banks failure could bring the entire system down

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From The Times

November 22, 2008

Britain is in no position to laugh at Iceland’s problems

Patrick Hosking

Is Britain simply a bigger version of Iceland? Certainly the City of London is starting to look a bit too much like Reykjavik, but with taller buildings and fewer cod. It is an exaggeration, but not that much of an exaggeration, to liken the UK to the broken, bankrupt North Atlantic island.

Like Iceland, we boast a huge banking industry out of all proportion to the overall economy. Like Iceland, we have an unfunded depositor lifeboat scheme totally unequipped to grapple with failing banks. Like Iceland, our national output is dwarfed by the vast liabilities of our banks. Like Iceland, our banks for years scoffed at relying on domestic depositors to fund their activities and developed a dangerous addiction to wholesale money. Like Iceland, our Government is poised to go on a borrowing spree to try to soften the pain. Like Iceland, our currency is on the skids as foreign investors pull out.

Our problems are not nearly so extreme, of course, but we’d be foolish to feel terribly smug as the International Monetary Fund and Scandinavian neighbours go in to bathe Iceland’s wounds.

The scale of our problems has still not been understood. In essence the domestic banks are largely bust. The Government’s £500 billion bailout plan is primarily designed not to keep banks lending to small firms and to homebuyers but to prevent an unimaginable financial calamity.


Banks provide the very foundations and plumbing of the entire economy. A failure of confidence in them could still bring the entire capitalist edifice tumbling down.

It suits ministers, however, to maintain the bogus claim that the bailout is about sustaining bank lending. True, that would be a helpful side-effect, but is not the main purpose. Indeed, a gentle and gradual reduction in the indebtedness of individuals and companies is still needed.

At the risk of hyperbole, we should not be worrying about whether this is going to be a thin Christmas for retailers (it is), but whether Britain and the West are about to plunge into a years-long economic Dark Age – complete with mass unemployment and social unrest.

Taxpayers are already facing a loss of almost £10 billion on their investment in Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds TSB and HBOS even before the Government hands over a penny. That is what their languishing share prices are saying.

The recession has barely begun and the banks are on their knees. Scores of billions of pounds of bad debts are yet to come, as companies and individuals default on loans.

When in early October officials mapped out the bailout with banks, they insisted that those banks stress-tested their balance sheets for a serious downturn. In the six weeks since then, the outlook has darkened swiftly. The worst-case scenario imaginable then may well be looking like a central-case scenario now.

Richard Pym, executive chairman of Bradford & Bingley, the nationalised bank, told MPs this week that the bank had already stress-tested its mortgage book to see how it would cope with a 25 per cent drop in house prices (answer: £600-800 million of losses). But he no longer regarded this as sufficient and was busy putting much larger house price falls into his equations.

The fattened-up capital cushions of the banks will be enough for a while, but banks remain colossolly levered. It wouldn’t take much of a deterioration in their assets to wipe out all the fresh capital raised. The banks may well have to come back to taxpayers for more. They will be given it, too, albeit at the price of total nationalisation.

One third of Icelanders now want to emigrate, things have got so bad, a recent survey found. The proportion of Britons with similar wanderlust may not be so different before this economic agony passes.

uk: mp's immunity at stake

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Cross-party fury over MP's arrest

The Lib Dems have called shadow immigration minister Damian Green's arrest a "mayday warning" for democracy amid cross-party anger over the move.

Mr Green was arrested by anti-terror officers, held for nine hours and had his two homes and offices searched as part of a Home Office leak inquiry.

Tory leader David Cameron called the police operation "alarming" and said the government had questions to answer.

But the Home Office said ministers were not informed until after the arrest.

'Democracy in danger'

Mr Cameron, London mayor Boris Johnson and Commons Speaker Michael Martin were all informed about the raids.

But Downing Street insisted ministers had not been given advance warning and Prime Minister Gordon Brown said it was purely a police matter.


"I had no prior knowledge, the home secretary had no prior knowledge, I know of no other minister who had any prior knowledge," he told Sky News, adding: "I knew about it only after it had happened."

Mr Green was not charged with any offence but was released on bail until February, when he could face further questioning.

The Ashford MP, the Tories' immigration spokesman since 2005, has denied any wrongdoing and said "opposition politicians have a duty to hold the government to account".

Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg told the BBC that he was "really shocked" by Mr Green's arrest.

"This is something you might expect from a tin-pot dictatorship, not in a modern democracy," he said.

Given the culture of "extraordinary secrecy" in Whitehall, it was getting harder to hold the government to account and opposition MPs had a constitutional duty to keep "ministers on their toes", he added.

He called on Gordon Brown to "rule out any further use of anti-terrorism powers in cases that have nothing to do with terrorism," although the Metropolitan Police stressed the arrest was made under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act and not anti-terror legislation.

Some counter-terrorism officers were involved because they were the most "appropriate" to carry out such an operation, the Met said, but David Cameron attacked the "heavy-handed" way in which it took nine officers to make the arrest and search the premises.

"If they wanted to talk to Damian Green why not pick up the telephone and ask to talk to him," he said. "I think this is extraordinary that it was so heavy-handed and done in this way," said Mr Cameron.

"They have got questions to answer, frankly, I think government ministers have got questions to answer as well. If they didn't know, why weren't they told?

"What do they think about in Britain today, counter-terrorism police are spending their time searching an MP's office, arresting him, holding him for nine hours, all on a day when British citizens are being killed on the other side of the world and all because, as far as I can see, he made public some information that was in the public interest that the government found uncomfortable.

"Well, let's hope that our democracy hasn't come to that."

Shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve released a list of more than 50 questions he said the government had to answer about the arrest, including when ministers and officials were told about it.

"The government's limp and confused response begs more questions than it answers. Ministers have some very important questions to answer."

Leaks

Sir David Normington, the top civil servant at the Home Office, said he had taken the decision to ask for police help in identifying the source of a series of "leaks of sensitive information over an extended period," because the leaks had "risked undermining the effective operation of my department".

"The police investigation led to a junior member of the Home Office being arrested on 19 November and subsequently suspended from duty," said Sir David in a statement.


"Yesterday (Thursday), I was informed by the Metropolitan Police at about 1.45pm that a search was about to be conducted of the home and offices of a member of the Opposition front bench. I was subsequently told that an arrest had been made.

"Ministers were not involved in the decision to seek police assistance or in the subsequent investigation and were only told of the arrest after it had occurred."

The leaks thought to be at the centre of the investigation include:

The November 2007 revelation that the home secretary knew the Security Industry Authority had granted licences to 5,000 illegal workers, but decided not to publicise it.
The February 2008 news that an illegal immigrant had been employed as a cleaner in the House of Commons.
A whips' list of potential Labour rebels in the vote on plans to increase the pre-charge terror detention limit to 42 days.
A letter from the home secretary warning that a recession could lead to a rise in crime.
The Metropolitan Police confirmed Mr Green was arrested by members of its counter-terrorism command, thought to be Special Branch officers, at his home in Kent and searches were conducted at his homes in London and Kent and at two offices in Kent and London.

It said the investigation was not terrorism related but did fall within the counter-terror unit's remit and that it was made without the knowledge or approval of ministers.

'Fair game'

There was also concern about the arrest on the Labour benches.

Former minister Denis MacShane said that the Speaker should make clear that MPs were entitled to hold sensitive material in the same way as lawyers and doctors.


"To send a squad of counter terrorist officers to arrest an MP shows the growing police contempt for Parliament and democratic politics," he said.

"The police now believe that MPs are so reduced in public status that they are fair game for over-excited officers to order dawn raids, arrests and searches of confidential files held by MPs or those who work for them.

"I am not sure this is good for British democracy."

Police say Mr Green was held on suspicion of "conspiring to commit misconduct in a public office" and "aiding and abetting, counselling or procuring misconduct in a public office" - an obscure and little-used offence under common law.

One legal expert said it was doubtful whether any case would be brought against Mr Green.

"In a western democracy, I think it would be very surprising if an elected member of Parliament was put on trial for an offence which arises from him putting in the public domain material that he thinks should be there in the public interest," said Robert Brown, a partner at the law firm Corker Binning.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/uk_politics/7753763.stm

Published: 2008/11/28 18:03:03 GMT

© BBC MMVIII

10.000 indian troups already in afghanistan

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http://www.ahmedquraishi.com/print_article.php?id=465

The Real Story Behind Marriott Attack

Ø 10,000 Indian troops are stationed in Afghanistan under the garb of supervising construction of road Jalalabad-Port Chahbahar project that has now been completed. Whereas India has officially declared 14 Indian consulates in Afghanistan, on ground they have 107 in which 20 intelligence units are burning their midnight oil to destabilise Pakistan

Ø After 9/11 CIA bought the loyalties of pro-Pakistan tribal chiefs, leaving ISI and MI behind, those who refused were killed

Ø Nek Mohammad was killed by Americans when he made peace with Pakistan

Ø ISI had once given six figure coordinates of Baitullah and yet no Hellfire missile was fired on his hideout by CIA

Ø Foreign intelligence agents are involved in carrying out gruesome beheadings of security personnel and torching girls’ schools to defame the real Taliban who had a peaceful agenda

Ø Besides CIA and RAW, even Iran and Uzbekistan had developed their tentacles in Balochistan, Swat and Kurram Agency

Ø The nexus in Kabul is working upon a scripted plan to make FATA lawless and beyond the control of security forces, push militancy into settled areas and then into major cities and thus create a civil warlike situation to prove their contention that Pakistan was the most dangerous country in the world and that the extremists were on the verge of taking over power and nuclear weapons

By Asif Haroon Raja
Monday, 22 September 2008.

Asian Tribune

WWW.AHMEDQURAISHI.COM

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—When Gen. Musharraf submitted to U.S. pressure after 9/11 and ditched the Taliban in Afghanistan, he provided air bases as well as logistics support and shared intelligence with CIA. He allowed CIA and FBI to recruit agents in FATA and other places and to establish their outposts. The focus of ISI and other agencies was shifted towards hunting and nabbing so-called terrorists all over the country, in monitoring dissident elements within the army and in political wheeling and dealings. The CIA acquired all the links ISI and MI had both sides of the Pak-Afghan border and gradually took most agents on ISI payroll within its fold. By virtue of having better technology and means the CIA was able to take over intelligence acquisition and dissemination system. As a consequence the troops operating in FATA became entirely dependent upon CIA inputs. Taking advantage of complete liberty of action, CIA succeeded in buying the loyalties of many
tribal chiefs and notables in FATA by doling out dollars in sacks since it knew that the Pashtun could not be crushed by force but could be purchased. Those not falling in line were got killed.

In FATA, Nek Muhammad was first cultivated and provided logistic support. When he entered into a peace deal with Pak Army in July 2005, he was killed using precision guided missile. Abdullah Mehsud, an Afghan war veteran who had also fought the Northern Alliance in October-November 2001 was captured and brainwashed during his two years internment in Guantanamo Bay. He was released after agreeing to work on terms dictated by CIA and he soon was able to takeover the leadership role. His death at Zhob at the hands of Pak security forces was a loss for CIA.

Baitulah Mehsud and Fazlullah had not taken part in Afghan jihad and do not qualify to head Taliban; yet 30 year old Baitullah has managed to create Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and Fazlullah calls the shots in Swat. Mulla Omar had never shown interest in establishing any links with Pakistani Taliban and had warned Nek Muhammad not to operate under the brand name of Taliban. It is being questioned as to how come Baitullah, Fazlullah and their spokesmen desperately wanted by Pakistan security forces have escaped the hawk eye of USA, particularly after they have been seen giving detailed interviews to media and using their cell phones? ISI had once given six figure coordinates of Baitullah and yet no Hellfire missile was fired on his hideout by CIA. The TTP that has spread its influence in all the seven agencies of tribal belt and in neighboring settled districts of NWFP has succeeded in making inroads into Punjab, particularly southern Punjab. Large
number has been recruited from Chiniot, Bahawalpur, Dera Nawab, Bahawalnagar, Faisalabad, Sialkot and other places.

After Shakai peace deal with the militants in South Waziristan in July 2005, Pakistan was subjected to a calculated slander campaign. Having pushed more than one hundred thousand troops into the furnace of FATA it was scoffed at for not doing enough to control militancy in FATA. Pakistan was also accused of nuclear proliferation and IAEA kept up the pressure to hand over AQ Khan for interrogation. Musharraf accepted the charge and forced AQ Khan to make a confession to defuse the heat. The religious extremist threat was blown out of all proportions and it was repeatedly stated that Pakistan’s nuclear assets had become unsafe. Musharraf accepted this charge as well and promised to fight extremism and terrorism with full force.

After declaring Pakistan as the most dangerous country, FATA was declared as the most dangerous place on earth. Pakistan was blamed for growing turbulence in Afghanistan since in the view of U.S. military leaders and Karzai Pak army was not doing enough to control militancy. The phenomenon of missile attacks by drones commenced in January 2006 when a suspected target in Damadola was attacked killing scores of innocent civilians. Another deadly missile attack was launched on a Madrassa in Bajaur in October that year killing 80 students. Ever since, this phenomenon continues unabated.

Once the ISI was freed from the wild goose chase of so-called terrorists and came under pressure on account of missing persons, it started to concentrate on its primary task in the troubled spots. To its horror it found far too many militant groups and criminal gangs operating under the guise of religious militants and cultivated by foreign agencies.

They were the ones involved in carrying out gruesome beheadings of security personnel and torching girls’ schools to defame the real Taliban who had a peaceful agenda. Besides CIA and RAW, even Iran and Uzbekistan had developed their tentacles in Balochistan, Swat and Kurram Agency. Most of the pro-Pakistan groups had been purchased or neutralized and those not coming to terms were eliminated by groups sponsored by CIA. Things had gone topsy-turvy and ISI found itself at a loss how to differentiate between friend and foe.

It is when the ISI began to recover the lost ground and renewed its old contacts in FATA and started to expose and block clandestine activities of CIA, RAW and RAM that all hell broke lose on ISI. Instead of feeling ashamed of what they were doing, USA had the cheeks to start making hue and cry that ISI was linked with the Taliban and that it must be emasculated. The three colluding partners lost their cool when the Indian Embassy in Kabul was subjected to a suicide attack on 7 July 2008. The trio fumed with anger and blamed ISI without even carrying out preliminary investigations. It was alleged that the perpetrator of suicide attack belonged to Gujranwala. Adm. Mike Mullen and Deputy Director CIA Stephen Kappes came huffing and puffing to Islamabad on 12 July and expressed their concern in strong words. Both Gen Tariq and Gen Kayani were told to bring the ISI to heel and to control militancy on their side of the border. The details of suicide bomber
provided by the visitors proved false. It transpired later on that it was a bomb planted in a parked jeep which was detonated with the help of a remote control and was masterminded by Mossad.

The month of September saw intensification of missile attacks and each attack resulted in loss of innocent lives. The idea was to antagonize pro-government Waziris and also to force them to migrate as had happened in case of Bajaur. To further up the ante, Pakistan was declared as a battleground and a first ever ground attack was carried out by U.S. troops on the night of 3 September at Angoor Adda killing 15 men women and children. A deadly missile attack was conducted on pro-Pakistan Jalaluddin Haqqani house in North Waziristan on 8 September killing 25 inmates mostly women and children. He was blamed for carrying out attack on Indian Embassy.

The intruding drone was forced to beat a hasty retreat on 12 September when Pakistani jets got airborne and started to track it. A ground attack on 15th was also thwarted by the troops and locals. So far, 62 border violations have been carried out by U.S.-ISAF forces including 36 after the takeover by PPP government in March 2008. So far 30 missile attacks have been made killing innocent people. In none of the attacks any Al-Qaada operative or militant Taliban was killed.

The nexus in Kabul is working upon a scripted plan to make FATA lawless and beyond the control of security forces, push militancy into settled areas and then into major cities and thus create a civil warlike situation to prove their contention that Pakistan was the most dangerous country in the world and that the extremists were on the verge of taking over power and nuclear weapons. After inflaming South Waziristan, North Waziristan, Mohmand Agency, Khyber Agency, Darra Adam Khel, Kurram Agency, Hangu and Swat, Bajaur Agency was built into a stronghold of militants where huge cache of arms and ammunition was dumped. By virtue of being located at the crossroad of the tribal belt and also linked with Dir, Swat and Afghanistan, it was to act as bulwark and a launching pad to provide reinforcement to other areas.

10,000 Indian troops are stationed in Afghanistan under the garb of supervising construction of road Jalalabad-Port Chahbahar project that has now been completed. Whereas India has officially declared 14 Indian consulates in Afghanistan, on ground they have 107 in which 20 intelligence units are burning their midnight oil to destabilise Pakistan. Many mercantile shops run by Indians have an intelligence office in the rear. In Wakhan, a religious Madrassa run by Indian Muslim clerics is functioning since 2002 under the patronage of RAW and Mossad. Very young boys, mostly orphans, destitute or homeless are recruited. Recruits are mostly Afghans, Uzbeks, Tajiks and Caucasians. The latter being fair skinned and resembling Europeans are trained to hit targets in Europe or in USA to once again create a 9/11 like situation.

Reportedly, 10,000 ideologically motivated terrorist and suicide bombers have been trained. Besides receiving military training, they have also been made to learn Pashto and customs of the Pashtun. They are regularly infiltrated into troubled spots of Pakistan. Posing as volunteers they join the rank and file of militants to fight the army. They are the ones who are destroying schools, CD shops, bridges and other installations and carrying out brutal beheading of captured personnel. The idea is to create chaos and confusion and also to defame the real Taliban that have not come under their influence. They are also responsible for creating cleavages within the people of FATA and in disrupting peace deals. In Kurram Agency, Afghan officers and soldiers are actively involved in the sectarian conflict by way of providing arms and ammunition to Shias belonging to Tori tribe and physically participating in duels with Sunnis. In Swat, Fazlullah led militants
are supplied with war munitions as well as fighters.

Likewise, dissident tribal chiefs in Balochistan including late Akbar Bugti were also taken on board. The CIA helped in reincarnating BLA and providing all sorts of war munitions to Baloch militants belonging to Bugti, Marri and Mengal tribes and establishing over 60 Farari camps in Balochistan. Shamsi airbase that was handed over to USA in October 2001, houses Blackhawk helicopters primarily engaged in monitoring the entire length of Iranian border. CIA has cultivated Sunni Iranian Baloch Jandullah group (not the one that had operated against 5 Corps commander). It is anti- Iranian regime and was utilized by CIA to carryout acts of sabotage in Iran through Zahidan. Iran has now constructed a stone wall all along its border to prevent cross border terrorism from Baluchistan. It has clouded Pak-Iran relations since the latter feels that such activities could not have been undertaken without the blessing of Pak government.

It is now clear that our so-called friends have been playing a double game. Now that USA has bared its teeth and let its intentions known, to pretend that it would stop short of achieving its objectives will be like living in fools’ paradise. It is simply degrading to unashamedly say that we cannot fight the Americans. It is also preposterous to assume that Pakistan may not survive without American support. Pro-American elements within Pakistan on U.S. payroll have been parroting this theme since creation of Pakistan to safeguard their vested interest. North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Iran, Somalia are living examples who have survived despite adopting hostile posture against USA. It is high time that we gird up our loins and put our act together to face up to the challenge boldly.

The army under Gen. Kayani has expressed its resolve to confront the threat and safeguard country’s sovereignty irrespective of the consequences. It is now up to our week-kneed rulers oblivious of the ominous threat and still busy in power game as to how they stand up to the test. It will be naive to expect that the threat will be warded off with diplomacy alone. We must make USA realize that it will become exceedingly difficult for U.S. led allied troops to operate in Afghanistan if Pakistan opts out of fighting U.S. war of terror and refuses to provide transit facility to carry oil and food supplies to its troops in Afghanistan. The magnitude of dependence can be gauged from the fact each day over 400 containers ply from Karachi and Quetta to Afghanistan transporting food, munitions and 300 million gallons of fuel for U.S.-Nato troops in Afghanistan. We may also consider bridling CIA’s unchecked activities and closing down four bases in control of
USA.

Asif Haroon Raja is a defence and a political analyst. This article was first published by the Asian Tribune.

© 2007-2008. All rights reserved. AhmedQuraishi.com & PakNationalists
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium
without royalty provided this notice is preserved.

senior russian diplomat: usa will collapse and split

Russian analyst predicts decline and breakup of U.S.

24/11/2008 19:31

MOSCOW

RIA Novosti

A leading Russian political analyst has said the economic turmoil in the United States has confirmed his long-held view that the country is heading for collapse, and will divide into separate parts.

Professor Igor Panarin said in an interview with the respected daily Izvestia published on Monday: "The dollar is not secured by anything. The country's foreign debt has grown like an avalanche, even though in the early 1980s there was no debt. By 1998, when I first made my prediction, it had exceeded $2 trillion. Now it is more than 11 trillion. This is a pyramid that can only collapse."

The paper said Panarin's dire predictions for the U.S. economy, initially made at an international conference in Australia 10 years ago at a time when the economy appeared strong, have been given more credence by this year's events.

When asked when the U.S. economy would collapse, Panarin said: "It is already collapsing. Due to the financial crisis, three of the largest and oldest five banks on Wall Street have already ceased to exist, and two are barely surviving. Their losses are the biggest in history. Now what we will see is a change in the regulatory system on a global financial scale: America will no longer be the world's financial regulator."

When asked who would replace the U.S. in regulating world markets, he said: "Two countries could assume this role: China, with its vast reserves, and Russia, which could play the role of a regulator in Eurasia."

Asked why he expected the U.S. to break up into separate parts, he said: "A whole range of reasons. Firstly, the financial problems in the U.S. will get worse. Millions of citizens there have lost their savings. Prices and unemployment are on the rise. General Motors and Ford are on the verge of collapse, and this means that whole cities will be left without work. Governors are already insistently demanding money from the federal center. Dissatisfaction is growing, and at the moment it is only being held back by the elections and the hope that Obama can work miracles. But by spring, it will be clear that there are no miracles."

He also cited the "vulnerable political setup", "lack of unified national laws", and "divisions among the elite, which have become clear in these crisis conditions."

He predicted that the U.S. will break up into six parts - the Pacific coast, with its growing Chinese population; the South, with its Hispanics; Texas, where independence movements are on the rise; the Atlantic coast, with its distinct and separate mentality; five of the poorer central states with their large Native American populations; and the northern states, where the influence from Canada is strong.

He even suggested that "we could claim Alaska - it was only granted on lease, after all."

On the fate of the U.S. dollar, he said: "In 2006 a secret agreement was reached between Canada, Mexico and the U.S. on a common Amero currency as a new monetary unit. This could signal preparations to replace the dollar. The one-hundred dollar bills that have flooded the world could be simply frozen. Under the pretext, let's say, that terrorists are forging them and they need to be checked."

When asked how Russia should react to his vision of the future, Panarin said: "Develop the ruble as a regional currency. Create a fully functioning oil exchange, trading in rubles... We must break the strings tying us to the financial Titanic, which in my view will soon sink."

Panarin, 60, is a professor at the Diplomatic Academy of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and has authored several books on information warfare.

imf : the worse is yet to come

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http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=081122230427.xqkurulg&show_article=1

Worst of financial crisis yet to come: IMF chief economist

Nov 22 07:04 PM US/Eastern


The IMF's chief economist has warned that the global financial crisis is set to worsen and that the situation will not improve until 2010, a report said Saturday.
Olivier Blanchard also warned that the institution does not have the funds to solve every economic problem.

"The worst is yet to come," Blanchard said in an interview with the Finanz und Wirtschaft newspaper, adding that "a lot of time is needed before the situation becomes normal."

He said economic growth would not kick in until 2010 and it will take another year before the global financial situation became normal again.

The International Monetary Fund on Friday promised to help Latvia deal with its economic crisis after it assisted Iceland, Hungary, Ukraine, Serbia and Pakistan.

But Blanchard said the IMF was not able to solve all financial issues, in particular problems of liquidity.

Withdrawals of capital leading to problems of liquidity "can be so significant that the IMF alone cannot counter them," he said, adding that massive withdrawals of investments from emerging countries could represent "hundreds of billions of dollars.

"We do not have this money. We never had it," he said.

The IMF had spent a fifth of its 250 billion dollar (200 billion euro) fund in the last two weeks, Blanchard added.

He also urged central banks around the world to cut interest rates, after the Swiss National Bank made a surprise one percentage point rate cut Thursday.

The central banks "should lower interest rates to as close to zero as possible," he said.

Copyright AFP 2008

congress voted bailout under threat of martial law

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http://www.larouchepac.com/news/2008/11/22/inhofe-paulson-threatened-martial-law.html

Paulson Threatened Martial Law

Increase DecreaseNovember 22, 2008 (LPAC) -- Sen. James Inhofe (R-Ok.) said yesterday that it was Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson who personally told Congressmen that there would be martial law in America if they did not pass the bailout of the banks as demanded by the Bush Administration. On Oct. 2, Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) said on the House floor that "Many of us were told in private conversations that if we voted against this bill on Monday the sky would fall, the market would drop two or three thousand points the first day, another couple of thousand the second day, and a few members were even told that there would be martial law in America if we voted no."

Now, Senator Inhofe, speaking on KFAQ radio station in Tulsa, has confirmed who it was that issued this threat. The interview host Pat Campbell asked Infhofe, "Somebody in D.C. was feeding you guys quite a story prior to the bailout, a story that if we didn't do this we were going to see something on the scale of the depression, there were people talking about martial law being instituted, civil unrest. Who was feeding you guys this stuff?"

Inhofe replied, "That's Henry Paulson. We had a conference call early on, it was on a Friday I think--a week and half before the vote on Oct. 1. So it would have been ... the 19th of September, we had a conference call. In this conference call and I guess there's no reason for me not to repeat what he said, but he said, he painted this picture you just described. He said, This is serious. This is the most serious thing that we faced."

Inhofe has demanded that the remaining funds not already given away be taken back by the government, and suggested that Paulson was giving the money to his friends.

But simply taking money back is not a solution. There is only one competent solution to this mess and that is a bankruptcy re-organization as Lyndon LaRouche has defined.

uk: soon over 1m more joblosses

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Businesses predict 3m jobless and borrowing up to pounds 111bn

'Prolonged and painful' recession forecast: Sluggish recovery only expected in 2010.

The Guardian

Nov 15, 2008 p6

Byline: Mark Milner and Julia Kollewe

Britain is heading for a "prolonged and painful" recession which could see unemployment climb to 3 million and government borrowing soar to pounds 111bn, according to an influential business group.

The British Chambers of Commerce's latest quarterly economic forecast, published today, predicts that the most likely outlook is for five-quarters of negative growth and sluggish recovery in 2010. "Britain is facing an extraordinary period in its economic history. Current circumstances are unique and the global credit crisis is entering a critical phase," the BCC's director general, David Frost, said.

The gloomy assessment comes at the end of a week which has seen a raft of companies announce redundancy programmes involving the loss of around 20,000 jobs. Yesterday the RBS, Clydesdale and Yorkshire banks and the van maker LDV became the latest to lay off workers. The number of bankruptcies is also climbing. Figures from the Ministry of Justice showed a 7% increase in the number of individuals in England and Wales declaring themselves bankrupt and a 13% increase in the number of companies seeking winding up orders.

The TUC general secretary, Brendan Barber, said: "This has been the week when the credit crunch started to bite the real economy with job losses and redundancies coming thick and fast every day. The government now needs to be as bold in tackling unemployment as it has been in preventing a financial meltdown."

Unemployment could peak at 3.25 million - more than 10% of the workforce - if the measures were inadequate, the BCC warned. Even if the government delivered an expected stimulus package of around pounds 18bn, public borrowing could reach pounds 111bn in 2009/10 - a "huge deficit which entails serious risks for the UK".

The BCC's chief economist, David Kern, said: "UK public finances are in a dreadful state. Public sector net borrowing will inevitably balloon in the short term."

The BCC expects consumer price inflation to be below 1% by this time next year and for the UK to experience deflation.

It expects the Bank of England's monetary policy committee to cut interest rates to 2% in the next month or two and that rates could be down to 1% or 1.5% by the middle of 2009, if the recession deepens.

Kern said it was vital that monetary and fiscal policy were run in tandem and that the measures to boost the economy should be focused on tax cuts. "If the government's fiscal stimulus is inadequate, or lacks credibility, the UK recession will be worse. If the markets interpret the UK measures as being reckless, the pound may plummet to dangerous lows . . . forcing the government to change course, frustrating its policy aims."

As the job losses began to bite across Britain, Birmingham-based LDV, which makes about 10,000 vehicles a year, said it intended to shed 95 full-time manufacturing posts due to falling demand, particularly in Russia and eastern Europe. A spokesman for the company, which is owned by the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, said the cuts at Washwood Heath, were a direct consequence of a worldwide drop in sales of its Maxus model.

The downbeat news from the UK was mirrored in continental Europe, where the eurozone is now officially in recession, mainly due to a slump in Germany, Europe's biggest economy, and Italy, the third biggest. European car sales fell for the sixth month running, by 14.5%.

The economies of the 15 countries using the euro shrank by 0.2% between July and September compared with the previous quarter, according to figures from the European Union's statistics office, Eurostat, following a 0.2% contraction in the previous quarter.

Germany and Italy have slipped into recession, but France, the euro-zone's second-biggest economy, has surprisingly bucked the trend, showing 0.1% growth between July and September. Spain, fourth biggest, shrank by 0.2%. The figures bring annual growth in the eurozone to 0.7% - half that of three months ago, according to Eurostat. The downturn has reduced demand for oil, pushing inflation lower. Eurostat reported inflation was zero on a monthly basis in October, with the annual rate slowing to 3.2% from 3.6% in September.

"We expect eurozone GDP to grow by just 1% overall in 2008 and then to contract by 0.5% in 2009 as it is hit by sharply weaker global growth, extended financial sector problems, rising unemployment and very weak business and consumer confidence," warned Howard Archer of Global Insight. "It will take time for lower oil prices, the retreat of the euro, lower interest rates and fiscal stimulus in a number of countries to generate recovery."

nato spied, cold war style

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SPIEGEL ONLINE

11/17/2008 04:06 PM

WESTERN SECRETS FOR MOSCOW

Estonian Spy Scandal Shakes NATO and EU

By Holger Stark

For years an Estonian government official has apparently been collecting the most intimate secrets of NATO and the EU -- and passing them on to the Russians. The case is a disaster for Brussels.

Communications between the suspected top spy and his commanding officer seemed like a throwback to the Cold War. Investigators allege that in order to send messages to his Russian contact, Herman Simm, 61, used a converted radio which looked like a relic from yesteryear's world of consumer electronics. But there was nothing old-fashioned about what Simm, a high-ranking official in the Estonian Defense Ministry in Tallinn, reportedly transmitted to Moscow over the years. It was the very latest intelligence information.

Although Simm was arrested with his wife Heete in the Estonian capital Tallinn on Sept. 21, this spy story -- which has been largely kept under wraps until now -- primarily concerns the European Union and NATO based in faraway Brussels. Since Simm was responsible for dealing with classified information in Tallinn, he had access to nearly all documents exchanged within the EU and NATO. Officials who are familiar with the case assume that "virtually everything" that circulates between EU member states was passed on to the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, the SVR -- including confidential analyses by NATO on the Kosovo crisis, the war in Georgia and even the missile defense program. Investigators believe that Simm was a "big fish."

Estonian capital city Tallinn: For the former Soviet state, the scandal has become the downside of a political success story.
DPA

Estonian capital city Tallinn: For the former Soviet state, the scandal has become the downside of a political success story.
Meanwhile, a number of investigative teams from the EU and NATO have flown to Tallinn to probe the extent of the intelligence disaster. The investigation is being led by the NATO Office for Security, which is headed by an American official. As investigators pursue their work, they continue to unearth mounting evidence pointing to the enormity of the betrayal. A German government official has called the situation a "catastrophe," and Jaanus Rahumägi, a member of Estonia's national parliament who heads the parliamentary oversight committee for the government security agency, fears "historic damage."

NATO officials in Brussels are comparing Simm's alleged spying to the case of Aldrich Ames, a former CIA agent who for years funneled information to the Russian intelligence service, the KGB. However, the extensive fallout of the Estonian leaks makes this the worst espionage scandal since the end of the Cold War.

The case reveals how vulnerable the alliance has become in the wake of the expansion of NATO and the EU into Eastern Europe. When the decision was made to allow Estonia -- a tiny country with a population of only 1.3 million -- and six other countries into NATO and the EU in 2004, then-German Defense Minister Peter Struck of the left-leaning Social Democrats (SPD) expressed delight with this "great step on the way toward an undivided and free Europe, toward more security" and toward "a stronger NATO."

In Tallinn the downside of this political success story is now rearing its ugly head. Within the alliance, Estonia is not treated much differently than Italy or Germany when it comes to sensitive information. For a large power like Russia, which has always more or less rejected NATO and observed the expansion of the EU with suspicion, taking a slight detour through the Baltic States was the perfect way to reach into the heart of Brussels with a reasonably low level of risk. Thanks to Simm's alleged help, the Russians apparently achieved this with ease.

Investigators now assume that Simm established contact with the Russian intelligence service as early as the late 1980s. At the time, Estonia was striving for independence and it was clear that Moscow would eventually lose the Baltic Republics. Now was the time for Russia to secure its influence. When Estonia's NATO membership was first discussed "in the mid-1990s, Simm was officially recruited by the Russian government," claims Rahumägi. There is evidence indicating that the relationship was fairly loose to begin with. It's possible the KGB successor organization, the SVR, kept Simm as a "sleeper."

Simm rapidly advanced through the ranks, and in 1994 he became the Estonian chief of police. Later, he was transferred as a department head to the Defense Ministry, where he was responsible for the secret coordination with NATO and the EU. After Tallinn joined the EU in 2004, his position became tremendously valuable to Moscow.

NATO headquarters in Brussels: The worst espionage scandal since the end of the Cold War.
AP

NATO headquarters in Brussels: The worst espionage scandal since the end of the Cold War.
It remains to be seen whether money was a motive for Simm's alleged actions. What is clear, however, is that the high-ranking ministerial official from Tallinn owns half a dozen plots of land and properties, including a farm near the Baltic coast and a lavishly renovated, whitewashed residence in the small city of Saue near Tallinn. Investigators began to observe this house when an increasing number of clues about the Simm's alleged contact man started to surface. The contact man is believed to be an SVR agent traveling around European on a fake Spanish passport. Meanwhile, officials at the Estonian Public Prosecutor's Office are hoping to press charges against Simm in early 2009.

Right now, NATO is extremely interested in "deciphering the Russians' game plan," sources in Brussels say. Later, though, the case is expected to result in far-reaching changes in the manner in which classified material is handled within the alliance. A comprehensive probe to seek further leaks in Eastern Europe is also expected.

"We have to assume," says a Brussels official, "that the Russian intelligence apparatus maintains a number of Simms in the Baltic States."

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,590891,00.html

anti-paedophile police copter crashes

source: waynemadsenreport.com

Dead Cambodian police chief changed sides on human trafficking front and died in chopper crash

November 12, 2008 -- Dead Cambodian police chief changed sides on human trafficking front and died in chopper crash
WMR has learned from our Asian intelligence sources that Cambodian police chief, General Hok Lundy, who had been accused of involvement in human trafficking by the U.S. State Department in February 2006 but was awarded a medal by the FBI for his role in fighting terrorism and was praised by U.S. ambassador to Cambodia Joseph Mussomeli for his cooperation in fighting « drug trafficking and human smuggling, » had changed sides in the human, mostly child, trafficking front and was shutting down a number of facilities in Cambodia used for purposes of child prostitution. Lundy died in a helicopter crash on November 9 in Svay Rieng province in the southeast of the country. Investigators are claiming the helicopter crash, which also killed the pilot, co-pilot, and Cambodian Army General Sok Sa Em, was due to bad weather. Cambodia’s Interior Ministry reported that radio contact was lost with the helicopter 15 minutes after it took off from Phnom Penh International
Airport at around 7:20 pm (1220 GMT). The helicopter reportedly caught fire before it crashed.
It was a far cry from 2004 when Lundy released several child traffickers after a child prostitution brothel on the outskirts of Phnom Penh was raided by police in December of that year.
Lundy was close to Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen and his daughter is married to one of Sen’s sons. Lundy was also seen as close to jailed GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff who opened a pipeline to supply young girls from Cambodia to Asian labor « sweat shops » on the island of Saipan in the U.S.-controlled Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas.
It is significant that Lundy’s chopper went down after taking off from Phnom Penh airport. One of the first child prostitution activities shut down by Lundy was at an orphanage near Phnom Penh International. The airport received a number of private VIP charter flights and its proximity to the orphanage enabled high-level visitors from Western nations and Japan to engage in sexual activities with the orphanage’s children. WMR has learned that King Norodom Sihamoni and Queen Mother Norodom Monineath Sihanouk persuaded Lundy to clean up his act and actively pursue child traffickers in Cambodia and their U.S. diplomat and intelligence agency protectors. The Queen Mother now funds the orphanage near the airport that was preyed upon by Western VIP pedophiles. One informed source told WMR that « I think the Chief [Lundy] was getting ready for the big roundup and thus was sent early to the angels up there. » The source said that Lundy was assassinated because « he
knew too much. »
After Lundy changed sides on the child trafficking and pedophile front, he moved first to seize computer video equipment that was used to produce child pornography. Lundy then went after a pedophile ring that involved a top CIA asset based in Tokyo and Bangkok and another individual linked to top U.S. State Department officials, including ambassadors, first secretaries, CIA « official cover » officers, and senior officials at the State Department’s Foggy Bottom headquarters in Washington, DC.
A WMR source in Asia who has investigated U.S.-run pedophile rings in Southeast Asia stated, « the pedos were starting to see slippage, with one bust after the
other, and hints of pressure on their main pipeline for kids and kiddie porn.
It was his [Lundy’s] boys, after all, who shut down the satellite signals
tower at an orphanage used for pedophile activities, the main conduit for scrambled kiddie porn and pedo messaging with the kids. So he [Lundy] was especially dangerous, having watched and supposedly tolerated the high-ranking peds and then turning up the heat on them, with video evidence and a rising tide of busts, and finally the crackdown on the Internet porn line. »
Today, the London Guardian is reporting « The sudden death of a man [Lundy] who had made many enemies has sparked much speculation in Cambodia that the helicopter crash may not have been an accident. »
Lundy’s confrontation with senior U.S. government and intelligence officials over their use of Cambodia as a base for child prostitution and pedophile activities likely earned him a quick death sentence. The very first foreign policy priority of the Obama administration must be a thorough investigation of the CIA, the State Department, and pedophile activities and especially the role or lack thereof of Mark P. Lagon, the Director of the State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons.

onu: une araignee dans le plafond

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Polémique sur le coût d'un nouveau dôme au siège européen de l'ONU

Mardi 18 novembre, 20h35, AP

La décoration très avant-gardiste du dôme du "Hall XX" qui accueillera le Conseil des droits de l'homme de l'ONU au siège européen des Nations unies à Genève est au coeur d'une polémique à cause de son coût, révélé mardi: 23 millions de dollars (18 millions d'euros).

Pour réaliser cette voûte multicolore hérissée de centaines de pointes en forme de stalactites, l'artiste espagnol Miquel Barcelo a utilisé plus de 100 tonnes de peinture avec des pigments venus du monde entier. Il a travaillé avec des architectes, des ingénieurs et même des laboratoires spécialisés dans la physique des particules pour élaborer l'aluminium ultra-résistant utilisé pour la décoration du dôme de 1.500 mètres carrés. Une création artistique dont la réalisation a pris un an.

Selon le ministère des Affaires étrangères espagnol, le gouvernement de Madrid a financé les travaux à hauteur de 40%, le reste étant payé par des donateurs privés. Concernant l'argent public utilisé pour le dôme, 500.000 euros proviennent du budget du gouvernement espagnol pour l'aide au développement et le financement d'organisations internationales comme l'ONU.

En Espagne, le Parti populaire (PP, opposition) a reproché au gouvernement de José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero d'avoir utilisé des fonds qui auraient pu être dépensés pour lutter contre la pauvreté dans les pays pauvres, mais le ministère des Affaires étrangères assure que l'argent public déboursé pour l'oeuvre de Barcelo vient d'un financement séparé.

La polémique a gagné le Parlement espagnol la semaine dernière, le député du Parti populaire Gonzalo Robles demandant "combien de milliers d'enfants on aurait pu s'occuper" avec l'argent dépensé pour cette création artistique. Les socialistes, au pouvoir, l'ont accusé de déformer les faits.

Le gouvernement de Madrid n'a pas dit combien il avait payé l'artiste pour cette commande. Une conférence de presse initialement prévue mardi avec Barcelo et le chef de la diplomatie espagnol a été annulée à Genève.

Lors d'une cérémonie avec le roi d'Espagne Juan Carlos, le secrétaire général des Nations unies Ban Ki-moon a remercié Barcelo d'avoir mis "ses talents uniques au service du monde". "L'oeuvre d'art que vous avez créée pour cette salle est innovante et rayonnante", a déclaré M. Ban. AP

roubini: financial tsunami ahead and s&p - 35%

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The Worst Is Not Behind Us

Beware of those who say we've hit the bottom

By Nouriel Roubini

Forbes.com through rense.com

11-16-8

It is useful, at this juncture, to stand back and survey the economic landscape--both as it is now, and as it has been in recent months. So here is a summary of many of the points that I have made for the last few months on the outlook for the U.S. and global economy, as well as for financial markets:

--The U.S. will experience its most severe recession since World War II, much worse and longer and deeper than even the 1974-1975 and 1980-1982 recessions. The recession will continue until at least the end of 2009 for a cumulative gross domestic product drop of over 4%; the unemployment rate will likely reach 9%. The U.S. consumer is shopped-out, saving less and debt-burdened: This will be the worst consumer recession in decades.

--The prospect of a short and shallow six- to eight-month V-shaped recession is out of the window; a U-shaped 18- to 24-month recession is now a certainty, and the probability of a worse, multi-year L-shaped recession (as in Japan in the 1990s) is still small but rising. Even if the economy were to exit a recession by the end of 2009, the recovery could be so weak because of the impairment of the financial system and the credit mechanism that it may feel like a recession even if the economy is technically out of the recession.

-- Obama will inherit an economic and financial mess worse than anything the U.S. has faced in decades: the most severe recession in 50 years; the worst financial and banking crisis since the Great Depression; a ballooning fiscal deficit that may be as high as a trillion dollars in 2009 and 2010; a huge current account deficit; a financial system that is in a severe crisis and where deleveraging is still occurring at a very rapid pace, thus causing a worsening of the credit crunch; a household sector where millions of households are insolvent, into negative equity territory and on the verge of losing their homes; a serious risk of deflation as the slack in goods, labor and commodity markets becomes deeper; the risk that we will end in a deflationary liquidity trap as the Fed is fast approaching the zero-bound constraint for the Fed funds rate; the risk of a severe debt deflation as the real value of nominal liabilities will rise, given price deflation,
while the value of financial assets is still plunging.

-- The world economy will experience a severe recession: Output will sharply contract in the Eurozone, the U.K. and the rest of Europe, as well as in Canada, Japan and Australia/New Zealand. There is also a risk of a hard landing in emerging market economies. Expect global growth--at market prices--to be close to zero in Q3 and negative by Q4. Leaving aside the effects of the fiscal stimulus, China could face a hard landing growth rate of 6% in 2009. The global recession will continue through most of 2009.

--The advanced economies will face stag-deflation (stagnation/recession and deflation) rather than stagflation, as the slack in goods, labor and commodity markets will lead advanced economies' inflation rates to become below 1% by 2009.

--Expect a few advanced economies (certainly the U.S. and Japan and possibly others) to reach the zero-bound constraint for policy rates by early 2009. With deflation on the horizon, zero-bound on interest rates implies the risk of a liquidity trap where money and bonds become perfectly substitutable, where real interest rates become high and rising, thus further pushing down aggregate demand, and where money market fund returns cannot even cover their management costs.

Deflation also implies a debt deflation where the real value of nominal debts is rising, thus increasing the real burden of such debts. Monetary policy easing will become more aggressive in other advanced economies even if the European Central Bank cuts too little too late. But monetary policy easing will be scarcely effective, as it will be pushing on a string, given the glut of global aggregate supply relative to demand--and given a very severe credit crunch.

--For 2009, the consensus estimates for earnings are delusional: Current consensus estimates are that S&P 500 earnings per share (EPS) will be $90 in 2009, up 15% from 2008. Such estimates are outright silly. If EPS falls--as is most likely--to a level of $60, then with a price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 12, the S&P 500 index could fall to 720 (i.e. about 20% below current levels).

If the P/E falls to 10--as is possible in a severe recession--the S&P could be down to 600, or 35% below current levels.

And in a very severe recession, one cannot exclude that EPS could fall as low as $50 in 2009, dragging the S&P 500 index to as low as 500. So, even based on fundamentals and valuations, there are significant downside risks to U.S. equities (20% to 40%).

Similar arguments can be made for global equities: A severe global recession implies further downside risks to global equities in the order of 20% to 30%.Thus, the recent rally in U.S. and global equities was only a bear-market sucker's rally that is already fizzling out--buried under a mountain of worse-than-expected macro, earnings and financial news.

--Credit losses will be well above $1 trillion and closer to $2 trillion, as such losses will spread from subprime to near-prime and prime mortgages and home equity loans (and the related securitized products); to commercial real estate, to credit cards, auto loans and student loans; to leveraged loans and LBOs, to muni bonds, corporate bonds, industrial and commercial loans and credit default swaps. These credit losses will lead to a severe credit crunch, absent a rapid and aggressive recapitalization of financial institutions.

--Almost all of the $700 billion in the TARP program will be used to recapitalize U.S. financial institutions (banks, broker dealers, insurance companies, finance companies) as rising credit losses (close to $2 trillion) will imply that the initial $250 billion allocated to recap these institutions will not be enough. Sooner rather than later, a TARP-2 will become necessary, as the recapitalization needs of U.S. financial institutions will likely be well above $1 trillion.

--Current spreads on speculative-grade bonds may widen further as a tsunami of defaults will hit the corporate sector; investment-grade bond spreads have widened excessively relative to financial fundamentals, but further spread-widening is possible, driven by market dynamics, deleveraging and the fact that many AAA-rated firms (say, GE) are not really AAA, and should be downgraded by the rating agencies.

--Expect a U.S. fiscal deficit of almost $1 trillion in 2009 and 2010. The outlook for the U.S. current account deficit is mixed: The recession, a rise in private savings and a fall in investment, and a further fall in commodity prices will tend to shrink it, but a stronger dollar, global demand weakness and a larger U.S. fiscal deficit will tend to worsen it. On net, we will observe still-large U.S. twin fiscal and current account deficits--and less willingness and ability in the rest of the world to finance it unless the interest rate on such debt rises.

--In this economic and financial environment, it is wise to stay away from most risky assets for the next 12 months: There are downside risks to U.S. and global equities; credit spreads--especially for the speculative grade--may widen further; commodity prices will fall another 20% from current levels; gold will also fall as deflation sets in; the U.S. dollar may weaken further in the next six to 12 months as the factors behind the recent rally weather off, while medium-term bearish fundamentals for the dollar set in again; government bond yields in the U.S. and advanced economies may fall further as recession and deflation emerge but, over time, the surge in fiscal deficits in the U.S. and globally will reduce the supply of global savings and lead to higher long-term interest rates unless the fall in global real investment outpaces the fall in global savings.

Expect further downside risks to emerging-markets assets (in particular, equities and local and foreign currency debt), especially in economies with significant macro, policy and financial vulnerabilities. Cash and cash-like instruments (short-term dated government bonds and inflation-indexed bonds that do well both in inflation and deflation times) will dominate most risky assets.

So, serious risks and vulnerabilities remain, and the downside risks to financial markets (worse than expected macro news, earnings news and developments in systemically important parts of the global financial system) will, over the next few months, overshadow the positive news (G-7 policies to avoid a systemic meltdown, and other policies that--in due time--may reduce interbank spreads and credit spreads).

Beware, therefore, of those who tell you that we have reached a bottom for risky financial assets. The same optimists told you that we reached a bottom and the worst was behind us after the rescue of the creditors of Bear Stearns in March; after the announcement of the possible bailout of Fannie and Freddie in July; after the actual bailout of Fannie and Freddie in September; after the bailout of AIG (nyse: AIG -news - people ) in mid-September; after the TARP legislation was presented; and after the latest G-7 and E.U. action.

In each case, the optimists argued that the latest crisis and rescue policy response was the cathartic event that signaled the bottom of the crisis and the recovery of markets. They were wrong literally at least six times in a row as the crisis--as I have consistently predicted over the last year--became worse and worse. So enough of the excessive optimism that has been proved wrong at least six times in the last eight months alone.

A reality check is needed to assess risks--and to take appropriate action. And reality tells us that we barely avoided, only a week ago, a total systemic financial meltdown; that the policy actions are now finally more aggressive and systematic, and more appropriate; that it will take a long while for interbank and credit markets to mend; that further important policy actions are needed to avoid the meltdown and an even more severe recession; that central banks, instead of being the lenders of last resort, will be, for now, the lenders of first and only resort; that even if we avoid a meltdown, we will experience a severe U.S., advanced economy and, most likely, global recession, the worst in decades; that we are in the middle of a severe global financial and banking crisis, the worst since the Great Depression; and that the flow of macro, earnings and financial news will significantly surprise (as during the last few weeks) on the downside with
significant further risks to financial markets.

I'll stop now.

Nouriel Roubini, a professor at the Stern Business School at New York University and chairman of
Roubini Global Economics, is a weekly columnist for Forbes.com.

http://www.forbes.com/opinions/2008/11/12/recession-global-economy-oped-cx_nr_1113roubini.html

global cooling vs. doctored warming evidences

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/11/16/do1610.xml

The world has never seen such freezing heat

By Christopher Booker

12:01am GMT 16/11/2008

A surreal scientific blunder last week raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming. On Monday, Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore's chief scientific ally, Dr James Hansen, and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on record.

This was startling. Across the world there were reports of unseasonal snow and plummeting temperatures last month, from the American Great Plains to China, and from the Alps to New Zealand. China's official news agency reported that Tibet had suffered its "worst snowstorm ever". In the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month, and ranked it as only the 70th-warmest October in 114 years.

So what explained the anomaly? GISS's computerised temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal. But when expert readers of the two leading warming-sceptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit, began detailed analysis of the GISS data they made an astonishing discovery. The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running.

EU facing revolt over climate change target enforcement

EU plans new energy deals

Himalayan glaciers 'could disappear completely by 2035'
The error was so glaring that when it was reported on the two blogs - run by the US meteorologist Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre, the Canadian computer analyst who won fame for his expert debunking of the notorious "hockey stick" graph - GISS began hastily revising its figures. This only made the confusion worse because, to compensate for the lowered temperatures in Russia, GISS claimed to have discovered a new "hotspot" in the Arctic - in a month when satellite images were showing Arctic sea-ice recovering so fast from its summer melt that three weeks ago it was 30 per cent more extensive than at the same time last year.

A GISS spokesman lamely explained that the reason for the error in the Russian figures was that they were obtained from another body, and that GISS did not have resources to exercise proper quality control over the data it was supplied with. This is an astonishing admission: the figures published by Dr Hansen's institute are not only one of the four data sets that the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) relies on to promote its case for global warming, but they are the most widely quoted, since they consistently show higher temperatures than the others.

If there is one scientist more responsible than any other for the alarm over global warming it is Dr Hansen, who set the whole scare in train back in 1988 with his testimony to a US Senate committee chaired by Al Gore. Again and again, Dr Hansen has been to the fore in making extreme claims over the dangers of climate change. (He was recently in the news here for supporting the Greenpeace activists acquitted of criminally damaging a coal-fired power station in Kent, on the grounds that the harm done to the planet by a new power station would far outweigh any damage they had done themselves.)

Yet last week's latest episode is far from the first time Dr Hansen's methodology has been called in question. In 2007 he was forced by Mr Watts and Mr McIntyre to revise his published figures for US surface temperatures, to show that the hottest decade of the 20th century was not the 1990s, as he had claimed, but the 1930s.

Another of his close allies is Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, who recently startled a university audience in Australia by claiming that global temperatures have recently been rising "very much faster" than ever, in front of a graph showing them rising sharply in the past decade. In fact, as many of his audience were aware, they have not been rising in recent years and since 2007 have dropped.

Dr Pachauri, a former railway engineer with no qualifications in climate science, may believe what Dr Hansen tells him. But whether, on the basis of such evidence, it is wise for the world's governments to embark on some of the most costly economic measures ever proposed, to remedy a problem which may actually not exist, is a question which should give us all pause for thought.

allied death camps and war crimes in germany

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Institute for Historical Review

In 'Eisenhower’s Death Camps': A U.S. Prison Guard Remembers

Martin Brech

In October 1944, at age eighteen, I was drafted into the U.S. army. Largely because of the “Battle of the Bulge,” my training was cut short, my furlough was halved, and I was sent overseas immediately. Upon arrival in Le Havre, France, we were quickly loaded into box cars and shipped to the front. When we got there, I was suffering increasingly severe symptoms of mononucleosis, and was sent to a hospital in Belgium. Since mononucleosis was then known as the "kissing disease," I mailed a letter of thanks to my girlfriend.

By the time I left the hospital, the outfit I had trained with in Spartanburg, South Carolina, was deep inside Germany, so, despite my protests, I was placed in a “repo depot” (replacement depot). I lost interest in the units to which I was assigned, and don't recall all of them: non-combat units were ridiculed at that time. My separation qualification record states I was mostly with Company C, 14th Infantry Regiment, during my seventeen-month stay in Germany, but I remember being transferred to other outfits also.

In late March or early April 1945, I was sent to guard a POW camp near Andernach along the Rhine. I had four years of high school German, so I was able to talk to the prisoners, although this was forbidden. Gradually, however, I was used as an interpreter and asked to ferret out members of the S.S. (I found none.)

In Andernach about 50,000 prisoners of all ages were held in an open field surrounded by barbed wire. The women were kept in a separate enclosure that I did not see until later. The men I guarded had no shelter and no blankets. Many had no coats. They slept in the mud, wet and cold, with inadequate slit trenches for excrement. It was a cold, wet spring, and their misery from exposure alone was evident.

Even more shocking was to see the prisoners throwing grass and weeds into a tin can containing a thin soup. They told me they did this to help ease their hunger pains. Quickly they grew emaciated. Dysentery raged, and soon they were sleeping in their own excrement, too weak and crowded to reach the slit trenches. Many were begging for food, sickening and dying before our eyes. We had ample food and supplies, but did nothing to help them, including no medical assistance.

Outraged, I protested to my officers and was met with hostility or bland indifference. When pressed, they explained they were under strict orders from “higher up.” No officer would dare do this to 50,000 men if he felt that it was “out of line,” leaving him open to charges. Realizing my protests were useless, I asked a friend working in the kitchen if he could slip me some extra food for the prisoners. He too said they were under strict orders to severely ration the prisoners’ food, and that these orders came from “higher up.” But he said they had more food than they knew what to do with, and would sneak me some.

When I threw this food over the barbed wire to the prisoners, I was caught and threatened with imprisonment. I repeated the “offense,” and one officer angrily threatened to shoot me. I assumed this was a bluff until I encountered a captain on a hill above the Rhine shooting down at a group of German civilian women with his .45 caliber pistol. When I asked, “Why?,” he mumbled, “Target practice," and fired until his pistol was empty. I saw the women running for cover, but, at that distance, couldn't tell if any had been hit.

This is when I realized I was dealing with cold-blooded killers filled with moralistic hatred. They considered the Germans subhuman and worthy of extermination; another expression of the downward spiral of racism. Articles in the G.I. newspaper, Stars and Stripes, played up the German concentration camps, complete with photos of emaciated bodies. This amplified our self-righteous cruelty, and made it easier to imitate behavior we were supposed to oppose. Also, I think, soldiers not exposed to combat were trying to prove how tough they were by taking it out on the prisoners and civilians.

These prisoners, I found out, were mostly farmers and workingmen, as simple and ignorant as many of our own troops. As time went on, more of them lapsed into a zombie-like state of listlessness, while others tried to escape in a demented or suicidal fashion, running through open fields in broad daylight towards the Rhine to quench their thirst. They were mowed down.

Some prisoners were as eager for cigarettes as for food, saying they took the edge off their hunger. Accordingly, enterprising G.I. “Yankee traders” were acquiring hordes of watches and rings in exchange for handfuls of cigarettes or less. When I began throwing cartons of cigarettes to the prisoners to ruin this trade, I was threatened by rank-and-file G.I.s too.

The only bright spot in this gloomy picture came one night when. I was put on the “graveyard shift,” from two to four a.m. Actually, there was a graveyard on the uphill side of this enclosure, not many yards away. My superiors had forgotten to give me a flashlight and I hadn't bothered to ask for one, disgusted as I was with the whole situation by that time. It was a fairly bright night and I soon became aware of a prisoner crawling under the wires towards the graveyard. We were supposed to shoot escapees on sight, so I started to get up from the ground to warn him to get back. Suddenly I noticed another prisoner crawling from the graveyard back to the enclosure. They were risking their lives to get to the graveyard for something. I had to investigate.

When I entered the gloom of this shrubby, tree-shaded cemetery, I felt completely vulnerable, but somehow curiosity kept me moving. Despite my caution, I tripped over the legs of someone in a prone position. Whipping my rifle around while stumbling and trying to regain composure of mind and body, I soon was relieved I hadn't reflexively fired. The figure sat up. Gradually, I could see the beautiful but terror-stricken face of a woman with a picnic basket nearby. German civilians were not allowed to feed, nor even come near the prisoners, so I quickly assured her I approved of what she was doing, not to be afraid, and that I would leave the graveyard to get out of the way.

I did so immediately and sat down, leaning against a tree at the edge of the cemetery to be inconspicuous and not frighten the prisoners. I imagined then, and still do now, what it would be like to meet a beautiful woman with a picnic basket under those conditions as a prisoner. I have never forgotten her face.

Eventually, more prisoners crawled back to the enclosure. I saw they were dragging food to their comrades, and could only admire their courage and devotion.

On May 8, V.E. Day [1945], I decided to celebrate with some prisoners I was guarding who were baking bread the other prisoners occasionally received. This group had all the bread they could eat, and shared the jovial mood generated by the end of the war. We all thought we were going home soon, a pathetic hope on their part. We were in what was to become the French zone [of occupation], where I soon would witness the brutality of the French soldiers when we transferred our prisoners to them for their slave labor camps.

On this day, however, we were happy.

As a gesture of friendliness, I emptied my rifle and stood it in the corner, even allowing them to play with it at their request. This thoroughly “broke the ice,” and soon we were singing songs we taught each other, or that I had learned in high school German class (“Du, du, liegst mir im Herzen”). Out of gratitude, they baked me a special small loaf of sweet bread, the only possible present they had left to offer. I stuffed it in my “Eisenhower jacket,” and snuck it back to my barracks, eating it when I had privacy. I have never tasted more delicious bread, nor felt a deeper sense of communion while eating it. I believe a cosmic sense of Christ (the Oneness of all Being) revealed its normally hidden presence to me on that occasion, influencing my later decision to major in philosophy and religion.

Shortly afterwards, some of our weak and sickly prisoners were marched off by French soldiers to their camp. We were riding on a truck behind this column. Temporarily, it slowed down and dropped back, perhaps because the driver was as shocked as I was. Whenever a German prisoner staggered or dropped back, he was hit on the head with a club and killed. The bodies were rolled to the side of the road to be picked up by another truck. For many, this quick death might have been preferable to slow starvation in our “killing fields.”

When I finally saw the German women held in a separate enclosure, I asked why we were holding them prisoner. I was told they were “camp followers,” selected as breeding stock for the S.S. to create a super-race. I spoke to some, and must say I never met a more spirited or attractive group of women. I certainly didn't think they deserved imprisonment.

More and more I was used as an interpreter, and was able to prevent some particularly unfortunate arrests. One somewhat amusing incident involved an old farmer who was being dragged away by several M.P.s. I was told he had a “fancy Nazi medal,” which they showed me. Fortunately, I had a chart identifying such medals. He'd been awarded it for having five children! Perhaps his wife was somewhat relieved to get him “off her back,”but I didn't think one of our death camps was a fair punishment for his contribution to Germany. The M.P.s agreed and released him to continue his “dirty work.”

Famine began to spread among the German civilians also. It was a common sight to see German women up to their elbows in our garbage cans looking for something edible -- that is, if they weren't chased away.

When I interviewed mayors of small towns and villages, I was told that their supply of food had been taken away by “displaced persons” (foreigners who had worked in Germany), who packed the food on trucks and drove away. When I reported this, the response was a shrug. I never saw any Red Cross at the camp or helping civilians, although their coffee and doughnut stands were available everywhere else for us. In the meantime, the Germans had to rely on the sharing of hidden stores until the next harvest.

Hunger made German women more “available," but despite this, rape was prevalent and often accompanied by additional violence. In particular I remember an eighteen-year old woman who had the side of her faced smashed with a rifle butt, and was then raped by two G.I.s. Even the French complained that the rapes, looting and drunken destructiveness on the part of our troops was excessive. In Le Havre, we’d been given booklets warning us that the German soldiers had maintained a high standard of behavior with French civilians who were peaceful, and that we should do the same. In this we failed miserably.

“So what?” some would say. “The enemy's atrocities were worse than ours.” It is true that I experienced only the end of the war, when we were already the victors. The German opportunity for atrocities had faded, while ours was at hand. But two wrongs don't make a right. Rather than copying our enemy's crimes, we should aim once and for all to break the cycle of hatred and vengeance that has plagued and distorted human history. This is why I am speaking out now, 45 years after the crime. We can never prevent individual war crimes, but we can, if enough of us speak out, influence government policy. We can reject government propaganda that depicts our enemies as subhuman and encourages the kind of outrages I witnessed. We can protest the bombing of civilian targets, which still goes on today. And we can refuse ever to condone our government’s murder of unarmed and defeated prisoners of war.

I realize it’s difficult for the average citizen to admit witnessing a crime of this magnitude, especially if implicated himself. Even G.I.s sympathetic to the victims were afraid to complain and get into trouble, they told me. And the danger has not ceased. Since I spoke out a few weeks ago, I have received threatening calls and had my mailbox smashed. But its been worth it. Writing about these atrocities has been a catharsis of feelings suppressed too long, a liberation, that perhaps will remind other witnesses that “the truth will make us free, have no fear.” We may even learn a supreme lesson from all this: only love can conquer all.


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

Martin Brech lives in Mahopac, New York. When he wrote this memoir essay in 1990, he was an Adjunct Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Mercy College in Dobbs Ferry, New York. Brech holds a master’s degree in theology from Columbia University, and is a Unitarian-Universalist minister.

This essay, written in 1990, was published in The Journal of Historical Review, Summer 1990 (Vol. 10, No. 2), pp. 161-166. (Revised, updated: Nov. 2008)

For Further Reading

James Bacque, Crimes and Mercies: The Fate of German Civilians Under Allied Occupation, 1944-1950 (Toronto: Little, Brown and Co., 1997)

James Bacque, Other Losses: An investigation into the mass deaths of German prisoners at the hands of the French and Americans after World War II (Toronto: Stoddart, 1989)

John Dietrich, The Morgenthau Plan: Soviet Influence on American Postwar Policy (New York: Algora, 2002)

Ralph Franklin Keeling, Gruesome Harvest: The Allies’ Postwar War Against the German People (IHR, 1992). Originally published in Chicago in 1947.

Giles MacDonogh, After the Reich: The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation (New York: Basic Books, 2007)

Mark Weber, “New Book Details Mass Killings and Brutal Mistreatment of Germans at the End of World War Two” (Summer 2007)
( http://www.ihr.org/other/afterthereich072007.html )

Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, Nemesis at Postsdam (Lincoln, Neb.: 1990)

Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the Eastern European Germans, 1944-1950 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993) / 1994)

us: mossad chief of staff

.
waynemadsenreport.com

November 6, 2008

Obama faced with security problem at outset of transition process

WMR has learned from informed U.S. intelligence sources that prospective Barack Obama White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has an active FBI counter-intelligence file maintained on him. Emanuel's rise to the Chief of Staff position may pose a significant security problem for President-elect Obama if the FBI insists on conducting the full background security investigation normally required for senior White House officials.

Questions about Emanuel's links to the Israeli intelligence service, the Mossad, were allegedly so great that President Bill Clinton was forced to dismiss Emanuel from the White House staff in 1998. One of the FBI agents who discovered Emanuel's dealings with Israeli intelligence was, according to our sources, the late FBI counter-terrorism Assistant Director John O'Neill. O'Neill retired after being set up in a smear operation involving a temporarily stolen brief case in 2001. O'Neill and another FBI agent who still works for the bureau and shall remain nameless at this point to protect him and his career discovered that Emanuel was heavily involved in the decision to place intern Monica Lewinsky close to President Clinton. O'Neill accepted the top security position for Kroll Associates at the World Trade Center. O'Neill was killed in the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center. WMR has also reported that O'Neill was a close friend of slain retired
Houston CIA station chief Roland V. "Tony" Carnaby, who was similarly investigating Israeli intelligence operations in the Houston area when Houston police shot and killed him last April.

Emanuel reportedly had knowledge of Israeli intelligence penetration of White House communications systems and Lewinsky, in sworn testimony before the Office of Independent Counsel, stated: "He [Clinton] suspected that a foreign embassy [it is now known that embassy was that of Israel] was tapping his telephones, and he proposed cover stories." Lewinsky continued, "If ever questioned, she should say that the two of them were just friends. If anyone ever asked about their phone sex, she should say that they knew their calls were being monitored all along, and the phone sex was just a put on."

WMR has learned from U.S. intelligence sources that Emanuel was discovered to be part of a political intelligence and blackmail operation directed against Clinton b and Binyamin Netanyahu to sink Clinton's proposed Middle East peace deal. We have also learned that the FBI investigation of Emanuel is part of a file code-named the "Mega file." "Mega" is a reference to a top-level Mossad agent in the Reagan administration who was said to have run a number of Israeli agents, including U.S. Navy spy Jonathan Pollard.

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

Journalist Reaches From Grave To Nail Rahm

Excerpts From Archived News Investigations

By The Late Sherman H. Skolnick

(July 13 1930 ­ May 21, 2006)

11-9-8

"Heaven, in its Judgment, has cursed us, the common people of America, with a traitor-infested central government, with an evil and fraudulent banking system, with a mendacious press, and with a venal and corrupt judiciary condoned by rapacious and cowardly lawyers. Thus, some say our Constitution is deservedly dead since, in our name, innocent folk on foreign shores are butchered and bombed. We ordinary Americans, if loudmouthed ---Are we quickly approaching the time when foreign secret police on U.S. soil, with impunity, will knock at our door in the dark of night and take us away, who knows, to a world government concentration camp? And will we be the most well-informed inmates of why and how we are there, inside the barbed wire?

Tell me if you can: WHAT IS THE REASON, NONE DARE CALL THIS TREASON? "
Sherman H. Skolnick
(July 13 1930 ­ May 21, 2006)
http://www.skolnicksreport.com/chinesesp2.html

FROM HIS GRAVE: SHERMAN SKOLNICK EXPOSES RAHM EMANUEL

The late Sherman Skolnick proved himself over the years to be one of the most astute and accurate American investigator journalists. As the main pillar of American journalism, he simply did not have any match. He alone has put to shame all the US media with his meticulous investigations, as well as being responsible to the removal of corrupt judges and others. It is with great honour and humility in memory of this giant American journalist that we are bringing to you his research about Rahmbo. I hope that these warnings by Skolnick will prepare our readers for what is coming very soon. All my interviews with Skolnick are available at our audio archives.

The following are excerpts (in no particular order), sent to us by readers, from Sherman Skolnick articles in which he has tried to warn us about Rahm Emanuel. URLs available at bottom. I hope this information keeps our readers informed about the character of our next White House Chief Of Staff 'Enjoy'. (Ed.)
_________________

Intro:

Most people don't know of Rahm Emanuel's frightening past. After President Clinton's election many years ago, one day Rahm Emanuel, Obama's future chief of staff, allegedly named each of the enemies of the Clinton campaign and then stabbing the table with a knife while yelling "dead!" after each name prior to stabbing the table. When you probe deeper into Congressman Emanuel, you find that he is the son of an Irgun Fighter, the same Irgun that blew up the King David Hotel in a terrorist bombing and killed British Military, who were classified as Terrorists by the British in Palestine but from the Israeli perspective were looked upon as freedom fighters. Rahm when he turned 18 was enlisted in the Israeli Defense Forces. He is know as RAHMBO for his pitbull posture! The late Sherman Skolnick in his Skolnick Report said that..."
http://www.newstin.com/tag/us/86579385

Rahm Emanuel - Activities And Associations

"Rahm Emanuel - Top reputed black-mailer, extortionist, and arm-twister for the Clinton White House. About 1991, moved from the Chicago-area, to Arkansas to help conduct Clinton's presidential campaign. Raised funds reportedly by knowing secret workings of major covert operations of the American CIA. Such as: HOUSEHOLD INTERNATIONAL and HOUSEHOLD BANK, headquartered in Chicago, successor to CIA's proprietary dope and assassination funding operation, NUGAN HAND BANK.

General counsel of Nugan Hand as well as Household was former Director of Central Intelligence William Colby (murdered because he knew too much about Rahm Emanuel, the Mossad, and Clinton). Rahm Emanuel latched onto a 50 million dollar portion of federal funds parked with Household to cover the pending claims of Chicago-area caulking contractor, Joseph Andreuccetti, who claimed various Chicago-area banks were implicated, with top corrupt IRS officials, in stealing millions of dollars of properties and monies belonging to Andreuccetti.

Rahm Emanuel grabbed a portion of the parked funds to jump-start Clinton's 1992 campaign. Other portions of the funds were secretly transferred from Chicago to Little Rock to try to cover up an embezzlement of Madison Guaranty S & L for which Bill and Hillary Clinton were subject to being prosecuted on federal bank misappropriation criminal charges. Emanuel is reportedly a double-dealer, purporting to act for the Mossad at the same time acting against.

Emanuel is reportedly chief arranger of Red Chinese and other illicit funds massively flowing through the Chicago markets, disguised as soybean trading, foreign currency dealings, and such, on the Chicago Board of Trade, the Chicago Mercentile Exchange, and the Chicago Board Options Exchange. Currently Rahm plays a key role with Wasserstein & Perella, New York-based alleged investment firm apparently fronting for various Red Chinese interests in U.S."

"Foreign intelligence sources are snickering over reports that the Red Chinese claim they have clandestine audio tapes, still pictures, and YES, even undercover video, showing secret agents of the President/Commander-in-Chief receiving suitcases loaded with money, in return for the U.S. top nuclear secrets including a copy of the super-secret computer data on nuclear testing. The Chinese, so say these sources, are asserting that they BOUGHT such items, fair and square, from CLinton's emissaries. If there is a problem in this type of "routine" business transaction, say the sources quoting Chinese officials, well, "Let the Americans attend to their end of White House business ethics". "

"Wow! What Americans perceive as treachery and espionage the Chinese identify as "business ethics" in a C.O.D. deal. And who are suspected of being Clinton's secret luggage receivers? Here are a few reportedly to consider:===For a long time, RAHM EMANUEL was Clinton White House Senior Advisor and top campaign fund-raiser using apparently strong-arm tactics or even blackmail. In a PBS-outlet program, broadcast in Chicago on WTTW-TV, Channel 11, Rahm Emanuel, on-camera, showed how influential he was with Clinton that Rahm's desk was the closest to the Oval Office. Intelligence sources contend Rahm Emanuel, in effect, is and has been the reputed Deputy Chief, for NORTH AMERICA, of Israeli Intelligence, the Mossad [The Institute]. And why do some contend that Monica Lewinsky, her parents, and others surrounding Clinton in the sex episode, dealt with a Nazi-like specialty, luring someone into a sex "honey pot" and that these are all reportedly Israeli
intelligence assets? "

"AND, the Mossad has had unholy arrangements with the Red Chinese on nuclear secrets, contradicted by the fact that the Red Chinese have supplied Silkworm Missiles to sworn enemies of Israel. After supposedly leaving the Clinton White House, Rahm Emanuel has become a bigshot on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, which has reportedly laundered billions of dollars, for Clinton and his handlers and controllers, including Red Chinese and ethnic Chinese [Indonesia] illicit funds from dope trafficking from S.W. China into the U.S.., through Chicago, of "China White", high purity heroin. Also illicit funds from the harvesting of human body parts, on a just-when-needed basis from political prisoners, condemned to death when the hearts, liver, lungs, kidneys, etc., are needed by greedy U.S. hospitals. {As a producer/moderator of a public access Cable TV Show in Chicago, I am planning a one-hour show on this dirty, bloody business. By the way, the political
prisoners are beheaded so as not to damage the body parts. Prominent doctors and hospitals are in this rotten traffic, bought and sold like parts of a car.] "

"Rahm Emanuel is no stranger apparently to murder. His father reportedly was part of the assassination team in 1948, that slaughtered U.N. Official, Count Bernadotte, during the Palestine Partition controversy. ===ANother suspected receiver reportedly of Chinese "business" money suitcases is Clinton White House honcho Samuel "Sandy" Berger. "

""MONICA LEWINSKY, reportedly an espionage double-agent. Acting for the apparent deputy station chief for North America, of Israeli intelligence, the Mossad, RAHM EMANUEL. She at the same time was assigned later by Clinton to a key position in the Pentagon, to the staff of the Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon. Her job: to find out by performing sexual numbers on Pentagon officials, who among the top U.S. Military were vowing to arrest Commander-in-Chief Clinton on charges, under the Military Code, of treason. Her parents reportedly had been "sleeper agents" planted by the Mossad. Clinton gave Monica topmost security clearance at the Pentagon without requiring her to go through the usual screening process. She traveled with William Cohen, Secretary of Defense, and took notes of his meetings although not fully competent as a secretary."

"RAHM EMANUEL as former senior Clinton White House advisor was reportedly implicated in various illicit dealings with the Red Chinese penetrating U.S. industrial, financial, and military secrets. A dual citizen, Israel/US. he left the U.S. about 1990 to serve in the Israel Defense Forces, the IDF After leaving the Clinton White House, where he served off and on for some six years, Rahm made a sizeable fortune apparently from the secret Red Chinese dealings to get at U.S. secrets, while Rahm Emanuel was a top official of the investment house, Wasserstein, Perella & Co. Rahm is ostensibly an accomplished participant in "political opposition research", a code name for compiling and using blackmail data."
_________________

"Rahm Emanuel has used a portion of his apparently ill-gotten fortune to buy massive advertising and such, paving the way for him to win, as he did, the Illinois Congressional District previously occupied by defrocked Congressman Rostenkowski, convicted of embezzling sums from the House of Representives private bank. With his dual political loyalty as well, Rahm both supported Clinton publicly while he apparently manipulated him privately using reputed The Mossad controlled sexmate, Monica Lewinsky."
_________________

"Rahm Emanuel has ostensibly functioned as The Mossad's Deputy Chief for North America. In the past, some of Israeli intelligence's top officials for U.S./Canada, were headquartered in Chicago, operating in part through Bank Leumi. [In 1993, through a one-hour public access Cable TV program, we exposed the bank and a major spy/ swindler, later jailed, aided and abetted by the bank allowing him under the table funds as "overdrafts", the Clifford Sugarman affair. He was jailed as a consequence of our tv show.]"
_________________

"For many years, Chairman of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, was Leo Melamed, more recently, Chairman Emeritus. He reportedly grew up in the Orient and understands and/or speaks Chinese. Have the reporters who have interviewed him over the years, ever asked HIM about his reported role in promoting the Red Chinese Secret Police and their domination of the Chicago markets? When, if ever, does the financial press even mention the Red Chinese and the Chicago markets, the prices of items by them referred to worldwide? For a hundred and fifty years the Rothschilds have controlled the Chicago Board of Trade, later joined by the Irish Catholic aristocracy. Do we all understand that the Rothschilds are interwoven with the Vatican? In a simplistic explanation, the world is divided between the Rothschilds and the Rockefellers. At the annual super-secret Bilderberg Group meetings, each year in a different country, the Rockefellers and the Rothschilds, although
age-old competitors and "enemies", sit together. Business is business. On behalf of espionage interests, interwoven with the Rockefellers, Rahm Emanuel helped propel William Rockefeller Clinton into high office. In earlier stories, on my website, I wrote how 3 million dollars was siphoned off a secret federal agency 50 million dollar fund used to keep Bill and Hillary Clinton from being federal criminally prosecuted for bank embezzlement. The 3 million dollars put into the hands of Rahm Emanuel jump-started Clinton's 1992 campaign for President."
_________________

"So, the Red Chinese with the aid of their secret political police are able to funnel billions from dirty business coming out looking like soybean and foreign currency deals in Chicago. An instrumenal reputed player/facilitator in all this has been Rahm Emanuel and his gang. On a local PBS TV outlet show in Chicago, Rahm bragged how as Clinton White House Senior Advisor he had a desk closest to the Oval Office. The TV cameras were allowed right into the White House to show this. In effect, Rahm is reportedly the Deputy Chief, for North America, of Israel's secret police, The Mossad. Rahm is permitted to have dual citizenship. During the Persian Gulf War, he went to Israel to serve in their armed forces, reportedly in an espionage capacity. And Rahm Emanuel apparently has two faces. He supposedly has been a Clinton administration loyalist. BUT, at the same time, he reportedly controlled and directed the Israel/Red Chinese secret police circle that
manipulated Clinton on sexual scandals, diverting our attention from the oil fraud and similar important matters.. Rahm's gang ostensibly included Monica Lewinsky, whose parents for years were reportedly assets of The Mossad. Clinton/Rahm Emanuel sent Monica to the Pentagon to sniff out what Admirals and Generals were planning a coup against Clinton. In the process, she got pregnant and had an abortion.. Included apparently in the circle is Linda Tripp who previously was a covert operative of the Delta Forces, one of the few women in that capacity."
_________________

"After being Clinton White House Senior Advisor, on and off for six years, Rahm Emanuel became a bigshot with the Chicago office of Wasserstein & Perella, New York-based so-called "investment bankers" purportedly for the Red Chinese and their secret police. Through that firm, Rahm has reportedly been able to promote the agenda of China's Gestapo operating on U.S. soil. And Rahm with the financial "muscle" of the Chinese spy machine has reportedly been able to dominate various other brokers, facilitating the money laundering of illicit funds. Keeping tabs on all this with his own spy shop, Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley reportedly ordered the Irish Catholic aristocracy that manages the Chicago Board of Trade for the Rothschilds: "Get those Red Chinese 'spooks' out of there!" Result: soon thereafter on April Fool's Day, 2000, Richie Daley had a bout of hypertension that put him in Northwestern Memorial Hospital. Was it an accident or did someone send the
Mayor a message? "
_________________

"For some years, Harris Bank has been the worldwide center of foreign exchange, trading in the currencies of most every country. Known as ForEx, the trading has reportedly been the key feature in money laundering for the Chicago commodity and currency markets, the Chicago Board of Trade, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, and the Chicago Board Options Exchange.. The financial press seldom if ever mentions that the Red Chinese and the ethnic Chinese of Indonesia have an armlock on the Chicago markets. Their reputed front man has been Rahm Emanuel, for six years having been Clinton White House senior advisor. In a Chicago TV program, Emanuel bragged on camera from scenes in the White House, that his desk there was the closest to the Oval Office."
_________________

The Above Information Was Extracted From The Following Articles..

Red Chinese Blackmailing Clinton?
http://www.skolnicksreport.com/chinese.html

THE TRIPP-WIRE
by Sherman H. Skolnick, moderator/producer of Chicago public access Cable TV Show "Broadsides" since 1991, and chairman/founder since 1963, Citizen's Committee to Clean Up the Courts.
http://www.skolnicksreport.com/tripwire.html

THE RED CHINESE SECRET POLICE IN THE UNITED STATES, Part Two of a Series
by Sherman H. Skolnick
http://www.skolnicksreport.com/chinesesp2.html

Whiskey, Dope and Hot Money Banks
http://www.skolnicksreport.org/whiskey.html

The Red Chinese Secret Police In The United States Part 3
S.E.C.-China Mess Can Rock US
By Sherman H. Skolnick skolnick@ameritech.net
www.SkolnicksReport.com
11-7-8
http://rense.com/general84/red.htm
_________________

Journalist Christopher Bollyn Supporting Sherman Skolnick

Son of a Zionist Terrorist

Rahm Emanuel's Dirty Secret

By Christopher Bollyn
Independent Journalist (Without Borders)

17 November 2006

The Terrorists In The U.S. Congress

The new "golden boy" of the Democrat Party, the Israeli-American congressman Rahm Emanuel, is the son of a terrorist.

Really, I am not making this up, the chief power-broker of the Democrat Party, the 5-and-a-half foot foul-mouthed Israeli named Rahm, is the son of terrorist ­ a real living terrorist.

So, what do we do as citizens of the land of the free and the home of the brave fighting the War on Terror?

Do we run and hide from the foul-mouthed little Israeli who danced ballet and swears for effect - or do we laugh? Or do we demand answers? How can we respect a U.S. Congressman who served in a foreign army and whose father was a terrorist?

Rep. Rahm Emanuel, the Democrat congressman for the 5th District of Illinois in Chicago is the son of an Israeli terrorist. Rahm's father, Benjamin, was a member of the Irgun, the Zionist terrorist organization that coined a new word as they blew up hotels, train stations, and other buildings in Palestine in the 1930s and 40s.

Rahm was an Israeli citizen until he was 18 years old, when for obvious reasons he hid his Israeli passport in his underwear drawer. In 1991, however, he pulled his Israeli passport out and went and reportedly joined the Israeli Army to defend Zion from Saddam's Scuds.

Irgun, the army of his father, is short for Irgun Zvai Leumi, which supposedly means something like "National Military Organization" in Hebrew. As a matter of fact, the Irgun was simply a terrorist Zionist group that operated in Palestine from 1931 to 1948. They killed innocent Palestinians and British soldiers and blew up buildings.

After 1948 they became part of the new Israeli government and did the same thing. In September 2001 they put their skills to work in New York City and Washington to kick start the "war on terror" - a conflict long promoted by their chief architect, Bibi Netanyahu, son of the former secretary of Ze'ev Jabotinsky.

The Irgun even has a website with pictures of the buildings they blew up before they demolished the World Trade Center with Thermite and high explosives:

www.etzel.org.il

In Israel, the Irgun is referred to as Etzel, an acronym of the group's Hebrew initials. The Irgun was considered a terrorist organization by the British authorities as well as by mainstream Zionist and Jewish organizations, such as the Jewish Agency, the Haganah and the Histadrut. (It just has not made it onto the U.S. State Department's list of terrorist organizations ­ even after blowing up the World Trade Center. Some people are slow to learn.)

Irgun was founded by Ze'ev Jabotinsky and the relationship with Jabotinsky's Revisionist Zionism made it the predecessor to Israel's right-wing Herut and Likud parties.

Guess who runs Israel today?

Answer: The sons and daughters of Irgun. (Check out the commander list on the Etzel website if you don't believe me.)

Guess who runs the United States today? The same people ­ let's start with Rahm Emanuel.

Of course you won't find anything about Rep. Emanuel's father's exploits in Palestine on Rahm's website: http://www..house.gov/emanuel/aboutrahm.shtml

The late Sherman Skolnick of Chicago called Rahm Emanuel the "Acting Deputy Chief for North America of the Mossad ­ Israeli Intelligence."
cloakanddagger.de Rahm Emanuel

Skolnick went on to say that Emanuel's father Benjamin had been "part of the Israeli assassin team that murdered Sweden's Count [Folke] Bernadotte" in 1948. Bernadotte was the envoy of the United Nations in Palestine who sought to find a solution to the UN Partition Plan that gave Palestinian land to Jews from "beyond the pale."

Was Skolnick correct? Skolnick does not document his claims so I checked into his allegations.

"Beyond the pale" would certainly describe where Rahm Emanuel's family came from. His father's family came to Palestine from somewhere in the Ukraine in 1917, according to what Dr. Benjamin M. Emanuel told me the other day. Dr. Emanuel now lives on the appropriately named Locust Road in Wilmette, Illinois.

Benjamin, speaking with a thick Israeli accent, told me that his father's name was Ezekiel Auerbach and that his mother's name was Pinina or something like that. He said it meant "pearl" in Hebrew. Asked about his role in the Irgun, Ben told me he had been a "simple soldier."

Yes, Ben, but serving as "simple soldier" in a terrorist organization makes you a terrorist. And the fact that you served in a terrorist organization 60 years ago makes no difference. You know, same rules for Nazis and terrorists.

Is that not what all those fellows in Guantanamo are being held for?

The Emanuel family name was Auerbach until 1936, although they are not related to the famous rabbinical family of Germany and Krakow named Auerbach. Ben said that his family was from Russia. (Well, the pale but not quite Russia.)

His father Ezekiel supposedly changed the family name to Emanuel when his son with that name died fighting Palestinians in 1936.

Many Jewish families in Palestine changed their names to make themselves sound like they actually came from Palestine. And you wondered where all those Jews disappeared during World War II?

Sheinerman became Sharon, Yezernitzky became Shamir, and Auerbach became Emanuel, and so on. And then multiply by a few hundred thousand. Voila! Millions of European Jews vanish from the face of the Earth - and build new lives in Palestine.

Ben told me that Emanuel Auerbach had died from "shrapnel in the knee" in 1936. When I asked him today for details on this incident he suddenly decided that he did not want to do an interview on the phone and hung up.

But before he terminated the conversation, Dr. Benjamin Auerbach-cum-Emanuel told me that he had been a member of the Irgun and had served under Menachem Begin.. He told me that he had never met Begin and had not smuggled weapons into Palestine, other news reports notwithstanding.

Naftali Bendavid (not a local reporter) with The Chicago Tribune spent 18 months working with Rahm Emanuel to prepare a story for the week after the mid-term elections although Naftali did not think that there was enough room in the 9-page story to mention the salient fact that Dr. Benjamin Emanuel had been a member of the terrorist organization ­ the Irgun.

No. In 9 pages of Bendavid's fluff piece there was simply no room to mention the ugly fact that Rahm's father had been a member of a terrorist organization.

Naftali Bendavid (clearly of Israeli persuasion) wrote a 9-page cover story for last Sunday's paper, which took up the entire second section of the now-failing Chicago Tribune.. (The latest rumor in Chicago is that the indicted but not convicted Zionist criminal Maurice Greenberg may buy the Tribune.)

(This is the same paper that actually hired an outside writer from TIME magazine to co-author a short piece in order to properly smear me and misrepresent the story of my brutal arrest at the hands of Homeland Security goons last August.)

Naftali, at his office in Washington, knew all about Irgun when I spoke with him on the phone. When I said it was an egregious omission to leave out the fact that Rahm's father had been in the Irgun, he said he just couldn't figure how to squeeze that bit into a 9-page article.

Naftali, let me help, as English is my mother tongue: "Rahm Emanuel's father Benjamin was a member of the Irgun, a Zionist terrorist group that operated in Palestine from 1931 to 1948. The Irgun blew up buildings and killed hundreds of innocent people in order to achieve the goals of militant Zionism in occupied Palestine."

Rahm's mother is Martha Smulevitz, who married the Israeli doctor in August 1955. Ben told me that they met in Chicago. I asked if she was related to the Smulevitz family that was living in Palestine in the 1930s. He said no.

There are Smulevitz's and Shmuelevitz's all throughout the Zionist invasion of Palestine. One was hanged by the Brits, one dealt with the Nazis in Berlin, and another was the chief of staff for Menachem Begin ­ take your pick.

It would, however, be most interesting if Rahm's father were actually related to Moshe Auerbach, the Zionist who went to Berlin with Pino Ginzburg to arrange the transfer of Jews and money to Palestine ­ with the Nazi regime.

On February 28 1937, Feivel Polkes, head of the Haganah told Adolf Eichmann that he was interested most of all in "accelerating Jewish migration to Palestine so that the Jews would obtain a majority over the Arabs in his country."

In The Secret Contacts: Zionism and Nazi Germany -1933-1941 by Klaus Polkehn, he revealed that collaboration between the Zionists and the Third Reich was cemented by the "Mossad Aliyah Beth" which had been created by Haganah as an illegal immigration organization. Pina Ginsburg and Moshe Auerbach, with the blessings of the Reich, set up offices in Berlin to carry out their immigration activities in 1938.

Here is a page from Klaus Polkehn's book.

And you wonder where Rahm Emanuel got his "chutzpah" from?
Photo: "I said before the election that if the Democrats win the House, the lion's share of the credit should go to Rahm," says Rep. Ray LaHood, an Illinois Republican. "He legitimately can be called the golden boy of the Democratic Party today. He recruited the right candidates, found the money and funded them, and provided issues for them. Rahm did what no one else could do in seven cycles."
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/
2006/11/08/AR2006110802239.html

And the fact that more than 70 percent of the American population is opposed to wasting U.S. blood and treasure to fight a Zionist war in Iraq means nothing?

ADDITIONAL RELATED ARTICLES & FORUMS DEALING WITH RAHM EMANUEL

(please copy to your computer ASAP, as this information may soon 'disappear' from the internet)

http://theuniversalseduction..com/articles/sherman-skolnick-of-
chicago-said-emanuel-was-the-head-of-the-mossad-in-the-usa-what-the

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/profiles/3392848/
Profile-Rahm-Emanuel-Barack-Obamas-new-enforcer.html

http://www.vnnforum.com/showthread.php?p=874797

http://foxmulder.blox.pl/2008/11/Rahmbo.html

http://www.pharmalot.com/2008/11/chief-of-staff-
rahm-emanuel-a-friend-to-pharma/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/08/obama-
rahm-emanuel-white-house

http://vindy.com/news/2008/nov/07/raum-emanuel-is-
known-for-getting-things-dones/

http://samsedershow.com/node/262

http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=3391

http://www.wakeupfromyourslumber.com/node/8968

http://www..shout.net/~bigred/cn.html

http://www.rense.com/general83/eman.htm

http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message657557/pg1

source: www.rense.com