Contact Bruce? Bzerbel1@gmail.com

"AND YOU SHALL CRY OUT IN THAT DAY BECAUSE OF THE KING THAT YOU HAVE CHOSEN FOR YOURSELVES AND THE LORD WILL NOT HEAR YOU IN THAT DAY"                           1ST SAMUEL 8:18

POSTED JULY 29, 2010

INS CO'S SCREW DEAD SOLDIER'S FAMILIES

We do a lot in this nation to celebrate the military. We sing patriotic songs. We have parades. We put ribbons on our cars. We give medals to soldiers. What we don't do is anything real for those who have chosen to put on the uniform of the United States.

Those in the military have been subjected to medical experiments. They have been abandoned in foreign concentration camps. They have been lied to about their enlistments. They have been forced to return again and again to Iraq and Afghanistan. They have been screwed out of medical and pension benefits. No! No songs or parades for those things.

Now, in the article below, our corporate controllers have hit a new low. Life Insurance benefits due to the beneficiaries of military service personnel are now being put into non insured accounts without the permission of the beneficiaries. Yes, they just take the money and keep it. Give some worthless checks to the families and when they try to cash them, they bounce. It's time for our military personnel to figure it out. There is no war for freedom. It's for them and their profits. Those in the military are treated  no better than human toilet paper, to be used and disposed of by our government masters and their financiers. Do we really want to die for them?

Bruce                     New World Order News

Fallen Soldiers' Families Denied Cash as Insurers Profit

Cindy Lohman holds a photo of her late son, Ryan, on the grounds of Monocacy National Battlefield in Frederick, Maryland, on July 9, 2010. Photographer: Bill Cramer/Bloomberg Markets via Bloomberg

The package arrived at Cindy Lohman’s home in Great Mills, Maryland, just two weeks after she learned that her son, Ryan, a 24-year-old Army sergeant, had been killed by a bomb in Afghanistan. It was a thick, 9-inch-by- 12-inch envelope from Prudential Financial Inc., which handles life insurance for the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Inside was a letter from Prudential about Ryan’s $400,000 policy. And there was something else, which looked like a checkbook. The letter told Lohman that the full amount of her payout would be placed in a convenient interest-bearing account, allowing her time to decide how to use the benefit.

“You can hold the money in the account for safekeeping for as long as you like,” the letter said. In tiny print, in a disclaimer that Lohman says she didn’t notice, Prudential disclosed that what it called its Alliance Account was not guaranteed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its September issue.

Lohman, 52, left the money untouched for six months after her son’s August 2008 death.

“It’s like you’re paying me off because my child was killed,” she says. “It was a consolation prize that I didn’t want.”

As time went on, she says, she tried to use one of the “checks” to buy a bed, and the salesman rejected it. That happened again this year, she says, when she went to a Target store to purchase a camera on Armed Forces Day, May 15.

‘I’m Shocked’

Lohman, a public health nurse who helps special-needs children, says she had always believed that her son’s life insurance funds were in a bank insured by the FDIC. That money -- like $28 billion in 1 million death-benefit accounts managed by insurers -- wasn’t actually sitting in a bank.

It was being held in Prudential’s general corporate account, earning investment income for the insurer. Prudential paid survivors like Lohman 1 percent interest in 2008 on their Alliance Accounts, while it earned a 4.8 percent return on its corporate funds, according to regulatory filings.

“I’m shocked,” says Lohman, breaking into tears as she learns how the Alliance Account works. “It’s a betrayal. It saddens me as an American that a company would stoop so low as to make a profit on the death of a soldier. Is there anything lower than that?”

Millions of bereaved Americans have unwittingly been placed in the same position by their insurance companies. The practice of issuing what they call “checkbooks” to survivors, instead of paying them lump sums, extends well beyond the military.

Touching Americans

In the past decade, these so-called retained-asset accounts have become standard operating procedure in an industry that touches virtually every American: There are more than 300 million active life insurance policies in the U.S., and the industry holds $4.6 trillion in assets, according to the American Council of Life Insurers.

Insurance companies tell survivors that their money is put in a secure account. Neither Prudential nor MetLife Inc., the largest life insurer in the U.S., segregates death benefits into a separate fund.

Newark, New Jersey-based Prudential, the second-largest life insurer, holds payouts in its own general account, according to regulatory filings.

New York-based MetLife has told survivors in a standard letter: “To help you through what can be a very difficult, emotional and confusing time, we created a settlement option, the Total Control Account Money Market Option. It is guaranteed by MetLife.”

No FDIC Insurance

The company’s letter omits that the money is in MetLife’s corporate investment account, isn’t in a bank and has no FDIC insurance.

“All guarantees are subject to the financial strength and claims-paying ability of MetLife,” it says.

Both MetLife, which handles insurance for nonmilitary federal employees, and Prudential paid 0.5 percent interest in July to survivors of government workers and soldiers. That’s less than half of the rate available at some banks with accounts insured by the FDIC up to $250,000.

Bank of New York Mellon Corp. handles the paperwork and monthly statements for customers with MetLife “checking accounts.” The insurance company, not the bank, most recently reported holding about $10 billion in death benefits, in 2008.

The “checkbook” system cheats the families of those who die, says Jeffrey Stempel, an insurance law professor at the William S. Boyd School of Law at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, who wrote ‘Stempel on Insurance Contracts’ (Aspen Publishers, 2009).

‘Bad Faith’

“It’s institutionalized bad faith,” he says. “In my view, this is a scheme to defraud by inducing the policyholder’s beneficiary to let the life insurance company retain assets they’re not entitled to. It’s turning death claims into a profit center.”

Prudential’s Alliance Account is helpful to families of soldiers, says company spokesman Bob DeFillippo.

“For some families, the account is the difference between earning interest on a large amount of money and letting it sit idle,” he says. Prudential follows the law, he says.

“We fully and regularly disclose the nature and terms of the account to account holders,” DeFillippo says. “We make it clear that the money can be withdrawn at any time by simply writing a draft.”

Metlife spokesman Joseph Madden says his company’s customers are very happy with the Total Control Account.

‘Overwhelmingly Positive’

“The feedback from TCA customers has been overwhelmingly positive,” he says. “The TCA affords beneficiaries security, peace of mind and time to make an informed decision -- while earning interest in the interim.”

Madden says the company was paying some survivors 0.5 percent in July while some others got 1.5 percent or 3 percent, depending on the age and origin of insurance accounts. The accounts don’t violate any laws, Madden says, and are authorized by New York state insurance law.

Insurers are holding onto at least $28 billion owed to survivors, according to three firms that handle retained-asset accounts for about 130 life insurance companies. There are no public records showing how much companies are holding in these accounts.

The “checks” that Cindy Lohman wrote, the ones rejected by retailers, were actually drafts, or IOUs, issued by Prudential. Even though the “checks” had the name of JPMorgan Chase & Co. on them, Lohman’s funds weren’t in that bank; they were held by Prudential.

Federal Bank Law

Before a check could clear, Prudential would have to send money to JPMorgan, bank spokesman John Murray says.

Insurance companies -- in addition to holding onto the money of survivors, paying them uncompetitive interest rates and giving them misleading guarantees -- may be violating a federal bank law. A 1933 statute makes it a felony for any company to accept deposits without state or federal authorization.

That means only banks or credit unions can accept deposits, says Arthur Wilmarth, a professor at George Washington University Law School in Washington who has testified before Congress about banking regulations.

If a prosecutor pressed an insurance company, retained- asset accounts could be outlawed because insurers say they deposit money into these accounts and don’t have bank charters or banking regulation, Wilmarth says. MetLife also offers its own version of certificates of deposit.

“If it swims, quacks and flies like a duck, the court could decide that it is indeed a duck,” he says. “You then potentially could have a criminal violation.”

Potential Bank Run

This unregulated quasi-banking system operated by insurers has none of the protections of the actual banking system. Lawrence Baxter, a professor at Duke University School of Law in Durham, North Carolina, says the potential exists for a catastrophe.

If one insurer is unable to meet its obligations on retained-asset accounts, people could lose faith in other companies and demand immediate payment, triggering a panic, says Baxter, who has consulted with federal agencies on financial regulation.

The government established the FDIC in 1933 after frantic depositors tried to pull their money from banks. The federal government has no such program for death-benefit accounts.

“There’s more than $25 billion out there in these accounts,” Baxter says. “A run could be triggered immediately by one insurance company not being able to honor its payout. The whole point of creating the FDIC was to put an end to bank runs.”

No Federal Regulation

The sweeping financial regulatory legislation signed by President Barack Obama on July 21 doesn’t address retained-asset accounts. It creates a new federal insurance office, which won’t be a regulator. It will collect information, monitor the industry for systemic risk and consult with state insurance regulators.

An industry with $19.1 trillion in potential liabilities will remain unregulated by the federal government. In 2008, insurers approved claims totaling $60 billion in death benefits, according to the life insurance council.

The federal government doesn’t even regulate the life insurance it supplies, via MetLife, to its own employees in a program called Federal Employees’ Group Life Insurance. As the VA does for soldiers, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management sends handbook to nonmilitary government workers -- some 4 million active employees and retirees.

The handbook says their life insurance policies automatically pay out death benefits in the form of a “money- market-account checkbook.” The 217-page handbook omits that the money isn’t FDIC insured and will stay with MetLife until someone writes a “check.”

‘Unfair Advantage’

This lack of disclosure is unconscionable, says Harvey Goldschmid, a commissioner of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission from 2002 to 2005.

“I can’t imagine why bank regulators haven’t been requiring a prominent ‘no FDIC insurance’ disclosure,” says Goldschmid, who’s now a law professor at Columbia University in New York. “This system works very badly for the bereaved. It takes unfair advantage of people at their time of weakness.”

The closest relative to retained-asset accounts may be money-market mutual funds, which are pools of cash invested in short-term debt securities.

Money Market Rules

The SEC requires fund companies to warn investors that money market funds don’t have FDIC insurance. It also mandates that fund managers provide a prospectus, that they invest in specific types of safe debt and that they post a detailed schedule of their investments monthly on their websites.

Insurers’ retained-asset accounts have none of those regulatory protections.

A June 2009 MetLife standard condolence letter to survivors leaves out that accounts aren’t in a bank and aren’t federally insured. In June 2010, 25 years after MetLife invented retained- asset accounts, the company released a customer agreement that does disclose that retained assets aren’t in a money market account nor in a bank and that they have no FDIC insurance.

“The assets backing the Total Control Accounts are maintained in MetLife’s general account and are subject to MetLife’s creditors,” the agreement says. That language contradicts the federal employee handbook, which says survivors get a money market account.

Gerry Goldsholle, the man who invented retained-asset accounts, says MetLife makes $100 million to $300 million a year from investment returns on the death benefits it holds. A former president of MetLife Marketing Corp., Goldsholle, 69, devised the accounts in 1984. He’s now a lawyer in private practice in Sausalito, California.

‘This Is Crazy’

Goldsholle says he pondered the billions of dollars of death-benefit proceeds the company paid out each year.

“I looked at this and said this is crazy,” says Goldsholle, who left the firm in 1991. “What are we doing to retain some of this money? It’s very expensive to bring money in the front door of an insurance company. You’re paying very large commissions and sales expenses.”

So he came up with a way for MetLife to hold onto death benefits.

“The company would win because we would make a nice spread on the money,” Goldsholle says, while customers would earn interest on their accounts. MetLife, he says, can earn 1 to 3 percentage points more from its investment income -- mostly from bonds -- than it pays out to survivors.

Misconceptions

The accounts Goldsholle invented have spread much faster than the ability of state regulators to track them -- or even to understand how they work. Ted Hamby, North Carolina’s deputy insurance commissioner for life and health, says he believes retained-asset accounts have FDIC protection.

“Whatever money is on deposit in that checking account will be insured, up to the limits of the FDIC,” he says. He’s wrong. No retained-asset accounts have FDIC coverage.

In Connecticut, where 106 insurance companies are based, state insurance department manager for market conduct Kurt Swan also says that retained-asset accounts are kept in banks, with FDIC coverage.

“I think they’re just trying to offer some flexibility to the beneficiary,” he says. Swan and his colleague, William Arfanis, the department’s principal financial examiner, both say the insurers don’t profit from the retained-asset accounts. That too is wrong. The companies do earn investment gains on death benefits.

Some Rules

Just six states had any rules for retained-asset accounts as of July 2009, according to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. Arkansas, Colorado, Kansas, Nevada, North Carolina and North Dakota require insurers to disclose fees and interest rates and to tell survivors they may withdraw all of the money by writing a single check.

Maryland, which isn’t on the NAIC list, also has rules.

Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner Joel Ario, whose state has no rules for retained-asset accounts, says he has asked his staff to prepare a regulation forbidding insurance companies from using such accounts as the default method of paying a death claim.

“I haven’t heard a plausible argument about why these accounts are better for the consumer,” Ario says.

If state insurance regulators have paid scant attention to retained-asset accounts, state bank regulators have taken an even more hands-off approach.

‘Not Drawn Attention’

“Quite honestly, we deal with issues that our members want us to deal with,” says Michael Stevens, senior vice president for regulatory policy at the Washington-based Conference of State Bank Supervisors. “This is not one that has drawn their attention.”

Three companies have not only noticed but have also profited by handling retained-asset accounts for insurers. Open Solutions Inc., based in Glastonbury, Connecticut, oversees 400,000 accounts for 67 insurance companies.

Open Solutions sends out “checkbooks,” prints periodic statements and computes accrued interest for accounts with total deposits of $10 billion, says Jay Woldar, director of sales and account management at Open Solutions.

One of its competitors, Bank of New York Mellon, administers more than 500,000 retained-asset accounts holding a total of $14 billion, including MetLife’s retained assets. Chicago-based Northern Trust Corp. handles about $4 billion in 125,000 accounts, spokesman John O’Connell says.

Survivors generally don’t touch these accounts immediately.

Accounts Stay Opened

“About 40 percent of the money stays in for more than a year,” Woldar says. Insurers can have use of survivors’ money for years, even decades, says Randi Lichtenstein, a product line manager at Bank of New York.

“They can stick around for quite a while,” she says. “There are accounts that all insurance companies have on these platforms that go back 10, 15, 20 years.”

MetLife’s Madden says most of its customers’ retained-asset accounts are closed within one year. About 28 percent of survivors of soldiers and veterans keep their retained-asset accounts open for more than two years, the VA says.

During a routine audit completed in 2004, the New York State Insurance Department found that 1,476 retained-asset accounts, worth a total of $33.5 million, at Hartford, Connecticut-based Phoenix Life Insurance Co., had been dormant for more than three years.

In New York, funds in an account that remains dormant for more than three years may be turned over to the state. Phoenix spokeswoman Alice Ericson says the company now has a policy of sending letters to people whose accounts have been inactive for two years.

Inactive Accounts

Almost one-third of the 6,890 retained-asset accounts run by Mony Life Insurance Co. were inactive for more than three years, New York auditors found in 2002. Mony is now owned by Axa SA, Europe’s second-largest insurer by market value.

A few people have sued insurers over the use of retained- asset accounts. Prudential won a lawsuit in 2009 in which a survivor complained about the Alliance Account. MetLife has a case pending in which a survivor says that she was cheated by the retained-asset account. In court-filed papers, MetLife denies any wrongdoing.

There has been only one ruling by a federal appellate court on the substance of such accounts -- and it went against an insurance company.

After a federal judge in Boston dismissed a policyholder suit claiming that Chattanooga, Tennessee-based insurer Unum Group was stealing account earnings from survivors, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit overruled the lower court in 2008. It reinstated the case.

‘Euphemistically Named’

“The euphemistically named ‘Security Account,’ accompanied with a checkbook, was no more than an IOU which did not transfer the funds to which the beneficiaries were entitled out of the plan assets,” the three-judge panel wrote.

Unum spokeswoman Mary Clarke Guenther says retained-asset accounts are a commonly accepted practice in the industry. The case is pending.

Absent regulatory or legal intervention, bereaved family members like Cindy Lohman will continue to find death benefits going into retained-asset accounts. Her son, Ryan, posthumously received a Purple Heart and Bronze Star Medal for sacrificing his life to save fellow soldiers in Afghanistan in August 2008.

He had ordered a Humvee to swerve to avoid an explosive device, exposing himself to its deadly blast.

‘Accept The Reality’

Three days after learning of her son’s death, Lohman says, an Army casualty assistance officer came to her home, explaining that Ryan had a life insurance policy and that her signature was needed to release the money.

“By signing that, it forced me to accept the reality that he was dead and not coming back,” she says.

Since 1999, the VA has allowed Prudential to send survivors “checkbooks” tied to its Alliance Account. In 2009 alone, the families of U.S. soldiers and veterans were supposed to be paid death benefits totaling $1 billion immediately, according to their insurance policies. They weren’t.

Prudential’s VA policies promise either a lump sum payout or 36 monthly payments. About 90 percent of survivors, including Lohman, choose to receive the full amount upfront. When they do, they don’t get a check; they get a “checkbook.”

Under a 2008 law, survivors covered by Prudential’s VA policy are allowed one year to put death benefits into a Roth IRA, allowing them to earn investment gains for the rest of their lives tax-free. Prudential never informed Lohman, she says.

‘If They Had Told Me’

“I definitely would have done that if they had told me,” Lohman says.

Even Stephen Wurtz, deputy assistant director for insurance at the VA, who has overseen the insurance program for 25 years, has been kept in the dark by Prudential.

“Prudential runs the program on a cost-reimbursement basis only,” he initially said, referring to the $4.2 million in fees the VA paid Prudential in 2009. “They’re really good guys. They do it patriotically. They don’t make any money from the Alliance Account.”

Wurtz, 62, said he had believed that the Alliance Account money went into a bank. After he learned that the payouts actually stayed in Prudential’s general fund, Wurtz says, he asked Prudential how much money the insurance company made from these accounts and how many dollars it held in retained assets.

Prudential declined to answer, saying that information was proprietary, Wurtz says.

‘Maybe I Didn’t’

Prudential, which has had the insurance contract with the VA since 1965, pitched the checkbook payout to the VA in 1999 as an added benefit to survivors, Wurtz says. The government agency accepted Prudential’s offer, he says.

“Maybe I didn’t ask enough questions,” he says.

Printed on each “check,” next to “Prudential’s Alliance Account” is the name of JPMorgan, the second-biggest U.S. bank by assets. JPMorgan spokesman Murray declined to say how much the bank is paid for its role with Prudential.

The way Prudential has set up the “checks” implies that JPMorgan stands behind the accounts and that they are thus backed by the FDIC, Duke’s Baxter says.

“That’s misleading the beneficiaries,” he says.

“We disclose the roles of all companies involved in administering these accounts,” Prudential’s DeFillippo says. JPMorgan’s Murray declined to comment.

Prudential’s general account earned 4.4 percent in 2009, mostly from bond investments, according to SEC filings. The company has paid survivors 0.5 percent in 2010.

‘It’s Shameful’

“It’s shameful that an insurance company is stealing money from the families of our fallen servicemen,” says Paul Sullivan, who served in the 1991 Gulf War as an Army cavalry scout and is now executive director of Veterans for Common Sense, a nonprofit advocacy group based in Washington. “I’m outraged.”

Sullivan, a project manager at the VA’s benefits unit from 2000 to 2006, says he was never told Prudential kept money and earned investment gains from soldiers’ insurance payouts instead of sending it to survivors.

“There shouldn’t be secret profits,” he says. “This should be transparent. The lack of oversight is appalling.”

It’s not much different for the 4 million nonmilitary U.S. government employees and retirees -- including staff of the FDIC -- covered by MetLife policies. That program, begun in 1965, averages more than $2 billion in death benefits claimed every year, the government says.

Payouts are handled by the Office of Federal Employees’ Group Life Insurance. That makes it look like the government is taking care of its employees’ insurance coverage. It isn’t. That “office” is a unit of MetLife.

MetLife Holds the Money

Edmund Byrnes, a spokesman for the Office of Personnel Management, which oversees MetLife’s federal employee contract, says MetLife segregates death benefits into beneficiary accounts after it approves death claims.

“Once MetLife transfers the funds to the Total Control Account, the monies are no longer under MetLife’s control,” Byrnes says.

MetLife spokesman Madden says something different.

“The assets that back the liabilities on all the TCAs are placed in MetLife’s general account,” he says.

Back at the Veterans Affairs office, Deputy Assistant Director Wurtz, who’s a civilian employee, says he now understands for the first time that since he’s covered by the federal insurance program, his own wife could receive a MetLife “checkbook” someday.

‘Ripping Off Their Own’

“Uncle Sam is ripping off their own,” Wurtz says. “My wife would get the money, and they would blood-suck some of it out of her.”

It took Wurtz, who’s been working with insurers for most of his career, more than a decade to understand how retained-asset accounts work. Companies like MetLife and Prudential have never told millions of Americans with insurance policies that when they die, the insurer plans to hold their family’s money in its own account to make investment gains from the death benefit.

“It’s outrageous that somebody’s profiting off other people’s grief,” says Mark Umbrell of Doylestown, Pennsylvania. His 26-year-old son, Colby, an Army Airborne Ranger who earned a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart, was killed in Iraq in May 2007. Umbrell was among those who got a “checkbook” account.

“I think we’re being taken,” he says.

The question for Umbrell, Lohman and a million others with these accounts is whether anything will change. State bank regulators say if there are to be any reforms, they should be made by insurance departments. Officials at those state agencies often say they don’t even understand what a retained-asset account is.

“It’s flown under the radar,” professor Stempel says. “Regulators have not done their job.”

Until public officials wake up, the bereaved will remain a secret profit center for the life insurance industry.

POSTED JULY 28, 2010

PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANIES TRY TO FORCE VACCINES

Yes, our government masters are busy, busy, busy. At this time every year, school districts all around the nation join together to promote the lie that all children must be vaccinated in order to enter school. There is no law anywhere, that requires children to be vaccinated. All schools are required to provide parents who wish to opt out, with a waiver form.

There is a video below covering just some of the facts concerning DPT vaccines. As bad as whooping cough is, the vaccine is worse. Our children are the most vaccinated generation in history. They are also the most unhealthy generation in at least 100 years. The fact remains that the 3rd largest killer in the U.S. today, is legally prescribed drugs. Vaccines contain many dangerous chemicals. Ingredients like, Aluminum, Propylene Glycol, Squalene, Thimerisol (Mercury) and other cancer causing agents are frequently included. On top of this many of the vaccines are made from aborted fetuses.

We need to ask, "Whom do we trust"? Do we believe our central government and the pharmaceutical companies are truthful? Are we willing to put our lives and health as well as that of our children in their hands without question? We wouldn't trust known criminals with our children and these people are no better. Just say no.

Bruce                    New World Order News

POSTED JULY 27, 2010

ARMED POLICE THUGS ATTACK  RAW FOOD STORE

Yes, our government masters are busy, busy, busy. Now that they have many convinced evil demons are out to get us, they have been speeding towards total control in a police state. Forget about Bin Laden and the Taliban, they are too busy shaking down old ladies at the airport and attacking the vitamin and natural food businesses.

Yes, we all need to surrender to total police control so they can keep us safe from consuming harmful foods and supplements. No, they don't have time to remove toxic fluoride from our water. No, they don't have time to outlaw genetically modified foods that kill laboratory animals and are wiping out honey bees. No, they don't have time to remove the aspartame that causes tumors, headaches and blindness, from thousands of foods. And no, they can't be bothered with chemically added virus's that now are in millions of school lunches throughout the nation. And, of course , the fact that the third largest killer in the U.S. is "legally" prescribed drugs is totally lost on them.

No, put on your ski mask, (so no one knows you are a Nazi thug), cover up your badge, get your taser out and fight for freedom by attacking your friends and neighbors selling healthy foods. Unless our friends in the police forces throughout the nation start refusing these orders, America will descend into bedlam and the natural food stores will be the least of their problems.

Bruce                    New World Order News

Raw-food raid highlights a hunger

Some people balk at restrictions on selling unprocessed milk and other foods. 'How can we not have the freedom to choose what we eat?' one says. Regulators say the rules exist for safety and fairness.

POSTED JULY 26, 2010

TOXIC RAIN FALLING IN GULF

In the article below and accompanying video links, it is becoming apparent that the effects from the Gulf oil leak are getting out of hand. Some of the dispersant chemicals along with byproducts from the oil itself are finding their way into the clouds coming from Gulf evaporation.

The disturbing thing about this is the problem with our society in general. The problem comes from multi-national corporations controlling a large, out of control central government. Everything they do is for the corporations and themselves. Everything that comes out of their mouths are lies. No one trusts our government masters anymore. Their response has been to start a phony war on terror which has taken direct aim on the citizens of the country.

It's getting so people are afraid to call the authorities anymore fearing unwanted attention. Are the police our friends? Want to call the FBI? How about Homeland Security, the IRS? No, most do not want anything to do with any of them. Now, in the Gulf, we are supposed to trust them to protect us. Who believes that? So, what is the truth there? I imagine we will soon find out, but not from them. Would they really allow major environmental damage in the Gulf? Judging from what we have witnessed in recent years, I would not put it past them.

Bruce                    New World Order News

Monday, July 26, 2010

Toxic Black Rain Falling In The Gulf

POSTED JULY 23, 2010

WHO ARE AMERICA'S HERO'S?

When I was a young boy, we celebrated heros both real and fictitious. Our real heros were George Washington, Andrew Jackson, Davy Crockett, those who raised the American Flag on Iwo Jima, and the like. Fictitious heros were generally on television. They included Zorro, Batman, The Green Hornet, Superman and so on.

Today, we no longer celebrate those with real accomplishments and real moral character. Today we have Madonna, Kobe Bryant, Lebron James, Alex Rodriguez, Matthew Mcconaughey and others in entertainment and sports. Many of our streets, cities and monuments are named after politicians. The common denominator for almost all of our contemporary heros is that they have done nothing of real value for our society. They are famous for being famous. If there is moral character, it is not a requirement, but strictly coincidental. A couple of weeks ago I had to endure a standing ovation in my church for a soldier who had recently returned from Iraq, having accomplished nothing other than going there and coming back.

This leads me to the article below. In it the author speaks of how our government masters and their willing accomplices in the main stream media have infected our psyche with the assumption that all military are heros. Yes, I guess if you are "just following orders" you are now a hero. Funny! 60 years ago the allied command, led by this nation, tried and convicted military personnel from Germany and Japan for doing the exact same thing. I guess if you win the war, you are a hero. If you lose, you are a criminal. I'll tell who should be a hero, Michael New. He was a soldier who refused to accept emblems of the United Nations as well as submit to foreign officers. That my friend, is courage and heroism, not somebody who bounces a ball for a living.

Bruce                           New World Order News

Consider a strange aspect of our wars since October 2001: they have yet to establish a bona fide American hero, a national household name.  Two were actually "nominated" early by the Bush administration — Jessica Lynch, a 19-year-old private and clerk captured by the Iraqis in the early days of the American invasion and later "rescued" by Army Rangers and Navy Seals, and Pat Tillman, the former NFL safety who volunteered for service in the Army Rangers eight months after 9/11 and died under "enemy" gunfire in Afghanistan.

Both stories were later revealed to be put-up jobs, pure Bush-era propaganda and deceit.  In Lynch’s case, almost every element in the instant patriotic myth about her rescue proved either phony or highly exaggerated; in Tillman’s, it turned out that he had been killed by friendly fire, but — thanks to a military cover-up (that involved General Stanley McChrystal, later to become Afghan war commander) — was still given a Silver Star and a posthumous promotion.  Members of his unit were even ordered by the military to lie at his funeral, and he was made into a convenient "hero" and recruitment poster boy for the Afghan War. Both were shameful episodes, involving administration manipulation and media gullibility.  Since then, as TomDispatch regular and retired lieutenant colonel William Astore points out, U.S. troops as a whole have been labeled "our heroes," but individual heroes have been in vanishingly short supply.

In fact, the only specific figures who get the heroic treatment these days are our military commanders.  They tend to be written about like so many demi-gods (until they fall).  General McChrystal, before his ignominious nosedive, was presented in the press (with the Tillman incident all but forgotten) as a cross between a Spartan ascetic and a strategic genius (with the brain of a military Stephen Hawking).  Present war commander General David Petraeus regularly receives even more fawning media treatment and seems to be worshipped in Washington these days as if he were not only "an American hero," but a genuine military god (as well as a future presidential candidate).  Yet, in the way they’ve been treated, both of these figures seem closer to celebrities than heroes in any traditional sense.

Perhaps this catches something essential about America’s unending wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and also what used to be called the Global War on Terror but now has no name.  Like the drone pilots who sit at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada, killing peasants and terrorists 7,000 miles away and to whom new standards of "valor" are now being applied, most Americans are remarkably detached from the wars our "all volunteer" military force (and its vast contingent of for-profit mercenary warriors) fight in distant lands.  Our forces have become generically heroic, but no one cares to look too closely at the specifics of these bloody, dirty wars that will never end in victory, not close enough to end up with actual heroes.  Our "heroic" troops have no real names, any more than the wars they fight, and so individual heroics are perhaps beside the point.  (Check out the latest TomCast audio interview in which William Astore discusses heroism and the military by clicking here, or to download to your iPod, here.)  Tom 

"Our American Heroes" 
Why It’s Wrong to Equate Military Service with Heroism 
By William J. Astore

When I was a kid in the 1970s, I loved reading accounts of American heroism from World War II.  I remember being riveted by a book about the staunch Marine defenders of Wake Island and inspired by John F. Kennedy’s exploits saving the sailors he commanded on PT-109.  Closer to home, I had an uncle — like so many vets of that war, relatively silent on his own experiences — who had been at Pearl Harbor when the Japanese attacked on December 7, 1941, and then fought them in a brutal campaign on Guadalcanal, where he earned a Bronze Star.  Such men seemed like heroes to me, so it came as something of a shock when, in 1980, I first heard Yoda’s summary of war in The Empire Strikes Back.  Luke Skywalker, if you remember, tells the wizened Jedi master that he seeks "a great warrior." "Wars not make one great," Yoda replies.

Okay, it was George Lucas talking, I suppose, but I was struck by the truth of that statement.  Of course, my little epiphany didn’t come just because of Yoda or Lucas.  By my late teens, even as I was gearing up for a career in the military, I had already begun to wonder about the common ethos that linked heroism to military service and war.  Certainly, military service (especially the life-and-death struggles of combat) provides an occasion for the exercise of heroism, but even then I instinctively knew that it didn’t constitute heroism.

Ever since the events of 9/11, there’s been an almost religious veneration of U.S. service members as "Our American Heroes" (as a well-intentioned sign puts it at my local post office).  That a snappy uniform or even intense combat in far-off countries don’t magically transform troops into heroes seems a simple point to make, but it’s one worth making again and again, and not only to impressionable, military-worshipping teenagers.

Here, then, is what I mean by "hero": someone who behaves selflessly, usually at considerable personal risk and sacrifice, to comfort or empower others and to make the world a better place.  Heroes, of course, come in all sizes, shapes, ages, and colors, most of them looking nothing like John Wayne or John Rambo or GI Joe (or Jane).

"Hero," sadly, is now used far too cavalierly.  Sportscasters, for example, routinely refer to highly paid jocks who hit walk-off home runs or score game-winning touchdowns as heroes.  Even though I come from a family of firefighters (and one police officer), the most heroic person I’ve ever known was neither a firefighter nor a cop nor a jock: She was my mother, a homemaker who raised five kids and endured without complaint the ravages of cancer in the 1970s, with its then crude chemotherapy regimen, its painful cobalt treatments, the collateral damage of loss of hair, vitality, and lucidity.  In refusing to rail against her fate or to take her pain out on others, she set an example of selfless courage and heroism I’ll never forget.

Hometown Heroes in Uniform

In local post offices, as well as on local city streets here in central Pennsylvania, I see many reminders that our troops are "hometown heroes."  Official military photos of these young enlistees catch my eye, a few smiling, most looking into the camera with faces of grim resolve tinged with pride at having completed basic training.  Once upon a time, as the military dean of students at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, I looked into such faces in the flesh, congratulating young service members for their effort and spirit.

I was proud of them then; I still am.  But here’s a fact I suspect our troops might be among the first to embrace: the act of joining the military does not make you a hero, nor does the act of serving in combat.  Whether in the military or in civilian life, heroes are rare — indeed, all-too-rare.  Heck, that’s the reason we celebrate them.  They’re the very best of us, which means they can’t be all of us.

Still, even if elevating our troops to hero status has become something of a national mania, is there really any harm done?  What’s wrong with praising our troops to the rafters?  What’s wrong with adding them to our pantheon of heroes?

The short answer is: There’s a good deal wrong, and a good deal of harm done, not so much to them as to us.

To wit:

*By making our military a league of heroes, we ensure that the brutalizing aspects and effects of war will be played down.  In celebrating isolated heroic feats, we often forget that war is guaranteed to degrade humanity.  "War," as writer and cultural historian Louis Menand noted, "is specially terrible not because it destroys human beings, who can be destroyed in plenty of other ways, but because it turns human beings into destroyers."

When we create a legion of heroes in our minds, we blind ourselves to evidence of their destructive, sometimes atrocious, behavior.  Heroes, after all, don’t commit atrocities.  They don’t, for instance, dig bullets out of pregnant women’s bodies in an attempt to cover up deadly mistakes.  They don’t fire on a good Samaritan and his two children as he attempts to aid a grievously wounded civilian.  Such atrocities and murderous blunders, so common to war’s brutal chaos, produce cognitive dissonance in the minds of many Americans who simply can’t imagine their "heroes" killing innocents.  How much easier it is to see the acts of violence of our troops as necessary, admirable, even noble.

*By making our military generically heroic, we act to prolong our wars.  By seeing war as essentially heroic theater, we esteem it even as we excuse it.  Consider, for example, Germany during World War I, a subject I’ve studied and written about.  Now, as then, and here, as there, the notion of war as heroic theater became common.  And when that happens, war’s worst excesses are conveniently softened on the "home front," which only contributes to more war-making.  As the historian Robert Weldon Whalen noted of those German soldiers of nearly a century ago, "The young men in field-grey were, first of all, not just soldiers, but young heroes, Junge Helden.  They fought in the heroes’ zone, Heldenzone, and performed heroic deeds, Heldentaten.  Wounded, they shed hero’s blood, Heldenblut, and if they died, they suffered a hero’s death, Heldentod, and were buried in a hero’s grave, Heldengrab."  The overuse of helden as a modifier to ennoble German militarism during World War I may prove grating to our ears today, but honestly, is it that much different from America’s own celebration of our troops as young heroes (with all the attendant rites)?

*By insisting programmatically on American military heroism, we also lay a firm foundation for potentially dangerous post-war myths, especially of the blame-mongering "stab-in-the-back" variety.  After all, once you have a league of heroes, how can you assign responsibility for costly, debilitating, perhaps even lost wars to them?  It’s just a fact that heroes don’t lose.  And if they’re not responsible, and their brilliant, super-competent leaders (General "King David" Petraeus springs to mind) aren’t responsible — then it’s only a small step to assigning blame to weak-willed civilians and so-called unpatriotic elements on the "home front," especially since we’re not likely to credit our enemies for much.  By definition, cravenly hiding among civilians as they do, our enemies are just about incapable of behaving heroically.

Of Young Heroes and Front Pigs

In rejecting the "heroic" label, don’t think we’d be insulting our troops.  Quite the opposite: we’d be making common cause with them, for most of our troops undoubtedly already reject the "hero" label, just as the young "heroes" of Germany did in 1917-18.  With the typical sardonic humor of front-line soldiers, they preferred the less comforting, if far more realistically descriptive label (given their grim situation in the trenches) of "front pigs."

Whatever nationality they may be, troops at the front know the score.  Even as our media and our culture seek to elevate our troops into the pantheon of demi-gods, our "front pigs" carry on, plying an ancient and brutal trade.  Most simply want to survive and come home with their bodies, their minds, and their buddies intact.  Part of the world’s deadliest war machine, they are naturally concerned first about saving their own skins, and only secondarily worried about the lives of others.  This is not beastliness.  Nor is it heroism.  It’s simply a front pig’s nature.

So, next time you talk to our soldiers, Marines, sailors, or airmen, do them (and your country) a small favor.  Thank them for their service.  Let them know that you appreciate them.  Just don’t call them heroes.

William J. Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF) and TomDispatch regular, teaches History at the Pennsylvania College of Technology.  He welcomes reader feedback at wjastore@gmail.com. Check out the latest TomCast audio interview in which Astore discusses heroism and the military by clicking here, or to download to your iPod, here.

Copyright 2010 William J. Astore

POSTED JULY 22, 2010

WHAT ABOUT THE REAL STORY OF IRAQ WAR?

In past articles I have repeatedly criticized the organized ignorance of many in our Christian community regarding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In many individual discussions with some of these people I find we are playing one game of tennis and another of baseball. Translated that means I try to give facts about the war while the others give slogans and cliche's more suited for cheer leading than factual discussions.

The article below covers one of these atrocities. Many years ago the U.S. and Israeli military began to include depleted uranium in many of their munitions. These are radioactive materials when exploded into dust are highly toxic and carcinogenic. The half life of DU is over 2 billion years. As of 2003 U.S. forces have dumped over 4000 tons of this material on Iraq. (Well, that ought to keep them free) Cancer and birth defects are epidemic in Iraq and the surrounding areas. These materials transported through prevailing winds are dramatically increasing lung cancer rates throughout the Northern hemisphere.

Let me speak one more time to my Christian brothers and sisters. We just can't keep singing "God Bless America" every time the subject of these wars come up. As Christians we have a higher duty to show the world that we serve our God and not the god of a nation. Look at these pictures below. This is a very, very small part of the reality we have supported. Our nation continues to decimate millions of people in our name. If we REALLY believe in God, then we will either take responsibility or become responsible. I have often said you are either a Christian or you're not. You can't have one foot in the church and the other in these wars based on lies.

Bruce                               New World Order News

Fatima Ahmed was born in Fallujah with deformities that include two heads Photo: uruknet.info

30mm depleted uranium tipped armour piercing cartridge. Photo: AFP/Ettienne Ansotte

Iraq environment minister blamed Monday the use of depleted uranium weapons by U.S. forces during the 2003 Operation Shock and Awe for the current surge in cancer cases across the country. As a result of "at least 350 sites in Iraq being contaminated during bombing" with depleted uranium (DU) weapons, Nermin Othman said, the nation is facing about 140,000 cases of cancer, with 7,000 to 8,000 new ones registered each year. Speaking at a ministerial meeting of the Arab League, she also complained that many chemical plants and oil facilities had been destroyed during the two military campaigns since the 1990s, but the ecological consequences remain unclear. 'Our ministry is fledgling, and we need international support; notably, we need laboratories to better monitor air and water contamination,' she said. The first major UN research on the consequences of the use of DU on the battlefield was conducted in 2003 in the wake of NATO operations in Kosovo, Bosnia, and Montenegro. The UN Environment Program (UNEP) said in its report after the research that DU poses little threat if spent munitions are cleared from the ground. 'Health risks primarily depend on the awareness of people coming into contact with DU,' UNEP writes in its 2004 brochure 'Depleted Uranium Awareness.' No major clean-up or public awareness campaigns have been reported in Iraq. Photo: Uruknet

Iraq Solidarity News (Al-Thawra) Welcome to Iraq Solidarity News, the online magazine of the Iraq Solidarity Campaign UK. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 02, 2006 Depleted Uranium Weapons — an investigation Angus Stickler, BBC A BBC investigation can reveal that the US and UK military have continued to use depleted uranium weapons despite warnings from scientists that it poses a potential long-term cancer risk to civilians. A former senior scientist with the United Nations has told the BBC that studies showing that it was carcinogenic were suppressed from a seminal World Health Organisation report. The US has refused to fund major research and has been criticised for failing to cooperate with UN attempts to conduct a post conflict assessment in Iraq. Angus Stickler reports: US and UK bombing of Iraq, March 2003. Photo: www.robert-fisk.com/   When depleted uranium bullets are fired, the rounds can rip through the tank armour. And once inside — on contact with air they combust exploding into a 10,000 degrees centigrade ball of fire. Both the US and UK used depleted uranium in Iraq. The US fired 320 tons in Gulf War I — and possibly as much as 2,000 tonnes in Gulf War II. But its use is highly controversial — blamed as one of the possible causes of cancer and birth defects. It’s this that prompted the Untied Nations’ World Health Organisation to conduct a major assessment of the post conflict hazards.   The findings were published in 2001. Dr Mike Repacholi retired as the Coordinator of the W.H.O. Radiation and Environmental Health Unit in June of this year.   He oversaw the project.   US and UK bombing of Iraq, March 2003. Photo: www.robert-fisk.com/ He says, “Depleted uranium is basically safe — you can touch depleted uranium for hours and not cause and radiation damage you can ingest it and it’s excreted through the body — 99 per cent of it goes within about a day — you would have to ingest a huge amount of depleted uranium dust to cause any adverse health effect.” The W.H.O. assessment warns that children should be restricted from going into post conflict areas.   The monograph — as it is called — is now used by some as the definitive document on the potential health hazards of depleted uranium.   But now this BBC investigation has been told — its findings may skewed. Dr Keith Baverstock — now retired — was a senior radiation advisor with 12 years experience at the W.H.O — part of Dr Repacholi's editorial team at the time.   He came across research indicating that depleted uranium is a potentially dangerous carcinogen: “When you breathe in the dust the deeper it goes into the lung the more difficult it is to clear.   The particles that dissolve pose a risk — part radioactive — and part from the chemical toxicity in the lung — and then later as that material diffuses into the rest of the body, and into the blood stream a potential risk at sites like the bone marrow for leukaemia, the lymphatic system and the kidney” according to Dr Baverstock. US and UK bombing of Iraq, March 2003. Photo: www.robert-fisk.com/   Health warnings suppressed This is called genotoxicicty says Dr Baverstock, it could take decades before evidence of cancer starts to emerge. As part of the W.H.O. team he submitted these findings — based on peer reviewed research conducted by the United States Department of Defense — for inclusion into the monograph. It received short shrift.   Dr Repacholi says this was with good reason. It was the committee's general conclusion that this data did not substantiate that there was a health effect at this stage.   Was the science that was in that report — which was research that came effectively from the US Department of Defense — was it wrong? DR REPACHOLI:    We want a comprehensive report — we want to include everything that we can — but we don't want fairytale stuff — it wasn't collaborated by other reports — that was felt to the level that science would say this was established. ANGUS STICKLER:    My understanding is that at the time that there were eight published peer reviewed research studies — attesting to the genotoxic nature of uranium — all of which could have been included in the monograph? REPACHOLI:    Yep — these — er — papers were speculative at the time and W.H.O. will only publish data that they know is established.   Destroyed houses. US and UK bombing of Iraq, March 2003. Photo: www.robert-fisk.com/ STICKLER:    Shouldn't the World Health Organisation err on the side of caution? REPACHOLI:    W.H.O is a conservative organisation there's no doubt — it's not a leader in this sort of thing — it's not out there saying wow we should be concerned about this, this and this — it's not there to do that. Dr Baverstock disagrees.   He says the W.H.O stance that this is inconclusive science is not safe science.   He attempted to take the issue further. DR BAVERSTOCK:    When it wasn't included in the monograph — I with two other colleagues prepared a paper for the open literature and the W.H.O did not permit me to submit that paper for publication. ANGUS STICKLER:    Why not — what reasons were you given? Housing damaged. US and UK bombing of Iraq, March 2003. Photo: www.robert-fisk.com/   BAVERSTOCK:    Well ha — I still have not had a reason as to why that paper was not allowed to be published. STICKLER:    Could it be the case that the science you're talking about is unsafe — in that you're — as a scientist — a bit miffed that they didn't include what you wanted them to include? BAVERSTOCK:    No I'm not miffed about it at all — we use this kind of laboratory testing in many systems to screen chemicals and to know whether things are going to be dangerous or not. STICKLER:    Why do you think your study was — as you say — suppressed? BAVERSTOCK:    It is naive to think that in institutions like the United Nations one is free from political influences — the member states have their own agendas. STICKLER:    What you seem to be saying there is that the W.H.O. was pressurised by the likes of the United States to come to the right conclusion?   Wounded face of child. US and UK bombing of Iraq, March 2003. Photo: www.robert-fisk.com/ BAVERSTOCK:    I think that could be the case — yes. It’s ironic that the major player that Dr Baverstock believes was behind the decision block publication of his study — was the nation state that conducted the research he was citing: The United States' Department of Defence Armed Forces Radiobiological Research Institute: a credible State laboratory.   A point I put to Dr Repacholi. DR REPACHOLI:    The problem that W.H.O had and it went right up to the Director General's office that it was finally disapproved at that level was that on the basis of the evidence that we have — we can't conclude that it is harmful — and to have a paper from another W.H.O staff member that says we absolutely think it's harmful — makes W.H.O look a bit odd. STICKLER:    With the greatest respect — that's going to have very little truck with someone who may get seriously ill because of depleted uranium the fact that the W.H.O. may look a bit odd?

Wounded child US and UK bombing of Iraq, March 2003. Photo: www.robert-fisk.com/

The Silence Of Horror While the so-called Hippies were dropping drugs in the Sixties, The United States Government was dropping Napalm on innocent civilians in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. It was a, " Scorched-Earth Policy." The U.S. Government was a marching plague of firepower across Southeast Asia. Southeast Asia is the most bombed area in the world. And, the vast number of Americans do not have a clue that this horror ever happened. Geneva convention rules are for fools, who think there is fair play in war. War is barbaric, and the American people have paid taxes to hide the corpses, and the truth. Now, lets fast forward 30 years, and the same thing is happening in the Middle East. In a simple statement, George W. Bush, 43rd president of the United States, is barbaric. It is a very simple truth. But, the vast majority of the American people will never hear this truth. Why? Because the truth would napalm their soul. Photo and words: Mike Hastie U.S. Army Medic Vietnam 1970-71

REPACHOLI:    No the odd part is that it looks like W.H.O. is not in control of its shop. There is undoubtedly a massive gulf between the views of these two scientists.   Dr Repacholi — however — denies that pressure was brought to bear on the W.H.O. The findings of the US Department of Defense research — are now in the public domain: depleted uranium is genotoxic — it chemically alters DNA and could be a precursor to tumour growth.   Since 2001, there have been numerous studies supporting the findings. We asked for an interview with the scientist who conducted these studies — Dr Alexandra Miller — the US Department of Defense refused.   The BBC has been told that she applied to the US Army Research Programme to do further work on the effects of depleted uranium in 2004, five and six.   All the applications were turned down.   Burnt body of child. US and UK bombing of Iraq, March 2003. Photo: www.robert-fisk.com/ Iraqi cancer increase This is the Isotope Geo-science laboratory at the British Geological Survey.   Its equipment has been used by the British Government to conduct the most extensive research so far — into depleted uranium contamination of UK troops.   Professor Randall Parrish says there are worrying signals coming from Iraq — from civilian populations. “I’ve been to several international conferences where I’ve heard Iraqi medical physicians summarise health statistics on the occurrence of birth defects and non Hodgkin’s Lymphomas and the rise in incidents in these kind of effects especially in the area of southern Iraq and the Basra area appears quite alarming on the basis of the figures that I’ve seen — significant data — that would suggest that we should be erring on the side of caution here — and it ought to be investigated” Professor Parrish told us. Professor Parrish has recently completed another research study — as yet unpublished — but it shows that if inhaled — depleted uranium remains in high concentrations in the body — a potential hazard — for decades.   The priority now, he says, is to ascertain whether it poses a real risk to humans — the people of Iraq. PROFESSOR PARRISH:    If we want to get to bottom of this issue as to whether populations and people are really suffering — we have to conduct environmental and health assessments — in places where people are exposed and we can I think solve this problem if sufficient resources and the will is there to actually address the problem. ANGUS STICKLER:    Do you think the will is there on the part of the politicians? US and UK bombing of Iraq, March 2003. Photo: www.robert-fisk.com/   PARRISH:    Unless we can conduct additional work — this issue of DU and the politics of it will continue to hang over many governments for years and years and years to come. Professor Parrish is prepared to undertake research on behalf of any member state that wishes to fund him. In the meantime the United Nations Environment Programme UNEP has trained a team of Iraqi scientists ready to carry out a detailed assessment.   But despite having political allies in Washington Henrik Slotte chief of the UNEP post conflict branch — says his work can’t progress further without co-operation from the US. HENRIK SLOTTE:    Without the coordinates and clear information about what was used and when — it is impossible to start working on depleted uranium in the field — it's like looking for a needle in the haystack. ANGUS STICKLER:    Are they providing you with all the information you've requested? SLOTTE:    In the case of Iraq we have requested and the reply has been that this is an issue that concerns many parts of that administration and it will take some time for them to come back in writing. STICKLER:    You do now have a team of Iraqis now ready to go in — wouldn't it be helpful for them to have this information now?   US and UK bombing of Iraq, March 2003. Photo: www.robert-fisk.com/ SLOTTE:    Yes it would. STICKLER:    Are there any indications that they are going to get this information shortly? SLOTTE:    There are no indications. Depleted Uranium according to a growing body of scientists is carcinogenic — a health hazard not just to Saddam Husain’s republican guard — but Iraqi civilians for generations to come. It’s been used in other theatres of conflict too — Afghanistan and Lebanon — and calls for action are now gaining ground. Not just with fervent campaigners — but eminent scientists, academics, and lawyers too — depleted uranium munitions they say should be banned under international law as potential weapons of indiscriminate effect. You can listen to the report by clicking on the following link      "LISTEN"

23 July, 2007 Iraqis blame U.S. depleted uranium for surge in cancer CAIRO, July 23 (RIA Novosti) — Iraq's environment minister blamed Monday the use of depleted uranium weapons by U.S. forces during the 2003 Operation Shock and Awe for the current surge in cancer cases across the country. As a result of "at least 350 sites in Iraq being contaminated during bombing" with depleted uranium (DU) weapons, Nermin Othman said, the nation is facing about 140,000 cases of cancer, with 7,000 to 8,000 new ones registered each year. Speaking at a ministerial meeting of the Arab League, she also complained that many chemical plants and oil facilities had been destroyed during the two military campaigns since the 1990s, but the ecological consequences remain unclear. "Our ministry is fledgling, and we need international support; notably, we need laboratories to better monitor air and water contamination," she said. The first major UN research on the consequences of the use of DU on the battlefield was conducted in 2003 in the wake of NATO operations in Kosovo, Bosnia, and Montenegro. The UN Environment Program (UNEP) said in its report after the research that DU poses little threat if spent munitions are cleared from the ground. "Health risks primarily depend on the awareness of people coming into contact with DU," UNEP writes in its 2004 brochure "Depleted Uranium Awareness." No major clean-up or public awareness campaigns have been reported in Iraq. © 2007 RIA Novosti

uruknet.info   اوروكنت.إنفو     informazione dall'iraq occupato information from occupied iraq أخبار منالعراق المحتلة The Crucified Boy Layla Anwar ...I suddenly had a flashback.   A dream I had about 6 months prior to the second Gulf War. I dreamt of a young Iraqi boy, being held by two american GI's and uplifted to be crucified on a cross. They nailed him to the cross and walked away. I woke up choking.   I said to myself, they tortured the children of Iraq now they will crucify them. The boy is now resurrected and is guiding my pen. He is asking me to draw him crucified on a old rotting wooden cross. He tells me that he wants the background to be filled with a half million skeletons of dead babies with Ms.Albright smiling on top of them. He is asking me to draw newborns with grosteque deformities due to depleted uranium. He is urging me not to forget the starving looking babies due to malnutrition. He is making sure I paint the children who have cancer because of american chemical weapons, queuing up in desolate hospitals. And he has not forgotten the children who survived in tattered clothes with their tattered textbooks walking barefoot to school. Oh wait, he is also telling me to draw in the corner, a picture of the orphanage bombed during the war of liberation and he is making sure that I show the kids running in the streets desperate with nowhere to go — some kidnapped, some sold whilst others raped. I asked him if he wanted me to add anything. He said the picture is almost complete. "What shall I call it?" I asked. He replied: "The World as I see it".

US military forces praying in front of Christian symbol of the Jesus cross as US missiles and planes bombed and dropped cluster bombs and depleted uranium over Iraq Invasion of Basra, Baghdad, Mosul and other cities, Iraq, April 2003 Photos: MarchforJustice.com

slide cursor underneath or side of photos US army marine forces praying in tent before US bombing and cluster bomb attacks on Iraq. Invasion of Basra, Baghdad, Mosul and other cities, Iraq, April 2003 Photos: MarchforJustice.com

An Iraqi child Terry Jemison of the Department of Veterans Affairs reported this week to the American Free Press that “Gulf-era veterans” now on medical disability since 1991 number 518,739, with only 7,035 reported wounded in Iraq in that same 14-year period. Soldiers developing malignancies so quickly since 2003 can be expected to develop multiple cancers from independent causes. This phenomenon has been reported by doctors in hospitals treating civilians following NATO bombing with DU in Yugoslavia in 1998-1999 and the U.S. military invasion of Iraq using DU for the first time in 1991. Medical experts report that this phenomenon of multiple malignancies from unrelated causes has been unknown until now and is a new syndrome associated with internal DU exposure. Just 467 U.S. personnel were wounded in the three-week Persian Gulf War in 1990-1991. Out of 580,400 soldiers who served in Gulf War I, 11,000 are dead, and by 2000 there were 325,000 on permanent medical disability. This astounding number of disabled vets means that a decade later, 56 percent of those soldiers who served now have medical problems. The number of disabled vets reported up to 2000 has been increasing by 43,000 every year. Brad Flohr of the Department of Veterans Affairs told American Free Press that he believes there are more disabled vets now than even after World War II.        Depleted Uranium — the dangerous enemy              http://www.sfbayview.com/081804/Depleteduranium081804.shtml

(left) A little Iraqi boy rescued from under the rubble of his home, which was destroyed during a US air strike on Falluja yesterday, October 2, 2004, warplane overnight. Iraqis condemn U.S. appointed, CIA tainted Prime Minister, Allawi, after the US air aaid on Falluja that killed 9 Iraqis and injured eleven, many of them children. (right) A wounded Iraqi boy cries in a hospital October 2, 2004 in the rebel-held city of Falluja, after an attack by a U.S. warplane overnight. Dr. Mohammad al-Dulaimi said at Falluja's main hospital that a woman, a child and an elderly man were killed and 12 others wounded in the raid. Photos: Mohammed Khodor/Reuters

(upper left) Child lying dead in makeshift coffin, result of US bombing attack on Iraq. (upper right) Small Child and children lying dead in makeshift coffin, result of US bombing attack on Iraq. (lower left) Two small injured children, young boys, result of US bombing attack on Iraq. (lower right) Young girl, blood on her face, arm and body serverly shredded, lying dead in makeshift coffin, result of US bombing and cluster bomb attack on Iraq. Invasion of Baghdad, Mosul and other cities, Iraq, April 2003. Photos: MarchforJustice.com

Study suggests cancer risk from depleted uranium James Randerson Tuesday May 8, 2007 Depleted uranium, which is used in armour-piercing ammunition, causes widespread damage to DNA which could lead to lung cancer, according to a study of the metal's effects on human lung cells. The study adds to growing evidence that DU causes health problems on battlefields long after hostilities have ceased. DU is a byproduct of uranium refinement for nuclear power. It is much less radioactive than other uranium isotopes, and its high density - twice that of lead - makes it useful for armour and armour piercing shells. Marines bow their heads during a prayer as Marines of Regimental Combat Team 5 hold a memorial at Camp Pendleton, in southern California, February 15, 2007 for the casualties of their recent 12-month deployment in al-Anbar Province in Iraq. Photo: REUTERS/Mark Avery Photos inserted by TheWE.cc   It has been used in conflicts including Bosnia, Kosovo and Iraq and there have been increasing concerns about the health effects of DU dust left on the battlefield. In November, the Ministry of Defence was forced to counteract claims that apparent increases in cancers and birth defects among Iraqis in southern Iraq were due to DU in weapons. Now researchers at the University of Southern Maine have shown that DU damages DNA in human lung cells.   The team, led by John Pierce Wise, exposed cultures of the cells to uranium compounds at different concentrations. The compounds caused breaks in the chromosomes within cells and stopped them from growing and dividing healthily. "These data suggest that exposure to particulate DU may pose a significant [DNA damage] risk and could possibly result in lung cancer," the team wrote in the journal Chemical Research in Toxicology. Previous studies have shown that uranium miners are at higher risk of lung cancer, but this has often been put down to the fact that miners are also exposed to radon, another cancer-causing chemical. Prof Wise said it is too early to say whether DU causes lung cancer in people exposed on the battlefield because the disease takes several decades to develop. "Our data suggest that it should be monitored as the potential risk is there," he said. Prof Wise and his team believe that microscopic particles of dust created during the explosion of a DU weapon stay on the battlefield and can be breathed in by soldiers and people returning after the conflict. Once they are lodged in the lung even low levels of radioactivity would damage DNA in cells close by. "The real question is whether the level of exposure is sufficient to cause health effects.   Shouts at US taxpayer paid occupation forces A Palestinian woman shouts at occupation forces in occupied east Jerusalem Old City, Saturday. Feb. 10, 2007. The Israel military, including weapons: tanks, missiles, warplanes, artillery, shells, are all funded by the US taxpayer. More than Fifteen million US dollars is given by US taxpayers to Israel each day for their military use. Total funding is more than 4 billion US dollars per year. Photo: AP/Muhammed Muheisen Photos inserted by TheWE.cc The answer to that question is still unclear," he said, adding that there has as yet been little research on the effects of DU on civilians in combat zones. "Funding for DU studies is very sparse and so defining the disadvantages is hard," he added. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2007

slide cursor here An Iraqi child in a Samarra hospital, one of the victims of the US attempt to control the Iraqi city. BETWEEN THE LINES    October 2004 High Levels of Uranium found in troops or civilians. Two of five articles cited under this heading were written by Tedd Weyman, deputy director of the Uranium Medical Research Centre, based in Toronto, Canada, and Washington, D.C. Weyman was honored for reports he wrote about the use of uranium weapons used by the U.S. in the war in Afghanistan. These conventional weapons contain uranium, classified as depleted uranium or DU. Despite the label, these weapons are still radioactive. Uranium is considered an ideal weapons material due to its density and ability to penetrate its target. Weyman has conducted health studies in both Iraq, where DU weapons were deployed, and also in Afghanistan, where weapons containing non-depleted uranium were used. Between The Lines' Melinda Tuhus spoke to Weyman about his research.   Tedd Weyman's reports have been honored by Project Censored. For more information, call the Research Centre at (416) 465-1341 or visit the group's website at www.umrc.net Tedd Weyman    Afghanistan was an extremely traumatic personal experience for me.   I was shaken right to my core because over there the uranium was used in experimental bombs. That was the days when the name Bunker Buster became well known. Those cave-penetrating weapons were even called seismic-shock bombs. So these were very large bombs in the neighborhood of two to five thousand pounds. I found my first day in Afghanistan a village in which the entire village was no more than a kilometer away from where a bombing sortie had occurred on a quasi-military outpost in the Jalalabad area, which is near the Pakistan border. All the people in the village were standing watching the bombers fire their bombs. These bombs came down, very big explosions, deep into the earth, threw a lot of material up into the air as a smoke plume, flashed odd colors, then a smoke plume full of dust, dirt and debris — and of course we found out later was uranium particles — came across their village. All these people were covered in it, like the dust you could wipe off your skin, off your clothes, off your window ledge because it was such a quantity. Within a few minutes of exposure people started to feel funny.

slide cursor here Afghan women watch U.S. soldiers searching their house for weapons in Bagh village, in Khakeran Valley, Zabul province, Afghanistan, June 26, 2005. Photo: Reuters, 1/25/04 US air strike kills 17 Civilians < The air strike by US forces in eastern Afghanistan last week killed 17 civilians including women and children, a provincial governor has said. US planes had bombed Chechal village as part of a search for four missing US special forces servicemen. Assadullah Wafa, governor of Konar province, said the bombing was a "mistake" and called for a US inquiry. BBC July 4, 2005 Civilian deaths by US NATO forces are now ongoing

To rebel is right, to disobey is a duty, to act is necessary !

Depleted Uranium

An Iraqi child An Interview With LEUREN MORET, Geoscientist Interview Conducted By W. Leon Smith and Nathan Diebenow Leuren Moret is a geoscientist who works almost around the clock educating citizens, the media, members of parliaments and Congress and other officials on radiation issues. She became a whistleblower in 1991 at the Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab after witnessing fraud on the Yucca Mountain Project. She is currently working as an independent citizen scientist and radiation specialist in communities around the world, and contributed to the U.N. subcommission investigating depleted uranium. According to Wikipedia online encyclopedia, Moret testified at the International Criminal Tribunal for Afghanistan in Japan in 2003, presented at the World Depleted Uranium Weapons Conference in Hamburg, Germany, and spoke at the World Court of Women at the World Social Forum in Bombay, India, in January 2004. THE INTERVIEW ICONOCLAST: What are the latest developments with reducing depleted uranium exposures on U.S. troops?

An Iraqi child   MORET: A young veteran named Melissa Sterry of Connecticut has introduced a bill into the Connecticut Legislature requiring independent testing of returning Afghan and Gulf War veterans going back to 2001. She said that she did it because she’s sick, and her friends are dead, and that’s from serving in the 2003 conflict. I have been following the bill and talking to her.  Yesterday, she testified twice at the United Nations. I said, "Why don’t we get this bill all over the U.S. in state legislatures because it informs the public and get the local media to cover it." The U.S. has blocked any accountability at international and national levels. There’s a total cover-up just like with Agent Orange, the atomic veterans, MKULTRA, the mind control experiments the CIA did. This is more of the same, but the issue is much, much worse because the genetic future of all those contaminated is effected. Now vast regions around our world, as well as our atmosphere, are contaminated with the depleted uranium.  They’ve used so much.

An Iraqi child 400,000 Nagasaki bombs It’s the equivalent number of atoms, as the Japanese professor calculated it, to over 400,000 Nagasaki bombs that has been released into the atmosphere.  That’s really an underestimate. I went to Louisiana in April.  I was invited to speak at the University of New Orleans for three days.  One of the veterans asked me to be in their April 19 protest and rally through the City of New Orleans.  He took the Connecticut bill straight to the Legislature, and he got two legislators to sponsor it, and he said, "Just whiteout the name ‘Connecticut’ and write in ‘Louisiana’ on the bill." You’re not going to believe it.  It passed 101 to 0 yesterday in the Louisiana House. I want you to write about it because we want it (the DU testing bill) in Texas. Nevada is going to introduce it. Congressman Jim McDermott is going to put it into the Washington legislature. We want to get the governor of Montana to do it because he’s the first governor to demand his National Guard be returned. I think half of them are back.  He said, "I need them in the state."

An Iraqi child DU issue is awful The DU issue is just really, really, really, really so awful.  I don’t think there’s any greater tragedy in the history of the world in what they’ve done. ICONOCLAST: Is there a danger of depleted uranium, being used in weaponry over there, spreading by air over here? MORET: The atmosphere globally is contaminated with it. It’s completely mixed in one year. I’m an expert on atmospheric dust.  I’m a geoscientist, a geologist, and that’s what I studied and did my research on.  It’s really a fascinating subject. We have huge dust storms that are a million square miles and transport millions of tons of dust and sand every year around the world. The main centers of these dust storms are the Gobi Desert in China, which is where the Chinese did atmospheric testing, so that’s all contaminated with radiation, and it gets transported right over Japan, and it comes straight across the Pacific and dumps all its sand and dust on the U.S., North America. It’s loaded with radioactive isotopes, soot, pesticides, chemicals, pollution — everything is in it — fungi, bacteria, viruses.

An Iraqi child   The Sahara Desert is another huge dust center, and it goes up all over Europe and straight across the Atlantic, to the Caribbean, and up the East Coast.  Of course, you get it in Texas with those hurricanes.  They all originate in the Sahara Desert. The third region is the Western United States, which is where the Nevada test site is located. We did 1,200 nuclear weapons tests there, so all this radiation that is already there, which is bad enough, has caused a global cancer epidemic since 1945.  All of that radiation was the equivalent of 40,000 Nagasaki bombs.  We’re talking about 10 times more. In April of 2003, the World Health Organization said they expect global cancer rates to increase 50 percent by the year 2020. Infant mortality is going up again all over the world.  This is an indicator of the level of radioactive pollution. When the U.S. and Russia signed the partial test ban treaty in 1963, the infant mortality rate started dropping again, which is normal.  Now they are going up again.  It’s the global pollution with this radiation. ICONOCLAST: I had one of our correspondents send me a series of photographs of the Al-Asad dust storm in Iraq on April 28.

An Iraqi child MORET: That dust is what I’m talking about. ICONOCLAST: In the picture you can see a gigantic wall of sand. MORET: I have 16 pictures of that storm.  They’re posted with photos from Iraqi doctors of the children of people with cancer and leukemia.  So what did you think of that dust storm? ICONOCLAST: I thought it was really dramatic. MORET: It remobilizes all the radiation, but those are the larger chunks. The DU burns at such high temperatures.  It’s a pyroforic metal which means it burns. The bullets and big caliber shells are actually on fire when they come out of the gun barrel because they are ignited by the friction in the gun barrel. Seventy percent of the DU metal becomes a metal vapor. Radioactive gas weapon It’s actually a radioactive gas weapon and a terrain contaminant. I’ll email you the URL of the 1943 memo to General Leslie Grove under the Manhattan Project.  It’s the blueprint for depleted uranium.  They dropped the atomic bombs, but they did not use the DU weapons because they thought they were too horrific. I’ve toured and gone all over Japan with a pediatrician in Basra and an oncologist, a cancer specialist.  These poor doctors — their whole families are dying of cancer.  He has 10 members of his family with cancer now that he’s treating, and this is just from Gulf War I.  They’ve used much, much, much more in 2003.  All over the whole country. ICONOCLAST: What can soldiers expect when they come home?

Dr. Jonymous HanonThe family

MORET: If they were in Bradley Fighting Vehicles, they’re coming home with rectal cancer from sitting on ammunition boxes. The young women are reporting terrible problems with endometriosis.  That’s the lining of the uterus malfunctioning, and they just bleed and bleed and bleed. Some of them have uterine cancer — 18 and 19 and 20 year olds.  The Army will not even diagnose it.  They send them back to the battlefields.  They won’t treat them or diagnose them.  A group of 20 soldiers pushed from Kuwait to Baghdad in 2003 in all the fighting.  Eight of those 20 soldiers have malignancies. ICONOCLAST: Does exposure to depleted uranium effect their psychological background when they come home?   An Iraqi dead child MORET: Depleted uranium are these particles that form at very high temperatures.  They are uranium oxides that are insoluble.  They are at least 100 times smaller than a white blood cell, so when the soldiers breathe, they inhale them. The particles go through the nose, go through the olfactory and into the brain, and it messes up their cognitive abilities, thought processes. It damages their mood-control mechanism in the brain. Four soldiers at Fort Bragg came back from Afghanistan, and within two months, those four had murdered their wives.  This is part of the damage to the brain from the radiation and the particles. The soldiers from Gulf War I in a group of 67 soldiers who came back, they had DU in their equipment, in their clothes, in their bodies, in their semen, and they had normal babies before they went over there to war. They came back, and the VA did a study.  Of 251 Gulf War I veterans in Mississippi, in 67 percent of them, their babies born after the war were deemed to have severe birth defects. They had brains missing, arms and legs missing, organs missing.  They were born without eyes.  They had horrible blood diseases.  It’s horrific. An Iraqi child   If you want to look at something, Life magazine did a photo essay which is still on the Internet.  It’s called "The Tiny Victims of Desert Storm."  You should look at that — oh, my God, the post-Gulf War babies playing with their brothers and sisters who are normal. Basically, it’s like smoking crack, only you’re smoking radioactive crack.  It goes straight into the blood stream.  It’s carried all throughout the body into the bones, the bone marrow, the brain.  It goes into the fetus.  It’s a systemic poison and a radiological poison. ICONOCLAST: What about the people in the United States that are here?  You say that DU is being mixed and spread globally? MORET: Yes, it’s being mixed globally.  We’re getting secondary smoke.  It’s the secondary smoke effect.  You know the people who inhabit a room with smokers?  They are getting that secondary smoke, and so are we. ICONOCLAST: Is that secondary smoke getting thicker as we speak? MORET: Yeah, the concentration of the depleted uranium particles in the atmosphere all around the globe is increasing. There are indications that the U.S. will go in June and bomb the heck out of Iran.  We’re monitoring the U.S. Army ammunition factories.  They have very large orders for those huge bunker buster bombs that have 5,000 lbs. of DU in the warhead.   An Iraqi dead child ICONOCLAST: So the prognosis for America isn’t really good? MORET: No, it’s really bad. ICONOCLAST: And if this continues then? MORET: It’s going to kill off the world’s population.  It already is, and it doesn’t just effect people.  It effects all living systems.  The plants, the animals, the bacteria.  It effects everything. ICONOCLAST: So the things that we eat for instance, if they have DU in them, then we’ll just get it in our systems, and so we’re polluting the oceans, so that could effect all marine life? MORET: Yes, it’s in the air, water, and soil.  The half-life of DU, Uranium 238, is 4.5 billion years the age of the Earth.

Wednesday, 1 November 2006 Depleted uranium risk 'ignored' Both British and US troops have used depleted uranium in Iraq   UK and US forces have continued to use depleted uranium weapons despite warnings they pose a cancer risk, a BBC investigation has found. Scientists have pointed to health statistics in Iraq, where the weapons were used in the 1991 and 2003 wars. A report by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in 2001 said they posed only a small contamination risk. But a senior UN scientist said research showing how depleted uranium could cause cancer was withheld. The UK Ministry of Defence said that there was no evidence linking depleted uranium use to ill health. Depleted uranium is extremely dense and hard, and is used for armour-piercing bullets or shells. Fears over health implications led to a study by the WHO in 2001.   There is no scientific or medical evidence to link depleted uranium with the ill health of people living in the Gulf region UK Ministry of Defence   Dr Mike Repacholi, who oversaw work on the report, told Angus Stickler of BBC Radio Four's Today programme that depleted uranium was "basically safe". "You would have to ingest a huge amount of depleted uranium dust to cause any adverse health effect," he said. 'Risk from particles' But Dr Keith Baverstock, who worked on the project, said research conducted by the US Department of Defense suggested otherwise.

DEPLETED URANIUM Has a reduced proportion of isotope Uranium-235 Less radioactive than natural uranium and very dense Military uses include defensive armour plating, armour-penetrating ordnance Can be inhaled as dust or ingested in contaminated food and water near impact sites Used in Iraq, the former Yugoslavia   He described a process known as genotoxicity, which begins when depleted uranium dust is inhaled. "The particles that dissolve pose a risk - part radioactive - and part from the chemical toxicity in the lung," he said. Later, he said, the material enters the body and the blood stream, potentially affecting bone marrow, the lymphatic system and the kidneys. The research was not included in the WHO report, and Dr Baverstock believes it was blocked. Mr Repacholi said the findings were not corroborated by other reports and it was not WHO policy to publish "speculative" data. He denied any pressure was brought to bear. But other senior scientists have pointed to worrying health statistics in Iraq, which show a rise in cancer and birth defects. Prof Randy Parrish of the Isotope Geosciences Laboratory in the UK said environmental and health assessments were needed in Iraq to establish the facts. Iraqi scientists trained by the UN are seeking to carry out such an assessment, but Henrik Slotte of the United Nations Environmental Programme said without clear information from the US on what was used and where, it was "like looking for a needle in a haystack". He said there was "no indication" this information was forthcoming from the US. A spokesman for the UK's Ministry of Defence, meanwhile, told the BBC that there was "no scientific or medical evidence" to link depleted uranium use to sickness in Iraq. He said the MOD was aware of recent research into the effects of depleted uranium at cellular level, but that it had to be guided by "the professional advice of the Health Protection Agency and the International Commission on Radiological Protection".

ICONOCLAST: With the damage that’s been done to this point, can we turn back?  We can’t clean it up? MORET: There’s no way to clean it up.  What happens is these tiny particles float around the Earth.  There are still plutonium and uranium floating around the Earth from bomb testing. These particles are so tiny that molecules bumping into them keep them lofted in the air, and so the only way for them to get out of the atmosphere is rain, snow, fog, pollution, which will clear them out of the air and deposit them in the environment. What happens is the surface of these particles gets wetted by the moisture in the air. They come down and land on stuff and stick to it like a glue. You can’t ever get the particles off whatever they’re sticking to because have you ever put a drop of water on a microscope slide and then put another one on top of it?   Can you pull those apart?   An Iraqi dead child ICONOCLAST: No. MORET: Okay, that’s the same effect that happens to radioactive particles. Once they are removed from the atmosphere, they stick to any surfaces they land on. In a way they are removed from circulation from the atmosphere. You can’t wash them off. If it keeps raining or they’re in a creek, you know, if they’re on rocks or stones or something in a creek, they won’t even wash off. You didn’t know it was this bad, did you? ICONOCLAST: No, I knew it was bad, but I thought it was fairly isolated. MORET: No.  What is over there (in Iraq) is over here in about four days.  I don’t know if you followed Chernobyl.  That big bubble of radiation went around and around the world, but this is dust.  It becomes a part of atmospheric dust.  Like the dust storm you saw in that photo, it goes everywhere. ICONOCLAST: Is it in the upper levels of the atmosphere or the lower levels? MORET: It’s in lower orbital space.  They brought the Mir spacecraft back down to Earth when they got done using it, and there was something called a space midge which covered the electronics on the outside of the spacecraft and protected it from radiation that comes from the sun because electronics are real vulnerable to radiation. They analyzed the surface of that space net and found uranium and uranium decayed products which they said came from atmospheric testing or burned up spacecraft with nuclear materials or nuclear reactors on board. Uranium can also come from supernovas, but they thought that the most likely sources were atmospheric testing and the nuclear materials we put in space. ICONOCLAST: Essentially then, you’re saying that we’re conducting a nuclear war. An Iraqi dead child   MORET: Yes, and that’s exactly what it is.  We’ve conducted four nuclear wars since 1991.  Yeah, these are nuclear wars. DU is a nuclear weapon. ICONOCLAST: From the point of view of a scientist, what needs to happen to correct this? MORET: Well, we need to stop the use of it.  We’ve built an international movement to stop the use, the manufacture, the storage, the sales, and the deployment of depleted uranium weapons. ICONOCLAST: Are the munitions we sell to other countries contained with depleted uranium? MORET: We have.  In 1968 the first depleted uranium weapons systems that we found a patent for suddenly appeared in the U.S. patent office. It was for the Navy. It was sort of a Gatling gun style weapon system that you mounted on ships. It rapidly fires like 2,500 bullets a minute. It’s over 3,000 now. They’ve improved the design. Then in 1973, we gave depleted uranium weapons systems to the Israelis and supervised their use.  They used them in the Arab-Israeli war and completely wiped out the Arabs in five days.  Then the show was on the road.  That was the first actual battlefield demonstration of this new weapon system. Hughes Aircraft developed the full-length system which is for the Navy.  That’s the Gatling gun system.  They still use it.  That was produced in 1974 and tested.  Within six months the U.S. government had sold the DU weapons system to 12 entities which included many branches of the U.S. military and other counties. We’ve sold DU weapons systems to about — we don’t know exactly for sure — it’s been about 12 or 17 countries. The good news is that normally such a weapons system that effective would have been sold to 80, 100, or 120 countries by now. But because of the radiological, biological, and environmental hazard, countries were not only afraid to buy it, the ones who did buy it are afraid to use it.

Peace Only countries that have used DU as weapon are Britain, the U.S., and Israel The only countries we know that have used DU are Britain, the U.S., and Israel. The United Nations in 1996 passed a resolution that depleted uranium weapons are weapons of mass destruction, and they are illegal under all international laws and treaties. In 2001, the European Parliament passed a resolution on DU. What happened is that the NATO forces went into Yugoslavia in 1998 and ’99 and flew 39,000 bombing runs and completely bombed Yugoslavia into radioactive rubble. Germany and the U.S. made the most money on the destruction of Yugoslavia, and they made sure that countries that didn’t know about the DU, that the peacekeepers from those countries like from Italy and Portugal, were sent to the most contaminated regions in Yugoslavia. Germans and Americans didn’t send their own troops into those areas.  They were in the least contaminated areas. These poor soldiers from other countries came back and died within weeks or in a couple of days or months.  The parents in Portugal and Italy are furious and went to the Parliament and media, and there was just a huge media storm of articles about DU. The cat was out of the bag because of the 1998 NATO invasion of Yugoslavia.  The cat was out of the bag, but Japanese troops have been sent into Somawa.  They’re self-defense forces.  It was the most contaminated area where the heaviest fighting happened in Iraq.  We can expect those soldiers to be really, really sick. ICONOCLAST: What about Iraq itself?  What’s been done thus far? MORET: It’s uninhabitable.  The whole country.  Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Afghanistan are completely uninhabitable. An Iraqi child   ICONOCLAST: But people live there, so they’re going to live there suffering? MORET: Well, you can see from the birth defects and the illnesses that it is pretty severe. Each year the number of birth defects and illnesses will rise because of the total contamination levels in all living things will increase because they are breathing that air and drinking water and eating the food from contaminated soils. It’s just a slow death sentence.  The same with Yugoslavia and Afghanistan. Depleted uranium is a very, very, very effective biological weapon. This is the primary purpose for using it. Marion Falk (a retired chemical physicist who built nuclear bombs for more than 20 years at Lawrence Livermore lab), who is the Manhattan Project scientist I work with, taught me pretty much everything about radiation and particles and DU. Purpose is the kill, maim and disease the civilian population He said the purpose of weapons used by the military is not only to injure and kill the enemy soldiers, but the purpose is to kill, maim, and disease the civilian population because it reduces the productivity of a country and pretty soon a lot of their resources are going to be used for taking care of sick people. They will have fewer and fewer healthy workers. Of course, once you cause mutation in the DNA, that damage is passed on to future generations of that affected person or animal or plant. DNA does not repair itself. ICONOCLAST: So the mutations would be probably destructive moreso than constructive. MORET: Oh, the mutations are causing those birth defects.

An Iraqi child ICONOCLAST: They’re not evolutionary diseases? MORET: No, they are evolutionary.  They are inherited by all future generations and passed on.  It’s like if you have red hair and all of your future generations will have that gene. ICONOCLAST: So if I had a precondition to heart disease because of the radiation, then the generation that would come after me would have the same problem? MORET: Well, if you damage the cell or parts of the cell or functioning of cells, that doesn’t necessarily damage the DNA. There are two kinds of damage: one damages the cells of the living organism, and that may not be passed on, but if you damage the DNA in the egg or the sperm, that is passed on to all future generations. ICONOCLAST: So the guys coming back from the war, their sperm is probably going to be — MORET: Damaged.  Yes.  They also have depleted uranium in their semen.  When they’re intimate with their partners, they internally contaminate them with depleted uranium. The women become sick themselves. They have depleted uranium in their bodies, and there is something called burning syndrome. Just absolutely horrible. You can read about it in an article by David Rose in the December Vanity Fair.  It’s on the Internet. A friend of mine is the widow of a Canadian Gulf War veteran. David Rose interviewed her, and she griped about the burning semen. She said, "I had 20 condoms full of frozen peas in my freezer at all times, and after we were intimate, I would insert one into my vagina, and that is the only way I could bear the pain from the burning semen." And it goes through condoms, too. ICONOCLAST: Gosh, durn! MORET: Yeah, you should see the high school classes when I talk about the burning semen and the internal contamination. The girls’ mouths go into little round Os, and the boys start panicking because they’re like, "I’ll never get sick!" (laughs) The name of this article is "Weapons of Self-Destruction." An Iraqi child   ICONOCLAST: How much DU will it take to kill off all known life on this planet? MORET: The amount of radiation released is certainly going to have a very, very profound global impact, and we’re already seeing infant mortality increasing globally. The fetus is the most susceptible to radiation damage because all the cells are rapidly dividing, the limbs and the bodies developing, so when you start introducing toxic chemicals and radiation, it really damages the natural process of fetal development. The reason they were able to convince the Senate to sign the partial test ban treaty in 1963 was because of the increase in infant mortality. It had been dropping and declining two or three percent for quite a long time each year because of better prenatal care and educating mothers. Infant mortality started going up after the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, especially in the ‘50s when the big bomb testing started. By 1963, it was really obvious that the bomb testing globally was having a real impact on the unborn.  They signed the partial test ban treaty. Russia and the U.S. stopped atmospheric testing, and the infant mortality rate started going down right away. They’re going up again now. This is global radioactive pollution, and how long it would take to eliminate all life is something nobody knows, but the depleted uranium is a very, very effective biological weapon. There are two purposes for the military use of weapons. One is to destroy the enemy soldiers, and the other, which is just as important, is to destroy the enemy civilian population. By causing illnesses and disease, long lingering illnesses really impact the productivity and the economy of a country.   An Iraqi child It was Chernobyl and other nuclear disasters that actually destroyed the Soviet Union because the former Soviet Union is very, very sick from all the radiation that was released. They were much more sloppier than we were. I have a World Health Organization world health survey which they published in the Journal of American Medical Association last June. The impact of atmospheric testing is very, very apparent by the percentage of population in each country they investigated for some form of mental illness. For instance, Japan is 8.8 percent. Nigeria is very low — 4.7 percent.  They have almost no radiation in Nigeria. In the Ukraine where they had the Chernobyl accident, it is 20.4 percent.  Spain is at 9.2 percent.  Italy is 8.2 percent.  It’s pretty low because they don’t have nuke plants. France is 75 percent reliant on nuclear power, so you have mental illness in 18.4 percent of the population. Mexico is at 12.2 percent, and the United States is at 26.3 percent — the highest rate of mental illness in the world. And George Bush and his siblings were all exposed in utero to bomb testing fallout in the United States. He had a toddler sister who died of leukemia when she was about three. I worked with a group called the Radiation And Public Health Project. Their website is. We are all radiation specialists, well-known scientists, and independent scientists. We’ve collected 6,000 baby teeth around nuclear power plants and measured the radiation in them, and one of our members is the neighbor of the women who worked with all of the Bush children, including President Bush himself, because they had severe learning disabilities.

An Iraqi child   ICONOCLAST: How do we know that the Bush children were exposed? MORET: By the year of their birth.  The year they were carried by their mother. You have to look at how much bomb testing material was released into the atmosphere, and there’s a direct correlation to the decline in SAT scores for all teenagers in the U.S. to the amount of radiation that was released into the atmosphere the year their mother was carrying them. These are delayed effects of radiation exposure in utero. ICONOCLAST: So they were living in Connecticut, but they were still feeling the effects of the radiation in Nevada? MORET: Two years ago the U.S. government admitted that every single person living in the United States between 1957 and 1963 was internally exposed to radiation. So for any pregnant woman during those years, her fetus was exposed. ICONOCLAST: What type of radiation levels are we talking about? MORET: It’s low levels, and the main pathways are drinking water and dairy products. It even killed the baby fish in the Atlantic. Strontium-90 is a man-made isotope that comes out of nuclear bombs and nuclear reactors. They measured the levels of strontium-90 in milk in Norway from the 1950s up until the 1970s, and they measured the decline in the fishing catch in that same period, and as the strontium-90 increased in the milk in Norway, fishing catches declined. By 1963, when the U.S. tested a nuclear bomb almost every day (they did 250 tests in one year because the treaty was going to be signed), the fishing catch declined by 50 percent. In the Pacific, it declined 60 percent because there was Russian, Chinese, French, and U.S. testing in the Pacific. ICONOCLAST: So we’re still eating those contaminated fish today.  Has the genetic code been changed? MORET: The oceans are getting whatever is getting rained down, snowed down, or fogged down from the atmosphere.It’s getting into the oceans. This big frog die-off, which is global, is certainly related to the radiation in the rainwater. It’s a global nuclear holocaust. It effects all living things. That’s why they call it "omnicide," which means it kills all living things — the plants, the animals, the bacteria. Everything. ICONOCLAST: You think we ought to have the Weather Channel report on the current sand storm conditions in Iraq so we can prepare four days in advance for the radiation?   An Iraqi child MORET: I’ll tell you what I did when 9/11 happened. I called all the doctors with Radiation And Public Health Project, and I said, "Get out of town, and don’t come back until it has rained three times." One lived 12 miles downwind from the Pentagon.  She went out on her balcony with her geiger counter.  I said, "Get that geiger counter out of your purse." We had just done a press conference in San Francisco, and I knew she had it in her purse. Well, the radiation levels were 8-10 times higher than background. We called the EPA, HAZMAT, FBI, and said, "Get all those emergency response workers suited up. They need to be protected." Two days after 9/11, the EPA radiation expert for that region called back and said, "Yup, the Pentagon crash rubble was radioactive, and we believe it’s depleted uranium, but we’re not worried about that. It’s only harmful if it’s inhaled." He said, "We’re worried about the lead solder in the plane."  Well, you know what’s in Tomahawk missiles?  They have depleted uranium warheads.  The radioactive crash rubble contaminated with DU is evidence of a DU warhead. ICONOCLAST: I did not think about that, but going back to my original question:  Should the Weather Channel report for us on the toxic dust storms in Iraq? MORET: But how could people get away from them?  These dust storms are a million square miles.  They’re huge, and they come right across the Atlantic, the Caribbean, and Texas coast line, and right up the East Coast. There are people who are going to leave the state every time there’s a hurricane.  It’s in the food, drinking water, dairy products, and then the problem with Uranium 238, which is 99.39 percent DU, is that it decays in over 20 steps into other radioactive isotopes. That’s why I call it the "Trojan Horse."  It’s the weapon that keeps giving.  It keeps killing.  This is like smoking radioactive crack. It goes right in your nose.  It crosses the olfactory bulb into your brain.  It’s a systemic poison.  It goes everywhere. These particles that form at very high temperatures — 5,000-10,000 degrees C — are nanoparticles.  They are a 10th of a micron or smaller.  A 10th of a micron is 100 times smaller than a white blood cell. They get picked up in the lipids and probably the cholesterol and go right through the cell membranes of the cell.  They screw up the cell processes.  They screw up the signaling between the cells because the cells all talk to each other and coordinate what they’re doing.  It messes up brain function.

An Iraqi child   ICONOCLAST: Do you know what Iraq was like before the first Gulf War? MORET: Iraq prior to the 1991 Gulf War was the most advanced in the entire Middle East. They had scrupulous databases of the health problems and disease rates, which is why the U.S. bombed all of the offices in the Ministry of Health. We destroyed all those records so that a pre-Gulf War health base could not be established to show how much these diseases have increased. This would concern the U.S. in terms of compensation for war crimes. In these horrible U.N. sanctions, they (the Iraqis) could never get all of the protocol medicine for the treatment of leukemia. They (the U.N.) would say, "These steps of the leukemia treatment were components in weapons, so you can’t have that." They never gave the people the full proper protocols in the areas of treatment they needed to get rid of the leukemia. It hid the effects of the depleted uranium because the children were starving. They had malnutrition.  They had the healthiest population in the Middle East (prior to Gulf War I). ICONOCLAST: Let’s talk about the children of Iraq. MORET: After the Gulf War, they had maybe one baby a week born with birth defects in the hospitals in Basra. Now they are having 10-12 a day. The levels of uranium are increasing in the population every year.  Every day, people are eating and drinking while the whole environment is contaminated.  Just what you’d expect. There are more babies born with birth defects, and the birth defects are getting more and more severe.  An Iraqi doctor told me that babies are being born now that are lumps of flesh.  She said that they don’t have heads or legs or arms.  It’s just a lump of flesh. This also happened to populations that were not removed from islands in the Pacific when the bomb tests occurred.  Basically, governments were using them as guinea pigs. ICONOCLAST: So all the countries that were equipped with nuclear weapons are guilty of those atrocities. MORET: They were all doing it.  France, Russia.  China, and the U.S.  And I’m not sure if Britain did bomb testing.  They were real low key about it. ICONOCLAST: Where are the radiation hot spots in the United States? MORET: In the United States, it would be within a 100 miles of nuclear power plants.  We have 110 nuclear power plants in the U.S.  We have the most of any country in the world, but only a 103 are operating. Almost all of the entire East Coast. What we did was we took government data from the Centers of Disease Control on breast cancer deaths between 1985 and 1989.   An Iraqi child Breast Cancer Anywhere from within a 100 miles of a nuclear power plant is where two-thirds of all breast cancer deaths occurred in the U.S. between 1985 and 1989. It’s also around the nuclear weapons laboratories. That would be Los Alamos in New Mexico, the Idaho Nuclear Engineering Lab in Idaho, and Hanford in Washington State, which is where they got the plutonium for all the bombs. They contaminated the entire Columbia River watershed and almost the whole state of Washington. It gets into the water and into the plants and into the vegetation. If you eat clams or mussels or crabs or things like that, even certain kinds of fish that eat off of the mud at the bottom of the river, you have much higher levels of radiation in your tissues. It depends on each person and on how healthy they are, but this man from Washington State died suddenly. He was in his late 40s. They did an autopsy, and he was full of radioactive zinc. They went, "Where in the world did he get this?   It only comes from nuclear bombs and nuclear reactors." They studied his diet and discovered he loved to eat oysters. They found out where he bought his oysters and found the oyster beds. They were 200 miles off shore, from Washington State. The radiation was being carried off out to sea from the coastline. It was passing over this oyster bed. The oysters were just gobbling them up.

An Iraqi child   ICONOCLAST: What are the symptoms of DU poisoning? MORET: Soldiers on the battlefield have reported a metallic taste in their mouth. That’s the actual taste of the uranium metal. Then within 24-48 hours, soldiers on the battlefield have reported that they felt sick. They start getting muscle aches, and they lose energy. Some of them came back incontinent. In other words, in adult diapers. One woman reported that the first night home, she wanted to be intimate with her husband, but she had absolutely no feeling. She couldn’t feel anything from the waist down. This particulate matter damages the neuromuscular system, the nerves; it just goes everywhere. And there’s no treatment for it. These particles are very, very insoluble, so they can’t even dissolve in body fluids, so they can be excreted from the body. Then they keep releasing. Even when uranium decays, it turns into another radioactive isotope.   An Iraqi child Shooting bullets until you die So it’s a particle that just sits there shooting bullets until you die. Another problem is that soldiers have crumbling teeth. Teeth just start falling apart. The uranium replaces calcium in the calcium-phosphate structure of the teeth. Some have complained about grand mal seizures, cerebral palsy. Some diseases reported at very high rates in Air Force and Army soldiers are Parkinson’s disease, Lou Gehrig’s disease, and Hodgkin’s disease. This is damage to the mitochondria in the cells and the nerves. The mitochondria make all the energy for the body, so when you damage mitochondria, another symptom is chronic fatigue syndrome. There’s just not enough energy produced by the body to function normally. I found a study in the SanDia Nuclear Weapons Laboratory employee newsletter in September 2003. They are doing major studies in mitochondrial disfunction related to Lou Gehrig’s, Hodgkin’s, and Parkinson’s diseases for veterans. Since it’s at a nuclear weapon’s lab, they are fully aware of the health damage.

An Iraqi child   ICONOCLAST: Tell me about the tests that detect for DU in the body. MORET: The chromosome test in the best indicator. It’s $5,000. The urine test is a $1,000. If you test positive with the urine test, you know you’re contaminated. If you test negative, it does not mean that you’re not contaminated. It just means that you may or may not be contaminated but enough hasn’t dissolved in your blood stream to go through your kidneys to be excreted in your urine. Anyone who goes now cannot avoid being contaminated. Anyone!   Anyone!   Anyone! Everyone who goes to the Middle East and Afghanistan will be contaminated.  The DU issue affects every single living thing on this planet.  What else has that impact? They have altered the genome for the entire planet forever with this DU.  The Pentagon people say, "You’re exaggerating or you use the uranium word to scare people." I don’t care if people believe me or not. All I can say is that over time what I am saying will actually be an underestimation of the long term effects. A Military Perspective Interview with Dr. Doug Rokke, Ph.D, former Director of the U.S. Army Depleted Uranium Project http://www.iconoclast-texas.com/News/19news04.htm A Survivor’s Perpsective http://www.iconoclast-texas.com/News/19news05.htm http://www.iconoclast-texas.com/News/19news03.htm

An Iraqi boy

POSTED JULY 21, 2010

WORST UNEMPLOYMENT IN 50 YEARS

I should add " as the recovery continues". In the article below the author shows a graph of long term continuing unemployment at more than double the highest rate at any time during the past 50 years. He asks several questions about what can be done about it, but doesn't give any answers,

Judging from his picture, the author does not look very old so he has to rely on studying history to be able to come up with answers. Those of us who are older already have these answers. In a debate with Al Gore in the early 1990's, Ross Perot stated that the gigantic sucking sound is our nation's jobs going to Mexico. Unfortunately, the Mexicans found out that sucking sound came for them and their jobs as they went to slave labor camps overseas.

The answer to a good economy and good jobs has always been the same. You have to make and grow things. We don't. Millions of our manufacturing jobs have been shipped overseas. In recent years much of our agricultural consumption is from products grown outside our country. The so-called "free trade" killed our country. If it isn't reversed and soon, we are finished. It's just that simple. This administration and the ones before it have no interest whatsoever in saving this economy. We need to get rid of them and their kind. We need to stop importing anything from any nation that does not have to abide by our standards for wages, safety and environmental controls. If we do that we will come back. Otherwise-----

Bruce                 New World Order News

The Scariest Unemployment Graph I've Seen Yet

Jul 20 2010, 12:00 PM ET 

POSTED JULY 20. 2010

CRMINAL COPS DON'T GO TO JAIL. THOSE RECORDING THEM DO.

It's a totally predicable pattern that goes with tyranny. Those in authority decide on their own whim what is a crime. If they don't like you, they get to chose from over a million laws to find one that applies to you. Of course those 1 million laws rarely, if ever, apply to them.

Back in the days of King George, any member of royalty was exempt from the law. They could steal, kill, rape, destroy property, or whatever else they wanted to do as long as it was not against another member of the royal class. Really good "soldiers" were knighted so they too could be exempt from normal prosecutions. You see, there really isn't anything new here.

Now we have some bad apples within various law enforcement departments. That's always been the case, but was hasn't always been the case is their being above the laws they are sworn to uphold. Someone should tell our government masters that they are 235 years too late. We no longer have a King and we no longer have a royal class. In the article below cops are arresting ordinary people for recording them while doing their job. Of course the cops can record anyone they want, anytime they want. They even have other cops recording their subordinates as they perform their duties. What really upsets them is those that are criminal are being exposed. So now they arrest those who expose them. So, I guess we need to use other technology to put them on video. Good luck finding all of the cameras. If it wasn't for citizens recording cops, a few cops in Oakland, CA, would have gotten away with murder.

With all due respect for police authority, we do not serve you. You serve us. According to the Constitution which you are sworn to uphold, God is the ultimate authority, then the people, then you. If that is unacceptable, you can always become a cop in a country with a different system. We, here, like our nation the way it is.

Bruce                         New World Order News

Growing Number of Prosecutions for Videotaping the Police
Prosecutions Draw Attention to Influence of Witness Videos


That Anthony Graber broke the law in early March is indisputable. He raced his Honda motorcycle down Interstate 95 in Maryland at 80 mph, popping a wheelie, roaring past cars and swerving across traffic lanes.
Anthony Graber was arrested for posting a video of his traffic stop on YouTube.

But it wasn't his daredevil stunt that has the 25-year-old staff sergeant for the Maryland Air National Guard facing the possibility of 16 years in prison. For that, he was issued a speeding ticket. It was the video that Graber posted on YouTube one week later -- taken with his helmet camera -- of a plainclothes state trooper cutting him off and drawing a gun during the traffic stop near Baltimore.

In early April, state police officers raided Graber's parents' home in Abingdon, Md. They confiscated his camera, computers and external hard drives. Graber was indicted for allegedly violating state wiretap laws by recording the trooper without his consent.
Related
WATCH: Caught on Tape: Cop Punches Girl
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WATCH: Cop Cam

WATCH: Caught on Tape: Cop Punches Girl

WATCH: Should Cops Wear Body Cameras?

WATCH: Cop Cam

Arrests such as Graber's are becoming more common along with the proliferation of portable video cameras and cell-phone recorders. Videos of alleged police misconduct have become hot items on the Internet. YouTube still features Graber's encounter along with numerous other witness videos. "The message is clearly, 'Don't criticize the police,'" said David Rocah, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland who is part of Graber's defense team. "With these charges, anyone who would even think to record the police is now justifiably in fear that they will also be criminally charged."

Carlos Miller, a Miami journalist who runs the blog "Photography Is Not a Crime," said he has documented about 10 arrests since he started keeping track in 2007. Miller himself has been arrested twice for photographing the police. He won one case on appeal, he said, while the other was thrown out after the officer twice failed to appear in court.

"They're just regular citizens with a cell-phone camera who happen to come upon a situation," Miller said. "If cops are doing their jobs, they shouldn't worry."

The ACLU of Florida filed a First Amendment lawsuit last month on behalf of a model who was arrested February 2009 in Boynton Beach. Fla. Her crime: videotaping an encounter between police officers and her teenage son at a movie theater. Prosecutors refused to file charges against Sharron Tasha Ford and her son.

videotaping as a Tool for Citizens

"The police have cameras in their cars. I watch cops on TV," Ford said. "I'm very hurt by what happened. A lot of people are being abused by police in the same way."

Ford's lawyer, James Green, called videotaping "probably the most effective way to protect citizens against police officers who exaggerate or lie."

"Judges and juries want to believe law enforcement," he said. "They want to believe police officers and unless you have credible evidence to contradict police officers, it's often very difficult to get judges or juries to believe the word of a citizen over a police officer."

In Palm Beach County, Fla., Greenacres resident Peter Ballance, 63, who has Asperger's syndrome and has to record conversations to help his memory, settled a civil lawsuit for $100,000 last year. In August 2005, police officers tackled and arrested Ballance for refusing to turn off his tape recorder.

"You know what," said the officer, according to court documents, "I still don't want that recording device on."

"Well, it's on," Ballance replied.

"It is a third-degree felony," the cop said. "If you want to push it, you can go to jail for it."

"Well, I'm pushing it now," Ballance said.

Ballance snapped pictures of the officers. One of the cops delivered a blindside tackle. Ballance had to be treated for injuries and cardiac symptoms at a hospital on the way to the county jail. At the hospital, officers refused to let Ballance use his recorders to communicate with doctors, court papers said.

In Portsmouth, N.H., earlier this month, Adam Whitman, 20, and his brother were charged with wiretapping, a felony in the state for videotaping police on the Fourth of July when they were called to a party and ended up arresting 20 people, many for underage drinking.

A police spokesman told ABCNews.com that the wiretapping charges were being dropped.

itness Videos on the Rise

Across the country, arrests such as these highlight the growing role of witness video in law enforcement. A dozen states require all parties to consent before a recording is made if there is a "reasonable expectation of privacy." Virginia and New York require one-party consent. Only in Massachusetts and Illinois is it illegal for people to make an audio recording of people without their consent.

"The argument is, 'Well, can a police officer beside the highway have a private conversation with somebody that they pull over?'" said Joseph Cassilly, the Harford County prosecutor handling Graber's case.

Cassilly added, "Suppose a police officer pulled you over and he wanted to have a talk with you. 'Sir, I smell alcohol on your breath. Can you talk to me about how much you've had to drink? Would you want somebody else to stop by and record that and put it on the Internet?"

Rocah of the ACLU disagreed. "It's not that recording any conversation is illegal without consent. It's that recording a private conversation is illegal without consent," he said. "So then the question is, 'Are the words of a police officer spoken on duty, in uniform, in public a 'private conversation.' And every court that has ever considered that question has said that they are not."

New Video, Old Debate

In many jurisdictions, the police themselves record encounters with the public with dashboard cameras in their cars.

"Police and governmental recording of citizens is becoming more pervasive and to say that government can record you but you can't record, it speaks volumes about the mentality of people in government," Rocah said. "It's supposed to be the other way around: They work for us; we don't work for them."

Graber's YouTube video, meanwhile, has helped renew the old debate about whether government has a right to keep residents from recording the police. There is even an "I support Anthony Graber and his right to freedom of expression" Facebook page with close to 600 friends.

"Suffice it to say that our client is terrified at the prospect of these criminal charges," Rocah said.

Rocah said actual wiretapping prosecutions, though rare, are happening more frequently. But intimidation with the threat of arrest for taping the police is much more common.

"Prosecution is only the most extreme end of a continuum of police and official intimidation and there's a lot of intimidation that goes on and has been going on short of prosecution," he said. "It's far more frequent for an officer to just say, 'You can't record or give me your camera or give me your cell phone and if you don't I'm going to arrest you. Very few people want to test the veracity of that threat and so comply. It's much more difficult to document, much more prevalent and equally improper." 


POSTED JULY 19, 2010

STREET GANGS INFECT U.S. MILITARY


The article below gives us all some more about which to worry. In the U.S. effort to bring freedom to Iraq and Afghanistan, they have apparently decided to bring one more aspect of modern U.S. culture----street gangs. I know, there are rules against this, but rules, guidelines and laws are only for the rest of us. The U.S. military only obeys the laws they like.

One of the largest of the gangs, the Latin Kings, are all over Chicago. The areas where they have strength are not even patrolled by Chicago police. Now they have a foothold in the military and nobody does anything about it.

I have said repeatedly, we have no business fighting wars based on lies. I guess I can amend that to say, we have no business fighting wars based on lies using street gangs from our cities. What in the world has happened to the U.S.? Is it good for national security to give domestic terrorists a uniform, training and weapons to fight a non existent enemy? These are weapons they can and will use on us. While some are worried about Bin Laden in the middle east, real danger is returning to America.


Bruce                      New World Order News

'Scary' growth of gangs in war zones

Chicago cop who served in Afghanistan and Iraq has warning: Gang members are coming home with military training

Being in a street gang is now forbidden for members of the U.S. armed forces. But you might not guess that if you were to visit U.S. military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to soldiers who have recently served there.

Jeffrey Stoleson, a Wisconsin corrections official, returned from Iraq in January with photos of gang graffiti on armored vehicles, latrines and buildings. Stoleson, a sergeant with a National Guard unit, was there for nine months to help the Army set up a prison facility outside Baghdad.

» Click to enlarge image

A soldier flashes Latin King signs.

(National Gang Intelligence Center)

PHOTO GALLERY

Gangs in War Zones

"I saw Maniac Latin Disciples graffiti out of Chicago," Stoleson said, adding that there was a lot of graffiti for Texas and California gangs, as well as Mexican drug cartels.

A Chicago Police officer -- who retired from the regular Army and was recently on a tour of Afghanistan in the Army Reserve -- said Bagram Air Base was covered with Chicago gang graffiti, everything from the Gangster Disciples' pitchfork to the Latin Kings' crown.

"It seems bigger now," said the officer, who previously served a tour in Iraq, where he also saw gang graffiti.

Now back in Chicago, the officer said he has arrested high-level gang members who have served in the military and kept the "Infantryman's bible" -- called the FM 7-8 -- in their homes. The book describes how to run for cover, fire a weapon tactically and do the "three- to five-second rushes" seen in war movies.

"It's scary," he said.

In 2006, Stoleson saw similar graffiti in Iraq during another tour of duty there. That year, the Chicago Sun-Times reported on gangs in the military -- and published several of Stoleson's photos of gang graffiti.

Congress eventually banned members of the military from belonging to street gangs. And last November, the Defense Department added the ban to its rules.

Spokesmen for the Army and Defense Department said they could not provide figures on how many soldiers have been thrown out of the military or otherwise disciplined as a result of gang membership.

Stoleson, who stressed he was not speaking for the Wisconsin Department of Corrections or the Army, said it appears the problem is worse than ever. He warned that soldiers who return to gang life back home are especially dangerous because they know military tactics that they can use against the police and the public -- as a Marine did in 2005 when he killed a police officer and wounded three others in a California ambush.

"Gang members are coming home now with one or two tours," he said. "Some were on the field of battle."

Civilian contractors in Iraq are part of the gang problem overseas, Stoleson said. He said he was involved in destroying a large quantity of drugs confiscated from U.S. contractors in Iraq.

Stoleson, who is a member of the International Latino Gang Investigators Association, said some police departments in California are now tracking whether gang members were in the military.

A second Chicago Police officer, who searches homes for drugs and guns, said gang members targeted by his team are sometimes current or former members of the armed forces. That becomes part of the team's pre-raid briefings because the suspect is an increased safety risk with military training, the officer said.

"We recently arrested a guy in the reserves for crack [cocaine]," the officer said. "He was a gang-banger."

Stoleson said that, on his previous tour in Iraq, he was friends with a soldier who associated with the Maniac Latin Disciples when he grew up in Chicago.

"We talked a lot about it. He said the military was the only way he could break free," Stoleson said.

But those aren't the people Stoleson worries about.

"My problem is the guys who go into the military to continue the lifestyle," he said.

T.J. Leyden, a former white supremacist, was one of those guys. He said he recruited fellow members of the Hammerskin Nation into the Marines when he was in the corps in the late 1980s and early 1990s and sent stolen Kevlar body armor and helmets to fellow skinheads back home.

"I wore white supremacist T-shirts, and I hung a swastika flag out of my barracks," said Leyden, who was kicked out of the Marines for drinking and fighting. "I hated America. The only reason I was a Marine was because they were the baddest of the bad."

Leyden, who lives in Utah now, said he quit the white-supremacy movement in 1996 because he was worried "my sons were becoming me."

He began working against the movement and founded Straight Talk Consulting, giving lectures to students and advising the FBI, the National Guard and other organizations about gangs in the military.

Leyden said his informants have told him that skinheads and street gangs are still entrenched in both the regular military and the National Guard.

"The military needs to wake up," he said.

POSTED JULY 16, 2010

NOW ADMITTED: WAR BASED ON LIES

The article below confirms what many of us knew from the very beginning. The reasons given for the invasion of Iraq were bold faced lies. There were no weapons of mass destruction. There was no program to develop nuclear weapons. There was no connection to Al-Qaeda. There was no connection to the events of 911. All lies. So what!

And that's our dilemma. Over and over and over again our government masters lie to us and we do nothing. In the past 45 years, thousands of American lives and millions of lives in other countries have been lost. They were lost because of these wars that are based on lies and the politicians just continue on their merry way. And if that wasn't bad enough, we're still there. We're still conducting these wars with no sign of stopping. Every day, millions of dollars are wasted. Every day scores of soldiers and civilians are killed and it just goes on and on.

Maybe I sound like a broken record, but this will only end when soldiers refuse to fight these type of wars and those who lie about it are arrested and prosecuted---- not go on a book tour and make millions of dollars. There are many our there in uniform who want to defend America. Here's an idea. How about putting yourselves on the line to defend America from these liars and crooks.

Bruce                                   New World Order News

WMD claims were lies says former envoy

By Nigel Morris, Deputy Political Editor

Too-big-to-fail is a much bigger problem than you thought. We’ve all read damning accounts of the government saving banks from their risky subprime bets, but it turns out that the Wall Street privilege problem is far more deeply ingrained in the U.S. legal system than the simple bailouts witnessed in 2008. America’s largest banks can engage in flagrantly criminal activity on a massive scale and emerge almost completely unscathed. The latest sickening example comes from Wachovia Bank: Accused of laundering $380 billion in Mexican drug cartel money, the financial behemoth is expected to emerge with nothing more than a slap on the wrist thanks to an official government policy which protects megabanks from criminal charges.

Bloomberg’s Michael Smith has penned a devastating expose detailing Wachovia’s drug-money operations and the government’s twisted response. The bank was moving money behind literally tons of cocaine from violent drug cartels. It wasn’t an accident. Internal whistleblowers at Wachovia warned that the bank was laundering drug money, higher-ups at the bank actively looked the other way in order to score bigger profits, and the U.S. government is about to let everyone involved get off scott free. The bank will not be indicted, because it is official government policy not to prosecute megabanks. From Smith’s story:

No big U.S. bank . . . has ever been indicted for violating the Bank Secrecy Act or any other federal law. Instead, the Justice Department settles criminal charges by using deferred-prosecution agreements, in which a bank pays a fine and promises not to break the law again . . . . Large banks are protected from indictments by a variant of the too-big-to-fail theory. Indicting a big bank could trigger a mad dash by investors to dump shares and cause panic in financial markets.

Wachovia was acquired by Wells Fargo in late 2008. The bank’s penalty for laundering over $380 billion in drug money is going to be a promise not to ever do it again, and a $160 million fine. The fine is so small that Wachovia will almost certainly turn a profit on its drug financing business after legal costs and penalties are taken into account.

This is several steps beyond what most of us think about when we debate too-big-to-fail. The government isn’t shielding Wachovia from losses on risky bets in the capital markets casinos— it’s shielding the bank from the prosecution of outright criminal behavior. The drug money business did not pose risks to the financial system, and Wachovia wasn’t losing money on it. Wachovia is simply being shielded from what ought to be the ordinary functioning of the justice system.

Think about what would happen if you or I were accused of laundering $380 billion in drug money. We could not simply settle the allegations out of court in exchange for an apology and a fine. We’d spend the rest of our lives in jail for financing a ruthless, bloody and illegal business. About 22,000 people have been killed in the Mexican drug trade since 2006, and the drug trade itself can’t happen without extensive money laundering operations. Moving the money is one of the most difficult and critical elements of any criminal enterprise—without ways to convert crooked cash into seemingly innocuous funds, crooks simply can’t operate. Wachovia was doing top-level dirty work for drug dealers.

On the streets of American cities, the mere possession of these drugs can land you with a multi-year prison sentence. But financing multi-billion-dollar drug empires? Don’t do it again, pretty please.

Too-big-to-fail isn’t just a matter of systemic risk and mathematical models gone haywire, It’s about the basic functioning of our democracy. You cannot have a functional democracy in which an entire privileged class of bankers can get away with anything—and if you can get away with laundering hundreds of billions of dollars in drug money, there’s not much you can’t get away with.

Congress is poised to pass a decent Wall Street reform bill, but that legislation will not end this criminal imbalance. If the bill will really end too-big-to-fail, the Justice Department could immediately end its special immunity policies for large financial institutions. That isn’t going to happen. The public deserves tougher prosecutors, but we also need further legislation to break up the megabanks so that they can’t use their economic clout to bully everyone in Washington.

Michelle Obama Declares Panama City Beach Oil Free

WJHG.com
July 13, 2010

Editor’s note: Oil reached Panama City beaches in late June. Mrs. Obama is apparently as irresponsible as Florida’s governor, Charlie Crist. “It is safe,” Crist said about the oil, “there isn’t a toxic nature to it that is detrimental to anybody. It is much more of a nuisance than anything else at this point.” The Escambia County Health Department lifted a health advisory on Pensacola Beach in late June, even though the EPA said it was not healthy for beachgoers to go in the water.

Panama City Beach- Monday was an historic day for Bay County. Michelle Obama became the first sitting First Lady to visit Bay County when she arrived for a briefing on the oil-spill, then made remarks at an invitation only event on Panama City Beach.

First Lady Michelle Obama arrived at Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport around 2:30 Monday afternoon. “Well it’s a great opportunity to welcome the First Lady to our community and we’re very excited at the airport here to have choose us as her arrival and departure point,” said Randy Curtis, Airport Executive Director.

From the airport the First Lady headed to the Tourist Development Council to speak with local officials and business leaders regarding the toll the BP oil disaster has taken on the local economy. “The ramifications I think will probably come maybe in another year or so, because the people who are not coming on vacation may not come back. And so it’s the loss of business and unfortunately that’s a way of life for us,” said Panama City Beach Mayor Gayle Oberst.

Read entire article

Maybe oil is not washing up on the beach in Panama City, but there seems to be a lot of military with BP employees.

POSTED JULY 13, 2010

DISASTER IN THE GULF AS POLITICIANS CHEERLEAD

Yesterday, while listening to The Tom O'Brien Show, ( a talk show commenting on stocks and investments), Florida Governor Charlie Crist came on for a short interview. He talked about how clean and pure Florida's beaches were. He talked about how BP is going to get the upper hand on the oil leak in the Gulf. He even talked about how the Florida economy is coming back.

After the interview, I sent an Email to Tom O'brien stating that the interview was "a pile of crap" and if he wanted the truth about the oil spill he should write me. Of course he didn't. Have you noticed that those in government and the media NEVER respond to anyone. They are in a world of their own --- a world of make believe and continual B.S. Nothing that Charlie Crist said is true. It really is hard to speak for 10 minutes and never once tell the truth about anything, but he did it.

The article below, written by Wayne Madsen, covers a wide array of alarming developments concerning the oil leak in the Gulf. Very soon we may see substantial health problems developing for those in that area. We may also see even more long term health problems. We may soon see the military begin evacuations to "temporary" facilities. If one wants to know if the controlled reports from the Gulf are true, just look at what happens when an independent person goes there and tries to take pictures or video. Our government masters and their benefactors from BP have shut that area down. If they were not lying, why hide the evidence?

Bruce                         New World Order News

BP Committing Ecocide on Islands in Gulf

From environmentalists and wildlife specialists to fisherman and businessmen along the Gulf Coast the message is the same: BP is not only strangling the news of what is actually occurring in the Gulf of Mexico with the oil disaster but has co-opted key federal regulatory and oversight agencies to advance its agenda and that of its oil partners, including Halliburton, Anadarko, and Transocean.
 
The logistics of the oil clean-up is being criticized because of the over-dependence on deepwater oil skimmer boats. No procedures are in place for using skimmers that can operate in shallower waters of 1 1/2 to 2 feet. There are a number of boats that could be used for shallow water skimming being tied up in port and not being used by BP.
 
Fishermen who have experience in rescuing sea turtles enmeshed in fishing nets are not being used in turtle rescue operations. In fact, they face arrest if they even touch an endangered turtle. Some 3,000 fisherman have remained idled by the oil disaster and most have not been hired by BP. Idled fishermen were told by BP that they would be called when their help was needed. However, later BP told them that many would probably never be called.
 
BP has hired an army of contractors and sub-contractors who are spending plenty of "flash money" to assuage some local businesses. However, WMR noticed while driving to Louisiana a large number of seafood distributors and restaurants that were shuttered.
 
Those hired by BP to clean up beaches and waters are not permitted to wear respirators and many are becoming sick, even coughing up blood. This editor, while driving to Venice, began to experience burning and watering eyes, a condition that lasted hours after returning to the west bank of New Orleans.
 
The disinformation being promulgated by BP is being accentuated by a number of local TV reporters being "embedded" with Coast Guard units in the waters off the coast and in the marshland and estuaries. Furthermore, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), accused by many local environmentalists and fishermen of being complicit in the cover-up of bad news, has issued a report claiming that tests of 600 fish caught in waters "near the edge of the oil" have proven negative for chemical toxins. Fishermen interviewed by WMR said the claim is ludicrous since there are no fish in the waters in the oil zone or near it.
 
Gone from the waters of the Gulf off Louisiana are grouper, snapper, amberjack, tuna, and even the small colorful blenny, which normally feeds at oil rig pylons in the Gulf and is found only in the Amazon basin, in addition to the Louisiana Gulf waters. The Gulf waters are slowly being turned into a hydrocarbon soup of dispersed oil bubbles that is translucent black in color.
 
Fishing boat owners whose boats have been used for clean-up efforts are suffering fiberglass hull damage from hydrocarbon penetration and BP has informed the owners that their boats will have to be destroyed afterwards and their hulls ground up. However, even boats not being used for clean-up will be destroyed with no assurance that BP will compensate the owners.

FREE Breaking Investment & Geopolitical Intelligence - Previously only available to Governments, Intelligence Agencies & selected Hedge Funds. Click here for more information on our Free Weekly Intelligence Report
 
NOAA is also reportedly sitting on bathymetric maps of the Gulf sea floor that shows a massive fissure on the sea floor that is located 7 miles from the Deepwater Horizon site. The fissure is leaking 120,000 gallons of crude a day, along with methane gas. The Corexit-dispersed oil has seeped under booms set up to protect Lake Ponchartrain, which lies north of New Orleans. Dead fish and tar balls have now turned up in the lake.
 
Further out in the Gulf and along sensitive refuges like Elmer's Island, massive fish kills are being reported by local residents. The Coast Guard and BP have established a no-fly zone over Elmer's Island, a major bird sanctuary.
 
In addition, local fishermen said that nurseries in the Gulf, responsible for producing 40 percent of America's seafood, are being destroyed by the oil and the chemical soup created by the mixing of oil dispersant Corexit 9500. Corexit is breaking down the crude oil into small oil bubbles and a watery oil mixture that is seeping under the booms set up to protect sensitive fish nurseries, oyster beds, and other pristine areas. Many Atlantic fish species also spawn in the Gulf and they are also threatened by the oil disaster. Even barnacles, one of the most resistant sea creatures to extreme situations, are dying in vast numbers, along with sponges and coral.
 
Near Venice, Louisiana in Plaquemines Parish, is the old Civil War fort of Fort Jackson. A national historical site and park, Fort Jackson has been turned into a major base for joint BP-Coast Guard dumping of Corexit on oil in the Gulf. WMR witnessed five helicopters carrying suspended white bags of Corexit out over Gulf waters.
 
Hastily-erected signs at the entrances to Fort Jackson warn that the site is closed to visitors because of "construction." Fort Jackson actually serves as a major base of operations for BP and Coast Guard activities. The Obama administration, which has stated its commitment to "open government," is engaged in what amounts to semi-covert BP-Coast Guard operations in the Gulf.
 
WMR has also been informed by a reputable source that BP has been engaged in night time spraying of a bleaching agent on Louisiana beaches to make it appear that the beaches are being cleaned up. The planes, which fly at night, disregard flight regulations by flying with their lights out. The operations have been approved by the Coast Guard and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
 
Also coming in for criticism is the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which has remained silent as federal incident commanders have ordered home wildlife rescue workers from Texas and other states. One group that was told to pack its bags was the non-profit Wildlife Rescue & Rehabilitation, Inc. from Texas, which has 20 years of experience in handling animal rescues from oil spills. BP hired the O'Brien Group, a subsidiary of SEACOR Holdings of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, as its wildlife rescue coordinator. Local environmentalists view O'Brien as a shill for BP.
 
The EPA is also remaining mute on air quality reports from Venice that show that on May 7 hydrogen sulfide in the air was measured at 1192 parts per billion. Five parts per billion is considered hazardous to human health. In addition, the May 7 reports show that benzene levels in the air were measured at 5000 parts per billion, again in the health danger zone. Propylene glycol, a major component in Corexit 9500, is being measured in Gulf waters at 150 times its lethal concentration.
 
BP has hired the same firm that performed air quality monitoring in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina's Murphy oil spill in Chalmette to perform monitoring for the current oil disaster. Thefirm has been called a "proven liar" in both incidents by environmentalists and emergency planners.
 
BP clean-up workers have also been found dumping tar balls from the water and beaches in land-fills in Mississippi and St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana. The oil from the sludge is seeping into the local water tables.
 
The corporate news media, particularly the local New Orleans television stations, are embedding their reporters with Coast Guard and BP teams in the Gulf. The corporate media reports essentially serve as public relations outreeach for BP. A number of New Orleans and Louisiana groups are trying to get the actual news about the disaster out but face limited resources.

To call the Gulf oil disaster the worst environmental disaster in the history of the United States is an understatement. And with the connivance of the Obama White House, the Gulf of Mexico is being turned into the Gulf of Death.

By Wayne Madsen for Oilprice.com

POSTED JULY 12, 2010

GOV'T MASTERS BRING FRANKENSTEIN TO DINNER TABLE

Yes, our government masters and their corporate partners are busy, busy, busy. The article below covers a new type of salmon ready for you and your children to eat. This is not a natural fish. No, it's a fish created and modified in a laboratory. So, if you like GMO corn, soybeans and other foodstuffs, you'll love "frankenfish".

Before I sign off for today, I just want us to take a trip down memory lane. Monsanto corp, the creator of many GMO foods, was responsible for the development of Zyklon B used in the death camps by Nazi Germany. Since Monsanto brought GMO to our farmer's fields, the honey bee population has been decimated. Our generation has also seen explosions in diseases that were rare for our ancestors. Diseases such as cancer, diabetes, kidney disease and all sorts of conditions of the intestinal tract have exploded. Almost no one today, of advanced years, can live without constant medication. GMO foods are banned in Europe and Canada, but we eat them here. GMO foods are not prominently labeled so you may not even know if you are consuming them.

I almost forgot-----geneticist, Val Giddings said he would feed these foods to his children. Well, ancient rulers would throw their kids into volcanoes to pacify their gods. Mr. Giddings would fit right in. So enjoy the water and air in the Gulf. Our government masters say it's safe. Eat the GMO food. They say it's good for you. Make sure your children take mercury in their vaccines. The medical professional says it's healthy. Drink fluoride in the water. You'll have nice teeth. Oh, what the heck, pound your head with a hammer, that will knock sense into you.

Bruce             New World Order News

FDA nears approval of genetically engineered salmon

POSTED JULY 9, 2010

POLICE MURDERER GETS 6 MONTHS IN JAIL

It is with sadness that I report the following news. An Oakland police officer has just concluded his trial for the killing of an unarmed black man outside a subway station New Years day 2009. The man was lying face down with his hands handcuffed behind his back. The officer then pulled out his pistol and shot the man in the back.

The sadness I feel is for our law enforcement officers who are losing the respect of the citizens they are sworn to protect. Most Police are good people. This doesn't excuse the bad ones. It also does not excuse those other officers who just look the other way while criminals get away with murder. And it sure doesn't excuse a justice system that has one standard for themselves and another for the rest of us.

We have now entered, still another sad chapter in the story of America. This chapter could well be entitled, "We don't trust you anymore". Maybe those on the very top believe a couple million of them can exist with the contempt of 300 million of us. If that's what they think, they are wrong. What I think is, many police who are now supporting them will soon be supporting us.

Bruce      New World News

Violence erupts after peaceful protest against Mehserle trial verdict

July 9, 3:00 AMSF Crime ExaminerThomas Pendergast

Violence, vandalism and looting broke out in Oakland on Thursday night, after a peaceful protest against the verdict from the trial of former BART police officer Johannes Mehserle had ended.

Mehserle faced a murder charge or manslaughter but was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in a Los Angeles courtroom, for shooting to death Oscar Grant, 22, on New Year's Day of 2009.

Mehserle is white and Grant was an African American.

He'd gone to the Fruitvale BART station in Oakland to assist another BART officer in breaking up a fight that Grant was apparently involved in. Soon after his arrival, he attempted to arrest Grant, who was lying unarmed and face down on the pavement as Mehserle and the other officer pinned him to the ground.

He then drew his service pistol and shot Grant in the back, killing him. Mehserle's defense was that he'd meant to draw his Taser but drew his pistol by mistake. The jury apparently believed him, convicting him of involuntary manslaughter, meaning essentially that he didn't intend to murder Grant but was reckless or careless enough in his actions that a man was killed because of those actions.

Although the verdict is a rare instance of a police officer being convicted at all for an on-duty killing, Grant's family and many in the crowd clearly wanted a murder conviction.

The protest against the verdict ended peacefully at 8 p.m. Soon after, a phalanx of Oakland police officers in riot gear attempted to clear Broadway at 13th Street but a crowd of angry protesters blocked them and wouldn't let them pass. After someone broke the window to a local business and several people threw bottles and other objects at them, police announced that they'd declared the gathering an "unlawful assembly" and demanded that the demonstrators get off the streets.

Many in the crowd refused to comply.

At least a dozen or more citizens locked arms with each other and formed a line between the police and the demonstrators.

"I'm here to keep the peace," said an elderly woman in that line, who only identified herself as "a citizen of Oakland," as she stood with her back to police.

"I'm just afraid that the cops (have) a little too much testosterone and we're just slowing them down ... citizens protecting citizens," she said.

 After an OPD Sergeant on the scene ordered the street cleared again, the line of officers began to advance and shoved the line of citizens in front of them with batons.

When the citizens resisted, chaos ensued and the officers began making arrests.

Police eventually cleared the intersection all the way up Broadway well past 14th Street and arrested at least ten people in the process. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that at about 10 p.m. a group of Black Bloc anarchists broke from the others and went north on Broadway, smashing windows and cars and looting. The newspaper further reports that somewhere between 50 and 100 of them were arrested.

 


POSTED JULY 8, 2010

PRECHTER PREDICTS BIGGEST MARKET CRASH IN 300 YEARS

In the article below, market guru, Robert Prechter predicts that the U.S. stock market will soon begin a market crash that will take the DOW to the 1000 mark. That's a 90% drop! The biggest question I have is will there even be a DOW or a U.S. stock market?

I know. There will always be a USA. In fact the article quotes others who "poo poo" Prechter's predictions. Of course they don't have any facts to back their criticism, just cliche's and platitudes about the American people. Unfortunately, none of this has anything to do with the American people. Our economic system has been run by international bankers for the past 100 years. Their goal is to enrich themselves at our expense.

A short time ago I even started selling my Gold and Silver stocks in preparation for a possible stock market crash. I have also begun to go " short" using various ETF's (exchange traded funds) in the NASDAQ, EURO and 20 year bond. It's sad that the only money that can be made today is to play our market to go down, but our goal is to survive. Whatever is the final end of this, it isn't going to be good. We must plan for the worst. If we're wrong, we're all happy, but if we're right, our very lives may depend upon how well we're prepared.

Bruce                                     New World Order News

The biggest market crash since the 1720?

The Week
July 8, 2010

Market forecaster Robert Prechter says we’re on the verge of the biggest market crash since the 1720 collapse of Britain’s South Sea Bubble, with the Dow nosediving to below 1,000 in the next five to six years, from around 10,000 now. Prechter, regarded as a powerful market “guru” in the late 1980s, relies on an esoteric technical-analysis tool that uses past market movements to predict future ones. “If I’m right, it will be such a shock that people will be telling their grandkids many years from now, ‘Don’t touch stocks,’” he says. How seriously should we take the warning?

What’s an amateur to believe? Prechter makes “Dr. Doom” Nouriel Roubini “sound like Jiminy Cricket,” says Rod Dreher in BeliefNet. But how are “utterly unsophisticated” investors like me (and probably you) supposed to judge if we should sell all our stocks, as Prechter’s “apocalyptic scenario” dictates? It sounds like a “radical position,” but Prechter’s “very far from a fringe figure,” and even his rosier peers are moving from stocks for the time being.
“Coming: Dow 1,000?”

Prechter is way too gloomy: Dow 1,000? asks Mike Shedlock in Fav Stocks. “Poppycock.” The Dow might sink as low as 5,000, but it will probably “meander around 10,000 for another decade,” as it has since first topping 10,000 in 1999. That may not seem like a reason to break out the “party hats,” but in those same 10 years, Japan’s Nikkei has dropped by about 50 percent.

POSTED JULY 7, 2010

TROOPS MOVING TO GULF FOR EVACUATION

I have been watching various sources to validate the rumors of a mass evacuation of residents from the Gulf area. Estimates of up to 40 million people subject to evacuation have been circulating all over the internet. This is a common ploy to dramatically overplay an event so the reality will come in well short of the wild predictions.

Today, on the Alex Jones show, there were a couple of military personnel calling in to tell of orders to deploy to the Gulf next week. They were issued new desert camouflage uniforms even though they already have uniforms. Requests for breathing gear were denied as the superiors are saying the air is safe to breathe.

The article below covers the standard government denials of their plans. This information comes from those on the inside attempting to warn the rest of us. Estimates of 40 million to be evacuated are just a disinfo operation. The reality is evacuations will be well short of that in the beginning ---- a few thousand here, a few thousand there, over a long period of time. Look for statements like "temporary" ,"limited", "short term", and other Government B.S. This is going to happen. They will try to control the information concerning it. My advice to those in areas that may be affected, move yourselves out. Do not go on to their trucks. Do not go to the "temporary relocation facility".

Bruce                                    New World Order News

Despite Rumors, Officials Insist No Gulf Evacuation Planned

Emergency managers say evacuation story “dreamed up” by Internet bloggers

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Monday, July 5, 2010

Despite growing rumors that there are plans for an imminent evacuation of the area affected by the BP oil spill, officials insist that no such program is being considered, attributing the stories to Internet bloggers with overactive imaginations.

For the past few weeks, the Infowars office has been bombarded with emails containing links to dubious websites that cite even more dubious sources in claiming that a massive evacuation program is being readied. The latest reports claim that soldiers are moving military families out of the Gulf to get ahead of the deluge of people who will be forced out of the area.

While claims of an evacuation remain confined to hearsay at this stage, such a scenario is not out of the question. If some of the estimated 2-4 million barrels of oil that have spilled into the Gulf are picked up by hurricanes and shoved onshore, the consequences would be terrifying, and would likely mandate some form of evacuation.

Oil in the Gulf not only contains a massive amount of methane, but also deadly hydrogen sulfide, benzene and methylene chloride. BP admits methane makes up about 40 percent of the leaking crude by mass. Experts have warned that “dead zones” will affect entire areas if the situation continues to worsen.

However, it’s not only bloggers on obscure websites who are warning of an evacuation. CFR member and chairman emeritus of Simmons & Company International Matthew Simmons was quoted in a June 22 Washington Post article discussing what will happen if a tropical storm hits the region.

“We’re going to have to evacuate the gulf states. Can you imagine evacuating 20 million people?… This story is 80 times worse than I thought,” Simmons was quoted as saying.

Indeed, should an evacuation eventually occur, expect to see the government launch another round of illegal gun confiscations just as they did during hurricane Katrina.

In response to the evacuation rumors, emergency officials in Hillsborough County said that the story was “dreamed up” by an Internet blogger called Maryann Tobin.

“The concept alone frightens me, their claiming FEMA and other governmental people are secretly planning to evacuate people from the Tampa Bay area if the oil spill comes?” said Larry Gispert, manager of Hillsborough County’s Emergency Operation Center. “Well, we’re the ones who would do the evacuation and I’m here to tell you I’m not secretly doing anything.”

Former NSA official Wayne Madsen as well as “former State Trooper and Secret Service appointee” Greg Evenson are two other individuals who claim that an evacuation is just around the corner.

While rumors of a planned evacuation remain unconfirmed, there is no doubt whatsoever that the Obama administration has ruthlessly placed the importance of exploiting the crisis above and beyond any attempt to fix it.

The government is using the disaster to push its nightmare “green economy” agenda by invoking the crisis as a poster child for the dreaded carbon tax. The worse the situation gets, the more political capital Obama accrues to denounce oil companies like BP and call for dependence on oil to be reduced by hiking gas taxes. Of course, most people remain unaware of the fact that companies like BP were amongst the founding members of the cap and trade lobby and have been the staunchest promoters of the man-made global warming scam.

POSTED JULY 6, 2010

POINTLESS, NEVER ENDING, EVER EXPANDING, WARS.

As some of you already know, I am a child of the 60's. For the 1st part of that decade, we enjoyed prosperity and peace. Most of our families only needed one bread winner, leaving the remaining parent home with us, the children. We played outside for hours, mostly unconcerned with the epidemic problems that afflict us today --- but all of that changed on a day in November 1963.

That day was the one where our President was murdered in a coup-de-tat. I know, our government masters still cling to the story of a lone nut, firing an unfirable rifle through a tree, faster than possible, expelling a bullet past the effective range, changing directions and killing our President. This President, Kennedy, had decided not to remain in Vietnam. He also decided to remove the unlimited power of the CIA and the Federal Reserve. So they had him killed.

The new President Johnson quickly got us into a war based on lies which took a peaceful rebellion from my generation to end. Today we are back in Vietnam, only we call it Iraq, Afghanistan or wherever our government masters want. There is no end. There is no purpose. The point of these wars changes as often as we change our socks. We change leaders, but not leadership. The solution is simple and it's up to you. I'm speaking to those in the uniform of the armed forces of the United States and their  friends and relatives. Just say no. Our nation does not belong to a band of crooks, it belongs to us. Just because they have slithered their way into positions of authority does not make them America. You are America. You are their power and you can remove it.  It's time to come home.

Bruce                New World Order News

The War That’s Not a War

Ron Paul
Campaign For Liberty
July 5, 2010

Statement of Congressman Ron Paul

United States House of Representatives

The War That’s Not a War

In January 1991, we went to war in the Middle East against Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s dictator who was our ally during the Iran-Iraq war. A border dispute between Kuwait and Iraq broke out after our State Department gave a green light for Hussein’s invasion.

After Iraq’s successful invasion of Kuwait we reacted with gusto and have been militarily involved in the entire region, six thousand miles from our shores, ever since. This has included Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. After twenty years of killing and a couple trillion dollars wasted, not only does the fighting continue with no end in sight, but our leaders threaten to spread our bombs of benevolence on Iran.

For most Americans, we are at war — at war against a tactic called terrorism, not a country.

This allows our military to go any place in the world without limits as to time or place.

But how can we be at war? Congress has not declared war as required by the Constitution.

That is true, but our presidents have and Congress and the people have not objected. Congress obediently provides all the money requested for the “war.”

People are dying, bombs are dropped, our soldiers are shot at and killed.

Our soldiers wear uniforms; our enemies do not. They are not part of any government. They have no planes, no tanks, no ships, no missiles, and no modern technology.

What kind of a war is this anyway? If it really is one. If it was a real war we would have won it by now.

Our stated goal since 9/11 has been to destroy al Qaeda. Was al Qaeda in Iraq? Not under Saddam Hussein. Our leaders lied us into invading Iraq and deceived us into occupying Afghanistan.

There’s still really no al Qaeda in Iraq and only a hundred or so in Afghanistan, yet there is no end in sight to the “war.” Could there have been other reasons for this war that is not a war?

Military victory in Afghanistan is illusive. Does anyone really know whom we are fighting and why?

Why has the war not ended? Nine years and it continues to spread. Some claim it is to keep America safe, that our soldiers are fighting and dying for our freedom, defending our Constitution. Are we being lied to in order to keep us in this spreading war, just as we were lied to in the 1960’s to keep us in Vietnam?

We own the Iraq government as we do Afghanistan’s. In Afghanistan we are fighting the Taliban-those dangerous people with guns, defending their homeland.

Once they were called the Mujahideen, our old allies, along with Osama bin Laden, in the fight to oust the Soviets from Afghanistan in the 1980’s.

In that effort our CIA funded radical jihad against those nasty foreign occupiers-the Russians.

What gratitude? Those same people now resent our benevolent occupation-with a little violence thrown in.

The resistance to our presence grows as our perseverance wanes.

Our people are waking up but our officials refuse to recognize the longer we stay the greater is the support for those dedicated to the principle that Afghanistan is for Afghans, who resent all foreign occupation.

The harder we fight a war that is not a war, the weaker we get and the stronger becomes our enemy.

When an enemy without weapons can resist an army of great strength, the most powerful of all history, one should ask, who has the moral high ground?

Military failure in Afghanistan is to be our destiny. Changing generals without changing our policies or our policy makers perpetuates our agony and delays the inevitable.

This is not a war that our generals have been trained for. Nation building, police work, social engineering is never a job for foreign occupiers and never an appropriate job for soldiers trained to win wars.

A military victory is no longer even a stated goal of our military leaders or our politicians, as they know that type of victory is impossible.

The sad story is:

This war is against ourselves, our values, our Constitution, our financial well being and common sense, and at the rate we are going, it is going to end badly. What we need are honest leaders with character and a new foreign policy

POSTED JULY 5, 2010

DON'T GO TO CHURCH ON NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

I wasn't going to post today as it is a National holiday. This changed yesterday in church on the 4th of July. I should know better by now, but I guess I still have not learned my lesson. I don't know when it happened, but in 99 % of our churches today, the position of God is being crowded out by worship of the government. I know, they say it's for America, but don't kid yourself, it's for the government. God save the Queen, bless the Pope, God bless the State of Israel, France, Italy, Russia, it doesn't matter. Secular leaders are always trying to sell you on the idea that they are in tune with God. Some even say they are God and we, foolishly fall for this over and over again.

So, back to the Sunday service. The preacher announced that a soldier had returned from Afghanistan and led the applause. Most in the congregation gave him a standing ovation. I did not. Maybe I'm missing something, but where did we get the idea that a soldier who was "just following orders" is a hero deserving a standing ovation. Furthermore, where did we get the idea that this is "God's war". Unless my God is a liar, murderer, rapist and drug pusher, this is not his war.

Over the months I have posted many examples of murder, rape, drug pushing, theft and leaders lying about this war and the one in Iraq. Some would say that "this is just war". Unfortunately, that may be so, but that doesn't make it right and it sure doesn't make it Holy. No, my idea of a hero is one that stands up against tyranny and evil and not supporting  it. Jesus, himself said, "No man can serve 2 masters". This is what many are attempting to do in our churches today. Just as Daniel refused to bow down to the image of the King, a true Christian will refuse to give homage to a government run by liars and perverts--- especially in the House of God.

Our Pastor is a good man who has worked himself to the bone in the cause of the Lord. This is well in excess of anything I have done or will ever do, but when one takes on the role of a Biblical "watchman", ignoring government policy that is closer to Satan than Jesus, makes that person as guilty as those who perpetrate those evils.

No, soldiers today are no more heros than those from 1939 Germany were when they invaded Poland based on lies. Heros are those like we just finished celebrating on the 4th of July who refused to follow the unGodly orders of King George. Until they say no, the wars will increase until all the world is involved. We will then have to answer the same question that was posed to those on trial at  Nuremberg after World War 2. "Why didn't you do something"? The gentleman from our church yesterday wasn't thinking about his country. He wasn't thinking about his pledge to God. He was thinking about himself.

The next time there's a National Holiday like Flag Day, Memorial Day or 4th of July close to a church service, you may want to stay home. The next time you are ambushed in Church to give some sort tribute, pledge or allegiance to the government, get up and walk out. After all, we already have a God and one is enough.


Bruce             New World Order News

POSTED JULY 2, 2010

GREAT QUOTES FOR U.S. INDEPENDENCE DAY

I thought I would help us all to remember the reason for this 4th of July celebration. Many of us praise our founding fathers as well as great statesmen from the past that signify the spirit of independence and celebration of the individual that defined our nations birth.

Today, our government masters are an anathema to every principle upon which our nation was founded. They accuse our founding father's principles as being terrorist. They substitute lies for truth, cowardice for bravery, deception for honor, perversion for morals, laziness for industry, taking for giving. Most today, know with disgust, the principles upon which today's leadership is based.

Fortunately, for us, the American dream is flickering, but not dead. I am heartened by many who have come forward to re-proclaim the words of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence. Our government masters are busy building up defenses and security for themselves because they are afraid----afraid of us. The celebration of July 4th, 1776 and the reasons for it, give good reasons for their fear.

Bruce                           New World Order News

"I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world - no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men." -- Woodrow Wilson, on the creation of the Federal Reserve

Here's a quote from Abraham Lincoln contradicting the general view that he was anti-slavery.  "I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution . . . has passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the states, including that of persons held to service." Then, while "holding such a provision to be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable."

   
John F. Kennedy on Secret Societies
6 min - Apr 5, 2008 - Uploaded by warrior1777
So you think Secret Societies are a Joke huh? Well why don't you listen to this Great Man WARNING you about them. Warning ...

Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death

Patrick Henry, March 23, 1775.

No man thinks more highly than I do of the patriotism, as well as abilities, of the very worthy gentlemen who have just addressed the House. But different men often see the same subject in different lights; and, therefore, I hope it will not be thought disrespectful to those gentlemen if, entertaining as I do opinions of a character very opposite to theirs, I shall speak forth my sentiments freely and without reserve. This is no time for ceremony. The questing before the House is one of awful moment to this country. For my own part, I consider it as nothing less than a question of freedom or slavery; and in proportion to the magnitude of the subject ought to be the freedom of the debate. It is only in this way that we can hope to arrive at truth, and fulfill the great responsibility which we hold to God and our country. Should I keep back my opinions at such a time, through fear of giving offense, I should consider myself as guilty of treason towards my country, and of an act of disloyalty toward the Majesty of Heaven, which I revere above all earthly kings.

Mr. President, it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and, having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it.

I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past. And judging by the past, I wish to know what there has been in the conduct of the British ministry for the last ten years to justify those hopes with which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves and the House. Is it that insidious smile with which our petition has been lately received? Trust it not, sir; it will prove a snare to your feet. Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed with a kiss. Ask yourselves how this gracious reception of our petition comports with those warlike preparations which cover our waters and darken our land. Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation? Have we shown ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled that force must be called in to win back our love? Let us not deceive ourselves, sir. These are the implements of war and subjugation; the last arguments to which kings resort. I ask gentlemen, sir, what means this martial array, if its purpose be not to force us to submission? Can gentlemen assign any other possible motive for it? Has Great Britain any enemy, in this quarter of the world, to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies? No, sir, she has none. They are meant for us: they can be meant for no other. They are sent over to bind and rivet upon us those chains which the British ministry have been so long forging. And what have we to oppose to them? Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that for the last ten years. Have we anything new to offer upon the subject? Nothing. We have held the subject up in every light of which it is capable; but it has been all in vain. Shall we resort to entreaty and humble supplication? What terms shall we find which have not been already exhausted? Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves. Sir, we have done everything that could be done to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and Parliament. Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned, with contempt, from the foot of the throne! In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free-- if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending--if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained--we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms and to the God of hosts is all that is left us!

They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power. The millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable--and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come.

It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace-- but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!


POSTED JULY 1, 2010

CONGRESSMAN STARK MOCKS HIS CONSTITUENTS

There is a video below where a Congressman from California verbally attacks and mocks constituents that showed up for a town hall meeting. Just like "The Sheriff of Nottingham" from the story of Robin Hood, Stark oozes arrogance in his appearance before the voters.

We really have gone over the top with these people. They no longer have any pretense of representing us. They steal our money. The live like kings. They continually lie to us. They pass laws they don't even bother reading. They are obsessed with protecting themselves with billions spent on police and security and now figuratively spit in our face when we dare to question them.

It is timely in this 4th of July holiday, we confront the New American Royalty. Throughout the ages Royalty has always acted the same. Today is no different. Obviously, Congressional bills aren't the only things Pete Stark doesn't read. He also doesn't read history. If he did, he would realize that arrogant pigs like him eventually will answer to the people. When that day comes, I doubt he will like it.

Bruce                           New World Order News

Pete Stark brazenly mocks constituents at town hall meeting

Andrew Steele
America 20xy
June 31, 2010

Looking like a burnt-out teacher with three years left to retirement presiding over an after school detention session, Congressman Pete Stark (D-CA) took great pleasure recently in alienating his constituents at a town hall meeting by marginalizing the Mexican border issue and issuing sarcastic, belittling answers to reasonable questions that were asked of him.

When a Minuteman– part of a group that voluntarily patrols the Mexican border and reports crossings by illegal immigrants–stood to ask a question, Stark first asked him, “Who are you going to kill today?”  Then in response to the question itself, which was why the federal government wasn’t doing more to seal the borders, Stark mockingly responded, “We’d like to get all the Minutemen armed so they can stop shooting people here.”

Stark then went on to make other amazingly detached and dismissive retorts which sparked outrage from various members of the audience, including a round of applause when the Minuteman asked his question again.  Stark then insisted that the border was secure, which invited more jeers.

Politicians have always been accused of pandering to their constituents and offering transparently phony promises to address their concerns, feeling that a false front of sincerity was enough to placate their critics.  In recent history however, politicians have reacted to voters with arrogant ridicule and outright hostility as a mass awakening has caused Americans to increasingly exercise their duties as citizens to become more politically active, challenging the dominance of the establishment that keeps career politicians in office.

Pete Stark’s performance at the town hall is the most brazen display of disdain from a politician towards ordinary Americans since Bob Etheridge assaulted a student who asked him a question on the street a few weeks ago.  Such displays show that the masks are  falling off the controlled authorities of the nation as the metaphorical lizards underneath them are revealed.  Now, instead of rushing to put the masks back on, some political reptiles are deciding to show their true faces, baring their teeth and lashing their tongues out at their stunned constituents, whom they once at least pretended to represent.

POSTED JUNE 30, 2010

U.S. BANKS LAUNDER DRUG MONEY. SO WHAT!

Below is an extensive article concerning the laundering of Mexican drug money by Wachovia bank and others. Referring to hundreds of millions of dollars in transactions, the article still only scratches the surface. The CIA has admitted to operating drug operations as early as French IndoChina in the 50's, 60's and 70's. They have also admitted to drug running from Nicaragua to the U.S. during the 80's using Mena, Arkansas as a transportation point.

Oh, it gets worse! Just a couple of months ago, a top general in the U.S. military admitted, in an interview with Geraldo Rivera to assigning U.S. troops in Afghanistan, to guard poppy fields for drug lords there. Billions and billions of dollars have moved around from drug lords to bankers to politicians to police to military and so on.

Notice that after all of this revelation, almost no one is punished. The banks are given small fines from time to time and then given still more billions from the taxpayers with which they can easily pay those pesky fines. I'm not sure how this government can survive with so much crookedness going on. Corruption is no longer the exception. It is the rule, but like all from the past who engage in this type of criminal behavior. Sooner or later they fall. The main reason is, they are never satisfied and eventually turn on each other.

Bruce                                  New World Order News

Banks Financing Mexico Gangs Admitted in Wells Fargo Deal

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent inspects a vehicle heading into the U.S. at the San Ysidro border crossing in San Diego. Photographer: Scott Dalton/Bloomberg Markets via Bloomberg

 

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June 29 (Bloomberg) -- Wells Fargo & Co., which bought Wachovia Corp. in 2008, has admitted in court that its unit failed to monitor and report suspected money laundering by narcotics traffickers. Bloomberg's Erik Schatzker reports. (Source: Bloomberg)

 

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June 29 (Bloomberg) -- Bloomberg Markets Magazine senior writer Michael Smith discusses the use of Wachovia Corp., Bank of America Corp. and others by Mexican drug cartels to launder funds. In the magazine's August 2010 issue, Smith reports that Wells Fargo & Co., which bought Wachovia in 2008, admitted in court that its unit failed to monitor and report suspected money laundering by narcotics traffickers. Smith speaks with Betty Liu on Bloomberg Television’s “In the Loop.” (Source: Bloomberg)

 

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June 29 (Bloomberg) -- Martin Woods, former director of Wachovia Corp.'s anti-money-laundering unit in London, talks with Bloomberg's Julie Hyman and Mark Crumpton about the use of Wachovia Corp. and others by Mexican drug cartels to launder funds. Bloomberg Markets Magazine senior writer Michael Smith reports in the magazine's August 2010 issue that Wells Fargo & Co., which bought Wachovia in 2008, admitted in court that its unit failed to monitor and report suspected money laundering by narcotics traffickers. (Source: Bloomberg)

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent inspects a vehicle heading into Mexico at the San Ysidro border crossing in San Diego. Photographer: Scott Dalton/Bloomberg Markets via Bloomberg

A marker shows where the international border lies between San Diego, California and Tijuana, Mexico. Photographer: Scott Dalton/Bloomberg Markets via Bloomberg

Mexican President Felipe Calderon vowed to crush the drug cartels when he took office in December 2006. Photographer: Tim Sloan/AFP/Getty Images

Just before sunset on April 10, 2006, a DC-9 jet landed at the international airport in the port city of Ciudad del Carmen, 500 miles east of Mexico City. As soldiers on the ground approached the plane, the crew tried to shoo them away, saying there was a dangerous oil leak. So the troops grew suspicious and searched the jet.

They found 128 black suitcases, packed with 5.7 tons of cocaine, valued at $100 million. The stash was supposed to have been delivered from Caracas to drug traffickers in Toluca, near Mexico City, Mexican prosecutors later found. Law enforcement officials also discovered something else.

The smugglers had bought the DC-9 with laundered funds they transferred through two of the biggest banks in the U.S.: Wachovia Corp. and Bank of America Corp., Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its August 2010 issue.

This was no isolated incident. Wachovia, it turns out, had made a habit of helping move money for Mexican drug smugglers. Wells Fargo & Co., which bought Wachovia in 2008, has admitted in court that its unit failed to monitor and report suspected money laundering by narcotics traffickers -- including the cash used to buy four planes that shipped a total of 22 tons of cocaine.

The admission came in an agreement that Charlotte, North Carolina-based Wachovia struck with federal prosecutors in March, and it sheds light on the largely undocumented role of U.S. banks in contributing to the violent drug trade that has convulsed Mexico for the past four years.

‘Blatant Disregard’

Wachovia admitted it didn’t do enough to spot illicit funds in handling $378.4 billion for Mexican-currency-exchange houses from 2004 to 2007. That’s the largest violation of the Bank Secrecy Act, an anti-money-laundering law, in U.S. history -- a sum equal to one-third of Mexico’s current gross domestic product.

“Wachovia’s blatant disregard for our banking laws gave international cocaine cartels a virtual carte blanche to finance their operations,” says Jeffrey Sloman, the federal prosecutor who handled the case.

Since 2006, more than 22,000 people have been killed in drug-related battles that have raged mostly along the 2,000-mile (3,200-kilometer) border that Mexico shares with the U.S. In the Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez, just across the border from El Paso, Texas, 700 people had been murdered this year as of mid- June. Six Juarez police officers were slaughtered by automatic weapons fire in a midday ambush in April.

Rondolfo Torre, the leading candidate for governor in the Mexican border state of Tamaulipas, was gunned down yesterday, less than a week before elections in which violence related to drug trafficking was a central issue.

45,000 Troops

Mexican President Felipe Calderon vowed to crush the drug cartels when he took office in December 2006, and he’s since deployed 45,000 troops to fight the cartels. They’ve had little success.

Among the dead are police, soldiers, journalists and ordinary citizens. The U.S. has pledged Mexico $1.1 billion in the past two years to aid in the fight against narcotics cartels.

In May, President Barack Obama said he’d send 1,200 National Guard troops, adding to the 17,400 agents on the U.S. side of the border to help stem drug traffic and illegal immigration.

Behind the carnage in Mexico is an industry that supplies hundreds of tons of cocaine, heroin, marijuana and methamphetamines to Americans. The cartels have built a network of dealers in 231 U.S. cities from coast to coast, taking in about $39 billion in sales annually, according to the Justice Department.

‘You’re Missing the Point’

Twenty million people in the U.S. regularly use illegal drugs, spurring street crime and wrecking families. Narcotics cost the U.S. economy $215 billion a year -- enough to cover health care for 30.9 million Americans -- in overburdened courts, prisons and hospitals and lost productivity, the department says.

“It’s the banks laundering money for the cartels that finances the tragedy,” says Martin Woods, director of Wachovia’s anti-money-laundering unit in London from 2006 to 2009. Woods says he quit the bank in disgust after executives ignored his documentation that drug dealers were funneling money through Wachovia’s branch network.

“If you don’t see the correlation between the money laundering by banks and the 22,000 people killed in Mexico, you’re missing the point,” Woods says.

Cleansing Dirty Cash

Wachovia is just one of the U.S. and European banks that have been used for drug money laundering. For the past two decades, Latin American drug traffickers have gone to U.S. banks to cleanse their dirty cash, says Paul Campo, head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s financial crimes unit.

Miami-based American Express Bank International paid fines in both 1994 and 2007 after admitting it had failed to spot and report drug dealers laundering money through its accounts. Drug traffickers used accounts at Bank of America in Oklahoma City to buy three planes that carried 10 tons of cocaine, according to Mexican court filings.

Federal agents caught people who work for Mexican cartels depositing illicit funds in Bank of America accounts in Atlanta, Chicago and Brownsville, Texas, from 2002 to 2009. Mexican drug dealers used shell companies to open accounts at London-based HSBC Holdings Plc, Europe’s biggest bank by assets, an investigation by the Mexican Finance Ministry found.

Following Rules

Those two banks weren’t accused of wrongdoing. Bank of America spokeswoman Shirley Norton and HSBC spokesman Roy Caple say laws bar them from discussing specific clients. They say their banks strictly follow the government rules.

“Bank of America takes its anti-money-laundering responsibilities very seriously,” Norton says.

A Mexican judge on Jan. 22 accused the owners of six centros cambiarios, or money changers, in Culiacan and Tijuana of laundering drug funds through their accounts at the Mexican units of Banco Santander SA, Citigroup Inc. and HSBC, according to court documents filed in the case.

The money changers are in jail while being tried. Citigroup, HSBC and Santander, which is the largest Spanish bank by assets, weren’t accused of any wrongdoing. The three banks say Mexican law bars them from commenting on the case, adding that they each carefully enforce anti-money-laundering programs.

HSBC has stopped accepting dollar deposits in Mexico, and Citigroup no longer allows noncustomers to change dollars there. Citigroup detected suspicious activity in the Tijuana accounts, reported it to regulators and closed the accounts, Citigroup spokesman Paulo Carreno says.

Criminal Empires

On June 15, the Mexican Finance Ministry announced it would set limits for banks on cash deposits in dollars.

Mexico’s drug cartels have become multinational criminal enterprises.

Some of the gangs have delved into other illegal activities such as gunrunning, kidnapping and smuggling people across the border, as well as into seemingly legitimate areas such as trucking, travel services and air cargo transport, according to the Justice Department’s National Drug Intelligence Center.

These criminal empires have no choice but to use the global banking system to finance their businesses, Mexican Senator Felipe Gonzalez says.

“With so much cash, the only way to move this money is through the banks,” says Gonzalez, who represents a central Mexican state and chairs the senate public safety committee.

Gonzalez, a member of Calderon’s National Action Party, carries a .38 revolver for personal protection.

“I know this won’t stop the narcos when they come through that door with machine guns,” he says, pointing to the entrance to his office. “But at least I’ll take one with me.”

Subprime Losses

No bank has been more closely connected with Mexican money laundering than Wachovia. Founded in 1879, Wachovia became the largest bank by assets in the southeastern U.S. by 1900. After the Great Depression, some people in North Carolina called the bank “Walk-Over-Ya” because it had foreclosed on farms in the region.

By 2008, Wachovia was the sixth-largest U.S. lender, and it faced $26 billion in losses from subprime mortgage loans. That cost Wachovia Chief Executive Officer Kennedy Thompson his job in June 2008.

Six months later, San Francisco-based Wells Fargo, which dates from 1852, bought Wachovia for $12.7 billion, creating the largest network of bank branches in the U.S. Thompson, who now works for private-equity firm Aquiline Capital Partners LLC in New York, declined to comment.

As Wachovia’s balance sheet was bleeding, its legal woes were mounting. In the three years leading up to Wachovia’s agreement with the Justice Department, grand juries served the bank with 6,700 subpoenas requesting information.

Not Quick Enough

The bank didn’t react quickly enough to the prosecutors’ requests and failed to hire enough investigators, the U.S. Treasury Department said in March. After a 22-month investigation, the Justice Department on March 12 charged Wachovia with violating the Bank Secrecy Act by failing to run an effective anti-money-laundering program.

Five days later, Wells Fargo promised in a Miami federal courtroom to revamp its detection systems. Wachovia’s new owner paid $160 million in fines and penalties, less than 2 percent of its $12.3 billion profit in 2009.

If Wells Fargo keeps its pledge, the U.S. government will, according to the agreement, drop all charges against the bank in March 2011.

Wells Fargo regrets that some of Wachovia’s former anti- money-laundering efforts fell short, spokeswoman Mary Eshet says. Wells Fargo has invested $42 million in the past three years to improve its anti-money-laundering program and has been working with regulators, she says.

‘Significantly Upgraded’

“We have substantially increased the caliber and number of staff in our international investigations group, and we also significantly upgraded the monitoring software,” Eshet says. The agreement bars the bank from contesting or contradicting the facts in its admission.

The bank declined to answer specific questions, including how much it made by handling $378.4 billion -- including $4 billion of cash-from Mexican exchange companies.

The 1970 Bank Secrecy Act requires banks to report all cash transactions above $10,000 to regulators and to tell the government about other suspected money-laundering activity. Big banks employ hundreds of investigators and spend millions of dollars on software programs to scour accounts.

No big U.S. bank -- Wells Fargo included -- has ever been indicted for violating the Bank Secrecy Act or any other federal law. Instead, the Justice Department settles criminal charges by using deferred-prosecution agreements, in which a bank pays a fine and promises not to break the law again.

‘No Capacity to Regulate’

Large banks are protected from indictments by a variant of the too-big-to-fail theory.

Indicting a big bank could trigger a mad dash by investors to dump shares and cause panic in financial markets, says Jack Blum, a U.S. Senate investigator for 14 years and a consultant to international banks and brokerage firms on money laundering.

The theory is like a get-out-of-jail-free card for big banks, Blum says.

“There’s no capacity to regulate or punish them because they’re too big to be threatened with failure,” Blum says. “They seem to be willing to do anything that improves their bottom line, until they’re caught.”

Wachovia’s run-in with federal prosecutors hasn’t troubled investors. Wells Fargo’s stock traded at $30.86 on March 24, up 1 percent in the week after the March 17 agreement was announced.

Moving money is central to the drug trade -- from the cash that people tape to their bodies as they cross the U.S.-Mexican border to the $100,000 wire transfers they send from Mexican exchange houses to big U.S. banks.

‘Doesn’t Stop Anyone’

In Tijuana, 15 miles south of San Diego, Gustavo Rojas has lived for a quarter of a century in a shack in the shadow of the 10-foot-high (3-meter-high) steel border fence that separates the U.S. and Mexico there. He points to holes burrowed under the barrier.

“They go across with drugs and come back with cash,” Rojas, 75, says. “This fence doesn’t stop anyone.”

Drug money moves back and forth across the border in an endless cycle. In the U.S., couriers take the cash from drug sales to Mexico -- as much as $29 billion a year, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That would be about 319 tons of $100 bills.

They hide it in cars and trucks to smuggle into Mexico. There, cartels pay people to deposit some of the cash into Mexican banks and branches of international banks. The narcos launder much of what’s left through money changers.

The Money Changers

Anyone who has been to Mexico is familiar with these street-corner money changers; Mexican regulators say there are at least 3,000 of them from Tijuana to Cancun, usually displaying large signs advertising the day’s dollar-peso exchange rate.

Mexican banks are regulated by the National Banking and Securities Commission, which has an anti-money-laundering unit; the money changers are policed by Mexico’s Tax Service Administration, which has no such unit.

By law, the money changers have to demand identification from anyone exchanging more than $500. They also have to report transactions higher than $5,000 to regulators.

The cartels get around these requirements by employing legions of individuals -- including relatives, maids and gardeners -- to convert small amounts of dollars into pesos or to make deposits in local banks. After that, cartels wire the money to a multinational bank.

The Smurfs

The people making the small money exchanges are known as Smurfs, after the cartoon characters.

“They can use an army of people like Smurfs and go through $1 million before lunchtime,” says Jerry Robinette, who oversees U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations along the border in east Texas.

The U.S. Treasury has been warning banks about big Mexican- currency-exchange firms laundering drug money since 1996. By 2004, many U.S. banks had closed their accounts with these companies, which are known as casas de cambio.

Wachovia ignored warnings by regulators and police, according to the deferred-prosecution agreement.

“As early as 2004, Wachovia understood the risk,” the bank admitted in court. “Despite these warnings, Wachovia remained in the business.”

One customer that Wachovia took on in 2004 was Casa de Cambio Puebla SA, a Puebla, Mexico-based currency-exchange company. Pedro Alatorre, who ran a Puebla branch in Mexico City, had created front companies for cartels, according to a pending Mexican criminal case against him.

Federal Indictment

A federal grand jury in Miami indicted Puebla, Alatorre and three other executives in February 2008 for drug trafficking and money laundering. In May 2008, the Justice Department sought extradition of the suspects, saying they used shell firms to launder $720 million through U.S. banks.

Alatorre has been in a Mexican jail for 2 1/2 years. He denies any wrongdoing, his lawyer Mauricio Moreno says. Alatorre has made no court-filed responses in the U.S.

During the period in which Wachovia admitted to moving money out of Mexico for Puebla, couriers carrying clear plastic bags stuffed with cash went to the branch Alatorre ran at the Mexico City airport, according to surveillance reports by Mexican police.

Alatorre opened accounts at HSBC on behalf of front companies, Mexican investigators found.

Puebla executives used the stolen identities of 74 people to launder money through Wachovia accounts, Mexican prosecutors say in court-filed reports.

‘Never Reported’

“Wachovia handled all the transfers, and they never reported any as suspicious,” says Jose Luis Marmolejo, a former head of the Mexican attorney general’s financial crimes unit who is now in private practice.

In November 2005 and January 2006, Wachovia transferred a total of $300,000 from Puebla to a Bank of America account in Oklahoma City, according to information in the Alatorre cases in the U.S. and Mexico.

Drug smugglers used the funds to buy the DC-9 through Oklahoma City aircraft broker U.S. Aircraft Titles Inc., according to financial records cited in the Mexican criminal case. U.S. Aircraft Titles President Sue White declined to comment.

On April 5, 2006, a pilot flew the plane from St. Petersburg, Florida, to Caracas to pick up the cocaine, according to the DEA. Five days later, troops seized the plane in Ciudad del Carmen and burned the drugs at a nearby army base.

‘Wachovia Knew’

“I am sure Wachovia knew what was going on,” says Marmolejo, who oversaw the criminal investigation into Wachovia’s customers. “It went on too long and they made too much money not to have known.”

At Wachovia’s anti-money-laundering unit in London, Woods and his colleague Jim DeFazio, in Charlotte, say they suspected that drug dealers were using the bank to move funds.

Woods, a former Scotland Yard investigator, spotted illegible signatures and other suspicious markings on traveler’s checks from Mexican exchange companies, he said in a September 2008 letter to the U.K. Financial Services Authority. He sent copies of the letter to the DEA and Treasury Department in the U.S.

Woods, 45, says his bosses instructed him to keep quiet and tried to have him fired, according to his letter to the FSA. In one meeting, a bank official insisted Woods shouldn’t have filed suspicious activity reports to the government, as both U.S. and U.K. laws require.

‘I Was Shocked’

“I was shocked by the content and outcome of the meeting and genuinely traumatized,” Woods wrote.

In the U.S., DeFazio, who had been a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent for 21 years, says he told bank executives in 2005 that the DEA was probing the transfers through Wachovia to buy the planes.

Bank executives spurned recommendations to close suspicious accounts, DeFazio, 63, says.

“I think they looked at the money and said, ‘The hell with it. We’re going to bring it in, and look at all the money we’ll make,’” DeFazio says.

DeFazio retired in 2008.

“I didn’t want anything from them,” he says. “I just wanted to get out.”

Woods, who resigned from Wachovia in May 2009, now advises banks on how to combat money laundering. He declined to discuss details of Wachovia’s actions.

U.S. Comptroller of the Currency John Dugan told Woods in a March 19 letter his efforts had helped the U.S. build its case against Wachovia.

‘Great Courage’

“You demonstrated great courage and integrity by speaking up when you saw problems,” Dugan wrote.

It was the Puebla investigation that led U.S. authorities to the broader probe of Wachovia. On May 16, 2007, DEA agents conducted a raid of Wachovia’s international banking offices in Miami. They had a court order to seize Puebla’s accounts.

U.S. prosecutors and investigators then scrutinized the bank’s dealings with Mexican-currency-exchange firms. That led to the March deferred-prosecution agreement.

With Puebla’s Wachovia accounts seized, Alatorre and his partners shifted their laundering scheme to HSBC, according to financial documents cited in the Mexican criminal case against Alatorre.

In the three weeks after the DEA raided Wachovia, two of Alatorre’s front companies, Grupo ETPB SA and Grupo Rahero SC, made 12 cash deposits totaling $1 million at an HSBC Mexican branch, Mexican investigators found.

Another Drug Plane

The funds financed a Beechcraft King Air 200 plane that police seized on Dec. 29, 2007, in Cuernavaca, 50 miles south of Mexico City, according to information in the case against Alatorre.

For years, federal authorities watched as the wife and daughter of Oscar Oropeza, a drug smuggler working for the Matamoros-based Gulf Cartel, deposited stacks of cash at a Bank of America branch on Boca Chica Boulevard in Brownsville, Texas, less than 3 miles from the border.

Investigator Robinette sits in his pickup truck across the street from that branch. It’s a one-story, tan stucco building next to a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet. Robinette discusses the Oropeza case with Tom Salazar, an agent who investigated the family.

“Everybody in there knew who they were -- the tellers, everyone,” Salazar says. “The bank never came to us, though.”

New Meaning

The Oropeza case gives a new, literal meaning to the term money laundering. Oropeza’s wife, Tina Marie, and daughter Paulina Marie deposited stashes of $20 bills several times a day into Bank of America accounts, Salazar says. Bank employees got to know the Oropezas by the smell of their money.

“I asked the tellers what they were talking about, and they said the money had this sweet smell like Bounce, those sheets you throw into the dryer,” Salazar says. “They told me that when they opened the vault, the smell of Bounce just poured out.”

Oropeza, 48, was arrested 820 miles from Brownsville. On May 31, 2007, police in Saraland, Alabama, stopped him on a traffic violation. Checking his record, they learned of the investigation in Texas.

They searched the van and discovered 84 kilograms (185 pounds) of cocaine hidden under a false floor. That allowed federal agents to freeze Oropeza’s bank accounts and search his marble-floored home in Brownsville, Robinette says. Inside, investigators found a supply of Bounce alongside the clothes dryer.

Guilty Pleas

All three Oropezas pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Brownsville to drug and money-laundering charges in March and April 2008. Oscar Oropeza was sentenced to 15 years in prison; his wife was ordered to serve 10 months and his daughter got 6 months.

Bank of America’s Norton says, “We not only fulfilled our regulatory obligation, but we proactively worked with law enforcement on these matters.”

Prosecutors have tried to halt money laundering at American Express Bank International twice. In 1994, the bank, then a subsidiary of New York-based American Express Co., pledged not to allow money laundering again after two employees were convicted in a criminal case involving drug trafficker Juan Garcia Abrego.

In 1994, the bank paid $14 million to settle. Five years later, drug money again flowed through American Express Bank. Between 1999 and 2004, the bank failed to stop clients from laundering $55 million of narcotics funds, the bank admitted in a deferred-prosecution agreement in August 2007.

Western Union

It paid $65 million to the U.S. and promised not to break the law again. The government dismissed the criminal charge a year later. American Express sold the bank to London-based Standard Chartered PLC in February 2008 for $823 million.

Banks aren’t the only financial institutions that have turned a blind eye to drug cartels in moving illicit funds. Western Union Co., the world’s largest money transfer firm, agreed to pay $94 million in February 2010 to settle civil and criminal investigations by the Arizona attorney general’s office.

Undercover state police posing as drug dealers bribed Western Union employees to illegally transfer money, says Cameron Holmes, an assistant attorney general.

“Their allegiance was to the smugglers,” Holmes says. “What they thought about during work was ‘How may I please my highest- spending customers the most?’”

Smudged Fingerprints

Workers in more than 20 Western Union offices allowed the customers to use multiple names, pass fictitious identifications and smudge their fingerprints on documents, investigators say in court records.

“In all the time we did undercover operations, we never once had a bribe turned down,” says Holmes, citing court affidavits.

Western Union has made significant improvements, it complies with anti-money-laundering laws and works closely with regulators and police, spokesman Tom Fitzgerald says.

For four years, Mexican authorities have been fighting a losing battle against the cartels. The police are often two steps behind the criminals. Near the southeastern corner of Texas, in Matamoros, more than 50 combat troops surround a police station.

Officers take two suspected drug traffickers inside for questioning. Nearby, two young men wearing white T-shirts and baggy pants watch and whisper into radios. These are los halcones (the falcons), whose job is to let the cartel bosses know what the police are doing.

‘Only Way’

While the police are outmaneuvered and outgunned, ordinary Mexicans live in fear. Rojas, the man who lives in the Tijuana slum near the border fence, recalls cowering in his home as smugglers shot it out with the police.

“The only way to survive is to stay out of the way and hope the violence, the bullets, don’t come for you,” Rojas says.

To make their criminal enterprises work, the drug cartels of Mexico need to move billions of dollars across borders. That’s how they finance the purchase of drugs, planes, weapons and safe houses, Senator Gonzalez says.

“They are multinational businesses, after all,” says Gonzalez, as he slowly loads his revolver at his desk in his Mexico City office. “And they cannot work without a bank.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Michael Smith in Santiago, Chile, at mssmith@bloomberg.net.

POSTED JUNE 29, 2010

VIDEO SHOWS TORONTO POLICE SETUP PROTESTERS

Fresh from the 1 billion dollar international banker fiasco in Toronto comes video that shows the truth about the so-called violence from the protesters there. The video clearly shows individuals identified as anarchists committing acts of violence after which they are guided behind police lines and protected there.

Today, I have been reading blogs allegedly written by average Canadian citizens. Having lived there for over 3 years I know something about the mentality of Canadians and am more than surprised at the almost unanimous support for anything the police did as well as support for a complete suspension of all civil rights. My first reaction is to believe the articles were either "cherry picked" or fabricated. That would fit in with our friendly media whores. The second reaction may be Canadians are becoming like all too many Americans and do not investigate anything while accepting whatever the government says.

I and others have gone to the time and effort to report the truth as the video below evidences. The sad fact is 99% of people today would not take or post a video like this. Even sadder is a large majority of people will not even watch it. I don't remember who it was, but someone once said we get the government we deserve. If that is true, we are indeed in big trouble.

Bruce                                   New World Order News

09:33

EXPOSED! - G20 Police in Black Bloc Anarchist Gear @ 0:45 - Toronto