John Byrne
The Raw Story
March 4, 2010

The Pentagon confirmed late Tuesday that it is investigating the death of a 24-year-old Indiana Marine after he was shot to death in Afghanistan, allegedly by several US-paid private security contractors.
The contractors, according to a fellow Marine in Afghanistan who communicated with an investigative reporter in Chicago, were Afghanis who were found with “copious amounts of opium” and had been paid by the United States as guards.
“He was killed by American Hired Local National Contractors that were high on opium the morning of the 19th,” the ABC reporter quotes a friend and fellow colleague of Lance Corporal Joshua Birchfield as saying in an email message.
Read entire article

Tyler Durden
Zero Hedge
March 4, 2010
A week ago Ron Paul asked Ben Bernanke a series of questions, which the Chairman and pundits immediately dismissed as “bizarre” and an indication that the potential presidential candidate has finally lost it (among these was a very nuanced question whether or not the Fed is buying sovereign debt, something which Bernanke disclosed in 2002 is a distinct possibility and an action the Fed is permitted to do). Chief among these were queries arising from the work of U of T professor Robert Auerbach, and specifically his book “Deception and Abuse at the Fed” (not available on Kindle), which seek information on whether the Fed was involved in the Watergate scandal and, subsequently, in Iraqi weapons purchases.

Well, Paul may not be as kooky as people are trying to make him out to be. None other than “consumer protection advocate” Barney Frank has demanded that Bernanke do a full probe based on these allegations.
Bloomberg reports:
Representative Ron Paul asked questions about “inappropriate political interference” and “hidden transfers of resources” during a Feb. 24 hearing with Bernanke, and the allegations “must be fully investigated,” Frank said in a letter today to Bernanke and obtained by Bloomberg News.
Frank, 69, said the Fed must address the charges because “continued concern about political interference” with the Fed and “allegations about a lack of transparency.” Bernanke and other Fed officials are trying to fend off a measure offered by Paul, which passed the House in December, that would open the Fed to audits of interest-rate decisions.
“These specific allegations you’ve made I think are absolutely bizarre, and I have absolutely no knowledge of anything remotely like what you just described,” Bernanke told Paul, a Texas Republican who wrote the 2009 book “End the Fed,” during last week’s hearing.
Some more on Professor Auerbach’s background, which lends substantial credibility to his allegations:
Auerbach worked for Henry Gonzalez, a former chairman of the House committee who died in 2000 and investigated the sale of U.S. arms to Iraq in the 1980s, before the Gulf War. Gonzalez said the Fed and other agencies initially tried to block his probe, according to a 1992 New York Times article.
Fed bank examiners in Atlanta failed to note $5.5 billion being funneled to Iraq from a local branch of an Italian bank, Auerbach, a critic of the central bank and former congressional economist, said in his book.
“The Federal Reserve’s ability to manage monetary policy in an effective manner depends, in large part, on its reputation for independence and integrity,” Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat, said in the letter. “A complete investigation of these charges is necessary to maintain both.”

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Thursday, March 4, 2010

A glib 33 second propaganda ad produced by the Kentucky Department for Public Health portrays skeptics of the swine flu vaccine as raving lunatics, despite the fact that the head of the Council of Europe’s investigation into the 2009 outbreak labeled it “one of the greatest medical scandals of the century.”
The commercial, which is entitled ‘H1N1 Vaccine Myths,’ features a group of office workers spewing ridiculous theories about the swine flu vaccine that have never been embraced by any vaccine skeptic, in an attempt to build a classic straw man and smear people who question the necessity for taking the shot as unstable lunatics.

The actors in the ad debate whether the H1N1 vaccine was “made from platypus milk,” or whether it “makes you susceptible to hypnotic suggestion.”

The clip ends by another actor in the ad stating, “It was made from secret alien technology found on the moon.”

“Some folks believe anything,” states an assertive female voice, “The swine flu vaccine is safe, effective, and you still need it, learn more at Kentucky’s flu website, that way you can separate the fact from the fiction.”

Unfortunately, Kentucky health authorities have completely failed to separate the fact from the fiction during the course of their 33 second ad, because they attribute outlandish theories about the vaccine to skeptics who have never even uttered such things.

While the advertisement frames suspicion about the vaccine in the context of tin-foil hat wearing madness, in reality the swine flu pandemic has been denounced as a gargantuan hoax not by demented paranoid psychotics, but by the head of the Council of Europe’s Sub-committee on Health, Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, who as the chief of a major investigation into the H1N1 outbreak, labeled the case a “fake pandemic” manufactured by pharmaceutical companies in league with the WHO to make vast profits while endangering public health.

In a separate interview, Wodarg labeled the pandemic, “One of the greatest medical scandals of the century.”
Makers of the swine flu vaccine such as CSL Limited and GlaxoSmithKine saw their profit margin soar by 63 per cent and 30 per cent respectively on the back of swine flu fearmongering that was dutifully practiced in spades by the corporate media throughout 2009. Roche made a whopping 12 times the profit during the second quarter of 2009 compared to the same period in 2008 as a result of the scare.
As we highlighted at the time, the very vaccine inserts that were publicly available clearly stated that the shot could cause Guillain-Barre Syndrome, Vasculitis, Paralysis, Anaphylactic Shock And Death. The vaccines also contained mercury and squalene, which have been directly linked with autism and Gulf War syndrome respectively.

Concerns about such dangers grew to such an extent that the majority of Americans told a Fox News poll that they thought the vaccine was more risky than catching the actual swine flu virus. Separate polls showed that the majority of doctors, nurses and health workers in the UK refused to take the shot.

In November 2009, take up of the vaccine was so slow that the U.S. government was forced to appoint what the media ludicrously billed as an “independent” group of health advisors whose job it was to whitewash adverse reactions to the swine flu vaccine and “explain” them to the public as mere coincidence. The “independent” group was lead by Dr. Marie McCormick of the Harvard School of Public Health, who had spent the last 10 years whitewashing reports of a link between vaccines and autism.

Suspicions surrounding the safety of the vaccine were confirmed when it was revealed that German Chancellor Angela Merkel and government ministers would be taking a shot that did “not contain disputed additives — contrary to the vaccine for the remainder of the population.”

This commercial represents a desperate last ditch effort on behalf of health authorities to try and shift the endless batches of unused H1N1 vaccines that still remain precisely because millions of Americans believed the lunatics who warned them about the dangers of the shot and refused to take it.

So if you really do think you “still need” the H1N1 shot after it has been completely exposed as an international scandal by one of the premiere investigatory bodies in Europe, then roll up your sleeve and knock yourself out, after all, it’s “safe” and “effective” according to the government, but apparently not “safe” and “effective” enough for the political class in major western countries to take the same injection that you’ll be getting.

Watch the commercial below.

Washington’s Blog
March 3, 2010
House majority leader Steny Hoyer – a close ally to President Obama – says the U.S. needs to raise taxes and cut spending .
As Agence France-Presse reports:
The United States must embrace a blend of tax increases and spending cuts to rein in its deficit or face a potentially crippling debt crisis like the one in Greece, a top US lawmaker warned Monday.
“It is enough to look across the Atlantic at Greece’s extreme economic crisis and understand: It can happen here. If we don’t change course, it will happen here,” said Democratic House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer…
“It seems to me that the only solution that can win the support of both parties is a balanced approach: one that cuts some spending and raises some revenue while avoiding extremes in either direction,” he said.
Of course, many others have warned of the massive debt overhand in the U.S. as well.
But why aren’t our government “leaders” talking about slashing the military-industrial complex, which is ruining our economy with unnecessary imperial adventures?
And why aren’t any of our leaders talking about stopping the permanent bailouts for the financial giants who got us into this mess? And see this.
And why aren’t they taking away the power to create credit from the private banking giants – which is costing our economy trillions of dollars (and is leading to a decrease in loans to the little guy) – and give it back to the states?
If we did these things, we wouldn’t have to raise taxes or cut core services to the American people.

Chris Hedges
Truthdig
March 2, 2010

We owe Ralph Nader and Cynthia McKinney an apology. They were right about Barack Obama. They were right about the corporate state. They had the courage of their convictions and they stood fast despite wholesale defections and ridicule by liberals and progressives.

Obama lies as cravenly, if not as crudely, as George W. Bush. He promised us that the transfer of $12.8 trillion in taxpayer money to Wall Street would open up credit and lending to the average consumer. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC), however, admitted last week that banks have reduced lending at the sharpest pace since 1942. As a senator, Obama promised he would filibuster amendments to the FISA Reform Act that retroactively made legal the wiretapping and monitoring of millions of American citizens without warrant; instead he supported passage of the loathsome legislation. He told us he would withdraw American troops from Iraq, close the detention facility at Guantánamo, end torture, restore civil liberties such as habeas corpus and create new jobs. None of this has happened.

Read entire article

Richard K. Moore
Global Research
March 1, 2010

Historical background – the establishment of capitalist supremacy
When the Industrial Revolution began in Britain, in the late 1700s, there was lots of money to be made by investing in factories and mills, by opening up new markets, and by gaining control of sources of raw materials. The folks who had the most money to invest, however, were not so much in Britain but more in Holland. Holland was the leading Western power in the 1600s, and its bankers were the leading capitalists. In pursuit of profit, Dutch capital flowed to the British stock market, and thus the Dutch funded the rise of Britain, who subsequently eclipsed Holland both economically and geopolitically.
In this way British industrialism came to be dominated by wealthy investors, and capitalism became the dominant economic system. This led to a major social transformation. Britain had been essentially an aristocratic society, dominated by landholding families. As capitalism became dominant economically, capitalists became dominant politically. Tax structures and import-export policies were gradually changed to favor investors over landowners.

It was no longer economically viable to simply maintain an estate in the countryside: one needed to develop it, turn it to more productive use. Victorian dramas are filled with stories of aristocratic families who fall on hard times, and are forced to sell off their properties. For dramatic purposes, this decline is typically attributed to a failure in some character, a weak eldest son perhaps. But in fact the decline of aristocracy was part of a larger social transformation brought on by the rise of capitalism.

The business of the capitalist is the management of capital, and this management is generally handled through the mediation of banks and brokerage houses. It should not be surprising that investment bankers came to occupy the top of the hierarchy of capitalist wealth and power. And in fact, there are a handful of banking families, including the Rothschilds and the Rockefellers, who have come to dominate economic and political affairs in the Western world.

Unlike aristocrats, capitalists are not tied to a place, or to the maintenance of a place. Capital is disloyal and mobile – it flows to where the most growth can be found, as it flowed from Holland to Britain, then from Britain to the USA, and most recently from everywhere to China. Just as a copper mine might be exploited and then abandoned, so under capitalism a whole nation can be exploited and then abandoned, as we see in the rusting industrial areas of America and Britain.

This detachment from place leads to a different kind of geopolitics under capitalism, as compared to aristocracy. A king goes to war when he sees an advantage to his nation in doing so. Historians can ‘explain’ the wars of pre-capitalist days, in terms of the aggrandizement of monarchs and nations.

A capitalist stirs up a war in order to make profits, and in fact our elite banking families have financed both sides of most military conflicts since at least World War 1. Hence historians have a hard time ‘explaining’ World War 1 in terms of national motivations and objectives.

In pre-capitalist days warfare was like chess, each side trying to win. Under capitalism warfare is more like a casino, where the players battle it out as long as they can get credit for more chips, and the real winner always turns out to be the house – the bankers who finance the war and decide who will be the last man standing. Not only are wars the most profitable of all capitalist ventures, but by choosing the winners, and managing the reconstruction, the elite banking families are able, over time, to tune the geopolitical configuration to suit their own interests.

Nations and populations are but pawns in their games. Millions die in wars, infrastructures are destroyed, and while the world mourns, the bankers are counting their winnings and making plans for their postwar reconstruction investments.

From their position of power, as the financiers of governments, the banking elite have over time perfected their methods of control. Staying always behind the scenes, they pull the strings controlling the media, the political parties, the intelligence agencies, the stock markets, and the offices of government. And perhaps their greatest lever of power is their control over currencies. By means of their central-bank scam, they engineer boom and bust cycles, and they print money from nothing and then loan it at interest to governments. The power of the banking elites is both absolute and subtle…

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Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Monday, March 1, 2010

Microsoft founder Bill Gates told a recent TED conference, an organization which is sponsored by one of the largest toxic waste polluters on the planet, that vaccines need to be used to reduce world population figures in order to solve global warming and lower CO2 emissions.
Stating that the global population was heading towards 9 billion, Gates said, “If we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services (abortion), we could lower that by perhaps 10 or 15 per cent.”
Quite how an improvement in health care and vaccines that supposedly save lives would lead to a lowering in global population is an oxymoron, unless Gates is referring to vaccines that sterilize people, which is precisely the same method advocated in White House science advisor John P. Holdren’s 1977 textbook Ecoscience, which calls for a dictatorial “planetary regime” to enforce draconian measures of population reduction via all manner of oppressive techniques, including sterilization.
“I’m not sure what the nothing-to-see-here explanation is for Bill Gates’ theory that “new vaccines” can help lower the population of the world,” points out the Cryptogon blog, “But I thought about the incidents from the 1990s where the World Health Organization was providing a “tetanus vaccine” to poor girls and women (and just poor girls and women) that contained human chorionic gonadotrophin (hCG). For those who don’t want to delve into that, in short, it was a World Health Organization experiment; a test of a vaccine against pregnancy.”
After presenting an equation that included the number of people on the planet and CO2 emissions, Gates said, “Probably one of these numbers is going to get pretty near to zero.”
Later in the presentation, Gates mentions picking a vaccine, “which is something I love,” that would be used to lower global CO2 emissions.
He also advocates pouring more money into the global warming scam by way of the United Nations, as well as a “CO2 tax” and cap and trade, while making it clear that the developed world would have to reduce its living standards by cutting back on essential services that generate CO2.
Gates said that a 20 per cent reduction in CO2 emissions was necessary by 2020, a 50 per cent reduction by 2050, and ultimately that there had to be zero CO2 emissions globally, a measure that would completely reverse hundreds of years of technological progress and return man to the agrarian age, all in the name of preventing an alleged miniscule temperature increase that has been proven to be based on fraudulent data models in light of the Climategate scandal.
One of Gates’ proposals for reducing CO2 emissions is the use of biofuels, which as a new report highlights, has resulted in millions of acres of forests being destroyed, which ultimately means a net increase in CO2 emissions from biofuels when compared to fossil fuels, not to mention the massive devastation caused to wildlife.
As we have documented, a CO2 reduction of 50-80 per cent, not to mention 100 per cent, would inflict a new great depression in the United States, reducing GDP by 6.9 percent – a figure comparable with the economic meltdown of 1929 and 1930.
Additionally, the “post-industrial revolution” being proposed by Gates and his ilk would lead to massive job losses.
The implementation of so-called “green jobs” in other countries has devastated economies and cost millions of jobs. As the Seattle Times reported back in June, Spain’s staggering unemployment rate of over 18 per cent was partly down to massive job losses as a result of attempts to replace existing industry with wind farms and other forms of alternative energy.
In a so-called “green economy,” “Each new job entails the loss of 2.2 other jobs that are either lost or not created in other industries because of the political allocation — sub-optimum in terms of economic efficiency — of capital,” states the report.
The fact that Gates would be so open in his call to use vaccines to lower global population (without a word as to the human rights considerations), probably has a lot to do with the audience attending his speech.
The TED organization admits that it is elitist, “in a good way,” and charges a whopping $6,000 dollars membership fee which must be paid by conference attendees. TED also charges nearly $1,000 just for its live conference web stream. The organization’s sponsors include IBM and military-industrial complex kingpin General Electric, which has a notorious history of environmental misdeeds, being ranked fourth-largest corporate producer of air pollution in the United States, with more than 4.4 million pounds per year (2,000 Tonnes) of toxic chemicals released into the air. GE is also a major contributor to the toxic waste problem, rendering its sponsorship of an organization that claims to be seeking solutions to environmental problems completely hypocritical.
Watch Gates’ speech below.

XX

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
February 28, 2010

Obama waited until Saturday night to renew the Bill of Rights busting Patriot Act. It was set to expire today. Both the Senate and the House signed off on the extension last week. So called “privacy protections” were dumped when Senate Democrats failed to raise a 60-vote supermajority to pass them. Cast aside were restrictions and greater scrutiny on the government’s authority to spy on Americans and seize their records, the Associated Pressreports.

“The Obama administration wanted to extend the measure because of provisions it says are important in tracking suspected terrorists, including roving wiretaps to track multiple communications devices,” Reuters reported on Thursday.

“Disappointingly, the government’s dangerously broad authority to conduct roving wiretaps of unspecified or ‘John Doe’ targets, to secretly wiretap of persons without any connection to terrorists or spies under the so-called ‘lone wolf’ provision, and to secretly access a wide range of private business records without warrants under PATRIOT Section 215 were all renewed without any new checks and balances to prevent abuse,” Kevin Bankston wrote last week after the act sailed through Congress.

Instead of tracking terrorists, the bill has been used to track the American people. In 2008, for instance, the Justice Department made 763 requests for “sneak-and-peek” warrants, but only three of those had to do with terrorism investigations, according to senator Russ Feingold.

Judge Andrew Nepalitano denounced the Patriot Act in 2007.

Feingold told a Senate Judiciary Committee in September of 2009 that 65 percent of the cases for which sneak-and-peek warrants were used were drug investigations.

The Patriot Act was not designed to be used against supposed terrorists. “It’s not meant for intelligence, it’s for criminal cases,” Assistant Attorney General David Kris told the Senate Judiciary Committee. “So I guess it’s not surprising to me that it applies in drug cases.”

The Patriot Act allows the government to search and seize Americans’ papers and effects without probable cause to assist “terror” (drug and other victimless crime) investigations. It prevents a right to a speedy and public trial (ask American Jose Padilla about this one). It discourages freedom of association, freedom of speech (the government may prosecute librarians or keepers of any other records if they tell anyone the government subpoenaed information related to a terror investigation), and the right to legal representation (the government may monitor conversations between attorneys and clients in federal prisons and deny lawyers to Americans accused of crimes).

The act allows the government to abduct citizens and jail them without charge or the ability to confront witnesses against them. It allows the government to hold anybody deemed an “unlawful combatant” incommunicado forever. It effectively turns America into East Germany or Stalin’s Russia.

Democrats and moonstruck liberals should be held directly responsible for turning American into a police state. After all, they bought into Obama’s “yes we can” mantra and packed Congress with Democrats who voted last week to extend the Patriot Act.

They should have voted for Ron Paul.