The Hidden Cost of War

EXPOSED!

Ron Paul and Peter Schiff

America Financial Meltdown

"Land of the Free"

A Short Film by John Jensen


video.google.com

"The citizens of the states: Your time has come to either step up to the plate or submit to human bondage. I know that millions of caring, decent Americans are trying to fight this leviathan monster out of Washington, DC., but as time has shown, between a completely broken judicial system, rotten career politicians and ignorant, uninformed, disinterested and special interest group voters, we are losing ground. As we continue to see the shredding of the Bill of Rights, Americans are becoming more afraid of the federal government. Take this 13:23 minute video. Watch it. What you see are Americans who have invested time and money into making a short film because they see the real time danger facing this republic by a growing police state under the guise of "for our own good" agencies like the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA. Nothing could be further from the truth."

BATTLE PLAN FOR THE 50 STATES
PART 1 of 2
By: Devvy
September 22, 2008
NewsWithViews.com

http://www.newswithviews.com/Devvy/kidd394.htm

New Lego Building Blocks for the Big Boys!

CAFR1 NATIONAL REPORT - 09/21/08

I received the following communication today. It appears the Government has new Lego building blocks to play with. Prison cells that are designed to snap together to build a prison anywhere at any time to meet the demand.

The new Lego style can be snapped together to make a hundred, a thousand, or hundred thousand cell prisons, two, three, or ten blocks high. Rather expensive to make these mobile type units don't you think? Our government must see a need for them somewhere. Your home town when needed maybe?

Move em in, move em out when and where needed! The people need to confiscate a few of these units and stack them in DC and Wall Street. They are truly needed there and could be put to good use.

Sent FYI from,

Walter Burien
http://CAFR1.com

PS: Video of Cell placement for final unit design:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQMcPCnIGcE

For DC and Wall Street, now you know where to get their new homes for them from!
Sent FYI from,

Walter Burien
http://CAFR1.com


The communication received today 09/21/08 is as follows:

From: "Reb"
Subject: PHOTOS: Jail cells off loaded in Utah . . . gov't officials refuse to talk . . . problem!
Date: Sun, September 21, 2008 4:45 am
To: WalterBurien@CAFR1.com


Subject: Fwd: ALERT Pictures: PRISON CELLS unloaded in PROVO, UTAH

This was on the Barbara Jean show. Right down in Provo's east bay these concrete blocks (cells) were unloaded while her show was being broadcast. Thank goodness for citizen journalists who went and captured these images. What and who they are for is the question?

"Official" sources most likely would evade giving a straight answer.

I appreciate whoever it was that took these photo's and it sounded like someone also was capturing video at some point. I'd like to see that too.

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Ross Subject: ALERT
Pictures: PRISON CELLS unloaded in PROVO, UTAH

See below.

Subject: ALERT Pictures: PRISON CELLS unloaded in PROVO, UTAH
Ed who took these pictures at the University Ave, East Bay, Provo.

Ed said one unloader said they where going to Vernal another one said don't believe him because they have railroad tracks out to Vernal.

Date: Monday, September 8, 2008, 3:32 PM

These are pictures I just took of them unloading the units. There were a couple of people there who were flag pickups who are to follow the big trucks for delivery to what they said is Vernal. There were no big trucks there when I left at about 3:00PM.

Please acknowledge if you receive these ok.

Some of the pictures show the cells loaded on their sides and at the bottom straight up.










“A community is infinitely more brutalized by the habitual employment of punishment than it is by the occasional occurrence of crime.”
- Oscar Wilde, [‘The Soul of Man under Socialis’, 1891]

“The black flower of civilized society, a prison.”
Nathaniel Hawthorne [‘The Scarlet Letter- 1850]

“The jailer is another kind of captive—is the jailer envious of his prisoner’s dreams?”
Gerard de Nerval [Fragments de Faust]

“Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison…the only house in a slave State in which a free man can abide with honor.”
- Thoreau

There is a paradox at the core of penology, and from it derives the thousand ills and afflictions of the prison system. It is that not only the worst of the young ar sent to prison but the best – that is the proudest, the bravest, the most daring, the most enterprising, and the most undefeated of the poor. There starts the horror.
Norman Mailer, introduction to In the Belly of the Beast

"Prisons are the symbol of the servitude of the people, they are always built only to subjugate the people, the workers and peasants. . . Free people have no use for prisons. Wherever prisons exist, the people are not free. . . In keeping with this attitude, they [the Makhnovists] demolished prisons wherever they went." [Peter Arshinov, The History of the Makhnovist Movement, p. 153]

"Gary Nash describes Iroquois culture. No laws and ordinances, sheriffs and constables, judges and juries, or courts or jails - the apparatus of authority in European societies - were to be found in the northeast woodlands prior to European arrival. Yet boundaries of acceptable behaviour were firmly set. Though priding themselves on the autonomous individual, the Iroquois maintained a strict sense of right and wrong..." [Howard Zinn, Columbus, the Indians and Human Progress, 1492-1992]

"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." The reason the U.S. has the largest incarceration rates in the world, with an increasingly privatized prison system, is that this is our one constitutionally protected form of slavery, according to Harvard legal scholar Kaia Stern."

How much of that 700 BILLION dollar Treasury Dept. Slush Fund goes to Israel?

See previous post - Let's do the Time Warp, again, Rumsfeld says $2.3 TRILLION Missing from Pentagon.

How much of the 700 BILLION dollar slush fund given to the Treasury Department will wind up in Tel Aviv?

wakeupfromyourslumber.com

A slush fund that starts at 700 BILLION, and there's NO LIMIT.

Maybe this is the "Clean Break: Securing the Realm" scenario talked about where Israel gets some type of outside money to permanently prop up that racist and apartheid, Jews only state.

A document written by some of the same thugs that lied the US into the Iraq War.

Thugs like David Wurmser, Doug Feith and Richard Perle.
The Clean Break document here, says that "...[financial] self-reliance will grant Israel greater freedom of action and remove a significant lever of pressure used against it in the past."

In other words, if Israel was able to secure a line of financing independent of the US Congress, where occasionally, embarrassing questions about Israel's brutal ethnic cleansing campaign against the Palestinians and the Lebanese get asked, then with that independent financing, Israel could murder and steal to it's hearts content.

Congress is being asked and told to hurry, hurry, hurry, push this thru NOW, don't ask any questions, especially about the part that will give US money to foreign interests, as shown here

Why?

Is it because one or more of those foreign interest are banks in Tel Aviv or banks directly related to Israel? And why does this whole bill sound like a "Get out of Jail" free card to the con artists and hustlers who helped tank the US economy to begin with, since we're being told to act like adults and not to worry about bygones and thieves, they'll be dealt with later....Right.

This is equivalent to seeing a thief ransacking your house and pointing out to him where your kid's piggybank is located.

If this whole damned deal is such a good thing, then why this portion?
"Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.”
They've already changed the provisons several times, how many more changes before this load of manure gets shoveled down our throats?

The legislative outline that went to Capitol Hill at 1:30 a.m. Saturday had said that an eligible financial institution had to have “its headquarters in the United States.” That would exclude foreign-based institutions with big U.S. operations, such as Barclays, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland and UBS.

But a Treasury “Fact Sheet” released at 7:15 Saturday night sought to give the administration more flexibility, with an expanded definition that could include all of those banks: “Participating financial institutions must have significant operations in the U.S., unless the Secretary makes a determination, in consultation with the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, that broader eligibility is necessary to effectively stabilize financial markets.”
From the always on the ball blog at American Everyman

***UPDATE*** It’s interesting that CBS is trying to sell this plan to it’s viewers as “the Lesser of Two Evils” quoting “some sources say…”. This article doesn’t mention the fact that the $700 billion isn’t an overall price, just a cap on how much can be outstanding at one time, meaning it will be much more in overall cost to the taxpayers. Nor do they mention the complete and unchallengeable control that one person would have over that immense sum of money. Instead they just parrot the usual cliche that people are expected to buy these days when having to suck-it-up and accept something they don’t really want; “the lesser of two evils“. I certainly hope you “progressive” sites out there take note.

Within the $700 billion dollar Bailout Bill, there lies some very interesting clauses. The most striking of which is Section 8

“Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.”

This basically means that the decisions that the Secretary makes may, or may not be, announced to the public at the sole discretion of the Secretary, and those decisions cannot be challenged, in any way, by court or by oversight committee, giving him absolute and final say over what happens to $700 billion dollars of our money.

They will have complete control to the largest slush-fund in the world, and they will be allowed to use it, in secret, and with absolutely ZERO accountability to the public from which that money comes from.

Imagine giving your accountant complete access to all of your wealth and savings and even mortgages, and you can’t know what he is doing with it and you have no legal recourse afterward. You aren’t even allowed to investigate, mush less bring charges or contend any of his actions. Would you sign that contract?

Not only that, but it’s not really just $700 billion. According to the bill, the Secretary will have at his disposal that amount at any one given time. But if he were to “resolve” a portion of that debt, say by buying up all of Exxon’s competitor’s stock, and then short selling it all off to say… Exxon, we eat the loss, the Rockefeller’s get the gain, and that little bit of money goes back into the kitty, and the Secretary has a new $700 billion to play with.

“The Secretary’s authority to purchase mortgage-related assets under this Act shall be limited to $700,000,000,000 outstanding at any one time.”

I don’t think it is possible to even dream up a worse authority to give to an administration that has already proven that they will put their loyalty to certain companies over the will of the people, the good of the people and the rights of the people.

The only good thing about this bill is that it is slated to last only 2 years. My guess is that it won’t take them half that long before there are only two banks in the entire country; Jp Morgan/Chase and Bank of America.

This is insane. What they have done, is purposefully allowed the crash of the morgage markets in order to create massive profits for themselves and at the same time, to create a financial disaster that they are now using to justify this handover of wealth and absolute power to… themselves.

I will say this again because it deserves repeating; how can any public servant even think about handing this kind of unregulated power over to the kinds of people that have already proven they will put their corporate ties over everything else? Anyone, and I mean anyone, who votes for this legislation as it is written, deserves to be removed from office immediately. Democrat, republican, or independent.

Reporter Warns Staged Financial Crisis Part Of Fascist Coup

Huffington Post writer threatened by neo-con bloggers after urging readers to remember Prescott Bush’s Fascist “Business Plot”

Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Monday, Sept 22, 2008

A reporter for the left leaning alternative news website The Huffington Post has been attacked by neo-con bloggers and phony right-wing patriots after pointing out that the current financial crisis is part of an intentional coup to transfer unprecedented power to the Executive Branch and place public funds in the hands of the global corporate elite.

Writer Larisa Alexandrovna, makes a number of salient points in an article entitled “Welcome to the final stages of the coup…“.

Referring to the Bush administration’s “Wall Street bailout bill“, Alexandrovna warns that a fascist coup is in it’s closing stages, describing the proposed legislation as “treachery being conducted in the light of day.”

She writes:

“Now, if you do not yet understand that the Wall Street crisis is a man-made disaster done through intentional deregulation and corruption, I have a bridge in Alaska to sell to you (or Sara Palin does anyway). This manufactured crisis is now to be remedied, if the fiscal fascists get their way, with the total transfer of Congressional powers (the few that still remain) to the Executive Branch and the total transfer of public funds into corporate (via government as intermediary) hands.

[...] we already now have in writing, formally as presented to Congress, the intentions of this administration to nullify Congressional powers permanently, to alter Judicial powers permanently, and to openly steal public funds using as blackmail the total collapse of the US economy if these powers are not handed over. You do see how this is blackmail, do you not? You do see how this is a manufactured crisis precisely designed to be used as blackmail, do you not?”

Alexandrovna points out that the Treasury’s bailout proposal to Congress would provide the Treasury Secretary the power to buy up any assets he sees fit, hire anyone he wants to do it, appoint private companies as financial deputies and write whatever regulations he thinks are needed.

Furthermore, she points out that the bill states:

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

Alexandrovna is echoing the comments of historian John Steele Gordon who told reporters “It sounds like Paulson is asking to be a financial dictator, for a limited period of time.” She is also repeating a stark warning provided by Frank Razzano, a former assistant chief trial attorney at the Securities and Exchange Commission now at Pepper Hamilton LLP in Washington, who stated that the Bush administration is seeking “dictatorial power unreviewable by the third branch of government, the courts, to try to resolve the crisis.”

As we have also reported, the $700 billion bailout legislation would provide billions to foreign central banks in addition to private foreign banks.

The proposed move represents a total shift of U.S. taxpayers’ funds into the hands of powerful private interests, some of which do not even represent American companies.

Alexandrovna compares the current manufactured crisis to the now infamous “Business Plot” of 1933, a previous attempt at an outright coup in order to install fascism in America. This treasonous plot was so called because the high-level plotters, including Prescott Bush, the current president’s grandfather, were Wall Street men who openly supported fascism.

The coup attempt came to light one year later in 1934, when General Smedley Butler informed the Congress that a group of wealthy industrialists had attempted to get on side high ranking military figures in order to overthrow the government of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

“It seems this time around, the Bush family is trying the more subtle approach to open bloodshed: first create a crisis, then under the guise of addressing that crisis, overthrow democracy. Yes, it does sound terribly conspiracy-theory-esque when explained just this way. But what else does one call a criminal conspiracy to destroy Congressional powers permanently, alter Judicial powers permanently, and steal public funds?” Alexandrovna writes.

In a passionate conclusion the writer demands that Impeachment be brought against those members of the government involved in the “New Business Plot”. She then voices fears that failing this, people will have to take to the streets to prevent the usurpation of their freedoms and the total dissolution of America:

“You are no longer Republicans, Democrats, or any shade of voter. You do not live in a swing state or a solid colored state. You are simply this: an American. That is the only side that matters. So call your members of Congress and demand, no, declare that unless they do their duty to the Constitution and to us, we will move to the streets - not because we want to, but because our founding fathers demanded this duty of each and every citizen in the face of such a domestic enemy. Demand - as is your right - that this bill be voted against and demand - as is your right - that the people plotting this treachery be held to account. We are either a nation of laws or we are no longer a democracy. Pick a side, because there won’t be another time, another moment, another chance to be a patriot.”

Despite pointing out concrete facts, urging readers to see through the false left/right paradigm and come together to do something about such an unprecedented power grab, a number of phony patriots and neo-con bloggers have poured scorn on Alexandrovna, accusing the writer of calling for an armed insurrection, expressing hope that the government is “monitoring such enticements” and threatening to report her to the “lawful authorities” in order that she be locked in a “nice, well-lit and cheery cell”.

In a remarkable example of the Orwellian society that has continued to grow around us like a cancer, none of Alexandrovna’s detractors care to focus on the fascist treachery she describes but instead accuse her of being the traitor and the one that should be locked away.

Today finance ministers from the G7 countries roundly applauded the bailout proposal as Henry Paulson, the US Treasury Secretary called for other countries to follow America’s example.

“I’m going to be pressing our colleagues around the world to design similar programmes for their banks and institutions. Our system is a global one.” Paulson stated.

Under Proposed Bailout,

Feds Could Speculate, Nationalize Any Company or Industry, Or Do Anything Else They Want Using Taxpayer Money

George Washington’s Blog
Monday, Sept 22, 2008

The Fact Sheet from the U.S. Treasury states:

The purchases are intended to be residential and commercial mortgage-related assets, which may include mortgage-backed securities and whole loans. The Secretary will have the discretion, in consultation with the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, to purchase other assets, as deemed necessary to effectively stabilize financial markets.

So Paulson, in consultation with Bernanke, could “deem it necessary” to “stabilize” the financial markets by buying boat loads of gold. Or by cornering the market in uranium or platinum.

Or they could decide that they needed to buy Microsoft and Google.

Just like Bush and Cheney have gotten us into oil wars and wars to protect Israel under the guise of being necessary to protect our national defense, Paulson and Bernanke could do anything they want by pretending it is for the stability of the financial markets, especially since no one could challenge their actions in court.

Naomi Klein: Financial crisis part of Bush ’shock doctrine’

Naomi Klein: Financial crisis part of Bush ’shock doctrine’

David Edwards and Andrew McLemore
Raw Story
Monday, Sept 22, 2008

The bailout of Wall Street’s largest players by the federal government is another example of the Bush administration pursuing a corporate agenda at the expense of average Americans, a prominent author argued on Friday.

In a Friday night interview on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, Naomi Klein said President Bush’s $700 billion proposal to rescue the financial sector stems from a profiteering streak that has dominated the last eight years.

“The disaster is far from over,” Klein said. “The disaster was on Wall Street and they have moved the disaster to Main Street.”

Referring to the bailout, Klein said the “bomb has yet to detonate” and that the real crisis will strike when tax payers are overwhelmed when faced with the debt from the bailouts.

According to Klein, the bomb will detonate if Sen. John McCain becomes president and “rationalizes” that it is necessary to privatize government programs like social security and healthcare because neither the government nor Americans can afford them.

“The real disaster has yet to come; the real disaster is the debt that is going to explode on American tax payers,” Klein said.

Klein’s book, “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism,” outlines how crises, real or perceived, have been used by governments, especially the United States under George W. Bush, to strong-arm a disoriented citizenry into accepting changes to its rights, and its government, that it wouldn’t otherwise accept.

But Andrew Sullivan of TheAtlantic.com disagreed with Klein that a few “demonized” companies were at fault when the real culprit behind the mortgage crisis has been the willingness of Americans to

“[The American people] have spent and borrowed more than they could actually support,” Sullivan said. “…To some extent, the American people are responsible for the crisis they are currently in.”

Klein quickly shot back her own rebuttal.

“The reason why this bubble was allowed to inflate is not because the American people demanded it, it was because it was spectacularly profitable for Wall Street,” Klein said.

The video was from HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, broadcast September 19, 2008.

Top 25 Censored Stories for 2009

• #1. Over One Million Iraqi Deaths Caused by US Occupation


• # 2 Security and Prosperity Partnership: Militarized NAFTA


• # 3 InfraGard: The FBI Deputizes Business


• # 4 ILEA: Is the US Restarting Dirty Wars in Latin America?


• # 5 Seizing War Protesters’ Assets


• # 6 The Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act


• # 7 Guest Workers Inc.: Fraud and Human Trafficking


• # 8 Executive Orders Can Be Changed Secretly


• #9 Iraq and Afghanistan Vets Testify


• # 10 APA Complicit in CIA Torture


• # 11 El Salvador’s Water Privatization and the Global War on Terror


• # 12 Bush Profiteers Collect Billions From No Child Left Behind


• # 13 Tracking Billions of Dollars Lost in Iraq


• # 14 Mainstreaming Nuclear Waste


• # 15 Worldwide Slavery


• # 16 Annual Survey on Trade Union Rights


• # 17 UN’s Empty Declaration of Indigenous Rights


• # 18 Cruelty and Death in Juvenile Detention Centers


• # 19 Indigenous Herders and Small Farmers Fight Livestock Extinction


• # 20 Marijuana Arrests Set New Record


• # 21 NATO Considers “First Strike” Nuclear Option


• # 22 CARE Rejects US Food Aid


• # 23 FDA Complicit in Pushing Pharmaceutical Drugs


• # 24 Japan Questions 9/11 and the Global War on Terror


• # 25 Bush’s Real Problem with Eliot Spitzer

Uncle Sam & 911

9/11 Truth Norway: Why We Fight

WeAreChangeLA confronts CIA Director Michael V. Hayden

on the controlled demolition of the Constitution and 9/11 treason

"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety deserve neither Liberty nor Safety"
~~ Benjamin Franklin


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3D1wThnJo3Y
----------------------------

video: Bruno Bruhweiler
editing: Jeremy Rothe-Kushel
intro music: Libra Project "Information (acoustic version on WERS '03")
outro music: Shumonik

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

On September 16, 2008, CIA Director and former Director of the NSA Michael V. Hayden came to speak to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council. WeAreChangeLA decided to go and join the conversation.

Stewart Howe, taking the civil approach while referencing a speech Hayden gave to the CFR last year, asked the Director whether, in the post-9/11 United States of America, we were, in fact, witnessing the controlled demolition of the Constitution and Bill of Rights under the guise of a War on Terror.

During Hayden's answer, Jeremy Rothe-Kushel, taking an disuptive approach, asked Hayden whether it was possible that a couple of Mossad agents could have been documenting (and celebrating btw) in the minutes after the 1st hit on the WTC, while Hayden and almost the entire military-intelligence command structure learned about it from CNN. Really, this is their story. Most, including Hayden, allegedly attributed the 1st attack to "pilot error."

It is our duty as Americans to confront, with the power of truth spoken, those war criminals who are, under guise of a War on Terror, waging war on We the People and our Republic, and who have declared the entire planet to be their war-zone.

Only a truth, justice and peace revolution based on love will prevail.
This is the longer question I would like to ask Mr. Hayden that had to figure out how to boil down to 10 seconds in the moment. If he wants to come clean this treasonous matter, I'm sure he has my phone number, and he can give me a call.

As the director of the NSA, even with such institutional resources and programs such as the NRO, NGA (then known as NIMA), Project Groundbreaker and Trailblazer, you claim to have had no indication of “Al-Qaeda’s plan to attack NY or Washington or the US in general." A message had been intercepted but not translated until after 9-11 that said “tomorrow is the zero hour.” Fair enough, since you were apparently not alone in our government in being in the dark about what happened on 9-11. While the NRO, Joint Chiefs, NORAD and FEMA were running wargames and terror drills that were fairly mimetic of what actually happened, people like Bush and Rice said that no one could imagine what happened. And it appears that many people in a crucial position of responsibility that day not only said they thought the 1st hit was accident, but found out about the entire event from the TV. The secretary of Defense allegedly learned that the Pentagon was under threat by the loud boom from the other side.

But meanwhile, a couple hours before the attack, a message had been transmitted through Odigo, an Israeli messaging company that warned of an imminent attack in NY. And then, in the minutes after couple few Mossad agents in New Jersey are immediately aware that a terrorist attack is occurring and just so happen to be in place to document it and celebrate it, while people like the president and his whole contingent allegedly believe the 1st hit was “pilot error”,

So, what we have here is almost the entire top tier of the civilian, military and intelligence command structure supposedly learning that the nation was under attack from CNN while someone’s text messaging their Israeli friends a pretty exact warning a couple hours before the attack and Mossad agents are perfectly positioned in New Jersey to immediately document and celebrate the 1st strike on the Towers.

Either we’re dealing with a full on Israeli-cultivated, architected and/or desired terrorist attack against the US, catching the entire US military and intelligence establishment unaware, or people like the President and Vice President, you and others in and out of our government were likely knowledgeable and/or architecturally complicit in the attacks.

So, I would like to hear which of these two possible scenarios you assert to be true.

And then finally I need to ask you, if, God and patriots forbid, there were to be another terrorist attack on the people of the United States of a nuclear, biological, chemical or other nature- as we are promised is INEVITABLE by the people such as Vice President Cheney, Department of Homeland Security Czar Chertoff who should, if operating from a place of good faith with the American people, only be promising to do everything they can to stop it from ever happening again- why should we the patriotic American people of conscience and courage and those of our soldiers who take seriously the oath they took to defend us and our Constitution against ALL enemies both foreign and domestic, not immediately look to lawless individuals within institutions and companies in places like Chantilly and Langley, Virginia, Fort Meade, Maryland, San Diego, CA, the City of London, Tel Aviv and 1600 Pennsylvania Ave for accountability?

And the even more glaring and pressing question is, with all the evidence that points to lawless individuals embedded in these very same places being the architects of the 9-11-01 terrorist attacks, what do you suggest we the American people do right now to resolve this ongoing treasonous cover-up of an act of war on the American people and the murder of almost 3000 human beings from the United States and almost a half of the countries of the world?

Why, except for the difficulty of slipping your guards and convincing the police to back up the arrest, should I not consider it my duty as an American under the law of the land to attempt a citizen’s arrest on you right now for your guilt, at the very least of treason in your role in the ongoing cover-up of 9-11?

And if you happen to still think that I am joking, I have right here in my hands the letter and information that a group of patriotic Americans delivered to Federal Judge George H. Wu 2 months ago to fulfill our constitutional duties to inform the judiciary of treasonous actions and inactions by the heads of the executive and legislative branches.

Isolation

Self-imposed due to the feeling of helplessness during the unfolding of the many day-by-day horrible events.

Incredible Documentary Footage of Mass Arrest in St. Paul

By Laura Flanders, Firedoglake
Posted on September 19, 2008, Printed on September 20, 2008

alternet.org

Now that we've had a few weeks to settle, a look back at Labor Day in the Twin Cities. Labor Day was of course also Day One of the Republican National Convention. Video was released today of an apparent mass arrest of utterly peaceful concert goers at the SEIU Labor Day concert.

The most surreal moment in the tape is an off-camera exchange. Police in riot gear have surrounded loungers in a waterfront park. They announce, "Ladies and Gentlemen, You're Under Arrest" and you hear one young woman say incredulously "Are you serious?"

Yep, I'm afraid they are.

Here's the press release that came with the video, from the Glass Bead Collective:

BURIED TAPE REVEALS USE OF FORCE AND AN UNWARRANTED MASS ARREST OF BYSTANDERS DURING THE REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION

ST. PAUL, Minnesota (September 18, 2008) Video released today shows the indiscriminate arrest of a crowd of two hundred at the waterfront across from a concert on Harriet Island Regional Park during this month's Republican National Convention in St. Paul. The video includes multiple angles of the event as well as an interview with the cameraman who buried his footage and was one of almost two hundred people arrested for rioting without probable cause.

More than eight hundred people were arrested in St. Paul during the Republican National Convention. This video shows that at least twenty percent of the eight hundred plus arrested were seized without due cause.

Quite frankly, I didn't see anyone exhibiting behavior that would qualify as probable cause for an arrest.

Laura Flanders is the host of GRITtv and the author of Blue Grit: True Democrats Take Back Politics from the Politicians.

Fox News Censors Ron Paul AGAIN! (9/20/08)

During a highly advertised show titled “Fact vs. Fear” that aired on Fox Business News on Saturday Morning September 20th which touted guests coming on such as Ron Paul, Rupert Murdoch, Knute Gingrich, Donald Trump, Steve Forbes and others, Fox attempted to offer up what they considered to be a fair debate about the state of the current economic crisis and to separate rumors from fear mongering. Ironically in the middle of Dr. Paul’s explanation about the cause of this debacle, the connection mysteriously goes dead. Rupert Murdoch and other guests suffered no connection problems.

Let's do the Time Warp, again.

September 10, 2001 - JUST ONE DAY BEFORE 9/11:

Rumsfeld says $2.3 TRILLION Missing from Pentagon

On the day before 9/11, the Pentagon admitted that $2.3 Trillion was missing, unaccounted for. Rumsfeld then called it a matter of "life and death."

IT'S LIKE A FIX FOR A JUNKIE!

Ron Paul on Economy Meltdown

It's hard to argue against the idea that a free market makes a better product.

Ron Paul Blasts "Secret Government" Running Economy

Congressman warns middle class in danger of being wiped out, says Congress is oblivious and Fed has no clue.

Watch the full address by the Congressman:


Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Thursday, Sept 18, 2008
http://www.prisonplanet.com/ron-paul-blasts-secret-government-running-economy.html

Congressman Ron Paul has issued a stinging address concerning the financial crisis in which he outlines how the current economic problems, created via malinvestment and shift to a debt based economy, are now being mismanaged by private interests in secret.

What’s more he says he is not sure the Federal Reserve has any idea what to do next and that the Congress is totally oblivious to the whole sorry state of affairs - a cocktail of elements he warns puts the middle class of America in serious jeopardy.
“Today we had a lot of financial fireworks in the markets, a lot of things are going on, and I think we are in the middle of something very big.” the Congressman stated.
Speaking on the recent collapse and government bailout of several big financial institutions he warned:

“We’re talking about big bucks, we’re not talking about hundreds of millions or even hundreds of billions, we’re talking about trillions of dollars, the obligation is immeasurable.”
“The interesting thing is that they (the financial institutions) don’t come to the Congress, I mean the Federal Reserve buys them out, they own it. We as tax payers now own Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and know one knows how much that will cost. They don’t come to the Congress, we don’t have appropriations, it’s done by secret government, private individuals behind the scenes maneuvering and manipulating and trying to patch things up. While in the meantime, I’m sure there’s a few people making a couple of bucks out of this whole thing.”

The Congressman highlighted how an economy structured on debt and credit and a financial system based on interventionism and self serving moral hazard has led to gross devaluation of the dollar and ultimately lies at the root of the current financial meltdown.

“Our problems come first of all from the Federal Reserve. It is a monopoly and it controls interest rates artificially low, causes people to make mistakes, that’s the basic source. But then on top of that in the Housing market we had the community reinvestment act which told investors that they had to loan to risky borrowers, and that was a risky complication. HUD contributes to this, FDIC contributes, it’s called moral hazard, everything that we have done over here creates moral hazard, that is we assure people or assume that we will take care of everybody, just go out and create the risk, it is the opposite of the market place.” Paul stated.

“You can’t create money like we’re doing in order to support the dollar, because ultimately it hurts the dollar and everything we do in Washington today whether its on the appropriations side, whether it’s what the Fed is doing, buying up America, it’s all putting pressure on the dollar. One of these days we’re just going to have to wake up and say that we need to liquidate debt. This is malinvestment.” he urged.

The Congressman then slammed those who have blamed the crisis on failures of the free market:
“And then they have people come along and say ’see, this is the failure of capitalism’, this has nothing to do with capitalism, this is something that started off as interventionism and us being too involved in the economy for the benefit of special interests. But now it is being socialized out in the open.”

“The end of this comes when people reject the dollar and I think we’re getting awfully close to this.” Paul stated echoing comments from leading investors such as Jim Rogers, who predicted Monday that the dollar would soon lose its world reserve status.

“When you see the movement in the markets that we have today, you know that there are serious problems out there and Congress basically are oblivious, they have no idea what’s going on.” Paul continued.

“As a matter of fact I’m not even sure the Federal Reserve has any idea what to do about this. They’ve been manipulating and maneuvering for their own benefit over the years but eventually the market wins out.”

The Congressman’s comments were echoed today by reports indicating that the Congress cannot agree on any form of action and is likely to simply adjourn and “get out of the way”.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told reporters that “no one knows what to do”.

In a stark warning, Ron Paul stressed that the longer the value of the dollar is allowed to depreciate, the greater the risk becomes for the majority of Americans:

“The reason this is so important is that if you care about people in a humanitarian sense, what you want to do is protect the value of the money. Just think of the third world nations when they have total run away inflation, the middle class gets wiped out. And what we are seeing today is the middle class being jeopardized by this type of system that we have, unlimited spending, unlimited debt, unlimited creation of new credit.”

“So it’s time that we wake up… The answers are in the free market, sound money and our Constitution.” Paul concluded.

Army Times Details Army Invasion of U.S.

Army Combat Team to Train for “Homeland Scenarios” Under NorthCom

Gina Cavallaro
Army Times
September 18, 2008

The 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team has spent 35 of the last 60 months in Iraq patrolling in full battle rattle, helping restore essential services and escorting supply convoys.

Now they’re training for the same mission — with a twist — at home.

Beginning Oct. 1 for 12 months, the 1st BCT will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks.

It is not the first time an active-duty unit has been tapped to help at home. In August 2005, for example, when Hurricane Katrina unleashed hell in Mississippi and Louisiana, several active-duty units were pulled from various posts and mobilized to those areas.

But this new mission marks the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to NorthCom, a joint command established in 2002 to provide command and control for federal homeland defense efforts and coordinate defense support of civil authorities.

After 1st BCT finishes its dwell-time mission, expectations are that another, as yet unnamed, active-duty brigade will take over and that the mission will be a permanent one.

“Right now, the response force requirement will be an enduring mission. How the [Defense Department] chooses to source that and whether or not they continue to assign them to NorthCom, that could change in the future,” said Army Col. Louis Vogler, chief of NorthCom future operations. “Now, the plan is to assign a force every year.”

The command is at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, Colo., but the soldiers with 1st BCT, who returned in April after 15 months in Iraq, will operate out of their home post at Fort Stewart, Ga., where they’ll be able to go to school, spend time with their families and train for their new homeland mission as well as the counterinsurgency mission in the war zones.

Stop-loss will not be in effect, so soldiers will be able to leave the Army or move to new assignments during the mission, and the operational tempo will be variable.

Don’t look for any extra time off, though. The at-home mission does not take the place of scheduled combat-zone deployments and will take place during the so-called dwell time a unit gets to reset and regenerate after a deployment.

The 1st of the 3rd is still scheduled to deploy to either Iraq or Afghanistan in early 2010, which means the soldiers will have been home a minimum of 20 months by the time they ship out.

In the meantime, they’ll learn new skills, use some of the ones they acquired in the war zone and more than likely will not be shot at while doing any of it.

They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack.

Training for homeland scenarios has already begun at Fort Stewart and includes specialty tasks such as knowing how to use the “jaws of life” to extract a person from a mangled vehicle; extra medical training for a CBRNE incident; and working with U.S. Forestry Service experts on how to go in with chainsaws and cut and clear trees to clear a road or area.

The 1st BCT’s soldiers also will learn how to use “the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has fielded,” 1st BCT commander Col. Roger Cloutier said, referring to crowd and traffic control equipment and nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals without killing them.

“It’s a new modular package of nonlethal capabilities that they’re fielding. They’ve been using pieces of it in Iraq, but this is the first time that these modules were consolidated and this package fielded, and because of this mission we’re undertaking we were the first to get it.”
The package includes equipment to stand up a hasty road block; spike strips for slowing, stopping or controlling traffic; shields and batons; and, beanbag bullets.

“I was the first guy in the brigade to get Tasered,” said Cloutier, describing the experience as “your worst muscle cramp ever — times 10 throughout your whole body.

“I’m not a small guy, I weigh 230 pounds … it put me on my knees in seconds.”

The brigade will not change its name, but the force will be known for the next year as a CBRNE Consequence Management Response Force, or CCMRF (pronounced “sea-smurf”).

“I can’t think of a more noble mission than this,” said Cloutier, who took command in July. “We’ve been all over the world during this time of conflict, but now our mission is to take care of citizens at home … and depending on where an event occurred, you’re going home to take care of your home town, your loved ones.”

While soldiers’ combat training is applicable, he said, some nuances don’t apply.

“If we go in, we’re going in to help American citizens on American soil, to save lives, provide critical life support, help clear debris, restore normalcy and support whatever local agencies need us to do, so it’s kind of a different role,” said Cloutier, who, as the division operations officer on the last rotation, learned of the homeland mission a few months ago while they were still in Iraq.

Some brigade elements will be on call around the clock, during which time they’ll do their regular marksmanship, gunnery and other deployment training. That’s because the unit will continue to train and reset for the next deployment, even as it serves in its CCMRF mission.

Should personnel be needed at an earthquake in California, for example, all or part of the brigade could be scrambled there, depending on the extent of the need and the specialties involved.
Other branches included

The active Army’s new dwell-time mission is part of a NorthCom and DOD response package.

Active-duty soldiers will be part of a force that includes elements from other military branches and dedicated National Guard Weapons of Mass Destruction-Civil Support Teams.

A final mission rehearsal exercise is scheduled for mid-September at Fort Stewart and will be run by Joint Task Force Civil Support, a unit based out of Fort Monroe, Va., that will coordinate and evaluate the interservice event.

In addition to 1st BCT, other Army units will take part in the two-week training exercise, including elements of the 1st Medical Brigade out of Fort Hood, Texas, and the 82nd Combat Aviation Brigade from Fort Bragg, N.C.

There also will be Air Force engineer and medical units, the Marine Corps Chemical, Biological Initial Reaction Force, a Navy weather team and members of the Defense Logistics Agency and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency.

One of the things Vogler said they’ll be looking at is communications capabilities between the services.

“It is a concern, and we’re trying to check that and one of the ways we do that is by having these sorts of exercises. Leading up to this, we are going to rehearse and set up some of the communications systems to make sure we have interoperability,” he said.

“I don’t know what America’s overall plan is — I just know that 24 hours a day, seven days a week, there are soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines that are standing by to come and help if they’re called,” Cloutier said. “It makes me feel good as an American to know that my country has dedicated a force to come in and help the people at home.”

Plunge Protection Team - Was Kick Off At 1:00 PM?

Dow 10,750.03 +140.37 +1.32%


Nasdaq 2,120.85 +22.00 +1.05%


S&P 500 1,172.15 +15.76 +1.36%


10 Yr Bond(%) 3.4050% -0.0050

Senator Harry Reid says "no one knows what to do."

Is this or isn't good enough reason to throw the whole lot of them to the wolves, I don't know what.

Democratic Congress May Adjourn, Leave Crisis to Fed, Treasury
By Kristin Jensen
Bloomberg

Sept. 18 (Bloomberg) -- The Democratic-controlled Congress, acknowledging that it isn't equipped to lead the way to a solution for the financial crisis and can't agree on a path to follow, is likely to just get out of the way.

Lawmakers say they are unlikely to take action before, or to delay, their planned adjournments -- Sept. 26 for the House of Representatives, a week later for the Senate. While they haven't ruled out returning after the Nov. 4 elections, they would rather wait until next year unless Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, who are leading efforts to contain the crisis, call for help.

One reason, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said yesterday, is that ``no one knows what to do'' at the moment.

``When you rush to judgment, you usually make mistakes,'' said Sherwood Boehlert, a former Republican congressman from New York. ``This is something you can't go on forever without addressing, but Congress in a short span of time is best served by going home.''

In 2002, after accounting scandals forced Enron Corp. and WorldCom Inc. into bankruptcy, Congress passed the Sarbanes-Oxley law, setting new corporate-governance rules. While the measure passed unanimously in the Senate and overwhelmingly in the House, it has since become a target of criticism from some Republicans, including presidential candidate John McCain, and from many in the business and financial worlds.

``There's a huge danger that needs to be guarded against -- that we'll have a tremendous overreaction in regulations,'' former Treasury Secretary John Snow said in an interview.

Reid's `Despair'

Still, the Democrats opened themselves up for attack with Reid's comments. The Republican National Committee pounced on the Nevada lawmaker for his ``despair,'' and Senator Mel Martinez, a Florida Republican, said his remarks are ``not a way to inspire confidence or begin to turn the tide.''

And there were some calls for at least a bipartisan show of leadership during the crisis, which has resulted in the collapse of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, investment banks Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and Bear Stearns Cos., and insurer American International Group Inc., among other companies.

Unless party leaders on both sides of the aisle join with President George W. Bush to endorse a solution, there's little Congress and the president can do in the near term to restore market confidence, said Chuck Gabriel, managing director of Capital Alpha Partners LLC, which advises investors on politics and Washington.

White House Lawn

Wall Street would respond positively ``if the president and Treasury Secretary Paulson and a couple of Cabinet members and the Republican and Democratic leadership all went on the White House lawn and said that we are resolved to taking additional measures in the coming weeks despite the elections to ensure that confidence is restored,'' Gabriel said.

``But the odds of that seem very, very low.''

Some committee chairmen have scheduled hearings and promised better oversight.

Representative Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, will hold two days of hearings on Oct. 6 and 7 ``to examine what went wrong and who should be held to account'' at AIG and Lehman Brothers, which filed for bankruptcy on Sept. 15.

Waxman's committee summoned Lehman Chief Executive Officer Richard Fuld, AIG CEO Robert Willumstad and former AIG chiefs Maurice ``Hank'' Greenberg and Martin Sullivan to speak.

`Work Will Continue'

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi defended the decision of Congress to adjourn. Lawmakers can always be recalled to Washington ``if there is a need to do so,'' she told reporters yesterday. In the meantime, House and Senate committees will hold hearings and the financial crisis will be studied by Congress, she said. ``Our work will continue even if we are not still on the floor,'' she said.

House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank said Congress could give the Federal Reserve authority to pay interest on bank reserves sooner than originally scheduled.

``They already have the authority; it's just a question of moving it up a couple of years,'' Frank, of Massachusetts, told reporters yesterday. ``We're trying to work that out.''

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd said the Fed also has the power to buy and dispose of bad debt stemming from the subprime-mortgage crisis.

``The Fed has the authority to move in this area,'' Dodd told reporters in Washington.

No `Quick Fixes'

Creating a separate agency to take on bad debt, akin to the Resolution Trust Corp. set up in 1989 to absorb losses from savings-and-loan associations, would take about a year, he said. Instead, the Fed should use its own authority to act.

Senator Johnny Isakson, a Georgia Republican active on housing issues, scoffed at suggestions that lawmakers postpone adjournment to rewrite laws governing the financial markets.

``The last thing you need,'' he said, ``are 535 people, not many of whom are that well-versed in financial markets, trying to do quick fixes to a market correction that's one of the more significant that we've ever seen.''

They worked hardly

So that you will have to work harder.

Get ready to puke.

Banking crisis: Merrill Lynch top brass set to share $200m
Even by Wall Street standards, the sums are unusually high for such a short period of employment

guardian.co.uk


Merrill Lynch's newly recruited chief executive, John Thain, stands to share a $200m (£111.4m) payout with two senior lieutenants for less than a year's work which culminated this week in the bank surrendering its 94-year-old independence.

The Wall Street bank known as the "thundering herd" agreed to a $50bn takeover by Bank of America on Monday after a hasty 48 hours of negotiation. The talks were prompted by fears over banking stability arising from the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

Thain, who was previously the head of the New York Stock Exchange, joined Merrill in December with a mandate to steer the bank out of financial trouble. When he arrived, he was given a $15m signing on bonus. If he leaves in Bank of America's takeover, he stands to get a further $11m in accelerated stock payouts.

Two former Goldman Sachs executives hired by Thain are likely to do even better. Merrill's head of global trading, Thomas Montag, who joined in August, has already received a $39m bonus. Together with stock options accelerated by a buyout, he could end the year with $76m. The bank's head of strategy, Peter Kraus, was given a $95m package including bonuses and stock awards to replace his generous compensation at Goldman when he joined in May, according to figures obtained by Bloomberg News.

It is yet to be determined whether any of the trio will have a role at Bank of America. Even by the standards of Wall Street payouts, the sums are unusually high for such a short period of employment.

Steven Hall, a New York-based executive remuneration expert, told the Guardian that Merrill had little choice but to honour the contracts: "At the time they were recruiting [Thain], a negotiation took place and he would have told them this is what his price was. You can't go back and change things now — it's almost a kind of buyer's remorse we may be seeing."

Thain, 53, is a leading fundraiser for the Republican presidential candidate John McCain. A doctor's son, he is an amateur beekeeper who used to keep hives in his back garden. He bought a two-bedroom apartment on New York's Park Avenue two years ago which had an asking price of $27.5m. He was hired by Merrill to steady the ship after huge losses on the credit markets which were run up under the leadership of ousted chief executive Stan O'Neal.

At a press conference this week to announce the buyout by Bank of America, Thain admitted that selling Merrill was not the original plan: "This isn't necessarily the outcome I would have expected when I took the job."

He insisted that he had made progress in tidying up Merrill: "We've been consistently cleaning up the balance sheet, repairing the damage that had been done over the last two or three years."

Thain reportedly fought back tears at a meeting to brief staff on Merrill's buyout this week. Analysts say that Merrill's liabilities were greater than he could have anticipated when he joined — and some have praised his decision to sell.

Defenders of Wall Street's controversial pay packages generally argue that although bankers do well during good times, they hold insecure jobs which are vulnerable during downturns.

"What we do see is that when times get tough, people lose their jobs — and that's the ultimate in pay cuts," said Hall.

A Merrill Lynch spokesman said the bank would not comment on executive compensation beyond the statutory disclosures required in filings with regulators.

How to buy votes

Biden calls paying higher taxes a patriotic act
ap

Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden said Thursday that paying more in taxes is the patriotic thing to do for wealthier Americans. The Republican campaign for president calls the tax increases their Democratic opponents propose "painful" instead of patriotic.

Under the economic plan proposed by Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, people earning more than $250,000 a year would pay more in taxes while those earning less — the vast majority of American taxpayers — would receive a tax cut.

"We want to take money and put it back in the pocket of middle-class people," Biden said in an interview on ABC's "Good Morning America."

Noting that wealthier Americans would indeed pay more, Biden said: "It's time to be patriotic ... time to jump in, time to be part of the deal, time to help get America out of the rut."

Republican presidential candidate John McCain released a television ad Thursday charging that Obama would increase the size of the federal government amid an economic crisis. Contending that "a big government casts a big shadow on us all," the ad features the image of a shadow slowly covering a sleeping baby as it exaggerates the reach of the Obama tax proposal.

"Obama and his liberal congressional allies want a massive government, billions in spending increases, wasteful pork," the ad says. "And we would pay — painful income taxes, skyrocketing taxes on life savings, electricity and home heating oil. Can your family afford that?"

The McCain campaign said the ad is set to run nationally.

The transformation of the USA into the USSRA (United Socialist State Republic of America)

continues at full speed with the nationalization of AIG

Nouriel Roubini | Sep 17, 2008

Last week we argued that, with the nationalization of Fannie and Freddie, comrades Bush, Paulson and Bernanke had started transforming the USA into the USSRA (United Socialist State Republic of America). This transformation of the USA into a country where there is socialism for the rich, the well connected and Wall Street (i.e. where profits are privatized and losses are socialized) continues today with the nationalization of AIG.

This latest action on AIG follows a variety of many other policy actions that imply a massive - and often flawed - government intervention in the financial markets and the economy: the bailout of the Bear Stearns creditors; the bailout of Fannie and Freddie; the use of the Fed balance sheet (hundreds of billions of safe US Treasuries swapped for junk toxic illiquid private securities); the use of the other GSEs (the Federal Home Loan Bank system) to provide hundreds of billions of dollars of “liquidity” to distressed, illiquid and insolvent mortgage lenders; the use of the SEC to manipulate the stock market (restrictions on short sales); the use of the US Treasury to manipulate the mortgage market (Treasury will now for the first time outright buy agency MBS to manipulate and prop up this market); the creation of a whole host of new bailout facilities (TAF, TSLF, PDCF) to prop and rescue banks and, for the first time since the Great Depression, to bail out non-bank financial institutions; the recent extension of the collateral available for the TSLF and PDCF facilities to a much wider range of toxic securities including equities and thus allowing the Fed to effectively manipulate even the stock market; and a whole range of other executive and legislative actions (including the recent bill to provide a public guarantee to mortgages for banks willing to reduce their face value).
RGE Spotlight Issues:

So, with the nationalization today of AIG, comrades Bush, Paulson and Bernanke welcome you again to the USSRA. At least in the case of Fannie and Freddie these two institutions were semi-public to begin with as they were Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs). Now we get instead the first pure case of a fully private company, actually the largest insurance company in the world, being nationalized. So the US government is now the largerst insurance company in the world. So the transformation of the USA into the USSRA goes a step further.

Let me now flesh out in more detail my arguments on why this government AIG takeover is reckless, flawed and should have and could have been avoided. There were other ways to deal with the potential systemic effects of collapse of AIG…

Fire In a Theater. The banking industry meltdown.

We’ve all heard the old saying about screaming ‘FIRE’ in a crowded theater. Even sheep can be dangerous if they are coaxed into stampeding.

But what of the reverse?

What are we to do when we see a filled-to-capacity theater slowly smoldering in flames, while its audience sits entranced by a hilarious movie featuring a talking pig in lipstick from Alaska? (Yes, I said it – and I meant it)

People’s lives are at risk. Much hangs in the balance. Short of panicking people, what are we to do as the flames begin to spread?

I suppose we could turn up the house lights and send the crusty old owner up to the stage to make a polite speech about the inherent strength of the building – and his belief that it is fundamentally strong – despite the fact that he blocked any attempts at meeting the fire codes.

Or, perhaps we could give away free popcorn – and call it a stimulus package – and hope people buy soda to throw at the fire?

Or, we could calmly explain to people that they have not only lost their initial investment, since the film will not be shown in its entirety, but, we are also charging people for the free barbecue - as they get burned – and using the extra money to build another theater up the street for the owner.

Perhaps we should wait until the fire spreads to the Asian market next door – and the snooty European part of town – and then once things get nice and smoky and chaotic, start a war with a rival theater in town for their naked act of aggression?

Maybe we should just lay off the theater staff – put an “out of business” sign up - call it a correction – and hammer shut the doors while the audience watches the film.

Maybe we can blame it on the ‘greedy’ audience? After all, no one promised them they would be safe, and, no one forced them to purchase the tickets, and, whose fault is it that the theater was so overcrowded? People should know their limits and not strain ‘the system’ with their selfish desires. Maybe we can press charges against them – and act fast to stop them from voting based on the obscure “people with less than 50% of their skin left may not vote” law.

Just how bad should it get before SOMEONE admits it’s a fucking fire – and puts the safety of the audience first?

We shall see.

Capitalism is burning to the ground. We are all caught inside. Like the hole in the ground at ground zero – 7 years after 9/11 - let us see what monuments people care to erect for us once this scorched-earth policy of economic gluttony consumes every last drop in every last rind of hope the world has left.

Let us see what the history books say about a society so utterly consumed with itself that it literally spontaneously self-combusted – and dragged a hapless world down with it.

And let us see what sustenance awaits the poor – the subsistence-level citizens of this world - when the last pillars of capitalism fall - and the wells run dry - and food can no longer make it to the market – and engines sputter and stop. Let us see what pithy asides Sean Hannity will make as the famine spreads.

What will historians say?

I suspect they will say we were going too fast, ignoring the iceberg warnings, claiming our ship was unsinkable - and the bestest in the world. They will say we were the richest most damned people on earth.

God help us.

“FIRE!!!!”

-- JohnA

Panic grips credit markets

FT.com
By Krishna Guha in Washington, Michael Mackenzie in New York and Gillian Tett in London
Published: September 17 2008 18:23 Last updated: September 18 2008 00:01

The panic in world credit markets reached historic intensity on Wednesday, prompting a flight to safety of the kind not seen since the second world war.

Barometers of financial stress hit record peaks across the world. Yields on short-term US Treasuries hit their lowest level since the London Blitz, while gold had its biggest one-day gain ever in dollar terms. Lending between banks, in effect, stopped.

Speculation mounted that the Federal Reserve, which refused to cut rates on Tuesday, could be forced into an embarrassing U-turn or might further expand its market liquidity operations.

The $85bn emergency Fed loan for the troubled insurance group AIG, announced on Tuesday night, failed to curb the surge in risk aversion. Instead, markets were hit by a fresh wave of anxiety.

One cause for fear came when shares in a supposedly safe money market mutual fund fell below par value – or “broke the buck” – owing to losses on debt in Lehman Brothers, which filed for bankruptcy protection on Monday. This raised the risk that retail investors in other such funds could panic and pull out their money.

All thought of profit was abandoned as traders piled in to the safety of short-term Treasuries, with the yield on three-month bills falling as low as 0.02 per cent – rates that characterised the “lost decade” in Japan. The last time US Treasuries were this low was January 1941.

Shares in the two largest independent US investment banks left standing – Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs – fell 24 per cent and 14 per cent, respectively, as the cost of insuring their debt soared, threatening their ability to finance themselves .

Morgan Stanley was holding preliminary merger talks with Wachovia, a troubled regional lender, and could approach other banks and look at other options in the coming days, people familiar with the situation said. Washington Mutual, another regional lender, has hired Goldman Sachs to contact potential buyers.

HBOS, a leading UK mortgage lender pressed into sales talks by the government after its share price halved this week, agreed to a £12bn takeover by Lloyds TSB.

A key measure of fear in the fixed-income markets - the so-called Ted spread, which tracks the difference between three-month Libor and Treasury bill rates - moved above 3 per cent, higher than the record close after the Black Monday stock market crash of 1987.

US authorities fired back with the Treasury announcing it was borrowing $40bn to give to the Fed to use for its emergency lending – in essence removing balance sheet constraints on the size of this assistance.

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced new curbs on short selling.
Some analysts have criticised US authorities for adopting an arbitrary approach to rescues - saving AIG, but not Lehman - that was impossible for investors to predict and therefore did not boost confidence.

The S&P 500 fell 4.7 per cent, led by a 8.9 per cent slump in financials. Equity volatility was near its highest level since March. The dollar fell against other major currencies.
Gold benefited from safe-haven buying, with prices rising 11.2 per cent to a three-week high of $866.47 a troy ounce.

Andrew Brenner, co-head of structured products and emerging markets at MF Global, said: “It feels like no one wants to take anyone’s credit...it feels like we are on a precipice.”

Chris Dodd - The Fed Can Screw Taxpayers

Dodd Says the Fed Has Authority to Set Up Debt Fund (Update2)
By Viola Gienger
Sept. 17 (Bloomberg) --

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd said the Federal Reserve can act as an ``effective Resolution Trust Fund'' to buy and dispose of bad debt stemming from the subprime mortgage crisis.

``The Fed has the authority to move in this area,'' Dodd told reporters in Washington today.
Creating a separate agency to take on bad debt, akin to the Resolution Trust Corp. set up in 1989 to absorb losses from savings and loan associations, would take about a year, he said. Instead, the Fed should use its own authority to act.

``Debating whether or not you're going to set up some new agency or bureaucracy in government is a nice point, but I don't think we have the luxury of waiting another year,'' Dodd said.

Establishing a new government bureaucracy might distract officials from addressing housing as the underlying cause of the financial crisis, Dodd said. Congress in July enacted legislation creating a Federal Housing Administration program to insure as much as $300 billion in refinanced mortgages for 400,000 borrowers at risk of losing their homes.

Implementing regulations based on that legislation will help, as will lower mortgage rates and the government's takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac earlier this month, Dodd said.
``But candidly, I want to do a lot more than 400,000 units,'' he said. ``And we have the opportunity to do more than that.''

Dodd met yesterday with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and said Bernanke agreed that the subprime mortgage collapse remains the core of the broader crisis.

Longer Term
For the longer term, Dodd said he is ``willing to entertain'' the idea of a separate agency.
House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, who proposed creating an RTC-like agency to take on bad loans on Sept. 15, said there is ``growing agreement among a lot of people that that is exactly what we need to be doing.''

Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat, plans to hold a hearing on the issue on Sept. 24, he said today in an interview on Bloomberg Television.

Scientists, Scholars, Architects & Engineers respond to NIST

This response is huge in that there are numerous graphics and links to cites. Follow the link below for complete response.

Orinal article:
Scientists, Scholars, Architects & Engineers respond to NIST

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Here are the first section of the response:

via Electronic Mail: wtc@nist.gov
WTC Technical Information Repository
Attention: Mr. Stephen Cauffman
National Institute of Standards and Technology
Stop 8610
Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8610

September 15, 2008

Re: Public Comments on WTC 7 Draft Reports

Dear Mr. Cauffman,

I am writing on behalf of a group of scientists, scholars, engineers and building professionals who are dedicated to scientific research regarding the destruction of all three high-rise buildings (WTC 1, 2 and 7) on September 11, 2001. We have examined the draft reports recently released by NIST purporting to explain the demise of WTC Building 7 (collectively referred to herein as the “Report”). We have found many areas that need to be revised and re-examined by NIST personnel before they release a final report on this matter. We have provided our names and affiliations at the end of this document, in accordance with the guidelines for submittal of comments promulgated by NIST at (http://wtc.nist.gov/media/comments2008.html).

At the outset, we would like to call attention to the fact that we requested a reasonable extension of time for the public to submit comments. Given the rate at which we were finding incorrect or contradictory statements in the Report, we would likely have found many more areas NIST needs to re-examine before issuing a final report. As we pointed out in our original correspondence with you requesting the extension, the original three week deadline was completely unreasonable. First, it took NIST more than three years to compile this 1000+ page Report. Why, then, were members of the public only given three weeks in which to comment? Moreover, NIST lists ten authors and dozens of contracted and employed staff, which over the three year investigation would yield somewhere in the neighborhood of 200,000 man-hours of labor. How did NIST expect members of the public to match or even come close to NIST's labor expenditure in three weeks? This first reason alone was enough to warrant a significant extension in the deadline for public comment.

Second, in NIST’s "Questions and Answers" page (http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/factsheet/wtc_qa_082108.html), NIST has attempted to refute many of the points that members of our group and others have made regarding the WTC 7 destruction. However, NIST did not provide any references to sections of the Report that support its alleged refutations. How is a member of the public, then, able to verify NIST’s refutation without reading through the entire 1000+ page Report? Our comments are directed to many of the areas addressed in the "Questions and Answers" page, and without citations directly to the Report itself, it was extremely difficult and time consuming for us see whether our main criticisms of the NIST theory of collapse have been adequately addressed in the Report. This is especially true in light of the fact that this latest draft Report is the third different story NIST has come up with.

Your response to our request was dismissive, based primarily on your belief that a six-week comment period on the 10,000 page report NIST issued for the Twin Towers was reasonable. You also saw no problem with NIST’s failure to provide any references in its Questions and Answers page to the 1000 page Report itself, apparently satisfied with NIST committing the logical fallacy of appeal to authority. As things stand right now, your position in this matter can be seen as nothing less than a deliberate attempt to hamstring the public’s ability to review and comment on NIST’s work in this extremely important area of research.

Nevertheless, we have been able to spend some time reading and analyzing the report, and have already found numerous problems that severely undermine its veracity and usefulness. Our comments on the Report are detailed below. Note that we declined NIST’s invitation to comment only on the summary report, NCSTAR 1A. These comments are all regarding the more detailed NCSTAR 1-9 document. Of course, once NCSTAR 1-9 is revised according to these comments, the summary report NCSTAR 1A will need to be revised as well.

Based on our comments below, it is readily apparent that the NIST collapse explanation relies solely on extremely suspect computer models. Furthermore, at each juncture where NIST was given the opportunity to input data into each subsequent model, NIST has chosen to use those inputs which would cause the highest temperatures and the most amount of structural damage. Therefore, the submitters of these comments hereby call on NIST to publicly release its models and modeling data so that members of the scientific community can test whether other, more reasonable, assumptions will also result in global collapse of the structure. After all, a scientific hypothesis cannot be widely accepted unless it is repeatable by others.

McCain on U.S. economy: From 'strong' to 'total crisis' in 36 hours

By Michael Cooper
Wednesday, September 17, 2008

On Monday morning, as Wall Street was absorbing one of the biggest shocks to the financial system in generations, Senator John McCain said he believed the fundamentals of the U.S. economy were "strong."

Hours later he backpedaled, explaining that he meant that American workers, the backbone of the economy, were productive and resilient. By Tuesday he was calling the economic situation "a total crisis" and decrying "greed" in Wall Street and Washington.

McCain's sharp turnabout in tone and substance reflected not only a recognition that he had struck a discordant note at a sensitive moment, but that he had done so on the very issue on which he can least afford to stumble.

As economic conditions have worsened over the course of this year and voter anxiety has increased, McCain has had to work to counter the impression - fostered by his own admissions as recently as last year that the economy is not his strongest suit - that he lacks the experience and understanding to address the nation's economic woes.

In this case, McCain first sought to explain away his remarks about the economy's fundamental soundness by saying he had been referring to the American people and almost daring his Democratic rival, Senator Barack Obama, to contradict him on that score. But within hours of his original remarks on Monday morning, his aides were scheduling appearances for him on morning television shows on Tuesday so he could erase the impression being promoted aggressively by the Democrats that McCain was out of touch.

His campaign sent out to reporters the advance text of a speech he was delivering later on Monday that contained much starker language about the financial crisis, and by Tuesday the campaign had produced a new ad asserting that McCain's experience and leadership were necessary in a "time of crisis."

Aides and advisers repeated the phrase that followed McCain's comments about the economy's fundamental strengths: "These are very, very difficult times."

For much of this year, McCain has seemed to struggle to strike a balance between conveying the optimism that many voters seem to want in their leaders, and the I-feel-your-pain empathy that they crave during hard times. His task is complicated by the tension between his plans to continue many of the economic policies of the unpopular incumbent Republican president and his pledges to improve the American economy and shake things up in Washington.

Beyond striking a more populist tone, and more explicitly acknowledging the nation's economic problems, McCain's campaign also began an effort Tuesday to cast him as a strong leader with deep experience on economic issues by virtue of his service on the Senate Commerce Committee, which he presided over for six years.

That effort quickly hit a pothole when one of his economic advisers suggested that he had helped to create the BlackBerry, by virtue of his role in brokering telecommunications legislation. The McCain campaign later disavowed the suggestion as "boneheaded."

As recently as this January, McCain argued at a Republican debate that Americans were better off now than they were eight years ago; by this summer he had released an ad that said "we're worse off than we were four years ago."

McCain's first big speech on the mortgage crisis warned against excessive government intervention; a month later he released his plan for government action to help people keep their homes. And a tour he began in July to emphasize his understanding of the economic pain Americans feel was overshadowed when one of his top economic advisers, former Senator Phil Gramm of Texas, was quoted as saying that the United States was only in a "mental recession" and had become "a nation of whiners."

The most recent episode began Monday morning at a rally in Jacksonville, Florida, when McCain spoke of the troubles in the financial sector. "There's tremendous turmoil in our financial markets and on Wall Street," he said. "People are frightened by these events. Our economy, I think still, the fundamentals of our economy are strong.

"But these are very, very difficult times. And I promise you we will never put America in this position again. We will clean up Wall Street. We will reform government. And this is a failure."

His statement about the strength of the fundamentals of the economy was one he has made many times, for nearly a year now, usually adding that times are tough or people are hurting. But his reiteration of the remark on Monday, after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers helped send the stock market plunging to its steepest lost since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, quickly became a political problem.

The McCain campaign then swung into action, to try to put the remark "in context," as one top aide said, and to brush back what they felt were unfair attacks coming from the Obama campaign.

On Tuesday morning, McCain was interviewed for CBS, ABC, NBC, Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, and CNBC. Again and again, he explained that he understood the "crisis" and called for a new commission to study the problem, modeled on the one that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks.

On NBC's "Today" show, one of the hosts, Matt Lauer, asked McCain how he could say that "the fundamentals of our economy are strong" while his campaign was releasing a television ad that said that the economy was in crisis.

"Well, it's obviously true that the workers of America are the fundamentals of our economy, and our strength and our future," McCain replied. "And I believe in the American worker, and someone who disagrees with that - it's fine. We are in crisis. We all know that.

"The excess, the greed and the corruption of Wall Street have caused us to have a situation which is going to affect every American. We are in a total crisis."