from STRATFOR
China: Rumors of the Central Bank Chief's Defection
August 30, 2010
Rumors have circulated in China that People’s Bank of China (PBC) Gov. Zhou Xiaochuan may have left the country. The rumors appear to have started following reports on Aug. 28 which cited Ming Pao, a Hong Kong-based news agency, saying that because of an approximately $430 billion loss on U.S. Treasury bonds, the Chinese government may punish some individuals within PBC, including Zhou. Although Ming Pao on Aug. 30 published a report on its website indicating that the prior report was fabricated by a mainland news site that had attributed the false information to Ming Pao, rumors of Zhou’s defection have spread around China intensively, and Zhou’s name has been blocked from Internet search engines in China.
STRATFOR has received no confirmation of the rumor, and reports by state-run Chinese media appeared to send strong indications that Zhou is in no trouble at the moment. However, the release of this rumor and its dispersion throughout the public is significant, particularly as the Communist Party of China (CPC) is preparing for a leadership transition in 2012.
Chinese state-run media and official government websites have run several high-profile reports about Zhou, which should be seen as a move to refute the rumors. The PBC website published two articles on its homepage reporting on Zhou’s meeting with visiting Japanese Financial Services Minister Shozaburo Jimi during the third China-Japan high-level economic dialogue as well as a meeting with an Italian delegation. Xinhua news agency reported that Zhou told the PBC Party Committee Enlargement Meeting on Aug. 30 it should “continue to implement justice, and strengthen legislative work in financial system.” Prior to this news, Zhou appeared at the 2nd annual conference of the heads of the Chinese, Japanese and Korean central banks held on Aug. 3, and his most recent public appearance was Aug. 10 for China’s Financial System Anti-corruption Construction Exhibition.
Zhou is known to have lofty political ambitions and is believed to be a close ally to former Chinese President Jiang Zemin, as well as a core figure for Jiang’s “Shanghai Gang.” There has been no shortage of rumors about Zhou’s possible dismissal in the past five years, as he is believed to be associated with several high-level financial scandals. For example, Zhou was rumored to be under “shuanggui,” a form of house arrest administered by the CPC, during the massive crackdown of Shanghai Party Secretary Chen Liangyu in 2006, which was perceived in the country as a crackdown of the Shanghai Gang and part of Hu’s effort to consolidate power ahead of the 2007 power transition. There was also a rumor that he might have been detained following the investigation and arrest of Wang Yi, the vice governor of the China Development Bank, along with several other officials in the financial circle. Currently, several financial scandals are still under investigation, and it is likely that Zhou, as PBC governor and one of the most powerful economic players in the country, could be associated with some cases. Therefore, whether or not the rumor is true at this time, the leaking of this news is very likely to be associated with a power struggle within the Communist Party’s economic hierarchy.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Monday, August 30, 2010
Countries Serious About ET Life
'Extraterrestrial hypothesis' is now public operative explanation for UFOs in France, U.K. and China
* August 24th, 2010 5:55 pm PT
* Alfred Lambremont Webre
* Seattle Exopolitics Examiner
Expert panels, military-intelligence agencies, and/or scientists, respectively, in France, U.K., and China now independently confirm that the ‘extraterrestrial hypothesis’ is now their public operative explanation for specific empirical UFO encounters.
According to one source, “The extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) is the hypothesis that some unidentified flying objects (UFOs) are best explained as being extraterrestrial life or space aliens from other planets occupying physical spacecraft visiting Earth.”
In France, on May 31, 2010, The Progress Report of the Sigma/3AF Commission, a semi-official report, adopted the extraterrestrial hypothesis for specific UFO sightings. According to researcher Antonio Huneeus “A new French report released on May 31, 2010 concluded that UFOs are definitely real and possibly of extraterrestrial origin. The Progress Report of the Sigma/3AF Commission comes from a highly credible source, the Aeronautical & Astronomical Association of France, known as the 3AF, which established a Commission on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena back in May 2008. The Commission’s President is Alain Boudier, a former French Defense attaché, and one of its key members is Jean-Gabriel Greslé, a former fighter pilot who studied at the U.S. Air Force Academy and later became an airliner pilot with Air France, where he experienced a couple of UFO sightings. Greslé has published three UFO books in France, including Unidentified Flying Objects: An Airline Pilot Talks (Guy Trédaniel, 1993).”
In the U.K. on August 4, 2010, the U.K. Ministry of Defence released World War II documents that confirmed that Prime Minister Winston Churchill had adopted the extraterrestrial hypothesis as the operating hypothesis of the U.K. government with regard to specific UFO sightings. In early August, 2010 the U.K. Ministry of Defence made public “an account of a wartime meeting attended by Winston Churchill in which, it is claimed, the prime minister was so concerned about a reported encounter between a UFO and RAF bombers, that he ordered it be kept secret for at least 50 years to prevent ‘mass panic’.
“Nick Pope, who used to investigate UFO sightings for the MoD, said: ‘The interesting thing is that most of the UFO files from that period have been destroyed.
“’But what happened is that a scientist whose grandfather was one of his [Churchill's] bodyguards, said look, Churchill and Eisenhower got together to cover up this phenomenal UFO sighting, that was witnessed by an RAF crew on their way back from a bombing raid.
“’The reason apparently was because Churchill believed it would cause mass panic and it would shatter people's religious views.’”
On August 23, 2010 in China, a planetary astronomer formally announced the extraterrestrial hypothesis as applicable to specific UFO encounters he had studied in notable sightings at the Purple Hills Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Dr. Michael E. Salla notes, “In a speech at a science forum held in the city of Guangzhou on August 23, a veteran Chinese astronomer with almost 40 years experience claimed that some UFOs are extraterrestrial spacecraft. Professor Wang Sichao is a planetary astronomer at the Purple Hills Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Based on scientific observations of UFOs over his 39-year career, he has concluded that some are powered by antigravity devices.
“He claimed some extraterrestrials are visiting Earth in a Research and Development capacity, and are therefore friendly enough to begin cooperation and mutual exchanges. A summary of Wang’s speech was reported by a number of China newspapers including the influential People’s Daily Online.
“Based on his observations at Purple Hills Observatory and analysis of UFO sightings, Wang was able to conclude that some UFOs are not natural phenomenon, and use antigravity technology. This is how the People’s Daily Online summarized Wang’s reasoning: ‘Wang also found that in the terrestrial space between the height of 130 kilometers and 1,500 kilometers, UFOs have appeared many times. Their flying speed is … as slow as 0.29 kilometers per second [1000 km/hr] and they can fly in the 1,460 kilometers' height for more than 25 minutes. This means UFOs have the anti-gravity ability. Otherwise, they would fall soon.’”
How the extraterrestrial hypothesis about UFOs relates to Exopolitics
Continues at: http://www.examiner.com/exopolitics-in-seattle/extraterrestrial-hypothesis-is-now-public-operative-explanation-for-ufos-france-u-k-and-china
Seattle Exopolitics Examiner
http://www.examiner.com/exopolitics-in-seattle/alfred-webre
* August 24th, 2010 5:55 pm PT
* Alfred Lambremont Webre
* Seattle Exopolitics Examiner
Expert panels, military-intelligence agencies, and/or scientists, respectively, in France, U.K., and China now independently confirm that the ‘extraterrestrial hypothesis’ is now their public operative explanation for specific empirical UFO encounters.
According to one source, “The extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) is the hypothesis that some unidentified flying objects (UFOs) are best explained as being extraterrestrial life or space aliens from other planets occupying physical spacecraft visiting Earth.”
In France, on May 31, 2010, The Progress Report of the Sigma/3AF Commission, a semi-official report, adopted the extraterrestrial hypothesis for specific UFO sightings. According to researcher Antonio Huneeus “A new French report released on May 31, 2010 concluded that UFOs are definitely real and possibly of extraterrestrial origin. The Progress Report of the Sigma/3AF Commission comes from a highly credible source, the Aeronautical & Astronomical Association of France, known as the 3AF, which established a Commission on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena back in May 2008. The Commission’s President is Alain Boudier, a former French Defense attaché, and one of its key members is Jean-Gabriel Greslé, a former fighter pilot who studied at the U.S. Air Force Academy and later became an airliner pilot with Air France, where he experienced a couple of UFO sightings. Greslé has published three UFO books in France, including Unidentified Flying Objects: An Airline Pilot Talks (Guy Trédaniel, 1993).”
In the U.K. on August 4, 2010, the U.K. Ministry of Defence released World War II documents that confirmed that Prime Minister Winston Churchill had adopted the extraterrestrial hypothesis as the operating hypothesis of the U.K. government with regard to specific UFO sightings. In early August, 2010 the U.K. Ministry of Defence made public “an account of a wartime meeting attended by Winston Churchill in which, it is claimed, the prime minister was so concerned about a reported encounter between a UFO and RAF bombers, that he ordered it be kept secret for at least 50 years to prevent ‘mass panic’.
“Nick Pope, who used to investigate UFO sightings for the MoD, said: ‘The interesting thing is that most of the UFO files from that period have been destroyed.
“’But what happened is that a scientist whose grandfather was one of his [Churchill's] bodyguards, said look, Churchill and Eisenhower got together to cover up this phenomenal UFO sighting, that was witnessed by an RAF crew on their way back from a bombing raid.
“’The reason apparently was because Churchill believed it would cause mass panic and it would shatter people's religious views.’”
On August 23, 2010 in China, a planetary astronomer formally announced the extraterrestrial hypothesis as applicable to specific UFO encounters he had studied in notable sightings at the Purple Hills Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Dr. Michael E. Salla notes, “In a speech at a science forum held in the city of Guangzhou on August 23, a veteran Chinese astronomer with almost 40 years experience claimed that some UFOs are extraterrestrial spacecraft. Professor Wang Sichao is a planetary astronomer at the Purple Hills Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Based on scientific observations of UFOs over his 39-year career, he has concluded that some are powered by antigravity devices.
“He claimed some extraterrestrials are visiting Earth in a Research and Development capacity, and are therefore friendly enough to begin cooperation and mutual exchanges. A summary of Wang’s speech was reported by a number of China newspapers including the influential People’s Daily Online.
“Based on his observations at Purple Hills Observatory and analysis of UFO sightings, Wang was able to conclude that some UFOs are not natural phenomenon, and use antigravity technology. This is how the People’s Daily Online summarized Wang’s reasoning: ‘Wang also found that in the terrestrial space between the height of 130 kilometers and 1,500 kilometers, UFOs have appeared many times. Their flying speed is … as slow as 0.29 kilometers per second [1000 km/hr] and they can fly in the 1,460 kilometers' height for more than 25 minutes. This means UFOs have the anti-gravity ability. Otherwise, they would fall soon.’”
How the extraterrestrial hypothesis about UFOs relates to Exopolitics
Continues at: http://www.examiner.com/exopolitics-in-seattle/extraterrestrial-hypothesis-is-now-public-operative-explanation-for-ufos-france-u-k-and-china
Seattle Exopolitics Examiner
http://www.examiner.com/exopolitics-in-seattle/alfred-webre
This Economy Is Ripping The Dignity Of Millions Of Unemployed Americans To Shreds
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/this-economy-is-ripping-the-dignity-of-millions-of-unemployed-americans-to-shreds
This Economy Is Ripping The Dignity Of Millions Of Unemployed Americans To Shreds
If you can still put a roof over your head and food on the table for your family, you should consider yourself to be very fortunate. There are millions of Americans out there right now that are really, really suffering. The cold, hard reality of it is that there aren't even close to enough jobs out there for everyone right now. It is almost as if we are all caught in a really bizarre game of musical chairs where the losers get stripped of their tickets to the middle class. What this horrible economy is doing to the dignity of millions of middle class Americans is incredibly saddening. There are a lot of very highly educated and very hard working Americans who cannot seem to get jobs no matter what they do and now find themselves doing whatever they can just to survive. It can be really hard to keep your dignity when you played by all the rules and you worked as hard as you could all your life and now you find yourself a half step away from being homeless. Those of us who are still doing okay should never look down on those who are struggling in this economy, because the truth is that any of us could be next.
If you really want to read some horror stories about what long-term unemployment is doing to some people in America, you should go spend an hour or two over at Unemployed-Friends some time. It is a great forum with a lot of great resources for the unemployed, but it also contains dozens and dozens and dozens of heartbreaking stories from middle class Americans who have had their lives shattered by this economic downturn.
The following is a typical story on Unemployed-Friends. It is from a 48 year old Air Force veteran who has lost everything and is now sleeping in his vehicle. It turns out that Scott48's job was shipped off to India and now he has been out of work for over two years....
"I am a 48 year old USAF Vet. I got my house in 1996 with the help of the VA. In 2009 the company I worked for went out of buisness(gone to India) I then became a 99er. I notified Wells Fargo that I lost my job and they said they would work with me, the next mortgage statement I got they conveniently increased my mortgage! With what I got from UE was enough for the house but I had to cut out the luxury of food, gas, utillities, insurance, entertainment and alcohol. That was it for me, so the forecloser ball was in motion. I had to give my dog to my cousin so he would get fed, I took everything I owened to the auction( execpt tools, clothes, pictures, tech manuals and my Saxophone) and sold it. I went to a half-way house the VA recomended for a week and it was joke, so my cousin said I could stay with her. After 4 months she diecided that I wasnt looking hard enough and kicked me out, and Ive applied for everything except selling myself. This summer I was staying in an abandoned house due to forecloser and the real estate company has now put it on the market, and I am now on the street sleeping in my vehicle or a friend here and there. Keeping clean is going to be a challenge cuz the Flying J truck stops charge $10 for a shower, rip-off. What a country!"
The truth is that this economy is driving many Americans to the brink of desperation. Even recent college graduates are becoming desperate enough to actually consider suicide. The following story is from an Unemployed-Friends user known as 08pacollegegrad....
"I could just take any job like working at fast food places, but I hear people who try can't even get hired there. I went to Wendy's for lunch the other day and I thought of picking up an application...but the slot where they keep the applications was completely empty. That should say it all. Plus, I feel like if I take just any job...I will be set back further and never be able to gain experience in my chosen fields.
I follow up on job applications, but employers ignore me for the most part when I try to contact them. I sent five follow up e-mails last week and got no responses. I contacted an employer expressing my interest in working for them, but all they gave me is the link to their online application system that I have never gotten a job from.
I am thinking of applying for more internships (I have already done two), but I don't want employers to think why I am applying for an internship when I should have had a full fledged job by now.
I have almost killed myself over my situaion and am taking anti-depressants right now. I see a psychiatrist every 4-6 weeks, but I still have days where I feel so empty. I am sick of sitting at home searching for jobs and praying for a response that never comes."
Many Americans spend day after day after day looking for a job that never comes. The sense of hopelessness that can build after doing this for a few years is almost indescribable. The following is another incredibly sad story from an Unemployed-Friends user known as feuxdejoie....
"I lost my job in June 2008, my husband was working but sentenced to prison for 4 years, for DUI, no accidents or injuries. I had been using my unemployment to pay bills but my last check came June 12, 2010. I'm alone and scared. The city that I live in has the highest unemployment in the State, Illinois. Our children are grown and I sit alone all day searching for jobs. My husband can only call once a month because of the outrageous rates for telephone calls. I'm at the end of my rope and don't know where to turn if they don't pass a tier V for unemployment or open up some jobs.
I turned 50 in April and had worked all of my life, starting at age 14 with a work permit! My employer stated to me that they needed someone bilingual and terminated me even after I told them that I would take classes to learn. I signed up for college and began classes in January then unemployment told me that I wasn't elgible for unemployment while attending school."
There are millions of Americans who believe that their lives are over because they can't get decent jobs. When you lose your job, your home, your car, your health insurance and then finally your unemployment insurance runs out, it is easy to lose all hope as an Unemployed-Friends user named Ember has done....
"so i feel pretty much hopeless. been unemployed since July 2008. in over two years i haven't even been called for an interview. tired of looking and applying for jobs outside of my field that require experience i don't have. it's all for naught. i have two bachelor of science degrees. my BS degrees, cuz that's what they're worth. since losing my job i've gotten divorced. lost my house. lost my health insurance. totalled my car and sustained chronic back pain. and moved in with my mom. and did i mention, when all this started i was a new mom, just back from maternity leave? so (now) i'm raising a toddler on my own, with no income. my unemployment insurance ran out a few weeks ago. i don't even know what to do now. i just want to disappear. i'm tired of trying. i'm tired of being a burden on everyone. if i didn't have the responsibility to take care of my child i wouldn't be around anymore."
This final example is from an Unemployed-Friends user identified as Faith1028. Be warned that this one will shake you to your core if you have any sensitivity at all. As you read this, keep in mind that this kind of thing is literally happening to millions of Americans these days....
"HI, y'all! This is my story. I'm from Chicago.
I lost my job 11.06.09 - I did my best to remain positive & confident that I would get a job by the end of November.
December 2009 - Still no job. I'm getting food stamps (LINK card) & Unemployment Benefits. Not much money at all, but I'm surviving. Thanks to all this stress, my stomach has been burning and/or been painful daily for all December. I puked my guts out on the 26th.
January 2010 - My stomach is still hurting every day. I had to close out my savings account. I haven't told my slumlord or my fellow tenants that I lost my job; I go on pretending I'm still going to work everyday. Unfortunately on the 26th, I got my eviction notice. I called the office to ask why. The response was "I don't know." I became hysterical. I've no job, no money, no family/friends to help. (I have many *relatives*, but no *family*.) I truly believed my only alternative was suicide. I wanted to say good-bye to my brother (my only sibling), but we haven't spoken to each other for over 4 years; I no longer have his address/phone number. I found him on Facebook. I didn't bring up my situation because I felt he wouldn't care. We exchanged a few messages and that was it. I haven't heard from him since. Good riddance.
February 2010 - Someone found a family that I can stay with for only $250/month! My own room! They turned out to be aquaintances of mine. Vegetarian, too! At least I have a place to stay. I'd rather live alone, but, hey, I'm desperate! -- And I'm not too crazy about the bedbugs. OW!
June/July 2010 - Thanks to daily/nightly use of citrine crystals since 30 May, I have no more stomach problems!
Thanks to weekly use of a natural (green!) pesticide from PlusNaturalEnzymes.com, I no longer have a problem with bedbugs! However...
Mid-June, my Unemployment Benefits ran out. Of course, I'm still looking for a job! What am I supposed to do - put a gun to someone's head and force them to hire me? As of this date, I have $12 left to my name; $0 in my chequeing account. I recently reapplied for and am now receiving food stamps. Before I got my food stamps back, I've eaten whatever (Vegetarian!) food I can get, even stuff I'm allergic to. As a result, I've become sick: cold-like symptoms, pain in lower intestines...and a rash over my arms, legs, & neck. Oh, does it itch! At least my food allergies are not life-threatening.
Needless to say, my depression has gotten worse.
I am really trying hard to remain positive -- and alive.
But why? Is it really all worth it?
I haven't paid July's rent, and the people I'm staying with are getting very *impatient*; I fear I'll be evicted again! The money is coming! It's not my bloody fault!
Someone on Twitter sent me a link to this site. I know I'm not the only one suffering; some folks have already committed suicide. I don't want to die, but I don't want to be homeless, either. I am so bloody scared.
Just give me money that my tax dollars paid for!
--Or better yet: GIVE ME A BLASTED JOB!!"
The really sad thing is that there are countless other stories just like these being posted all over the Internet all the time.
People are hurting.
People are losing hope.
So how did we get here?
Well, it turns out that the "haves" have figured out that they really don't need the "have nots" after all. Incredible advances in technology have increasingly enabled employers to replace humans with machines and computers. In addition, as we have detailed previously, millions upon millions of middle class American jobs are being shipped off to China and to dozens of third world nations where workers are more than happy to work for less than a tenth of what an American worker would make.
All of those jobs that have been lost to technology and that have been sent overseas are not going to come back. The hordes of long-term unemployed that we are seeing now is just the beginning. It is going to get a lot worse.
So the next time you hear a hard luck story from an unemployed American, don't look down on that person.
You might be next.
This Economy Is Ripping The Dignity Of Millions Of Unemployed Americans To Shreds
If you can still put a roof over your head and food on the table for your family, you should consider yourself to be very fortunate. There are millions of Americans out there right now that are really, really suffering. The cold, hard reality of it is that there aren't even close to enough jobs out there for everyone right now. It is almost as if we are all caught in a really bizarre game of musical chairs where the losers get stripped of their tickets to the middle class. What this horrible economy is doing to the dignity of millions of middle class Americans is incredibly saddening. There are a lot of very highly educated and very hard working Americans who cannot seem to get jobs no matter what they do and now find themselves doing whatever they can just to survive. It can be really hard to keep your dignity when you played by all the rules and you worked as hard as you could all your life and now you find yourself a half step away from being homeless. Those of us who are still doing okay should never look down on those who are struggling in this economy, because the truth is that any of us could be next.
If you really want to read some horror stories about what long-term unemployment is doing to some people in America, you should go spend an hour or two over at Unemployed-Friends some time. It is a great forum with a lot of great resources for the unemployed, but it also contains dozens and dozens and dozens of heartbreaking stories from middle class Americans who have had their lives shattered by this economic downturn.
The following is a typical story on Unemployed-Friends. It is from a 48 year old Air Force veteran who has lost everything and is now sleeping in his vehicle. It turns out that Scott48's job was shipped off to India and now he has been out of work for over two years....
"I am a 48 year old USAF Vet. I got my house in 1996 with the help of the VA. In 2009 the company I worked for went out of buisness(gone to India) I then became a 99er. I notified Wells Fargo that I lost my job and they said they would work with me, the next mortgage statement I got they conveniently increased my mortgage! With what I got from UE was enough for the house but I had to cut out the luxury of food, gas, utillities, insurance, entertainment and alcohol. That was it for me, so the forecloser ball was in motion. I had to give my dog to my cousin so he would get fed, I took everything I owened to the auction( execpt tools, clothes, pictures, tech manuals and my Saxophone) and sold it. I went to a half-way house the VA recomended for a week and it was joke, so my cousin said I could stay with her. After 4 months she diecided that I wasnt looking hard enough and kicked me out, and Ive applied for everything except selling myself. This summer I was staying in an abandoned house due to forecloser and the real estate company has now put it on the market, and I am now on the street sleeping in my vehicle or a friend here and there. Keeping clean is going to be a challenge cuz the Flying J truck stops charge $10 for a shower, rip-off. What a country!"
The truth is that this economy is driving many Americans to the brink of desperation. Even recent college graduates are becoming desperate enough to actually consider suicide. The following story is from an Unemployed-Friends user known as 08pacollegegrad....
"I could just take any job like working at fast food places, but I hear people who try can't even get hired there. I went to Wendy's for lunch the other day and I thought of picking up an application...but the slot where they keep the applications was completely empty. That should say it all. Plus, I feel like if I take just any job...I will be set back further and never be able to gain experience in my chosen fields.
I follow up on job applications, but employers ignore me for the most part when I try to contact them. I sent five follow up e-mails last week and got no responses. I contacted an employer expressing my interest in working for them, but all they gave me is the link to their online application system that I have never gotten a job from.
I am thinking of applying for more internships (I have already done two), but I don't want employers to think why I am applying for an internship when I should have had a full fledged job by now.
I have almost killed myself over my situaion and am taking anti-depressants right now. I see a psychiatrist every 4-6 weeks, but I still have days where I feel so empty. I am sick of sitting at home searching for jobs and praying for a response that never comes."
Many Americans spend day after day after day looking for a job that never comes. The sense of hopelessness that can build after doing this for a few years is almost indescribable. The following is another incredibly sad story from an Unemployed-Friends user known as feuxdejoie....
"I lost my job in June 2008, my husband was working but sentenced to prison for 4 years, for DUI, no accidents or injuries. I had been using my unemployment to pay bills but my last check came June 12, 2010. I'm alone and scared. The city that I live in has the highest unemployment in the State, Illinois. Our children are grown and I sit alone all day searching for jobs. My husband can only call once a month because of the outrageous rates for telephone calls. I'm at the end of my rope and don't know where to turn if they don't pass a tier V for unemployment or open up some jobs.
I turned 50 in April and had worked all of my life, starting at age 14 with a work permit! My employer stated to me that they needed someone bilingual and terminated me even after I told them that I would take classes to learn. I signed up for college and began classes in January then unemployment told me that I wasn't elgible for unemployment while attending school."
There are millions of Americans who believe that their lives are over because they can't get decent jobs. When you lose your job, your home, your car, your health insurance and then finally your unemployment insurance runs out, it is easy to lose all hope as an Unemployed-Friends user named Ember has done....
"so i feel pretty much hopeless. been unemployed since July 2008. in over two years i haven't even been called for an interview. tired of looking and applying for jobs outside of my field that require experience i don't have. it's all for naught. i have two bachelor of science degrees. my BS degrees, cuz that's what they're worth. since losing my job i've gotten divorced. lost my house. lost my health insurance. totalled my car and sustained chronic back pain. and moved in with my mom. and did i mention, when all this started i was a new mom, just back from maternity leave? so (now) i'm raising a toddler on my own, with no income. my unemployment insurance ran out a few weeks ago. i don't even know what to do now. i just want to disappear. i'm tired of trying. i'm tired of being a burden on everyone. if i didn't have the responsibility to take care of my child i wouldn't be around anymore."
This final example is from an Unemployed-Friends user identified as Faith1028. Be warned that this one will shake you to your core if you have any sensitivity at all. As you read this, keep in mind that this kind of thing is literally happening to millions of Americans these days....
"HI, y'all! This is my story. I'm from Chicago.
I lost my job 11.06.09 - I did my best to remain positive & confident that I would get a job by the end of November.
December 2009 - Still no job. I'm getting food stamps (LINK card) & Unemployment Benefits. Not much money at all, but I'm surviving. Thanks to all this stress, my stomach has been burning and/or been painful daily for all December. I puked my guts out on the 26th.
January 2010 - My stomach is still hurting every day. I had to close out my savings account. I haven't told my slumlord or my fellow tenants that I lost my job; I go on pretending I'm still going to work everyday. Unfortunately on the 26th, I got my eviction notice. I called the office to ask why. The response was "I don't know." I became hysterical. I've no job, no money, no family/friends to help. (I have many *relatives*, but no *family*.) I truly believed my only alternative was suicide. I wanted to say good-bye to my brother (my only sibling), but we haven't spoken to each other for over 4 years; I no longer have his address/phone number. I found him on Facebook. I didn't bring up my situation because I felt he wouldn't care. We exchanged a few messages and that was it. I haven't heard from him since. Good riddance.
February 2010 - Someone found a family that I can stay with for only $250/month! My own room! They turned out to be aquaintances of mine. Vegetarian, too! At least I have a place to stay. I'd rather live alone, but, hey, I'm desperate! -- And I'm not too crazy about the bedbugs. OW!
June/July 2010 - Thanks to daily/nightly use of citrine crystals since 30 May, I have no more stomach problems!
Thanks to weekly use of a natural (green!) pesticide from PlusNaturalEnzymes.com, I no longer have a problem with bedbugs! However...
Mid-June, my Unemployment Benefits ran out. Of course, I'm still looking for a job! What am I supposed to do - put a gun to someone's head and force them to hire me? As of this date, I have $12 left to my name; $0 in my chequeing account. I recently reapplied for and am now receiving food stamps. Before I got my food stamps back, I've eaten whatever (Vegetarian!) food I can get, even stuff I'm allergic to. As a result, I've become sick: cold-like symptoms, pain in lower intestines...and a rash over my arms, legs, & neck. Oh, does it itch! At least my food allergies are not life-threatening.
Needless to say, my depression has gotten worse.
I am really trying hard to remain positive -- and alive.
But why? Is it really all worth it?
I haven't paid July's rent, and the people I'm staying with are getting very *impatient*; I fear I'll be evicted again! The money is coming! It's not my bloody fault!
Someone on Twitter sent me a link to this site. I know I'm not the only one suffering; some folks have already committed suicide. I don't want to die, but I don't want to be homeless, either. I am so bloody scared.
Just give me money that my tax dollars paid for!
--Or better yet: GIVE ME A BLASTED JOB!!"
The really sad thing is that there are countless other stories just like these being posted all over the Internet all the time.
People are hurting.
People are losing hope.
So how did we get here?
Well, it turns out that the "haves" have figured out that they really don't need the "have nots" after all. Incredible advances in technology have increasingly enabled employers to replace humans with machines and computers. In addition, as we have detailed previously, millions upon millions of middle class American jobs are being shipped off to China and to dozens of third world nations where workers are more than happy to work for less than a tenth of what an American worker would make.
All of those jobs that have been lost to technology and that have been sent overseas are not going to come back. The hordes of long-term unemployed that we are seeing now is just the beginning. It is going to get a lot worse.
So the next time you hear a hard luck story from an unemployed American, don't look down on that person.
You might be next.
Bancor: The Name Of The Global Currency That A Shocking IMF Report Is Proposing
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/bancor-the-name-of-the-global-currency-a-shocking-imf-report-urges-the-world-to-adopt
Bancor: The Name Of The Global Currency That A Shocking IMF Report Is Proposing
Sometimes there are things that are so shocking that you just do not want to report them unless they can be completely and totally documented. Over the past few years, there have been many rumors about a coming global currency, but at times it has been difficult to pin down evidence that plans for such a currency are actually in the works. Not anymore. A paper entitled "Reserve Accumulation and International Monetary Stability" by the Strategy, Policy and Review Department of the IMF recommends that the world adopt a global currency called the "Bancor" and that a global central bank be established to administer that currency. The report is dated April 13, 2010 and a full copy can be read here. Unfortunately this is not hype and it is not a rumor. This is a very serious proposal in an official document from one of the mega-powerful institutions that is actually running the world economy. Anyone who follows the IMF knows that what the IMF wants, the IMF usually gets. So could a global currency known as the "Bancor" be on the horizon? That is now a legitimate question.
So where in the world did the name "Bancor" come from? Well, it turns out that "Bancor" is the name of a hypothetical world currency unit once suggested by John Maynard Keynes. Keynes was a world famous British economist who headed the World Banking Commission that created the IMF during the Breton Woods negotiations.
The Wikipedia entry for "Bancor" puts it this way....
The bancor was a World Currency Unit of clearing that was proposed by John Maynard Keynes, as leader of the British delegation and chairman of the World Bank commission, in the negotiations that established the Bretton Woods system, but has not been implemented.
The IMF report referenced above proposed naming the coming world currency unit the "Bancor" in honor of Keynes.
So what about Special Drawing Rights (SDRs)? Over the past couple of years, SDRs have been touted as the coming global currency. Well, the report does envision making SDRs "the principal reserve asset" as we move towards a global currency unit....
"As a complement to a multi-polar system, or even—more ambitiously—its logical end point, a greater role could be considered for the SDR."
However, the report also acknowledges that SDRs do have some serious limitations. Since the value of SDRs are closely tied to national currencies, anything affecting those currencies will affect SDRs as well.
Right now, SDRs are made up of a basket of currencies. The following is a breakdown of the components of an SDR....
*U.S. Dollar (44 percent)
*Euro (34 percent)
*Yen (11 percent)
*Pound (11 percent)
The IMF report recognizes that moving to SDRs is only a partial move away from the U.S. dollar as the world reserve currency and urges the adoption of a currency unit that would be truly international. The truth is that SDRs are clumsy and cumbersome. For now, SDRs must still be reconverted back into a national currency before they can be used, and that really limits their usefulness according to the report....
"A limitation of the SDR as discussed previously is that it is not a currency. Both the SDR and SDR-denominated instruments need to be converted eventually to a national currency for most payments or interventions in foreign exchange markets, which adds to cumbersome use in transactions. And though an SDR-based system would move away from a dominant national currency, the SDR’s value remains heavily linked to the conditions and performance of the major component countries."
So what is the answer?
Well, the IMF report believes that the adoption of a true global currency administered by a global central bank is the answer.
The authors of the report believe that it would be ideal if the "Bancor" would immediately be used as currency by many nations throughout the world, but they also acknowledge that a more "realistic" approach would be for the "Bancor" to circulate alongside national currencies at first....
"One option is for bancor to be adopted by fiat as a common currency (like the euro was), an approach that would result immediately in widespread use and eliminate exchange rate volatility among adopters (comparable, for instance, to Cooper 1984, 2006 and the Economist, 1988). A somewhat less ambitious (and more realistic) option would be for bancor to circulate alongside national currencies, though it would need to be adopted by fiat by at least some (not necessarily systemic) countries in order for an exchange market to develop."
So who would print and administer the "Bancor"?
Well, a global central bank of course. It would be something like the Federal Reserve, only completely outside the control of any particular national government....
"A global currency, bancor, issued by a global central bank (see Supplement 1, section V) would be designed as a stable store of value that is not tied exclusively to the conditions of any particular economy. As trade and finance continue to grow rapidly and global integration increases, the importance of this broader perspective is expected to continue growing."
In fact, at one point the IMF report specifically compares the proposed global central bank to the Federal Reserve....
"The global central bank could serve as a lender of last resort, providing needed systemic liquidity in the event of adverse shocks and more automatically than at present. Such liquidity was provided in the most recent crisis mainly by the U.S. Federal Reserve, which however may not always provide such liquidity."
So is that what we really need?
A world currency administered by an international central bank modeled after the Federal Reserve?
Not at all.
As I have written about previously, the Federal Reserve has devalued the U.S. dollar by over 95 percent since it was created and the U.S. government has accumulated the largest debt in the history of the world under this system.
So now we want to impose such a system on the entire globe?
The truth is that a global currency (whether it be called the "Bancor" or given a different name entirely) would be a major blow to national sovereignty and would represent a major move towards global government.
Considering how disastrous the Federal Reserve system and other central banking systems around the world have been, why would anyone suggest that we go to a global central banking system modeled after the Federal Reserve?
Let us hope that the "Bancor" never sees the light of day.
However, the truth is that there are some very powerful interests that are absolutely determined to create a global currency and a global central bank for the global economy that we now live in.
It would be a major mistake to think that it can't happen.
Bancor: The Name Of The Global Currency That A Shocking IMF Report Is Proposing
Sometimes there are things that are so shocking that you just do not want to report them unless they can be completely and totally documented. Over the past few years, there have been many rumors about a coming global currency, but at times it has been difficult to pin down evidence that plans for such a currency are actually in the works. Not anymore. A paper entitled "Reserve Accumulation and International Monetary Stability" by the Strategy, Policy and Review Department of the IMF recommends that the world adopt a global currency called the "Bancor" and that a global central bank be established to administer that currency. The report is dated April 13, 2010 and a full copy can be read here. Unfortunately this is not hype and it is not a rumor. This is a very serious proposal in an official document from one of the mega-powerful institutions that is actually running the world economy. Anyone who follows the IMF knows that what the IMF wants, the IMF usually gets. So could a global currency known as the "Bancor" be on the horizon? That is now a legitimate question.
So where in the world did the name "Bancor" come from? Well, it turns out that "Bancor" is the name of a hypothetical world currency unit once suggested by John Maynard Keynes. Keynes was a world famous British economist who headed the World Banking Commission that created the IMF during the Breton Woods negotiations.
The Wikipedia entry for "Bancor" puts it this way....
The bancor was a World Currency Unit of clearing that was proposed by John Maynard Keynes, as leader of the British delegation and chairman of the World Bank commission, in the negotiations that established the Bretton Woods system, but has not been implemented.
The IMF report referenced above proposed naming the coming world currency unit the "Bancor" in honor of Keynes.
So what about Special Drawing Rights (SDRs)? Over the past couple of years, SDRs have been touted as the coming global currency. Well, the report does envision making SDRs "the principal reserve asset" as we move towards a global currency unit....
"As a complement to a multi-polar system, or even—more ambitiously—its logical end point, a greater role could be considered for the SDR."
However, the report also acknowledges that SDRs do have some serious limitations. Since the value of SDRs are closely tied to national currencies, anything affecting those currencies will affect SDRs as well.
Right now, SDRs are made up of a basket of currencies. The following is a breakdown of the components of an SDR....
*U.S. Dollar (44 percent)
*Euro (34 percent)
*Yen (11 percent)
*Pound (11 percent)
The IMF report recognizes that moving to SDRs is only a partial move away from the U.S. dollar as the world reserve currency and urges the adoption of a currency unit that would be truly international. The truth is that SDRs are clumsy and cumbersome. For now, SDRs must still be reconverted back into a national currency before they can be used, and that really limits their usefulness according to the report....
"A limitation of the SDR as discussed previously is that it is not a currency. Both the SDR and SDR-denominated instruments need to be converted eventually to a national currency for most payments or interventions in foreign exchange markets, which adds to cumbersome use in transactions. And though an SDR-based system would move away from a dominant national currency, the SDR’s value remains heavily linked to the conditions and performance of the major component countries."
So what is the answer?
Well, the IMF report believes that the adoption of a true global currency administered by a global central bank is the answer.
The authors of the report believe that it would be ideal if the "Bancor" would immediately be used as currency by many nations throughout the world, but they also acknowledge that a more "realistic" approach would be for the "Bancor" to circulate alongside national currencies at first....
"One option is for bancor to be adopted by fiat as a common currency (like the euro was), an approach that would result immediately in widespread use and eliminate exchange rate volatility among adopters (comparable, for instance, to Cooper 1984, 2006 and the Economist, 1988). A somewhat less ambitious (and more realistic) option would be for bancor to circulate alongside national currencies, though it would need to be adopted by fiat by at least some (not necessarily systemic) countries in order for an exchange market to develop."
So who would print and administer the "Bancor"?
Well, a global central bank of course. It would be something like the Federal Reserve, only completely outside the control of any particular national government....
"A global currency, bancor, issued by a global central bank (see Supplement 1, section V) would be designed as a stable store of value that is not tied exclusively to the conditions of any particular economy. As trade and finance continue to grow rapidly and global integration increases, the importance of this broader perspective is expected to continue growing."
In fact, at one point the IMF report specifically compares the proposed global central bank to the Federal Reserve....
"The global central bank could serve as a lender of last resort, providing needed systemic liquidity in the event of adverse shocks and more automatically than at present. Such liquidity was provided in the most recent crisis mainly by the U.S. Federal Reserve, which however may not always provide such liquidity."
So is that what we really need?
A world currency administered by an international central bank modeled after the Federal Reserve?
Not at all.
As I have written about previously, the Federal Reserve has devalued the U.S. dollar by over 95 percent since it was created and the U.S. government has accumulated the largest debt in the history of the world under this system.
So now we want to impose such a system on the entire globe?
The truth is that a global currency (whether it be called the "Bancor" or given a different name entirely) would be a major blow to national sovereignty and would represent a major move towards global government.
Considering how disastrous the Federal Reserve system and other central banking systems around the world have been, why would anyone suggest that we go to a global central banking system modeled after the Federal Reserve?
Let us hope that the "Bancor" never sees the light of day.
However, the truth is that there are some very powerful interests that are absolutely determined to create a global currency and a global central bank for the global economy that we now live in.
It would be a major mistake to think that it can't happen.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Americas Top 20 Facts of (Law) Believe it or Not
Americas Top 20 Facts of (Law) Believe it or Not
http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message463013/pg1
1. The IRS is not a U.S. Government Agency. It is an Agency of the IMF (Diversified metal Products v. IRS etal. CV-93-405E-EJE U.S.D.C.D.I., Public Law 94-564, Senate Report 94-1148 pg. 5967, Reorganization Plan No. 26, Public Law 102-391.)
2. The IMF is an Agency of the UN. (Black’s Law Dictionary 6th Ed. Pg 816)
3. The U.S. has not had a Treasury since 1921 (41 Stat. Ch. 214 pg. 654)
4. There are no judicial courts in America and there has not been since 1789. Judges do not enforce Statutes and Codes. Executive Administrators enforce Statutes and codes (FRC. V. GE 281 US 464, Keller v. PE 261 US 428, 1 Stat. 138-178)
5. There have not been any Judges in America since 1789. There have just been Administrators. (FRC v. GE 281 US 464, Keller v PE 261 US 428 1Stat. 138-178)
6. New York City is defined in the Federal Regulations as the United Nations. Rudolph Giuliani stated on C-Span that “New York City was the capitol of the world” and he was correct. (20 CFR chapter 111, subpart B 422.103 (b) (2) (2) (also check out Rev. 14 in reference to what happened on 9/11)
7. You own no property, slaves can’t own property. Read the Deed to the property that you think is yours. You are listed as a Tenant. (Senate Document 43, 73rd Congress 1 st. Session)
8. You cannot use the Constitution to defend yourself because you are not a party to it. (Padelford Fay & Co. v. The mayor and Alderman of the City of Savannah 14 Georgia 438, 520)
9. The King of England financially backed both sides of the Revolutionary war. (Treaty at Versailles July 15, 1782, Treat of Peace 8 Stat 80)
10. America is a British Colony. (THE UNITED STATES IS A CORPORATION, NOT A LAND MASS AND IT EXISTED BEFORE THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR AND THE BRITISH TROOPS DID NOT LEAVE UNTIL 1796). Republican v. Sweers 1 Dallas 43, Treaty of Commerce 8 Stat 116, The society for Propagating the Gospel & c. v. New Haven 8 Wheat 464, Treaty of Peace 8 Stat 80, IRS Publication 6209, Articles Untitled 24 2006 3 12 21 47 9:47 PM of Association October 20, 1774.
11. Britain is owed by the Vatican. (Treaty of 1213).
12. The Pope can abolish any law in the United States (elements of Ecclesiastical Law Vol. 1 53-54)
13. We are slaves and own absolutely, nothing not even what we think are our children (Tillman v. Roberts 108 So. 62, Van Koten v. Van Koten 154 N.E. 146, Senate Document 43 & 73rd Congress 1 Session, Wynehammer v. People 13 N.R. REP 378, 481)
14. “The People” does not include you and me. (Barron v. Mayor & City Council of Baltimore. 32 U.S. 243)
15. It is not the duty of the police to protect you. Their job is to protect the Corporation and arrest code breakers. Sappv. Tallahasse, 348 So. 2nd 363, Reiff v. City of Philadelphia, 477 F. Supp. 1262, Lynch v. N.C. Dept. of Justice 376 S.E. 2nd. 247.
16. Everything in the “United States” is for sale: roads, bridges, schools, hospitals, water, prisons, airports, etc. I wonder who bought Klamath Lake? Did anyone take the time to check? (?Executive Order 12803)
17. We are Human capital (Executive Order 13037)
18. The FCC, CIA, FBI, NASA and all of the other alphabet gangs were never a part of the United States government. Even though the “US government” held shares of stock in the various Agencies. (U.S. v. Strang, 254 US 491, Lewis v. U.S. 680 F. 2d, 1239)
19. A 1040 form is for tribute paid to Britain. (IRS Publication 6209 IMF decoding manual)
20. We are enemies of the State (Trading with the Enemy Act 1933 Act of 1917 & 1933) Trading with the Enemy Act 1933 Act of 1917 & 1933 (People declared the Enemy) Oct. 6, 1917, under the Trading with the Enemy Act, Section 2 subdivision ( c ) Chapter 106 – Enemy defined “other than citizens of the United States...” March 9, 1933, Chapter 106, Section 5, subdivision (b) of the Trading with the Enemy Act of Oct. 6, 1917 (40 Stat. L. 411) amended as follows: “...any person within the United States.” See H.R. 1491 Public No. 1.
~~~~
The Ultimate Delusion
By: Stephen Ames
http://www.theforbiddenknowledge.com/hardtruth/ultimate_delusion.htm
Queen Elizabeth controls and has amended U.S. Social Security, as follows: S.I. 1997 NO.1778 The Social Security (United States of America) Order 1997 Made 22nd of July 1997 coming into force 1st September 1997.
See APFN Web Pages: http://www.apfn.org/apfn/knighthood.htm ; http://www.apfn.org/apfn/queen.htm
At the Court at Buckingham Palace the 22nd day of July 1997. Now, therefore Her Majesty an pursuance of section 179 (1) (a) and (2) of the Social Security Administration Act of 1992 and all other powers enabling Her in that behalf, is please, by and with advise of Her privy Council, to order, and it is hereby ordered as follows:
"This Order may be cited as the Social Security (United States of America) Order 1997 and shall come into force on 1st September 1997."
Does this give a new meaning to Federal Judge William Wayne Justice stating in court that he takes his orders from England?
This order goes on to redefine words in the Social Security Act and makes some changes in United States Law. Remember, King George was the "Arch-Treasurer and Prince Elector of the Holy Roman Empire and c, and of the United States of America." See: Treaty of Peace (1783) 8 U.S. Statutes at Large 80.. Great Britain which is the agent for the Pope, is in charge of the USA ..'
What people do not know is that the so called Founding Fathers and King George were working hand-in-hand to bring the people of America to their knees, to install a Central Government over them and to bind them to a debt that could not be paid. First off you have to understand that the UNITED STATES is a corporation and that it existed before the Revolutionary war. See Republica v. Sweers 1 Dallas 43. and 28 U.S.C. 3002 (15)
The United States is not a land mass, it is a corporation.
Now, you also have to realize that King George was not just the King of England, he was also the King of France. Treaty of Peace * U.S. 8 Statutes at Large 80.
On January 22, 1783 Congress ratified a contract for the repayment of 21 loans that the UNITED STATES had already received dating from February 28, 1778 to July 5, 1782. Now the UNITED STATES Inc. owes the King money which is due January 1, 1788 from King George via France. King George funded both sides of the Revolutionary War.
Now the Articles of Confederation which were declared in force March 1, 1781 States in Article 12:
"All bills of credit emitted, monies borrowed, and debts contracted by, or under the authority of Congress, before the assembling of the United States, in pursuance of the present confederation, shall be deemed and considered a charge against the United States, for payment and satisfaction whereof the said United States, and the public faith are hereby solemnly pledged."
The Articles of Confederation acknowledge the debt owed to King George.
Now after losing the Revolutionary War, even though the War was nothing more than a move to turn the people into debtors for the King, the conquest was not yet complete. Now the loans were coming due and so a meeting was convened in Annapolis, Maryland, to discuss the economic instability of the country under the Articles of Confederation. Only five States come to the meeting, but there is a call for another meeting to take place in Philadelphia the following year with the express purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation On February 21, 1787 Congress gave approval of the meeting to take place in Philadelphia on May 14, 1787, to revise the Articles of Confederation. Something had to be done about the mounting debt. Little did the people know that the so called founding fathers were going to reorganize the United States because it was Bankrupt.
On September 17, 1787 twelve State delegates approve the Constitution. The States have now become Constitutors. Constitutor: In the civil law, one who, by simple agreement, becomes responsible for the payment of another's debt. Blacks Law Dictionary 6th Ed.
The States were now liable for the debt owed to the King, but the people of America were not because they were not a party to the Constitution because it was never put to them for a vote.
On August 4th, 1790 an Act was passed which was Titled.-An Act making provision for the payment of the Debt of the United States. This can be found at 1 U.S. Statutes at Large pages 138-178. This Act for all intents and purposes abolished the States and Created the Districts. If you don't believe it look it up. The Act set up Federal Districts, here in Pennsylvania we got two. In this Act each District was assigned a portion of the debt. The next step was for the states to reorganize their governments which most did in 1790. This had to be done because the States needed to legally bind the people to the debt. The original State Constitutions were never submitted to the people for a vote. So the governments wrote new constitutions and submitted them to people for a vote thereby binding the people to the debts owed to Great Britain. The people became citizens of the State where they resided and ipso facto a citizen of the United States. A citizen is a member of a fictional entity and it is synonymous with subject.
What you think is a state is in reality a corporation, in other words, a Person.
"Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is Person." 9 F. Supp 272 "Word "person" does not include state. 12 Op Atty Gen 176.
There are no states, just corporations. Every body politic on this planet is a corporation. A corporation is an artificial entity, a fiction at law. They only exist in your mind. They are images in your mind, that speak to you. We labor, pledge our property and give our children to a fiction. For an in-depth look into the nature of these corporations and to see how you also have been declared a fictional entity. See: AMERICAN LAW AND PROCEDURE. JURISPRUDENCE AND LEGAL INSTITUTIONS. VOL.XIII By James De Witt Andrews LL.B. (Albany Law School), LL.D. (Ruskin University) from La Salle University. This book explains in detail the nature and purpose of these corporations, you will be stunned at what you read.
Now before we go any further let us examine a few things in the Constitution.
Article six section one keeps the loans from the King valid it states; "All Debts contracted and Engagements entered into, before the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be as valid against the United States under this Constitution, as under the Confederation."
Another interesting tidbit can be found at Article One Section Eight clause Two which states that Congress has the power to borrow money on the credit of the United States. This was needed so the United States (Which went into Bankruptcy on January 1, 1788) could borrow money and then because the States were a party to the Constitution they would also be liable for it. The next underhanded move was the creation of The United States Bank in 1791. This was a private Bank of which there were 25,000 shares issued of which 18,000 were held by those in England. The Bank loaned the United States money in exchange for Securities of the United States. Now the creditors of the United States which included the King wanted paid the Interest on the loans that were given to the United States. So Alexander Hamilton came up with the great idea of taxing alcohol. The people resisted so George Washington sent out the militia to collect the tax which they did. This has become known as the Whiskey rebellion. It is the Militia's duty to collect taxes. How did the United States collect taxes off of the people if the people are not a party to the Constitution? I'll tell you how. The people are slaves! The United States belongs to the founding fathers, their posterity and Great Britain. America is nothing more than a Plantation. It always has been. How many times have you seen someone in court attempt to use the Constitution and then the Judge tells him he can't. It is because you are not a party to it. We are SLAVES!!!!!!!
If you don't believe read Padelford, Fay & Co. vs. The Mayor and Aldermen of the City of Savannah. 14 Georgia 438, 520 which states " But, indeed, no private person has a right to complain, by suit in court, on the ground of a breach of the Constitution, the Constitution, it is true, is a compact but he is not a party to it."
Now back to the Militia. Just read Article One Section Eight clause (15) which states that it is the militia's job to execute the laws of the Union. Now read Clause (16) Which states that Congress has the power to provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the Militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States.... the Militia is not there to protect you and me, it is their duty to collect our substance. As you can plainly see all the Constitution did is set up a Military Government to guard the King's commerce and make us slaves. If one goes to 8 U.S. statutes at large 116-132 you will find "The Treaty of Amity, Commerce and Navigation". This Treaty was signed on November 19th, 1794 which was twelve years after the War. Article 2 of the Treaty states that the King's Troops were still occupying the United States. Being the nice King that he was, he decided that the troops would return to England by June 1st, 1796. The troops were still on American soil because, quite frankly the King wanted them here.
Many people tend to blame the Jews for our problems, but they too are for the most part also slaves. Jewish Law does however govern the entire world, as found in Jewish Law by MENACHEM ELON, DEPUTY PRESIDENT SUPREME COURT OF ISRAEL, to wit: "Everything in the Babylonian Talmud is binding on all Israel. Every town and country must follow all customs, give effect to the decrees, and carry out the enactment's of the Talmudic sages, because the entire Jewish people accepted everything contained in Talmud. The sages who adopted the enactment's and decrees, instituted the practices, rendered the decisions, and derived the laws, constituted all or most of the Sages of Israel. It is they who received the tradition of the fundamentals of the entire Torah in unbroken succession going back to Moses, our teacher."
We are living under what the Bible calls Mammon. As written in the subject Index, Mammon is defined as ("Civil law and procedure").
Now turn to the "The Shetars Effect on English Law" -- A Law of the Jews Becomes the Law of the Land, found in "The George Town Law Journal, Vol 71: pages 1179-1200." It is clearly stated in the Law Review that the Jews are the property of the Norman and Anglo-Saxon Kings. It also explains that the Talmud is the law of the land. It explains how the Babylonian Talmud became the law of the land, which is now known as the Uniform Commercial Code which is private international law. The written credit agreement -- the Jewish shetar is a lien on all of the property in the world. The treatise also explains that the Jews are owned by Great Britain and that the Jews are in charge of the Baking system.
We are living under the Babylonian Talmud. It was brought into England in 1066 and has been enforced by the Pope, Kings and the various religions ever since. It is total and relentless mind control, people are taught to believe in things that do not exist. Private International Law, which is commercial law, only deals with fictions, known as persons. A person is a fictional entity at law, not a living being. See UCC 1-201.
Now before you scream that the UCC is unconstitutional I'm sorry people, you are not a party to any constitution. Read the case cite below.
"But, indeed, no private person has a right to complain, by suit in court, on the ground of a breach of the Constitution. The Constitution it is true, is a compact, but he is not a party to it." Padelford, Fay & Co., vs. Mayor and Aldermen of the City of Savannah 14 Ga. 438, 520 You have to understand that Great Britain, (Article six Section one) the United States and the States are the parties to the Constitution not you. Let me try to explain. If I buy an automobile from a man and that automobile has a warranty and the engine blows up the first day I have it. Then I tell the man just forget about it. Then you come along and tell the man to pay me and he says no. So you take him to court for not holding up the contract. The court then says case dismissed. Why? Because you are not a party to the contract. You cannot sue a government official for not adhering to a contract (Constitution) that you are not a party too. You better accept the fact that you are a Slave. When you try to use the Constitution you are committing a CRIME known as CRIMINAL TRESPASS. Why? Because you are attempting to infringe on a private contract that you are not a party to. Then to make matters worse you are a debt slave who owns no property or has any rights. You are a mere user of your Masters property!
Here are just a couple of examples:
"The primary control and custody of infants is with the government" Tillman V. Roberts. 108 So. 62
"Marriage is a civil contract to which there are three parties-the husband, the wife and the state." Van Koten v. Van Koten. 154 N.E. 146.
"The ultimate ownership of all property is in the State: individual so-called 'ownership" is only by virtue of Government, i.e. law amounting to mere user; and use must be in accordance with law and subordinate to the necessities of the State. Senate Document No. 43 73rd Congress 1st Session. (Brown v. Welch supra)
You own no Property because you are a slave. Really you are worse off than a slave because you are also a debtor.
"The right of traffic or the transmission of property, as an absolute inalienable right, is one which has never existed since governments were instituted, and never can exist under government." Wynehamer v. The People. 13 N.Y. Rep.378, 481
Great Britain to this day collects taxes from the American people. The IRS is not an Agency of the United States Government.
All taxpayers have an Individual Master File which is in code. By using IRS Publication 6209, which is over 400 pages, there is a blocking series which shows the taxpayer the type of tax that is being paid. Most taxpayers fall under a 300-399 blocking series, which 6209 states is reserved, but by going to BMF 300-399 which is the Business Master File in 6209 prior to 1991, this was U.S.-U.K. Tax Claims, meaning taxpayers are considered a business and involved in commerce and are held liable for taxes via a treaty between the U.S. and the U.K., payable to the U.K. The form that is supposed to be used for this is form 8288, FIRPTA-Foreign Investment Real Property Tax Account. The 8288 form is in the Law Enforcement Manual of the IRS, chapter 3. The OMB's-paper-Office of Management and Budget, in the Department of Treasury, List of Active Information collections, Approved Under Paperwork Reduction Act is where form 8288 is found under OMB number 1545-0902, which says U.S. with holding tax return for dispositions by foreign persons, of U.S. Form #8288, #8288a.
These codes have since been changed to read as follows: IMF 300-309, Barred Assessment, CP 55 generated valid for MFT-30, which is the code for the 1040 form. IMF 310-399 reads the same as IMF 300-309, BMF 390-399 reads U.S.-U.K. Tax Treaty Claims. Isn't it INCREDIBLE that a 1040 form is a payment of a tax to the U.K.? Everybody is always looking to 26 U.S.C. for the law that makes one liable for the so called Income Tax but, it is not in there because it is not a Tax, it is debt collection through a private contract called the Constitution of the United States Article Six, Section One and various agreements. Is a cow paying an income tax when the machine gets connected to it's udders ? The answer is no. I have never known a cow that owns property or has been compensated for its labor. You own nothing that your labor has ever produced. You don't even own your labor or yourself. Your labor is measured in current credit money, which is debt. You are allowed to retain a small portion of your labor so that you can have food, clothing shelter and most of all breed more slaves.
You see, we are cows, the IRS is company who milks the cows and the United States Inc. is the veterinarian who takes care of the herd and Great Britain is the Owner of the farm in fee simple. The farm is held in allodium by the Pope. Now the picture will become much clearer after reading the next few paragraphs. We will now show the Popes involvement in the scheme of things. "Convinced that the principles of religion contribute most powerfully to keep nations in the state of passive obedience which they owe to their princes, the high contracting parties declare it to be their intention to sustain in their respective states, those measures which the clergy may adopt with the aim of ameliorating their interests, so intimately connected with the preservation of the authority of the princes; and the contracting powers join in offering their thanks to the Pope for what he has already done for them, and solicit his constant cooperation in their views of submitting the nations." Article (3) Treaty of Varona (1822)
If the Sovereign Pontiff should nevertheless, insist on his law being observed he must be obeyed. Bened. XIV., De Syn. Dioec, lib, ix., c. vii., n. 4. Prati, 1844. Pontifical laws moreover become obligatory without being accepted or confirmed by secular rulers. Syllabus, prop. 28, 29, 44. Hence the jus nationale, (Federal Law) or the exceptional ecclesiastical laws prevalent in the United States, may be abolished at any time by the Sovereign Pontiff. Elements of Ecclesiastical Law. Vol. I 53-54. So could this be shown that the Pope rules the world?
The Pope (Vicar of Christ) claims to be the ultimate owner of everything in the World. See Treaty of 1213, Papal Bulls of 1455 and 1492.
Don't let this information alarm you because without it you cannot be free, You have to understand that all slavery and freedom originates in the mind. When your mind allows you to accept and understand that the United States, Great Britain and the Vatican are corporations which are nothing but fictional entities which have been placed into your mind, you will understand that our slavery is because we believe in fictions.
THE END
http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message463013/pg1
1. The IRS is not a U.S. Government Agency. It is an Agency of the IMF (Diversified metal Products v. IRS etal. CV-93-405E-EJE U.S.D.C.D.I., Public Law 94-564, Senate Report 94-1148 pg. 5967, Reorganization Plan No. 26, Public Law 102-391.)
2. The IMF is an Agency of the UN. (Black’s Law Dictionary 6th Ed. Pg 816)
3. The U.S. has not had a Treasury since 1921 (41 Stat. Ch. 214 pg. 654)
4. There are no judicial courts in America and there has not been since 1789. Judges do not enforce Statutes and Codes. Executive Administrators enforce Statutes and codes (FRC. V. GE 281 US 464, Keller v. PE 261 US 428, 1 Stat. 138-178)
5. There have not been any Judges in America since 1789. There have just been Administrators. (FRC v. GE 281 US 464, Keller v PE 261 US 428 1Stat. 138-178)
6. New York City is defined in the Federal Regulations as the United Nations. Rudolph Giuliani stated on C-Span that “New York City was the capitol of the world” and he was correct. (20 CFR chapter 111, subpart B 422.103 (b) (2) (2) (also check out Rev. 14 in reference to what happened on 9/11)
7. You own no property, slaves can’t own property. Read the Deed to the property that you think is yours. You are listed as a Tenant. (Senate Document 43, 73rd Congress 1 st. Session)
8. You cannot use the Constitution to defend yourself because you are not a party to it. (Padelford Fay & Co. v. The mayor and Alderman of the City of Savannah 14 Georgia 438, 520)
9. The King of England financially backed both sides of the Revolutionary war. (Treaty at Versailles July 15, 1782, Treat of Peace 8 Stat 80)
10. America is a British Colony. (THE UNITED STATES IS A CORPORATION, NOT A LAND MASS AND IT EXISTED BEFORE THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR AND THE BRITISH TROOPS DID NOT LEAVE UNTIL 1796). Republican v. Sweers 1 Dallas 43, Treaty of Commerce 8 Stat 116, The society for Propagating the Gospel & c. v. New Haven 8 Wheat 464, Treaty of Peace 8 Stat 80, IRS Publication 6209, Articles Untitled 24 2006 3 12 21 47 9:47 PM of Association October 20, 1774.
11. Britain is owed by the Vatican. (Treaty of 1213).
12. The Pope can abolish any law in the United States (elements of Ecclesiastical Law Vol. 1 53-54)
13. We are slaves and own absolutely, nothing not even what we think are our children (Tillman v. Roberts 108 So. 62, Van Koten v. Van Koten 154 N.E. 146, Senate Document 43 & 73rd Congress 1 Session, Wynehammer v. People 13 N.R. REP 378, 481)
14. “The People” does not include you and me. (Barron v. Mayor & City Council of Baltimore. 32 U.S. 243)
15. It is not the duty of the police to protect you. Their job is to protect the Corporation and arrest code breakers. Sappv. Tallahasse, 348 So. 2nd 363, Reiff v. City of Philadelphia, 477 F. Supp. 1262, Lynch v. N.C. Dept. of Justice 376 S.E. 2nd. 247.
16. Everything in the “United States” is for sale: roads, bridges, schools, hospitals, water, prisons, airports, etc. I wonder who bought Klamath Lake? Did anyone take the time to check? (?Executive Order 12803)
17. We are Human capital (Executive Order 13037)
18. The FCC, CIA, FBI, NASA and all of the other alphabet gangs were never a part of the United States government. Even though the “US government” held shares of stock in the various Agencies. (U.S. v. Strang, 254 US 491, Lewis v. U.S. 680 F. 2d, 1239)
19. A 1040 form is for tribute paid to Britain. (IRS Publication 6209 IMF decoding manual)
20. We are enemies of the State (Trading with the Enemy Act 1933 Act of 1917 & 1933) Trading with the Enemy Act 1933 Act of 1917 & 1933 (People declared the Enemy) Oct. 6, 1917, under the Trading with the Enemy Act, Section 2 subdivision ( c ) Chapter 106 – Enemy defined “other than citizens of the United States...” March 9, 1933, Chapter 106, Section 5, subdivision (b) of the Trading with the Enemy Act of Oct. 6, 1917 (40 Stat. L. 411) amended as follows: “...any person within the United States.” See H.R. 1491 Public No. 1.
~~~~
The Ultimate Delusion
By: Stephen Ames
http://www.theforbiddenknowledge.com/hardtruth/ultimate_delusion.htm
Queen Elizabeth controls and has amended U.S. Social Security, as follows: S.I. 1997 NO.1778 The Social Security (United States of America) Order 1997 Made 22nd of July 1997 coming into force 1st September 1997.
See APFN Web Pages: http://www.apfn.org/apfn/knighthood.htm ; http://www.apfn.org/apfn/queen.htm
At the Court at Buckingham Palace the 22nd day of July 1997. Now, therefore Her Majesty an pursuance of section 179 (1) (a) and (2) of the Social Security Administration Act of 1992 and all other powers enabling Her in that behalf, is please, by and with advise of Her privy Council, to order, and it is hereby ordered as follows:
"This Order may be cited as the Social Security (United States of America) Order 1997 and shall come into force on 1st September 1997."
Does this give a new meaning to Federal Judge William Wayne Justice stating in court that he takes his orders from England?
This order goes on to redefine words in the Social Security Act and makes some changes in United States Law. Remember, King George was the "Arch-Treasurer and Prince Elector of the Holy Roman Empire and c, and of the United States of America." See: Treaty of Peace (1783) 8 U.S. Statutes at Large 80.. Great Britain which is the agent for the Pope, is in charge of the USA ..'
What people do not know is that the so called Founding Fathers and King George were working hand-in-hand to bring the people of America to their knees, to install a Central Government over them and to bind them to a debt that could not be paid. First off you have to understand that the UNITED STATES is a corporation and that it existed before the Revolutionary war. See Republica v. Sweers 1 Dallas 43. and 28 U.S.C. 3002 (15)
The United States is not a land mass, it is a corporation.
Now, you also have to realize that King George was not just the King of England, he was also the King of France. Treaty of Peace * U.S. 8 Statutes at Large 80.
On January 22, 1783 Congress ratified a contract for the repayment of 21 loans that the UNITED STATES had already received dating from February 28, 1778 to July 5, 1782. Now the UNITED STATES Inc. owes the King money which is due January 1, 1788 from King George via France. King George funded both sides of the Revolutionary War.
Now the Articles of Confederation which were declared in force March 1, 1781 States in Article 12:
"All bills of credit emitted, monies borrowed, and debts contracted by, or under the authority of Congress, before the assembling of the United States, in pursuance of the present confederation, shall be deemed and considered a charge against the United States, for payment and satisfaction whereof the said United States, and the public faith are hereby solemnly pledged."
The Articles of Confederation acknowledge the debt owed to King George.
Now after losing the Revolutionary War, even though the War was nothing more than a move to turn the people into debtors for the King, the conquest was not yet complete. Now the loans were coming due and so a meeting was convened in Annapolis, Maryland, to discuss the economic instability of the country under the Articles of Confederation. Only five States come to the meeting, but there is a call for another meeting to take place in Philadelphia the following year with the express purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation On February 21, 1787 Congress gave approval of the meeting to take place in Philadelphia on May 14, 1787, to revise the Articles of Confederation. Something had to be done about the mounting debt. Little did the people know that the so called founding fathers were going to reorganize the United States because it was Bankrupt.
On September 17, 1787 twelve State delegates approve the Constitution. The States have now become Constitutors. Constitutor: In the civil law, one who, by simple agreement, becomes responsible for the payment of another's debt. Blacks Law Dictionary 6th Ed.
The States were now liable for the debt owed to the King, but the people of America were not because they were not a party to the Constitution because it was never put to them for a vote.
On August 4th, 1790 an Act was passed which was Titled.-An Act making provision for the payment of the Debt of the United States. This can be found at 1 U.S. Statutes at Large pages 138-178. This Act for all intents and purposes abolished the States and Created the Districts. If you don't believe it look it up. The Act set up Federal Districts, here in Pennsylvania we got two. In this Act each District was assigned a portion of the debt. The next step was for the states to reorganize their governments which most did in 1790. This had to be done because the States needed to legally bind the people to the debt. The original State Constitutions were never submitted to the people for a vote. So the governments wrote new constitutions and submitted them to people for a vote thereby binding the people to the debts owed to Great Britain. The people became citizens of the State where they resided and ipso facto a citizen of the United States. A citizen is a member of a fictional entity and it is synonymous with subject.
What you think is a state is in reality a corporation, in other words, a Person.
"Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is Person." 9 F. Supp 272 "Word "person" does not include state. 12 Op Atty Gen 176.
There are no states, just corporations. Every body politic on this planet is a corporation. A corporation is an artificial entity, a fiction at law. They only exist in your mind. They are images in your mind, that speak to you. We labor, pledge our property and give our children to a fiction. For an in-depth look into the nature of these corporations and to see how you also have been declared a fictional entity. See: AMERICAN LAW AND PROCEDURE. JURISPRUDENCE AND LEGAL INSTITUTIONS. VOL.XIII By James De Witt Andrews LL.B. (Albany Law School), LL.D. (Ruskin University) from La Salle University. This book explains in detail the nature and purpose of these corporations, you will be stunned at what you read.
Now before we go any further let us examine a few things in the Constitution.
Article six section one keeps the loans from the King valid it states; "All Debts contracted and Engagements entered into, before the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be as valid against the United States under this Constitution, as under the Confederation."
Another interesting tidbit can be found at Article One Section Eight clause Two which states that Congress has the power to borrow money on the credit of the United States. This was needed so the United States (Which went into Bankruptcy on January 1, 1788) could borrow money and then because the States were a party to the Constitution they would also be liable for it. The next underhanded move was the creation of The United States Bank in 1791. This was a private Bank of which there were 25,000 shares issued of which 18,000 were held by those in England. The Bank loaned the United States money in exchange for Securities of the United States. Now the creditors of the United States which included the King wanted paid the Interest on the loans that were given to the United States. So Alexander Hamilton came up with the great idea of taxing alcohol. The people resisted so George Washington sent out the militia to collect the tax which they did. This has become known as the Whiskey rebellion. It is the Militia's duty to collect taxes. How did the United States collect taxes off of the people if the people are not a party to the Constitution? I'll tell you how. The people are slaves! The United States belongs to the founding fathers, their posterity and Great Britain. America is nothing more than a Plantation. It always has been. How many times have you seen someone in court attempt to use the Constitution and then the Judge tells him he can't. It is because you are not a party to it. We are SLAVES!!!!!!!
If you don't believe read Padelford, Fay & Co. vs. The Mayor and Aldermen of the City of Savannah. 14 Georgia 438, 520 which states " But, indeed, no private person has a right to complain, by suit in court, on the ground of a breach of the Constitution, the Constitution, it is true, is a compact but he is not a party to it."
Now back to the Militia. Just read Article One Section Eight clause (15) which states that it is the militia's job to execute the laws of the Union. Now read Clause (16) Which states that Congress has the power to provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the Militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States.... the Militia is not there to protect you and me, it is their duty to collect our substance. As you can plainly see all the Constitution did is set up a Military Government to guard the King's commerce and make us slaves. If one goes to 8 U.S. statutes at large 116-132 you will find "The Treaty of Amity, Commerce and Navigation". This Treaty was signed on November 19th, 1794 which was twelve years after the War. Article 2 of the Treaty states that the King's Troops were still occupying the United States. Being the nice King that he was, he decided that the troops would return to England by June 1st, 1796. The troops were still on American soil because, quite frankly the King wanted them here.
Many people tend to blame the Jews for our problems, but they too are for the most part also slaves. Jewish Law does however govern the entire world, as found in Jewish Law by MENACHEM ELON, DEPUTY PRESIDENT SUPREME COURT OF ISRAEL, to wit: "Everything in the Babylonian Talmud is binding on all Israel. Every town and country must follow all customs, give effect to the decrees, and carry out the enactment's of the Talmudic sages, because the entire Jewish people accepted everything contained in Talmud. The sages who adopted the enactment's and decrees, instituted the practices, rendered the decisions, and derived the laws, constituted all or most of the Sages of Israel. It is they who received the tradition of the fundamentals of the entire Torah in unbroken succession going back to Moses, our teacher."
We are living under what the Bible calls Mammon. As written in the subject Index, Mammon is defined as ("Civil law and procedure").
Now turn to the "The Shetars Effect on English Law" -- A Law of the Jews Becomes the Law of the Land, found in "The George Town Law Journal, Vol 71: pages 1179-1200." It is clearly stated in the Law Review that the Jews are the property of the Norman and Anglo-Saxon Kings. It also explains that the Talmud is the law of the land. It explains how the Babylonian Talmud became the law of the land, which is now known as the Uniform Commercial Code which is private international law. The written credit agreement -- the Jewish shetar is a lien on all of the property in the world. The treatise also explains that the Jews are owned by Great Britain and that the Jews are in charge of the Baking system.
We are living under the Babylonian Talmud. It was brought into England in 1066 and has been enforced by the Pope, Kings and the various religions ever since. It is total and relentless mind control, people are taught to believe in things that do not exist. Private International Law, which is commercial law, only deals with fictions, known as persons. A person is a fictional entity at law, not a living being. See UCC 1-201.
Now before you scream that the UCC is unconstitutional I'm sorry people, you are not a party to any constitution. Read the case cite below.
"But, indeed, no private person has a right to complain, by suit in court, on the ground of a breach of the Constitution. The Constitution it is true, is a compact, but he is not a party to it." Padelford, Fay & Co., vs. Mayor and Aldermen of the City of Savannah 14 Ga. 438, 520 You have to understand that Great Britain, (Article six Section one) the United States and the States are the parties to the Constitution not you. Let me try to explain. If I buy an automobile from a man and that automobile has a warranty and the engine blows up the first day I have it. Then I tell the man just forget about it. Then you come along and tell the man to pay me and he says no. So you take him to court for not holding up the contract. The court then says case dismissed. Why? Because you are not a party to the contract. You cannot sue a government official for not adhering to a contract (Constitution) that you are not a party too. You better accept the fact that you are a Slave. When you try to use the Constitution you are committing a CRIME known as CRIMINAL TRESPASS. Why? Because you are attempting to infringe on a private contract that you are not a party to. Then to make matters worse you are a debt slave who owns no property or has any rights. You are a mere user of your Masters property!
Here are just a couple of examples:
"The primary control and custody of infants is with the government" Tillman V. Roberts. 108 So. 62
"Marriage is a civil contract to which there are three parties-the husband, the wife and the state." Van Koten v. Van Koten. 154 N.E. 146.
"The ultimate ownership of all property is in the State: individual so-called 'ownership" is only by virtue of Government, i.e. law amounting to mere user; and use must be in accordance with law and subordinate to the necessities of the State. Senate Document No. 43 73rd Congress 1st Session. (Brown v. Welch supra)
You own no Property because you are a slave. Really you are worse off than a slave because you are also a debtor.
"The right of traffic or the transmission of property, as an absolute inalienable right, is one which has never existed since governments were instituted, and never can exist under government." Wynehamer v. The People. 13 N.Y. Rep.378, 481
Great Britain to this day collects taxes from the American people. The IRS is not an Agency of the United States Government.
All taxpayers have an Individual Master File which is in code. By using IRS Publication 6209, which is over 400 pages, there is a blocking series which shows the taxpayer the type of tax that is being paid. Most taxpayers fall under a 300-399 blocking series, which 6209 states is reserved, but by going to BMF 300-399 which is the Business Master File in 6209 prior to 1991, this was U.S.-U.K. Tax Claims, meaning taxpayers are considered a business and involved in commerce and are held liable for taxes via a treaty between the U.S. and the U.K., payable to the U.K. The form that is supposed to be used for this is form 8288, FIRPTA-Foreign Investment Real Property Tax Account. The 8288 form is in the Law Enforcement Manual of the IRS, chapter 3. The OMB's-paper-Office of Management and Budget, in the Department of Treasury, List of Active Information collections, Approved Under Paperwork Reduction Act is where form 8288 is found under OMB number 1545-0902, which says U.S. with holding tax return for dispositions by foreign persons, of U.S. Form #8288, #8288a.
These codes have since been changed to read as follows: IMF 300-309, Barred Assessment, CP 55 generated valid for MFT-30, which is the code for the 1040 form. IMF 310-399 reads the same as IMF 300-309, BMF 390-399 reads U.S.-U.K. Tax Treaty Claims. Isn't it INCREDIBLE that a 1040 form is a payment of a tax to the U.K.? Everybody is always looking to 26 U.S.C. for the law that makes one liable for the so called Income Tax but, it is not in there because it is not a Tax, it is debt collection through a private contract called the Constitution of the United States Article Six, Section One and various agreements. Is a cow paying an income tax when the machine gets connected to it's udders ? The answer is no. I have never known a cow that owns property or has been compensated for its labor. You own nothing that your labor has ever produced. You don't even own your labor or yourself. Your labor is measured in current credit money, which is debt. You are allowed to retain a small portion of your labor so that you can have food, clothing shelter and most of all breed more slaves.
You see, we are cows, the IRS is company who milks the cows and the United States Inc. is the veterinarian who takes care of the herd and Great Britain is the Owner of the farm in fee simple. The farm is held in allodium by the Pope. Now the picture will become much clearer after reading the next few paragraphs. We will now show the Popes involvement in the scheme of things. "Convinced that the principles of religion contribute most powerfully to keep nations in the state of passive obedience which they owe to their princes, the high contracting parties declare it to be their intention to sustain in their respective states, those measures which the clergy may adopt with the aim of ameliorating their interests, so intimately connected with the preservation of the authority of the princes; and the contracting powers join in offering their thanks to the Pope for what he has already done for them, and solicit his constant cooperation in their views of submitting the nations." Article (3) Treaty of Varona (1822)
If the Sovereign Pontiff should nevertheless, insist on his law being observed he must be obeyed. Bened. XIV., De Syn. Dioec, lib, ix., c. vii., n. 4. Prati, 1844. Pontifical laws moreover become obligatory without being accepted or confirmed by secular rulers. Syllabus, prop. 28, 29, 44. Hence the jus nationale, (Federal Law) or the exceptional ecclesiastical laws prevalent in the United States, may be abolished at any time by the Sovereign Pontiff. Elements of Ecclesiastical Law. Vol. I 53-54. So could this be shown that the Pope rules the world?
The Pope (Vicar of Christ) claims to be the ultimate owner of everything in the World. See Treaty of 1213, Papal Bulls of 1455 and 1492.
Don't let this information alarm you because without it you cannot be free, You have to understand that all slavery and freedom originates in the mind. When your mind allows you to accept and understand that the United States, Great Britain and the Vatican are corporations which are nothing but fictional entities which have been placed into your mind, you will understand that our slavery is because we believe in fictions.
THE END
A Botched Hostage Rescue in the Philippines
from STRATFOR
A Botched Hostage Rescue in the Philippines
August 26, 2010 | 0855 GMT
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A Botched Hostage Rescue in the Philippines
By Scott Stewart
On Aug. 23, Rolando Mendoza, a former senior police inspector with the Manila police department, boarded a tourist bus in downtown Manila and took control of the vehicle, holding the 25 occupants (tourists from Hong Kong and their Philippine guides) hostage. Mendoza, who was dressed in his police inspector’s uniform, was armed with an M16-type rifle and at least one handgun.
According to the police, Mendoza had been discharged from the department after being charged with extortion. Mendoza claimed the charges were fabricated and had fought a protracted administrative and legal battle in his effort to be reinstated. Apparently, Mendoza’s frustration over this process led to his plan to take the hostages. The fact that Mendoza entertained hope of regaining his police job by breaking the law and taking hostages speaks volumes about his mental state at the time of the incident.
After several hours of negotiation failed to convince Mendoza to surrender, communications broke down, Mendoza began to shoot hostages and police launched a clumsy and prolonged tactical operation to storm the bus. The operation lasted for more than an hour and left Mendoza and eight of the tourists dead at the end of a very public and protracted case of violence stemming from a workplace grievance.
Hostage-rescue operations are some of the most difficult and demanding tactical operations for police and military. To be successful, they require a great deal of training and planning and must be carefully executed. Because of this, hostage-rescue teams are among the most elite police and military units in the world. Since these teams are always training and learning, they pay close attention to operations like the one in Manila and study these operations carefully. They seek to adopt and incorporate tactics and techniques that work and learn from any mistakes that were made so they can avoid repeating them. Even in highly successful operations, there are always areas that can be improved upon and lessons that can be learned.
Indeed, in the Manila case, the events that unfolded provided a litany of lessons for hostage-rescue teams. The case will almost certainly be used in law enforcement and military classrooms across the globe for years as a textbook example of what not to do.
Breakdown of the Incident
Shortly after 10 a.m. on Aug. 23, Mendoza commandeered the bus and its occupants (his police inspector’s uniform was likely helpful in gaining him access to the vehicle). Within minutes, he released two female hostages. Soon thereafter he released four hostages (a woman and three children). Mendoza used a cell phone to call the Manila police, inform them of the situation and make his demands: that the charges against him be dropped by the police ombudsman’s office and that he be reinstated to the police force. These early hostage releases would generally be seen as a positive sign by the authorities, showing that Mendoza had some compassion for the women and children and that even if he was reducing the number of hostages for pragmatic, tactical reasons (to allow him better control over the group), he was at least reducing the number by releasing people and not killing them.
The police maintained communications with Mendoza, who stayed aboard the bus and kept the motor running. This not only kept the vehicle cool, but allowed Mendoza to watch events unfold around the bus on the onboard television set. He had his hostages close the curtains on the bus to make it more difficult for the authorities to determine where he was in the bus.
Shortly after 1 p.m., Mendoza requested more gasoline for the bus and some food. He released another hostage, an elderly man, in return for the gas and food. Two other hostages, both Philippine photographers, were released as a 3 p.m. deadline for action set by Mendoza came and went (one of the photographers was released before, one after). There were also reports that Mendoza had initially set a 12:30 p.m. deadline for action. The fact that these deadlines passed without violence would be an encouraging sign to the authorities that the incident could be resolved without bloodshed. Food was again taken out to the bus just before 5 p.m. During the afternoon, Mendoza could have been engaged by snipers on at least two occasions, but since negotiations were proceeding well and Mendoza did not appear to be close to shooting, the decision was made to try and wait him out and not attempt to kill him. If the snipers failed to incapacitate Mendoza, it could have risked the lives of the hostages.
During the ordeal, Mendoza continued to watch events unfold on the television inside the bus and reportedly even talked to journalists via cell phone. Mendoza also ordered the bus driver to park the vehicle sideways in the center of the road in an apparent attempt to make it more difficult to approach without detection.
Things took a marked turn for the worse around 6:20 p.m., when negotiators, accompanied by Mendoza’s brother Gregorio (who is also a police officer and who had earlier helped convince Mendoza to extend his deadline), approached the bus with a letter from the office of the ombudsman offering to reopen his case. Mendoza rejected the letter, saying he wanted his case dismissed, not reviewed. At this point, there are conflicting reports of what happened. The police negotiators told the Philippine Daily Inquirer that Mendoza’s brother told Mendoza that the letter from the ombudsman’s office was garbage and that he should not surrender. Other press reports indicate that the brother pleaded with Mendoza to take him hostage and release the tourists and that his pleading was seen as counterproductive to the negotiations.
Whatever the story, Mendoza’s brother was then arrested and his arrest was carried live on television and seen by Mendoza in the bus. Shortly after his brother’s arrest, Mendoza fired two warning shots and demanded in a radio interview that all the Manila Police Department SWAT officers be removed from the scene. Shortly after 7 p.m., Mendoza repeated his threats and refused to speak to his family members. Growing increasingly agitated, Mendoza shot two of the hostages when his demand for the SWAT officers to retreat was not met. He released the Philippine bus driver, who reportedly told police that all the hostages were dead. (We are unsure why the driver said this when only two of the passengers had been killed, but the police would have been able to tell from the volume of fire that Mendoza had not truly killed all the hostages.)
At about 7:30 p.m., the tires of the bus were shot out and a police tactical team approached the vehicle and began to smash its windows with a sledgehammer. The police attempted to slowly enter the back of the bus by crawling through one of the shattered windows from the top of a police truck but were forced back out of the window by gunfire.
At about 8:40 p.m., police deployed tear gas into the back of the bus through the missing windows. Gunfire erupted and Mendoza was finally killed in a hail of bullets. Six additional hostages also perished during the exchange of gunfire. It is unclear at this point if they were intentionally shot by Mendoza or if they were caught in the crossfire.
Hostage Situations
By the time of the rescue attempt, the saga of Mendoza’s firing from the police force had been going on for some time, and it is important to recognize that he did not make a spontaneous decision to seize the tourist bus. Even if the bus was targeted shortly before the attack, Mendoza’s path toward violent action would have included several significant warning signs. As in almost any case of violence that stems from issues in the workplace, once the chain of events are examined more closely, reports will emerge that warning signs were either missed or ignored. Had those warning signs been noted and acted upon, this situation might have been avoided.
Since the event was not pre-empted, once it happened and developed into a hostage situation, the primary objective of the authorities was to resolve the incident without violence. Skillful hostage negotiators do this by allowing the hostage-taker to vent. They also work hard to defuse any tension that has the attacker on edge and to gently wear the attacker down to the point of surrender. One of the essential principles in this effort is to isolate the hostage-taker so that he or she cannot receive outside communication, motivation, encouragement or other forms of support. Hostage negotiators seek to control the flow of all information into or out of the crime scene. That did not occur in this case. Mendoza was able to talk to outsiders on his cell phone and even gave media interviews. He was also able to use the television in the bus to watch live media coverage of the incident, including video of the deployment of police officers. This gave him a considerable advantage and far more information than what he could have observed with his eyes from inside the curtained bus.
As shown in the November 2008 attack in Mumbai, India, it has become more difficult to isolate assailants from outside communications in the cell phone era, but there are ways that such communications can be disabled. It is not known why the Manila police did not attempt to jam the outside communication signals going to and from the bus, but that is certainly something that will come up in the after-action review, as will their handling of the media and onlookers (one of whom was wounded) during the incident.
As negotiations are proceeding in a hostage situation, the authorities must always be busily preparing to launch an assault in case negotiations fail. When the assailant is agitated or mentally disturbed, the situation on the ground can sometimes change quite rapidly, and the rescue team needs to be prepared to act on a moment’s notice. Usually the team will come in with an initial assault plan and then alter and refine their plan as more intelligence becomes available, and as they become more familiar with the site and the situation.
If the hostages are being held in a building, the rescue team will get the blueprints of the building and collect as much information as possible in an effort to plan their assault on the location where the hostages are being held. In this case, the hostages were being held on a stationary bus, which made it far easier to collect that type of intelligence — a bus is a bus. The authorities also had access to released hostages who, had they been debriefed, could have described to authorities the situation inside the bus.
In a protracted hostage situation, the authorities will frequently employ technical measures to gather additional intelligence on the activities of the hostage-taker. This may involve the use of overt or clandestine video equipment, parabolic microphones or microphones surreptitiously placed in or near the site. Even thermal imaging sets and technical equipment to intercept cell phone communication or radio transmissions are sometimes used.
All the information gleaned from such efforts will not only go to the negotiators, to help them understand the hostage-taker’s frame of mind, but will also be used to help the rescue team fine-tune their assault plan.
Meanwhile, as the assault plan is being tweaked, negotiations continue and the hostage negotiators work to wear down the hostage-taker. It appears that the negotiators in the Mendoza case were doing a fairly good job of keeping the situation calm until the situation flared up involving Mendoza’s brother and the letter from the ombudsman’s office. Authorities clearly erred by not sending him a letter saying they had dropped the case against him. (They did not need the extortion charges now that they could arrest him and charge him with kidnapping and a host of other crimes.) It is hard to understand why the police department quibbled over words and refused to give him the piece of paper he expressly demanded. The police then aggravated the situation greatly with the public arrest of Mendoza’s brother. Those two events caused the situation to deteriorate rapidly and resulted in Mendoza’s decision to begin shooting. Once he shot the first two hostages, the negotiations were clearly over and it was time to implement a tactical solution to the problem.
The Use of Force
In a hostage situation, the use of force is a last resort. If force is required, however, the rescue team needs to hit hard, hit fast and hit accurately. There is little time for hesitation or error: Lives hang in the balance. This is where things began to get very ugly in the Mendoza case. Not only was there a delay between the murder of the first hostages and the launching of the first assault attempt, the assault was not hard, fast or accurate. To succeed, an assault should be dynamic, assume control of the scene by overwhelming force and use surprise and confusion to catch the hostage-taker off guard and quickly incapacitate him. The rescue team needs to dominate the place where the entry is being made and then quickly and accurately shoot the assailant. When the police began to smash the windows of the bus with sledgehammers and then continued to beat on the windows for more than a minute, Mendoza had ample time to kill his hostages had he wished to do so. The only thing that saved the hostages who did survive was Mendoza’s apparent reluctance to kill them.
It appears that the intent of the police was to smash the rear window to provide an opening and then to continue smashing windows as they moved forward in an effort to draw Mendoza’s attention to the front of the bus while the assault team entered from the rear. When the police did attempt to enter the bus using the roof of the police vehicle, however, it was a slow, clumsy attempt that was quickly repelled by Mendoza once he opened fire on the team. They did not enter the bus quickly, and their tepid approach caused them to lose the element of tactical surprise, denied them the opportunity to employ overwhelming force and allowed Mendoza time to think and react and begin firing. There was no hope of the assault team’s dominating the breaching point (or the rest of the bus) when they entered in such a half-hearted manner. Then, instead of following through with the assault by storming the front door while Mendoza was firing at the police in the rear of the bus, the police withdrew and went back to the drawing board. Again, had Mendoza wanted to kill all his remaining hostages, the withdrawal of the assault team gave him ample time to do so.
More than an hour after the first assault, the police again approached the bus and deployed tear gas grenades through the broken windows at the back of the bus. This flushed Mendoza toward the front of the bus and, after a brief exchange of gunfire, he was killed. There were some reports that he was killed by a police sniper, but we have seen no evidence to corroborate those reports, and it appears that he was shot from a relatively short range. Eight of the hostages survived the ordeal.
Granted, a bus does offer some challenges for a takedown operation, but is also a very common form of transportation throughout the world, and there have been numerous hostage situations involving buses in many different countries. Because of this, professional rescue teams frequently practice bus takedowns in much the same way they practice building takedowns or aircraft takedowns.
It was very apparent that the Manila SWAT unit lacked the experience, equipment and training to conduct effective hostage-rescue operations, and we have seen this problem in other local police departments in the developing world. We have not been able to learn why the police did not seek the help of a national-level hostage-rescue unit for the tactical aspect of this situation rather than leaving it to the Manila SWAT team to resolve. Given the prolonged duration of the situation and the location in the nation’s capital, higher-level assets should have had time to deploy to the scene.
Unlike many cases of workplace violence, this one did not involve a disgruntled employee charging into his former office with guns blazing. Instead, Mendoza embarked on a course of action that would, as it turned out, cause a great deal of public humiliation for his former employer. Indeed, the head of the Manila police district tendered his resignation Aug. 24. Four leaders of the Manila SWAT team were also placed on administrative leave.
In the past, some botched rescue attempts have spurred inquiries that have resulted in countries creating or dramatically improving their hostage-rescue capabilities. For example, the failed rescue attempt in Munich in 1972 led to the creation of Germany’s GSG-9, one of the most competent hostage-rescue teams in the world. It will be interesting to see if the Mendoza case spurs similar developments in the Philippines, a country facing a number of security threats.
Read more: A Botched Hostage Rescue in the Philippines | STRATFOR
A Botched Hostage Rescue in the Philippines
August 26, 2010 | 0855 GMT
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A Botched Hostage Rescue in the Philippines
By Scott Stewart
On Aug. 23, Rolando Mendoza, a former senior police inspector with the Manila police department, boarded a tourist bus in downtown Manila and took control of the vehicle, holding the 25 occupants (tourists from Hong Kong and their Philippine guides) hostage. Mendoza, who was dressed in his police inspector’s uniform, was armed with an M16-type rifle and at least one handgun.
According to the police, Mendoza had been discharged from the department after being charged with extortion. Mendoza claimed the charges were fabricated and had fought a protracted administrative and legal battle in his effort to be reinstated. Apparently, Mendoza’s frustration over this process led to his plan to take the hostages. The fact that Mendoza entertained hope of regaining his police job by breaking the law and taking hostages speaks volumes about his mental state at the time of the incident.
After several hours of negotiation failed to convince Mendoza to surrender, communications broke down, Mendoza began to shoot hostages and police launched a clumsy and prolonged tactical operation to storm the bus. The operation lasted for more than an hour and left Mendoza and eight of the tourists dead at the end of a very public and protracted case of violence stemming from a workplace grievance.
Hostage-rescue operations are some of the most difficult and demanding tactical operations for police and military. To be successful, they require a great deal of training and planning and must be carefully executed. Because of this, hostage-rescue teams are among the most elite police and military units in the world. Since these teams are always training and learning, they pay close attention to operations like the one in Manila and study these operations carefully. They seek to adopt and incorporate tactics and techniques that work and learn from any mistakes that were made so they can avoid repeating them. Even in highly successful operations, there are always areas that can be improved upon and lessons that can be learned.
Indeed, in the Manila case, the events that unfolded provided a litany of lessons for hostage-rescue teams. The case will almost certainly be used in law enforcement and military classrooms across the globe for years as a textbook example of what not to do.
Breakdown of the Incident
Shortly after 10 a.m. on Aug. 23, Mendoza commandeered the bus and its occupants (his police inspector’s uniform was likely helpful in gaining him access to the vehicle). Within minutes, he released two female hostages. Soon thereafter he released four hostages (a woman and three children). Mendoza used a cell phone to call the Manila police, inform them of the situation and make his demands: that the charges against him be dropped by the police ombudsman’s office and that he be reinstated to the police force. These early hostage releases would generally be seen as a positive sign by the authorities, showing that Mendoza had some compassion for the women and children and that even if he was reducing the number of hostages for pragmatic, tactical reasons (to allow him better control over the group), he was at least reducing the number by releasing people and not killing them.
The police maintained communications with Mendoza, who stayed aboard the bus and kept the motor running. This not only kept the vehicle cool, but allowed Mendoza to watch events unfold around the bus on the onboard television set. He had his hostages close the curtains on the bus to make it more difficult for the authorities to determine where he was in the bus.
Shortly after 1 p.m., Mendoza requested more gasoline for the bus and some food. He released another hostage, an elderly man, in return for the gas and food. Two other hostages, both Philippine photographers, were released as a 3 p.m. deadline for action set by Mendoza came and went (one of the photographers was released before, one after). There were also reports that Mendoza had initially set a 12:30 p.m. deadline for action. The fact that these deadlines passed without violence would be an encouraging sign to the authorities that the incident could be resolved without bloodshed. Food was again taken out to the bus just before 5 p.m. During the afternoon, Mendoza could have been engaged by snipers on at least two occasions, but since negotiations were proceeding well and Mendoza did not appear to be close to shooting, the decision was made to try and wait him out and not attempt to kill him. If the snipers failed to incapacitate Mendoza, it could have risked the lives of the hostages.
During the ordeal, Mendoza continued to watch events unfold on the television inside the bus and reportedly even talked to journalists via cell phone. Mendoza also ordered the bus driver to park the vehicle sideways in the center of the road in an apparent attempt to make it more difficult to approach without detection.
Things took a marked turn for the worse around 6:20 p.m., when negotiators, accompanied by Mendoza’s brother Gregorio (who is also a police officer and who had earlier helped convince Mendoza to extend his deadline), approached the bus with a letter from the office of the ombudsman offering to reopen his case. Mendoza rejected the letter, saying he wanted his case dismissed, not reviewed. At this point, there are conflicting reports of what happened. The police negotiators told the Philippine Daily Inquirer that Mendoza’s brother told Mendoza that the letter from the ombudsman’s office was garbage and that he should not surrender. Other press reports indicate that the brother pleaded with Mendoza to take him hostage and release the tourists and that his pleading was seen as counterproductive to the negotiations.
Whatever the story, Mendoza’s brother was then arrested and his arrest was carried live on television and seen by Mendoza in the bus. Shortly after his brother’s arrest, Mendoza fired two warning shots and demanded in a radio interview that all the Manila Police Department SWAT officers be removed from the scene. Shortly after 7 p.m., Mendoza repeated his threats and refused to speak to his family members. Growing increasingly agitated, Mendoza shot two of the hostages when his demand for the SWAT officers to retreat was not met. He released the Philippine bus driver, who reportedly told police that all the hostages were dead. (We are unsure why the driver said this when only two of the passengers had been killed, but the police would have been able to tell from the volume of fire that Mendoza had not truly killed all the hostages.)
At about 7:30 p.m., the tires of the bus were shot out and a police tactical team approached the vehicle and began to smash its windows with a sledgehammer. The police attempted to slowly enter the back of the bus by crawling through one of the shattered windows from the top of a police truck but were forced back out of the window by gunfire.
At about 8:40 p.m., police deployed tear gas into the back of the bus through the missing windows. Gunfire erupted and Mendoza was finally killed in a hail of bullets. Six additional hostages also perished during the exchange of gunfire. It is unclear at this point if they were intentionally shot by Mendoza or if they were caught in the crossfire.
Hostage Situations
By the time of the rescue attempt, the saga of Mendoza’s firing from the police force had been going on for some time, and it is important to recognize that he did not make a spontaneous decision to seize the tourist bus. Even if the bus was targeted shortly before the attack, Mendoza’s path toward violent action would have included several significant warning signs. As in almost any case of violence that stems from issues in the workplace, once the chain of events are examined more closely, reports will emerge that warning signs were either missed or ignored. Had those warning signs been noted and acted upon, this situation might have been avoided.
Since the event was not pre-empted, once it happened and developed into a hostage situation, the primary objective of the authorities was to resolve the incident without violence. Skillful hostage negotiators do this by allowing the hostage-taker to vent. They also work hard to defuse any tension that has the attacker on edge and to gently wear the attacker down to the point of surrender. One of the essential principles in this effort is to isolate the hostage-taker so that he or she cannot receive outside communication, motivation, encouragement or other forms of support. Hostage negotiators seek to control the flow of all information into or out of the crime scene. That did not occur in this case. Mendoza was able to talk to outsiders on his cell phone and even gave media interviews. He was also able to use the television in the bus to watch live media coverage of the incident, including video of the deployment of police officers. This gave him a considerable advantage and far more information than what he could have observed with his eyes from inside the curtained bus.
As shown in the November 2008 attack in Mumbai, India, it has become more difficult to isolate assailants from outside communications in the cell phone era, but there are ways that such communications can be disabled. It is not known why the Manila police did not attempt to jam the outside communication signals going to and from the bus, but that is certainly something that will come up in the after-action review, as will their handling of the media and onlookers (one of whom was wounded) during the incident.
As negotiations are proceeding in a hostage situation, the authorities must always be busily preparing to launch an assault in case negotiations fail. When the assailant is agitated or mentally disturbed, the situation on the ground can sometimes change quite rapidly, and the rescue team needs to be prepared to act on a moment’s notice. Usually the team will come in with an initial assault plan and then alter and refine their plan as more intelligence becomes available, and as they become more familiar with the site and the situation.
If the hostages are being held in a building, the rescue team will get the blueprints of the building and collect as much information as possible in an effort to plan their assault on the location where the hostages are being held. In this case, the hostages were being held on a stationary bus, which made it far easier to collect that type of intelligence — a bus is a bus. The authorities also had access to released hostages who, had they been debriefed, could have described to authorities the situation inside the bus.
In a protracted hostage situation, the authorities will frequently employ technical measures to gather additional intelligence on the activities of the hostage-taker. This may involve the use of overt or clandestine video equipment, parabolic microphones or microphones surreptitiously placed in or near the site. Even thermal imaging sets and technical equipment to intercept cell phone communication or radio transmissions are sometimes used.
All the information gleaned from such efforts will not only go to the negotiators, to help them understand the hostage-taker’s frame of mind, but will also be used to help the rescue team fine-tune their assault plan.
Meanwhile, as the assault plan is being tweaked, negotiations continue and the hostage negotiators work to wear down the hostage-taker. It appears that the negotiators in the Mendoza case were doing a fairly good job of keeping the situation calm until the situation flared up involving Mendoza’s brother and the letter from the ombudsman’s office. Authorities clearly erred by not sending him a letter saying they had dropped the case against him. (They did not need the extortion charges now that they could arrest him and charge him with kidnapping and a host of other crimes.) It is hard to understand why the police department quibbled over words and refused to give him the piece of paper he expressly demanded. The police then aggravated the situation greatly with the public arrest of Mendoza’s brother. Those two events caused the situation to deteriorate rapidly and resulted in Mendoza’s decision to begin shooting. Once he shot the first two hostages, the negotiations were clearly over and it was time to implement a tactical solution to the problem.
The Use of Force
In a hostage situation, the use of force is a last resort. If force is required, however, the rescue team needs to hit hard, hit fast and hit accurately. There is little time for hesitation or error: Lives hang in the balance. This is where things began to get very ugly in the Mendoza case. Not only was there a delay between the murder of the first hostages and the launching of the first assault attempt, the assault was not hard, fast or accurate. To succeed, an assault should be dynamic, assume control of the scene by overwhelming force and use surprise and confusion to catch the hostage-taker off guard and quickly incapacitate him. The rescue team needs to dominate the place where the entry is being made and then quickly and accurately shoot the assailant. When the police began to smash the windows of the bus with sledgehammers and then continued to beat on the windows for more than a minute, Mendoza had ample time to kill his hostages had he wished to do so. The only thing that saved the hostages who did survive was Mendoza’s apparent reluctance to kill them.
It appears that the intent of the police was to smash the rear window to provide an opening and then to continue smashing windows as they moved forward in an effort to draw Mendoza’s attention to the front of the bus while the assault team entered from the rear. When the police did attempt to enter the bus using the roof of the police vehicle, however, it was a slow, clumsy attempt that was quickly repelled by Mendoza once he opened fire on the team. They did not enter the bus quickly, and their tepid approach caused them to lose the element of tactical surprise, denied them the opportunity to employ overwhelming force and allowed Mendoza time to think and react and begin firing. There was no hope of the assault team’s dominating the breaching point (or the rest of the bus) when they entered in such a half-hearted manner. Then, instead of following through with the assault by storming the front door while Mendoza was firing at the police in the rear of the bus, the police withdrew and went back to the drawing board. Again, had Mendoza wanted to kill all his remaining hostages, the withdrawal of the assault team gave him ample time to do so.
More than an hour after the first assault, the police again approached the bus and deployed tear gas grenades through the broken windows at the back of the bus. This flushed Mendoza toward the front of the bus and, after a brief exchange of gunfire, he was killed. There were some reports that he was killed by a police sniper, but we have seen no evidence to corroborate those reports, and it appears that he was shot from a relatively short range. Eight of the hostages survived the ordeal.
Granted, a bus does offer some challenges for a takedown operation, but is also a very common form of transportation throughout the world, and there have been numerous hostage situations involving buses in many different countries. Because of this, professional rescue teams frequently practice bus takedowns in much the same way they practice building takedowns or aircraft takedowns.
It was very apparent that the Manila SWAT unit lacked the experience, equipment and training to conduct effective hostage-rescue operations, and we have seen this problem in other local police departments in the developing world. We have not been able to learn why the police did not seek the help of a national-level hostage-rescue unit for the tactical aspect of this situation rather than leaving it to the Manila SWAT team to resolve. Given the prolonged duration of the situation and the location in the nation’s capital, higher-level assets should have had time to deploy to the scene.
Unlike many cases of workplace violence, this one did not involve a disgruntled employee charging into his former office with guns blazing. Instead, Mendoza embarked on a course of action that would, as it turned out, cause a great deal of public humiliation for his former employer. Indeed, the head of the Manila police district tendered his resignation Aug. 24. Four leaders of the Manila SWAT team were also placed on administrative leave.
In the past, some botched rescue attempts have spurred inquiries that have resulted in countries creating or dramatically improving their hostage-rescue capabilities. For example, the failed rescue attempt in Munich in 1972 led to the creation of Germany’s GSG-9, one of the most competent hostage-rescue teams in the world. It will be interesting to see if the Mendoza case spurs similar developments in the Philippines, a country facing a number of security threats.
Read more: A Botched Hostage Rescue in the Philippines | STRATFOR
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
"We may be entering a full new Ice Age."
Aug 09, 2010
"We may be entering a full new Ice Age."
by the Earl of Sterling
An Italian theoretical physicist, Dr. Gianluigi ZangariDr. Gianluigi Zangari says the BP Oil Disaster has caused a dramatic weakening in the vorticity of the Gulf Stream and North Atlantic Current, and a reduction in North Atlantic water temperatures by 10 Celsius.
"The breaking of a crucial warm stream ... may generate a chain reaction of unpredictable critical phenomena and ... may have serious consequences on the dynamics of the Gulf Stream thermoregulation activity of the Global Climate."
The Gulf Stream's impact on climate is well known, keeping Iceland and Scotland comfortable in winter compared to the deep-freeze of Labrador at the same latitude. The Gulf Stream directly affects weather and climate patterns over the whole Northern Hemisphere, and perhaps even world wide.
GULF STREAM 'DYING'
The entire 'river of warm water' that flows from the Caribbean to the edges of Western Europe is dying due to the Corexit that the Obama Administration allowed BP to use to hide the scale of the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Disaster.
The approximately two million gallons of Corexit, plus several million gallons of other dispersants, have caused the over two hundred million gallons of crude oil to mostly sink to the bottom of the ocean. This has hidden much of the oil, with the hopes that BP can seriously reduce the mandated federal fines from the oil disaster.
However, there is no current way to effectively 'clean up' the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, which is about half covered in crude oil. Additionally, the oil has flowed up the East Coast of America and into the North Atlantic Ocean, and there is no way to effectively clean up this 'sea bottom oil'.
This massive amount of crude oil, covering such an enormous area, has seriously affected the Loop Current, the Gulf Stream, and the North Atlantic Current system, by breaking up the boundary layers of the warm water flow.
There are several names to the themo-regulation 'river of warm water' that keeps the Northern Hemisphere from going into a new Ice Age. The first section is named the "Loop Current" and it begins in the Caribbean, flows around the Yucatan Peninsula and goes into the Gulf of Mexico, then loops around the Gulf and exits on the east side and runs between Cuba and Florida.
At this point the current is called the "Florida Current" and it flows from the Keys up the East Coast of America (Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and part of North Carolina) to the Outer Banks. At the Outer Banks the current heads east into the North Atlantic where it is known as the "Gulf Stream". Eventually the Gulf Stream becomes the North Atlantic Current, which itself eventually becomes the Norway Current and the Canary Current.
This 'river of warm water' does not begin with the Loop Current, it is part of a much larger system that includes the Atlantic South Equatorial Current which flows north along the coast of Brazil (the North Brazil Current), and becomes the Caribbean Current, and is renamed the Yucatan Current as it flows north into the Yucatan Channel. This entire system is one of the main global themo-regulation processes that regulates the planet's temperatures.
Based on what has already happened (to the Loop Current and the Gulf Stream/North Atlantic Current/etc. and global weather patterns), and what is continuing to happen, we can project increased global climate changes that are both serious and near in terms of time. We may be entering a full new Ice Age.
There is no known way to clean up the massive amount of free crude oil, stripped of its lighter elements by dispersants, now on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico and in significant parts of the Atlantic Ocean (where the Gulf Stream flows).
The use of Corexit and other dispersants by BP, with the full cooperation of the Obama Administration has created the most significant danger to the entire planet in recorded history. This is what happens when a great nation slips into being a Third World type of nation, where money alone is the key driving force in government actions.
As full knowledge of the scope of the oncoming mega-disaster to the planet becomes known, the Obama Administration will find itself in a political crisis way beyond Watergate (that cost Nixon his presidency) or the sex affair that almost cost Clinton his presidency. The effect on this years mid-term Congressional elections are apt to be dramatic.
http://europebusines.blogspot.com/2010/08/special-post.html
"We may be entering a full new Ice Age."
by the Earl of Sterling
An Italian theoretical physicist, Dr. Gianluigi ZangariDr. Gianluigi Zangari says the BP Oil Disaster has caused a dramatic weakening in the vorticity of the Gulf Stream and North Atlantic Current, and a reduction in North Atlantic water temperatures by 10 Celsius.
"The breaking of a crucial warm stream ... may generate a chain reaction of unpredictable critical phenomena and ... may have serious consequences on the dynamics of the Gulf Stream thermoregulation activity of the Global Climate."
The Gulf Stream's impact on climate is well known, keeping Iceland and Scotland comfortable in winter compared to the deep-freeze of Labrador at the same latitude. The Gulf Stream directly affects weather and climate patterns over the whole Northern Hemisphere, and perhaps even world wide.
GULF STREAM 'DYING'
The entire 'river of warm water' that flows from the Caribbean to the edges of Western Europe is dying due to the Corexit that the Obama Administration allowed BP to use to hide the scale of the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Disaster.
The approximately two million gallons of Corexit, plus several million gallons of other dispersants, have caused the over two hundred million gallons of crude oil to mostly sink to the bottom of the ocean. This has hidden much of the oil, with the hopes that BP can seriously reduce the mandated federal fines from the oil disaster.
However, there is no current way to effectively 'clean up' the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, which is about half covered in crude oil. Additionally, the oil has flowed up the East Coast of America and into the North Atlantic Ocean, and there is no way to effectively clean up this 'sea bottom oil'.
This massive amount of crude oil, covering such an enormous area, has seriously affected the Loop Current, the Gulf Stream, and the North Atlantic Current system, by breaking up the boundary layers of the warm water flow.
There are several names to the themo-regulation 'river of warm water' that keeps the Northern Hemisphere from going into a new Ice Age. The first section is named the "Loop Current" and it begins in the Caribbean, flows around the Yucatan Peninsula and goes into the Gulf of Mexico, then loops around the Gulf and exits on the east side and runs between Cuba and Florida.
At this point the current is called the "Florida Current" and it flows from the Keys up the East Coast of America (Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and part of North Carolina) to the Outer Banks. At the Outer Banks the current heads east into the North Atlantic where it is known as the "Gulf Stream". Eventually the Gulf Stream becomes the North Atlantic Current, which itself eventually becomes the Norway Current and the Canary Current.
This 'river of warm water' does not begin with the Loop Current, it is part of a much larger system that includes the Atlantic South Equatorial Current which flows north along the coast of Brazil (the North Brazil Current), and becomes the Caribbean Current, and is renamed the Yucatan Current as it flows north into the Yucatan Channel. This entire system is one of the main global themo-regulation processes that regulates the planet's temperatures.
Based on what has already happened (to the Loop Current and the Gulf Stream/North Atlantic Current/etc. and global weather patterns), and what is continuing to happen, we can project increased global climate changes that are both serious and near in terms of time. We may be entering a full new Ice Age.
There is no known way to clean up the massive amount of free crude oil, stripped of its lighter elements by dispersants, now on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico and in significant parts of the Atlantic Ocean (where the Gulf Stream flows).
The use of Corexit and other dispersants by BP, with the full cooperation of the Obama Administration has created the most significant danger to the entire planet in recorded history. This is what happens when a great nation slips into being a Third World type of nation, where money alone is the key driving force in government actions.
As full knowledge of the scope of the oncoming mega-disaster to the planet becomes known, the Obama Administration will find itself in a political crisis way beyond Watergate (that cost Nixon his presidency) or the sex affair that almost cost Clinton his presidency. The effect on this years mid-term Congressional elections are apt to be dramatic.
http://europebusines.blogspot.com/2010/08/special-post.html
Fox News co-owner funded ‘Ground Zero mosque’ imam: report
http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0821/fox-shareholder-funded-mosque-imam/
Fox News co-owner funded ‘Ground Zero mosque’ imam: report
By Raw Story
Saturday, August 21st, 2010 -- 7:02 pm
The second largest shareholder in News Corp. -- the parent company of Fox News -- has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to causes linked to the imam planning to build a Muslim community center and mosque near Ground Zero in Manhattan, says a report from Yahoo!News.
According to the report from Yahoo!'s John Cook, Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, who owns seven percent of News Corp., "has directly funded [Imam Feisal Abdul] Rauf's projects to the tune of more than $300,000."
Cook reports that Prince Al-Waleed's personal charity, the Kingdom Foundation, donated $305,000 to Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow, a project sponsored by two of Rauf's initiatives, the American Society for Muslim Advancement and the Cordoba Initiative, which is building the Manhattan mosque.
That Fox News' second-largest shareholder, after Rupert Murdoch, has financial links to the "Ground Zero mosque" will be seen as ironic by critics of the news network, who have watched with chagrin as the network's talking heads attempt to link the mosque to radical Islamism.
Last week, Daily Show host Jon Stewart lambasted Fox panelist Eric Bolling's attempt to link the Cordoba Initiative to Hamas and Iran. Stewart used News Corp.'s connections to Prince Al-Waleed, and the prince's connections to the Carlyle Group and Osama bin Laden to make a tongue-in-cheek argument that Fox News may be a " terrorist command center."
"Stewart didn't need to take all those steps to make the connection," Cook writes.
Cook also reports that Prince Al-Waleed has in the past funded a number of Islamic organizations that have been maligned by Fox News commentators:
Al-Waleed donated $500,000 to the Council on American-Islamic Relations which has been repeatedly denounced on Fox News's air by Geller and others as a terror group in 2002. Indeed, Rauf's "numerous ties to CAIR" alone have been cited by the mosque's opponents as a justification for imputing terrorist sympathies to him, yet few people seem to be asking whether Murdoch's extensive multi-billion business collaboration with the man who funds both Rauf and CAIR merits investigation or concern.
Other beneficiaries of Al-Waleed's largess include the Islamic Development Bank, a project designed to "foster the economic development and social progress of [Muslims] in accordance with the principles of Shari'ah." The IDB funds the construction of mosques around the world, and has been implicated by frequent Fox News guest Stephen Schwartz in an attempt to spread radical Wahhabism (a fundamentalist branch of Islam) throughout the United States.
Cook notes that it was none other than News Corp.'s New York Post that reported on Prince Al-Waleed's donation to Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow. He reports that Fox News had no comment for his article, and emails to the prince's Kingdom Foundation were not returned.
Prince Al-Waleed owns an estimated $2.5-billion-worth of News Corp. Majority shareholder Rupert Murdoch recently took a stake in the prince's Middle East-based media conglomerate, Rotana Group. Murdoch and Prince Al-Waleed are reportedly working on launching an Arabic news network that will compete with existing pan-Arabic networks Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya.
Fox News co-owner funded ‘Ground Zero mosque’ imam: report
By Raw Story
Saturday, August 21st, 2010 -- 7:02 pm
The second largest shareholder in News Corp. -- the parent company of Fox News -- has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to causes linked to the imam planning to build a Muslim community center and mosque near Ground Zero in Manhattan, says a report from Yahoo!News.
According to the report from Yahoo!'s John Cook, Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, who owns seven percent of News Corp., "has directly funded [Imam Feisal Abdul] Rauf's projects to the tune of more than $300,000."
Cook reports that Prince Al-Waleed's personal charity, the Kingdom Foundation, donated $305,000 to Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow, a project sponsored by two of Rauf's initiatives, the American Society for Muslim Advancement and the Cordoba Initiative, which is building the Manhattan mosque.
That Fox News' second-largest shareholder, after Rupert Murdoch, has financial links to the "Ground Zero mosque" will be seen as ironic by critics of the news network, who have watched with chagrin as the network's talking heads attempt to link the mosque to radical Islamism.
Last week, Daily Show host Jon Stewart lambasted Fox panelist Eric Bolling's attempt to link the Cordoba Initiative to Hamas and Iran. Stewart used News Corp.'s connections to Prince Al-Waleed, and the prince's connections to the Carlyle Group and Osama bin Laden to make a tongue-in-cheek argument that Fox News may be a " terrorist command center."
"Stewart didn't need to take all those steps to make the connection," Cook writes.
Cook also reports that Prince Al-Waleed has in the past funded a number of Islamic organizations that have been maligned by Fox News commentators:
Al-Waleed donated $500,000 to the Council on American-Islamic Relations which has been repeatedly denounced on Fox News's air by Geller and others as a terror group in 2002. Indeed, Rauf's "numerous ties to CAIR" alone have been cited by the mosque's opponents as a justification for imputing terrorist sympathies to him, yet few people seem to be asking whether Murdoch's extensive multi-billion business collaboration with the man who funds both Rauf and CAIR merits investigation or concern.
Other beneficiaries of Al-Waleed's largess include the Islamic Development Bank, a project designed to "foster the economic development and social progress of [Muslims] in accordance with the principles of Shari'ah." The IDB funds the construction of mosques around the world, and has been implicated by frequent Fox News guest Stephen Schwartz in an attempt to spread radical Wahhabism (a fundamentalist branch of Islam) throughout the United States.
Cook notes that it was none other than News Corp.'s New York Post that reported on Prince Al-Waleed's donation to Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow. He reports that Fox News had no comment for his article, and emails to the prince's Kingdom Foundation were not returned.
Prince Al-Waleed owns an estimated $2.5-billion-worth of News Corp. Majority shareholder Rupert Murdoch recently took a stake in the prince's Middle East-based media conglomerate, Rotana Group. Murdoch and Prince Al-Waleed are reportedly working on launching an Arabic news network that will compete with existing pan-Arabic networks Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya.
Israeli-Palestinian Peace Talks, Again
from STRATFOR
Israeli-Palestinian Peace Talks, Again
August 23, 2010 | 1932 GMT
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Israeli-Palestinian Peace Talks, Again
By George Friedman
The Israeli government and the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) have agreed to engage in direct peace talks Sept. 2 in Washington. Neither side has expressed any enthusiasm about the talks. In part, this comes from the fact that entering any negotiations with enthusiasm weakens your bargaining position. But the deeper reason is simply that there have been so many peace talks between the two sides and so many failures that it is difficult for a rational person to see much hope in them. Moreover, the failures have not occurred for trivial reasons. They have occurred because of profound divergences in the interests and outlooks of each side.
These particular talks are further flawed because of their origin. Neither side was eager for the talks. They are taking place because the United States wanted them. Indeed, in a certain sense, both sides are talking because they do not want to alienate the United States and because it is easier to talk and fail than it is to refuse to talk.
The United States has wanted Israeli-Palestinian talks since the Palestinians organized themselves into a distinct national movement in the 1970s. Particularly after the successful negotiations between Egypt and Israel and Israel’s implicit long-term understanding with Jordan, an agreement between the Palestinians and the Israelis appeared to be next on the agenda. With the fall of the Soviet Union and the collapse of its support for Fatah and other Palestinian groups, a peace process seemed logical and reasonable.
Over time, peace talks became an end in themselves for the United States. The United States has interests throughout the Islamic world. While U.S.-Israeli relations are not the sole point of friction between the Islamic world and the United States, they are certainly one point of friction, particularly on the level of public diplomacy. Indeed, though most Muslim governments may not regard Israel as critical to their national interests, their publics do regard it that way for ideological and religious reasons.
Many Muslim governments therefore engage in a two-level diplomacy: first, publicly condemning Israel and granting public support for the Palestinians as if it were a major issue and, second, quietly ignoring the issue and focusing on other matters of greater direct interest, which often actually involves collaborating with the Israelis. This accounts for the massive difference between the public stance of many governments and their private actions, which can range from indifference to hostility toward Palestinian interests. Countries like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey are all prepared to cooperate deeply with the United States but face hostility from their populations over the matter.
The public pressure on governments is real, and the United States needs to deal with it. The last thing the United States wants to see is relatively cooperative Muslim governments in the region fall due to anti-Israeli or anti-American public sentiment. The issue of Israel and the United States also creates stickiness in the smooth functioning of relations with these countries. The United States wants to minimize this problem.
It should be understood that many Muslim governments would be appalled if the United States broke with Israel and Israel fell. For example, Egypt and Jordan, facing demographic and security issues of their own, are deeply hostile to at least some Palestinian factions. The vast majority of Jordan’s population is actually Palestinian. Egypt struggles with an Islamist movement called the Muslim Brotherhood, which has collaborated with like-minded Islamists among the Palestinians for decades. The countries of the Arabian Peninsula are infinitely more interested in the threat from Iran than in the existence of Israel and, indeed, see Israel as one of the buttresses against Iran. Even Iran is less interested in the destruction of Israel than it is in using the issue as a tool in building its own credibility and influence in the region.
In the Islamic world, public opinion, government rhetoric and government policy have long had a distant kinship. If the United States were actually to do what these countries publicly demand, the private response would be deep concern both about the reliability of the United States and about the consequences of a Palestinian state. A wave of euphoric radicalism could threaten all of these regimes. They quite like the status quo, including the part where they get to condemn the United States for maintaining it.
The United States does not see its relationship with Israel as inhibiting functional state-to-state relationships in the Islamic world, because it hasn’t. Washington paradoxically sees a break with Israel as destabilizing to the region. At the same time, the American government understands the political problems Muslim governments face in working with the United States, in particular the friction created by the American relationship with Israel. While not representing a fundamental challenge to American interests, this friction does represent an issue that must be taken into account and managed.
Peace talks are the American solution. Peace talks give the United States the appearance of seeking to settle the Israeli-Palestinian problem. The comings and goings of American diplomats, treating Palestinians as equals in negotiations and as being equally important to the United States, and the occasional photo op if some agreement is actually reached, all give the United States and pro-American Muslim governments a tool — even if it is not a very effective one — for managing Muslim public opinion. Peace talks also give the United States the ability, on occasion, to criticize Israel publicly, without changing the basic framework of the U.S.-Israeli relationship. Most important, they cost the United States nothing. The United States has many diplomats available for multiple-track discussions and working groups for drawing up position papers. Talks do not solve the political problem in the region, but they do reshape perceptions a bit at very little cost. And they give the added benefit that, at some point in the talks, the United States will be able to ask the Europeans to support any solution — or tentative agreement — financially.
Therefore, the Obama administration has been pressuring the Israelis and the PNA, dominated by Fatah, to renew the peace process. Both have been reluctant because, unlike the United States, these talks pose political challenges to the two sides. Peace talks have the nasty habit of triggering internal political crises. Since neither side expects real success, neither government wants to bear the internal political costs that such talks entail. But since the United States is both a major funder of the PNA and Israel’s most significant ally, neither group is in a position to resist the call to talk. And so, after suitable resistance that both sides used for their own ends, the talks begin.
The Israeli problem with the talks is that they force the government to deal with an extraordinarily divided Israeli public. Israel has had weak governments for a generation. These governments are weak because they are formed by coalitions made up of diverse and sometimes opposed parties. In part, this is due to Israel’s electoral system, which increases the likelihood that parties that would never enter the parliament of other countries do sit in the Knesset with a handful of members. There are enough of these that the major parties never come close to a ruling majority and the coalition government that has to be created is crippled from the beginning. An Israeli prime minister spends most of his time avoiding dealing with important issues, since his Cabinet would fall apart if he did.
But the major issue is that the Israeli public is deeply divided ethnically and ideologically, with ideology frequently tracking ethnicity. The original European Jews are often still steeped in the original Zionist vision. But Russian Jews who now comprise roughly one-sixth of the population see the original Zionist plan as alien to them. Then there are the American Jews who moved to Israel for ideological reasons. All these splits and others create an Israel that reminds us of the Fourth French Republic between World War II and the rise of Charles de Gaulle. The term applied to it was “immobilism,” the inability to decide on anything, so it continued to do whatever it was already doing, however ineffective and harmful that course may have been.
Incidentally, Israel wasn’t always this way. After its formation in 1948, Israel’s leaders were all part of the leadership that achieved statehood. That cadre is all gone now, and Israel has yet to transition away from its dependence on its “founding fathers.” Between less trusted leadership and a maddeningly complex political demography, it is no surprise that Israeli politics can be so caustic and churning.
From the point of view of any Israeli foreign minister, the danger of peace talks is that the United States might actually engineer a solution. Any such solution would by definition involve Israeli concessions that would be opposed by a substantial Israeli bloc — and nearly any Israeli faction could derail any agreement. Israeli prime ministers go to the peace talks terrified that the Palestinians might actually get their house in order and be reasonable — leaving it to Israel to stand against an American solution. Had Ariel Sharon not had his stroke, there might have been a strong leader who could wrestle the Israeli political system to the ground and impose a settlement. But at this point, there has not been an Israeli leader since Menachem Begin who could negotiate with confidence in his position. Benjamin Netanyahu finds himself caught between the United States and his severely fractured Cabinet by peace talks.
Fortunately for Netanyahu, the PNA is even more troubled by talks. The Palestinians are deeply divided between two ideological enemies, Fatah and Hamas. Fatah is generally secular and derives from the Soviet-backed Palestinian movement. Having lost its sponsor, it has drifted toward the United States and Europe by default. Its old antagonist, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, is still there and still suspicious. Fatah tried to overthrow the kingdom in 1970, and memories are long.
For its part, Hamas is a religious movement, with roots in Egypt and support from Saudi Arabia. Unlike Fatah, Hamas says it is unwilling to recognize the existence of Israel as a legitimate state, and it appears to be quite serious about this. While there seem to be some elements in Hamas that could consider a shift, this is not the consensus view. Iran also provides support, but the Sunni-Shiite split is real and Iran is mostly fishing in troubled waters. Hamas will take help where it can get it, but Hamas is, to a significant degree, funded by the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, so getting too close to Iran would create political problems for Hamas’ leadership. In addition, though Cairo has to deal with Hamas because of the Egypt-Gaza border, Cairo is at best deeply suspicions of the group. Egypt sees Hamas as deriving from the same bedrock of forces that gave birth to the Muslim Brotherhood and those who killed Anwar Sadat, forces which pose the greatest future challenge to Egyptian stability. As a result, Egypt continues to be Israel’s silent partner in the blockade of Gaza.
Therefore, the PNA dominated by Fatah in no way speaks for all Palestinians. While Fatah dominates the West Bank, Hamas controls Gaza. Were Fatah to make the kinds of concessions that might make a peace agreement possible, Hamas would not only oppose them but would have the means of scuttling anything that involved Gaza. Making matters worse for Fatah, Hamas does enjoy considerable — if precisely unknown — levels of support in the West Bank, and Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of Fatah and the PNA, is not eager to find out how much in the current super-heated atmosphere.
The most striking agreement between Arabs and Israelis was the Camp David Accords negotiated by U.S. President Jimmy Carter. Those accords were rooted in the 1973 war in which the Israelis were stunned by their own intelligence failures and the extraordinary capabilities shown by the Egyptian army so soon after its crushing defeat in 1967. All of Israel’s comfortable assumptions went out the window. At the same time, Egypt was ultimately defeated, with Israeli troops on the east shore of the Suez Canal.
The Israelis came away with greater respect for Egyptian military power and a decreased confidence in their own. The Egyptians came away with the recognition that however much they had improved, they were defeated in the end. The Israelis weren’t certain they would beat Egypt the next time. The Egyptians were doubtful they could ever beat Israel. For both, a negotiated settlement made sense. The mix of severely shaken confidence and morbid admittance to reality was what permitted Carter to negotiate a settlement that both sides wanted — and could sell to their respective publics.
There has been no similar defining moment in Israeli-Palestinian relations. There is no consensus on either side, nor does either side have a government that can speak authoritatively for the people it represents. On both sides, the rejectionists not only are in a blocking position but are actually in governing roles, and no coalition exists to sweep them aside. The Palestinians are divided by ideology and geography, while the Israelis are “merely” divided by ideology and a political system designed for paralysis.
But the United States wants a peace process, preferably a long one designed to put off the day when it fails. This will allow the United States to appear to be deeply committed to peace and to publicly pressure the Israelis, which will be of some minor use in U.S. efforts to manipulate the rest of the region. But it will not solve anything. Nor is it intended to.
The problem is that neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians are sufficiently unsettled to make peace. Both Egypt and Israel were shocked and afraid after the 1973 war. Mutual fear is the foundation of peace among enemies. The uncertainty of the future sobers both sides. But the fact right now is that all of the players prefer the status quo to the risks of the future. Hamas doesn’t want to risk its support by negotiating and implicitly recognizing Israel. The PNA doesn’t want to risk a Hamas uprising in the West Bank by making significant concessions. The Israelis don’t want to gamble with unreliable negotiating partners on a settlement that wouldn’t enjoy broad public support in a domestic political environment where even simple programs can get snarled in a morass of ideology. Until reality or some as-yet-uncommitted force shifts the game, it is easier for them — all of them — to do nothing.
But the Americans want talks, and so the talks will begin.
Read more: Israeli-Palestinian Peace Talks, Again | STRATFOR
Israeli-Palestinian Peace Talks, Again
August 23, 2010 | 1932 GMT
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Israeli-Palestinian Peace Talks, Again
By George Friedman
The Israeli government and the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) have agreed to engage in direct peace talks Sept. 2 in Washington. Neither side has expressed any enthusiasm about the talks. In part, this comes from the fact that entering any negotiations with enthusiasm weakens your bargaining position. But the deeper reason is simply that there have been so many peace talks between the two sides and so many failures that it is difficult for a rational person to see much hope in them. Moreover, the failures have not occurred for trivial reasons. They have occurred because of profound divergences in the interests and outlooks of each side.
These particular talks are further flawed because of their origin. Neither side was eager for the talks. They are taking place because the United States wanted them. Indeed, in a certain sense, both sides are talking because they do not want to alienate the United States and because it is easier to talk and fail than it is to refuse to talk.
The United States has wanted Israeli-Palestinian talks since the Palestinians organized themselves into a distinct national movement in the 1970s. Particularly after the successful negotiations between Egypt and Israel and Israel’s implicit long-term understanding with Jordan, an agreement between the Palestinians and the Israelis appeared to be next on the agenda. With the fall of the Soviet Union and the collapse of its support for Fatah and other Palestinian groups, a peace process seemed logical and reasonable.
Over time, peace talks became an end in themselves for the United States. The United States has interests throughout the Islamic world. While U.S.-Israeli relations are not the sole point of friction between the Islamic world and the United States, they are certainly one point of friction, particularly on the level of public diplomacy. Indeed, though most Muslim governments may not regard Israel as critical to their national interests, their publics do regard it that way for ideological and religious reasons.
Many Muslim governments therefore engage in a two-level diplomacy: first, publicly condemning Israel and granting public support for the Palestinians as if it were a major issue and, second, quietly ignoring the issue and focusing on other matters of greater direct interest, which often actually involves collaborating with the Israelis. This accounts for the massive difference between the public stance of many governments and their private actions, which can range from indifference to hostility toward Palestinian interests. Countries like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey are all prepared to cooperate deeply with the United States but face hostility from their populations over the matter.
The public pressure on governments is real, and the United States needs to deal with it. The last thing the United States wants to see is relatively cooperative Muslim governments in the region fall due to anti-Israeli or anti-American public sentiment. The issue of Israel and the United States also creates stickiness in the smooth functioning of relations with these countries. The United States wants to minimize this problem.
It should be understood that many Muslim governments would be appalled if the United States broke with Israel and Israel fell. For example, Egypt and Jordan, facing demographic and security issues of their own, are deeply hostile to at least some Palestinian factions. The vast majority of Jordan’s population is actually Palestinian. Egypt struggles with an Islamist movement called the Muslim Brotherhood, which has collaborated with like-minded Islamists among the Palestinians for decades. The countries of the Arabian Peninsula are infinitely more interested in the threat from Iran than in the existence of Israel and, indeed, see Israel as one of the buttresses against Iran. Even Iran is less interested in the destruction of Israel than it is in using the issue as a tool in building its own credibility and influence in the region.
In the Islamic world, public opinion, government rhetoric and government policy have long had a distant kinship. If the United States were actually to do what these countries publicly demand, the private response would be deep concern both about the reliability of the United States and about the consequences of a Palestinian state. A wave of euphoric radicalism could threaten all of these regimes. They quite like the status quo, including the part where they get to condemn the United States for maintaining it.
The United States does not see its relationship with Israel as inhibiting functional state-to-state relationships in the Islamic world, because it hasn’t. Washington paradoxically sees a break with Israel as destabilizing to the region. At the same time, the American government understands the political problems Muslim governments face in working with the United States, in particular the friction created by the American relationship with Israel. While not representing a fundamental challenge to American interests, this friction does represent an issue that must be taken into account and managed.
Peace talks are the American solution. Peace talks give the United States the appearance of seeking to settle the Israeli-Palestinian problem. The comings and goings of American diplomats, treating Palestinians as equals in negotiations and as being equally important to the United States, and the occasional photo op if some agreement is actually reached, all give the United States and pro-American Muslim governments a tool — even if it is not a very effective one — for managing Muslim public opinion. Peace talks also give the United States the ability, on occasion, to criticize Israel publicly, without changing the basic framework of the U.S.-Israeli relationship. Most important, they cost the United States nothing. The United States has many diplomats available for multiple-track discussions and working groups for drawing up position papers. Talks do not solve the political problem in the region, but they do reshape perceptions a bit at very little cost. And they give the added benefit that, at some point in the talks, the United States will be able to ask the Europeans to support any solution — or tentative agreement — financially.
Therefore, the Obama administration has been pressuring the Israelis and the PNA, dominated by Fatah, to renew the peace process. Both have been reluctant because, unlike the United States, these talks pose political challenges to the two sides. Peace talks have the nasty habit of triggering internal political crises. Since neither side expects real success, neither government wants to bear the internal political costs that such talks entail. But since the United States is both a major funder of the PNA and Israel’s most significant ally, neither group is in a position to resist the call to talk. And so, after suitable resistance that both sides used for their own ends, the talks begin.
The Israeli problem with the talks is that they force the government to deal with an extraordinarily divided Israeli public. Israel has had weak governments for a generation. These governments are weak because they are formed by coalitions made up of diverse and sometimes opposed parties. In part, this is due to Israel’s electoral system, which increases the likelihood that parties that would never enter the parliament of other countries do sit in the Knesset with a handful of members. There are enough of these that the major parties never come close to a ruling majority and the coalition government that has to be created is crippled from the beginning. An Israeli prime minister spends most of his time avoiding dealing with important issues, since his Cabinet would fall apart if he did.
But the major issue is that the Israeli public is deeply divided ethnically and ideologically, with ideology frequently tracking ethnicity. The original European Jews are often still steeped in the original Zionist vision. But Russian Jews who now comprise roughly one-sixth of the population see the original Zionist plan as alien to them. Then there are the American Jews who moved to Israel for ideological reasons. All these splits and others create an Israel that reminds us of the Fourth French Republic between World War II and the rise of Charles de Gaulle. The term applied to it was “immobilism,” the inability to decide on anything, so it continued to do whatever it was already doing, however ineffective and harmful that course may have been.
Incidentally, Israel wasn’t always this way. After its formation in 1948, Israel’s leaders were all part of the leadership that achieved statehood. That cadre is all gone now, and Israel has yet to transition away from its dependence on its “founding fathers.” Between less trusted leadership and a maddeningly complex political demography, it is no surprise that Israeli politics can be so caustic and churning.
From the point of view of any Israeli foreign minister, the danger of peace talks is that the United States might actually engineer a solution. Any such solution would by definition involve Israeli concessions that would be opposed by a substantial Israeli bloc — and nearly any Israeli faction could derail any agreement. Israeli prime ministers go to the peace talks terrified that the Palestinians might actually get their house in order and be reasonable — leaving it to Israel to stand against an American solution. Had Ariel Sharon not had his stroke, there might have been a strong leader who could wrestle the Israeli political system to the ground and impose a settlement. But at this point, there has not been an Israeli leader since Menachem Begin who could negotiate with confidence in his position. Benjamin Netanyahu finds himself caught between the United States and his severely fractured Cabinet by peace talks.
Fortunately for Netanyahu, the PNA is even more troubled by talks. The Palestinians are deeply divided between two ideological enemies, Fatah and Hamas. Fatah is generally secular and derives from the Soviet-backed Palestinian movement. Having lost its sponsor, it has drifted toward the United States and Europe by default. Its old antagonist, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, is still there and still suspicious. Fatah tried to overthrow the kingdom in 1970, and memories are long.
For its part, Hamas is a religious movement, with roots in Egypt and support from Saudi Arabia. Unlike Fatah, Hamas says it is unwilling to recognize the existence of Israel as a legitimate state, and it appears to be quite serious about this. While there seem to be some elements in Hamas that could consider a shift, this is not the consensus view. Iran also provides support, but the Sunni-Shiite split is real and Iran is mostly fishing in troubled waters. Hamas will take help where it can get it, but Hamas is, to a significant degree, funded by the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, so getting too close to Iran would create political problems for Hamas’ leadership. In addition, though Cairo has to deal with Hamas because of the Egypt-Gaza border, Cairo is at best deeply suspicions of the group. Egypt sees Hamas as deriving from the same bedrock of forces that gave birth to the Muslim Brotherhood and those who killed Anwar Sadat, forces which pose the greatest future challenge to Egyptian stability. As a result, Egypt continues to be Israel’s silent partner in the blockade of Gaza.
Therefore, the PNA dominated by Fatah in no way speaks for all Palestinians. While Fatah dominates the West Bank, Hamas controls Gaza. Were Fatah to make the kinds of concessions that might make a peace agreement possible, Hamas would not only oppose them but would have the means of scuttling anything that involved Gaza. Making matters worse for Fatah, Hamas does enjoy considerable — if precisely unknown — levels of support in the West Bank, and Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of Fatah and the PNA, is not eager to find out how much in the current super-heated atmosphere.
The most striking agreement between Arabs and Israelis was the Camp David Accords negotiated by U.S. President Jimmy Carter. Those accords were rooted in the 1973 war in which the Israelis were stunned by their own intelligence failures and the extraordinary capabilities shown by the Egyptian army so soon after its crushing defeat in 1967. All of Israel’s comfortable assumptions went out the window. At the same time, Egypt was ultimately defeated, with Israeli troops on the east shore of the Suez Canal.
The Israelis came away with greater respect for Egyptian military power and a decreased confidence in their own. The Egyptians came away with the recognition that however much they had improved, they were defeated in the end. The Israelis weren’t certain they would beat Egypt the next time. The Egyptians were doubtful they could ever beat Israel. For both, a negotiated settlement made sense. The mix of severely shaken confidence and morbid admittance to reality was what permitted Carter to negotiate a settlement that both sides wanted — and could sell to their respective publics.
There has been no similar defining moment in Israeli-Palestinian relations. There is no consensus on either side, nor does either side have a government that can speak authoritatively for the people it represents. On both sides, the rejectionists not only are in a blocking position but are actually in governing roles, and no coalition exists to sweep them aside. The Palestinians are divided by ideology and geography, while the Israelis are “merely” divided by ideology and a political system designed for paralysis.
But the United States wants a peace process, preferably a long one designed to put off the day when it fails. This will allow the United States to appear to be deeply committed to peace and to publicly pressure the Israelis, which will be of some minor use in U.S. efforts to manipulate the rest of the region. But it will not solve anything. Nor is it intended to.
The problem is that neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians are sufficiently unsettled to make peace. Both Egypt and Israel were shocked and afraid after the 1973 war. Mutual fear is the foundation of peace among enemies. The uncertainty of the future sobers both sides. But the fact right now is that all of the players prefer the status quo to the risks of the future. Hamas doesn’t want to risk its support by negotiating and implicitly recognizing Israel. The PNA doesn’t want to risk a Hamas uprising in the West Bank by making significant concessions. The Israelis don’t want to gamble with unreliable negotiating partners on a settlement that wouldn’t enjoy broad public support in a domestic political environment where even simple programs can get snarled in a morass of ideology. Until reality or some as-yet-uncommitted force shifts the game, it is easier for them — all of them — to do nothing.
But the Americans want talks, and so the talks will begin.
Read more: Israeli-Palestinian Peace Talks, Again | STRATFOR
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Genetically Manipulated Crops: The GMO Catastrophe in the USA. A Lesson for the World
On Behalf Of Global Research E-Newsletter
Sent: August 21, 2010 10:05 AM
Subject: F. William Engdahl: Genetically Manipulated Crops - The GMO Catastrophe in the USA. A Lesson for the World
Genetically Manipulated Crops: The GMO Catastrophe in the USA. A Lesson for the World
By F. William Engdahl
URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=20675
Global Research, August 18, 2010
Recently the unelected potentates of the EU Commission in Brussels have sought to override what has repeatedly been shown to be the overwhelming opposition of the European Union population to the spread of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) in EU agriculture. EU Commission President now has a Maltese accountant as health and enviromnent Commissioner to rubber stamp the adoption of GMO. The former EU Environment Commissioner from Greece was a ferocious GMO opponent. As well, the Chinese government has indicated it may approve a variety of GMO rice. Before things get too far along, they would do well to take a closer look at the world GMO test lab, the USA. There GMO crops are anything but beneficial. Just the opposite.
What is carefully kept out of the Monsanto and other agribusiness propaganda in promoting genetically manipulated crops as an alternative to conventional is the fact that in the entire world until the present, all GMO crops have been manipulated and patented for only two things—to be resistant or “tolerant” to the patented highly toxic herbicide glyphosate chemicals that Monsanto and the others force farmers to buy as condition for buying their patented GMO seeds. The second trait is GMO seeds that have been engineered genetically to resist specific insects. Contrary to public relations myths promoted by the agribusiness giants in their own self-interest, there exists not oné single GMO seed that provides a greater harvest yield than conventional, nor one that requires less toxic chemical herbicides. That is for the simple reason there is no profit to be made in such.
Giant super-weeds plague
As prominent GMO opponent and biologist, Dr Mae-Wan Ho of the Institute of Science in London has noted, companies such as Monsanto build into their seeds herbicide-tolerance (HT) due to glyphosate-insensitive form of the gene coding for the enzyme targeted by the herbicide. The enzyme is derived from soil bacterium Agrobacterium tumefaciens. Insect-resistance is due to one or more toxin genes derived from the soil bacterium Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis). The United States began large scale commercial planting of GMO plants, mainly soybeans and corn and cotton around 1997. By now, GM crops have taken over between 85 percent to 91 percent of the areas planted with the three major crops, soybean, corn and cotton in the US, on nearly 171 million acres.
The ecological time-bomb that came with the GMO according to Ho, is about to explode. Over several years of constant application of patented glyphosate herbicides such as Monsanto’s famous and highly Roundup, new herbicide-resistant “super-weeds” have evolved, nature’s response to man-made attempts to violate it. The super-weeds require significantly more not less herbicide to control.
ABC Television, a major US national network, made a recent documentary about the super-weeds under the rubric, “super weeds that can’t be killed.”
They interviewed farmers and scientists across Arkansas who described fields overrun with giant pigweed plants that can withstand as much glyphosate as farmers are able to spray. They interviewed one farmer who spent almost 400000 euro in only three months in a failed attempt to kill the new super-weeds.
The new super-weeds are so robust that harvester combines are unable to harvest the fields and hand tools break trying to cut them down. At least 400000 hectares of soybean and cotton in Arkansas alone have become invested with this new mutant biological plague. Detailed data on other agricultural regions is not available but believed similar. The pro-GMO and pro-agribusiness US Department of Agriculture has been reported lying about the true state of US crop harvest partly to hide the grim reality and to prevent an explosive revolt against GMO in the world’s largest GMO market.
Superweed
One variety of super-weed, palmer pigweed can grow up to 2.4 meters high, withstands severe heat and prolonged droughts, and produces thousands of seeds with a root system that drains nutrients away from crops. If left unchecked, it takes over an entire field in a year. Some farmers have been forced to abandon their land. To date palmer pigweed infestation in GMO crop regions has been identified in addition to Arkansas, also in Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, New Mexico, Mississippi and most recently, Alabama and Missouri.
Weed scientists at the University of Georgia estimate that just two palmer pigweed plants in every 6 meter length of cotton row can reduce yield by at least 23 percent. A single weed plant can produce 450 000 seeds.
Roundup toxic danger being covered-up
Glyphosate is the most widely used herbicide in the US and the world at large. Patented and sold by Monsanto since the 1970s under the trade name Roundup, it is a mandatory component of buying GMO seeds from Monsanto. Just go to your local garden store and ask for it and read the label carefully.
As I detail in my book, Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation, GMO crops and patented seeds were developed in the 1970’s with significant financial support from the pro-eugenics Rockefeller Foundation, by what were essentially chemical companies—Monsanto Chemicals, DuPont and Dow Chemicals. All three were involved in the scandal of the highly toxic Agent Orange used in Vietnam, as well as Dioxin in the 1970’s, and lied to cover up the true damage to its own employees as well as to civilian and military populations exposed.
Their patented GMO seeds were seen as a clever way to force increased purchase of their agricultural chemicals such as Roundup. Farmers must sign a legal contract with Monsanto in which it stipulates that only Monsanto Roundup pesticide may be used. Farmers are thus trapped both in buying new seeds from Monsanto each harvest and buying the toxic glyphosate.
France’s University of Caen, in a team led by molecular biologist, Gilles-Eric Seralini, did a study that showed Roundup contained one specific inert ingredient, polyethoxylated tallowamine, or POEA. Seralini’s team demonstrated that POEA in Roundup was more deadly to human embryonic, placental and umbilical cord cells than even the glyphosate itself. Monsanto refuses to release details of the contents of its Roundup other than glyphosate, calling it “proprietary.”
The Seralini study found that Roundup’s inert ingredients amplified the toxic effect on human cells—even at concentrations much more diluted than those used on farms and lawns! The French team studied multiple concentrations of Roundup, from the typical agricultural or lawn dose down to concentrations 100,000 times more dilute than the products sold on shelves. The researchers saw cell damage at all concentrations.
Glyphosate and Roundup are advertised as “less toxic to us than table salt” in a pamphlet from the Biotechnology Institute promoting GMO crops as ‘Weed Warrior.’ Thirteen years of GMO crops in the USA has increased overall pesticide use by 318 million pounds, not decreased as promised by the Four Horsemen of the GMO Apocalypse. The extra disease burden on the nation from that alone is considerable.
Nonetheless after introduction of Monsanto GMO seeds commercially in the USA, use of glyphosate has risen more than 1500% between 1994 and 2005. In the USA some 100 million pounds of glyphosate are used on lawns and farms every year, and over the last 13 years, it has been applied to more than a billion acres. When questioned, Monsanto’s technical development manager, Rick Cole, reportedly said the problems were “manageable.” He advised farmers to alternate crops and use different makes of herbicides produced by Monsanto. Monsanto is encouraging farmers to mix glyphosate with its older herbicides such as 2,4-D, banned in Sweden, Denmark and Norway for links to cancer and reproductive and neurological damage. 2,4-D is a component of Agent Orange, produced by Monsanto for use in Vietnam in the 1960s.
US Farmers turn to organics
Farmers across the United States are reported to be going back to conventional non-GMO crops instead. According to a new report from the US Department of Agriculture, retail sales of organic food went up to $21.1 billion in 2008 from $3.6 billion in 1997. The market is so active that organic farms have struggled at times to produce sufficient supply to keep up with the rapid growth in consumer demand, leading to periodic shortages of organic products.
The new UK Conservative-Liberal coalition government is strongly backing lifting a de facto ban on GMO in that country. UK Chief Scientific Adviser, Prof. John Beddington, recently wrote an article in which he misleadingly claimed “The next decade will see the development of combinations of desirable traits and the introduction of new traits such as drought tolerance. By mid-century much more radical options involving highly polygenic traits may be feasible.” He went on to promise “cloned animals with engineered innate immunity to diseases” and more. I think we can pass that one up, thank you.
A recent study by Iowa State University and the US Department of Agriculture assessing the performance of farms during the three-year transition it takes to switch from conventional to certified organic production showed notable advantages of organic farming over GMO or even conventional non-GMO crops. In an experiment lasting four years—three years transition and first year organic—the study showed that although yields dropped initially, they equalized in the third year, and by the fourth year, the organic yields were ahead of the conventional for both soybean and corn.
As well, the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) has recently been published, the result of three-year deliberation by 400 participating scientists and non-government representatives from 110 countries around the world. It came to the conclusion that small scale organic agriculture is the way ahead for coping with hunger, social inequities and environmental disasters. As Dr Ho argues, a fundamental shift in farming practice is needed urgently, before the agricultural catastrophe spreads further across Germany and the EU to the rest of the world.
Endnotes:
Super weed can’t be killed, abc news, 6 October 2009. See also,Jeff Hampton, N.C. farmers battle herbicide-resistant weeds, The Virginian-Pilot, 19 July 2009, http://hamptonroads.com/2009/07/nc-farmers-battle-herbicideresistant-weeds
Clea Caulcutt, ‘Superweed’ explosion threatens Monsanto heartlands, Clea Caulcutt, 19 April 2009, http://www.france24.com/en/20090418-superweed-explosion-threatens-monsanto-heartlands-genetically-modified-US-crops
N. Benachour and G-E. Seralini, Glyphosate Formulations Induce Apoptosis and Necrosis in Human Umbilical, Embryonic, and Placental Cells, Chem. Res. Toxicol., Article DOI: 10.1021/tx800218n
Publication Date (Web): December 23, 2008.
Carolyn Dimitri and Lydia Oberholtzer, Marketing U.S. organic foods: recent trends from farms to consumers, USDA Economic Research Service, September 2009, http://www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/EIB58/
International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development, IAASTD, 2008, http://www.agassessment.org/index.cfm?Page=Press_Materials&ItemID=11
Ho MW.UK Food Standards Agency study proves organic food is better. Science in Society 44, 32-33, 2009.
F. William Engdahl is the author of Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation
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www.globalresearch.ca contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to our readers under the provisions of "fair use" in an effort to advance a better understanding of political, economic and social issues. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than "fair use" you must request permission from the copyright owner.
For media inquiries: crgeditor@yahoo.com
© Copyright F. William Engdahl, Global Research, 2010
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© Copyright 2005-2007 GlobalResearch.ca
Web site engine by Polygraphx Multimedia © Copyright 2005-2007
Sincerely,
Connie
Sent: August 21, 2010 10:05 AM
Subject: F. William Engdahl: Genetically Manipulated Crops - The GMO Catastrophe in the USA. A Lesson for the World
Genetically Manipulated Crops: The GMO Catastrophe in the USA. A Lesson for the World
By F. William Engdahl
URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=20675
Global Research, August 18, 2010
Recently the unelected potentates of the EU Commission in Brussels have sought to override what has repeatedly been shown to be the overwhelming opposition of the European Union population to the spread of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) in EU agriculture. EU Commission President now has a Maltese accountant as health and enviromnent Commissioner to rubber stamp the adoption of GMO. The former EU Environment Commissioner from Greece was a ferocious GMO opponent. As well, the Chinese government has indicated it may approve a variety of GMO rice. Before things get too far along, they would do well to take a closer look at the world GMO test lab, the USA. There GMO crops are anything but beneficial. Just the opposite.
What is carefully kept out of the Monsanto and other agribusiness propaganda in promoting genetically manipulated crops as an alternative to conventional is the fact that in the entire world until the present, all GMO crops have been manipulated and patented for only two things—to be resistant or “tolerant” to the patented highly toxic herbicide glyphosate chemicals that Monsanto and the others force farmers to buy as condition for buying their patented GMO seeds. The second trait is GMO seeds that have been engineered genetically to resist specific insects. Contrary to public relations myths promoted by the agribusiness giants in their own self-interest, there exists not oné single GMO seed that provides a greater harvest yield than conventional, nor one that requires less toxic chemical herbicides. That is for the simple reason there is no profit to be made in such.
Giant super-weeds plague
As prominent GMO opponent and biologist, Dr Mae-Wan Ho of the Institute of Science in London has noted, companies such as Monsanto build into their seeds herbicide-tolerance (HT) due to glyphosate-insensitive form of the gene coding for the enzyme targeted by the herbicide. The enzyme is derived from soil bacterium Agrobacterium tumefaciens. Insect-resistance is due to one or more toxin genes derived from the soil bacterium Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis). The United States began large scale commercial planting of GMO plants, mainly soybeans and corn and cotton around 1997. By now, GM crops have taken over between 85 percent to 91 percent of the areas planted with the three major crops, soybean, corn and cotton in the US, on nearly 171 million acres.
The ecological time-bomb that came with the GMO according to Ho, is about to explode. Over several years of constant application of patented glyphosate herbicides such as Monsanto’s famous and highly Roundup, new herbicide-resistant “super-weeds” have evolved, nature’s response to man-made attempts to violate it. The super-weeds require significantly more not less herbicide to control.
ABC Television, a major US national network, made a recent documentary about the super-weeds under the rubric, “super weeds that can’t be killed.”
They interviewed farmers and scientists across Arkansas who described fields overrun with giant pigweed plants that can withstand as much glyphosate as farmers are able to spray. They interviewed one farmer who spent almost 400000 euro in only three months in a failed attempt to kill the new super-weeds.
The new super-weeds are so robust that harvester combines are unable to harvest the fields and hand tools break trying to cut them down. At least 400000 hectares of soybean and cotton in Arkansas alone have become invested with this new mutant biological plague. Detailed data on other agricultural regions is not available but believed similar. The pro-GMO and pro-agribusiness US Department of Agriculture has been reported lying about the true state of US crop harvest partly to hide the grim reality and to prevent an explosive revolt against GMO in the world’s largest GMO market.
Superweed
One variety of super-weed, palmer pigweed can grow up to 2.4 meters high, withstands severe heat and prolonged droughts, and produces thousands of seeds with a root system that drains nutrients away from crops. If left unchecked, it takes over an entire field in a year. Some farmers have been forced to abandon their land. To date palmer pigweed infestation in GMO crop regions has been identified in addition to Arkansas, also in Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, New Mexico, Mississippi and most recently, Alabama and Missouri.
Weed scientists at the University of Georgia estimate that just two palmer pigweed plants in every 6 meter length of cotton row can reduce yield by at least 23 percent. A single weed plant can produce 450 000 seeds.
Roundup toxic danger being covered-up
Glyphosate is the most widely used herbicide in the US and the world at large. Patented and sold by Monsanto since the 1970s under the trade name Roundup, it is a mandatory component of buying GMO seeds from Monsanto. Just go to your local garden store and ask for it and read the label carefully.
As I detail in my book, Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation, GMO crops and patented seeds were developed in the 1970’s with significant financial support from the pro-eugenics Rockefeller Foundation, by what were essentially chemical companies—Monsanto Chemicals, DuPont and Dow Chemicals. All three were involved in the scandal of the highly toxic Agent Orange used in Vietnam, as well as Dioxin in the 1970’s, and lied to cover up the true damage to its own employees as well as to civilian and military populations exposed.
Their patented GMO seeds were seen as a clever way to force increased purchase of their agricultural chemicals such as Roundup. Farmers must sign a legal contract with Monsanto in which it stipulates that only Monsanto Roundup pesticide may be used. Farmers are thus trapped both in buying new seeds from Monsanto each harvest and buying the toxic glyphosate.
France’s University of Caen, in a team led by molecular biologist, Gilles-Eric Seralini, did a study that showed Roundup contained one specific inert ingredient, polyethoxylated tallowamine, or POEA. Seralini’s team demonstrated that POEA in Roundup was more deadly to human embryonic, placental and umbilical cord cells than even the glyphosate itself. Monsanto refuses to release details of the contents of its Roundup other than glyphosate, calling it “proprietary.”
The Seralini study found that Roundup’s inert ingredients amplified the toxic effect on human cells—even at concentrations much more diluted than those used on farms and lawns! The French team studied multiple concentrations of Roundup, from the typical agricultural or lawn dose down to concentrations 100,000 times more dilute than the products sold on shelves. The researchers saw cell damage at all concentrations.
Glyphosate and Roundup are advertised as “less toxic to us than table salt” in a pamphlet from the Biotechnology Institute promoting GMO crops as ‘Weed Warrior.’ Thirteen years of GMO crops in the USA has increased overall pesticide use by 318 million pounds, not decreased as promised by the Four Horsemen of the GMO Apocalypse. The extra disease burden on the nation from that alone is considerable.
Nonetheless after introduction of Monsanto GMO seeds commercially in the USA, use of glyphosate has risen more than 1500% between 1994 and 2005. In the USA some 100 million pounds of glyphosate are used on lawns and farms every year, and over the last 13 years, it has been applied to more than a billion acres. When questioned, Monsanto’s technical development manager, Rick Cole, reportedly said the problems were “manageable.” He advised farmers to alternate crops and use different makes of herbicides produced by Monsanto. Monsanto is encouraging farmers to mix glyphosate with its older herbicides such as 2,4-D, banned in Sweden, Denmark and Norway for links to cancer and reproductive and neurological damage. 2,4-D is a component of Agent Orange, produced by Monsanto for use in Vietnam in the 1960s.
US Farmers turn to organics
Farmers across the United States are reported to be going back to conventional non-GMO crops instead. According to a new report from the US Department of Agriculture, retail sales of organic food went up to $21.1 billion in 2008 from $3.6 billion in 1997. The market is so active that organic farms have struggled at times to produce sufficient supply to keep up with the rapid growth in consumer demand, leading to periodic shortages of organic products.
The new UK Conservative-Liberal coalition government is strongly backing lifting a de facto ban on GMO in that country. UK Chief Scientific Adviser, Prof. John Beddington, recently wrote an article in which he misleadingly claimed “The next decade will see the development of combinations of desirable traits and the introduction of new traits such as drought tolerance. By mid-century much more radical options involving highly polygenic traits may be feasible.” He went on to promise “cloned animals with engineered innate immunity to diseases” and more. I think we can pass that one up, thank you.
A recent study by Iowa State University and the US Department of Agriculture assessing the performance of farms during the three-year transition it takes to switch from conventional to certified organic production showed notable advantages of organic farming over GMO or even conventional non-GMO crops. In an experiment lasting four years—three years transition and first year organic—the study showed that although yields dropped initially, they equalized in the third year, and by the fourth year, the organic yields were ahead of the conventional for both soybean and corn.
As well, the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) has recently been published, the result of three-year deliberation by 400 participating scientists and non-government representatives from 110 countries around the world. It came to the conclusion that small scale organic agriculture is the way ahead for coping with hunger, social inequities and environmental disasters. As Dr Ho argues, a fundamental shift in farming practice is needed urgently, before the agricultural catastrophe spreads further across Germany and the EU to the rest of the world.
Endnotes:
Super weed can’t be killed, abc news, 6 October 2009. See also,Jeff Hampton, N.C. farmers battle herbicide-resistant weeds, The Virginian-Pilot, 19 July 2009, http://hamptonroads.com/2009/07/nc-farmers-battle-herbicideresistant-weeds
Clea Caulcutt, ‘Superweed’ explosion threatens Monsanto heartlands, Clea Caulcutt, 19 April 2009, http://www.france24.com/en/20090418-superweed-explosion-threatens-monsanto-heartlands-genetically-modified-US-crops
N. Benachour and G-E. Seralini, Glyphosate Formulations Induce Apoptosis and Necrosis in Human Umbilical, Embryonic, and Placental Cells, Chem. Res. Toxicol., Article DOI: 10.1021/tx800218n
Publication Date (Web): December 23, 2008.
Carolyn Dimitri and Lydia Oberholtzer, Marketing U.S. organic foods: recent trends from farms to consumers, USDA Economic Research Service, September 2009, http://www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/EIB58/
International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development, IAASTD, 2008, http://www.agassessment.org/index.cfm?Page=Press_Materials&ItemID=11
Ho MW.UK Food Standards Agency study proves organic food is better. Science in Society 44, 32-33, 2009.
F. William Engdahl is the author of Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation
Please support Global Research
Global Research relies on the financial support of its readers.
Your endorsement is greatly appreciated
Subscribe to the Global Research e-newsletter
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Centre for Research on Globalization. The contents of this article are of sole responsibility of the author(s). The Centre for Research on Globalization will not be responsible or liable for any inaccurate or incorrect statements contained in this article.
To become a Member of Global Research
The CRG grants permission to cross-post original Global Research articles on community internet sites as long as the text & title are not modified. The source and the author's copyright must be displayed. For publication of Global Research articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact: crgeditor@yahoo.com
www.globalresearch.ca contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to our readers under the provisions of "fair use" in an effort to advance a better understanding of political, economic and social issues. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than "fair use" you must request permission from the copyright owner.
For media inquiries: crgeditor@yahoo.com
© Copyright F. William Engdahl, Global Research, 2010
The url address of this article is: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=20675
© Copyright 2005-2007 GlobalResearch.ca
Web site engine by Polygraphx Multimedia © Copyright 2005-2007
Sincerely,
Connie
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