NATO's Assault on Syria. Tarpley on 'Guns and Butter'

Illuminati Targets Russia

(Excerpted from Chapter 17: Caspian Sea Oil Grab: Big Oil & Their Bankers…)
December 4^th parliamentary elections in Russia were marked by outside interference by US-based NGO’s. Nearly 50,000 Muscovites – most members of the Communist Party – protested the fraudulent results in Bolotnaya Square near the Kremlin.
Despite the National Endowment for Democracy/Freedom House-funded ruse, the Communist Party still picked up the most seats. These results, along with Putin’s sending of an aircraft carrier to Syria and Russia’s Ambassador being kicked out of Qatar, indicate a Russia moving in a leftward direction.
This makes the Illuminati banksters very nervous.
Last week Mikhail Dmitrievitch Prokhorov announced that he would run for President in 2012. Prokhorov owns the New Jersey Nets basketball team and is worth $18 billion. He is the 3^rd richest man in Russia and the 32^nd richest man in the world.
Prokhorov is likely a Mikail Khodorkovsky-protégé front-man for the international bankers. He will play the same role that Croat billionaire Milan Panic filled when he ran for President of Yugoslavia in 1992. Panic lost to Slobodan Milosevic, whose country was shortly thereafter torn asunder by the banksters. Milosevic was later poisoned in the Hague after he embarrassed prosecutors via his vigorous defense.
If Prokohorov loses, will the banksters resort to violence against the Russian state?
It certainly wouldn’t be the first time the Illuminati has targeted resource-rich Russia.
Unholy Alliance
While the international banking syndicates had always dealt with the Soviet Union, access to its vast oil resources remained limited.  Ronald Reagan entered the White House in 1980 determined to splinter the Soviet Union into little pieces and open the country’s oilfields to the Four Horsemen.  His point man in doing so was CIA Director Bill Casey, whose Roman Catholic Knights of Malta connections were thoroughly exploited.
The Vatican’s secretive Opus Dei “saintly Mafia” was behind the ascent of Polish Cardinal Karol Wojtyla to the Papacy.  Wojtyla became Pope John Paul II and launched an Opus Dei/Vatican offensive to roll back Latin American liberation theology movements and East European communism.  Fascism came naturally to Karol Wojtyla.  During the 1940’s he was a chemical salesman for Nazi combine I. G. Farben.  Wojtyla sold the Nazis the cyanide they used at their Auschwitz death camps.  One of his best friends was Dr. Wolf Szmuness, mastermind of the 1978 Center for Disease Control Hepatitis B study in the US, through which the AIDS virus was introduced into the gay population. [722]
In 1982 Reagan met with Pope John Paul II.  Prior to the meeting Reagan signed NSD-32, authorizing a wide range of economic, diplomatic and covert activities to “neutralize the USSR’s hold on Eastern Europe”.  At the meeting the two agreed to launch a clandestine program to tear Eastern Europe away from the Soviets.  Poland, the Pope’s country of origin, would be the key.  Catholic priests, the AFL-CIO, the National Endowment for Democracy, the Vatican Bank and CIA would all be deployed.
The Vatican is the world’s largest owner of equities, using Swiss affiliate Banco di Roma per la Svizzera to conduct its more discretionary business.  Italian fascist Benito Mussolini gave the Vatican generous tax exemptions which it still enjoys.  Banco Ambrosiano’s P-2 leader Robert Calvi’s Grand Oriente Freemason’s supported reconciliation with the Vatican.  Relations between the Vatican and the Freemasons were strained in the 11th century when the Greek Orthodox split from the Roman Catholics. Knights Templar and the Knights Hospitaler of St. John factions emerged.  The latter was the Catholic faction. They changed their name to the Knights of Malta, after the island where they found refuge after their Crusades defeat, with help from the Vatican.  Malta is a nexus of CIA/MI6/Mossad intrigues.
In the 13th century Pope Clement V, backed by France’s King Philip, charged the Protestant Knights Templars with heresy, citing their penchant for drug running, arms peddling, gambling and prostitution rings.  These activities are what made the Templars “filthy rich”.  Pope Clement made an example of Templar leader Jaques de Molay, whom he burned at the stake on Friday the 13th. [723]  The Templars took their loot and fled to Scotland to found Scottish Rite Freemasonry.  They bankrolled the House of Windsor, which controls Britain and presides at the apex of Freemasonry around the world.  Masonic Lodge members enroll their children in the de Molay Society, which is named in honor of the toasted Templar pirate.
Calvi’s attempt to reconcile protestant and Catholic secret societies was a success. He became paymaster to the Polish Solidarity movement, while Nixon Treasury Secretary David Kennedy’s dirty Continental Illinois Bank served as conduit for CIA funds sent by Bank of Cicero asset Bishop Paul Marcinkus to fund Solidarity. [724]  The Vatican teamed up with Europe’s Black Nobility, the Bilderbergers and CIA to launch the top-secret JASON Society and armed South American dictators to quash liberation theology.  In 1978 when Pope John Paul II took power, the Vatican issued a commemorative stamp featuring an Egyptian pyramid and the Roshaniya all-seeing eye. [725]  The Vatican and the Illuminati Brotherhood were reunited.
Reagan’s meetings with Pope John Paul II were an affirmation of this powerful new alliance, which would now focus on bringing the Soviet Union to its knees.  Even before Reagan met with the Pope the CIA had groomed an informant at the Polish Ministry of Defense- Colonel Ryszard Kuklinski.  Kuklinski reported to the Vatican and helped organize the Polish Solidarity Movement, led by the wealthy Radziwill family who had funded JFK assassins via Permindex.  Most Solidarity leaders were old-money aristocrats.
The precursor to Solidarity was the National Alliance of Solidarists, a Russian/Eastern European fascist hit squad funded by RD/Shell’s Sir Henry Deterding and German Vickers Arms Corporation President Sir Basil Zacharoff.  Sir Auckland Geddes of Rio Tinto Zinc, which bankrolled Francisco Franco’s fascist coup in Spain, also contributed to the Solidarists.  Geddes’ nephew- Ford Irvine Geddes- was chairman of the Inchcape’s Peninsular & Orient Navigation Company from 1971-1972. [726]
The Solidarist’s US headquarters was the Tolstoy Foundation, which is housed in the same building as Julius Klein Associates, which ran guns to the murderous Haganah and Stern Gang Zionist death squads who stole Palestinian lands to found Israel. Klein was an M16 Permindex insider who helped plan the JFK hit.
The Solidarists stepchild, the Solidarity Movement, was touted in the Western media as a great Polish liberating force.  With boatloads of CIA help, Solidarity toppled the Communist government in Warsaw. Their straw man Lech Walesa became President of Poland.  In 1995 Walesa was defeated by former Communist leader Aleksander Kwasniewski.  Walesa was rewarded for his boot licking with a job at Pepsico.
CIA Director Casey demanded a constant focus on Eastern Europe at CIA.  Casey met often with Philadelphia Roman Catholic Cardinal John Krol to discuss the Solidarity Movement.  He utilized his Knights of Malta connections, leaning heavily on Brother Vernon Walters, whose spook resume read like a James Bond novel.  Walter’s latest incarnation was Reagan Ambassador at Large to Vatican Secretary of State Agostino Cardinal Casaroli. [727]  By 1991 Walters was US Ambassador to the UN, where he successfully beat the drums of war against Iraq.  He was in Fiji that same year, just prior to the overthrow of that left-leaning government.
Other Knights of Malta members involved in the Eastern European destabilization effort were Reagan NSA and Robert Vesco lieutenant Richard Allen, Reagan NSA Judge William Clark, Reagan Ambassador to the Vatican William Wilson and Zbigniew Brzezinski.  Other prominent Knights of Malta members include Prescott Bush, Nixon Treasury Secretary William Simon, Nixon coup-plotter Alexander Haig, contra supporter J. Peter Grace and Venezuelan Rockefeller lieutenant Gustavo Cisneros.
The Reagan team had a five-part strategy in its efforts to destroy the Soviet Union.  First, it would pursue the JASON Society’s Star Wars concept in an attempt to engage the Soviets in a space-based arms race which they knew Moscow could not afford.  Second, the CIA would launch covert operations in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary in attempts to overthrow those Soviet-allied governments.  While Walesa emerged in Poland, poet Vaclev Havel became CIA white knight in Czechoslovakia.  Like Walesa, Havel became unpopular and was soon tossed out of his puppet presidency.
A component of the CIA destabilization program was to buy weapons from these East European nations to arm CIA-sponsored rebels in Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Angola and Mozambique, using BCCI and later BNL as conduits.  The US also wanted to get their hands on the high-tech Soviet arsenal.  Poland secretly sold the US an array of advanced Soviet weaponry worth $200 million.  Romania did the same. Both countries saw their foreign debts reduced significantly. [728]
The third component of the Reagan strategy was to make financial aid to the Warsaw Pact contingent on economic privatization.  Fourth, the US would blanket East European and Soviet airwaves with pro-Western propaganda, using fronts like Radio Liberty, Radio Free Europe and the Voice of America.  The CIA financed local newspapers and magazines.
The Company got help inside the Soviet Union from its Mossad buddies in an effort spearheaded by media mogul and Mossad paymaster Robert Maxwell.  When Maxwell threatened to reveal a meeting between KGB head Vladimir Kryuchkov and Mossad brass aboard his private yacht at which a coup against Mikhail Gorbachev was discussed, Mossad ordered a hit on Maxwell.  On November 4, 1991 as he sailed around the Canary Islands Maxwell was assassinated by Israeli commandos.  The mass exodus of Russian Jews to Israeli-occupied settlements in Palestine was part of the secret deal between Mossad and Kryuchkov, who is still serving time in a Moscow prison for his treasonous role in the Gorbachev coup. [729]
But it was the fifth and final component of Reagan’s strategy that had the Four Horsemen salivating.  Reagan’s spooks initiated an economic warfare campaign against the Soviet Union, which included a freeze on technology transfers, counterfeiting of the Russian ruble and the sponsoring of separatist Islamist groups in the Soviet Central Asian Caucasus. The jihadis who were instructed to target a key transcontinental natural gas pipeline which the Soviets were building.  The Soviets had more natural gas than any country on earth and saw the completion of this pipeline as their cash cow for the 21st century. [730]  Big Oil wanted to milk that cow.
It’s the Oil, Stupid
When the Soviet Union’s last President Mikhail Gorbachev announced his perestroika and glasnost campaigns to privatize his country’s economy, he was aiding the Illuminati in destroying his country.  Was Gorbachev duped, an unwitting accomplice, a CIA deep-cover agent or a mind-controlled Operation Presidio Temple of Set victim?  Whatever the case, he played a key role in dismantling the Soviet Union.
The Soviets controlled not only the vast resources of their own nation, but Third World resources in Soviet-allied Comecon nations.  Part of perestroika was to cease Soviet aid to these developing nations to ease the growing Soviet debt burden which, like the US debt, accrued largely from decades of Cold War military spending.  The two superpowers’ debt was held by the same international banks, which now used this debt lever to pick a winner and to open Russian and Third World resource pools to their corporate tentacles. [731]
When the Berlin Wall fell and Gorbachev was overthrown in favor of IMF crony Boris Yeltsin, the Four Horsemen rushed to Moscow to begin making oil deals.  Oil and natural gas had always been the Soviet’s main export and it remained so for the new Russia.  In 1991, the country earned $13 billion in hard currency from oil exports.  In 1992 Yeltsin announced that Russia’s world leading 9.2 billion barrel/day oil sector would be privatized.
Sixty percent of Russia’s Siberian reserves had never been tapped. [732]  In 1993 the World Bank announced a $610 billion loan to modernize Russia’s oil industry- by far the largest loan in the bank’s history.  World Bank subsidiary International Finance Corporation bought stock in several Russian oil companies and made an additional loan to the Bronfman’s Conoco for its purchase of Siberian Polar Lights Company. [733]
The main vehicle for international banker control over Russian oil was Lukoil, initially 20%-owned by BP Amoco and Credit Suisse First Boston, where Clinton Yugoslav envoy and Dayton Peace Accords architect Richard Holbrooke worked.  Bush Sr. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh, who orchestrated the BNL cover-up, was now CS First Boston’s Chief Financial Officer.  A handful of Zionist Russian oligarchs, collectively known as the Russian Mafia, owned the rest of Lukoil, which served as the Saudi ARAMCO of Russia for the Four Horsemen, a partner to Big Oil in projects throughout the country which involved truly staggering amounts of capital.
These included Sakhalin Islands projects known as Sakhalin I, a $15 billion Exxon Mobil venture; and Sakhalin II, a $10 billion deal led by Royal Dutch/Shell which included Mitsubishi, Mitsui and Marathon Oil as partners.  Siberian developments were even larger.  RD/Shell is a 24.5% partner in Uganskneftegasin, which controls a huge Siberian natural gas field.  At Priobskoye, BP Amoco operates a $53 billion project. At Timan Pechora on the Arctic Ocean a consortium made up of Exxon Mobil, Chevron Texaco, BP Amoco and Norsk Hydo runs a $48 billion venture.
In November 2001 Exxon Mobil announced plans to invest another $12 billion in an oil and gas project in the Russian Far East.  RD/Shell announced a $8.5 billion investment in its Sakhalin Islands concessions.  BP Amoco made similar proclamations. [734]  In 1994 Lukoil pumped 416 million barrels of oil, making it fourth largest producer in the world after RD/Shell, Exxon Mobil and part-owner BP Amoco.  Its fifteen billion barrels in crude reserves rank second in the world to Royal Dutch/ Shell. [735]
The Soviet Caucasus, with encouragement from Langley, soon split from Russia.  The map of Central Asia was re-written as Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Ukraine and Georgia all declared their independence.  The pipeline Reagan ordered targeted carried Soviet natural gas east to the North Pacific port of Vladivostok and west to the Black Sea port of Novorrossiysk from the world’s richest known natural gas fields lying beneath and abutting the shoreline of the Caspian Sea, which lies in the heart of Caucasus.
The Four Horsemen coveted this resource more than any in the world.  They wanted to build their own private pipelines once they got their hands on the Caspian Sea natural gas fields, which also contain an estimated 200 billion barrels of crude oil.  Oil industry privatizations were quickly announced in the new Central Asian Republics which had, by virtue of their independence, taken control of the vast Caspian Sea oil and gas reserves.  By 1991 Chevron was holding talks with Kazakhstan. [736]
The Central Asian Republics became the largest recipients of USAID aid, as well as ExIm Bank, OPIC and CCC loans.  Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan were especially favored. These countries control the shoreline of the Caspian Sea, along with Russia and Iran.  In 1994 Kazakhstan received $311 million in US aid and another $85 million to help dismantle Soviet-era nuclear weapons.  President Clinton met with Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev. They signed an array of agreements ranging from disarmament deals to space research cooperation.  Kazakhstan, with an estimated 17.6 billion barrels of oil reserves, had been a strategic part of the Soviet nuclear weapons grid and was home to the Soviet space program.
The two leaders also signed an agreement providing investment protection for US multinationals.  The Free Trade Institute and US Chamber of Commerce sent officials to train Kazakhs in the finer arts of global capitalism.  The Four Horsemen moved in swiftly. Chevron Texaco laid claim to the biggest prize- the $20 billion Tenghiz oilfield- then grabbed another gusher at Korolev.  Exxon Mobil signed a deal to develop an offshore concession in the Caspian. [737]  Tengizchevroil is 45%-owned by Chevron Texaco and 25%-owned by Exxon Mobil. [738]  President George W. Bush’s NSA and later Secretary of State Condaleeza Rice, an expert on Central Asia, sat on the board at Chevron alongside George Schultz from 1989-1992. She even had an oil tanker named after her.
Across the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan was receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in US aid.  BP Amoco led a consortium of seven oil giants who spent an initial $8 billion to develop three concessions off the coast of the capital Baku- historic base camp of Big Oil in the region. [739]  BP Amoco and Pennzoil- recently acquired by Royal Dutch/Shell- took control of the Azerbaijan Oil Company, whose board of directors included former Bush Sr. Secretary of State James Baker.
In 1991 Air America super spook Richard Secord showed up in Baku under the cover of MEGA Oil. [740]  Secord & Company did military training, sold Israeli arms, passed “brown bags filled with cash” and shipped in over 2,000 Islamist fighters from Afghanistan with help from Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.  Afghan heroin began flooding into Baku.  Russian economist Alexandre Datskevitch said of 184 heroin labs that police discovered in Moscow in 1991, “Every one of them was run by Azeris, who use the proceeds to buy arms for Azerbaijan’s war against Armenia in Nagorno-Karabakh”. [741]
A Turkish intelligence source claims that Exxon and Mobil were behind the 1993 coup against elected Armenian President Abulfaz Elchibey.  Secord’s Islamists helped. Osama bin Laden set up an NGO in Baku as a base for attacking the Russians in Chechnya and Dagestan.  A more pliant President Heidar Aliyev was installed. In 1996, at the behest of Amoco’s president, he was invited to the White House to meet President Clinton- whose NSA Sandy Berger held $90,000 worth of Amoco stock. [742]
Armenian separatists backed by the CIA took over the strategic Armenian regions of Nagorno-Karabakh and Nakhnichevan which border Turkey and Iran.  When Turkish President Turgut Ozal mentioned intervention in Nakhnichevan to back the Azerbaijani seizure, Turkish Premier Suleyman Demirel quickly played down the statement from the key US ally.  These two regions are critical to Big Oil plans to build a pipeline from the Caspian Sea across Turkey to the Russian Black Sea port of Novorrossiysk.  The same route is utilized by Turkey’s Gray Wolves mafia in their Central Asia to Europe heroin endeavors.  When Gray Wolf Mehmet Ali Agca tried to assassinate Pope John Paul II in 1981, the CIA used its Gladio strategy, trying to pin it on Bulgaria’s Communist Lukashenko government.
Lukoil owns 26% of the Russian Black Sea port at Novorrossiysk.  Its president Vayit Alekperov wanted to build the Caspian pipeline through Grozny in Chechnya, while the Four Horsemen preferred the route through Turkey.  CIA support for Armenian separatists and Chechen Islamist rebels ensured chaos in Grozny. Alekperov finally agreed to the Turkish route.
In 2003 the Defense Department proposed a $3.8 million military training grant for Azerbaijan.  Later they admitted it was to protect US access to oil.  As author Michael Klare put it, “Slowly but surely, the US military is being converted into a global oil-protection service”. [743]
Turkmenistan, which borders the Caspian Sea on the southeast, is a virtual gas republic, containing massive deposits of natural gas.  It also has vast reserves of oil, copper, coal, tungsten, zinc, uranium and gold.  The biggest gas field is at Dauletabad in the southeast of the country, near the Afghan border.  The Unocal-led Centgas set about building a pipeline which would connect the oil fields around Chardzhan to the Siberian oilfields further north.  More crucial to Centgas was a gas pipeline from Dauletabad across Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Indian Ocean. [744] Advisers to the project included Henry Kissinger. Unocal is now part of Chevron.
With the Four Horsemen firmly in charge of Caspian Sea reserves, the Caspian Pipeline Consortium was born.  Chevron Texaco took a 15% stake with the other three Horsemen and Lukoil splitting the rest.  Pipeline security was provided by the Israeli firm Magal Security Systems, which is connected to Mossad.  Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan have especially cozy relations with Israel via Special Ambassador Yusef Maiman, who is president of the Israeli Mehrav Group.  Mehrav is involved in a project in Turkey to divert water from the upper Tigres and Euphrates Rivers to the southeast part of Turkey and away from Iraq. [745]  The Caspian pipeline was built by Bechtel in partnership with GE and Wilbros Group.  The pipeline quietly began moving oil and gas in November 2001, just two months after 911.
Bechtel also built the oilfield infrastructure at Tengiz for Chevron Texaco.  In 1995 Bechtel led a USAID-funded consortium to restructure the energy sectors of eleven Central and Eastern European nations in line with IMF mandates.  Bechtel received a massive contract to upgrade Russia’s many ailing aluminum smelters in tandem with Pechiney.  Lukoil contracted with New Jersey-based ABB Lummus Crest (formed when engineering giants Asea Braun Boveri and Lummis Crest merged) to build a $1.3 billion refinery at the Novorrossysk port and to do a $700 million upgrade on its refinery at Perm.
The Bush Jr. Administration now planned a series of additional Caspian Sea pipelines to compliment the Tenghiz-Black Sea route.  A Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan pipeline was built by a Four Horsemen consortium led by BP Amoco.  The law firm representing the BP-led consortium is James Baker’s family law firm- Baker Botts.  The BP Amoco pipeline runs the length of the country of Georgia through its capital Tblisi.
In February 2002 the US announced plans to send 200 military advisers and attack helicopters to Georgia to “root our terrorism”. [746]  The deployment was a smokescreen for pipeline protection.  In September 2002 Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivaniov accused Georgia of harboring Chechen rebels.  In October 2003 Georgian President Eduard Schevardnadze was forced to step down in a bloodless revolution.  According to a December 11, 2003 article on the World Socialist Party website, CIA sponsored the coup.
In September 2004 hundreds of Russian school children were killed when Chechen separatists seized their school building.  Russian President Vladimir Putin said of the incident, “Certain political circles in the West want to weaken Russia, just like the Romans wanted to weaken Carthage.”  He accused “foreign intelligence services” of complicity in the attacks.  His adviser Aslanbek Aslakhanov went further, stating on Russian Channel 2 News, “The men had their conversations not within Russia, but with other countries.  They were led on a leash.  Our self-styled friends have been working for several decades to dismember Russia… (they are the) puppeteers and are financing terror.”  Russia’s KM News ran the headline, “School Seizure was Planned in Washington and London”. [747]
Lukoil epitomizes the corruption so rampant in Russia since the Soviet collapse.  Bribery is the norm. Lukoil has given luxury jets to the mayor of Moscow, the head of Gazprom (the state-owned natural gas monopoly) and Kazakhstan President Nazarbayev.  In the mid-1990’s Lukoil announced that it would sell another 15 % stake to foreign stockholders through its largest owner and financial adviser CS First Boston and the Bank of New York. [748]  In 2002 they announced plans to sell off another big stake.
According to Kurt Wulff of the oil investment firm McDep Associates, the Four Horsemen, romping in their new Far East pastures, saw asset increases from 1988-1994 as follows: Exxon Mobil- 54%, Chevron Texaco- 74%, Royal Dutch/Shell- 52% and BP Amoco- 54%.  The Horsemen had more than doubled their collective assets in six short years.  This quantum leap in Anglo-American global power had everything to do with the takeover of the old Soviet oil patch and the subsequent impoverishment of its birthright owners.
[722] Behold a Pale Horse. William Cooper. Light Technology Publishing. Sedona, AZ. 1991.
[723] The Robot’s Rebellion: The Story of the Spiritual Renaissance. David Icke. Gateway Books. Bath, UK. 1994. p.94
[724] Hot Money and the Politics of Debt. R.T. Naylor. The Linden Press/Simon & Schuster. New York. 1987. p.78
[725] Ibid. p.165
[726] Dope Inc.: The Book that Drove Kissinger Crazy. The Editors of Executive Intelligence Review. Washington, DC. 1992
[727] “The Unholy Alliance”. Carl Bernstein. Time. 2-24-92. p.28
[728] “US Obtained Soviet Arsenal from Poland”. Eugene Register-Guard. 2-13-94
[729] The Other Side Of Deception. Victor Ostravsky. HarperCollins Publishers. New York. 1994.
[730] Bernstein. p.28
[731] “The Dismantling of the Soviet Union”. Peter Symon. Philippine Currents. November/December 1991.
[732] “Drilling for a Miracle”. Fred Coleman. US News & World Report. 12-7-92. p.54
[733] Evening Edition. National Public Radio. 6-18-93
[734] “Exxon’s Russian Oil Deal Makes Other Firms Feel Lucky”. Wall Street Journal. 12-13-01
[735] “The Seven Sisters Have a Baby Brother”. Paul Klebnikov. Forbes. 1-22-96. p.70
[736] Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia. Ahmed Rashid. Yale University Publishing. New Haven, CT. 2001. p.145
[737] “Christopher Promises Aid to Oil-Rich Kazakhstan”. AP. Northwest Arkansas Morning News. 10-24-93
[738] 10K Filings to SEC. Exxon Mobil and Chevron Corporations. 3-28-01
[739] “The Quietly Determined American”. Paul Klebnikov. Forbes. 10-24-94. p.48
[740] Azerbaijan Diary: A Rogue Reporter’s Adventures in a Oil-Rich, War-Torn, Post- Soviet Republic. Thomas Goltz. M.E. Sharpe. Armonk, NY. 1999. p.272
[741] “al-Qaeda, US Oil Companies and Central Asia”. Peter Dale Scott. Nexus. May-June, 2006. p.11-15
[742] See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA’s War on Terrorism. Robert Baer. Crown. New York. 2002. p.243-244
[743] Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America’s Growing Dependency on Imported Petroleum. Michael T. Klare. Metropolitan/Henry Holt. 2004. p.6-7
[744] Escobar. Part I
[745] “The Roving Eye: Pipelineistan, Part II: The Games Nations Play”. Pepe Escobar. Asia Times Online. 1-26-02
[746] “Wolf Blitzer Reports”. CNN. 2-27-02
[747] “Paranotes: Russian School Seige Conspiracy”. Al Hidell. Paranoia. Issue 37. Winter 2005.
[748] Klebnikov. 1-22-96. p.72
Dean Henderson is the author of Big Oil & Their Bankers in the Persian Gulf: Four Horsemen, Eight Families & Their Global Intelligence, Narcotics & Terror Network, The Grateful Unrich: Revolution in 50 Countries and Das Kartell der Federal Reserve. Subscriptions to his Left Hook blog are FREE at www.deanhenderson.wordpress.com

Twelve biggest US lies of 2011

As 2011 draws to a close, an award-winning US magazine has handpicked a dozen of the most monstrous lies that Washington has delivered to the world over the past year.
“I live in Washington where lying is an art form,” David J. Rothkopf wrote on the Foreign Policy website.
Before enumerating the most egregious US lies of 2011, Rothkopf divides the fallacious statements uttered by Washington into three categories.
Some, he says, are known for their “subtlety”, like President Barack Obama wanting to get special interests out of American politics. They “almost” feel true, Rothkopf says.
Others stand out for their “audacity”, like Newt Gingrich bringing down communism.
And last but not least are those which capture our attention for being offered with a “straight face,” like Mitt Romney saying he has deeply held political convictions.
Rothkopf, however, says among the plethora of US mendacious claims there are some which are most outstanding.

“They are the big lies that have defined our times,” he says, proceeding to catalogue those fibs.

1. “The war in Iraq is finally over after nine years.”
Rothkopf notes the US has been militarily engaged in Iraq since the early 1990 and this will likely be just the end of another installment in the long running series of US warmongering policies in the region.

2. “America’s mission in Iraq was a success.”
He expresses astonishment at such a claim while Iraq is divided, undemocratic, corrupt, and the US invasion has cost USD1 trillion, thousands of US lives, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives, and its national reputation. US war in Iraq bears greater semblance to a full-scale “fiasco”, he says.

3. “We are winning in Afghanistan.”
Rothkopf describes this one as a hot from the oven “howler” by the US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta. Washington has strengthened the region’s extremists and the threat of instability in nuclear Pakistan is now actually higher than it was when US went in, he says.

4. Tie: “Pakistan is America’s ally” and “Afghanistan is America’s partner.”
Neither Pakistan nor Afghanistan can by any “credible definition” be called a US ally. This is attested to by the animosity of Islamabad towards Washington and Kabul’s belittling of the US on the world stage, Rothkopf says.

5. “America is unthreatened by China’s growth.”
A “prayer” by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Rothkopf says. “It should be true. But it’s not,” he adds.

6. Tie: “Republicans are the problem” and “Democrats are the problem.”
Rothkopf dubs this one as “the great lie of American politics.” He says the problem with US politics is not the parties, but the money. “The system is so resolutely corrupt that recent scandals have only resulted in more money flowing into the system and past reforms being undone,” he notes.

7. “Cutting the taxes of millionaires helps create US jobs.”
There is not even one single solitary shred of evidence to support this “idiotic” suggestion, Rothkopf notes.

8. “This next summit of European leaders will be decisive …”
Rothkopf says despite the fact that this claim has been made every few weeks for the past months, the “supposedly sophisticated financial markets” of the United States continue to fall for it.

9. “The Obama administration is committed to serious financial services reform.”
The US financial system is still plagued by all the threats that instigated the 2008 recession. “Not an inch of progress,” Rothkopf says.

10. “Only nine percent of Americans approve of Congress.”
“This can’t possibly be true. There can’t possibly be that many,” Rothkopf says in a stinging sarcastic tone.

11. “The operation in Libya will be over in a matter of days or weeks.”
Rothkopf says the operation was wrong to begin with, “and then wrong and then wrong again for months.”

12. “I love Israel.”
Even though everyone in US politics makes such an assertion, nobody really means it, Rothkopf notes. What the politicians really mean, however, is that “I want American Jews to think I love Israel enough to vote for me and give me money,” he says.

“Those are just a few of a bumper year for duplicity, mendacity, and craven misstatements,” Rothkopf concludes.

Source.

TAB: Stolen Liberty – SOPA and SB 1867

By Mark Mayberry
Truth About Bills

Benjamin Franklin said, “Those who trade liberty for security, deserve neither.”
This has become the climate of America, simply put. We are willing to give up everything for one special interest group or to feel a little safer at night. What I am referring to are two pieces of legislation that could be the most outrageous since the infamous Patient Protection and Affordable Car Act, also known as Obamacare. These two pieces of legislation are worlds apart but both carry the same disease of big government. The legislation I am referring to is the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the National Defense Authorization Act amendment SB 1867. They say that a frog will be slowly cooked to death as long as the water starts out cold. With these two pieces of legislation currently in Congress, the burner has been lit, oh and we are the frogs!

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) was introduced to the House of Representatives on October 26, 2011. Lamar Smith (R-TX) and a bi-partisan group of representatives introduced it to the House floor as a way to stop online copyright infringement in the United States. It’s odd that it came out so close to Halloween as it was dressed up as a harmless bill. On the surface it sounds like anyone can get behind this, unless you are stealing movies and music that is. The interesting thing is that unlike most Halloween costumes it gets scarier when the mask is removed. SOPA would allow the Department of Justice (DOJ) and interested parties such as copyright holders to seek court hearings and eventual injunctions to shut down the web sites that are accused of copyright infringement. Also within this bill the parties can seek injunctions to bar payment sites like Paypal and compel search engines like Google to exclude these sites from search results under force of law. It would also force Internet service providers to block access to these sites engaging in copyright infringement. This bill would make it a FELONY to stream copyrighted material. To put it in prospective, most of you reading this have committed a felony today. There is a stipulation that copyright holders who “knowingly” falsely accuse a website will be held liable for punitive damages. Good luck ever proving that anyone knew, let me remind you that these are the same courts that just allowed Casey Anthony to skate.
Let’s get into the ramifications of SOPA. This legislation extends into a lot of areas outside of the Internet. If the law goes into effect the government could dictate to Paypal, Visa and many others who they could and could not do business with. There is not another industry in America where this would fly. Google and others would be required to remove sites from their registry or be prosecuted. These search engines have the right to supply people with any sites that are available and to force them to comply with this would be to violate their rights to do business as well. Again the government would compel Internet service providers to block out these sites and would be forced to unfairly censor the Internet to their customers. What this amounts to is the government’s ability to turn off someone’s mouthpiece at anytime under the auspices of protecting copyrights. If the government decided that they were getting to much bad press from a news source or if international news was leaking in that wasn’t supposed to they could in theory shut it off immediately. You see the government has known for a while that their worst enemy going forward is the Internet due to the lack of regulation. They are dealing with a more educated and informed populous then ever before. More people then ever get their news from online sources other than the big three ABC, NBC and CBS. Gone is the day of controlling a news story. So what do they do? They find a way to kill it by saying that we must protect the rights of our copyright holders. There is no secret that business and the government tends to be intertwined and there is nothing saying that a well-placed bribe by Company A couldn’t get Company B shutdown. By the time all the appeals and red tape are gone through Company A has now defeated Company B. I am sorry Congress but I am not willing to give up my rights for copyright holders.
On to monster number two. The Amendment SB 1867 is in my opinion the beginning of the end for American freedom. The length of the bill adds to its vagueness but the scary part is found in Sect 1032(a). The gist of it is that the United States Military would be allowed to hold a suspected “terrorist” indefinitely until their disposition under the laws regarding war. There is no regional restriction on this directive and so one must assume that it can happen in the United States as easy as Afghanistan. It states that the requirement doesn’t extend to United States citizens but it doesn’t place a ban on it either. The scariest thing about this bill is that they were trying to sneak it by us. During the Thanksgiving holiday Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Carl Levin (D-MI) met in secret and drafted this amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, which comes before Congress on many occasions. This amendment containing such an inflammatory proposal was buried underneath a lot of financial matters and other legal jargon. It then passed a closed door committee meeting with no hearing at all. This has been slid through the system and is on the eve of being law as the Senate has passed it. John McCain and Carl Levin as well as anyone else involved in this should be brought up on charges. This clearly is allowing the President to loose the United States military on American citizens at will. Man, it seems like I have heard this somewhere. Oh yes, that’s right, the American Militia Movement that everyone thinks is crazy. That’s where I heard it. Now let’s look at who is a terrorist shall we. According to a Federal Bureau of Investigation handout being distributed in military surplus stores and gun stores, it is anyone who makes racist or extreme religious statements, is missing fingers, pays in cash and makes comments regarding anti-US ideology. It could also anyone who buys a large quantity of ammunition, food, high capacity magazines, night vision, flashlights or gasmasks and bi-pods for rifles.
Let’s break this down even further so we can see the craziness of this and I guarantee when I am done you will know no less then five people who fit this description. Makes extreme religious remarks, How about abortion is a sin and homosexuals are going to hell? Someone who is missing fingers, I know guys who are missing fingers from work accidents and so on. Persons paying in cash, you know up until like a year or so ago my father paid for everything in cash. I have made several comments regarding my displeasure with the United States in this article so I guess that is anti-US ideology. Last but not least the final large quantities envelop the entire “Prepper” community and anyone like myself who is a gun enthusiast. This is how easy it is to now lock any of these people up indefinitely for whatever reason those in power can think up. I am by no means a conspiracy person but I can connect the dots. Pretty much any of us are suspicious to the Feds in one way or another and some of us are in more than one category. I must ask, since when did being responsible and stocking up for the worst make you a terrorist? I will tell you when. The government only fears it’s own people when they know they are overstepping. I will leave you with a quote on this subject from our founding father George Washington, “Firearms are second only to the Constitution in importance; they are the peoples’ liberty’s teeth.”
Both of these bills are dangerous in their own right but together they are a signal of a coming storm in America. The time is right for the government to begin to slowly take our rights away and it has already begun. SB 1867 and SOPA are not the first of their kind. If you do not believe me take a look around at the political landscape. Does the Patriot Act ring a bell? What about Fast and Furious? Due to Fast and Furious the debate on tighter gun restrictions have “spontaneously” begun. I am here to tell you that this is a plant. The goal of Fast and Furious was to inflame the United States over “assault” rifles. Did you know that the people of North Korea don’t know that they are one of the poorest countries in the world? They actually pity countries like the United States because of the poverty we live in. Do you know why they think this? Because the government has absolute control over all the information coming in and going out and it’s all in the name of national security. Just a thought.

Joel Skousen - The Iraq war was in vain and it is not over

Meet The Russian Avtobaza — Iran's Possible Drone Killer

Robert Johnson

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Speculation is running rampant after Iran claimed to have shot down a US RQ-170 surveillance drone Sunday, and while Tehran has yet to show proof, it appears their announcement coincides with the delivery of this piece of equipment.
Stephen Trimble from Flight Global reports Russia delivered the Avtobaza ground-based electronic intelligence and jamming system to Iran six-weeks ago.
While most weapons deliveries to Iran are blocked, a jamming system like the Avtobaza is allowed because it's a passively defensive machine "designed to jam side-looking and fire control radars on aircraft and manipulate the guidance and control systems of incoming enemy missiles."
Possibly what NATO regulators didn't plan on was the jammer's potential as a communications link allowing UAVs to be controlled remotely.
Whether that's how it was used Sunday is another matter.

National Defense Authorization Act

WAS IT HILLARY’S ERROR?

By Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.
Thursday, December 8, 2011

Given my personal role in the relevant international matters, an unfortunate remark concerning Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin which has been attributed to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, has been exploited to the effect of putting the possibility of avoiding a thermonuclear war into jeopardy.

So far, since an impeachable U.S. Presidency’s role in the authorship of the outright murder of an already defeated and captive Libyan President Muammar Qaddafi, the immediate danger of a count-down to a thermonuclear warfare among nations, had been delayed chiefly by the opposition to such action from, chiefly, both leading general officers of the United States and carefully crafted actions from the present government of Russia.

I do not presume that the intention as such of either Hillary Clinton or Vladimir Putin is originally at fault in this case; but, there is no doubt that Mrs. Clinton’s reported remarks have been a very serious blunder in their effects on the present global situation. Given the circumstances, including the role of the monstrously insane Emperor Nero-like British puppet, President Barack Obama, which I shall not explain at this time, the remarks attributed to her have been, most unfortunately, a grave mistake to have been uttered at this time. The effect has been to play into the hands of a man long-known to me as a British agent-in-fact, and a long standing personal enemy of mine and also of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachov.

Nominally, it is to be admitted, that the U.S.A. is, most unfortunately tied to and something like a captive of a morally and mentally incompetent madman whom most American citizens presently despise, but whom most of our leading political figures have so far lacked the courage to impeach, President Barack Obama. Secretary Clinton is thus placed in the difficult position of seeking to defend U.S. interests despite her being held, virtually as a British imperial captive to a reigning, Emperor-Nero-like madman in the White House.

Just to make clear the relevant global issues presently in sight, for those who are not actually silly, or worse kissers of the British Royal, drug-pushing butt, consider the following points.

Only the warning signs from both the U.S. military leaders, combined with the valuable preponderance of sane senior circles within the veteran leadership of Israel, have exhibited actual signs of strategic competence in respect to the present British monarchy’s efforts to continue its destruction of continental western Europe, combined with the Royal family’s presently explicit commitment to a massive genocide.

In short, the world hovers over the steaming furore of thermonuclear genocide, at the brink of a sudden and wide-spreading eruption globally.

The essence of the crisis now menacing the world in its global entirety, is the present role of a President of the United States, who is not only a mass-murderously insane President, but a mere puppet of a British monarchy which has avowed itself determined to effect the sudden and rapid depopulation of the population of this entire planet, from a currently estimated seven billions persons, to no more than one billion. The problems of that set of British imperial circles make minor the Adolf Hitler who was lifted to power by the combined efforts of the British empire and Wall Street’s Hitler boosters such as the Anglo-American gang of Wall Street’s Harriman.

Some will say that the British were our allies in two World Wars. In the first so-called World War, the war itself, according to Field Marshall von Moltke, had been unleashed, as a new “Seven Years War,” by means of the ouster of Germany’s Chancellor Bismarck on orders of the British imperial Royal family.

Notably, Winston Churchill begged piteously for President Franklin Roosevelt’s help, only when a Hitler, who had been a British puppet helped to power by the circles of France’s Petain, was now was about to gobble up the British empire. This was a Britain which had wished to be rescued, temporarily, by a Roosevelt, but a Britain which often acted, during the war, through aid of some among its such rabidly racist tools as Montgomery, aiding Churchill’s Britain to delay an Allied victory in Europe in one fashion or another.1 In the meantime, Britain waited for President Franklin Roosevelt to die, so that a puppet of Wall Street and London, the Wall-Street-owned, asinine Harry S Truman could sell the United States to London. Since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, we never really regained our United States once President John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert had been assassinated.

However, more than that must be said, urgently, at this time.

On The Subject of Nuclear War

My own introduction to the warfare of the post-John F. Kennedy time, was conditioned to a substantial degree by the outgrowth of my part in the founding of what became influential as the Fusion Energy Foundation (FEF). My own most significant role in that setting was developed during a period of my sojourns in Germany, during the period following my U.S. Presidency candidacy of 1976 against the Democratic Party pack during Brzezinski’s orchestration of the Jimmy Carter campaign. During the late Summer and my preparations for a new U.S. Presidential candidacy, conceptions respecting thermonuclear fusion had been built up, especially since my 1976 campaign, to the point that my strategic outlook and intentions for the next elected Presidency were already based upon the urgency of an outlook which I adopted during the Summer and Autumn of 1977, of what I identified then as a strategic defense initiative.

The first question which I was obliged to consider was the implication of the role of thermonuclear, rather than merely nuclear weaponry. It was evident, that only a feasible form of total systems of defense against the deployment of either thermonuclear or nuclear weapons, were practicable; furthermore that the response to this fact must be a practicable policy of strategic defense against systems of delivery for thermonuclear assaults as such.

Thus, when my earlier negotiations and related advocacies on behalf of both the United States and certain western and other European partisans, and discussions with leading Indian circles were superseded by, first, the London-connected Yuri Andropov. and the similarly pro-British Mikhail Gorbachov sought to destroy the effort at establishing a mutual defense between the U.S.A. and its associates, on the one side, and the Soviet Union on the other, I presented the warning that the posture of the Andropov regime would tend to ensure the crack-up the Soviet system within five years, as it did.

Unfortunately, the U.S. Congress rejected President Reagan’s declared support of what had been precisely my design for strategic defense, and that led to the process of accelerating wreckage left by President George H.W. Bush, and, despite President Clinton’s entertaining a defense policy, the net collapse of the U.S. economy over the entirety of the recent more than two decades.

The childish belief that warfare and like enterprises are analogous to sport enterprise among rival teams, which is the game into which Hillary Clinton was ensnared by the pressures radiating from criminal lunatic President Obama, is the only competent assessment of the remarks which, evidently, Mrs. Clinton was induced to utter, apparently without any competent advice from available, relevant intelligence resources.

The essential fact at this moment, is that either the United States has the brains and guts to accept the option represented by Prime Minister Putin, or the entire planet is probably at the verge of a visit to thermonuclear Hell.

The only safe outcome, would require the immediate ouster of a clinically insane British puppet-President of the United States, Barack Obama. Since the Republican candidates are hopelessly incompetent, and since Obama is worse than all of them combined, we now require the notion of a cooperative form of government united under a Democratic replacement for Barack Obama. This new Presidency must be a combination from the ranks of both those Parties which are patriotic first, and not partisan in any of the customary partisan electoral side-shows.

Footnotes
1. From the professional best of Rommel’s fleeing forces, it is attested that had brutish “Market Garden” Montgomery ever had the wit or courage to flank Rommel’s then fatally vulnerable, retreating forces, Rommel’s forces would have never escaped to face the assault by Patton’s forces in western North Africa, and the defeat of Hitler would have come much, much earlier in the remaining time to come. Today, we are witness to a similar folly in the post-John F. Kennedy wars of the U.S.A. to date, whereas the brains of MacArthur and Eisenhower had been still at the disposal of a still-living President John F. Kennedy. Since that assassination of President John F. Kennedy and his brother, the United States, wasted again and again in the folly of useless permanent warfare in the style of the notorious British spy “Parvus,” has been assigned to leave U.S. forces and the U.S. economy to rot on behalf of the British imperial monarchy.

Gerald Celente: We're going into an economic 9/11

US-UK Financier Elite in Finance Collapse, War Psychosis; Syria, Iran, Pakistan Targeted; Russian Resistance Grows

Britain’s Foreign Office Prepares For Riots In Europe; Sees Euro Collapse “When, Not If”

Zero Hedge: As every major developed economy hits Bass’s Keynesian Endgame, the status quo is set to change dramatically. Nowhere is this climax playing out louder than in Europe and the implicit solution of Germany-uber-alles (while seemingly inevitable though nevertheless lengthy in execution) is likely to not sit well with many of the EMU nations. To wit, The Telegraph today reports that Britain’s Foreign Office is advising its overseas embassies to draw up plans to help expats should the collapse of the Euro turn explosive. Almost incredibly, a senior minister has revealed that Britain is now planning on the basis that a euro collapse is matter of time.

The Telegraph: Prepare for riots in euro collapse, Foreign Office warns

British embassies in the eurozone have been told to draw up plans to help British expats through the collapse of the single currency, amid new fears for Italy and Spain.
As the Italian government struggled to borrow and Spain considered seeking an international bail-out, British ministers privately warned that the break-up of the euro, once almost unthinkable, is now increasingly plausible.
Diplomats are preparing to help Britons abroad through a banking collapse and even riots arising from the debt crisis.

The Treasury confirmed earlier this month that contingency planning for a collapse is now under way.
A senior minister has now revealed the extent of the Government’s concern, saying thatBritain is now planning on the basis that a euro collapse is now just a matter of time.
“It’s in our interests that they keep playing for time because that gives us more time to prepare,” the minister told the Daily Telegraph.

Recent Foreign and Commonwealth Office instructions to embassies and consulates request contingency planning for extreme scenarios including rioting and social unrest.

Greece has seen several outbreaks of civil disorder as its government struggles with its huge debts. British officials think similar scenes cannot be ruled out in other nations if the euro collapses.
Diplomats have also been told to prepare to help tens of thousands of British citizens in eurozone countries with the consequences of a financial collapse that would leave them unable to access bank accounts or even withdraw cash.

Fuelling the fears of financial markets for the euro, reports in Madrid yesterday suggested that the new Popular Party government could seek a bail-out from either the European Union rescue fund or the International Monetary Fund.
There are also growing fears for Italy, whose new government was forced to pay record interest rates on new bonds issued yesterday.
The yield on new six-month loans was 6.5 per cent, nearly double last month’s rate. And the yield on outstanding two-year loans was 7.8 per cent, well above the level considered unsustainable.
Italy’s new government will have to sell more than EURO 30 billion of new bonds by the end of January to refinance its debts. Analysts say there is no guarantee that investors will buy all of those bonds, which could force Italy to default.

The Italian government yesterday said that in talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Prime Minister Mario Monti had agreed that an Italian collapse “would inevitably be the end of the euro.”
The EU treaties that created the euro and set its membership rules contain no provision for members to leave, meaning any break-up would be disorderly and potentially chaotic.
If eurozone governments defaulted on their debts, the European banks that hold many of their bonds would risk collapse.

Some analysts say the shock waves of such an event would risk the collapse of the entire financial system, leaving banks unable to return money to retail depositors and destroying companies dependent on bank credit.

The Financial Services Authority this week issued a public warning to British banks to bolster their contingency plans for the break-up of the single currency.
Some economists believe that at worst, the outright collapse of the euro could reduce GDP in its member-states by up to half and trigger mass unemployment.

Analysts at UBS, an investment bank earlier this year warned that the most extremeconsequences of a break-up include risks to basic property rights and the threat of civil disorder.
“When the unemployment consequences are factored in, it is virtually impossible to consider a break-up scenario without some serious social consequences,” UBS said.

Russia Steps In

With the delay of Britian’s plans for World War III, due to the opposition coming from inside the military layers of the United States, Russia has stepped in, putting it’s own resources at risk, in a bold move to shut down the threat of war

Paul Craig Roberts: GOP debate is an amazing collection of stupidity

Max Keiser Corzine, MF Global, Global Meltdown, Alex Jones Show.

Corzine's Mafia Ties to Obama Leave Celente & MF Global Clients Wondering

Bob Chapman on the MF Global scandal

Bob Chapman on the MF Global debacle : Bob Chapman reveals that he is getting over a thousand emails a day regarding what happened to Gerald Celente with MF Global , commodity account is done by contracts , the contract is not worth the paper it is written on says bob Chapman , and the reason for that is that COMEX likes to screw everybody it's as simple as that he added , and the CME which owns the COMEX likes to do the same thing , and they change the rules all the time , and so you have no protection in the commodity market whatsoever and anybody in there should know that ... I have told people for years never to use margins under any circumstances , well some people do and unfortunatly sometimes they'll regret it .....

Goldman Sachs Conquers Europe

The ascension of Mario Monti to the Italian prime ministership is remarkable for more reasons than it is possible to count. By replacing the scandal-surfing Silvio Berlusconi, Italy has dislodged the undislodgeable. By imposing rule by unelected technocrats, it has suspended the normal rules of democracy, and maybe democracy itself. And by putting a senior adviser at Goldman Sachs in charge of a Western nation, it has taken to new heights the political power of an investment bank that you might have thought was prohibitively politically toxic.

This is the most remarkable thing of all: a giant leap forward for, or perhaps even the successful culmination of, the Goldman Sachs Project.
It is not just Mr Monti. The European Central Bank, another crucial player in the sovereign debt drama, is under ex-Goldman management, and the investment bank’s alumni hold sway in the corridors of power in almost every European nation, as they have done in the US throughout the financial crisis. Until Wednesday, the International Monetary Fund’s European division was also run by a Goldman man, Antonio Borges, who just resigned for personal reasons.
Even before the upheaval in Italy, there was no sign of Goldman Sachs living down its nickname as “the Vampire Squid”, and now that its tentacles reach to the top of the eurozone, sceptical voices are raising questions over its influence. The political decisions taken in the coming weeks will determine if the eurozone can and will pay its debts – and Goldman’s interests are intricately tied up with the answer to that question.
Simon Johnson, the former International Monetary Fund economist, in his book 13 Bankers, argued that Goldman Sachs and the other large banks had become so close to government in the run-up to the financial crisis that the US was effectively an oligarchy. At least European politicians aren’t “bought and paid for” by corporations, as in the US, he says. “Instead what you have in Europe is a shared world-view among the policy elite and the bankers, a shared set of goals and mutual reinforcement of illusions.”
This is The Goldman Sachs Project. Put simply, it is to hug governments close. Every business wants to advance its interests with the regulators that can stymie them and the politicians who can give them a tax break, but this is no mere lobbying effort. Goldman is there to provide advice for governments and to provide financing, to send its people into public service and to dangle lucrative jobs in front of people coming out of government. The Project is to create such a deep exchange of people and ideas and money that it is impossible to tell the difference between the public interest and the Goldman Sachs interest.
Mr Monti is one of Italy’s most eminent economists, and he spent most of his career in academia and thinktankery, but it was when Mr Berlusconi appointed him to the European Commission in 1995 that Goldman Sachs started to get interested in him. First as commissioner for the internal market, and then especially as commissioner for competition, he has made decisions that could make or break the takeover and merger deals that Goldman’s bankers were working on or providing the funding for. Mr Monti also later chaired the Italian Treasury’s committee on the banking and financial system, which set the country’s financial policies.
With these connections, it was natural for Goldman to invite him to join its board of international advisers. The bank’s two dozen-strong international advisers act as informal lobbyists for its interests with the politicians that regulate its work. Other advisers include Otmar Issing who, as a board member of the German Bundesbank and then the European Central Bank, was one of the architects of the euro.
Perhaps the most prominent ex-politician inside the bank is Peter Sutherland, Attorney General of Ireland in the 1980s and another former EU Competition Commissioner. He is now non-executive chairman of Goldman’s UK-based broker-dealer arm, Goldman Sachs International, and until its collapse and nationalisation he was also a non-executive director of Royal Bank of Scotland. He has been a prominent voice within Ireland on its bailout by the EU, arguing that the terms of emergency loans should be eased, so as not to exacerbate the country’s financial woes. The EU agreed to cut Ireland’s interest rate this summer.
Picking up well-connected policymakers on their way out of government is only one half of the Project, sending Goldman alumni into government is the other half. Like Mr Monti, Mario Draghi, who took over as President of the ECB on 1 November, has been in and out of government and in and out of Goldman. He was a member of the World Bank and managing director of the Italian Treasury before spending three years as managing director of Goldman Sachs International between 2002 and 2005 – only to return to government as president of the Italian central bank.
Mr Draghi has been dogged by controversy over the accounting tricks conducted by Italy and other nations on the eurozone periphery as they tried to squeeze into the single currency a decade ago. By using complex derivatives, Italy and Greece were able to slim down the apparent size of their government debt, which euro rules mandated shouldn’t be above 60 per cent of the size of the economy. And the brains behind several of those derivatives were the men and women of Goldman Sachs.
The bank’s traders created a number of financial deals that allowed Greece to raise money to cut its budget deficit immediately, in return for repayments over time. In one deal, Goldman channelled $1bn of funding to the Greek government in 2002 in a transaction called a cross-currency swap. On the other side of the deal, working in the National Bank of Greece, was Petros Christodoulou, who had begun his career at Goldman, and who has been promoted now to head the office managing government Greek debt. Lucas Papademos, now installed as Prime Minister in Greece’s unity government, was a technocrat running the Central Bank of Greece at the time.
Goldman says that the debt reduction achieved by the swaps was negligible in relation to euro rules, but it expressed some regrets over the deals. Gerald Corrigan, a Goldman partner who came to the bank after running the New York branch of the US Federal Reserve, told a UK parliamentary hearing last year: “It is clear with hindsight that the standards of transparency could have been and probably should have been higher.”
When the issue was raised at confirmation hearings in the European Parliament for his job at the ECB, Mr Draghi says he wasn’t involved in the swaps deals either at the Treasury or at Goldman.
It has proved impossible to hold the line on Greece, which under the latest EU proposals is effectively going to default on its debt by asking creditors to take a “voluntary” haircut of 50 per cent on its bonds, but the current consensus in the eurozone is that the creditors of bigger nations like Italy and Spain must be paid in full. These creditors, of course, are the continent’s big banks, and it is their health that is the primary concern of policymakers. The combination of austerity measures imposed by the new technocratic governments in Athens and Rome and the leaders of other eurozone countries, such as Ireland, and rescue funds from the IMF and the largely German-backed European Financial Stability Facility, can all be traced to this consensus.
“My former colleagues at the IMF are running around trying to justify bailouts of €1.5trn-€4trn, but what does that mean?” says Simon Johnson. “It means bailing out the creditors 100 per cent. It is another bank bailout, like in 2008: The mechanism is different, in that this is happening at the sovereign level not the bank level, but the rationale is the same.”
So certain is the financial elite that the banks will be bailed out, that some are placing bet-the-company wagers on just such an outcome. Jon Corzine, a former chief executive of Goldman Sachs, returned to Wall Street last year after almost a decade in politics and took control of a historic firm called MF Global. He placed a $6bn bet with the firm’s money that Italian government bonds will not default.
When the bet was revealed last month, clients and trading partners decided it was too risky to do business with MF Global and the firm collapsed within days. It was one of the ten biggest bankruptcies in US history.
The grave danger is that, if Italy stops paying its debts, creditor banks could be made insolvent.  Goldman Sachs, which has written over $2trn of insurance, including an undisclosed amount on eurozone countries’ debt, would not escape unharmed, especially if some of the $2trn of insurance it has purchased on that insurance turns out to be with a bank that has gone under. No bank – and especially not the Vampire Squid – can easily untangle its tentacles from the tentacles of its peers. This is the rationale for the bailouts and the austerity, the reason we are getting more Goldman, not less. The alternative is a second financial crisis, a second economic collapse.
Shared illusions, perhaps? Who would dare test it?

Source.

Boeing delivers first batch of 30,000-pound bombs to Air Force

The Massive Ordnance Penetrator — the Air Force has ordered 20 from Boeing — is nearly five tons heavier than any other bomb in the military's arsenal and is made to pulverize underground targets.

An artist's rendering of the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, a 30,000-pound bomb. (Boeing Co. / July 15, 2009)

• • X
    Emergency Incidents
    Defense
    Weaponry
    Manufacturing and Engineering
    Aerospace Manufacturing
    Military Equipment
    Missile Systems
    Boeing Co.
    Iran
    Nuclear Weapons
    North Korea
    Heavy Engineering
    Saddam Hussein
    Northrop Grumman Corporation
    U.S. Air Force
    United Nations
    Osama bin Laden
    World War II (1939-1945)

By W.J. Hennigan, Los Angeles Times

8:59 p.m. EST, November 16, 2011

THE Pentagon has successfully tested a flying bomb that travels faster than the speed of sound and will give military planners the ability to strike targets anywhere in the world in less than a hour.
Launched by rocket from Hawaii, the “Advanced Hypersonic Weapon,” or AHW, glided through the upper atmosphere over the Pacific “at hypersonic speed” before hitting its target in Kwajalein on the Marshall Islands, a Pentagon statement said.
Kwajalein is about 4000km southwest of Hawaii.
The Pentagon did not say what top speeds were reached by the vehicle, which unlike a ballistic missile is maneureable.
It comes as the US Air Force also took delivery of America’s heaviest non-nuclear bomb on order from Boeing.
At 30,000 pounds (13,607kg) the “Massive Ordnance Penetrator” is nearly five US tonnes (4535kg) bigger than the heaviest in its arsenal and designed to destroy targets deep underground.
For the flying bomb, scientists classify hypersonic speeds as those that exceed Mach 5 – or five times the speed of sound – 6000km/h.
The test aimed to gather data on “aerodynamics, navigation, guidance and control, and thermal protection technologies,” said Lieutenant Colonel Melinda Morgan, a Pentagon spokeswoman.
The US Army’s AHW project is part of “Prompt Global Strike” program which seeks to give the US military the means to deliver conventional weapons anywhere in the world within an hour.
On August 11, the Pentagon test flew another hypersonic glider dubbed HTV-2, which is capable of flying 27,000 km/h per hour, but it was a failure.
The AHW’s range is less than that of the HTV-2, the Congressional Research Service said in a report, without providing specifics.
The Pentagon has invested $US240 million in the Global Strike program this year.

Source.

Celente: MF Global Effed with the wrong Guy

Gerald Celente’s gold account was emptied by MF Global

How Can The American People Ever Trust Congress Again After Learning Of The Rampant Insider Trading That Has Been Going On?

Will the shocking insider trading revelations that havecome to light in recent days finally be enough to motivate the American people to start throwing all of the con men and charlatans out of Congress?  On Sunday, 60 Minutes opened up a huge can of worms when it did a feature story on insider trading by members of Congress.  Up until now, the vast majority of Americans had no idea that insider trading was actually legal for members of Congress.  In fact, as will be documented later on in this article, members of Congress have been using secrets that they have learned during the course of their duties to make huge amounts of money in the stock market.  If you can believe it, during the financial crisis of 2008 some members of Congress were making huge stock moves that would only pay off if the stock market crashed really hard at a time when they should have been focusing on creating legislation that would help the U.S. financial system survive.  It is hard not to feel sick after learning how low some of our "leaders" have stooped to enrich themselves.  Now that the American people are learning the truth, how can they ever trust Congress again?
Even before these revelations about insider trading by members of Congress came to light, the approval rating for Congress was sitting at about 11 percent.
There is a widespread feeling in this country that our political system simply does not work any longer.
Nearly all of our "leaders" seem to be wealthy elitists that are rapidly becoming wealthier.  Today, the average net worth for a member of Congress is approximately 3.8 million dollars, and the collective net worth of all of the members of Congress increased by 25 percent between 2008 and 2010.
It would be one thing is they were accumulating all of this wealth legitimately.  However, it is just not right for members of Congress to use government secrets and inside information that is not available to the general public to make huge profits in the stock market.
If any of the rest of us engage in insider trading, it could get us thrown into jail.
But as a recent CNBC article noted, members of Congress can pretty much get away with it as much as they want to....

When you buy and sell stocks based on secrets you learned at the office, it could be insider trading.
But when a United States Senator does it, it's probably perfectly legal.
That's because the SEC has largely determined that trading stocks based on advance knowledge of action in Congress is not insider trading.

But just because it is legal, that does not make it right.
Former Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff made headlines recently when he claimed that "a dozen members of Congress and their aides took part in insider trading".
Well, it turns out that there has been a whole lot more insider trading going on than that.

One of the politicians featured in the 60 Minutes story was Nancy Pelosi. Pelosi has been doing incredibly well financially in recent years. For example, her net worth soared by 62 percent in 2010. If you can believe it, Nancy Pelosi is now worth 35.2 million dollars. That is a nice chunk of change. So has she been getting a little bit of "extra help" along the way? According to a recent CNN article, one very preferential stock deal involving a credit card company went very well for her. It also turns out that there was credit card legislation that was pending in the House at the time.... Pelosi and her husband participated in an initial public offering of Visa in 2008, according to CBS. They bought 5,000 shares at the initial price of $44; two days later, shares were trading at $64, CBS said. The network reported the investment came at the same time a piece of legislation that was opposed by credit-card companies was making its way through the House. But what is even worse is what many members of Congress did with secret information that they were told by U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke at the start of the financial crisis of 2008. On September 16, 2008 Paulson and Bernanke held "closed door meetings" with members of Congress and warned them that the financial system was about to totally collapse. But instead of racing out to save the financial system, author Peter Schweizer says that many of our representatives in Congress raced out to save their stock portfolios. In his new book, Schweizer alleges the following.... *Schweizer says that U.S. Senator Dick Durbin sold $74,715 worth of stock on September 17th and $42,000 worth of stock on September 18th. *Schweizer says that U.S. Representative Jim Moran sold off shares in 90 different corporations on September 17th. *Schweizer says that U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse sold off at least $250,000 worth of stock between September 18th and September 24th. *Schweizer says that U.S. Representative Spencer Bachus bet very heavily against the stock market in the days following the September 16th meeting and made tens of thousands of dollars doing so. *Schweizer says that U.S. Senator John Kerry bought up approximately $350,000 of Bank of America stock and approximately $550,000 of Citigroup stock during October 2008 and November of 2008. It was during this time period that the bailout programs for the big banks were being developed and debated. Are you feeling sick to your stomach yet? But it isn't just members of Congress that are using secrets to make money in the stock market. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, quite a few Congressional staffers have also been making questionable trades.... "At least 72 aides on both sides of the aisle traded shares of companies that their bosses help oversee, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of more than 3,000 disclosure forms covering trading activity by Capitol Hill staffers for 2008 and 2009." But nobody is getting into trouble for any of this. This is how corrupt our system has become. And there are scientific studies that show that members of Congress have been doing significantly better in the stock market than the general public has been doing. For example, one study from 2004 found that members of Congress do even better in the stock market than corporate insiders do.... "A 2004 study of the results of stock trading by United States Senators during the 1990s found that that senators on average beat the market by 12% a year. In sharp contrast, U.S. households on average underperformed the market by 1.4% a year and even corporate insiders on average beat the market by only about 6% a year during that period. A reasonable inference is that some Senators had access to - and were using - material nonpublic information about the companies in whose stock they trade." A recent CNBC article mentioned another recent study that found that investments by members of the U.S. House of Representatives beat the market by about 6 percent a year.... In the 2011 study “Abnormal Returns From the Common Stock Investments of Members of the U.S. House of Representatives,” four university professors found that a portfolio that mimics the purchases of House Members beats the market by 55 basis points per month, or approximately 6 percent annually. That study looked at 16,000 common stock transactions made by approximately 300 House delegates from 1985 to 2001. Clearly all of this is not just some huge coincidence. So why doesn't Congress just pass a law to make it illegal for members of Congress to make trades based on insider information? Well, a few members of Congress have actually tried to introduce such legislation, but it has never gone anywhere. It turns out that members of Congress like things just the way that they are. Being a member of Congress is one of the best jobs in the country. It is a great way to become famous, get rich and live the high life. As mentioned earlier, only 11 percent of the American people think that Congress is doing a good job, and yet we keep sending the same people back to Congress time after time. Since 1964, the reelection rate for members of the U.S. House of Representatives has never fallen below 85 percent. Yes, our system is a joke, but the joke is on us. So do any of you out there actually believe that we have a chance of changing this deeply corrupt system?

[the american dream]