Danny Schechter: Time For a Moratorium on Foreclosures and Debt Relief

Danny Schechter: Time For a Moratorium on Foreclosures and Debt Relief:

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50 Jubilee plan Versus 999 plan pushed by Herman Cain

50 Jubilee plan proposed by Sigurd Hanson founder of the Planetary Order Of Oppressed People versus the 999 plan pushed by Herman Cain and the Tea Party .

Herman is a Dutch and English male given name. Its original meaning was "army man" (Arman) and derives from the Germanic elements "heri" meaning "army" combined with "man" meaning "man" (compare archaic Dutch "heer", meaning "army" and "man").

In the Greek New Testament, Cain is referred to as εκ του πονηρου. In at least one translation this is rendered "from the evil one", while others have "of the evil one." Some interpreters take this to mean that Cain was literally the son of the serpent in the Garden of Eden. A parallel idea can be found in Jewish tradition, that the serpent (Hebrew nahash נחש) from the Garden of Eden was father to firstborn Cain.

Herman Cain is the army man of the evil one that plans to unleash his 999 plan on America. Nine is the number of finality or judgment. It is the last of the digits, and thus marks the end; and is significant of the conclusion of a matter. The gematria of "th orgh mou" (tee orgee mou), my wrath, = 999 (Heb 3:11)

9 is a factor of 666. 9x74=666.  

The 50 plan as proposed by Sigurd Hanson. The name Sigurd means ruling spirit by the way.

Fifty is the number of jubilee or deliverance of the oppressed.

The national dept would be decreased by 2% each year for the next 50 years.

Credit card debt and available credit for your credit cards would be decreased by 2% per year until everyone would have no credit card debt. The maximum that credit card companies could charge would be 5% over what the government pays on savings bonds and treasury notes.

Taxes would be increased or decreased according to what the government needs to pay its bills and invest in infrastructure. There would be no fixed 9% tax as proposed by Mr. Cain.

National sales tax on everything but food and clothing, products made and produced in America and rents paid up to ¼  the poverty level. All used merchandise, used food, sales of stocks and real estate be taxed in return for no capital gains tax and no property tax and income tax for corporations. There would also be no sales tax on new stock offerings. You would also  not have to be a qualified investor to purchase new stock offerings as the government has set up so only the rich can take the risk and also the profits of new stock offering.

Property tax would be used  to pay for defense budget,  federal prisons, law enforcement, judicial system, FBI , CIA. The property tax would include property held outside the country by citizens of the USA. This would include real estate, jewels, gold and silver and stocks or any thing you have control over. 2% per year would be reduced on past debt that has been put on the national debt by the defense dept.

Income tax on all sources of income for individuals. This would include interest income and dividends. If the dividends come from a corporation that does not outsource its labor there would be no tax on dividends on dividends. If they outsource 90% the dividends would be taxed at 90%. If the dividends came from a corporation that outsourced 50% of its labor the tax on dividends would be 50%.

The income tax and sales tax would be at the same rate. There would be no payroll tax. Instead the income tax and sales tax would fund Medicare and Social Security. The Social Security benefits would be one dollar above the poverty level in your state. Everyone would receive the same benefits no matter how much you made. The tax rate should be set yearly depending on revenue. The less revenue the higher the tax rate to meet government expenses to have a balanced budget. Taxes from income would be used to lower the national debt except debt caused by the defense department.

Sales tax on recreational drugs made in America would have a surtax of 50%. Purity of and would be determined not by the government but by a no- profit agency or bureau just like your credit report is determined. Food and drug agency would go out of existence. In its place would be non-profit agencies that would replace it. At least 20 different agencies, groups, or guilds would make regulations to protect the consumer. The consumer would be the judge of what group to believe. Doctors would no longer be licensed by the government just as piano technicians are not. If you want to be assured of good piano tuner look up their guild. If you want to have your piano tuned by just anyone go ahead. Just the same go to a doctor that is a member of a group of doctors that police themselves. The same would go for all professions. Let the Buyer beware. Don’t ask the government to protect you.

Don’t ask the government to protect you from banks with deposits over 500 million dollars. Let the big banks find their own insurance. Only those banks with deposits under 500 million and whose CEO is not on the board of other banks or has stock in other banks would receive FDIC protection.

Sales tax on recreational drugs & tobacco products imported would be 500%. Make Cuban Cigars legal.


There would be no capital gains tax. Instead there would be a death tax. Estates would be taxed 5% up to five million dollars. Everything over five million dollars would be taxed at 50% and up to 500 million dollars. Over 500 million dollars would be taxed at 90%.

Shenanigans on Hennepin Ave. Minneapolis

Shenanigans on Hennepin   The Minneapolis Grain Exchange

An obscure syndicate known as the Minneapolis Grain Exchange remains the supreme price-setter for the continent's most widely exported wheat, a high-protein variety called hard red spring. Upper Left: Minneapolis Grain Exchange today; Upper Right: The Exchange itself; Lower Left: The Old Exchange trading pits; Lower Right: Hard Red Spring wheat.

Following is from

Read Article - http://www.antipasministries.com/html/file0000358.htm

CAPITALISTS OF CHAOS:
SPECULATING ON FOOD WHILE
THE WORLD STARVES

[THE ROOT OF THE ARAB REVOLT AGAINST THE AMERICAN NEW
WORLD ORDER SYSTEM IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA]

By: S.R. Shearer
April 24, 2011

FOOD BECOMES A FINANCIAL ABSTRACTION
TO BE MANIPULATED BY THE ELITES

Frederick Kaufman - in an article that appeared last year (July, 2010) in Harper's Magazine entitled "The Food Bubble:  How Wall Street Starved Millions and Got Away with It" - explains what's been happening:

"The history of food took an ominous turn in 1991, at a time when no one was paying much attention. That was the year Goldman Sachs decided our daily bread might make an excellent investment.

"Agriculture, rooted as it is in the rhythms of reaping and sowing, had not traditionally engaged the attention of Wall Street bankers, whose riches did not come from the sale of real things like wheat or bread but from the manipulation of ethereal concepts like risk and collateralized debt.

"But in 1991 nearly everything else that could be recast as a financial abstraction had already been considered. Food was pretty much all that was left. And so with accustomed care and precision, Goldman's analysts went about transforming food into a concept.

"They selected eighteen commodifiable ingredients and contrived a financial elixir that included cattle, coffee, cocoa, corn, hogs, and a variety or two of wheat. They weighted the investment value of each element, blended and commingled the parts into sums, then reduced what had been a complicated collection of real things into a mathematical formula that could be expressed as a single manifestation, to be known thenceforward as the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index. Then they began to offer shares.

NOTE: The creation of the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index is — as stated above — based on complicated mathematical formulations; the product created is called a "derivative." Derivatives are "investment instruments" whose value is linked to or "derived" from some other security. Derivatives are an extremely high-risk form of market speculation; nonetheless, they have become in recent years one of the largest markets in the world. The size of the derivatives market is estimated to be $600 trillion today. And just how complicated these mathematical formulations are can be demonstrated by examining the so-called PEARL derivative, a currency derivative that was marketed by Morgan Stanley in the early 1990s. The Pearl derivative (a simple derivative by today's standards) was linked to its principal multiplied by the change in the U.S. dollar over a particular period of time, plus twice the change in the value of the British pound, minus twice the change in the value of the Swiss Franc.

"As was usually the case, Goldman's product flourished. The prices of cattle, coffee, cocoa, corn, and wheat began to rise, slowly at first, and then rapidly. And as more people sank money into Goldman's food index, other bankers took note and created their own food indexes for their own clients. Investors were delighted to see the value of their venture increase, but the rising price of breakfast, lunch, and dinner did not align with the interests of those of us who eat. And so the commodity index funds began to cause problems.

 "Wheat was a case in point. North America, the Saudi Arabia of cereal, sends nearly half its wheat production overseas, and an obscure syndicate known as the Minneapolis Grain Exchange remains the supreme price-setter for the continent's most widely exported wheat, a high-protein variety called hard red spring. Other varieties of wheat make cake and cookies, but only hard red spring makes bread. Its price informs the cost of virtually every loaf on

earth."

GOLDMAN SACHS CREATES A
SOPHISTICATED PONZI SCHEME

According to Steven Rothbart, a commodities trader for Cargil, when Goldman Sachs entered the commodities market —

"Commodities had died. We sat there every day and the market wouldn't move. People left. They couldn't make a living anymore."

It was in the midst of this dead market that Goldman Sachs created its index fund: the strategy behind the index consisted essentially of creating a "BUBBLE" in the price of a certain commodity and persuading investors to participate in the creation of that bubble by bidding the price of the commodity up through a mechanism known as "REPLICATION." [Please see Appendix 1 for a description of this mechanism.]

While they would never admit it, what  Goldman Sachs created was a very, very sophisticated PONZI scheme. [Please see our article, "Ponzi Schemes, The Investment Craze and the End of Days" for a description of a Ponzi scheme.]

As a result of Goldman Sachs' Ponzi scheme, the price of wheat rose from a little less than $4.00 a bushel in 2003 to over $15.00 by 2008 — a rise of 400 percent, and it did so when the world was producing more wheat than ever before.

Indeed, the wheat harvest of 2008 turned out to be the most bountiful the world had ever seen. U.S. Department of Agriculture statistics eventually revealed that 657 million bushels of 2008 wheat remained in U.S. silos after the buying season, a record-breaking "carryover." So plentiful was the supply of wheat that even as hundreds of millions slowly starved around the world, 200 million bushels were sold for animal feed. Livestock owners could afford the wheat; poor people could not.

The worldwide price of food as a whole rose by 80 percent between 2005 and 2008, and unlike other food catastrophes of the past half century or so, the United States was not insulated from this one, as 49 million Americans found themselves unable to put a full meal on the table. Across the country demand for food stamps reached an all-time high, and one in five kids came to depend on food kitchens. In Los Angeles nearly a million people went hungry. In Detroit armed guards stood watch over grocery stores.

Naturally enough, as with all Ponzi schemes, the Ponzi pyramid had to eventually collapse, and it did for wheat shortly after reaching the astronomical price of over $15.00 a bushel in 2008. But Goldman Sachs had found a way to profit from the pyramid scheme regardless of whether it was inflating or deflating. Kaufman writes:

"If the price of wheat went up, Goldman made money. And if the price of wheat fell, Goldman still made money ... The bankers had figured out how to extract profit from the commodities market without taking on any of the risks they themselves had introduced ..."  [Again, please see Appendix 1 for a description of this mechanism.]

And what happened in 2008 may only be the beginning of man-made scarcities in the world's food supply. Kaufman warns:

"It may be hard to imagine commodity prices advancing another 460 percent above their mid-2008 price peaks. But the fundamentals argue strongly that these sectors have significant upside potential. I made a quick calculation: 460 percent above 2008 peaks would mean hamburger meat priced at $20 a pound."

NOTE: Paul B. Farrell writes that if one believes that average investors in the commodity markets will eventually "catch on" to how they are being duped, Goldman Sachs is already "... adjusting its strategies to keep a steady supply of naïve, clueless investors buying their toxic commodity ETFs, "dumb money" investments that "make lousy buy-and-hold investments" for Main Street investors while making Wall Street traders filthy rich." Farrell continues: "Wall Street banks are transferring wealth from their clients to their trading desks."

THE HOUSE ALWAYS WINS

Liam Fox and Gilbert Mercier describe the idea behind what Goldman Sachs and other Wall Streeters are up to:

"The idea is quite simple. It's a regular process of boom and bust with an elite few consistently making as much money off the bust as they do the boom. The boom period attracts people to invest their money into the inflating financial system. The bust allows for the money to be consolidated into the few hands that control and manipulate the system. At first you create the right conditions for an economic bubble to occur to get as much money as possible injected into the financial markets. During such a period of boom, the people running the financial game can reward themselves handsomely without even attracting attention from shareholders, because investors, especially the small ones, are under the illusion that they are greatly profiting from the upward trend. When the bust happens, suddenly the pseudo-science of Wall Street is replaced by the odds of chance in Vegas. Sorry for your luck, the house always wins in the end."

HORDING THE WORLD'S FARMLAND TO "CORNER THE
MARKET" ON AGRICULTURAL GOODS AND DRIVE UP PRICES

Rolling Stone's McKenzie Funk adds another brutal critique regarding what Wall Street is up to in "Will Global Warming, Overpopulation, Floods, Droughts and Food Riots Make This Man Rich?"

Funk focuses on Phil Heilberg, a former AIG commodity trader who is one of the new "Capitalists of Chaos." Heilberg is a self-proclaimed pure Ayn Rand capitalist hustling Africa, making "land grab" deals to control millions of acres and commodity rights in unstable nations in order to drive the price of food up all the more.

Regarding what Heilberg is up to in Africa, Funk writes that Heilberg -

"... makes no apologies for dealing with warlords: 'This is Africa ... The whole place is like one big Mafia, and I'm like a Mafia head.'"

Funk says, however, that people like Heilberg know -

"... that the 'Food Bubble' they're collectively blowing will also explode, triggering wars across the planet, wars fought over ever-scarcer non-renewable commodities. That's why the new Capitalists of Chaos -- not just Heilberg and Goldman, but Monsanto, Exxon, etc. -- and their competitors are in the short race to buy up and hoard rights to hard assets, positioning themselves for global catastrophes dead ahead."

In other words, Goldman Sachs, Monsanto, etc. are not only creating a "Food Bubble" on paper (i.e., creating "scarcity" on the world's commodity exchanges), but they are doing everything in their power to make it real by buying up the hard assets themselves and taking them "out of the market," thus creating REAL scarcity - even if it means starving people around the world.

Britain's Guardian reports that the trend for large land acquisitions by First World corporations is a wide-spread phenomenon affecting ever growing parts of south-east Asia, Africa and Latin America.

For instance, in Cambodia, 15% of land has been signed over to private companies since 2005. The Guardian goes on to report that -

"Many of the deals are shrouded in secrecy, so the scale of what is happening is obscured ... It's not hard to see why the subject generates so much attention. It's partly the secrecy element, partly the fear ... Large-scale land acquisition prompts all too vividly visions of a dystopian future in which millions of the hungry are excluded from the land of their forefathers by barbed wire fences and security guards as food is exported to feed the rich world.

NOTE: Dystopia is an imaginary place where everything is as bad as it possibly can get.

"This is no longer just a fear for the future. US environmentalist Lester Brown points out in his new book, World on the Edge, that in 2009 Saudi Arabia received its first shipment of rice from giant corporate agri-businesses that had acquired land in Ethiopia while at the same time the World Food Programme was feeding 5 million Ethiopians. Similarly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 7 million hectares for palm oil production were exported by agri-businesses while millions of people in the DRC are dependent were international aid for food ... [Please see our article, "The Congo and American Greed."]

"Much of the attention so far has focused on Africa. Most of the biggest deals have been in countries such as Ethiopia, Mali and Sudan. The imminently independent south Sudan has seen investors queuing up to exploit one of the areas of greatest potential for as yet under developed agricultural land. In comparison with many other areas of the world, land in Africa is very cheap; in Ethiopia, land can be leased for as little as $1 an acre."

Concerning what's happening in Ethiopia, Fekade Shewakena writes:

"If you are wondering why the government of Meles Zenawi in Ethiopia is doing the secretive land deals with ... agribusiness corporations without any public discussion and scrutiny, and why the officials are handling it in much the same way like thieves who sell their stolen stuff on street corners and dark alleys, you have asked a serious question and probably have almost gotten some of your answers. This is pure theft and burglary sugarcoated as investment — only in this case that the burglar has someone to open the door from inside. It is a dangerous venture that has little to do with solving Ethiopia's economic problems but bound to negatively impact the country's most strategic resources, land and water, and its posterity. It appears that we have reached a point where we are selling out our last belongings just like the desperate peasants I once saw in 1984 sell their last belongings for scrape as they fled their villages to escape an impending famine.

"This land deal, now popularly known as "land grab" among other names, and becoming epidemic in desperately poor ... countries, is a neocolonial venture where land is being sold to foreigners at bargain prices.

Foreign land grabs by First World "investors." State and private investors, from Citadel Capital to Goldman Sachs, are leasing or buying up tens of millions of hectares of farmlands in Asia, Africa and Latin America for food and fuel production. Land grabbing has intensified over the past 10-15 years with the adoption of deregulation policies, trade and investment agreements, and market oriented governance reforms. [From "Food Crisis and the Global Land Grab."]

"The "investors" are salivating over the cheap access to agricultural land, water and cheap labor which would definitely make them even richer in the lucrative food markets ... The Meles Zenawis of Africa are salivating over the quick cash that will go to temporarily solve their hard currency crunch and the opportunity of swelling their individual bank accounts. Those who likened these secret deals to the colonial scramble for African land, where some local chiefs signed and sold off tract after tract of land to colonialists under the influence of alcohol supplied by the colonialist and some glittering gifts, are not very far from an accurate description of these transactions."

PLEASE SEE THE FOLLOWING VIDEO
ON THE RAPE OF ETHOPIA

(View Video)

NOTE: One would be very wrong to assume that these kinds of land grabs are only occurring in Third World countries; they are happening in First World countries such as Canada. For example, NFU (the National Farmers Union) reports that — "In Canada, corporations, investors, and foreign interests are buying up farmland. The National Farmers Union (NFU) today released the first report of its kind documenting Canadian developments in a global land grab. "The NFU report gives ten specific examples of agribusiness and investment companies buying Canadian land. It gives details of these companies and their practices and thus illuminates the rapidly accelerating transfer of foodland ownership from family farmers and local citizens to foreign interests, investors, and corporations. "The report also details the role of Canadian federal and provincial governments in facilitating the farmland buy-up. Governments are failing to monitor or report corporate and investor purchases. Moreover, these same governments are acting to facilitate and promote purchases of farmland by non-farmers. "'Crown agency, Farm Credit Canada, is acting as the main financier of one of the country's biggest farmland investment companies—providing multi-million dollar loans to a company that has already bought up 100,000 acres of farmland. The federal government's 'Invest in Canada' website is promoting 'affordable' farmland, 'low political risk,' and 'fertile fields' to international investors', said NFU President Terry Boehm. "He continued: 'There have been two primary models of land ownership and food production over the centuries. In one, land is held broadly, owned by farmers and other local citizens. In another, a relatively small number of elites owned the land and those who worked it and grew the food were sharecroppers and serfs. Canada has, until recently, embraced the first model. But a corporate and investor farmland buy-up means that we may be in the opening stages of a rapid move to the latter model'." Farmland in western Canada being bought up by giant agri-businesses that make serfs out of ordinary Canadian farmers.

COMMODITY TRADING IS MUTATING INTO A
TOXIC PANDEMIC FUELED BY INSATIABLE GREED

McKenzie Funk continues with his assessment of what commodity traders such as Phil Heilberg — people that Funk calls "CAPITALISTS OF CHAOS" — are creating, and in doing so he echoes what Ellen Brown had to say earlier about the chaos this is creating in North Africa and the Middle East:

"The toxic trail of ... [what Goldman Sachs, etc. are up to] is already proving to be deadly, starving thousands worldwide, while the new Capitalists of Chaos only see incredible profit opportunities, as they make huge bets that they'll get even richer in the next round of catastrophes, disasters, poverty, starvation and wars.

"Bottom line: Commodity ... [trading] is mutating into a toxic pandemic fueled (and protected by) the insatiable greed of banks, traders and politicians whose brains are incapable of giving up their profit machine, won't until it implodes and self-destructs. The Wall Street Banksters have no sense of morals, no ethics, no soul, no goal in life other than getting very rich, very fast. They care nothing of democracy, civilization or the planet. [Please see our article, "The Elite, Money and the End of Days."]

"They are in a race to become the richest man in the world, to control more assets, more commodities, more rights, more land, more money ... It's a contest and the other 6.3 billion humans on the planet are just profit opportunities (and collateral damage) in the dangerous high-stakes games played by the new Capitalists of Chaos ruling the world."

COMING TO GRIPS WITH THE
REAL CHARACTER OF THE ELITES

It is sometimes difficult for ordinary people to believe that there exist such people - people who are so past all feeling toward others, and so lacking in any kind of compassion that they would purposefully starve their fellow man in order to enrich themselves.

But, of course, they do exist. Indeed, to the elites, people THEMSELVES are "commodities" to be used up and discarded; "throw-aways" to be worked to death and then cast off as human trash the way the German chemical firm I.G. Farben did to the Jews in Auschwitz-Birkenau; the way the British elites did to indigenous workers in India, Kenya, Malaysia, etc. 

HOW WE CAN INCREASE JOBS AND LOWER UNEMPLOYMENT

No one in Washington seems to have a solution for curing unemployment that make sense. The Republicans come up with laws that lower taxes for the rich and give them more loopholes.

 Lets change the income tax code to encourage consumers to buy American made products. For example if you have $100,000 taxable income and you buy an American made car you could reduce that taxable income. If you bought an American car for $50,000 and half of the value of the parts and materials  were certified to be made in America you could then reduce the figure by $25,000 the taxable income. If you bought a bottle of Vodka made in Sweden you would could not reduce your taxable income but if the bottle of Vodka was all produced and certified from supplies all made in America you would reduce your your taxable income by the cost of the American made Vodka. If you bought coffee produced from American soil  and packed in America with containers made in America you could reduce that taxable income amount. All food products made, caught packed and processed would be reduce you taxable income. Gasoline from American oil wells and refined in America would also reduce your taxable income.

I am sure all of our politician that are on the take from the multinational corporations would oppose my idea to encourage consumers to buy American made products. The Republicans haven't come up with any ideas except to lower taxes and do away with regulations that protect the workers and consumers.

If you think I have a good idea let your Senators and congressperson hear about it. I have already contacted mine. If enough people call and write your Senators and congressperson they may take note and do something about jobs. It is only the consumer and his money that will create real jobs. Lets encourage the consumer to spend money on American made products by revising the tax code for all consumers and not just the rich. Those consumers that do not make enough to pay income tax would be also get a tax rebate for their purchases of American made product of 15% the same as what the rich pay on capital gains.Lets hope they adopt the Buffet rule and get more money in the pockets of the poor.

It doesn't help the American worker if we just lower taxes and throw money at the poor. If welfare people would spend their money on American made things instead of junk made in China or some other slave country maybe they could get of the dole and get a real job.

The "anti-terrorist" witch-hunt and the future of America

No U-Turns on the Road to Serfdom?

The "anti-terrorist" witch-hunt and the future of America

by Justin Raimondo

In a series of raids last year, the FBI raided the homes and offices of antiwar activists in Minneapolis, North Carolina, Chicago, and California. They seized boxes of materials, cell phones, documents, and other private property, and issued subpoenas to a number of individuals, 24 at last count, demanding their appearance before a federal grand jury. The focus of this fishing expedition is ostensibly the "solidarity work" engaged in by the Antiwar Committee of Minneapolis, and sympathizing organizations, in Palestine and Columbia, but the history of police repression against these groups and individuals goes back years, specifically involving their work in organizing a march on the Republican and Democratic national conventions: in the Twin Cities, the "RNC Welcoming Committee," which planned the protest, was of particular interest to the authorities. The local cops, working with the FBI, actively worked to recruit informants, and — using information gleaned from these infiltrators — conducted a weekend-long reign of terror in early September 2008, breaking down doors, manhandling protesters — including journalists — and rounding up dissidents in anticipation of violence they claim "might" have occurred had the authorities not acted.

Police raid on "RNC Welcoming Committee"

In reality, of course, the RNC Welcoming Committee was engaged in perfectly legal activities protected by the First Amendment, and there was no evidence presented that violence was forthcoming — but, under the terms of the post-9/11 legislative assault on the Constitution that culminated in the "Patriot" Act and subsequent acts of Congress, the First Amendment is no longer operative in this country.

If you're an Influential Person, however, you can get away with almost anything. Let's say you're Michael Mukasey, Bush's former Attorney General, who recently traveled to Paris with Tom Ridge, former Homeland Security chieftain, Fran Townsend, President Bush's former chief adviser on Homeland Security and counter-terrorism, and former New York City mayor and spectacularly failed presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani, to endorse the continuing effort by the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK), or People's Mujahideen, to get off the State Department's list of terrorist organizations.

MEK is an Iranian Marxist-turned-neocon Iranian exile group, with a weirdly cultish orientation, that has murdered US diplomatic personnel and was instrumental in the 1979 takeover of the US embassy in Tehran. They lost out in the power struggle following the overthrow of the Shah, and fled to Iraq, where they were succored by Saddam Hussein: MEK brigades fought on the Iraqi side during the Iraq-Iran war, and carried out terrorist acts against civilian targets — a strategy they would very much like to carry out with US assistance today.

Maryam Rajavi

Over one-hundred members of Congress, who recently signed an appeal to the State Department to take MEK off the terrorist list, are angling for this, and the prominence of the US delegation to the Paris confab is part of the continuing campaign by the War Party to legalize these somewhat nutty cultists — whose unquestioned leader, Maryam Rajavi, has already declared herself the "President" of Iran — and get the group funding. The idea is to use them, as the Bush team used the Iraqi National Congress, to get "intelligence" — of similar quality — to gin up another war, this time against Tehran.

Can you imagine the outcry in official Washington if the FBI invaded the offices of Mukasey, Giuliani, Ridge, and Townsend, searching for evidence of "material support" to a foreign terrorist organization — the same crime the Minneapolis defendants are potentially facing? Such laws, however, aren't written in order to target such people: it's only those without power who suffer such a fate. If you're in any way associated with WikiLeaks, government agents are quick to stop you at the airport, question you, and seize your laptop, but if you're Rudy the Lout, on the way back from a tête-à-tête with terrorists — the good kind, rest assured — you're escorted to the VIP line and whisked through security.

Civil libertarians may cavil that this disparate treatment is evidence of selective prosecution, but selectivity is what the post-9/11 assault on the Bill of Rights is all about. Of course the government has the legal "right," these days, to read everyone's email, break into our private property, and collect information about our constitutionally protected activities — but you can bet they're not intercepting Senor Mukasey's email. Unless some political figure is being set up for blackmail, the Washington insiders and their friends are exempt from the depredations of the surveillance state. When it comes to the Antiwar Committee of Minneapolis, however — well, that's a horse of a different color, as they say in the land of Oz.

Anti-terrorist Fusion Centers and their end result

In the wake of 9/11, the neocons were strategically enough placed to launch a two-front war: one at home, and one abroad. The post-9/11 coup, in which a handful of neocons seized control of the machinery of the state and lied us into war, also involved waging a war on the home front —against the Constitution. And while the Iraq campaign ended in failure, an outcome currently being replicated in Afghanistan, their domestic campaign to destroy the legacy of the Founders and create the basis for a police state was much more successful. Indeed, I would venture to call it a near total victory.

With the support of both political parties, an extensive network of "anti-terrorist" "fusion centers" was created, in which local, state, and national law enforcement agencies cooperated in a "fused" effort to gather intelligence on and take action against targets deemed potential nodes of terrorist activity. Acting under a very broad mandate, and with billions of our tax dollars at their disposal, these agencies were also under considerable pressure to produce results. This led, according to the Office of the Inspector General, to spying on perfectly legal and even pacifist organizations, whose only "crime" was to oppose the foreign and military policies pursued by Washington.

A key part of this gigantic intelligence-gathering operation is the infiltration and disruption of suspect groups, such as the "RNC Welcoming Committee," and the less publicized "welcoming committee" planned for the Democratic national conventioneers. I would note in passing that the unusual interest taken by law enforcement in these various "welcoming committees" is perfectly logical, albeit unconstitutional and intolerable in a free society, because the two "major" political parties are, after all, mere extensions of the State. With their legally privileged status, encoded in highly restrictive ballot access laws, and their regular receipt of government funds — the national conventions of both parties are given millions of taxpayer dollars to fund their partisan extravaganzas — the Democrats and Republicans are just as much wards of the government as are such "quasi-private" agencies as the National Endowment for Democracy, the Federal Reserve, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, or Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Any actions that challenge the power or legitimacy of these quasi-agencies are bound to be met by the State with brutal force. The fate of those who defy our two-headed official ruling party is no different from those who challenge the single-headed ruling parties that dominate what we call "totalitarian" or "authoritarian" states: hence the raids on the Minneapolis Antiwar group and their sympathizers nationally, and the subsequent grand jury fishing expedition.

In gathering evidence to justify these raids, and give what is simply an act of naked repression the color of "law," the feds in cooperation with the local cops sent in infiltrators, including one "Karen Sullivan," whose modus operandi is described here. After being recruited to the Antiwar Committee in 2008, Sullivan — whose lesbian orientation and hints of having been abused by a former husband made her a sympathetic figure to her fellow activists — proceeded to make herself indispensable. She joined the core group — the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (Fight Back), a Marxist group which came out of the radical movements of the 1960s — and acted as a public spokeswoman for them, making speeches, and even traveling to Israel with other members in order to make contact with a Palestinian women's organization.

Freedom Road Socialist Organization and Karen Sullivan, the FBI infiltrator.

This went on for two and a half years, as agent Sullivan collected information on the Freedom Roaders and reported it to her superiors — until the raids, in which the cops used a key provided no doubt by their snitch to break into the Antiwar Committee's Minneapolis office. Whereupon she disappeared as quickly and mysteriously as she had first come on the scene.

The implications for the antiwar movement, and for any group that dares oppose government policy, are ominous: what this means is that any and all such groups must assume the presence of infiltrators, and take measures to guard against it. That this has a chilling effect on the public expression of dissent is an understatement: such assumed surveillance is certain to have the effect of weakening and marginalizing the targets, making it impossible to engage in constitutionally protected political organizing.

The pursuit of the Freedom Road organization is not intended to stop "terrorism" — unless one defines "terrorism" as any and all opposition to our foreign policy of global intervention. What it is designed to do is make an example out of the targets, and send a message: anyone who challenges our rulers in any significant way is going to be brought down using the full powers of the State to crush them, and jail them, if they persist. The campaign starts with a small group of Marxists, with no influence and virtually no allies, and ends with — well, then, how does it end? Where does it end?

It ends with you.

If the government can criminalize the peaceful political activities of the Freedom Roaders, and give the enablers of the violent MEK cultists a pass, then it's open season on anyone and everyone.

What is happening in these United States is that we are now saddled with a political police, which routinely spies on and intervenes in the peaceful, legal, and constitutionally protected activities of American citizens?

I'll tell you what's happening, and has already happened: we've reached a turning point, a bend in the road, and every day we go a little farther down it. To paraphrase Garet Garrett:

"We have crossed the boundary that lies between liberty and dictatorship. If you ask when, the answer is that you cannot make a single stroke between day and night. The precise moment does not matter. There was no painted sign to say, 'You now are entering Despotism'. Yet it was a very old road and the voice of history was saying: 'Whether you know it or not, the act of crossing may be irreversible'. And now, not far ahead, is a sign that reads: 'No U Turns'."

What we are facing is the prospect of a regime such as has not been seen since the days of the Alien and Sedition Acts, or the Palmer raids of World War I: a new era of repression enhanced by modern technology.

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WHAT IS THE REASON FOR THE DRUG WAR &POVERTY IN MEXICO

Article from ANIPAS MINISTRIES

Is the CIA behind Mexico's
Bloody Drug War?


PREFACE
We have spoken of the casual and routine manner the US has been using Death Squads in Egypt to prop up the government of Mubarak; but — as we indicated in our last "banner article," "What's Happening Now in Egypt" — Egypt is BY NO MEANS the only country where the use of Death Squads by the American super-state occurs; it occurs EVERYWHERE throughout the American New World Order System.
The process that has made the use of Death Squads so necessary is called "globalism" (sometimes known as "Free Trade") — a process that goes far beyond "merely" displacing wage-earners in First World countries, but one which also obliterates the peasant agriculture of Third World nations such as Mexico, Argentina, Chile and India.
Insofar as countries like Mexico are concerned, free trade (i.e., "globalization") undercuts peasant farming by making it compete against the giant agribusinesses of the First World - businesses that are located principally in the United States and to a lesser degree in Canada and Australia. In the process, peasant agriculture is ground down under the impress of a First World agricultural juggernaut, eventually resulting in the forced migration of these peasants from their homes in rural areas to the city where they are pressed into a kind of industrial slavery for re-located First World industries (like Ford, General Motors, General Electric, etc.), the products of which are not destined for Third World customers, but for First World consumers. The vacated peasant lands are then gathered up and reconstituted as large farms very often controlled by interests in the employ of the very First World agribusinesses which destroyed them in the first place — agribusinesses such as Cargill, Continental, ConAgra, Louis Drefus, Bunge, Carnac, Mitsui/Cook, and Archer Daniels Midland, etc.
In order to escape the abject poverty forced upon them by the "globalization" policies of Washington, many Mexicans migrate "illegally" to the United States, there to work as maids, gardeners, nannies, day-laborers and agricultural workers in conditions that approach those of indentured slaves — and all the while existing under the constant threat of deportation if they protest their living conditions.
In the interim, Mexico is DAMNED as a "Narco State" so that America can maintain in power its own puppet regime — one that grants access to America's giant corporations to plunder the country of its wealth — which is considerable. [Please see our articles, "The Bolivarian Revolution Reaches America's Southern Border," "Obrador's Parallel Leftist Government in Mexico City" and "What's up in Mexico."]

__________________________________
INTRODUCTION
Well-known journalist Mike Whitney writes:
"On April 23, two patrol cars were ambushed by armed gunman in downtown Ciudad Juarez. In the ensuing firefight, seven policemen were killed as well as a 17-year old boy who was caught in the crossfire. All of the assailants escaped uninjured fleeing the crime-scene in three SUVs. The bold attack was executed in broad daylight in one of the busiest areas of the city. "
Whitney continues:
"According to the Associated Press: 'Hours after the attack, a painted message directed to top federal police commanders and claiming responsibility for the attack appeared on a wall in downtown Ciudad Juarez. It was apparently signed by La Linea gang, the enforcement arm of the Juarez drug cartel. The Juarez cartel has been locked in a bloody turf battle with the Sinaloa cartel, led by Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman. "This will happen to you ... for being with El Chapo Guzman and to all the dirtbags who support him. Sincerely,La Linea."
The attack by La Linea (i.e., the Juarez drug cartel) on the police in Juarez was especially infuriating to the government of Mexican president Felipe Calderon because it is a well-known secret in Mexico that Calderon's government is allied with the Sinola drug cartel.
Reporter John Gilber, a Global Exchange human rights fellow in Mexico, reports that -
"Chapo" Guzman's Sinaloa Cartel and the government work together to both eliminate the competition [i.e., those drug cartels that are not on the "government's take" and carry out counterinsurgency operations against the guerrillas. Here El Chapo Guzman's cartel is working for the state and vice versa."
El Chapo and Felipe Calderon - America's men in Mexico dedicated to plundering the poor of Mexico in the interest of America's business elites.


El Chapo Guzman - head of the Sinola Drug cartel allied with the Mexican government of Felipe Calderon, "Washington's Man in Mexico." [Please see our article, "Obrador's Parallel Leftist government in Mexico City."]

Naturally enough, America's business elites approve this collaboration; after all, anything that aids America's suppression of the poor in Mexico will be looked upon with favor by Washington. Moreover, the shipment of drugs into America's poorer neighborhoods does wonders to pacify America's poor insofar as revolutionary activity in the "homeland" is concerned. [Please see our article, "Measuring the Depravity of the Elites: Pacifying the Poor through Drug Addiction" and "The History of CIA Involvement in Drugs."]

Mike Whitney reports that the big cartels are engaged in a ferocious battle for the drug corridors around Juarez. The Sinaloa, Gulf and La Familia cartels have formed an alliance against the upstart Los Zetas gang. Whitney goes on to say that it is alleged that the Calderon administration is allied with the Sinaloa cartel and refuses to arrest its members.
MURDER COURTESY OF THE SINOLA DRUG CARTEL
THAT IS ALLIED WITH THE MEXICAN GOVERNMENT
Whitney goes on to say that "... the US Treasury identifies at least 20 front companies that are laundering drug money for the Sinaloa cartel [which is to say, for the Mexican government] ... According to Diego Enrique Osorno, investigative journalist and author of the 'The Sinaloa Cartel': "There are no important detentions of Sinaloa cartel members. But the government is hunting down adversary groups, new players in the world of drug trafficking."
International Security Expert, Edgardo Buscaglia, says that "of over 50,000 drug related arrests, only a very small percentage have been Sinaloa cartel members, and no cartel leaders. Dating back to 2003, law enforcement data shows objectively that the government has been hitting the other organized crime groups in Mexico, but they have not been hitting the Sinaloa Federation, that's responsible for 45% of the drug trade in this country."
A report in the Los Angeles Times reveals that the government has diverted funds that were earmarked for struggling farmers (who have been hurt by NAFTA) "to the families of notorious drug traffickers and several senior government officials, including the agriculture minister." Here's an excerpt from the Los Angeles Times: "According to several academic studies, as much as 80% of the money went to just 20% of the registered farmers...Among the most eyebrow-raising recipients were three siblings of billionaire drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, head of the powerful Sinaloa cartel, and the brother of Guzman's onetime partner, Arturo Beltran Leyva". ("Mexico farm subsidies are going astray", Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times)
There's no doubt that if the LA Times knows about the circular flow of state money to drug traffickers, then the American government knows too. So why does the government persist with the same policy and continue to support the people they pretend to be fighting?
The massacre in downtown Juarez is just the latest incident in Mexico's bloody drug war. Between 5 to 6 more people will be killed on Saturday, and on every day thereafter with no end in sight. 23,000 people have been killed since 2006 in Juarez alone — much of it connected to the government's and the Sinola drug cartel's war against the Zetas.


The on-going partnership between the government and the Sinola Drug Cartel.
US GOVERNMENT ECONOMIC POLICIES
CREATE POVERTY IN MEXICO
The surge in narcotics trafficking and drug addiction go hand-in-hand with destructive free trade policies which have fueled their growth. NAFTA, in particular, has triggered a massive migration of people who have been pushed off the land because they couldn't compete with heavily-subsidized agricultural products from the US. Many of these people drifted north to towns like Juarez which became a manufacturing hub in the 1990s. But Juarez's fortunes took a turn for the worse a few years later when competition from the Far East grew fiercer. Now most of the plants and factories have been boarded up and the work has been outsourced to China where subsistence wages are the norm. Naturally, young men have turned to the cartels as the only visible means of employment and upward mobility. That means that free trade has not only had a ruinous effect on the economy, but has also created an inexhaustible pool of recruits for the drug trade. [Please see our article, "Chiapas: The Effect of the New World Order on the Poor."]

Washington's Merida Initiative--which provides $1.4 billion in aid to the Calderon administration to intensify military operations--has only made matters worse. The public's demand for jobs, security and social programs, has been answered with check-points, crackdowns and state repression. The response from Washington hasn't been much better. Obama hasn't veered from the policies of the prior administration. He is as committed to a military solution as his predecessor, George W. Bush.

But the need for change is urgent. Mexico is unraveling and ... the prospect of a failed state run by drug kingpins and paramilitaries on US's southern border becomes more and more probable. The drug war is merely a symptom of deeper social problems; widespread political corruption, grinding poverty, soaring unemployment, and the erosion of confidence in public institutions. But these issues are brushed aside, so the government can pursue its one-size-fits-all military strategy without second-guessing or remorse. Meanwhile, the country continues to fall apart.
THE CLASHING CARTELS
In forty years, US drug policy has never changed. The same "hunt them down, bust them, and lock them up" philosophy continues to this day. That's why many critics believe that the drug war is really about control, not eradication. It's a matter of who's in line to rake in the profits; small-time pushers who run their own operations or politically-connected kingfish who have agents in the banks, the intelligence agencies, the military and the government. Currently, in Juarez, the small fries' are getting wiped out while the big-players are getting stronger. In a year or so, the Sinaloa cartel will control the streets, the drug corridors, and the border. The violence will die down and the government will proclaim "victory", but the flow of drugs into the US will increase while the situation for ordinary Mexicans will continue to deteriorate.
Here's a clip from an article in the Independent by veteran journalist Hugh O'Shaughnessy:
"The outlawing and criminalizing of drugs and consequent surge in prices has produced a bonanza for producers everywhere, from Kabul to Bogota, but, at the Mexican border, where an estimated $39,000m in narcotics enter the rich US market every year, a veritable tsunami of cash has been created. The narcotraficantes, or drug dealers, can buy the murder of many, and the loyalty of nearly everyone. They can acquire whatever weapons they need from the free market in firearms north of the border and bring them into Mexico with appropriate payment to any official who holds his hand out." ("The US-Mexico border: where the drugs war has soaked the ground blood red", Hugh O'Shaughnessy, The Independent.)
It's no coincidence that Kabul and Bogota are the de facto capitals of the drug universe. US political support is strong in both places, as is the involvement of US intelligence agencies. But does that suggest that the CIA is at work in Mexico, too? Or, to put it differently: Why is the US supporting a client that appears to be allied to the most powerful drug cartel in Mexico? That's the question.
THE CHECKERED HISTORY OF THE CIA
In August 1996, investigative journalist Gary Webb released the first installment of Dark Alliance in the San Jose Mercury exposing the CIA's involvement in the drug trade. The article blew the lid off the murky dealings of the agency's covert operations. Webb's words are as riveting today as they were when they first appeared 14 years ago:
"For the better part of a decade, a San Francisco Bay Area drug ring sold tons of cocaine to the Crips and Bloods street gangs of Los Angeles and funneled millions in drug profits to a Latin American guerrilla army run by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, a Mercury News investigation has found.
"This drug network opened the first pipeline between Colombia's cocaine cartels and the black neighborhoods of Los Angeles, a city now known as the "crack'' capital of the world. The cocaine that flooded in helped spark a crack explosion in urban America and provided the cash and connections needed for L.A.'s gangs to buy automatic weapons.
"It is one of the most bizarre alliances in modern history: the union of a U.S.-backed army attempting to overthrow a revolutionary socialist government and the Uzi-toting "gangstas'' of Compton and South-Central Los Angeles." ("America's 'crack' plague has roots in Nicaragua war", Gary Webb, San Jose Mercury News) [Please see our articles, "Measuring the Depravity of the Elites," "The History of CIA Involvement in Drugs" and "The Death of Gary Webb."]
Counterpunch editor Alexander Cockburn has also done extensive research on the CIA/drug connection. Here's an excerpt from an article titled "The Government's Dirty Little Secrets", which ran in the Los Angeles Times.
"CIA Inspector General Frederick Hitz finally conceded to a U.S. congressional committee that the agency had worked with drug traffickers and had obtained a waiver from the Justice Department in 1982 (the beginning of the Contra funding crisis) allowing it not to report drug trafficking by agency contractors. Was the lethal arsenal deployed at Roodeplaat assembled with the advice from the CIA and other U.S. agencies? There were certainly close contacts over the years. It was a CIA tip that led the South African secret police to arrest Nelson Mandela." (The Government's Dirty Little Secrets, Los Angeles Times, commentary, 1998)
And then there's this from independent journalist Zafar Bangash:
"The CIA, as Cockburn and (Jeffrey) St Clair reveal, had been in this business right from the beginning. In fact, even before it came into existence, its predecessors, the OSS and the Office of Naval Intelligence, were involved with criminals. One such criminal was Lucky Luciano, the most notorious gangster and drug trafficker in America in the forties."
"The CIA's involvement in drug trafficking closely dovetails America's adventures overseas - from Indo-China in the sixties to Afghanistan in the eighties....As Alfred McCoy states in his book:Politics of Heroin: CIA complicity in the Global Drug Trade, beginning with CIA raids from Burma into China in the early fifties, the agency found that 'ruthless drug lords made effective anti-communists'." ("CIA peddles drugs while US Media act as cheerleaders", Zafar Bangash, Muslimedia, January 16-31, 1999)
And, this from author William Blum:
"ClA-supported Mujahedeen rebels ... engaged heavily in drug trafficking while fighting against the Soviet-supported government," writes historian William Blum. "The Agency's principal client was Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, one of the leading druglords and a leading heroin refiner. CIA-supplied trucks and mules, which had carried arms into Afghanistan, were used to transport opium to laboratories along the Afghan/Pakistan border. The output provided up to one half of the heroin used annually in the United States and three-quarters of that used in Western Europe...."
And, this from Portland Independent Media:
"Before 1980, Afghanistan produced 0% of the world's opium. But then the CIA moved in, and by 1986 they were producing 40% of the world's heroin supply. By 1999, they were churning out 3,200 TONS of heroin a year--nearly 80% of the total market supply. But then something unexpected happened. The Taliban rose to power, and by 2000 they had destroyed nearly all of the opium fields. Production dropped from 3,000+ tons to only 185 tons, a 94% reduction! This drop in revenue hurt not only the CIA's Black Budget projects, but also the free-flow of laundered money in and out of the Controller's banks." (Portland Independent Media)
The evidence of CIA involvement in the drug trade is vast, documented and compelling. Still, does that mean that there is some nefarious 3-way connection between the Sinaloa Cartel, the Calderon administration and the CIA? Isn't it more likely that US policymakers are simply stuck in an ideological rut and are unable to break free from the culture of militarism that has swallowed Washington whole? Author John Ross answers these questions and more in a speech he delivered at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington D.C. in April 2009. Here's an excerpt:
"What does Washington want from Mexico? On the security side, the U.S. seeks total control of Mexico's security apparatus. With the creation of NORTHCOM (Northern Command) designed to protect the U.S. landmass from terrorist attack, Mexico is designated North America's southern security perimeter and U.S. military aircraft now has carte blanche to penetrate Mexican airspace. Moreover, the North American Security and Prosperity Agreement (ASPAN in its Mexican initials) seeks to integrate the security apparatuses of the three NAFTA nations under Washington's command. Now the Merida Initiative signed by Bush II and Calderon in early 2007 allows for the emplacement of armed U.S. security agents - the FBI, the DEA, the CIA, and ICE - on Mexican soil and contractors like the former Blackwater cannot be far behind. Wars are fought for juicy government contracts and $1.3 billion in Merida moneys are going directly to U.S. defense contractors - forget about the Mexican middleman.
"On the energy side, the designated target is, of course, the privatization of PEMEX, Mexico's nationalized oil industry, with a particular eye out for risk contracts on deep sea drilling in the Gulf of Mexico utilizing technology only the EXXONs of this world possess." (John Ross, "The Big Scam : How and Why Washington Hooked Mexico on the Drug War)
The drug war is the mask behind which the real policy is concealed. The United States is using all the implements in its national security toolbox to integrate Mexico into a North America Uberstate, a hemispheric free trade zone that removes sovereign obstacles to corporate looting and guarantees rich rewards for defense contractors. As Ross notes, all of the usual suspects are involved, including the FBI and CIA. That means the killing in Juarez will continue until Washington's objectives are achieved.