Sunday, February 28, 2010

Protected Free Speech?

1950's Tar Baby


Image [found here]

Friday, February 26, 2010

Ron Paul questions Hillary Clinton

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Torture Inc., USA

Justice Department protects the torture lawyers, persecutes the ethical By Stephen Soldz (about the author)

opednews.com Permalink

Well, the long-awaited, and long-delayed Office of Professional Responsibility [OPR] report on the writing of the "Justice" Department Office of (Il)Legal Counsel torture memos came out Friday. The report in its three drafts can be found here. No surprise that the Obama administration manages to say "naughty" without any semblance of accountability.

The torture memo author John Yoo is excused, according to DoJ hack David Margolis, because he simply demonstrated "poor judgment" in claiming that the abhorrent and patently illegal was legal. Jay Bybee was excused because he, according to Margolis, didn't pay attention when he signed off on torture.

The circle is now closed and smoothed:

  • White House desires torture
  • CIA demands legal cover
  • OLC asked to provide legal rationale
  • CIA and White House tell what they want OLC memos to say; CIA provides the so-called "evidence" of safety of torture techniques
  • OLC writes the memos, following instructions
  • Obama White House then says no one can be prosecuted because they followed the memos
  • Memo authors are immune because there was no standard saying that incompetent work on demand designed to legalize hitherto illegal activities is unethical
  • Thus, patently illegal activities are able to carried out with no legal culpability for anyone

A beautiful job, now completed by Obama-Holder Justice Department hack Margolis. Future lawless administrations now have a ready template to use to provide legal rationale for any abuses they desire.

This clearing of the torture lawyers is not the first time the Justice Department has covered over abuses by its attorneys Department prosecutors repeatedly withhold exculpatory evidence from defense attorneys. In fact, Department protection of its unethical lawyers happens so often that the OPR is referred to as the "Roach Motel, because, as Boston attorney Harvey Silverglate explains: "cases go into the Roach Motel and never come out."

However, we shouldn't believe that the (In)Justice Department is unconcerned with problematic actions by its attorneys. Rather, they appear to prefer going after those who put professional ethics above institutional loyalty. While closing its eyes to abuses committed by those providing the legal rationale for torture, DoJ "ethics" hawks were ever vigilant in persecuting former DoJ attorney Jesselyn Radack for the crime of correctly telling field operatives that John Walker Lindh was entitled to an attorney and for refusing to go along with official lies afterward.

On December 7, 2001, I fielded a call from a Criminal Division attorney named John DePue. He wanted to know about the ethical propriety of interrogating "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh without a lawyer being present. DePue told me unambiguously that Lindh's father had retained counsel for his son. I advised him that Lindh should not be questioned without his lawyer....

I was forced out of my job, fired from my subsequent private sector job at the government's behest, placed under criminal investigation without any charges ever being brought, referred for disciplinary action to the state bars where I'm licensed as a lawyer, and put on the "No-Fly" List.

In an interview by Scott Horton, Radack explains the contrast between her treatment and that of the torture memo writers:

action stemming from advice I gave in a terrorism caseand my advice was to permit an American terrorism suspect to have counsel.

Contrary to OPR's own policies, it hastily and vindictively forwarded my case to the state bars in which I'm licensed, absent a finding of "professional misconduct," much less a finding of "intentional misconduct or reckless disregard of an applicable standard or obligation"the benchmark that OPR uses. Instead, OPR referred me to the bar disciplinary authorities for "possible misconduct." Moreover, I was referred based on a secret report to which I did not have access. Finally, I was referred for conduct I engaged in as a private citizen, not as a public servant, after I had left the employ of the Justice Department.

To the extent that OPR holds itself out as an internal watchdog of the Justice Department, that is belied by the fact that David Margolis, a single senior career attorney who has been with the Department for more than 40 years, has the unilateral power to override anything OPR does. Like most career bureaucrats, he obviously has a vested institutional interest in legitimizing Department conduct. Margolis's take-away message is that it's okay to ignore the rules of professional conduct if you're scared or in a hurry, failing to realize, perhaps because he's a government attorney, that stress and deadlines are the status quo for most lawyers.

Although entirely predictable, the Justice Department's decision to give Yoo and his cohorts a pass should offend all lawyers. It is now incumbent upon the legal profession, which is entirely self-regulated, to provide oversight and accountability within its own ranks and to the public.

The so-called "Justice" Department is clearly broken and in need of major reform. The first reform should be to abolish the OPR and submit all investigations of ethics violations to an independent Inspector General, as occurs in almost all other government agencies. The DoJ can no longer be allowed to investigate itself, placing the needs of institutional survival and comfort above the law and ethics. Unlike the OPR, the IG must have subpoena power to compel testimony from retired officials and obtain documents that are being deliberately withheld. IG decisions must not be allowed to be overruled by Department career hacks.

Additionally, Justice Department ethics rules need to be strengthened. Prosecutors and OLC lawyers who officially interpret the law should be held to higher standards regarding competent, independent, performance and loyalty to the law rather than administrations or the Department. Rules should makes sure that OLC lawyers can never again be protected by claims extreme partisanship excuses their incompetent legal interpretations. Prosecutors must be severely punished for withholding exculpatory evidence from defense attorneys.

As long as the Justice Department operates independent of any commitment to justice, no one is safe. When convenient, it will persecute the ethical and protect the guilty. Only the ethical have to fear in that case.

Stephen Soldz is psychoanalyst, psychologist, public health researcher, and faculty member at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis. He is co-founder of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology (more...)



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http://judicialmisconduct.blogspot.com/2007/06/got-ethics-official-connecticut.html

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Were New Orleans Police Officers executing citizens after Hurricane Katrina hit? Did they try to cover it up? [liveleak video with link] I posted a comment to that video just now, telling about what I saw and heard at that time.

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

"My Pet Goat", read by George W. Bush

Madsen: News of 9/11 WTC North Closed Circuit Video Surfaces

Diary Entry by Richard Volaar (about the author)

Existence of classified, closed circuit video piped in to complement George W. Bushes' reading of My Pet Goat surfaces.

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According to Wayne Madsen....

"A long-time L-3 Communications consultant for the National Security Agency (NSA) was, according to our source, one of the very few recipients of the live video stream that caught the first plane hitting the North Tower. The only other official who revealed that he saw the first plane strike the building on a live television link was President George W. Bush. Bush said on two occasions that he saw the first plane hit the building on television while waiting to speak to a group of elementary schoolchildren on the morning of 9/11.

"Video of the first plane hitting the North Tower did not surface until some time after the second plane had struck the South Tower at 8:46 am on September 11. The recorded film was taken by Jules and Gedeon Naudet, French documentary filmmakers who were shooting a film about the New York Fire Department and caught the scene from their vantage point at the corner of Church and Lispenard Streets in lower Manhattan. There were two other videos of the first plane's impact, one by Czech national Pavel Hlavna from a less-than-optimal vantage point at the entrance to the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel and a series of webcam stills taken by Wolfgang Staehle. The Naudet clip was not released until 13 hours after the plane impact. The Hlava film did not surface until two years after 9/11 and the Staehle shots are inconclusive still frames.

"There was one other video tape of the first plane striking the North Tower. It was confiscated by the FBI from five Israeli Mossad agents who were arrested later in the afternoon by East Rutherford, New Jersey police after being witnessed filming the first impact from Liberty State Park in Jersey City. The five Israelis, who came to be known as the "dancing Israelis" because they were seen celebrating the first impact, worked for an identified Mossad agent, Dominick Suter, who appeared on an FBI list of suspects, along with Mohammed Atta and the other hijackers. The FBI also reportedly had possession of the Naudet film before the six minutes of the impact was released by the French Gamma news agency."

What this means, folks, is that George W. Bush wasn't lying in the video clip, above. He may have actually seen this classified, closed circuit video of the first plane striking the North Tower on 9/11.

Again, this speaks to foreknowledge of the event. Foreknowledge of the event means we have direct evidence of participation in a criminal conspiracy to murder 3,000 American civilians on 9/11 by the Bush Administration.

If this L-3 Communications Consultant does not come forward with evidence or testimony as to the existence of this CC video, and soon, it will not matter what his employers do to wreck his wretched life. He will get to live whatever remains of his putrid existence secure in the knowledge that he ruined the lives of billions of human beings, including his own children and grandchildren.

The fires of eternal hell would be too good a punishment for such an amoral freak of nature.

Award winning poet, writer and refugee from the educational testing industry. Richard agitates, supports and motivates activists of all kinds, the most well-known being Cindy Sheehan. Web developer and designer by day, writer by night, Richard has (more...)

CIA, Wars, and Lying

[Part 1 video]

Part 3. Russophobes in Past U.S. Govts responsible for wars in Afghanistan & Creation of Al Qaeda.


Text with video:
Bin Laden and the Arab-Afghans. Part 3. Info continues from the previous video [part 2]: www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6HpBcYbBug

As well as training and recruiting Afghan nationals to fight the Soviets, the CIA permitted its ISI allies to recruit Muslim extremists from around the world.

Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid reports:
Between 1982 and 1992, some 35,000 Muslim radicals from 43 Islamic countries in the Middle East, North and East Africa, Central Asia and the Far East would pass their baptism under fire with the Afghan mujahideen. Tens of thousands more foreign Muslim radicals came to study in the hundreds of new madrassas [religious schools] that Zia's military government began to fund in Pakistan and along the Afghan border.

Eventually more than 100,000 Muslim radicals were to have direct contact with Pakistan and Afghanistan and be influenced by the jihad against the USSR.

In camps near Peshawar and in Afghanistan, these radicals met each other for the first time and studied trained and fought together. It was the first opportunity for most of them to learn about Islamic movements in other countries, and they forged tactical and ideological links that would serve them well in the future. THE CAMPS BECAME VIRTUAL UNIVERSITIES FOR FUTURE ISLAMIC RADICALISM.

One of the first non-Afghan volunteers to join the ranks of the mujahideen was Osama bin Laden, a civil engineer and businessman from a wealthy construction family in Saudi Arabia, with close ties to members of the Saudi royal family. Bin Laden recruited 4,000 volunteers from his own country and developed close relations with the most radical mujahideen leaders. He also worked closely with the CIA, raising money from private Saudi citizens. By 1984, he was running the Maktab al-Khidamar, an organization set up by the ISI to funnel "money, arms, and fighters from the outside world in the Afghan war."

Since September 11, CIA officials have been claiming they had no direct link to bin Laden. These denials lack credibility. The trial of defendants accused of the 1998 U.S. embassy bombing in Kenya disclosed that the CIA shipped high-powered sniper rifles directly to bin Laden's operation in 1989. Even the Tennessee-based manufacturer of the rifles confirmed this.

Some military analysts and specialists on the weapons trade say the CIA has spent years covering its tracks on its early ties to the Afghan forces.... Despite the ClA's denials, these experts say it was inevitable that the military training in guerrilla tactics and the vast reservoir of money and arms that the CIA provided in Afghanistan would have ended up helping bin Laden and his forces during the 1980s.
"In 1988, with U.S. knowledge, bin Laden created Al Qaeda (The Base): a conglomerate of quasi independent Islamic terrorist cells spread across at least 26 countries," writes Indian journalist Rahul Bhedi. "Washington turned a blind eye to Al-Qaeda, confident that it would not directly impinge on the U.S." After the forced by U.S.

Russophobes Soviet withdrawal, however, bin Laden and thousands of other volunteers returned to their own countries:

Their heightened political consciousness made them realize that countries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt were just as much client regimes of the United States as the Najibullah regime [in Afghanistan] has been of Moscow.

In their home countries they built a formidable constituency-popularly known as "Afghanis"-who combined strong ideological convictions with the guerrilla skills they had acquired in Pakistan and Afghanistan under CIA supervision.

Over the past 10 years, the "Afghani" network has been linked to terrorist attacks not only on U.S. targets, but also in the Philippines, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, France, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, China, Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, and elsewhere. "This is an insane instance of the chickens coming home to roost," one U.S. diplomat in Pakistan told the Los Angeles Times. "You can't plug billions of dollars into an anti-Communist jihad, accept participation from all over the world and ignore the consequences. But we did.

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BBC: al Qaeda Does Not Exist


Text with video:
There is no such thing as "al Qaeda", there is no one on earth who calls himself a member of "al Qaeda". "al Qaeda" is a term made up by the U.S. government to be applied to anyone killed during in the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. There is no formal organization. There is no secret terrorist network. What there is a is a phantom enemy, a boogyman that was easily sold to the American people for the benefit of the Bush Administration and their friends at PNAC.

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http://starkravingviking.blogspot.com/


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Poland admits CIA secret flights, prison confession next?


Text with video:
Polish air traffic control has officially confirmed CIA airplanes did land in their territory in 2003. The admission comes amid reports that Poland also hosted a secret U.S. prison, although that's been denied by the country's leaders. For more analysis, RT talks to Adam Bodnar from the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights.

9/11 Truth Search: Planes didn't take twin towers down


Text with video:
On 9/11, the world watched as two airplanes crashed into the twin towers of the world trade center, both of which collapsed shortly after. This much we know for sure, but for some, the cause of the collapse is still not so clear. Michael T Donly is a part of a group that says the two planes that hit the WTC twin towers could not have destroyed them.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Secrets of the CIA

I found an older documentary on youtube. It is cut into 6 short clips. Putting cement in baby milk, assassinations, torture, installing puppet governments. Most of the world knows the truth. Few Americans do. The CIA and other US covert espionage organizations have only gotten worse. Running drugs, killing, and the profiteering of the connected elite is what the US is about? Silence signifies acceptance.

CIA, State Sponsored Terror













http://thesrv.blogspot.com/2010/01/corporate-thugs.html

http://starkravingviking.blogspot.com/

Domestic Violence & Kangaroo Courts




Robin Shapiro testifies Feb. 17, 2010. More info: http://starkravingviking.blogspot.com...

In America, women stalked, terrorized, raped, and murdered by men get investigated with more attention if the woman is White, has money, and is attractive. Judges and police can then play "Daddy".

The Habeas Corpus debate raged in Connecticut. Should citizens and non-citizens be barred from challenging their illegal detentions and malicious prosecutions? That was part of the public debate that this video is an excerpt from.

Judges, police, prosecutors, legislators, and attorneys pretty much police themselves in the US. Mostly attorneys can sit on a Legislative Judiciary Committee. These lawyers make their money in the Judicial Branch under Judges. Judges are the monarchs of their pay and power. So minions of the Judicial Branch pretend to serve the people in the Legislative Branch. There is not supposed to be co-mingling of the branches. There is supposed to be separation of power.

Whistle blowers are toasted by the system.

There are hours of testimony in videos here:
http://judicialmisconduct.blogspot.co...
If you look for nuggets, the courts are racist, rigged, and law enforcement is about retaliation more so than about justice or criminal correction. I am sending the above link to the Washington DC FBI and US Department of Justice for review. If a judge commits perjury to remain judge another 8 years, he or she should not be given a free pass by legislators. He, or she, should be arrested and prosecuted. Legislators and lawyers who are complicit, should also face arrest and prosecution.

-Steven G. Erickson

Although the abuse is highlighted and exposed in Connecticut, it is a national problem in America. What can be gotten away with in Connecticut is gotten away with in the rest of the country. If such judicial abuse was so prevalent, there would be no worldwide Depression, major banking scandals, and two US Wars of Occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan:
http://thesrv.blogspot.com/2010/01/co...


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http://starkravingviking.blogspot.com/2010/02/crystal-ball-predictions.html

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[CT] Officer Hebert 3rd arrest for domestic-related crimes


Text with video:
Police Officer Arrested For Third Time
Officer On Unpaid Leave, Pending Disciplinary Hearings
February 19, 2008

WINSTEAD, Connecticut -- A Winsted police officer has been arrested three times in the past three months for separate incidents. For the third time, Torrington police officer, Robert Hebert, 33, has been accused of getting violent or out of control. Hebert's last arrest occurred on Saturday. Winsted police said Hebert has been placed on unpaid leave, pending disciplinary hearings, involving a number of different internal policy violations. Officials said the first incident took place in November, when Hebert was charged with carrying a dangerous weapon and breach of peace stemming from threats he made against his wife, with whom he is in the middle of divorce proceedings, according to court documents.
Is this typical police misconduct and brutality in the State of Connecticut?

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Raw Video: Cop Crashes Into Car Killing 2 Teens, Nov. 2009 upload:


Text with video:
Police have released a videotape of a June police cruiser crash that killed two Connecticut teens. The officer was driving 94 miles per hour and was not on an emergency call. He's been charged with manslaughter. (Nov. 18)

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3 cops, 3 towns, 3 arrests


Text with video:
Police from 3 towns and cities in Connecticut have been arrested in separate incidents.

A Connecticut police officer has been charged with sexual assault and...[Aug. '09]


Text with video:
A Connecticut police officer has been charged with sexual assault and placed on administrative leave for allegedly posing as his twin brother to have sex with a woman. (Aug. 24)

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Listen to what is said in video. It has long been rumored that judges, judicial managers, police officers, and Government Union Goon leaders tell legislators what they are allowed to legislate, and what not to. We live in an Organized Crime, Union, Police State! Is Connecticut State Police Commissioner John A. Danaher as big a woman hating racist as Arthur L. Spada is alleged to be?

Diversity in State Police Personnel Practices [March 2009 upload]


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Victim on Secret Police Enemies List


Text with video:
More info, CLICK HERE:
http://thegetjusticecoalition.blogspo...


Steven G. Erickson interviews Stephen Murzin May 22, 2006, about being stabbed 13 times and then arrested when he woke up in the hospital.

Felon on probation, David J. Taylor, wasn't even violated on probation for almost killing 3 people.

Should police officers suck as James Nardella and Scott Thomas get away with paying $10,000 to Connecticut State Register Police Confidential Informants to beat people up, set people up for arrests,and even kill people?

Phillip Inkel was also a victim of police misconduct. Todd Vashon played a role.

Connecticut State Police misconduct is legendary, they shouldn't have a secret "Enemies List" to go after and ruin citizens.

Do we live in a free country, or what?


Police Brutality US Marine gets beaten by Connecticut Police his brother gets beaten by Troop K Connecticut State Police
Misconduct


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Ex-Wife of Police Officer Lets Loose


Text with video:
Ex-Wife of Police Officer Lets Loose. Cathy Ellison talks about ex-husband in East Haven Connecticut, domestic assault, police misconduct, DCF women getting drunk with police officers, drug use of police etc.

This phone interview gets best towards the middle and end.

The East Haven mayor was allegedly caught by police using drugs and police helped cover it up.

Cops allegedly getting drunk with female DCF workers in bars passing out baggies of pot.

East Haven Police Officers were allegedly to drunk and high on drugs to return cruisers to the next shift.

White officers target minorities to keep them out of another primarily "White Only" town.

Police retaliate against landlords that don't want prostitutes living off them for free, video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFJAKd...

http://starkravingviking.blogspot.com/


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stevengerickson@yahoo.com

Steven G. Erickson liveleak.com videos:
http://www.liveleak.com/user/SvenVonErick

We're under Armed Occupation

We the people aren't being served by our government. We're being beaten up, robbed, and killed. Police officers are not to protect and serve us, they're to protect the integrity of the system. A Connecticut State Police Officer told me that. It was his reasoning for having the officers under him give a mugger immunity to put me, the homeowner in prison for a year for resisting being mugged after working 16 hours and coming home.

I don't pay taxes as I lost everything, and my contracting business built over 2 decades, having gone to prison. If you multiply the insanity in my case by 100's of thousands, you can see why America is tanking. You don't use tax dollars to use worthless parasites to ruin taxpayers and break up their families. That is the process that started in downtown America and is working its way out. I went to see legislators and asked them if they want evidence that the Judicial Branch is double the size it should be and is basically just a taxpayer scam. Judiciary Committee legislators don't want evidence, don't want to have a hearing, and don't think they should get evidence from constituents saying so on the record. [video and post]

If I had the money, I'd leave the sinking ship, America. I love my country, I like my fellow Americans, I hate the [snipped] who run the country.



The above is a comment I left in the below Opednews.com article:

America's First Suicide Bomber


By Paul Craig Roberts (about the author)

opednews.com Permalink

Joseph Stack, frustrated American, flew his airplane into an Austin, Texas, office building. He was one of the 79-percent of Americans who have given up on "their" government.

The latest Rasmussen Poll indicates that the vast majority of Americans are convinced that "their" government is totally unresponsive to them, their concerns, and their needs. Rasmussen found that only 21-percent of the American population agree that the U.S. government has the consent of the governed, and that 21-percent is comprised of the political class itself and liberals. Rasmussen concludes that the gap between the American population and the politicians who rule them "may be as big today as the gap between the colonies and England during the 18th century."

Indications are that Joseph Stack was sane. Like Palestinians faced with Israeli jet fighters, helicopter gunships, tanks, missiles and poison gas, Stack realized that he was powerless. A suicide attack was the only weapon left to him.

Stack targeted the IRS, the federal agency that had gratuitously ruined him. He flew his airplane into an office building occupied by 200 members of the IRS. This deliberate plan and the written explanation he left behind segregate him from deranged people who randomly shoot up a Post Office or university campus.

The government and its propaganda ministry do not want to call Stack a terrorist. "Terrorist" is a term the government reserves for Muslims who do not like what Israel does to Palestinians and the U.S. government does to Muslim countries.

But Stack experienced the same frustrations and emotions as Muslims who can't take it any longer and strap on a suicide vest.

"Violence," Stack wrote, "not only is the answer, it is the only answer." Stack concluded that nothing short of violence will get the attention of a government that has turned its back on the American people.

Anger is building up. People are beginning to do unusual things. Terry Hoskins bulldozed his house rather than allow a bank to foreclose on it. The local TV station conducted an online survey and found that 79 percent of respondents agreed with Hoskins' action.

Perhaps the turning point was the federal government's bailout of the investment banks whose reckless misbehavior diminished Americans' retirement savings for the second time in eight years. Now a former head of the most culpable bank is campaigning to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid benefits in order to pay for the bailout. President Obama has obliged him by creating a "deficit commission."

The "deficit commission" will be used to gut Social Security, just as the private insurance health plan is paid for by cutting $500 billion out of Medicare.

It could not be more clear that government represents the interest groups that finance the election campaigns.

Conservatives used to say that Washington's power should be curtailed in behalf of state and local governments that are "closer to the people." But of course state and local governments are also controlled by interest groups.

Consider Florida, for example. In 2004 the storm surge from Hurricane Ivan did considerable damage to the Gulf Coast of the Florida panhandle. At Inlet Beach in Walton County, the surge claimed two beachfront homes and washed away enough of the high ground as to leave other homes vulnerable to the next storm.

People wanted to armor their homes with some form of sea wall. When the county gave the go ahead, two houses on the West end hired engineers who constructed a barrier made of rows of tubes 60 feet long filled with sand, each weighing about 70 tons. The sand-colored tubes were buried under many tons of white sand trucked in, and sea oats were planted. It was a perfect solution, and an expensive one -- $250,000.

Just East of the two homes, Ivan washed away a section of beach front road and left three houses built on pilings sitting on the beach. Last year government with FEMA money rebuilt the section of washed away beachfront road and armored it and two adjacent houses. The government used interlocking iron or steel panels that it drove down into the sand, leaving six to seven feet of the rusty metal above ground. Hundreds of truck loads of sand were brought in to cover the unsightly sea wall.

It didn't require a storm to wash away the loose sand and leave the ugly rusty metal exposed on the beach. The first high tide did the trick. Residents and vacationers are left with an eyesore on a beach ranked as the third most beautiful in the world.

The ugly rusty barrier built by the government is still there. But the intelligent approach taken by the private homeowners has been condemned to death. As I write, heavy equipment is on the beach slashing open the tubes and piling up the sand to be carried away. The homes will be left standing on the edge and will be undermined by the next hurricane.

Why did this happen? The official reason given by Florida's Department of Environmental Policy is that the county could only issue a temporary permit. Only DEP can issue a permanent permit, and as the homeowners don't have DEP's permanent permit, out goes the expensive, carefully engineered and unobtrusive sea wall.

This is the way government "works" for ordinary citizens. For the vast majority of people, government exists as a persecution mechanism that takes great pleasure in ruining their lives and pocketbooks. The DEP has inflicted heavy stress on the homeowners, now elderly, and could bring on a heart attack or stroke.

The real explanation for DEP's merciless treatment of citizens is that the agency is powerless against developers. It cannot stop them from destroying the Everglades, from destroying wetlands, from polluting rivers, or from building in front of the coastal setback line. As the state politicians protect developers from the DEP, the only people against whom the DEP can use its authority are unrepresented citizens. Frustrated itself, the DEP lashes out at powerless citizens.

In the small settlement of Inlet Beach, there are numerous examples of developers getting what they want. Over the years hurricanes have eaten away the beach and the dunes. As this occurs the setback line for construction moves inland. Back when the real estate bubble was being created by Alan Greenspan's irresponsibly low-interest-rate policy, small beach front lots were going for one million dollars. In the midst of this frenzy, a well connected developer bought a beach front lot for $30,000.

The lot was not recognizable as such. It sits on flat land on the beach. Decades ago it was a lot, but as the Gulf ate away the coast, the lot is now positioned in front of the setback line. The developer got the lot for the low price, because no one had been able to get a building permit for years.

But the developer got a permit. According to the head of the neighborhood association at the time, the developer went to a DEP official, whose jurisdiction was another part of the state and who was a former employee of the developer, and was issued a permit. Because of its exposure, during the real estate boom the house sat unsold for years. The community, which had opposed the project, concluded that the developer just wanted to show that he was more powerful than the law.

Currently, on six acres next to a state park on the East end of Inlet Beach another well connected developer has obtained DEP permission to compromise Walton County's highest and last remaining sand dunes held in place with native vegetation in order to build 20 houses. To protect the houses, DEP has issued a permit for the construction of a fifteen foot high man-made sand wall, a marketing device that will offer little protection.

According to information sent to me, nine of the houses will be seaward of the Coastal Construction Control line. Apparently this was a result of the developer being represented by a former county attorney, who convinced the commissioners to allow the developer to plan on the basis of the 1996 FEMA flood plain maps instead of using the current 2007 maps. Since 1996 there have been a number of hurricanes, such as Dennis and Ivan, and the set back line has moved inward.

When state and local governments allow developers to set aside the rules governing flood-plain development, they create insurance losses that drive up the insurance premiums for everyone in the community. The disturbance of the natural dunes could result in a breach through which storm surge can damage nearby properties. Instead of protecting people, government is allowing a developer to impose costs of his project on others.

Joseph Stack, Terry Hoskins, and 79 percent of the American population came to the realization that government does not represent them. Government represents monied interests for whom it bends the rules designed to protect the public, thus creating a legally privileged class.

In contrast, as at the West end of Inlet Beach, ordinary citizens are being driven into the ground.

This is what we call "freedom and democracy."

Paul Craig Roberts, a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, has held numerous academic appointments. He has been reporting shocking cases of prosecutorial abuse for two decades. A new (more...)



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I wrote much tamer letters to the editor printed in newspapers pre 9-11. I was followed around, threatened by Connecticut State Police. My emails were read to set me up. My phone was tapped. A police informant was offered a bounty to arrange for me to be taken down. It is never a life that I thought that would be possible in a "Free Country".


stevengerickson@yahoo.com

Saturday, February 20, 2010

World Class International Scumbags

Some of the biggest scumbags in the world either have ties to Connecticut, or live in Connecticut ...

From the Kenny's Sideshow blog:

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Criminal Traitor Alexander Haig Finally Dies




Former teammates Haig and Kissinger discuss old times in 2006.










In America corrupt military and political figures like Haig get to live out their lives in freedom instead of paying for their crimes in a prison cell.

The bottom line is that Haig helped orchestrate the killing of an untold number of people across the world including tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers in Vietnam. He played key roles in the Nixon, Ford and Reagen administrations that contributed greatly to the decline of America.

Good riddance.


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Wednesday, November 25, 2009

The Mafia, CIA, and George Bush


Image stolen [from here]

The Mafia, CIA and George Bush (Part 1)


Text w/ video:
Pete Brewton teaches journalism and law at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas. The author of the bestseller The Mafia, CIA and George Bush, he is an award-winning journalist with 15 years reporting experience at the Houston Chronicle and the Houston Post. He practiced law in Houston for five years.

Mr. Brewton holds a Bachelors degree in philosophy from Rice University, a Masters degree in astronomy from New Mexico State University, a Masters degree from the American Graduate School of International Management, and a law degree from the University of Texas. He travels frequently to help with his mothers working cattle ranch in Lampasas County.

Mr. Brewton has won more than 20 reporting awards, including a Katie Award from the Dallas Press Club, first place in public service from the Texas APME, and the PEN Center USA West Literary Award.

He is the author of the book The Mafia, CIA and George Bush, which is based on his investigations of powerful Texas businessmen, politicians, and their connections to the savings and loans scandals of the 1980s. Brewton also explores the relationship that George H. W. Bush had with Ted Shackley, Carl E. Jenkins, Paul Helliwell, Rafael 'Chi Chi' Quintero and Thomas G. Clines.

The Mafia, CIA and George Bush (Part 2)


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Carlos "The Little Man" Marcello (February 6, 1910 - March 3, 1993) was an Italian-American mobster who became the boss of the New Orleans crime family, during the 1940s.

By the end of 1947, Marcello had taken control of Louisiana's illegal gambling network. He had also joined forces with New York Mob associate Meyer Lansky in order to skim money from some of the most important casinos in the New Orleans area. According to former members of the Chicago Outfit, Marcello was also assigned a cut of the money skimmed from Las Vegas casinos, in exchange for providing "muscle" in Florida real estate deals. By this time, Marcello had been selected as the "Godfather" of the New Orleans Mafia, by the family's capos and the Commission. He was to hold this position for the next 30 years.

On March 24, 1959, Marcello appeared before a United States Senate committee investigating organized crime. Serving as Chief Counsel to the committee was Robert F. Kennedy; his brother, Senator John F. Kennedy, was a member of the committee. In response to committee questioning, Marcello invoked the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution, in refusing to answer any questions relating to his background, activities and associates.

After becoming President, John Kennedy appointed his brother Robert as U.S. Attorney General. The two men worked closely together on a wide variety of issues including the attempt to tackle organized crime. In March 1961 Attorney General Robert Kennedy, acting on requests which had been first made to the Eisenhower administration by former Louisiana state police superintendent Francis Grevemberg, took steps to deport Marcello to Guatemala (the country Marcello had falsely listed as his birthplace). On April 4, of that year, Marcello was arrested by the authorities and taken forcibly to Guatemala.

It did not take Marcello long to get back into the United States. Undercover informants reported that Marcello made several threats against John F. Kennedy, at one time uttering the traditional Sicilian death threat curse, "Take the stone from my shoe." Some of those who knew him, however, suggested that Marcello did not know enough Italian to utter such a threat. In September 1962, Marcello told private investigator Edward Becker that, "A dog will continue to bite you if you cut off its tail...," (meaning Attorney General Robert Kennedy.), "...whereas if you cut off the dog's head...," (meaning President Kennedy), "... it would cease to cause trouble." Becker reported that Marcello, "clearly stated that he was going to arrange to have President Kennedy killed in some way." Marcello told another informant that he would need to take out "insurance" for the assassination by, ".... setting up some nut to take the fall for the job, just like they do in Sicily."

Just before Kennedy was assassinated on 22 November 1963, Dallas, Texas nightclub owner Jack Ruby made contact with Marcello, and Tampa, Florida boss Santo Trafficante, about a labor problem he was having with the American Guild of Variety Artists (AGVA). Ruby was a longtime associate of the Chicago Outfit and was sent to Dallas to open up rackets for the Outfit, all while under the umbrella of the New Orleans branch of La Cosa Nostra, whose sphere of influence included Dallas.

After Kennedy's assassination, the Federal Bureau of Investigation investigated Marcello. They came to the conclusion that Marcello was not involved in the assassination. On the other hand, they also said that they, "... did not believe Carlos Marcello was a significant organized crime figure," and that Marcello earned his living, "... as a tomato salesman and real estate investor." As a result of this investigation, the Warren Commission concluded that there was no direct link between Ruby and Marcello.

In 1966, Marcello was arrested in New York City after having met with the National Commission. The meeting was reportedly called because Marcello's leadership was being challenged by Trafficante Jr. and Anthony Carolla, the son of Marcello's predecessor as boss of the New Orleans Combine. The Commission had reportedly ruled in Marcello's favor just before the police burst in.

Marcello was then charged with consorting with known felons. After a long, drawn-out legal battle, Marcello was convicted of assaulting an FBI agent whom he had punched in the face on his return to Louisiana. Sentenced to two years in prison, he served less than six months, and was released on 12 March 1971.

The Mafia, CIA and George Bush (Part 3)


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Pete Brewton teaches journalism and law at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas. The author of the bestseller The Mafia, CIA and George Bush, he is an award-winning journalist with 15 years reporting experience at the Houston Chronicle and the Houston Post. He practiced law in Houston for five years.

James Addison Baker, III (born April 28, 1930) is an American attorney, politician, political administrator, and political advisor.

He served as the Chief of Staff in President Ronald Reagan's first administration and in the final year of the administration of President George H. W. Bush. Baker also served as Secretary of the Treasury from 1985-1988 in the second Reagan administration, and Secretary of State in the George H. W. Bush administration. He is also the namesake of the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University in Houston, Texas.

Baker served in the United States Marine Corps (19521954), attaining the rank of First Lieutenant and later rising to Captain in the United States Marine Corps Reserve.

From 1957 to 1969, and then from 1973 to 1975 he practiced law at the law firm of Andrews & Kurth.

Baker's first wife, the former Mary Stuart McHenry, was active in the Republican Party, working on the Congressional campaigns of George H. W. Bush. Originally Baker had been a Democrat, although he had been too busy trying to succeed in a competitive law firm to worry about politics and he considered himself apolitical. His wife's influence and enthusiasm led Baker to both politics as a career and the Republican Party. He was a regular tennis partner with Bush at the Houston Country Club in the late 1950s. When Bush decided to run for the U.S. Senate in 1969, he supported Baker's decision to run for the Congressional seat he was vacating. However, Baker changed his mind about running when his wife was diagnosed with cancer. She died of breast cancer in February 1970.

Bush then encouraged Baker to become active in politics to deal with the grief, something Bush had done when his daughter, Pauline Robinson (19491953), died of leukemia. Baker became chairman of Bush's Senate campaign in Harris County. Though Bush lost to Lloyd Bentsen in the election, Baker continued in politics, becoming the Finance Chairman of the Republican Party in 1971. The following year, he was selected as the Gulf Coast Regional Chairman for the Richard Nixon presidential campaign. In 1973 and 1974, Baker returned to the full time practice of law at Andrews & Kurth.

He served as Undersecretary of Commerce under President Gerald Ford in 1975 and ran Ford's unsuccessful re-election campaign in 1976. In 1978, Baker ran unsuccessfully to become Attorney General of Texas, losing the election to future Governor Mark White.

The Mafia, CIA and George Bush (Part 4)


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Pete Brewton teaches journalism and law at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas. The author of the bestseller The Mafia, CIA and George Bush, he is an award-winning journalist with 15 years reporting experience at the Houston Chronicle and the Houston Post. He practiced law in Houston for five years.

Palmer National of Washington, D.C. is a bank in Washington, D.C.. It was founded in 1983 by Harvey McLean, Jr. (a businessman from Shreveport, Louisiana. It was initially funded with $2.8 million to McLean from Herman K. Beebe. Oliver North used this bank during the Iran-Contra scandal by funneling money from his shell organization, the "National Endowment for the Preservation of Liberty," through Palmer National Bank to the Contras.

Herman K. Beebe, from Louisiana, was a convicted felon and Mafia associate. He had many connections to the intelligence community and was considered godfather of the dirty Texas S&Ls. He initially started his career in the insurance business and eventually banking, specifically; Savings and Loan Banks. Herman Beebe played a key role in the Savings and Loan scandals. Houston Post reporter Pete Brewton linked Beebe to a dozen failed S & L's. Altogether, Herman Beebe controlled, directly or indirectly, at least 55 banks and 29 S & L's in eight states. What is particularly interesting about Beebe's participation in these banks and savings and loans is his unique background. Herman Beebe had served nine months in federal prison for bank fraud and had impeccable credentials as a financier for New Orleans-based organized crime figures, including Vincent and Carlos Marcello. Additionally, according to ABC News Beebe invested money in Robert Tilton.

It was thought that Harvey McLean Jr. funded the startup of Palmer National Bank. It was actually Herman K. Beebe Sr. close friend and business associate of McLean. It has been reported that Beebe had numerous connections to New Orleans Mafia boss Carlos Marcello, associations with Mafia families in New York and California, and links to the Teamsters. Marcello has extensive business ties with fellow Louisiana organized crime figure. Herman Beebe was involved in a scheme in the early 1970s to smuggle guns and explosives to anti-Castro Cubans operating in Mexico.

In 1983 Beebe loaned McLean $2.8 million from his Bossier Bank and Trust in Bossier City, La. McLean owned Paris Savings and Loan of Paris, Texas. The $2.8 million loan provided the majority of the money that was used to initially capitalize Palmer Bank. Palmer National Bank loaned money to individuals and organizations that were involved in covert aid to the Nicaraguan Contras. In February 1985 the National Endowment for the Preservation of Liberty (NEPL), a conservative foundation run by Iran-Contra figure Carl "Spitz" Channell, who, as a director of International Business Communications, became a principal contractor for the OPD (now-defunct Office for Public Diplomacy). Channell secured $650,000 from Palmer National to illegally purchase weapons for the Nicaraguan Contras. Channell was one of the few private citizens convicted of crimes in the Iran-Contra scandal. He was the first to plead guilty to illegal activities in the scandal, and was placed on two years' probation for illegally using NEPL to help Oliver North raise donations for military supplies for the Contras. The money went through NEPL's account at Palmer National to a Banking in Swiss bank account used by North for Contra funding and the secret arms deals with Iran. NEPL raised about $10 million for the Contras after Congress had banned such military aid. In addition, the National Conservative Political Action Committee(NCPAC) borrowed more than $400,000 from Palmer National, as did political action committees for Senator Bob Dole (R-KS.) and then-Rep.Jack Kemp (R-NY).

A 1985 report by the comptroller of the currency listed Palmer as one of 12 national banks that Beebe had possible influence or control over. Further, Beebe has been implicated in the failure of at least 12 savings and loans (including Vernon Savings in Dallas and Continental Savings in Houston). In April 1985, just after Beebe had been convicted of defrauding the Small Business Administration and two months before the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation shut down Bossier, the $2.8 million loan from Bossier that established Palmer was transferred to San Jacinto Savings of Beaumont, Texas. Beebe pleaded guilty to fraud in connection with a loan at State Savings in Dallas and has twice been successfully prosecuted.

The Mafia, CIA and George Bush (Part 5)


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In American political jargon, an October surprise is a news event with the potential to influence the outcome of an election, particularly one for the U.S. presidency. The reference to the month of October is because the Tuesday after the first Monday in November is the date for national elections (as well as many state and local elections), and therefore events that take place in late October have greater potential to influence the decisions of prospective voters.

The term came into use shortly after the 1972 presidential election between Republican incumbent Richard Nixon and Democrat George McGovern, when the United States was in the fourth year of negotiations to end the very long and domestically divisive Vietnam War. Twelve days before the election day of November 7, on October 26, 1972, the United States' chief negotiator, the presidential National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, appeared at a press conference held at the White House and announced, "We believe that peace is at hand." Nixon, despite having vowed to end the unpopular war during his presidential election campaign four years earlier, had failed to either cease hostilities or gradually bring about an end to the war. Nixon was nevertheless already widely considered to be assured of an easy reelection victory against McGovern, but Kissinger's "peace is at hand" declaration may have increased Nixon's already high standing with the electorate. In the event, Nixon outpolled McGovern in every state except Massachusetts and achieved a 20 point lead in the nationwide popular vote. The fighting ended in 1973, but the last soldiers didn't leave Vietnam until 1975.

Since that election, the term "October surprise" has been used preemptively during campaign season by partisans of one side to discredit late-campaign news by the other side.

During the Iran hostage crisis, the Republican challenger Ronald Reagan feared a last-minute deal to release the hostages, which might earn incumbent Jimmy Carter enough votes to win re-election in the 1980 presidential election. As it happened, in the days prior to the election, press coverage was consumed with the Iranian government's decision—and Carter's simultaneous announcement—that the hostages would not be released until after the election.

It was first written about in a Jack Anderson article in the Washington Post in the fall of 1980, in which he alleged that the Carter administration was preparing a major military operation in Iran for rescuing U.S. hostages in order to help him get reelected. Subsequent allegations surfaced against Reagan alleging that his team had impeded the hostage release to negate the potential boost to the Carter campaign.

After the release of the hostages on the same day as Reagan's inauguration on January 20, 1981, some charged that the Reagan campaign made a secret deal with the Iranian government whereby the Iranians would hold the hostages until Reagan was inaugurated, ensuring that Carter would lose the election. Gary Sick, former Naval intelligence officer, and member of the National Security council under Presidents Ford, Carter, and Reagan made the accusation in a New York Times editorial. Initial response from Congress was hostile: House Democrats refused to authorize an inquiry, and Senate Republicans killed a $600,000 appropriation for a probe. Some former hostages sent an open letter demanding an inquiry. In subsequent Congressional testimony, Sick said that the popular media had distorted and misrepresented the accusers, reducing them to "gross generalizations" and "generic conspiracy theorists." Sick presented three main grounds for suspicion: 1. The disappearance of then-CIA Director William Casey during the time he is alleged to have been making the deal. 2. The refusal of both the F.B.I. and U.S. Customs to release records about Cyrus Hashemi, alleged to be working for both the Carter administration and Casey at this time. 3. "There is a considerable body of evidence that military equipment began to flow in substantial quantities from Israel to Iran almost immediately after the Reagan inauguration and that these shipments were known to, and approved, by the new administration."

Bani-Sadr, the former President of Iran, has also stated "that the Reagan campaign struck a deal with Teheran to delay the release of the hostages in 1980," asserting that "by the month before the American Presidential election in November 1980, many in Iran's ruling circles were openly discussing the fact that a deal had been made between the Reagan campaign team and some Iranian religious leaders in which the hostages' release would be delayed until after the election so as to prevent President Carter's re-election." He makes the same charge in "My Turn to Speak: Iran, the Revolution & Secret Deals with the U.S."

The Mafia, CIA and George Bush (Part 6)


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Lloyd Millard Bentsen, Jr. (February 11, 1921 - May 23, 2006) was a four-term United States senator (1971 until 1993) from Texas and the Democratic Party nominee for Vice President in 1988 on the Michael Dukakis ticket. He also served in the House of Representatives from 1949 to 1955. In his later political life, he was Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and the U.S. Treasury Secretary during the early years of the Clinton administration.

For 16 years, Bentsen worked in the financial sector in Houston. He was successful and became very secure financially. By 1970, he had become president of Lincoln Consolidated, a financial holding institution.

Following his successful primary campaign, which upset liberal incumbent Ralph Yarborough for the 1970 Democratic nomination for a Texas seat in the U.S. Senate, Bentsen resigned all management positions and directorships.

Later that year, Bentsen went on to win the general election when he was pitted against Congressman and future President George H. W. Bush. On election night, Bentsen beat Bush convincingly.

Beginning in 1974, Bentsen campaigned for the Democratic Party's 1976 presidential nomination. In 1974 he visited 30 states and raised $350,000 at a single fundraiser in Texas. Bentsen formally announced his candidacy on February 17, 1975, and in the early part of that year he had already raised over $1 million for his campaign; only George Wallace of Alabama and Henry M. "Scoop" Jackson of Washington had raised more money by that point. Bentsen did not organize effectively on a national level, and many observers believed the freshman senator was running without any real hope of winning the nomination, hoping instead to secure a vice-presidential nomination.

Wallace and Jackson were considered to be the two main contenders for the moderate to conservative voters to whom Bentsen would appeal; early in the campaign few foresaw Jimmy Carter of Georgia also effectively appealing to that group.

By October 1975 Bentsen, generating little national attention or significance in the polls, scaled back his campaign to a limited effort in areas of 8 to 10 states, hoping for a deadlocked convention. In the first state contest Bentsen vigorously contested, he managed only 1.6% of the vote in Mississippi. Two weeks later Bentsen staked the remainder of his campaign and resources in neighboring Oklahoma but finished third with only 12%. A few days later Bentsen shut down his national campaign, staying in the race only as a favorite son in Texas. However, in the May 1, 1976, primary Jimmy Carter won 92 of Texas' 98 delegates. The eventual nominee and president, Carter was later quoted as saying he had expected a much stronger showing by Bentsen but that Bentsen's failure to campaign nationally had ended his hopes.

Firmly ensconced in Washington, Bentsen was overwhelmingly re-elected to the Senate in 1976, 1982, and 1988. He defeated sitting Republican congressmen from "safe" House seats in all four of his Senate elections, including Bush in 1970. In 1976, he ended the career of Alan Steelman of Dallas. In 1982, he defeated James M. Collins of Dallas. In 1988, he defeated Beau Boulter of Amarillo. Bentsen was also on the ballot as the Democratic vice presidential nominee that year; he could seek both offices under the 1960 "Johnson law."

Bentsen was known as a moderate Democrat. His support for abortion rights, the Equal Rights Amendment, and civil rights was balanced by his endorsement of public school prayer, capital punishment, tax cuts, and deregulation of industry. He generally supported business interests in the arena of economic policy and swiftly rose to become a power to be reckoned with on the Senate Finance Committee.

Bentsen's reputation as a moderate Democrat served to alienate him not only from supporters of Ralph Yarborough, but from prominent national liberals, as well. Indeed, during the 1970 Senate race, the Keynesian economist John Kenneth Galbraith endorsed George Bush, arguing that if Bentsen were elected to the Senate, he would invariably become the face of a new, more conservative Texas Democratic Party, and that the long-term interests of Texas liberalism demanded Bentsen's defeat.

The Mafia, CIA and George Bush (Part 7)


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The savings and loan crisis of the 1980s and 1990s (commonly referred to as the S&L crisis) was the failure of 745 savings and loan associations (S&Ls aka thrifts). An S&L association is a financial institution in the United States that accepts savings deposits and makes mortgage loans. The ultimate cost of the crisis is estimated to have totaled around $160.1 billion, about $124.6 billion of which was directly paid for by the US government—that is, the US taxpayer, either directly or through charges on their savings and loan accounts — which contributed to the large budget deficits of the early 1990s.

The concomitant slowdown in the finance industry and the real estate market may have been a contributing cause of the 19901991 economic recession. Between 1986 and 1991, the number of new homes constructed per year dropped from 1.8 million to 1 million, which was at the time the lowest rate since World War II.

The United States Congress granted all thrifts in 1980, including savings and loan associations, the power to make consumer and commercial loans and to issue transaction accounts. Designed to help the thrift industry retain its deposit base and to improve its profitability, the Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act (DIDMCA) of 1980 allowed thrifts to make consumer loans up to 20 percent of their assets, issue credit cards, accept negotiable order of withdrawal (NOW) accounts from individuals and nonprofit organizations, and invest up to 20 percent of their assets in commercial real estate loans.

The damage to S&L operations led Congress to act, passing a bill in September 1981 allowing S&Ls to sell their mortgage loans and use the cash generated to seek better returns; the losses created by the sales were to be amortized over the life of the loan, and any losses could also be offset against taxes paid over the preceding 10 years. This all made S&Ls eager to sell their loans. The buyers—major Wall Street firms—were quick to take advantage of the S&Ls' lack of expertise, buying at 60%-90% of value and then transforming the loans by bundling them as, effectively, government-backed bonds (by virtue of Ginnie Mae, Freddie Mac, or Fannie Mae guarantees). S&Ls were one group buying these bonds, holding $150 billion by 1986, and being charged substantial fees for the transactions.

In 1982, the Garn-St Germain Depository Institutions Act was passed and increased the proportion of assets that thrifts could hold in consumer and commercial real estate loans and allowed thrifts to invest 5 percent of their assets in commercial loans until January 1, 1984, when this percentage increased to 10 percent.

A large number of S&L customers' defaults and bankruptcies ensued, and the S&Ls that had overextended themselves were forced into insolvency proceedings themselves.

The US government agency FSLIC, which at the time insured S&L accounts in the same way the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation insures commercial bank accounts, then had to repay all the depositors whose money was lost. From 1986 to 1989, FSLIC closed or otherwise resolved 296 institutions with total assets of $125 billion. An even more traumatic period followed, with the creation of the Resolution Trust Corporation in 1989 and that agencys resolution by mid-1995 of an additional 747 thrifts.

A Federal Reserve Bank panel stated the resulting taxpayer bailout ended up being even larger than it would have been because moral hazard and adverse selection incentives that compounded the systems losses.

There also were state-chartered S&Ls that failed. Some state insurance funds failed, requiring state taxpayer bailouts.

Silverado Savings and Loan collapsed in 1988, costing taxpayers $1.3 billion. Neil Bush, son of then Vice President of the United States George H. W. Bush, was Director of Silverado at the time. Neil Bush was accused of giving himself a loan from Silverado, but he denied all wrongdoing.

The US Office of Thrift Supervision investigated Silverado's failure and determined that Neil Bush had engaged in numerous "breaches of his fiduciary duties involving multiple conflicts of interest." Although Bush was not indicted on criminal charges, a civil action was brought against him and the other Silverado directors by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation; it was eventually settled out of court, with Bush paying $50,000 as part of the settlement, the Washington Post reported.

As a director of a failing thrift, Bush voted to approve $100 million in what were ultimately bad loans to two of his business partners. And in voting for the loans, he failed to inform fellow board members at Silverado Savings & Loan that the loan applicants were his business partners.

The Mafia, CIA and George Bush (Part 8)


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Pete Brewton teaches journalism and law at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas. The author of the bestseller The Mafia, CIA and George Bush, he is an award-winning journalist with 15 years reporting experience at the Houston Chronicle and the Houston Post. He practiced law in Houston for five years.

Mr. Brewton holds a Bachelors degree in philosophy from Rice University, a Masters degree in astronomy from New Mexico State University, a Masters degree from the American Graduate School of International Management, and a law degree from the University of Texas. He travels frequently to help with his mothers working cattle ranch in Lampasas County.

Mr. Brewton has won more than 20 reporting awards, including a Katie Award from the Dallas Press Club, first place in public service from the Texas APME, and the PEN Center USA West Literary Award.

He is the author of the book The Mafia, CIA and George Bush, which is based on his investigations of powerful Texas businessmen, politicians, and their connections to the savings and loans scandals of the 1980s. Brewton also explores the relationship that George H. W. Bush had with Ted Shackley, Carl E. Jenkins, Paul Helliwell, Rafael 'Chi Chi' Quintero and Thomas G. Clines.

The Mafia, CIA and George Bush (Part 9)


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Silverado Savings and Loan collapsed in 1988, costing taxpayers $1.3 billion. Neil Bush, son of then Vice President of the United States George H. W. Bush, was Director of Silverado at the time. Neil Bush was accused of giving himself a loan from Silverado, but he denied all wrongdoing.

The US Office of Thrift Supervision investigated Silverado's failure and determined that Neil Bush had engaged in numerous "breaches of his fiduciary duties involving multiple conflicts of interest." Although Bush was not indicted on criminal charges, a civil action was brought against him and the other Silverado directors by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation; it was eventually settled out of court, with Bush paying $50,000 as part of the settlement, the Washington Post reported.

As a director of a failing thrift, Bush voted to approve $100 million in what were ultimately bad loans to two of his business partners. And in voting for the loans, he failed to inform fellow board members at Silverado Savings & Loan that the loan applicants were his business partners.

Neil Bush paid a $50,000 fine and was banned from banking activities for his role in taking down Silverado, which cost taxpayers $1.3 billion. A Resolution Trust Corporation Suit against Bush and other officers of Silverado was settled in 1991 for $26.5 million.

As a result, the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act of 1989 (FIRREA) dramatically changed the savings and loan industry and its federal regulation. The highlights of the legislation, signed into law August 9, 1989, were: 1. The Federal Home Loan Bank Board (FHLBB) and the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation (FSLIC) were abolished.
2. The Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS), a bureau of the Treasury Department, was created to charter, regulate, examine, and supervise savings institutions.
3. The Federal Housing Finance Board (FHFB) was created as an independent agency to oversee the 12 federal home loan banks (also called district banks).
4. The Savings Association Insurance Fund (SAIF) replaced the FSLIC as an ongoing insurance fund for thrift institutions (like the FDIC, the FSLIC was a permanent corporation that insured savings and loan accounts up to $100,000). SAIF is administered by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
5. The Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) was established to dispose of failed thrift institutions taken over by regulators after January 1, 1989. The RTC will make insured deposits at those institutions available to their customers.
6. FIRREA gives both Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae additional responsibility to support mortgages for low- and moderate-income families.

While not part of the savings and loan crisis, many other banks failed. Between 1980 and 1994 more than 1,600 banks insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) were closed or received FDIC financial assistance.

From 1986 to 1995, the number of US federally insured savings and loans in the United States declined from 3,234 to 1,645. This was primarily, but not exclusively, due to unsound real estate lending.

The market share of S&Ls for single family mortgage loans went from 53% in 1975 to 30% in 1990. US General Accounting Office estimated cost of the crisis to around USD $160.1 billion, about $124.6 billion of which was directly paid for by the US government from 1986 to 1996. That figure does not include thrift insurance funds used before 1986 or after 1996. It also does not include state run thrift insurance funds or state bailouts.

The US government ultimately appropriated 105 billion dollars to resolve the crisis. After banks repaid loans through various procedures, there was a net loss to taxpayers of approximately $124 billion dollars by the end of 1999.

The concomitant slowdown in the finance industry and the real estate market may have been a contributing cause of the 19901991 economic recession. Between 1986 and 1991, the number of new homes constructed dropped from 1.8 to 1 million, the lowest rate since World War II.

Some commentators believe that a taxpayer-funded government bailout related to mortgages during the savings and loan crisis may have created a moral hazard and acted as encouragement to lenders to make similar higher risk loans during the 2007 subprime mortgage financial crisis.

The Mafia, CIA and George Bush (Part 10)


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Gulf and Western Industries, Inc., for a number of years known as Gulf+Western, was an American conglomerate.

Gulf and Western's prosaic origins date to a manufacturer named Michigan Bumper Co. founded in 1934, though Charles Bluhdorn treated his 1958 takeover of what was then Michigan Plating & Stamping as its "founding" for the purpose of later anniversaries.

Under Bluhdorn the company diversified widely, leaving behind things like stamping metal bumpers not only for communications properties like Paramount Pictures (1966) but also clothing (Kayser-Roth, which happened to own the Miss Universe pageant because it had bought Pacific Mills, which had invented the pageant to sell its Catalina brand of swimsuits), APS Holding Corp. auto parts, New Jersey Zinc (1966), the South Puerto Rico Sugar Company in La Romana, Dominican Republic (1967), the Associates First Capital Corporation, a financial services company (1968), Consolidated Cigars (1968), Stax Records (1968), Sega (1969), Simon and Schuster (1975), Madison Square Garden and by extension the New York Rangers and New York Knicks (1977) and Simmons Bedding Company (1979).

The company also purchased Desilu Productions from Lucille Ball in 1967, which included most of Ball's television product, as well as such properties as Star Trek and Mission: Impossible (It and its successor companies would make millions on both series over the following decades with such projects as Star Trek's various hit follow-up TV projects and films, beginning in the late 1970s). On June 5, 1980, Gulf+Western unveiled an electric car, powered by a zinc chloride battery that would hold a charge for several hours and permit speeds of up to 60 miles per hour. By year's end, however, the U.S. Department of Energy (which had invested $15 million in the project) reported that the battery had 65% less power than predicted and could be recharged only by highly trained personnel.

In 1983 Bluhdorn died of a heart attack on a plane en route home from the sugar plantation to New York headquarters, and the board bypassed president David Judelson and named senior vice president Martin S. Davis, who had come up through Paramount Pictures, as the new Chief Executive Officer.

Davis slimmed down the company's wilder diversifications and focused it on entertainment, and sold all of its non-entertainment and non-publishing assets. In 1981, former officials of Gulf and Western's Natural Resources Division led a buyout of New Jersey Zinc and made it a subsidiary of Horsehead Industries, Inc. In 1983, Gulf & Western sold Consolidated Cigar Corporation to five of its senior managers. Also in 1983, Gulf+Western sold the U.S. assets of Sega to pinball manufacturer Bally Manufacturing Corporation. The Japanese assets of Sega were purchased by a group of investors led by David Rosen and Hayao Nakayama. South Puerto Sugar was sold to an investment group including The Fanjul Brothers in 1984. In 1985, APS auto parts, Kayser-Roth clothing and Simmons Bedding were sold to the Wickes Companies. The company restructured, subsequently renamed itself Paramount Communications in 1989, and promptly sold The Associates to the Ford Motor Company. * The Talking Heads song "Puzzling Evidence" which is about the commercialization of America mentions the conglomerate in the line "With your Gulf and Western and your Mastercard, got what you wanted and lost what you had". * In Mel Brooks' 1976 film, Silent Movie, the main characters make a colorized silent film to prevent "Engulf & Devour" from taking over a film studio. This was in reference to the Gulf+Western takeover of Paramount Pictures in 1966. * In the Animaniacs episode "This Pun For Hire", a rare and valuable statue serves as a plot device - when one of the characters tries to run off with it, she says that she "claims it in the name of Gulf+Western", and Yakko concludes she works for Paramount. By the time the episode aired, G+W had ceased to exist.

The Mafia, CIA and George Bush (Part 11)


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The below re-posted [from here]

The War on Drugs - a Bush Family Production

The World's #1 Drug Dealer of All Time

From 1976 to 1979, Papa Bush directed the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). In 1979 he made his first try to become President of the United States. He lost the Republican Party nomination to Ronald Reagan who asked Bush to be his Vice-President. Bush became Vice- President in 1980 and headed the National Security Council's "Crisis Management Team". Mr. Bush was busy during his term as Vice-President becoming the largest crack cocaine dealer in the World.

After becoming the World's #1 Drug Dealer during his term in office as Vice-President, in 1988, George Bush was elected President. The San Jose Mercury News in August, 1996, in an expose by reporter Gary Webb based on court records described how the Nicaraguan Contras with the backing of the Reagan-Bush administration, flooded the streets of Los Angeles with crack cocaine during 1983-87, supplying gangs like the Crips and Bloods. The Executive Intelligence Review (EIR) reported on September 20, 1996 that this was done while George Bush was overseeing the entire operation along with Oliver North (of Iran-Contra fame). As a direct result, there were 100,000 to 200,000 people imprisoned in America on drug charges.

An article, "CIA Genl. Counsel: Contra Drug Records May Not Exist" published in The New Federalist on September 30, 1996 reports that Jeff Smith, General Counsel of the CIA has "acknowledged--for the first time-- that records of such activities may not exist, for the reason that U.S. government officials may have been involved in privatized, 'off-line' secret operations."
The article goes on to say that the activities of Oliver North, Richard Secord, Felix Rodriguez, and others, were all supervised by George Bush and that the operation was actually run outside the "official" CIA through private networks and contractors. Apparently, such covert operations are permitted under the 1981 Executive Order 12333, and under National Security Decision Directives 2, 3, and others.

At a Washington, D.C. press conference on Sept. 19, 1996, EIR Washington bureau chief Bill Jones, Law Editor Edward Spannuas, Counterintelligence Editor Jeffery Steinberg, and EIR analyst Gail Billington, released a 120-page special multi-client report, '
Would a President Bob Dole Prosecute Drug Super-Kingpin George Bush?' which documents the role of the former Vice President and President, in overseeing the biggest cocaine-smuggling operations of the 1980s. Steinberg reviewed many of Reagan Presidential Executive Orders and National Security Decision Directives, many now declassified, that placed Vice President Bush -- not the CIA -- directly in charge of the Contra operation. Although active and former CIA personnel were involved in the Contra supply operations, Steinberg documented that it was senior Bush aides, including ex-CIA official Donald Gregg, ex-CIA officer Felix Rodriguez, and Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North, who administered the secret program and who had first-hand knowledge of the illegal drug trafficking by Contra pilots.

'
The evidence is overwhelming,' Steinberg concluded, 'that the Contras were flooding the United States with illegal drugs, to finance the war in Central America; and that Vice President George Bush sat on top.'' And who was his right-hand man? Dick Cheney! Scary, isn't it?

During his term of office he granted 6 pardons to former officials in Watergate scandals. Bush officially began his "
War on Drugs" on September 5, 1989, just two years after supplying street gangs in the United States with millions of dollars in crack cocaine. He outlined the Federal Government's strategy for eliminating drug use when he gave the first prime time address of his presidency. His budget asked for $7.9 billion from Congress, a $2.2 billion increase from the previous budget. Of that, 70% would go to law enforcement, which included $1.6 billion for jails. However, only 30% went to prevention, education, and treatment.

Bush chose to wage his war by primarily focusing on demand in the United States, which meant arresting the drug user (not the trafficker) rather than focusing on prevention, education and treatment, or interdiction (trying to reduce the supply of drugs). Since the federal government has very limited police power, Bush decided to wage this war through by coercing the states. States that did not comply with the Bush plan would be penalized with a reduction in funding from the federal government.

A bill was passed in December, 1990 that coerced the states into suspending the driver's licenses and revoking government permits and benefits including college loans of those who were convicted of drug crimes. If the states did not enact the legislation mandated by this federal bill, there would be a significant reduction of federal aid to their highways, beginning in 1993. This is America? No. It is Papa George Bush’s view of America – not unlike a dictatorship. By coercing the states into doing the brunt of the fighting, without providing them with adequate funds, the federal government was forcing them to spend more money out of their own budgets to fight Bush's “War on Drugs” – a “war” he had created himself by supplying the drugs!

Bush used forfeiture, or confiscation of property that "
the government believed to be drug related". This law was used to confiscate cars, currency and land. The seized property is then auctioned off to raise money for both the state and federal governments. Forfeiture doesn't even require a trial, let alone a conviction. It's Good Old Russia right here in America and nobody is saying anything!

Forfeiture laws operate under assumed guilt. In 1989, the United States government took in over $1 billion due to forfeiture. Jails soon became overcrowded. Drug arrests rose almost 69%. By 1992 there were more people in federal jails for drug charges than there were for all crimes in 1980, causing Chief Justice of the Supreme Court William Rehnquist to complain that there were too many arrests. Despite the $1.6 billion that had gone to build new federal prisons, there was a logjam due to Bush's focus on the drug user; twice as many people were arrested for possession than for selling. This overcrowding meant that sentences had to be shortened, usually of violent offenders since drug offenders received mandatory sentences.

The drug war was a dismal failure in its dealings with the poor and it was planned that way. Bush glutted the streets of America with drugs. Then he started his "War on Drugs", not on the traffickers, but on the users, the same users that for whom he had provided the drugs. He made sure people were put in jail with mandatory sentencing, deprived them of personal property through forfeiture, and labeled them a "drug user" by society. Thanks to Bush many corporations and businesses in American rob our citizens of their basic right to privacy by requiring drug testing before employment. Worst of all, he made the States pay for it. It is the way they divide and conquer the American people.

No effort was made to rehabilitate or treat those convicted of drug related crimes. If Bush actually wanted to reduce demand, he would have placed more emphasis on treatment. Bush ignored treatment, education and research. Congress felt that his initial budget for treatment was so inadequate that it added $1.1 billion for treatment, prevention, and education. By 1992, the amount for treatment alone had grown to $1.9 billion. Not enough was known about drug abuse and addiction to treat it. This is the father of the man who claims to be a “compassionate Conservative”, an oxymoron is there ever was one.

Papa Bush's War on Drugs was a racist attack on the poor who by 1992 used more cocaine, heroin, and crack than when the War on Drugs began. One million people still smoked crack by the end of the Bush administration. The crime rate actually increased during the war on drugs. After a year of fighting drugs in Washington, D.C., his drug czar admitted failure. Drug use did not decline, and the homicide rate remained steady.


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Text posted with video:
Explanation:
http://starkravingviking.blogspot.com...

I, Steven G. Erickson, had filmed Vermont Attorney General candidate Charlotte Dennett and Vincent Bugliosi from the current Attorney General's office around the streets of Montpelier, VT, as they were asking about prosecuting US President George W. Bush for murder and about voting.

Whether or not you live in Vermont, if you want to see Bush prosecuted I advise getting in touch with people in Vermont to get out in support of Progressive candidate Dennett.


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[click here] to view Steven G. Erickson videos posted on Youtube.com

[click here] to go to most recent Stark Raving Viking blog posts

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[click here] for:

Kill a cop and not get in trouble if you have powerful family connections?


John M. Walker Jr.
posted by The Stark Raving Viking at 12:34 PM

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Governments From Around the World ADMIT That They Carry Out False Flag Terror

(from OpedNews.com)

Governments from around the world admit they carry out false flag terror:
  • A major with the Nazi SS admitted at the Nuremberg trials that - under orders from the chief of the Gestapo - he and some other Nazi operatives faked attacks on their own people and resources which they blamed on the Poles, to justify the invasion of Poland. Nazi general Franz Halder also testified at the Nuremberg trials that Nazi leader Hermann Goring admitted to setting fire to the German parliament building, and then falsely blaming the communists for the arson
  • The CIA admits that it hired Iranians in the 1950's to pose as Communists and stage bombings in Iran in order to turn the country against its democratically-elected prime minister
  • Israel admits that an Israeli terrorist cell operating in Egypt planted bombs in several buildings, including U.S. diplomatic facilities, then left behind "evidence" implicating the Arabs as the culprits (one of the bombs detonated prematurely, allowing the Egyptians to identify the bombers, and several of the Israelis later confessed) (and see this and this)
  • As admitted by the U.S. government, recently declassified documents show that in the 1960's, the American Joint Chiefs of Staff signed off on a plan to blow up AMERICAN airplanes (using an elaborate plan involving the switching of airplanes), and also to commit terrorist acts on American soil, and then to blame it on the Cubans in order to justify an invasion of Cuba. See the following ABC news report; the official documents; and watch this interview with the former Washington Investigative Producer for ABC's World News Tonight with Peter Jennings. Official State Department documents show that - only nine months before - the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other high-level officials discussed blowing up a consulate in the Dominican Republic in order to justify an invasion of that country
  • An Algerian diplomat and several officers in the Algerian army admit that, in the 1990s, the Algerian army frequently massacred Algerian civilians and then blamed Islamic militants for the killings (and see this video; and Agence France-Presse, 9/27/2002, French Court Dismisses Algerian Defamation Suit Against Author)
  • According to the Washington Post, Indonesian police admit that the Indonesian military killed American teachers in Papua in 2002 and blamed the murders on a Papuan separatist group in order to get that group listed as a terrorist organization.
  • The well-respected former Indonesian president also admits that the government probably had a role in the Bali bombings
  • As reported by BBC, the New York Times, and Associated Press, Macedonian officials admit that the government murdered 7 innocent immigrants in cold blood and pretended that they were Al Qaeda soldiers attempting to assassinate Macedonian police, in order to join the "war on terror".
  • Former Department of Justice lawyer John Yoo suggested in 2005 that the US should go on the offensive against al-Qaeda, having "our intelligence agencies create a false terrorist organization. It could have its own websites, recruitment centers, training camps, and fundraising operations. It could launch fake terrorist operations and claim credit for real terrorist strikes, helping to sow confusion within al-Qaeda's ranks, causing operatives to doubt others' identities and to question the validity of communications."
  • United Press International reported in June 2005:
    U.S. intelligence officers are reporting that some of the insurgents in Iraq are using recent-model Beretta 92 pistols, but the pistols seem to have had their serial numbers erased. The numbers do not appear to have been physically removed; the pistols seem to have come off a production line without any serial numbers. Analysts suggest the lack of serial numbers indicates that the weapons were intended for intelligence operations or terrorist cells with substantial government backing. Analysts speculate that these guns are probably from either Mossad or the CIA. Analysts speculate that agent provocateurs may be using the untraceable weapons even as U.S. authorities use insurgent attacks against civilians as evidence of the illegitimacy of the resistance.
Why Should I Care?

You may ask yourself "why should I care?"

You should care because terrorism harms the economy. Specifically, a study by Harvard and the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) points out:

From an economic standpoint, terrorism has been described to have four main effects (see, e.g., US Congress, Joint Economic Committee, 2002). First, the capital stock (human and physical) of a country is reduced as a result of terrorist attacks. Second, the terrorist threat induces higher levels of uncertainty. Third, terrorism promotes increases in counter-terrorism expenditures, drawing resources from productive sectors for use in security. Fourth, terrorism is known to affect negatively specific industries such as tourism.
The Harvard/NBER concludes:
In accordance with the predictions of the model, higher levels of terrorist risks are associated with lower levels of net foreign direct investment positions, even after controlling for other types of country risks. On average, a standard deviation increase in the terrorist risk is associated with a fall in the net foreign direct investment position of about 5 percent of GDP.
Moreover:
Terrorism has contributed to a decline in the global economy (for example, European Commission, 2001).
And see this.

In addition, you should care because terror causes governments to strip liberties and civil rights from the people:

"This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector."
- Plato

"If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy."
- U.S. President James Madison

"Terrorism is the best political weapon for nothing drives people harder than a fear of sudden death".
- Adolph Hitler

"Why of course the people don't want war ... But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship ... Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."
- Hermann Goering, Nazi leader.

"The easiest way to gain control of a population is to carry out acts of terror. [The public] will clamor for such laws if their personal security is threatened".
- Josef Stalin

Indeed, the political causes you hold most dear will be derailed if false flag terror is carried out. To see that this is true, let's take a step back ..
Imagine, if you would, that you were a citizen in Germany right after the example of false flag terror by the Nazis discussed above had occurred. Do you believe you could have stopped the government from invading Poland by reminding Germans that war is bad and peace is good? Do you imagine you could have stopped the brownshirts and loss of domestic rights by writing about the desirability of civil liberties? Do you think that you could have convinced people that protecting the environment, or addressing human or civil rights, or helping the poor, or education, or equality, or any other political crusade was more important than "protecting the Fatherland" when Germans were terrified for their safety?

Please think about it.

The German people were whipped up into a state of hysteria and fear, because they thought they were under attack by Poles and other "bad guys". The German's were in shock, and rallied around their "strong" leader (it wasn't just the bad economy). Without first exposing the truth that the attacks were false flag attacks - which were largely the source and root cause of the German people's fears, and which allowed the German parliament and other institutions to hand Hitler total power - the sweeping away of good political causes by the wave of fear could not be stopped.


Moreover, the Nazis might have been derailed and perhaps brought to justice well before the Nuremberg trials if the false flag hoaxes had been exposed at the time. The German people could have been spared from the horrors inflicted on their nation and the world by the Nazis. And sanity and positive political changes might have prevailed in 1940's-era Germany.

Please think about it . . .

Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.

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