palin has intel past

.
source: http://articles.latimes.com/2008/sep/06/nation/na-guard6


An important job, but focused on Alaska policy

The job involves important managerial responsibilities but provides little, if any, foreign policy experience, military officials say.

By Julian E. Barnes

September 06, 2008 in print edition A-13

Seeking to buttress the foreign policy credentials of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, Republicans have repeatedly cited the vice presidential nominee’s experience as commander of the Alaska National Guard.

As governor, Palin oversees military units whose duties include serving overseas, search-and-rescue missions across the state’s vast landscape and manning key elements of the U.S. missile defense system at Ft. Greely.

But foreign deployments of Guard units and the operation of national defense assets like the Ft. Greely missile interceptors are not the responsibility of state governors. Those functions come under the regular U.S. military chain of command.

Commanding the Alaska National Guard is hardly an insignificant job, military officials say. Still, they acknowledge that it provides little, if any, foreign policy experience.

Overseeing a state Guard is a “chief executive role” with real management responsibilities, said Mark Allen, a spokesman for the National Guard Bureau, the federal office that coordinates state National Guards.

“I don’t think people should think it is a casual relationship, or is like the king putting on the medals,” Allen said. “It is not that at all. But the role of the governor is to use the Guard to help the citizens of a state, as opposed to declaring war on a neighboring state.”

The Alaska National Guard is unusual in that its jobs include manning part of the U.S. missile defense system. The 49th Missile Defense Battalion works on interceptor missiles designed to shoot down intercontinental missiles.

Members of the Alaska National Guard also were deployed to Iraq, and Palin visited their unit in July 2007. The McCain campaign has pointed to that experience as an example of Palin’s foreign policy background.

“She’s been the commander of Alaska’s National Guard, who’s been deployed overseas,” Tucker Bounds, a McCain spokesman, said on CNN in one of several recent references to Palin’s gubernatorial responsibility for the Guard. “That’s foreign policy experience.”

Since governors have no role in overseeing Guard members federalized for service in Iraq, military experts said that should not count as foreign policy experience.

National Guard officials said visits such as Palin’s trip to Iraq may be important because state officials can lobby the federal government for better training and more equipment if they are needed. There is no indication that during her trip Palin found major problems with how the Alaska Guard was trained or equipped.

Closer to home, the bread-and-butter duties of most state National Guards are natural disasters. During Palin’s 21 months in office, there has been one declared disaster: widespread flooding in June and July this year. Palin quickly signed a disaster declaration, officials said. The Guard’s role was limited to providing two water tanks and 30,000 sandbags to local authorities.

The Alaska Air National Guard, with 1,946 service members, is involved in an exceptional number of search-and-rescue missions. Since Palin became governor in December 2006, the Air Guard has flown 521 missions, saving 200 lives and assisting with the rescue of 77 more people, said Kalei Brooks, a spokeswoman for the Alaska Department of Military and Veterans Affairs.

“Our rescue squadron is the busiest in the nation,” she said.

In recent years, the department has overseen a reorganization of the 1,900-member Army National Guard. Following a U.S. Army restructuring plan, officials have helped assign soldiers to new units.

But training requirements for Guard units are established not by governors, but by the Army, the Air Force and the National Guard Bureau.

“That requirement comes down from the United States Army and Air Force,” Allen said. “But that training and that equipment become very important when they are needed within the states.”

julian.barnes@latimes.com


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

source: http://blog.russianlife.com/2008/09/palin.html

Wednesday, September 03, 2008

Sarah Palin's Secret Past... Revealed!


Many have scoffed at Cindy McCain's defense of Alaska Governor (and GOP Veep candidate) Sarah Palin's foreign policy chops with the assertion that "Alaska is the closest part of our continent to Russia."

Scoff not. The truth is so more startling still.

We have made thorough inquiries with our sources in Russia's far eastern region of Chukotka (just 53 miles from Alaskan America across the Bering Strait), and it turns out that Ms. Palin's connection with Russia may have more wrinkles than a 44-year-old Texas Armadillo.

Our source, which requested anonymity because he was specious, alleged that, in 1988 and 1989, when Palin was ostensibly employed as a "sports reporter" for KTUU in Anchorage and "helping out" in her husband's family commercial fishing business, she captained a fishing vessel which made several highly treacherous forays into Russian waters and at least twice landed on what was then Soviet soil. According to our source, Palin was carrying out secret missions, dropping sleeper spies onto Russian soil and slipping away under cover of darkness.

"This is very brave woman," said our Chukotkan informant. "She come very close to get caught many times. And she drop off secret anti-Soviet agents too."

There was no immediate, official comment from the McCain-Palin campaign to the revelation that Palin worked for US intelligence 20 years ago. But one influential Republican source did offer, on deep background, that "you media clowns don't know half of what there is to know about Little Sarah. Hell, did you know 'Palin' is derived from the Russian word for 'scorch'? I didn't think so. Dammit, when the American public finds out that this little woman was almost single-handedly responsible for the collapse of the Soviet Union, it's gonna be all over for the Angry Leftists."

Our Russian source was inclined to agree. "This is American hero. Russian hero too. International hero. And if you don't believe me she was spy, you just have to look at her family. You think it accident that all her children have code names like Willow and Piper and Trig? Truth, she is sometimes a hard thing."

And yet, the truth will always out...

Posted by editor at 7:42 PM

e.todd : le neo protectionnisme comme solution

.
http://contreinfo.info/article.php3?id_article=2430

Emmanuel Todd : « l’instabilité sociale va s’aggraver »

21 décembre 2008

« En France, le libre-échange ne profite plus, depuis une dizaine d’années, qu’à une toute petite fraction de la population. L’appauvrissement a gagné une large majorité de citoyens. Or, le système éducatif produit 33 % de bacheliers par an dans une génération. Est en train de se créer une vaste classe moyenne supérieure par l’éducation mais avec des revenus en pleine érosion. Ce sont les jeunes diplômés sacrifiés par le système économique. Cette situation ne peut mener qu’à des troubles sociaux et politiques. »

Frank De Bondt s’entretient avec Emmanuel Todd pour Sud-Ouest, 14 décembre 2008

Dans quel état l’Europe sortira-t-elle d’une crise économique dont chacun pense qu’elle s’aggravera en 2009 ?

Devant la possibilité d’un effondrement des échanges mondiaux, la situation de l’Europe est moins catastrophique que celle des États-Unis ou de la Chine, parce que son commerce extérieur reste relativement équilibré, grâce notamment à la puissance exportatrice de l’Allemagne. À l’inverse, l’économie américaine est massivement déficitaire. Si les échanges s’arrêtaient, le niveau de vie américain chuterait de 20 %. Quant à la Chine, elle ferait un grand bond en arrière. L’Europe est redevenue, depuis l’implosion de l’industrie américaine, le centre de gravité industriel et technologique de la planète. En raison des forces productives dont elle dispose.

L’Europe aurait donc moins besoin d’être protégée que les États-Unis ?

Ce n’est pas ce que je veux dire. Si on pense à l’effet du libre-échange sur les divers pays, il est clair que la première grande victime a été l’économie américaine, qui subit le choc de la concurrence européenne, japonaise et maintenant chinoise. L’industrie européenne n’a pas été détruite, mais le libre-échange a mis la pression sur les salaires, provoqué des délocalisations et tiré le niveau de vie vers le bas. Toutefois, l’Europe est à un stade de détérioration beaucoup moins avancé que les États-Unis.

Comment analysez-vous les réponses politiques en Europe pour faire face à la crise actuelle ?

La crise actuelle n’est pas seulement la conséquence de la crise des subprimes, elle a commencé au moment où le niveau de vie avait déjà baissé partout en Europe. N’inversons pas les choses. Les dirigeants occidentaux refusent cependant de voir que c’est la diminution du pouvoir d’achat et de la demande qui a conduit à la crise. En réinjectant de l’argent, comme ils le font aujourd’hui, les gouvernements remettent en marche la machine à délocaliser et à tirer les salaires vers le bas. La politique de Gordon Brown au Royaume-Uni consistant à relancer la consommation est absurde, car ses effets seront temporaires. Quant aux Allemands, qui comptent exclusivement sur la demande extérieure, ils n’ont rien compris. Finalement, chaque pays européen montre son tempérament. Les Anglais parient sur le crédit et l’endettement. Les Français sont dans une sorte de néo-gaullisme de l’investissement. Et les Allemands sont dans la
rigidité et le refus de renforcer la demande intérieure. Si ces divergences nationales empêchent une action commune réfléchie, cela va peut-être conduire les pays européens à envisager enfin une remise en question du libre-échange et à comprendre que seul un protectionnisme à l’échelle continentale pourra faire remonter les salaires et la demande. Encore faut-il pour cela que la France et l’Allemagne s’entendent, ce que ne semble pas avoir compris Nicolas Sarkozy, responsable de la brouille entre nos deux pays.

Après les émeutes déclenchées par les jeunes Grecs, doit-on s’attendre à une mobilisation de la jeunesse en France, où le malaise est perceptible, et peut-être à des affrontements sociaux de grande ampleur dans toute l’Europe ?

Il est difficile de généraliser. Les réactions à la crise ne seront pas les mêmes partout. En France, le libre-échange ne profite plus, depuis une dizaine d’années, qu’à une toute petite fraction de la population. L’appauvrissement a gagné une large majorité de citoyens. Or, le système éducatif produit 33 % de bacheliers par an dans une génération. Est en train de se créer une vaste classe moyenne supérieure par l’éducation mais avec des revenus en pleine érosion. Ce sont les jeunes diplômés sacrifiés par le système économique. Cette situation ne peut mener qu’à des troubles sociaux et politiques. Tant que les classes populaires étaient les seules à souffrir du libre-échange, les systèmes sociaux étaient stables. Maintenant que les classes moyennes commencent à en pâtir, l’instabilité sociale va s’aggraver.

Nous ne sommes, certes, pas en 1929, mais la leçon de cette crise historique est que tous les pays n’avaient pas réagi de la même manière. La France a eu le Front populaire. Les États-Unis, le New Deal. L’Angleterre, un conservatisme mou. Et l’Allemagne, le nazisme. Les tempéraments nationaux restent très différents. En ce qui concerne la France, une résurgence des conflits de classes est probable. Ailleurs, je ne sais pas. Comment réagiront l’Italie et l’Allemagne, qui souffrent également ?

Une dérive autoritaire est-elle à redouter ?

Nous assistons aujourd’hui, en France, à une course de vitesse entre la remontée d’une vraie gauche (ce qui se passe au Parti socialiste est très intéressant) et une tentation autoritaire à droite. Les signes sont clairs. Le paradoxe du sarkozysme, c’est une grande agitation doublée d’un autoritarisme naturel. Il faut prendre très au sérieux les bavures policières, l’obsession du sécuritaire, la mise en tutelle de l’audiovisuel, y compris par l’intermédiaire du propriétaire de TF1. Lorsque l’État se met à servir directement les intérêts des grands groupes privés, cela rappelle de bien mauvais souvenirs. Et arrêtons de penser que le retour de l’État est lié à la gauche. L’État fort au service du capital, c’est le fascisme.

Cela dit, restons raisonnables : la France a une vraie culture libérale qui la met à l’abri du fascisme. Le pire qu’elle ait produit, ce sont les divers régimes bonapartistes. La forme française classique de l’autoritarisme de droite est une dictature non fasciste. Mais après tout, Nicolas Sarkozy a été élu à cause de la peur et de l’insécurité, il pourrait, demain, être tenté de profiter d’une flambée de violence.

Y a-t-il un risque, en Europe, de retour des nationalismes ?

Je n’y crois pas. On pourrait évidemment le craindre à cause de la création, chez nous, d’un ministère du Blablabla et de l’Identité nationale, ainsi que du discours officiel sur la fierté d’être français. Mais je le ressens plutôt comme un nationalisme parodique. La réalité est que nous sommes dans un vide de croyance collective. L’ultra-individualisme dominant ne laisse pas d’espace au véritable sentiment national. Le risque n’est pas dans le retour du nationalisme mais plutôt dans l’émergence de l’État « monstre froid ». C’est-à-dire de l’État en tant que système de pouvoir pur.

D’ailleurs, le déficit de sentiment national dans les classes supérieures fait partie du problème actuel caractérisé par l’irresponsabilité sociale des élites. Un pays qui accepte le libre-échange, les délocalisations et l’ouverture aveugle des frontières n’est pas menacé de nationalisme.

Publication originale Sud Ouest

uk bishops on labour: morally corrupt

.
Morally corrupt: Bishops' verdict on Labour.

Sunday Telegraph

Dec 28, 2008

LEADING BISHOPS in the Church of England have launched a withering attack on the Government, questioning the morality of its policies.

Five of the Church's most senior figures said the Government now presided over a country suffering from family breakdown, an unhealthy reliance on debt and a growing divide between rich and poor.

The Bishop of Manchester accused Labour of being "beguiled by money'' and "morally corrupt''.

The Bishop of Hulme said they were "morally suspect'' and the Bishop of Durham said they had reneged on their promises.

They were joined by the bishops of Winchester and Carlisle who claimed ministers had squandered their opportunity to transform society and run out of steam.

The bishops said Labour sacrificed principled politics and long-term solutions for policies designed to win votes. One described the Government as "tired'' and another said its policies were "scandalous''.

Meanwhile, in an article for The Sunday Telegraph, David Cameron accused Gordon Brown of leading Britain to the "brink of bankruptcy''.

The Conservative leader said the "debt crisis'', which he claimed was the Government's responsibility alone, would serve as the Prime Minister's "political epitaph''.

Although they were speaking independently in a series of interviews with The Sunday Telegraph, the bishops' common criticisms reflect the deepening rift between the Government and the Church on social and moral issues. Relations have become increasingly fractious following condemnation of Mr Brown's spending plans by Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the publication of a report that accused the Government of marginalising the Church.

In February, the General Synod, the Church's parliament, will hold a debate on the implications of the financial crisis that is expected to lead to heavy criticism of the Government. The Rt Rev Tom Wright, the Bishop of Durham, said ministers had not done enough to help the poor.

"Labour made a lot of promises, but a lot of them have vanished into thin air,'' he said. "We have not seen a raising of aspirations in the last 13 years, but instead there is a sense of hopelessness.

"While the rich have got richer, the poor have got poorer. When a big bank or car company goes bankrupt, it gets bailed out, but no one seems to be bailing out the ordinary people who are losing their jobs and seeing their savings diminished.''

The Rt Rev Nigel McCulloch, the Bishop of Manchester, condemned Labour for encouraging people to get further into debt. "The Government has acted scandalously. This is not just an economic issue, but a moral one. It's about what we value,'' he said.

"The Government believes that money can answer all of the problems and has encouraged greed and a love of money that the Bible says is the root of all evil. It is morally corrupt because it encourages people to get into a lifestyle of believing they can always get what they want.''

Bishop McCulloch said New Labour was guilty of pursuing the policies championed by Margaret Thatcher, which the

Church condemned in its landmark 1985 report, Faith in the City. It blamed Thatcherite policies for the growth of spiritual and economic poverty in Britain's inner cities.

"Both administrations have been beguiled by money,'' said Bishop McCulloch.

"It is ironic that under a Labour government we have the poor feeling they have been betrayed and the gap is getting ever greater. Any government of integrity would have exercised restraint, but this has been sadly lacking.''

The Rt Rev Stephen Lowe, the Church's Bishop for Urban Life and Faith and also the Bishop of Hulme, said: "The Government isn't telling people who are already deep in debt to stop overextending themselves, but instead is urging us to spend more.

"That is morally suspect and morally feeble. It is unfair and irresponsible of the Government to put pressure on the public to spend in order to revive the economy.''

Bishop Lowe suggested that it was a cynical ploy to improve the economy in time for the next general election.

"They are trying to take the credit for this, but are playing with people's livelihoods in the process.'' The bishop commissioned a Church report, Moral, But No Compass, published earlier this year, which said Labour had failed society and marginalised the Church.

It revealed the level of unease felt among senior clerical figures over the direction being taken by the Government.

The Rt Rev Graham Dow, the Bishop of Carlisle, and the Rt Rev Michael Scott-Joynt, the Bishop of Winchester, said Labour deserved credit for some past achievements but it was struggling to balance its conscience with the pressure to win the next election.

"I agree with the Conservatives that the breakdown of the family is a crucial element in the difficulties of our present society,'' said Bishop Dow.

"The Government hasn't given sufficient support to that because it is scared of losing votes.'' He argued that Labour's failure to back marriage and its "insistence on supporting every choice of lifestyle'' had had a negative effect on society. "I think Labour has got tired,'' he said. Bishop Scott-Joynt said: "The Government hasn't done anything like enough to help those less well off, particularly in terms of tax redistribution. There also has been the disaster of the 10p tax.

"It is imperative that this Government help the poorer people and hold the hard-hit communities in its sights, but it seems to have its eye on

re-election instead.''

A senior ministerial source said: "The Government has a proud record on promoting fairness and opportunity for all, combating poverty and in tackling Third World debt and promoting international development.

"We also believe it is morally right to provide real help and resources to people facing unemployment or worried about losing their homes.'

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
BBC

Bishops attack 'immoral' Labour

Five Anglican bishops have attacked the government by calling into question the morality of its policies.

The bishops of Durham, Winchester, Hulme, Manchester and Carlisle told the Sunday Telegraph the UK was beset by family breakdown, debt and poverty.

Bishop of Manchester the Rt Rev Nigel McCulloch said Labour was "beguiled by money" and "morally corrupt".

But Labour MP Sir Stuart Bell, who represents the Church in the Commons, said the comments were "nonsense".

'Inevitable come-uppance'

Speaking to the Sunday Telegraph, Bishop of Durham the Rt Rev Tom Wright accused ministers of making promises that had later "vanished into thin air".

"We have not seen a raising of aspirations in the last 13 years, but instead there is a sense of hopelessness. While the rich have got richer, the poor have got poorer," he said.

In a separate interview with the paper, Bishop McCulloch echoed those criticisms, just days after he used his Christmas Day sermon to warn that society was facing an inevitable come-uppance for its "buy now, pay later" culture.

The Rt Rev Stephen Lowe, the Church's Bishop for Urban Life and Faith, said he feared Britain would simply return to a "financial system based on indebtedness" after the current crisis.

"The government isn't telling people who are already deep in debt to stop overextending themselves, but instead is urging us to spend more," he said.

"That is morally suspect and morally feeble. It is unfair and irresponsible of the government to put pressure on the public to spend in order to revive the economy."

Bishop Lowe, who is bishop of Hulme within the diocese of Manchester, later told the BBC he wanted to see an end to "the notion of greed, of getting something you want immediately using the credit card".

Meanwhile, the Bishops of Carlisle and Winchester claimed ministers had squandered their opportunity to transform society.

The Rt Rev Graham Dow, the Bishop of Carlisle, said: "I agree with the Conservatives that the breakdown of the family is a crucial element in the difficulties of our present society.

"The government hasn't given sufficient support to that because it is scared of losing votes."

BBC political correspondent Iain Watson said while it was not the first time the Church and state have clashed in recent times, the bishops' language was "particularly robust".

Only last week, the Archbishop of Canterbury launched a public attack on the government.

Dr Rowan Williams said Gordon Brown's plans to spend more in order to tackle the recession were like an "addict returning to the drug", and suggested the economy had been going in the wrong direction for decades.

'Bishops' palaces'

Sir Stuart Bell MP, who is the Second Church Estates Commissioner and the Church's representative in the Commons branded the criticism as "nonsense".

He said: "Not only is the government seeking to help those on lower incomes, it is leading the fight in the Third World to relieve poverty - a task Gordon Brown pursued in all his years as chancellor and since as prime minister.

"It is also nothing short of nonsense to say that the government's policies are designed to win a future election. They are designed to assist all sections of the community through the difficulties that face them.

"Possibly the bishops would prefer the proposed policies of the Conservatives, to reduce taxes by reducing public expenditure - thus ensuring the closure of schools and hospitals and a reduction in services - in which case they would allow themselves the luxury of further criticism."

Sir Stuart added that it "ill-behoved" those who lived in "bishops' palaces" to condemn government policies aiming at alleviating poverty.

But Labour MP John McFall told the BBC he believed there was "a kernel of truth" in the bishops' remarks.

"It's important for people to look at this in a moral dimension - right and wrong - and to ensure that we bring back some of the responsibility that was evident many, many years ago when people had to save up for things," he said.

"We've all got to make ourselves more responsible and if that's what the bishops are pushing out, that message, then I'm on their side."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/7801667.stm

Published: 2008/12/28 14:15:37 GMT

© BBC MMVIII

iraq inspectors threatened by cheney

.
Blix to testify against Iraq war makers?

source: voltairenet.org

Hans Blix, UN chief weapons inspector: ’’Cheney threatened to discredit me’’

A former UN chief weapons inspector says he is ready to testify about the false US allegations which led to the Iraq war before a tribunal.

Hans Blix, in a Sunday interview with Al Jazeera television said he and the Head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mohamed ElBaradei, were subjected to implicit threats from US Vice President Dick Cheney in the run-up to the Iraq war.

The former top UN inspector said Cheney had also threatened to defame ElBaradei and him if they refused to provide the "required" information on Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction.

"The Bush administration misled Americans and the world by creating a hype about weapons of mass destruction in order to justify the invasion of Iraq," Blix added.

The Swedish constitutional lawyer had earlier in 2004 told NBC News that, "It is probable that the governments were conscious that they were exaggerating the risks they saw in order to get the political support they would not otherwise have had.’’

Blix, who was the director general of the IAEA from 1981 to 1997, added that he is ready to testify about the false US allegations before an international tribunal.

After the invasion of Iraq and the US failure to find the alleged WMD in the country, intelligence officials were severely criticized for relying "too much on defectors and exercising too little critical judgment in assessing their information."

Earlier in January 2008, members of the House Judiciary Committee called for starting impeachment hearings against Cheney.

The House Judiciary Committee members accused Cheney of "manipulating intelligence to deceive Congress and the American people about a fabricated threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and an alleged relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda."

Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Vice President Dick Cheney made a false claim on NBC that Iraq had been the ’geographic base’ for the attacks.

However, President George W. Bush acknowledged on September 17, 2003 that, "We have no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the 11 September attacks."

http://www.presstv.ir/

shades of clearstream over sarko

waynemadsenreport.com

December 18, 2008

Clearstream scandal to return to haunt Sarkozy

WMR has learned from informed sources that French President Nicolas Sarkozy will soon face renewed charges that he received illegal foreign funds through the Lumxemourg banking company Clearstream. Luxembourg is a well-known tax haven that maintains strict confidentiality over banking and corporate records.

Then-French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin met with the recently-retired head of French military intelligence Philippe Rondot and EADS deputy director Jean Louis Gergorin. Gergorin told de Villepin that two names on the secret list of French politicians who had Clearstream accounts -- Paul de Nagy and Stéphane Bosca -- were pseudonyms for Sarkozy. It was believed by French intelligence that the names came from Sarkoy's father's full name, Nicolas Paul Stéphane Sarkösy de Nagy-Bosca.

Clearstream reportedly represented a massive money laundering operation that financed political and other operations around the world. Banks and companies with Clearstream accounts included the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), Bank Menatep of jailed Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Banco Ambrosiano (also known as the Vatican Bank), Bahrain International Bank (with reported links to Osama Bin Laden), and The Carlyle Group.

Sarkozy was Interior and, for a short time, Finance Minister in the Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP) government in which De Villepin served as Foreign Minister and Prime Minister.

Sarkozy's camp denounced the Clearstream list as a forgery and, as President, Sarkozy has put de Villepin under a criminal investigation. However, WMR has learned from sources close to France's General Directorate for External Security (DGSE) that Sarkozy's removal of Pierre Brochand,a Jacques Chirac appointee, as the head of DGSE in October will soon have unpleasant consequences for the mercurial Sarkozy.

DGSE classified documents could soon appear that will re-ignite the Clearstream affair and prove that Sarkozy's political career was financed by foreign funds. The revelations will reportedly exonerate de Villepin and Chirac, who have been charged by pro-Sarkozy elements in France of a criminal conspiracy to defame Sarkozy.

Sarkozy and his neocon allies were able to kill the story of Clearstream by lawsuits against journalists and criminal charges against French officials who were aware of the details of the case. An Excel spreadsheet of Clearstream accounts was removed from several web sites under threat of legal action. WMR obtained a copy of the 2002 spreadsheet.

The release of classified information on Clearstream may have repercussions far beyond France and shed light on an international quadrillion dollar scheme involving Israeli-connected gangsters to line the pockets of billionaires, launder cash, defraud banks, and loot national treasuries.

On February 5, 2008, WMR reported: "In the wake of the recent reports about former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds' revelations that Turkish, Israeli, and Pakistani operatives worked with top members of the Bush administration to smuggle nuclear technology and also engaged in money laundering and drug smuggling, comes the astrounding revelations about the French bank Societe Generale SA and three other banks being involved in laundering money from a Paris garment district through Israel.

The revelations about SoGen follow the massive swindle by SoGen junior trading partner Jerome Kerviel that resulted in a $7.3 billion loss for the bank. Kerviel, who has been likened by some in France to the French Jewish Army Captain Alfred Dreyfus in the infamous "Dreyfus Affair," stands accused of falsification, computer abuse, and breach of trust.

SoGen, Barclays France, Societe Marseillaises de Credit (owned by HSBC), and the National Bank of Pakistan are accused of laundering money in what is known as the "Sentier 2 Affair." The Sentier district of Paris is a center for garment merchants. SoGen chairman Daniel Bouton, still reeling from the Kerviel fraud, is charged with failing to uphold anti-money laundering laws in the case. He is charged along with six French rabbis, and 132 other people in the money laundering scheme that 72 million euros was laundered from France via Israel from 1996 to 2001. Fraudulent French checks were cashed in Israeli banks and exchanged for New Israeli Shekels (NIS), and then returned to France via the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT) for clearance by the French banks. Israeli banks that handled the transactions received a commission for each transaction. However, no Israeli banks have been charged in the scandal . . .

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has been unusually quiet on the Kerviel and Sentier 2 financial scandals. He likely wants no attention paid to the possible links between Kerviel, Sentier 2, and his own scandal that almost derailed his presidential candidacy: Clearstream.

On February 6, 2007, WMR reported: 'right-wing French presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy received money from international American fugitive and Russian-Israeli Mafia kingpin Marc Rich, according to informed French sources. The money was transmitted through the Luxembourg-based Clearstream clearing division of Deutsche Borse. Sarkozy cleverly proclaimed his innocence in the French-Taiwan frigate bribery and money laundering affair, accusing French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin of being behind a political dirty trick. However, in squawking loudly about his innocence in the Taiwan scandal, Sarkozy diverted attention away from his receipt of funds from the Russian-Israeli Mafia Clearstream accounts of Bank Menatep, the bank owned by jailed Russian tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

Sarkozy, a committed neo-con who favors a hard line towards Arabs domestically and internationally, is reported to have received funds from Switzerland-based Marc Rich, via Menatep's Clearstream accounts, prior to and after Menatep's collapse in 1998. Menatep has been linked to a number of Russian-Israeli mafiosi figures, including Semyon Mogilevich, considered to be the most dangerous Russian-Israeli Mafia leader in the world. Rich's former attorney, I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, is on trial in Washington, DC for perjury and obstruction of justice in the outing of a covert CIA officer.'

President Clinton pardoned Rich in a last minute deal worked out in January 2001, shortly before Clinton left office.

On January 30, Russian police arrested Mogilevich in Moscow and charged him with tax evasion. Mogilevich holds Russian as well as Israeli citizenship. In 2003, the US Justice Department indicted Mogilevich in Philadelphia and charged him and two associates with stock manipulation of the Pennsylvania firm YBM Magnex."

YBM Magnex was incorporated in Canada. The sizeable investments in the phony YBM Magnex by Canadian investment manager Sceptre Investment Counsel Ltd. resulted in a loss of investor confidence in the financial services firm and the departure of its top fund manager Allan Jacobs in 2007.

President-elect Barack Obama's selection of Clinton Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder as Attorney General will shine a new light on the Rich pardon. Holder approved the last-minute pardon for Rich in the waning days of the Clinton administration in January 2001.

Recently, the Canadian Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre (FINTRAC) reported on a foreign spy operation in Canada that used a series of "folding tent" and brass plate corporations, as well as banks, to move move money and buy restricted commodities out of Canada. Canadian Tory and neocon quarters suggested that China, Iran, or Russia was the foreign spy agency cited by FINTRAC. There is strong evidence to suggest that the perpetrator was Israel's Mossad.

The FINTRAC investigation was part of a joint operation with U.S. authorities. The illegal transactions involved some $35 million, according to FINTRAC. In October, Israeli hacker Ehud Tenenbaum was arrested in Canada for the electronic theft of $1.8 million from a Calgary's Direct Cash Management Inc. Tenenbaum was arrested on a U.S. warrant for being involved in an international hacking ring that electronically looted money from banks in Russia, Turkey, the Netherlands, Sweden, Belgium, Germany, and other countries.

In 1998, Tenenbaum, code-named "The Analyzer," broke into Pentagon computers. As part of his sentence, Tenenbaum was ordered to help "Israeli organizations" to protect themselves against cyber-attacks. Many informed computer security experts believe Tenenbaum went to work for Mossad.

Canada suspects that "white label" automatic teller machines (ATMs), privately-owned cash dispensing machines, are being used by the Russian-Israeli Mafia to engage in massive global money laundering. Tenenbaum and his associates withdrew money from credit and debit card accounts, to which money was illegally transferred, from ATM machines in Montreal and other cities.

In a scheme reminiscent of Bernard Madoff's $50 billion phony hedge fund Ponzi scheme run through his Madoff Securities in Manhattan, in September 2007, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) charged the founders of the bankrupt Portus Alternative Asset Management hedge fund with fraud. The two charged, Boaz Manor and Michael Mendelson, defrauded 26,000 Canadians and 700 foreign investors in Canada, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Bermuda, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, England, the Turks and Caicos Islands, Cyprus, the Isle of Jersey, and the United States of hundreds of millions of dollars. Some of the money was used by the pair to buy diamonds. Manor fled Canada to Israel in March 2005 and denied any wrongdoing.

If the DGSE begins leaking documents on the massive underground world of illegal money movements, Sarkozy could find himself facing a criminal trial.

On May 11, 2006, WMR reported: " . . . the recent attacks on de Villepin from the neo-cons are said to have more to do with his opposition to any attack on Iran than on Luxembourg money tranches. European intelligence sources report that the attacks on DeVillepin (and Chirac) and the recent tirade against Russian President Vladimir Putin by Vice President Cheney, are all part of a coordinated attack against European leaders who oppose military action against Iran. With the loss of Italy, the neo-cons are trying to establish new bridgeheads in France and Russia. What has particularly piqued the neo-con anger with deVillepin is this recent quote from the French Prime Minister concerning an attack on Iran, 'My conviction is that military action is certainly not the solution . . . We have already lived through this type of scenario and we know that not only does it settle nothing, but it can raise risks. We have seen this in the most clear way with Iraq.'
The neo-cons are using Clearstream and their man Sarkozy to hammer deVillepin as a way of clearing the path for Sarkozy to become the next French President. Neither deVillepin, Chirac, or the French intelligence services, all aware of Sarkozy's connections to the neo-cons, want to see the Interior Minister move into the Elysee Palace and steer France into the neo-con camp. DeVillepin is refusing to resign because he holds the trump card on Sarkozy and his friends, which include members of the neo-Nazi French National Front. Chirac recently said there are legitimate reasons to investigate Clearstream and lashed out at the neo-cons and their fellow travelers who are trying to sink the investigation of Sarkozy. Chirac said, 'Democracy is not the disrespect and exploitation to outrageous lengths of legal procedures under way.'"

UPDATE 1X. WMR has learned that the reported Chinese and Russian connections to the recent CSIS report that a foreign intelligence agency was illegally moving money electronically out of Canada is because Israeli intelligence operatives bought Russian and Chinese "off-the-shelf" companies to hide the Israeli connection to the caper. The operation, according to a well-placed WMR source, involves Canada's mining industry, particularly gold mining.

central banker confirms meltdown

.
World faces "total" financial meltdown: Bank of Spain chief

Dec 21 11:40 AM US/Eastern

The governor of the Bank of Spain on Sunday issued a bleak assessment of the economic crisis, warning that the world faced a "total" financial meltdown unseen since the Great Depression.
"The lack of confidence is total," Miguel Angel Fernandez Ordonez said in an interview with Spain's El Pais daily.

"The inter-bank (lending) market is not functioning and this is generating vicious cycles: consumers are not consuming, businessmen are not taking on workers, investors are not investing and the banks are not lending.

"There is an almost total paralysis from which no-one is escaping," he said, adding that any recovery -- pencilled in by optimists for the end of 2009 and the start of 2010 -- could be delayed if confidence is not restored.

Ordonez recognised that falling oil prices and lower taxes could kick-start a faster-than-anticipated recovery, but warned that a deepening cycle of falling consumer demand, rising unemployment and an ongoing lending squeeze could not be ruled out.

"This is the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression" of 1929, he added.

Ordonez said the European Central Bank, of which he is a governing council member, would cut interest rates in January if inflation expectations went much below two percent.

"If, among other variables, we observe that inflation expectations go much below two percent, it's logical that we will lower rates."

Regarding the dire situation in the United States, Ordonez said he backed the decision by the US Federal Reserve to cut interest rates almost to zero in the face of profound deflation fears.

Central banks are seeking to jumpstart movements on crucial interbank money markets that froze after the US market for high-risk, or subprime mortgages collapsed in mid 2007, and locked tighter after the US investment bank Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy in mid September.

Interbank markets are a key link in the chain which provides credit to businesses and households.

Copyright AFP 2008

full out crisis will blow in march says dutch think tank

.
http://www.leap2020.eu/GEAB-N-30-is-available%21-Global-systemic-crisis-New-tipping-point-in-March-2009-When-the-world-becomes-aware-that-this_a2567.html

Global systemic crisis – New tipping-point in March 2009: 'When the world becomes aware that this crisis is worse than the 1930s crisis'

- Public announcement GEAB N°30 (December 16, 2008) -

LEAP/E2020 anticipates than the unfolding global systemic crisis will experience in March 2009 a new tipping point of similar magnitude to the September 2008 one. According to our team, at that period of the year, the general public will become aware of three major destabilizing processes at work in the global economy, i.e.:

• the length of the crisis
• the explosion of unemployment worldwide
• the risk of sudden collapse of all capital-based pension systems

A whole range of psychological factors will contribute to this tipping point: general awareness in Europe, America and Asia that the crisis has escaped from the control of every public authority, whether national or international; that it is severely affecting all regions of the world, even if some are more affected than others (see GEAB N°28); that it is directly hitting hundreds of millions of people in the “developed” world; and that it is only worsening as its consequences reveal throughout the real economy. National governments and international institutions only have three months left to prepare themselves to the next blow, one that could go along severe risks of social chaos. The countries which are not properly equipped to cope with a surge in unemployment and major risks on pensions will be seriously destabilized by this new public awareness.

In this 30th issue of the GEAB, the LEAP/E2020 team describes these three destabilizing processes (two of them are described in this public announcement) and gives recommendations to cope with the surge in risks. In addition, this issue also provides the opportunity to make an objective assessment of the reliability of LEAP/E2020's anticipations and specifies a number of methodological aspects of the analytical process used. In 2008, LEAP/E2020's success rate reaches 80%, and even 86% when it comes to strictly socio-econimic anticipations. In a year of major upheavals, our teal ise altogether quite proud of this result.


The crisis will last at least until the end of 2010

Evolution of the US money base and indications of related major US crisis periods (1910 – 2008) - Source: Federal Reserve Bank of Saint Louis / Mish’s Global Economic Analysis
As we already explained in GEAB N°28, the crisis will affect in different ways the different regions of the world. However, and LEAP/E2020 wishes to be very clear on that aspect, contrary to the dominant stance today (coming from those experts who denied the fact that a crisis was coming up three years ago, who denied that it was global two years ago, and who denied the fact that it was systemic six months ago), we anticipate that the minimum duration of the decanting phase of the crisis is 3 years (1). It shall be finished neither in spring 2009, nor in summer 2009, nor at the beginning of 2010. It is only towards the end of 2010 that the situation will start stabilizing again and improving a little in some regions of the world, i.e. Asia and the Eurozone, as well as in countries producing energy, mineral and food commodities (2). Elsewhere, it will continue; in particular in the US and UK, and in all the countries depending on their economy, were the
duration could approximate a decade. In fact these countries should not expect any real return to growth before 2018.

Moreover no one should imagine that the improvement at the end of 2010 will correspond to a return of high growth. The recovery will take long. For instance, stock markets will take a decade to return to levels comparable to 2007, if they ever return to that. Remember that it took twenty years before Wall Street resumed its 1920 levels. Well, according to LEAP/E2020, the present crisis is deeper and longer than in the 1930s. The general public will gradually become aware of the long-term aspect of this crisis in the coming three months and this situation will immediately trigger two tendencies carrying with them socio-economic instability: fear of the future and enhanced criticism towards leaders.


The risk of sudden collapse of all capital-based pension systems
Finally, among the various consequences of the crisis for dozens of millions of people in the US, Canada, UK, Japan, Netherlands and Denmark in particular (3), there is the fact that, from the end of the year 2008 onward, news about major losses on the part of the organizations in charge of managing the financial assets supposed to finance pensions will multiply. The OECD anticipates that pension funds will lose 4,000 billion USD in 2008 only (4). In the Netherlands (5) as well as in the United Kingdom (6), monitoring organizations recently blew the whistle asking for an emergency contribution reappraisal and a State intervention. In the United States, growing numbers of announcements call for contribution increases and benefit reductions (7), knowing that it is only in a few weeks time that most of these funds will start calculating their total losses (8). Most of them are still deluding themselves about their capacity to build up again their capital
after the markets turn around. In March 2009, when pension fund managers, pensioners and governments will become simultaneously aware of the fact that the crisis is there to last, that it coincides with the « baby-boomer » generation’s age of retirement and that the markets will not resume their 2007 levels until many long years (9), chaos will flood this sector and governments will reach the moment when they will be compelled to nationalize all these funds. And Argentina, who took this decision a few months ago already, will appear a pioneer.

All the trends described above are already at work. Their combination and the public becoming aware of the consequences they could entail, will result in the great collective psychological trauma of Spring 2009, when everyone will realize that we are all trapped into a crisis worse than in the 1930s and that there is no possible way out in the short-term. The impact on the world’s collective mentalities of people and policy-makers will be decisive and modify significantly the course of the crisis in its next stage. Based on greater disillusion and fewer beliefs, social and political instability will settle down worldwide.

Finally, this GEAB N°30 presents a series of 13 questions & answers designed to enhance savers'/investors'/decision-makers' capacity to understand and anticipate the next stages of the global systemic crisis:
1. Is this crisis different from the previous crises which affected capitalism?
2. Is this crisis different from the 1930s crisis?
3. Is the crisis as serious in Europe or Asia as in the USA?
4. Are the current actions undertaken by public authorities worldwide sufficient to curb the crisis?
5. What are the major risks still weighting on the world financial system? And are all savings equal in front of the crisis?
6. Is the Eurozone a true protection shield against the worst aspects of the crisis and what should the Eurozone do to improve its protection status?
7. Is the Bretton Woods system (in its 1970s last version) currently collapsing? Should the Euro take the place of the Dollar?
8. What can be expected from the next G20 meeting in London?
9. Do you think that deflation is right now the biggest threat to economies worldwide?
10. Do you think that the Obama administration will be able to prevent the USA from sinking into what you called the ‘Very Great US Depression’?
11. In terms of currencies, beyond your anticipation of the Dollar resuming its collapse in the very next months, do you think that the UK Pound and the Swiss Franc are still currencies with an international status?
12. Do you think that the CDS market is about to implode in the coming months? And what could be the consequences of such a phenomenon?
13. Is there a ‘US Treasury Bonds Bubble” about to burst?

---------
Notes:

(1) It can be useful to read on this crisis a very interesting contribution by Robert Guttmann published in the 2nd half of 2008 on the website Revues.org, supported by the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme Paris-Nord.

(2) As a matter of fact, commodities have already started contributing to boost the market of international sea transport. Source: Financial Times, 12/14/2008

(3) It is in those countries that capital-based pension systems were most developed (see GEAB N°23) but is also the case of Ireland. Source: Independent, 11/30/2008

(4) Source: OECD, 11/12/2008

(5) Source: NU.NL, 12/15/2008

(6) Source: BBC, 12/09/2008

(7) Sources: WallStreetJournal, 11/17/2008; Phillyburbs, 11/25/2008; RockyMountainNews, 11/19/2008

(8) Source: CNBC, 12/05/2008

(9) Not to mention the effect of an explosion of the US T-Bond bubble on pension funds. See Q&A, GEAB N°30.

Mardi 16 Décembre 2008

chicago: blago bookie for the mob!

.
http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/local&id=6559104


Blagojevich was bookie, says federal informant

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

6:09 PM

By Chuck Goudie

The ABC7 I-Team has learned that an attorney who went undercover for the FBI in the late 1980's says he told federal authorities years ago about wrongdoing by Blagojevich.
His name is Robert Cooley.
Cooley was a criminal defense lawyer in Chicago in the late 1980's who became one of the most potent witnesses against Chicago corruption, testifying for federal prosecutors in cases that resulted in dozens of convictions.
Cooley says that before Rod Blagojevich got into politics he was a bookmaker on the North Side who regularly paid the Chicago mob to operate.
Story continues belowAdvertisement"When I was working with government wearing wire, I reported, I observed Rod, the present governor, who was running a gambling operation out in the western suburbs. He was paying street tax to the mob out there," said Robert Cooley, federal informant.
On a web-based interview show last week, Cooley said he reported to federal authorities nearly two decades ago that Rod Blagojevich had been operating an illegal sports gambling business.
Robert Cooley is a former Chicago police officer-turned mob lawyer-turned federal informant.
During Operation Gambat in the late 1980's and early 1990's, Cooley's undercover work and testimony put away 24 crooked politicians, judges, lawyers and cops.
Several years ago, when Mr. Blagojevich was running for re-election, Cooley provided the same information to the ABC7 I-Team. Because Cooley did not want to be identified at the time and the governor denied it, ABC7 did not report the story.
On Tuesday, Cooley spoke on the record.
He told ABC7 that Mr. Blagojevich regularly paid a so-called street tax to Robert "Bobby the Boxer" Abbinanti, a convicted outfit gambling collector. In the early 1980's, Abbinanti was working for convicted West Side mob boss Marco D'amico. Bookies pay street taxes to the crime syndicate in exchange for being allowed to operate such a racket.
"I predicted five years ago when he ran the first time that he was a hands on person who would be selling every position in the state of Illinois and that it exactly what happened," said Cooley.
Cooley, who secretly recorded conversations in a Counselor's Row restaurant near City Hall which brought down the first ward leadership, contends Illinois corruption is unstoppable.
"The biggest problem you have now and reason for what is happening is that the people in power have money and ability to silence the media so it will never be reported and as long as you have that going on, you will never stop it," Cooley.
A spokesman for Governor Blagojevich said on Tuesday evening that he cannot comment on Cooley, the bookmaking allegation or the mob payoffs.
He referred us to the governor's criminal defense lawyer Ed Genson. Mr. Genson says he is too busy right now to talk.
A spokesman for the United States attorney in Chicago said that his office will have no comment.

(Copyright ©2008 WLS-TV/DT. All Rights Reserved.)

"baby p": another dutroux or casa pia? ( 7 texts)

.
London's bourough of Haringey has last year witnessed the horrors of the "Baby P" affair. Behind this child molester-killer story, emerge patterns reminding of the Casa Pia ( Portugal ) or the Dutroux ( Belgium) stories that deserve further investigations.

Hereafter some UK press articles where you can discover that:

1/ in 8 months ( 240 days ) a molested baby has been seen 60 times ( once every 4 days ) by social services which did not detect anything.

2/ The director of Harringey's child protection service tried to block an inquiry of her department.

3/ The borough spent 19,000£ on spin to better answer the public outcry.

4/ Relatives of Baby P parents were involved in a child sex ring

5/ In another instance, the Haringey social services transferred a child from a good foster family to some child molester.

What hides this kind of cover up and piling up of blinding evidences?

Alexandre de Perlinghi

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/the-60-missed-chances-to-save-abused-childs-life-1012495.html

The 60 missed chances to save abused child's life

Despite numerous visits from social workers, a toddler was allowed to die from the horrific injuries inflicted by his guardians

By Mark Hughes, Crime Correspondent

Wednesday, 12 November 2008


A baby who was beaten, bruised and left to die by his guardians was seen 60 times by social workers but was never taken into care. The child was seen 18 times by council staff, 37 times by health workers and five times by welfare officers, yet no one rescued him from his abusers before he died.

Yesterday, a nationwide review of children's services was launched after Haringey Council in north London was again accused of failing to prevent the harrowing death of a child. Haringey was the authority involved in the case of eight-year-old Victoria Climbié, who was murdered at the hands of her great-aunt and her boyfriend in 2000.

Now the authority faces fresh criticism over the death of the 17-month-old child, known as Baby P, who was battered and abused for eight months, despite being on the council's child protection register.

Yesterday Baby P's 27-year-old mother, her 32-year-old boyfriend and their lodger, Jason Owen, 36, were convicted at the Old Bailey of causing or allowing the death of a child.

Murder charges against the mother and Jason Owen were dropped after the judge decided there was insufficient evidence to convict. The 32-year-old man was yesterday found not guilty of murder. After their conviction, attention turned to the authorities which apparently failed Baby P in the months leading up to his death. The Metropolitan Police admitted errors in their investigation, while a doctor at St Ann's Hospital, Tottenham, has not had her contract renewed for her failure to spot that the child had a broken back and ribs just two days before he died.

But it is the conduct of Haringey Council that prompted children's minister Beverley Hughes to announce a nationwide independent review of child protection services. The council's failings in the Climbié case led to Lord Laming's inquiry which made recommendations in child protection reform. But just five years after that report was published, the Government yesterday asked the peer to conduct another inquiry following the death of Baby P.

Ms Hughes said: "To ensure the reforms the Government set out after Lord Laming's inquiry are being implemented systematically, Ed Balls and I have asked Lord Laming to prepare an independent report of progress being made across the country."

Yesterday, Lord Laming, who called for a series of reforms in the wake of Victoria Climbié's death, said the similarities between her case and Baby P's were "dispiriting".

In the eight months that Haringey Council was involved in the case, social workers visited the home of Baby P 60 times – twice a week – but failed to take the child into care. At one point, they allowed Baby P to return to his mother even when she was on bail for attacking him.

The case has been described as "worse than Climbié". It is very similar. It involved the same council, the same health visitor clinic in Lordship Lane, Tottenham, and one of the same social workers, Sylvia Henry.

Ms Henry was accused of lying in official records relating to the Climbié case to cover up her team's lack of action. In the Baby P case, she was one of the social workers involved in the decision to return Baby P to his mother during the initial inquiry in December 2006.

Two social workers and a lawyer at Haringey Council have been given written warnings after a review into their conduct during the case. Ms Henry, it was confirmed to The Independent last night, will not be disciplined and she, along with every other social worker involved in the case, will keep her job.

Yesterday Sharon Shoesmith, the chairwoman of Haringey's local safeguarding children board – the body that led the independent review, refused to apologise for her council's handling of the case.

Instead, she criticised the child's mother for "deceit" in dealing with the council and the police, and extolled the benefits of hindsight, but said: "The very sad fact is you cannot stop anyone who is determined to kill their children.

"Of course we are shocked by the details of this but no agency killed this child. This child was killed by members of his own family. The agencies are not responsible." Dr Jane Collins, the chief executive of Great Ormond Street Hospital, which provided paediatric services to Baby P, said that Dr Sabah Al Zayyat – the doctor who failed to spot Baby P's broken back and rib two days before he died – had not had her contract renewed – a decision the GP is fighting.

Asked about the hospital's role in the child's death, Dr Collins added: "Our doctor did not show the diligence expected. Do you not think we feel bad about that? We feel as uncomfortable about that as you do. Clearly we did not get things right. He [Baby P] died and we need to do things better."

The police also admitted to errors in their handling of the case. Detective Superintendent Caroline Bates, who led the inquiry, said: "With hindsight, having the benefit of a major investigation, we know quite clearly the mother was lying and trying to subvert agencies involved with the family."

Privately, however, the police are said to be angry at the lack of co-operation shown by Haringey Council. Sources say that the council's unwillingness to disclose vital documents relating to the case hampered their investigation.

The tragically short life of Baby P was marred by violence and marked by a series of blunders and missed opportunities by the organisations in charge with saving him from abuse.

Just two days before his death, Baby P was taken to see Dr Zayyat. During the trial at the Old Bailey, jurors were told Dr Zayyat did not spot the fact the child had a broken back and nine broken ribs. Instead, she noted that he was "miserable"and had a cold and sent him home.

The visit to the doctor was the last chance anyone had to save Baby P, but it was certainly not the first.

Throughout the investigation, Baby P's 27-year-old mother lied to the police and social services and claimed his injuries were caused because he was a feisty child who liked to headbutt things.

Neither the police nor the social workers, both of whom visited the home several times, realised the mother was sharing her home with two men. And tragically, they decided to drop the investigation into the alleged abuse the day that the child died.

Baby P's natural father left the family home in July 2006, four months after his son was born. In November 2006, the mother, described as a slob "devoid from reality" and obsessed with internet chatrooms and daytime television, moved her new boyfriend into the house, in Tottenham.

The mother did not inform social services that her new boyfriend, who had a fascination with knives and was "sadistic" and "fascinated with pain" according to the police, had moved in. In December 2006, the mother was arrested after bruises were found on the Baby P's face and chest. Social services were informed and visited the council flat in Haringey, which the mother and her boyfriend shared with three dogs including a large Rottweiler.

There, they found pornography scattered around the house, which was dirty and smelled of urine. Baby P was placed on the child protection register and handed to a family friend but was allowed to return home after five weeks.

In April 2007, he was admitted to North Middlesex Hospital with bruises, two black eyes and swelling on of his head. His mother claimed he had fallen onto a marble fireplace and blamed his grandmother for the injuries.

Baby P returned to the hospital in June 2007, again with bruises. That time, his mother blamed the injuries on a fight he had with another child. She was rearrested and bailed and police officers recommended the child should not be allowed to return to his mother.

Detective Superintendent Caroline Bates said: "The officers involved felt very strongly that the child should not be returned to the family."

Despite that, the child was returned to the house as he had not reached the threshold required for taking a child into care.

Later that month, on 29 June, the abuse accelerated when Owen moved into the flat.

The following day, 30 June, Maria Ward, the appointed social worker paid an unannounced visit to the house. She is said to have missed injuries to the child's face and hands because he had been smeared with chocolate to disguise them.

On 1 August came the last chance to save Baby P's life. He was taken to Dr Al Zayyat who did not spot the child's terrible injuries.

The following day, the mother was told by police she would not be prosecuted. But that evening the child was to suffer a final and fatal attack when he was punched so hard in the mouth that he swallowed his tooth and suffered damage to his spine and neck. The following morning, Baby P was found dead in his cot. Experts said he had been dead for several hours.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/3474575/The-28-experts-who-failed-to-save-battered-Baby-P.html

The 28 'experts' who failed to save battered Baby P

Baby P was seen by 28 different social workers, doctors and police officers before he was tortured to death, it has emerged.

By Gordon Rayner and Nick Allen

17 Nov 2008

All of them had contact with the 17-month-old boy after concerns were first raised that he was being abused, but their combined expertise failed to save him from the violent beatings that finally killed him eight months later.

Baby P was taken to hospital nine times, the last occasion coming two days before his death, when his spine had been broken but doctors failed to spot that he had been paralysed because he was “quite miserable and crying” and so, they said, it was not possible to make a “full examination”.


The catalogue of missed opportunities, revealed in court documents, begin on March 1 2006, the date of Baby P’s birth. It shows how medical complaints escalated from minor childhood infections to increasingly distressing injuries.

It includes excuses given to explain Baby P’s injuries, which become more severe once the mother’s boyfriend moved in.

The catalogue includes:

October 13 2006, “bruising to head and chest / accidental fall downstairs”,

December 19 2006, Defendant and mother arrested regarding assault, with P receiving a leg x-ray two days later.

April 5 2007, P is pushed into a fireplace, something the defendant says was done by another child.

June 8 2007, P is registered for neglect, but continues to return to hospital with ear infections and head lice.

August 1, 2007, P seen by doctors at St Annes Hospital who notes he is “quite miserable crying” so they are unable to make a full examination.

August 3, 2007, emergency services receive a 999 call and P dies at hospital.

It was also claimed yesterday that the social worker responsible for Baby P’s welfare was dealing with 50 per cent more cases than the supposed maximum.

Maria Ward was allegedly dealing with 18 cases at the time of the boy’s death in August 2007 despite Haringey council’s guidelines stipulating that no more than 12 cases be allocated to each social worker. It says her caseload was seven families.

Miss Ward’s alleged predicament mirrors that of Lisa Arthurworrey, the social worker who had responsibility for Victoria Climbié when the eight-year-old was killed in Haringey in 2000. Miss Arthurworrey had 19 cases — a workload that Haringey said at the time was too high.

A spokesman for Haringey council said Miss Ward had seven families allocated to her, which it said was “in line with the average caseload for our social workers” but it refused to comment on whether the seven families included 18 different children.

Last week, the mother’s 32-year-old boyfriend and another man, Jason Owen, 36, were convicted of causing or allowing the death of Baby P. The mother, 27, had previously admitted a similar charge.

Meanwhile, Children’s Secretary Ed Balls could draft in a 'hit squad’ to take over the running of Haringey social services once an urgent inquiry into the Baby P incident has been completed, it was reported last night.

Hampshire’s head of children’s services John Coughlan has already been sent in to ensure that the correct procedures are being followed.

Mr Balls promised to “come down hard” on anyone who was found to have failed in their duty of care to Baby P when he receives an interim report into the child’s death on Dec 1. “Where serious mistakes are made there must be accountability and I will not hesitate in responding to what went wrong,” he said.

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

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/baby-p/3708586/Sharon-Shoesmith-tried-to-stop-investigation-into-department.html

Shoesmith tried to halt inquiry after death of Baby P.

Caroline Gammell.

Dec 12, 2008

THE disgraced director of children's services at Haringey council tried to prevent an investigation into her department six months after the death of Baby P, a leaked report shows.

Sharon Shoesmith, who was sacked on Monday, said a full review of child protection services was unnecessary due to "good performance in this area''.

Despite the child's death, the 55-year-old said such a review would not "add value''. She even suggested that her staff be "commended''.

Mrs Shoesmith's attempts to shield her department came in her Child Protection Feasibility Report last February. Baby P died in August last year after suffering months of abuse at the hands of his mother, her boyfriend and their lodger.

Last week, a review by Ofsted concluded that there had been a catalogue of failings at Haringey with breakdowns in communication, poor record taking and bad management.

Mrs Shoesmith was fired from her pounds 100,000-a-year post without compensation.

But in her report, she praised Haringey children's service, saying it should be "commended for improving performance in this area''. She made no mention of Baby P.

Mrs Shoesmith insisted that the council's overview and scrutiny committee did not need to review the child protection service.

She said Ofsted had rated the service as "good'' in its 2007 annual performance assessment, a report which has since been discredited and strongly criticised.

"In the light of the good performance in this area, as recognised by the recent annual performance assessment and the existing reporting and monitoring arrangements both locally and nationally, the committee agrees that a full scrutiny review would not be beneficial or add value to the service,'' Mrs Shoesmith wrote.

The report was uncovered by lawyers for Nevres Kemal, the social worker who warned four government ministers and Ofsted that Haringey social services were "out of control'' six months before the death of Baby P.

Lawrence Davies, of the lawyers Equal Justice, said he had written to Gordon Brown about the report and had demanded an independent inquiry into Ofsted.

"Without our client's action, the public would be none the wiser and Haringey would still be commending itself,'' he said.

"It is of public importance that those involved in the child protection tragedy in Haringey are made accountable and that, regrettably, includes Ofsted inspectors.''

Mrs Shoesmith was suspended on full pay last week before her contract was terminated. Two other senior social workers were suspended while three others were placed under review.

Baby P died in August last year after months of abuse that was concealed from social workers

Source Citation:Gammell, Caroline. "Shoesmith tried to halt inquiry after death of Baby P.(News)." Daily Telegraph

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

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article2014141.ece

Council paid £19k for Baby P 'spin'

By ANTHONY FRANCE

08 Dec 2008

SHAMED Haringey Council squandered £19,000 trying to make Baby P scandal boss Sharon Shoesmith look better.

MPs were furious last night after learning spin doctors were hired following the tot tragedy.

Their role was to give media advice to the head of children’s services and her colleagues.

Ms Shoesmith, 55 — now suspended — was given role-play exercises by up to three firms on how to answer probing questions from journalists.

She twice refused to apologise at a press conference over her department’s shocking failure to save the 17-month-old “at-risk” tot after his evil mother and stepdad and a lodger were convicted of torturing him to death.

Lib Dem MP Lynne Featherstone said: “It is absolutely outrageous that this money has been wasted on spin doctors. Every penny would have been better spent on improving our children’s services.”

Haringey even offered Scotland Yard access to its media advisers — but the suggestion was flatly refused.
The taxpayers’ cash was blown even though Haringey has an in-house communications team. The role of spin doctors was exposed in an answer to a written question tabled by the Lib Dems to council leader George Meehan before he quit last week.

Mr Meehan said: “The cost of paid-for media advice to the council from three sources included media training for key spokespeople. The total estimated final cost will be £19,000.”

Ms Shoesmith was suspended after a report slammed failures by her team as “damning” and “devastating”. She is still picking up her £110,000-a-year salary.

Baby P died after the North London council failed to learn from the death of Victoria Climbie, eight, who was tortured to death in the borough eight years ago.

Ofsted, the Healthcare Commission and the Chief Inspector of Constabulary found Haringey failed to check whether adults involved with at-risk children were on the violent or sex offenders’ register, or identify children at immediate risk of harm.

a.france@the-sun.co.uk

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

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article5337785.ece

Baby P relative implicated in child sex ring.

Sunday Times

Dec 14, 2008

Eileen Fairweather

A RELATIVE of Baby P, who died after sustained abuse, was known by police and social services to be involved in a suspected paedophile ring, it emerged this weekend.

The close relative was named in the children's homes scandal in Islington, north London, in the 1990s in which youngsters in council care were alleged to have been abused by paedophiles and driven into prostitution.

The relative was considered such a key figure in the scandal that an independent report was commissioned on his role. It found that he had been singled out by suspected child abusers and was subsequently alleged to have recruited other children for wealthy paedophiles.

According to the report the child was involved with three pimps suspected of being involved in child abuse. These men telephoned or called at the children's homes and persuaded him with money, drugs and threats to bring other children to them.

The disclosure raises further questions about the failure of Haringey council to take Baby P into care. Care experts say routine background checks on the family would have uncovered the history of abuse in the family and should have raised serious and immediate concerns.

Liz Davies, the former Islington social worker who blew the whistle on the 1990s scandal, said the child was like a "Pied Piper" who led other children into abuse. "But he was also a victim himself, who begged for help," she said.

The scandal was uncovered by the London Evening Standard in the early 1990s. It said children in council care had been abused by paedophiles and prostitution rings.

An inquiry found the homes had been run "disastrously", and although it was unable to confirm some of the worst allegations, it concluded they had not been properly investigated at the time.

At the time of the scandal Baby P's mother was living in Islington. Her own mother had a drink problem and she was sent, aged 11, to a boarding school for disturbed children.

Her relative had already been placed in an Islington's children's home. He is now believed to be in prison.

There is no suggestion that he was involved in abusing Baby P, who died in August after having suffered months of violence. Baby P's mother and two co defendants were convicted of causing or allowing his death and are awaiting sentence.

When the Department for Children, Schools and Families was asked last week why no effective action was taken by Haringey in light of the role of Baby P's relative in the Islington child homes scandal, a spokesman said a new "serious case review" had been commissioned into the death of Baby P.

Any fresh information about any alleged failures involving social services in Haringey should be handed to the review team, he said.

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

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23598785-details/Haringey%3A+the+tragic+betrayal+of+another+child/article.do

Haringey: the tragic betrayal of another child

Keith Dovkants

09.12.08

Related Articles

Haringey snatched child from me to give to abusers

Comment: Haringey: politics of a tragedy
The rotten borough of Haringey?

DAMNING new evidence of the incompetence of Haringey child protection services is revealed today.

The council at the centre of the Baby P scandal snatched another child from a loving foster parent and put him into the care of a couple now at the centre of an investigation into abuse.

Baby C was taken after social workers acting on the orders of disgraced children's director Sharon Shoesmith launched a court battle to take the baby boy from his foster mother, who had applied to become his guardian.

The highly experienced foster mother, who cannot be named for legal reasons, has now disclosed the full, shocking story to the Evening Standard. It includes her version of how the child, now five and known as Child C, was seized by one of Ms Shoesmith's staff as he played outside his home.

As the social worker ran with the child to a car, the boy screamed for his foster mother, who was physically restrained by a Haringey social services manager.

The council then fast-tracked adoption procedures to place Child C with the couple now being questioned by police over allegations of abuse.

Ms Shoesmith has gone into hiding after she was sacked because of her role in the death of Baby P. She was dismissed from her £100,000-a-year post without a pay-off last night after being suspended last week by Children's Secretary Ed Balls when a damning report found systemic failures in her department.

Ms Shoesmith will still receive a "gold-plated" pension worth up to £1.5 million, and she could legally challenge the decision to deny her a pay-off as she was expected to be entitled to a six-figure severance package.

She failed to return to her Bloomsbury flat last night and her family refused to say where she was. She would not be back until next month, they said.

She caused a furore when she failed to apologise over the death of 17-month-old Baby P, who died after a sustained period of abuse at the hands of his mother, her partner and a lodger.

Ms Shoesmith, 55, played a key role in the handling of Child C. Her department wanted to place the child, who is of African descent, with black adoptive parents and rejected appeals from his foster mother, who is of north African origin but is not black.

The foster mother was one of the borough's approved foster parents and had previously successfully looked after a baby taken from its mother at birth.

Now the Metropolitan Police Child Abuse Investigation Command has been called in to investigate allegations that after he was adopted Child C suffered abuse.

He has been treated twice in hospital, once for a head injury.

The inquiry team has been told the boy's adoptive mother rejected him and complained he was ruining her marriage.

Health professionals familiar with the case were disturbed that Haringey social services department was not acting.

One, consultant child psychiatrist Hamish Cameron, who had compiled a report on Child C, decided to call in the police.

==========================================================================

Related Articles

Haringey snatched child from me to give to abusers

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23598848-details/Haringey+snatched+child+from+me+to+give+to+abusers/article.do

article no more available (jan 2010)

==========================================================================

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23590669-details/The+rotten+borough+of+Haringey/article.do

The rotten borough of Haringey?

Keith Dovkants

21.11.08


AS HARINGEY council prepares to debate the Baby P affair for the first time on Monday there is a sense that the borough's elected leadership is struggling to grasp the enormity of what has happened. Baby P's death is the second such tragedy in a few years and it cannot be surprising if people wonder whether there is something dysfunctional about the place itself.

Baby P, and before him Victoria Climbie, slipped through the safety net at Haringey. Some may imagine a syndrome is at work, although the reality may be far more complex and every bit as troubling.

The story of the child tortured to death has now moved to the internet, with appeals for revenge from so-called web vigilantes. Cyberspace and mobile phones have re-opened territory once occupied by lynch mobs. Baby P's 27-year-old mother and her 32-year-old boyfriend, both convicted of causing the 17-month-old child's death, cannot be named by the media for legal reasons. Yet their names are now widely known.

As the boy's mother languished in a segregated cell at Holloway prison, awaiting sentence, pages were posted on Facebook urging violence. One carried this message: "Death is too good for (mother's name). Torture the bitch that killed Baby P." The sites were taken down, but more appeared. A text message naming the couple was sent to mobile phones across the country. A web message was directed at prison inmates, calling on them to harm the pair in jail.

The tsunami of anger and hatred unleashed by the Baby P atrocity underlines the fact that such horrors are rare. But they may become less rare in the future. Camila Batmanghelidjh, founder of Kids' Company, sees the working of London's social services departments at close hand. She told the Evening Standard there could be hundreds of children like Baby P whose plight may never be exposed because, although abused and neglected, they manage to survive.

"If that baby had not died, we would probably never have heard of him," she said. "This case is not an exception. Throughout London, and other inner cities, the whole social services system is not fit for purpose."

Ms Batmanghelidjh has seen some of the worst scenes from the frontline of childcare. And she is in daily contact with individuals who are overworked and demoralised.

"They are so overwhelmed they try to find reasons for not taking cases," she said. "Because the system is not working they realise they don't have the capability of doing the good they want to do. Every day they are exposed to relentless levels of abuse, neglect and dysfunction. They become inured; their norms shift. The futility gets to them."

There is a frighteningly high, and probably increasing, number of households where abuse is passed on from generation to generation, she said. It is impossible, in the current system, for social workers to cope.

"You can't blame them," she said. "They are forced to meet targets and to do that they often have to lie. Managers don't want to be seen to be failing, so they don't admit to failure. Central government, which might be able to make a difference, doesn't know what's happening. The individual child has no advocacy. They are suffering now but we may never know who they are."

She does not single out Haringey for blame. Its social services department is probably no worse than any other in London. Yet Haringey is different. Pauline Bradley, who worked as a social worker in Haringey for 13 years until 2006, said: "The difference from other parts of London is in the mix of rich and poor. It really is two worlds."

Haringey was formed in 1965 from the former boroughs of Tottenham, Wood Green and Hornsey. It covers 11.5 square miles and is home to 224,000 people. That is the official number. Haringey probably has a population closer to 280,000 although no one knows for sure. This is a symptom of one of its problems. The transient population in the borough is among the highest in London.

Eritreans, Tamils and Somalis are among large numbers of asylum seekers who drift in and out. Nearly half the borough's population comes from an ethnic minority background. More than 190 languages are spoken by school pupils, half of whom have English as a second language. More than a third of Haringey's schoolchildren are eligible for free meals.

The indicators for poverty suggest Haringey is the 13th most deprived area in England and the ninth most deprived in London. The most recent figures put the unemployment rate at 6.2 per cent, compared with a London rate of 3.6 per cent.

The most telling figure, perhaps, may be the one that records infant mortality. In London as a whole, the rate is 5.7 in 1,000 births. In Haringey it is 6.9.

From these numbers it might be imagined the borough is a miserable, modern incarnation of a Hogarth cartoon. Not so. In Highgate, where the boundary with Camden runs down the High Street, a seven-bedroom home with a summerhouse and wine cellar is currently on sale at £3,850,000. It is not untypical of properties in the area where expensive boutiques and highly-rated restaurants prosper in a village-like setting.

In Muswell Hill, parents clamour for a home in the catchment area of Fortismere School, reckoned to be one of the best state secondary schools in England. Houses here can cost more than £1 million, at least £200,000 more than similar homes outside the catchment area. Muswell Hill is one of north London's most sought-after locations. Actress Maureen Lipman recently sold her house here for more than £1 million and the BBCs business editor, Robert Peston, lives with his family in one of the more favoured streets.

Even here, poverty makes its presence felt. In the Baptist church on Dukes Avenue, near the patisseries and cafes of the shopping centre, volunteers run a soup kitchen five nights a week. John Grant, an early-retired civil servant, has been organising the food evenings here for 12 years.

There are contrasts like this throughout London but Haringey is perhaps unique in having such disparity over so much of its territory. At Monday's council meeting, the housing chairman John Bevan is to be asked how many of Haringey's homes have no inside lavatory. It may seem an odd request but it is being asked because on the west side of the borough, surrounded by some of the most desirable and expensive homes in London, a disabled woman in her 80s lives in a council property that has been hardly touched since the 1940s. Sixteen years ago, when she was living alone after the death of her elderly father, council officials promised they would refurbish the house and install a bathroom inside. She is still waiting.

Now, frail and moving only with great pain and difficulty, her case has been taken up by a councillor who asked to remain anonymous. The reason? The elderly woman is deeply embarrassed by her predicament and is terrified that even the faintest clue could disclose her identity.

Haringey's most impoverished area is usually reckoned to be Northumberland Park, near Tottenham Hotspur's White Hart Lane stadium. Even here, poverty is relative. Council blocks sit side-by-side with terraces of 1930s homes and many of the residents eke out an existence on benefits. One is Sarah Ellis, 33, a single parent with three children. She pays a nominal £5 a week rent for a two-bedroom flat where her 14-year-old daughter Sharmaine shares a room with her five-year-old brother Declan. The youngest child, Piper, two, shares a room with her mother.

"It's very hard," she said. "I have been begging the council to put me in a larger home for five years now. The four of us are cooped up in a small space, we need more room." This Christmas she plans to take out a £500 loan to buy the children presents. "I have often taken out a loan at Christmas so that I can afford food and presents," she said. "My weekly income is just not enough."

Each week, Miss Ellis receives £230, which includes Child Tax Credit, Child Benefit and Income Support. After spending £150 a week on groceries, the rest goes on rent and bills. "At the end of the week I have no money whatsoever," she said. "I live on less than a shoestring budget. I can barely afford nappies for my youngest."

Miss Ellis, who has lived on the estate all her life, and moved into her current flat 14 years ago, said she is desperate to leave the area because it is plagued by gangs and crime.

"I can't let the children out to play as there are gangs of kids smoking crack in the stairwell near my flat," she said. "And in the playground, teenagers think it's funny to throw fireworks and knives at one another. It's a horrible estate to live on. There are times when I wonder how the hell I can carry on."

Keith Flett, chair of Haringey Trades Council and a veteran campaigner is leading a highly vocal attempt to roll back plans for cuts in the borough's health services. Few people are better able to pinpoint Haringey's problems.

"One of the biggest issues is poverty of opportunity," he said. "Look at Tottenham. It was once a centre of manufacturing, there were jobs. Now the furniture industry has gone, the engineering firms have closed and it's all warehouses. Young people are left with nothing. Services are under pressure like never before and they struggle to get the right people. If you were a social worker would you put Haringey at the top of your list? With its history?"

Flett lays a share of the blame for Haringey's woes at the door of its Labour-controlled council. Labour has run Haringey since 1968. The leader, George Meehan, has been a councillor since 1971 and has been leader three times. He was in charge during the Climbie affair.

Flett said: "There tends to be a one-party state view of the world. You saw that the other night when Labour debated the Baby P tragedy behind closed doors. The Lib-Dems have almost as many councillors as Labour now - why didn't they invite them in? Why didn't he say: 'we're all in this together, let's find common purpose?' But the Labour leadership tends to sort things out between themselves, as they have always done."

The Lib-Dems are making inroads fast. Some perceive an East-West divide in Haringey, with the most prosperous residents in the west. This is where the party has made most progress. Lib-Dem group leader Robert Gorrie said of the disparity that is so much a part of Haringey: "It's a kind of social schizophrenia. On one side of the road you've got million-pound houses, on the other you have some of the worst council homes in Britain."

Lynne Featherstone, the Lib-Dem MP for Hornsey and Wood Green, has campaigned for action on what she says is injustice in government funding. Haringey, because of its location, is not designated an inner London borough, but it has inner city problems.

Featherstone wants the government to recognise this and has been pressing for changes in education funding. Haringey receives £5,480 for each pupil, while inner London boroughs, such as the far more wealthy Kensington and Chelsea, get £6,216.

"Haringey has equal if not greater educational challenges than many inner London boroughs," she said. "It's ridiculous that if you stand on one side of the Seven Sisters Road a child is worth £736 less than on the other because of a borough boundary."

The boundaries are mere lines on maps, of course, and Camila Batmanghelidjh says they are virtually meaningless when it comes to a question of whether a child is safer in one borough or another.

"Every social services department feels it is walking a tightrope," she said. "They have all watched the Baby P tragedy unfold and they are thinking: 'That could have been us.'"