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Friday, April 30, 2010

Attack on Arizona epitomizes left-liberal/neocon war against last vestiges of Western civilization in America [updated]

Stand Up for Arizona
(The American Conservative) -- by Patrick J. Buchanan --

Major demonstrations are to be held in 70 cities on May 1 to protest the new Arizona law to cope with an army of half a million illegal aliens now living there.

Since Gov. Jan Brewer signed that law a week ago, Arizona has been subjected to savage attack as the modern embodiment of Jim Crow, apartheid and Nazism. Few have risen in her defense.

In San Francisco, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., moves are afoot to boycott Arizona and cancel conventions to break the state, as it was broken when Arizona declined to set aside a holiday for Martin Luther King.

Republican leaders like Jeb Bush, Karl Rove and even the rising Marco Rubio of Florida have declared themselves “troubled” or “concerned” and washed their hands of Arizona, which suggests they have not read the law — or the party remains captive to country-club political correctness.

In a particularly offensive smear, Mexican President Felipe Calderon charged Arizona with opening the door “to intolerance, hate, discrimination and abuse in law enforcement.”

And what was the reaction of the Great Apologist to this slander of an American state by the leader of a neighboring nation?

None. One wonders if Barack Obama will ever stand up to foreign leaders’ abusing the nation that awarded him its highest honor. Or has he been marinated since birth in the “Blame America First” mindset of the San Francisco Democrats who sneer at the real America?

As columnist Michelle Malkin writes, there is no shortage of ammunition our president could have used to fire back at the hypocrites of Mexico City.

For where Arizona has made it a misdemeanor to be in the country illegally, in Calderon’s country it is a felony that can get you years in prison. Where illegal aliens in America regularly protest under Mexican flags, no foreign resident of Mexico may demonstrate against the regime.

Where immigration is changing the ethnic balance of this country, in Mexico immigrants are not allowed in who could upset “the equilibrium of the national demographics.” Where Americans demand we treat illegal aliens firmly but fairly, Guatemalans caught in Mexico are often treated with a brutality bordering on sadism.

We really do not need any lectures on morality or human rights from Mexico. But what is the matter with our leader that he will not defend his country?

As for the supposedly neo-Nazi Arizona law, what does it really say and do?

First, it brings Arizona law into conformity with federal law. As it has long been a federal crime to be in the country illegally, it is now a crime in Arizona.

Second, just as U.S. law since 1940 has required legal aliens — immigrants and guest workers — to carry their green cards or work visas at all times, Arizona law now says the same thing...MORE...LINK
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Chris Moore comments:

Of course Leftists are going to blame America first, because they hate Christianity and Western Civilization in general, and white Christians in particular, and thus seek to keep it all on the defensive until ultimate demise. It's their version of the Samson Option or End Times, after which they seem to believe a brave new world of harmonious globalization will spontaneously arise, deluded little intellectual peons that they are.

But more disturbing is what passes for the Right in America today, which is supposed to the more clear thinking and mature of the two:

Bechanan: "Republican leaders like Jeb Bush, Karl Rove and even the rising Marco Rubio of Florida have declared themselves “troubled” or “concerned” and washed their hands of Arizona, which suggests they have not read the law — or the party remains captive to country-club political correctness."

Captive to that, to cheap-labor Corporatism, and to their own millenarian delusions revolving around Empire, neoconservatism and Zionism.

What passes for "leadership" in America today is nothing so much as a hoard of infantile elites who haven't a clue about what the hell they are doing, or what the hell is really going on in this country.

-----
@ Majumder: "WHY does American government allow illegal immigration? Because, illegal immigration allows American government to expand itself by virtue of expanding healthcare, education, housing, and correctional system for the newcomers. Some would say, American taxpayers pay the bills for all those additional costs for healthcare, education, housing, and correctional system. In fact, American taxpayers do not foot the bills. Because, American government does not actually pay for any of those new additional costs. Costs just accrue in the form of budget deficits that are never paid off or will never be paid off to any creditor. American government will simply print more greenbacks and foreign governments will continue buying American government’s debts infinitely."

You get it mostly right. Except foreign governments, which only finance a percentage of the deficits, will NOT buy American debt infinitely, because they know the Fed will eventually have to massively INFLATE in order to pay off even a small percentage of total American debt, which means the debt they are holding will become largely worthless.

Also, by the Fed’s massive credit creation and printing of dollars, Americans DO pay for all those programs in the form of inflation, and will pay through the nose for all the spending when the Fed starts to inflate massively.

Do you think the dollar is going to remain the world's reserve currency forever? Think again. Already the G20 and the International bankers are laying plans to replace the dollar as world reserve currency with the SDR.
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/04/was-sdr-just-chosen-as-new-world.html


So because these buffoons in Washington have been so grossly irresponsible in their spending and negligent in their management of the country and its foreign policy, the world is going to dump the dollar and leave untold generations of Americans saddled with massive debt and worthless monopoly money, Weimar style.

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Are those opposed to globalisationism and mass immigration "bigots," or are those pushing them morally vain, elitist, greedy and nihilistic?

Transatlantic Immigration
(American Conservative Blog) -- by Philip Giraldi --

If you think the heap of abuse being piled on Arizona is unique to America’s ethnically fractured politics, you should take a look at England. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who is running for reelection, encountered yesterday a 66 year old woman who asked him why so many immigrants from Eastern Europe were receiving government benefits when so many Brits experiencing difficulties were unable to receive any assistance at all. She also asked why there were so many foreigners attending British universities, making it difficult for children like her own grandchildren to attend.

I don’t know the extent to which EU residents can claim British benefits when unemployed, but certainly the woman’s first question was a reasonable one, without any racial overtones about immigrants, and the comment about foreigners at taxpayer supported universities would also seem to be within the realm of polite discourse. Brown apparently did not agree. Not knowing that his microphone was still on, he muttered about how the woman was a “bigot” as he returned to his car.

For me the problem is one of government accountability. No one in government has ever asked the British people whether they want large scale immigration any more than anyone in Washington has ever posed that question to Americans about our 8 to 22 million illegals. Every major political party in both countries reflects the elite consensus view that immigration and “diversity” are good. Opinion polls reveal, however, that the elite view is far from popular, with up to 80% of the indigenous population in both countries opposed to large numbers of immigrants. For the average Brit as for the average American there is, unfortunately, no recourse. If you vote for one of the candidates who is actually likely to win in an election his position on immigration will likely be identical to that of his opponent.

In the essentially two party system prevailing in Britain and America, even when you vote the bum out you are just as likely to get another bum. If you voted for a Democrat or a Republican (or Conservative or Labour) in 2002 you still got a war with Iraq in the following year just as everyone’s vote will be irrelevant if America’s elites decide to go to war with Iran and the British poodle goes along for the ride...LINK
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Related:

Labour let in migrants ‘to engineer multicultural UK’
By Daily Mail/ 24th October 2009

Huge increases in immigration over the past decade were a deliberate attempt to engineer a more multicultural Britain, a former Government adviser said yesterday. Andrew Neather, a speechwriter who worked in Downing Street for Tony Blair and in the Home Office for Jack Straw and David Blunkett, said Labour’s relaxation of controls was a plan to ‘open up the UK to mass migration’. As well as bringing in hundreds of thousands to plug labour market gaps, there was also a ‘driving political purpose’ behind immigration policy, he claimed. Ministers hoped to change the country radically and ‘rub the Right’s nose in diversity’. But Mr Neather said senior Labour figures were reluctant to discuss the policy, fearing it would alienate its ‘core working-class vote’...MORE...LINK
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Chris Moore comments:

What’s going on in this country is essentially the same thing as in Britain: Western-hating, Marxist-indoctrinated yet shallow, money-worshipping and materialistic “elites” who see themselves as the vanguard of internationalism looking to drive down wages by flooding the country with cheap immigrant labor, looking to gain political power by assembling the various immigrant ethnic blocks into a left-statist coalition, and looking to wipe out the vestiges of “bigoted” Western Civilization as quickly as possible.

Of course, all this is being helped along by globalizationist Corporatism.

“Bigots” is just one of those fashionable terms employed by self-righteous, overly materialistic elitists living in gated communities to justify their nihilistic vanity and greed.


Fran Rossi comments: "@ Chris Moore, you do realize that both conservatives and liberals employ the cheap, immigrant labor to which you refer in your comment. Conservatives just prefer to demonize them instead of their employers, hence their flocking to the Left. Immigration is no more an anti-West, Marxist plot (you make me laugh) than is off shore oil drilling."

Yes, I know Corporatist conservatives and Statist liberals both seek to exploit immigrants for their own ambition, vanity and greed. Did you not read my post?

And if you don’t believe there is a political goal behind mass immigration, you must not have read the blurb I posted and linked to on how Labour “Ministers hoped to change the country radically and ‘rub the Right’s nose in diversity’” via mass immigration, and to “plug labor market gaps” (Read: drive down the price of labor.)

Don’t you find it ironic that a party that advertises itself as advocating on behalf of “Labour” seeks to drive DOWN the price of labor via mass immigration?

These globalization-pimping “elites” are all hustlers, swindlers and cads.

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Goldman Sachs unmasked as a den of thieves that swindles everyone from U.S. taxpayers to its own clients

Seize and Liquidate Goldman Sachs
(Infowars.com) -- by Webster Tarpley --

...The mystique of Goldman Sachs is based in large part on their reputation as the smartest financiers on Wall Street. After today’s hearings, this mystique has permanently dissipated. The Goldman executives babbled. They sounded dumb. They stalled and stammered and went into contortions to avoid giving straight answers to simple questions. They were mendacious and evasive when they did speak. Financial powers around the world will note carefully the refusal of three out of four Goldman executives on one panel to state that they had a duty to defend the interests of their clients. Who will want to do business with such a gang? Goldman Sachs got $10 billion of taxpayer money in low-interest loans under the Bush-Paulson TARP. Part of that money went to pay for obscene bonuses for Goldman executives like the ones on display today. The argument for bonuses is that they must be paid to retain the highly talented personnel, virtual geniuses, who are indispensable for Wall Street speculative success. But these are no geniuses, they are imbeciles. No more bonuses should be paid by banks saved through public money.

Don’t buy any used cars from Lloyd Blankfein

Sleaziest of all was Goldman’s risk-monger in chief, Lloyd Blankfein, who pretended not to know that derivatives are often kept hidden off balance sheet. The morally insane Blankfein testified that his role was to provide the firm’s clients with “the risk they wanted.” Other GS witnesses represented the firm’s role as “distributing risk.” But it turned out that they were manufacturing risk through the very existence and activities of Goldman Sachs, which had the result of pyramiding the total risk of the US financial system into intergalactic space. It is time to regulate much of that unbearable risk out of existence with appropriate regulatory legislation. In the meantime, no sane person would buy a used car from Blankfein. Nor should they believe his assurance that the “recession” has ended.

But when at the end of the day Blankfein finally suggested to Sen. Tester that synthetic CDOs might be outlawed, we should accept his proposal immediately.

Today’s hearings reveal the Goldman Sachs gunslingers and whiz kids as ignorant gangsters and con artists, notable only for their ability to practice massive fraud with impudence. These sleazy mediocrities do not deserve bonuses paid for by taxpayers. Rather, it is time to shut them down and put them in the dock.

If Goldman Sachs had cared about is clients, it would have urgently warned them to unload their subprime risk by late 2006 or thereabouts. Instead, Goldman was busily increasing its clients’ risk by selling them more toxic CDOs out of its own inventory warehouse.

Goldman Sachs: bookies who stack the deck and fix the games

As the philandering Sen. Ensign pointed out, comparing Wall Street to Las Vegas is a slander on the croupiers of Las Vegas, where everyone knows or should know that the game is rigged so that the house always wins. To use the comparison introduced by Sen. McCaskill, Goldman Sachs was operating as the gambling house, or the bookie. At the same time, Goldman was betting for their own account. But much worse was the fact that Goldman was stacking the decks, loading the dice, fixing the games on which the bets were placed, and bribing the umpires.

As Ensign put it in a rare moment of lucidity, the subprime mortgage was bad. But the collapse of subprime would not have had anything like its actual destructive effect on the US economy if it had not been compounded by the mass of synthetic derivatives that were piled on top of subprime.

No national or social purpose served by Goldman Sachs and toxic derivatives bets

The broader issue raised by today’s hearing is: what human purpose is served by the existence of Goldman Sachs, which concocts toxic synthetic CDOs for the purpose of allowing speculators, who are often lied to and duped, to bet for or against them. Goldman Sachs can only be described as a speculative parasite which promotes the activities of other speculative parasites, such as the John Paulson hedge fund at the expense of the public and of its other clients. It was a crime to inject $10 billion of Treasury money into Goldman Sachs. It was another crime for the Fed to lend Goldman untold billions (just how many billions Bernanke still refuses to disclose) to keep them afloat and enable more predatory profits. These crimes must stop, and the public money must be clawed back. Most important, it is time to shut down the derivatives rackets.

Goldman got $12.5 billion from taxpayers for AIG credit default swaps

Useful questions from GOP Sen. Coburn pointed to another kind of derivative: the infamous credit default swap (CDS). These CDS are what brought down AIG, whose London hedge fund had issues $3 trillion in derivatives. When the government bailed out AIG, part of that $180 billion of taxpayer money was used for payouts to the CDS counterparties of AIG, biggest among them Goldman, which got $12.5 billion from the US taxpayer. That was 100 cents on the dollar on a mass of toxic CDS. Coburn wanted to know why Goldman got all their money back, while GM bondholders took a bath as GM went bankrupt. That was, of course, a matter of Goldman’s political clout through GS alum Henry Paulson and Obama Car Czar Steve “The Rat” Rattner, backed up by the historic preponderance of finance capital over industrial capital in this country since Andrew Carnegie sold out to JP Morgan over a century ago...MORE...LINK

The oligarch-fueled rise of Barack Obama from relative obscurity to Torturer In Chief in a few short years

Is Obama A Congenital Liar & Sadistic Torturer?
While The Obamas Party In The White House, The CIA Tortures Men, Women and Children
(Rense.com) -- By J. Speer-Williams --

...Not long ago Obama, a relatively unknown Afro-American, was being sheep-dipped (gaining an identity, to build creditability) as a Constitutional Law professor (when he - by rights - should have been studying our Constitution) at the highly regarded University of Chicago School of Law, while he doubled as an Illinois state legislator.

And even though flextime Professor Obama had produced no original scholarship papers on Constitutional Law, he was offered a tenured position at the lofty Chicago School of Law. But oddly enough, hard working Professor Obama refused tenure, as he must have known he was on a much faster greased track to something much bigger ... if ... he could only improve his poor teleprompter reading skills of what others wrote for him.

And, Mr. Soetero ... er... Mr. Obama applied himself to his trade, which was not statesmanship, but neuro-linquistics. And in time, Obama's teleprompter reading coaches perfected with their student a slow rhythmic flow of spoken words, broken up with many "uhs," with the same measured cadence as the words appeared on his teleprompter screens.

Then strangely, in an unprecedented move, the Democratic Party kingmakers gave lowly state Senator Obama a national stage, when allowing him to display his reading cadence at their presidential nominating convention of 2004.

And even more amazingly, the following year, Barack became a United States senator. Then unbelievably, three years later, Mr. Obama became president and commander-in-chief of the most militarily equipped nation on Earth, without ever serving a day in any military. And, unless one is extremely naive, they know that some powerful interests, made Mr. Obama into Mr. President.

The only power, we are conversant with, that has that much muscle is the private and foreign International Monetary/Banking Cartel. And true enough, it was those oligarchs that gave Obama about six times the presidential campaign funds as they did that other republican guy ... what's his name ... the one who wants to torture detainees indefinitely.

This rise for President Obama "From Obscurity to Savior: In Three Years" has to be some kind of a record in American politics, and would make an excellent title for an expose.

Obama, only in the US Senate for half a term, before he became president, was and is a blank slate upon which Barack's fans have projected their individual wishes, hopes, fantasies, broken souls, and anything else that fans fancy. But remember, the word "fan" is short for fanatic: one possessed by an excessive or irrational zeal, especially for an entertainment, religious or political personality ... or perhaps for a petty demagogue.

What happens when Obama, with rock-star status, doesn't deliver on the "free lunch" some of his fan have been fanaticizing about?

What if President Obama takes us into expanded wars, or a new war, and further destroys our dollar in the process?

What if Obama's socialism is only for the super-rich? What if his policies bring on the greatest economic depression in our history? Will Obama's fans turn against him and his policies? Not likely.

What if Obama doesn't deliver on all the promises he made while running for the presidency, like, "I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank."

Instead, Obama expanded the war in Afghanistan, and is waging a new one in Pakistan, and then wins a Nobel Peace Prize. Can someone please explain that to me? Is it because he has brought "peace"to so many dead people?

Obama also promised no tax increases for families netting less than $250,000 a year, then vigorously pushed congress to pass his Healthcare Reform Bill, which promises us the largest tax increases in American history.

"Lobbyists won't find a job in my White House," said candidate Obama; but within a month of taking office, President Obama had hired 12 lobbyists. By the same time a year later, Obama had hired 40 lobbyists, for senior positions, including three Cabinet secretaries, and the CIA director.

"Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones for my presidency," promised candidate Obama. He even said government negotiations on the health care bill would be televised on C-SPAN. But instead, President Obama allowed no cameras during the secret negotiations he conducted at the White House reconciling the House and Senate versions of the health care bill, even turning down a request by the C-SPAN CEO to televise those negotiations.

According to the 2009 Pulitzer Prize winner PolitiFact, President Obama has broken over 500 of his campaign promises. Was the man merely ignorant of what a president can actually accomplish, or is Obama simply a congenital liar?

In any case, has any president, in our history, broken more promises in such a short period?

The rudest awakening to the real Obama may be his continuance and advancement of the heinous torture policies of his demonic predecessor, George Bush - The Lesser.

Obama's most egregious broken promise for open government was his exercise of Executive Privilege, with his refusal to investigate the torture crimes of the Bush administration, or to release a series of photographs depicting outrageous US tortures, by dismissing the most shameful chapter in American history with his, "We've moving on."

Moving on where, Mr. Obama?...

Even Harper's magazine writer Scott Horton states he has obtained specific corroboration from a highly credible military officer with first hand knowledge of Iraqi men, women and children being raped and sodomized by US soldiers in Abu Gharaib.

Keep in mind that the above tortures took place in front of witnesses; but, there seems to be a number of secret prisons where special torture techniques are carried out by the CIA, without any witnesses allowed, as reported in the Washington Post.

And by Special Order of President Bush, and not repealed by President Obama, the CIA does not have to reveal to anyone who these prisoners are, or what happens to them behind the the impenetrable walls of about 170 US prisons around the world. Not satisfied with torturing detainees, US officials seem to also want to leave relatives and friends of the detainees in a constant state of worry and misery, wondering what happened to their loved ones.

Abu Gharaid sections off men from their wives and children, and children from their mothers, except when children are being tortured in front of their parents.

According to a Human Rights Watch report, the US Army, since March of 2003, has imprisoned about 2,400 children in Iraq, some as young as ten years old. Many of these children have been imprisoned for more than a year, without charges or trials, in violation of the Coalition Provisional Authority memorandum on criminal procedures.

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and all other oversight agencies have been denied permission to see these children, or where they are imprisoned in Iraq. What is being done to these children, that you have to hide them, Mr. Obama? Give us some answers, Mr. Obama. Insist that your teleprompter writers print in large letter for you to read the answers to us...MORE...LINK

Pro-war Tea Partiers need to wise up about how Big Militarism and Big Government go hand-in-hand

To the Tea Party: War and Liberty Aren’t Fellow Travelers(AntiWar.com) -- by Ivan Eland --

In an astute op-ed piece in the Christian Science Monitor, James Bovard points out that the love of liberty by the Tea Party crowd usually takes a backseat to a hatred of President Obama and the Left. After attending a tax day Tea Party event in Rockville, Md., a suburb of the nation’s capital, Bovard reported that the Tea Partiers oppose big government from the Left but not from the Right. Big government from the Right usually involves warfare and its accompanying enhanced police powers at home, which usually severely erode the liberty Tea Partiers claim to stand for. For example, the tea sippers extended their pinkies in a salute to torture, harsh policies toward Iran, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. They didn’t seem to mind the National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretapping and vacuuming up of ordinary Americans’ phone calls either, according to Bovard.

Yet of all the causes of big government in human history, warfare is the most important. The nation-state originally came into being because wars had become too expensive for mere kingdoms to handle...

...World War I was what allowed big government a vast and permanent foothold in American society. War had become so expensive and large scale that the U.S. government took over the entire economy to fight it – historically, the first time that had happened. Equally important, the government crushed dissent with the worst violations of civil liberties in American history. The war’s only rivals in stifling free political discourse were the Alien and Sedition Acts passed in the late 1700s – ostensibly needed by the government to fight off the French in the Quasi War but really aimed at political opponents. After World War I, resulting anti-foreign sentiments led to a red scare and the Palmer raids by law enforcement on innocent people.

During the Great Depression, Herbert Hoover and Franklin Delano Roosevelt brought back many of the World War I wartime agencies designed to "manage" the economy and simply renamed them. The war had set the bad precedent that no sector of the American economy was immune from government meddling.

World War II, the most horrific war in world history, also gave us the most government. During the war, government again took over regulation of the economy and even accounted for more than 40 percent of the American economy’s output, an all-time high. Although for the general population, civil liberties erosion was not as great as during World War I, that was little comfort to Japanese-Americans, who had not a single instance of disloyalty but were thrown into unconstitutional internment camps anyway...

And of course, we have George W. Bush, a big-government conservative, who curiously wins, as Bovard notes, a 57 percent approval rating from the "small government" Tea Partiers. Yet in parallel with his war on terror, domestic spending increased more than any president since Lyndon Johnson, and he dramatically increased executive power to near tyrannical proportions by illegally using torture, wiretapping, and indefinite detentions without trial...MORE...LINK

Mexico increasingly a failed state with rape, torture, murder spilling into U.S.; what country on earth fails to guard its borders this way?

South of the Border
A crisis is brewing
(AntiWar.com) -- by Justin Raimondo --

The other day, the head of security for the Mexican state of Michoacán was ambushed in her car: she escaped with non-life threatening injuries, but four people were killed and ten wounded in a well-planned attack that featured the throwing of hand grenades. In Ciudad Juarez, seven Mexican police were attacked and killed by assailants. The attacks were the work of Mexican drug cartels, who have long been at odds over turf, but the latest attacks may be an indication that the cartels are increasingly turning to targeting the Mexican government itself as their principal enemy.

Mexico’s governing class has long been one of the most venal and corrupt in the world. For many years, the ruling Institutional Party of the Revolution (PRI) dominated national and state politics, dispensing favors to the privileged, repressing any and all signs of dissent, and generally living off the fat of the land. This ended in 2000, when the candidate of the conservative opposition, Vicente Fox, captured the presidency, but the breakup of the PRI’s political monopoly did little to liberalize Mexican society, which remained sunk in poverty, corruption, and spiraling violence. The violence is generated primarily by the rising drug cartels, which have grown to the point where they threaten the authority of the governing structures, until today, when they are attacking government convoys, and no one – not even the head of security for a major state – is safe.

And that goes for the Americans, too, who are finding that the violence is spilling over the US-Mexican border. As a 2009 news report put it:

"Homes are being invaded by gunmen, people raped and tortured, and bodies dumped in the Arizona desert as violence from the Mexican drug wars spills into the American Southwest. Illegal immigration and drug smuggling have always been issues in this border state, but warring Mexican cartels are carrying violence to levels that have shocked law enforcement and government officials.

"There are more than 1,000 safehouses used to corral illegal immigrants after they are smuggled into the country at any given time in Phoenix, according to Lieutenant James Warriner of the Arizona Department of Public Safety. Illegal immigrants are taken to so-called drop houses, stripped naked, blindfolded, and held for ransom. If they’re naked, there is less chance of them fleeing. A bucket in the room serves as a toilet.

"’Next door in the other room is the torture/rape room,’ [Arizona state Senator Jonathan] Paton said. ‘They say, "Hey we need another 2,000 dollars or we’re going to torture and rape so-and-so."’

"Arizona state police have found 30 to 40 people crammed into rooms the size of a child’s bedroom. Paton recently visited one in a Phoenix neighborhood. …

"Home invasions and kidnappings are so prevalent now that the Phoenix Police Department has formed a special squad just to deal with them. Men hired by the Sinaloa drug cartel – the most active in Arizona – wearing body armor and tactical gear identical to American SWAT teams kick in doors, zip-cuff the inhabitants, then kill them. Several bodies were dumped in the western Phoenix suburb of Buckeye last year, according to Warriner."

Talk about terrorism – this is the real McCoy. So what is the federal government doing about it? The answer is: nothing. The US-Mexican border is just as porous as ever, and any attempt to seal it is denounced as "racist" and the equivalent of setting up a "police state."

While I don’t approve of the recent legislation passed by the Arizona state legislature, which empowers police to check anyone who might "reasonably" suspected of being in the country illegally, opponents of the bill – particularly the professional victimologists and weepy-eyed liberals – refuse to recognize that the effort was spawned, not by hate but by the rising violence of a nearly-failed state – Mexico – which is seeping across the border and threatens to become a torrent of criminality and chaos.

What I would like to know is this: what country on earth fails to guard its borders this way?...MORE...LINK

Saturday, April 24, 2010

Are Lindsey Graham and Elena Kagan gay? Since neither is libertarian, Americans have the right to know

(LibertarianToday.com) -- by Chris Moore --

In discussing the allegations of homosexuality recently leveled at would-be Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan and Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, Toby Harnden of the Telegraph says most Americans don't care one way or the other, and that neither the Obama administration (in the case of Kagan) or "the reprehensable" William Gheen (in the case of Lindsey Graham) should have ever addressed the issue to begin with.

Toby Harnden:
On the face of it, Elena Kagan, the United States Solicitor General, and Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina would not seem to have much in common.

Kagan is a Democrat and former dean of Harvard who is currently in the frame to be chosen by President Barack Obama as a Supreme Court Justice. Graham happens to be a lawyer too but he is a Republican, a faithful sidekick of Senator John McCain and a Colonel in the US Air Force Reserve.

Last week, however, both were "outed" as being gay - actions that prompted outrage on the Left in the case of Kagan and, well, hilarity on the Left in the case of Graham...

[Kagan] was described by conservative blogger Ben Domenech as being boosted among liberals because she would be the "first openly gay justice" on America's highest court.

Far from being a smear, the statement appeared to be a genuine statement of what Domenech thought was a known fact - and something that has often been speculated about and remarked on by gay bloggers.

What drew attention to what he had buried in the middle of a relatively obscure blog post was an apoplectic reaction by the White House, which denounced Domenech and said his assumption was "inaccurate". Anita Dunn was wheeled out to accuse him of "applying old stereotypes to single women"...

Frankly, most Americans - and most on the American Right - could not care less. The influence of Christian conservatives is on the wane and few among their number view the personal sexual conduct of an individual - even if they consider it immoral - as a disqualifier for high public office.

But the White House intervention triggered a lot of tut-tutting from liberals about the conservative bigotry.

Next up was poor old Lindsey Graham. Prefacing his remarks with the statement that "I'm a tolerant person", William Gheen, head of Americans for Legal Immigration, demanded that the Senator "tell people about your alternative lifestyle and your homosexuality".

Graham's crime in Gheen's eyes is that he favours immigration reform - and is (bear with me here) "trying to sell out your own countrymen" for fear of his true sexuality being revealed.

Rather than being given the good ignoring that he deserved, the reprehensible Gheen instantly became a national figure, even reaching that modern American pinnacle of fame, being lampooned on Comedy Central by both Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart...

It was funny, as Colbert invariably is. But it was also cruel and tinged with a certain retro quality. Graham didn't deserve it any more than Kagan did. It was hypocritical too - there was no comedy prompted by Kagan's outing (effectively by the White House, in the bizarre form of a denial)...

If Americans really don't care wether Elena Kagan or Lindsey Graham are homosexuals, why not discuss it openly?

For example, during the Lewinsky scandal, the left-liberals used to argue that whether or not Bill Clinton had had a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky was "no big deal," and that most Americans "simply don't care."

Fine. If that's their position, then why not just come right out and admit the affair? The answer is that most Americans DO care, whether they're willing to admit it or not. Liberal Americans probably care less about such things than conservative Americans, but the knowledge will undoubtedly inform and affect the American public's evaluation of the political figure, and therefore the public has a right to know -- particularly if it plays a role in the formulation of public policy.

What political relevance does Kagan's personal sexual orientation have on her politics? What political relevance does Graham's?

If it's really "no big deal," then why not simply come right out and ask them? If they say that their orientations have no effect whatsoever on their formulation of public policy, then Americans can only be further informed if those who might have evidence otherwise are encouraged to step forward and air it.

For example, Gheen seems to believe that Graham is being blackmailed by someone with knowledge of his homosexuality to support immigration amnesty. Does he have evidence of this, or is it merely Gheen's belief that a homosexual is likely to be more sympathetic to liberal initiatives in general, and the liberal initiative of granting mass amnesty in particular? I'd certainly like to know.

Similarly, is Kagan's alleged homosexuality likely to prompt her to read "rights" into the Constitution -- say the right to homosexual marriage -- that most Americans believe aren't there?

In a democracy, isn't open debate about all of this far more helpful in selecting those who will formulate public policy than it is hurtful? Indeed, isn't it essential?

And what about heterosexuals? Will their public policy formulations reflect their own personal value systems in a way that homosexuals might find abhorrent? Will a Christian's? Would a Congressional body vetting a Statist heterosexual Christian have the right to ask them if they've ever engaged in an extra-marital affair?

Absolutely, and here's why: So long as Statists insist on "rigging the game" and using the State for purposes of social engineering, all bets are off, and any non-libertarian politician or public figure's personal life is relevant to how they might try to socially engineer society and public policy, and in which direction.

Personally, I advocate keeping government to a minimum, and allowing the marketplace of religions and ideas to reign, unencumbered by intrusive and inherently coercive Big Government. Therefore, I support school vouchers redeemable at private schools (whether religious or "progressive") over forcing all students seeking a free education into the failing and ideologically-driven public school system, for example. But those non-libertarian Statists whose politics inherently seek to use policy to coerce, manipulate or engineer a society into adopting, accepting or pursuing their personal agendas and goals by means of federal laws, government institutions, and government sticks and carrots deserve to have every essence of their being and character scrutinized before attaining public office, from their "personal" religions straight through to their "personal" sexual orientations.

Why? Because they want government to do their bidding, and their personal lives are therefore relevant to what, exactly, that bidding will be.

Left-liberals will no doubt say this will lead to McCarthyism, but that's exactly the kind of environment they invite by attempting to use "secular" Big Government to bash, coerce, manipulate, intimidate and badger society into adopting their world view.

Left-liberals whose politics inherently use government to "hound" can hardly complain when they themselves get hounded, now can they?

Downfall engineered by our own "elites"? China on the rise, America in steep decline

The Chinese Century
(The American Conservatism) -- by Patrick J. Buchanan --

...Determined to take America’s title as the world’s first manufacturing nation, as she has taken Germany’s title as the world’s leading exporter, China keeps her currency undervalued and demands of those who sell to China that they also produce in China. As America’s share of the world economy steadily falls, China’s share has doubled. This year, China will overtake Japan as the world’s second-largest economy.

Having seen the Soviet Union disintegrate into 15 nations and fearing the ethno-nationalism of Tibetans and Uighurs, Beijing floods her border provinces with Han Chinese. America, declaring racial, ethnic and religious diversity a strength, invites the world to come and swamp its native-born. And mostly poor, unskilled and uneducated, they are coming by the millions.

China puts savings ahead of spending, production ahead of consumption, manufacturing ahead of finance. Embracing free trade, Americans declare that it makes no difference who produces what, where. What’s good for the Global Economy is good for America.

Before the financial collapse, the U.S. savings rate stood at zero percent of family income. In China, it ranged between 35 percent and 50 percent.

Since the Cold War, the United States has been playing empire — intervening to punish evil-doers and advance democracy in Panama, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan.

We have expanded NATO to include Eastern Europe, the Baltic States and much of the Balkan Peninsula. We have not let a single alliance lapse from the Cold War. And we have fewer friends and more adversaries than at the end of the Cold War. What has all this intervention availed us?

China, having fought no one, has rapidly built up her military power and developed ties to the growing number of nations at odds with America, from Russia to Iran to Sudan to Venezuela.

The Chinese of 2010 call to mind 19th century Americans who shoved aside Mexicans, Indians and Spanish to populate a continent, build a mighty nation, challenge the British Empire — superpower of the day — and swiftly move past her in manufacturing to become first nation on earth. Men were as awed by America then as they are by China today.

America seems a declining superpower. She cannot defend her borders, balance her budgets or win her wars. Her educational system at the primary and secondary level is a shambles. In the first decade of the century, she lost one of every three manufacturing jobs. In this second decade, she is looking at trillion-dollar deficits to 2020. The world is losing confidence in her ability to manage her surging national debt.

While we are finally extricating ourselves after seven years from an unnecessary war in Iraq, we are heading deeper into an Afghan war that has lasted a decade, the end of which it is impossible to see.

During the Cold War, China was in the grip of a millenarian ideology that blinded her to her true interests. Today, it is we who are captive to a utopian ideology that is becoming perilous to the republic...MORE...LINK
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Buchanan: “Today, it is we who are captive to a utopian ideology that is becoming perilous to the republic.”

Chris Moore comments:

Would that be neoconservatism or left-liberalism? Not that there’s much difference between their common subversiveness, radicalism, and invade-the-world, invite-the-world ethic.

And with that ethic and all the other American travails and failures Buchanan lists (to which I would add the current Wall Street highway robbery), it’s almost as if our own elites have engineered our disgrace, demise and plunder.

Was this motivated by an ideological hatred of Western civilization? Greed? Arrogance? Selfishness? Arrested development? I would say all of these.

From SEC to federal judges, Big Government "moral authority" busy surfing porn at taxpayer expense as country goes to hell in hand basket

SEC porn investigation nets dozens
(Washington Post) -- by Ed O'Keefe --

Dozens of Securities and Exchange Commission staffers used government computers to access and download explicit images and many of the incidents have occurred since the global financial meltdown began, according to a new watchdog investigation.

The SEC inspector general conducted 33 probes of employees, 31 of which occurred in the last two and a half years, according to a summary of the cases requested by Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) that first surfaced Thursday evening.

Several of employees held senior positions, earning between $99,300 and $222,418 per year, the inspector general's summary said. Three of the incidents occurred this year, ten in 2009, 16 in 2008, two in 2007 and one each in 2006 and 2005.

In one instance, a regional office staff account admitted viewing pornography on his office computer and on his SEC-issued laptop while on official government travel. Another staff account received nearly 1,800 access denials for pornography Web sites in a two-week period and had more than 600 images saved on her laptop’s hard drive, the report said.

A senior attorney at SEC headquarters in Washington admitted he sometimes spent as much as eight hours viewing pornography from his office computer, according to the report. The attorney’s computer ran out of space for the downloaded images, so he started storing them on CDs and DVDs that he stored in his office.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), ranking Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said it was “nothing short of disturbing that high-ranking officials within the SEC were spending more time looking at pornography than taking action to help stave off the events that brought our nation's economy to the brink of collapse."

"This stunning report should make everyone question the wisdom of moving forward with plans to give regulators like the SEC even more widespread authority," Issa said in a subtle jab at ongoing financial reform efforts.

Grassley’s decision to release the summary comes as SEC investigators have filed a fraud case against Wall Street powerhouse Goldman Sachs. But a spokeswoman cautioned against reading too much into the timing.

"The IG findings that Grassley released underscore the importance of good IG work," said Grassley spokeswoman Jill Kozeny.

The behavior exposed in the watchdog report violates government ethics rules, but illegal pornography access by federal workers is nothing new:

• A senior executive at the National Science Foundation spent at least 331 days looking at pornography on his government computer and chatting online with nude or partially clad women without being detected. The problems reportedly were so pervasive they diverted the agency's watchdog from its main mission.

• National Park Service employee John A. Latschar, who oversaw the Gettysburg National Military Park, used his office computer over a two-year period to search for and view more than 3,400 sexually explicit images. He was later reassigned to an unspecified desk job.

• Alex Kozinski, chief judge of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, established a Web site that featured sexually explicit photos and video. He later acknowledged posting images, defended the content as "funny" (no, really) and said he thought the site was for his private storage. All of this while he was presiding over an obscenity trial...MORE...LINK

Friday, April 23, 2010

Controlled opposition getting nervous: Statist Bushcon/neocon Rove bitterly laments Ron Paul "taking over" Tea Party movement (which Paul originated)

The Establishment’s Nervous Mutterings on Ron Paul
(Infowars.com) -- By Jurriaan Maessen --

One obvious sign that the establishment’s sweat is starting to break is arch-warmonger Karl Rove’s recent mentioning of Ron Paul in connection to the Tea Party. Where in the past neocons and establishment liberals alike arrogantly dismissed Paul, now they seem nervous in the face of liberty rising.

Rove appeared yesterday on Fox News attempting to describe the Tea Party. In answer to the question, of what people the Tea Party consists, Rove stated:

“I’ll tell you who they are: you got a group of libertarians, who sort of, campaign for liberty, Ron Paulites, who say: let’s take over this movement.”

Watch the clip:

This is unmistakable and deliberate confusing of cause and effect. If someone has lit the fire of liberty prior to the rise of the current Tea Party, it’s Ron Paul. So the claim that Paul and the “Paulites” are attempting to “take over” the Tea Party movement, is beyond absurd...MORE...LINK

Big Government and Big Greed, where Left-Right authoritarianism unites

IndyMac Attack: Did Schumer, Paulson, Soros, and the CRL Kill the Bank and Profit From Its Collapse?
(Big Government) -- by Andrew Mellon

At the end of 2007, hedge fund billionaire John Paulson invested $15 million in the leftist non-profit, Center for Responsible Lending, their largest single donation ever. Around the same time, Paulson and his employees contributed over $100,000 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, headed, at the time, by Sen. Chuck Schumer. Roughly six months later, CRL and Sen. Schumer both launched a highly public attack on the California-based mortgage lender, Indymac. The lender failed, wiping out the investment of thousands of people. Roughly six months after that, John Paulson, in partnership with George Soros, bought up the remnants of Indymac for pennies on the dollar.

It is a drama that no longer surprises us, unfortunately. Wealthy investors use their access to elected officials and their checkbook to advocacy groups for private profit. But this story has a twist; a top executive of CRL when this deal went down, Eric Stein, is now working at the Treasury Department, heading up the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency. Mr. Stein will be the chief federal official designing regulations to protect consumers. Right.

This is that story...MORE...LINK
-------------------------
Related:
Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Rampant fraud from D.C. to Wall Street: Economists can’t solve the problem of criminal banksters and corrupt government regulators looting the system

Economist James Galbraith: Economists Should Move into the Background, and "Criminologists to the Forefront"
(Washington's Blog) --

University of Texas economics professor James K. Galbraith previously said that fraud caused the financial crisis:

"You had fraud in the origination of the mortgages, fraud in the underwriting, fraud in the ratings agencies."

Senator Kaufman said last month:

"Fraud and potential criminal conduct were at the heart of the financial crisis."

Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur says that there was rampant fraud leading up to the crash (see this and this).

TARP overseer Elizabeth Warren suspects fraud as the cause of the crisis.

Yves Smith has shown that fraud largely caused the subprime crisis. Janet Tavakoli says that rampant fraud and Ponzi schemes caused the financial crisis.

According to economist Max Wolff:

"The securitization process worked by "packag(ing), sell(ing), repack(aging) and resell(ing) mortages making what was a small housing bubble, a gigantic (one) and making what became an American financial problem very much a global" one by selling mortgage bundles worldwide "without full disclosure of the lack of underlying assets or risks." Buyers accepted them on good faith, failed in their due diligence, and rating agencies were negligent, even criminal, in overvaluing and endorsing junk assets that they knew were high-risk or toxic. "The whole process was corrupt at its core."

William Black - professor of economics and law, and former head of prosecution during the S&L crisis - says that massive fraud by is what caused this economic crisis. Specifically, he says that companies, auditors, rating agencies and regulators all committed fraud which helped blow the bubble and sowed the seeds of the inevitable crash. And see this.

Black and economist Simon Johnson also state that the banks committed fraud by making loans to people that they knew would default, to make huge profits during the boom, knowing that the taxpayers would bail them out when things went bust...

As economist James Galbraith told Dan Froomkin this week:

"Once you understand the implications of massively fraudulent practices, it changes the professional community that has the principal say about interpreting the crisis."

Economists, he said, should move into the background -- and "criminologists to the forefront."...MORE...LINK

Instead of being used to end credit crunch, taxpayer bailout funds provided to banks went straight into executives' pockets

Banks receiving government aid cut loans
(USA TODAY) -- By Dennis Cauchon --

Banks that received federal assistance during the financial crisis reduced lending more aggressively and gave bigger pay raises to employees than institutions that didn't get aid, a USA TODAY/American University review found.

The reduction of credit during the worst of the recession raises questions about whether the $247 billion assistance program achieved one of its primary goals: to stimulate the economy by reviving the flow of credit to businesses and individuals.

USA TODAY and the American University Investigative Reporting Workshop used federal bank data to conduct the first comprehensive analysis comparing the behavior of 940 banks in the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and 7,400 banks outside it. Key findings about TARP's first year:

• Lending fell. The amount of loans outstanding to businesses and individuals fell 9.1% for the 12 months ending Sept. 30, 2009, at banks that participated in TARP compared with a 6.2% drop at banks that didn't.

• Employee pay rose. Average pay at banks getting aid rose 9.4% in the program's first year. By contrast, non-TARP banks increased salaries 1.8%.

• Cost-cutting limited. Banks in TARP cut costs less than those outside the program. Government-aided banks increased branches by 2.7% while non-TARP banks cut branches by 1.2%...MORE...LINK

Oath Keepers demonized by Statist Left and Right for "extreme" and "treasonous" act of pledging to uphold the U.S. Constitution

The Oath Keepers have more in common with Henry David Thoreau than Timothy McVeigh.
(The American Conservative) -- By Jesse Walker --

Mother Jones says they represent “the Age of Treason.” Bill O’Reilly believes they’re “pretty extreme.” When Rob Waters of the Southern Poverty Law Center wrote about the group, he called on the government to “ensure that the armed forces are not inadvertently training future domestic terrorists.”

They’re talking about the Oath Keepers, a coalition of current and former military, police, and other public officials. And what treasonous, terrorist tactic have these extremists adopted? They have pledged not to obey unconstitutional commands.

Search the group’s founding document and the closest thing you will find to a call to violence is the statement that, should a dictatorship be imposed and a popular uprising break out, its members will not only refuse to fire on the dissenters but will “join them in fighting against those who dare attempt to enslave them.” And even then the “fighting” needn’t necessarily be armed. (They also say they aren’t “advocating or promoting violence towards any organization, group or person.”) Otherwise, the manifesto is a call to stand down, not to rise up. Not every Oath Keeper would appreciate the comparison, but the group has more in common with those dissidents of the ’60s who refused to go to war than with any paramilitary cell.

If you wanted to find a theoretical discussion of Oath Keepers’ plans, you wouldn’t turn to a text on terrorism or guerrilla warfare. You would open the second book of Gene Sharp’s three-volume classic on civil disobedience, The Politics of Nonviolent Action, and turn to the section headlined “Action by Government Personnel.” In “an essentially nonviolent struggle,” Sharp writes, “a mutiny may express itself entirely through the refusal to carry out usual functions of forcing the regime’s will on the populace or waging war against a foreign enemy.” In addition, “police or others may selectively refuse certain orders on a scale too limited to be described accurately as mutiny.” The examples he offers range from the British occupation of India, where a regiment refused to fire on a peaceful protest, to the Nazi occupation of Norway, where policemen frequently flouted the Germans’ orders.

In the current case, there are ten commands the Oath Keepers have forsworn. Those who join the group must refuse

• to disarm the American people

• to conduct warrantless searches of the American people, their homes, vehicles, papers, or effects

• to detain American citizens as “unlawful enemy combatants” or to subject them to trial by military tribunal

• to impose martial law or a “state of emergency” on a state, or to enter with force into a state, without the express consent and invitation of that state’s legislature and governor

• to invade and subjugate any state that asserts its sovereignty and declares the national government to be in violation of the compact by which that state entered the Union

• to blockade American cities, thus turning them into giant concentration camps

• to force American citizens into any form of detention camps under any pretext

• to assist or support the use of any foreign troops on U.S. soil against the American people

• to confiscate the property of the American people, including food and other essential supplies, under any emergency pretext whatsoever

• to do anything that would “infringe on the right of the people to free speech, to peaceably assemble, and to petition their government for a redress of grievances”

Looking at that list, three things immediately come to mind. The first is that resisting such orders should not be controversial—or at the very least, should not be considered outside the boundaries of normal debate. The item about states asserting sovereignty will raise hackles in some quarters, though it’s rooted in the fact that several legislatures are considering resolutions that lean in that direction. Otherwise these are orders that anyone with civil-libertarian instincts would reject on their face. Appearing on MSNBC in March, Crazy for God author Frank Schaeffer dismissed the group as malcontents who think they could “break the law and not follow orders if they don’t like what they’re being told.” But these are not merely instructions the members “don’t like.” They are commands that would be illegal under the Constitution...MORE...LINK

Why is Israeli-born Muslim hater advising top military brass on conflict with Iran?

Israel First: More on Dr. Lani Kass
(AntiWar.com) -- by Philip Giraldi --

My recent account of the career of Dr. Lani Kass was based on what has appeared about her in the public record and media, including her own comments regarding national defense and security policy. To recapitulate, Kass was born, raised, and educated in Israel. She has a PhD in Russian studies and is fluent in Russian and Hebrew in addition to English. Kass reportedly reached the rank of major in the Israeli air force before moving to the United States and working her way up through the US defense establishment. She is currently the most senior civilian adviser to Air Force Chief of Staff Norton Schwartz and is believed to have access to most American defense secrets. Kass is best known to the public for her role in promoting Air Force cyberwarfare, but she also appears to have been a major player in counter-terrorism policy and in war preparations directed against Iran even though she has no actual substantive background in those areas. She believes that the US is engaged in a long war against Islamo-radicalism and that "winning" against Iran is necessary but the American people must be willing to pay the price to succeed.

My concern regarding Dr. Kass is based on the potential conflict of interest and divided loyalty that is normal in anyone who is born in one country and moves to another. She comes from a country that has a history of large scale and highly aggressive espionage directed against the United States and she appears to continue to have close ties to her birthplace. Dr. Kass has become a naturalized American while apparently retaining her Israeli citizenship and her three children were reportedly born in Israel, not the United States. The information she has access to would be extremely valuable to Israel and potentially damaging to US interests, particularly as she likely knows what the US Air Force response to a unilateral Israeli attack on Iran would be....

I continue to question to what extent Kass has been properly security vetted for her position, to include rigorous inquiry into whether or not she still has ties to the Israeli government. I also can only speculate at the type of advice that Kass is providing to her Pentagon associates as she appears to embrace particularly hard line views about Muslims and about the desirability of going to war with Iran, positions that are rather similar to those promoted by the Israeli government...

More information has also been developed regarding Kass’s current role. According to a highly reliable source, Dr. Lani Kass is now the principal adviser to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen regarding the Middle East. She recently was involved in a very important meeting, one that concerned Israel.

The meeting took place because of concerns that the United States has been losing the "war of ideas" in the Muslim world. At the end of last year, General David Petraeus sent a special emissary out on a fact finding mission to meet with the heads of state and top military officers in all of the Muslim countries considered to be friends or allies of the US for a frank exchange of views. The emissary, an Arabic speaker, learned that no country any longer trusts the United States because it is widely believed that all American policies in the Near East region are subject to veto by Israel. It was also commonly observed that Washington is complicit in the genocide against the Palestinians because of its failure to do anything to restrain Israel, making it extremely difficult to rally popular support in any Muslim country for US policies.

Petraeus was surprised by the unanimity and emotion of the views that were confidentially expressed and thought the issue to be important enough to move it up the chain of command. In February, he met with Admiral Mullen and briefed him on his findings. Mullen was accompanied only by Dr. Lani Kass, who was described to Petraeus as his special assistant for the Middle East. Mullen expressed some dismay at the implications of the findings while Kass disputed Petraeus’ conclusions and said that the concerns being expressed were greatly exaggerated. Petraeus nevertheless presented his report to the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 17th together with his judgment that the failure to address the Palestinian issue was putting US soldiers in danger because it was inflaming anti-American sentiment and giving groups like al-Qaeda an unnecessary propaganda victory.

One might argue that Dr. Lani Kass is just another Israel firster who has risen to high office in the US government, not really unlike Dennis Ross, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Elliott Abrams, and Douglas Feith. And that might well be true. But at the same time one must challenge the judgment of those who enabled her rise to a position of great responsibility and power and there should be serious questions about whether her bellicose and racially tinged viewpoint comes from objective and honest analysis of the genuine challenges confronting the United States or from her loyalty to her country of birth...MORE...LINK

80% of Americans don't trust the federal government; time to dissolve the people and elect another?

80% Of Americans Don’t Trust The Government
(POPFI) -- by Ron Hogan --

According to recent numbers released by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, recent polls show that some 8 out of every 10 Americans, or 80% of the country, don’t trust in big government and larger governmental organizations to solve the country’s problems. Only 22 percent of people polled believe that they can trust in Washington to solve the nation’s problems effectively. That means as many people trust in Washington as believe that UFOs are visiting the planet Earth.

Combine this with unease over the health insurance reforms pushed into place by a partisan Congress, hated bail-outs for big businesses, low approval ratings for the Congress, and a spike in Presidential disapproval, and you’ve got bad news for the Democratic party heading into the midterm elections. People aren’t happy, and when people aren’t happy, incumbent politicians lose their spots.

I’m actually kind of surprised that Obama’s approval numbers aren’t even lower. When Congress is getting a 71% disapproval rating, you’d think that the President would also be more unpopular...MORE...LINK
---------------------------

Chris Moore comments:

Here's the Statist 'Solution':

Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?


-- Marxist Bertolt Brecht, from his poem 'The Solution'

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

The murderous Bill Clinton, with his authoritarian and abusive Statist ideology, deigns to lecture the People on morality

Bill Clinton on Violence and Government -- A Lethal Hypocrisy
(Counterpunch) -- By JAMES BOVARD --

Yesterday, on the fifteenth anniversary of the attack on the federal office building in Oklahoma City, former President Bill Clinton had an op-ed in the New York Times headlined: “Violence is Unacceptable in a Democracy.” The article settles any doubts about whether Clinton was one of the most talented demagogues of modern times.

Casting a net of collective guilt over much of the 48 contiguous states, Clinton announced that the 1995 bombing was the fault of people who believed “that the greatest threat to American freedom is our government, and that public servants do not protect our freedoms, but abuse them.” People who distrusted government helped echo ideas which somehow persuaded “deeply alienated and disconnected Americans” to carry out the attack.

In other words, people who harshly criticize the government are guilty of - or at least complicit in - mass murder.

It would be difficult to contrive a storyline to better exonerate all government actions. We still know far too little about the actual facts of the Oklahoma City bombing. We do know that the perpetrators were guilty of a heinous crime and deserved the harshest punishment. But that is a topic for a different day.

Clinton declared that “we do not have the right to resort to violence — or the threat of violence — when we don’t get our way. “

Unless you’re the government...

Clinton’s op-ed mentions, almost as an aside, that the Oklahoma City bombing occurred on the second anniversary of the final assault at Waco. In 1995, Clinton denounced the Branch Davidians as “murderers” for their response to the 1993 Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms attack on their home. Clinton used that label even though a Texas jury found no such guilt - and even though the BATF apparently shot first and did not have a proper warrant for its no-knock, military-style raid.

Clinton was commander-in-chief when the FBI 54-ton tanks smashed into the Davidians’ home, collapsing 25% of the ramshackle building on top of residents before a fire commenced that left 80 people dead. His administration did almost everything it could to cover up the details of federal action at Waco, spurring the widespread distrust which Clinton later denounced.

The federal raid in April 2000 to seize six year old Elian Gonzalez was Clinton-style non-violence at its best. The late-night surprise attack went as planned - nabbing the boy and leaving shattered doors, a broken bed, roughed-up Cuban-Americans and two NBC cameramen on the ground, writhing in pain from stomach-kicks or rifle-butts to the head. But a photographer caught the image of a souped-up Border Patrol agent pointing his submachine gun toward the terrified boy...

Clinton’s Iraq policy relied on systemic violence. The U.S. was the lead country in enforcing and perpetuating the blockade on Iraq that resulted in hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dying. U.S. planes carried out hundreds of bombing runs on Iraq, and volleys of American cruise missiles slammed his country during his reign.

Bill Clinton has often acted like his 78-day bombing assault on Serbia in 1999 was his finest hour. The State Department was referring to the Kosovo Liberation Army as a terrorist group until 1997. After Clinton decided to attack Serbia, the KLA officially became freedom fighters. The fact that both Serbs and ethnic Albanians were up to their elbows in atrocities was simply brushed aside or denied. After surviving a Senate impeachment trial, Clinton was hellbent on starring in an old-time morality play.

Clinton’s bombing campaign killed hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Serb civilians. From intentionally bombing a television station, Belgrade neighborhoods, power stations, bridges (regardless of the number of people on them at the time), to “accidentally” bombing a bus (killing 47 people), a passenger train, marketplaces, hospitals, apartment buildings, and the Chinese embassy, the rules of engagement for U.S. bombers guaranteed that many innocent people would be killed.

In his anniversary op-ed, Clinton declared that “without the law there is no freedom.” But the law did not stop, or even slow, Clinton from raining death on Belgrade. Clinton brazenly violated the War Powers Act, the 1973 law which required the president to get authorization from Congress for committing U.S. troops to any combat situation that lasted more than 60 days. The House of Representatives refused to endorse Clinton’s warring. But, on Serbia and many other issues, Clinton acted as if his moral mission exempted him from all restraints, legal and otherwise...

Clinton warned that “there is a big difference between criticizing a policy or a politician and demonizing the government that guarantees our freedoms and the public servants who enforce our laws.”

And who is to judge when criticizing turns into demonizing? The politicians themselves? Or perhaps the Department of Homeland Security, with its reports on the perils of “extremists” who believe in the Constitution and civil liberties? And then there is always the FBI, which views practically anyone who thinks Washington is full of crap as a dangerous extremist.

And what of the “public servants” who violate citizens’ rights, unjustifiably shoot or Taser them, fabricate evidence against them, or otherwise make their lives hell? What of the congressmen who vote in favor of laws that authorize torture or suspend habeas corpus? What of Justice Department lawyers who craft briefs proving why the president is a Czar?

Fifteen years after the Oklahoma City bombing, we must also remember the danger from politicians who place government above the law and above the people...MORE...LINK

In context of Tea Partiers, establishment-Right Statist "conservative" Kathleen Parker declares anonymous internet journalism "sort of like terrorism"

Pulitzer Winning Columnist Weighs In
(You Tube) -- By CBSNewsOnline --

...LINK


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

Chris Moore comments:

This just goes to show that the establishment-Right Statists simply can't be trusted to protect the U.S. Constitution, American sovereignty, the American economy (from leviathan Washington and its bankster cronies) or American freedom overall. They apparently view American defenders of all of these to be "terrorists."

There's an old saying that if two ideologies go far enough Right and far enough Left, the two end up uniting. Well, it appears that the Statist Right and the Statist Left have coalesced around American Empire, Big Government, unconditional support for racist Zionism, anti-Christianity, Big Business/Wall Street corporatism, open borders for cheap wages and growing markets, war profiteering, and the military-industrial complex.

Oh yea -- and the enslavement of Americans to all of this.

Pure evil.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Ron Paul: Fed and cronies engineered bubble, SEC looked the other way, now Fed and SEC being rewarded by Congress with more power

Ron Paul - Fox Business, 04/19/10
(You Tube) -- by campaignforliberty --

On Monday, April 19, 2010, Congressman Paul was interviewed on Fox Business' "Varney & Co." concerning financial regulatory reform legislation and how the Federal Reserve and our current regulatory system encourage corruption in our economy...LINK

Monday, April 19, 2010

Are the tea-partiers indicative that America is entering a phase of white racial retrenchment?

The Tea Party Tribe
(The American Conservative) -- By Patrick J. Buchanan

“Is white the new black?”

So asks Kelefa Sanneh in the subtitle of “Beyond the Pale,” his New Yorker review of several books on white America, wherein he concludes we may be witnessing “the slow birth of a people.”

Sanneh is onto something. For after a year of battering as “un-American,” “evil-doers” and racists, and praise from talk-show hosts and Sarah Palin as “the real Americans,” Tea Party America seems to be taking on a new and separate identity.

Ethnonationalism — the recognition of an embryonic people that they are different from their neighbors, and the concomitant drive to live apart — is, as Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote 20 years ago, a more powerful force than any ideology, be it communism, fascism or democracy.

Ethnonationalism is the pre-eminent force of the age we have entered, the creator and destroyer of empires and nations. Even as Schlesinger was writing his “Disuniting of America,” Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union were disintegrating into 22 new nations, along the lines of ethnicity. In Dagestan, Ingushetia, Chechnya, Ossetia and Abkhazia, the process proceeds apace.

It has happened before — and here.

In the American colonies, the evil institution of slavery, followed by a century of segregation, created out of the children of captured Africans who had little in common other than color a new people, the African-Americans, who went out and voted 24-to-one for Barack Obama...

Obama in the campaign of 2008 recognized that “out there” in Middle America existed another country, far from the one he grew up in, far from the privileged Ivy League community to which he belonged.

“You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and … the jobs have been gone now for 25 years. … So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

Palin and Tea Partiers now repeat Obama’s disparaging line about their clinging to Bibles and guns — with defiant pride.

As others have done in our multicultural and multiethnic nation, this people is beginning to assert its identity, unapologetically.

Sioux gather at Little Bighorn to celebrate the massacre of Custer’s command. Hawaiian natives demand a new ethnically based government — and receive Obama’s blessing. Hispanics march under Mexican flags in Los Angeles to demand citizenship for illegal aliens.

Now Southerners are proudly commemorating ancestors who fought and fell in the Lost Cause and demanding recognition of Confederate History Month. And state governors are acceding.

In 2004, when Howard Dean reached out to “guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks,” Shelby Steele wrote that this was “absolutely verboten. Racial identity is simply forbidden to whites in America” because of their history and white guilt.

This, Sanneh suggests, is changing. The imputation of racism to Tea Partiers has not intimidated or cowed them...

Why are the Tea Partiers not intimidated the way Republicans often are? Why is the charge of racism not working?

First, they do not feel the guilt of country-club Republicans.

Second, they know it to be untrue. While Tea Partiers are anti-Obama, they are also anti-Pelosi, anti-Martha Coakley and anti-Charlie Christ. The coming conflict is not so much racial as it is cultural, political and tribal.

Black America seems united. White America is the house divided, for it is in the womb of white America that this new people is gestating and fighting to be born...MORE...LINK
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Chris Moore comments:

I have mixed emotions about this. On the one hand, you've got to hand the greatness of Western civilization and all its wonderful accomplishment to the combination of white ethnicity and Christianity. On the other, Christianity is supposed to be universal, irrespective of race. And the early genius of the American melting pot had Christian connotations as well -- that we could all be united in our common commitment to certain ideals, and a common agreement to live by them, no matter our ethnicity.

But we also have the problem of the Left and certain ethnic tribal elements encouraging multiculturalism (institutionalized tribalism) and ethnically conscious organizing and activism. And these groups have been very politically effective and hence well-rewarded by the system. So why should whites have to spurn ethnic cohesiveness and organize with one arm tied behind their backs?

My hope is that this period of white retrenchment we seem to entering will eventually allow for the reassertion of Christian moral authority which will once again render all tribalism subordinate and frowned upon by the civilization, and deconstruct a lot of these institutionalized multi-cultural and special interest apparatus’ that succeed in nothing so much as keeping us all at each others’ throats.

Federal Government's price-suppression of gold can't last forever

Are Gold And Silver Prices Ready To Make A Significant Move?
(Coin Update News) -- By Patrick A. Heller --

(April 17)
...In the past two weeks, there has been much more than normal activity by the US government’s trading partners at adding to their short positions in the gold and silver markets. Obviously someone, probably in the US government, has given the orders to restrain the recent price rises for the two metals. It is evident that, for now, the limit for gold has been set at $1,160.00 and for silver at $18.50. Should the metals get close to these levels and stay there for at least three days, such a trend increases the likelihood that prices will break out on the upside.

Since the prices of gold and silver have been pushing these targets at the close on Wednesday and Thursday this week, it was important to the US government that the prices be suppressed on Friday. That is exactly what happened.

Of course, those who don’t accept the theory of the US government being behind the price suppression will point to yesterday’s announcement that the Securities and Exchange Commission filed fraud charges against Goldman Sachs as the reason for the decline. This development resulted in a quick drop in US stock markets. With some investors receiving margin calls that they have to cover, other prices may suffer when investors have to liquidate other assets like gold and silver to get cash flow. Also, John Paulson’s financial activities are linked to the charges against Goldman Sachs, which may create fear that Paulson’s recently created gold fund may have to sell some gold.

While this event is almost certainly having a significant impact on the decline in gold and silver prices, you have to understand the close relationship between Goldman Sachs and the US government. Many who have held the position of Treasury Secretary formerly worked for Goldman Sachs. I have two suspicions here. First, with so many former Goldman Sachs officials currently holding high offices in Washington, I think that the company was not only aware of the forthcoming charges, but actually helped plan when the news hit the market. Second, it is conceivable that this news development may have been timed to come out on a day when “something” was needed that would have the effect of knocking down gold and silver prices.

To me it is entirely possible that the charges against Goldman Sachs were deliberately released yesterday as part of the effort to attack gold and silver. I have no proof of this but, when you consider the recent track record, to the US government this would be a sensible tactic.

However, I do not expect yesterday’s trend to last long. My conclusion is of the “more likely than not” variety rather than a “virtually certain” one. The factors supporting my thinking are not exact data that can be double checked or referenced. Instead, they are more of collecting stories from people working various sectors of the precious metals markets, and trying to find a common thread among them.

The overwhelming direction of the stories I have been hearing focus on investors trying to purchase greater amounts of physical gold and silver but having greater difficulty at being able to do so. There are also multiple horror stories about investors trying to take physical delivery on contracts and being thwarted entirely or at least having to wait months beyond the promised due date. The stories that may be most significant are those that suggest that some former allies in the gold and silver price suppression are now taking the opposite side to become buyers when the price declines offer temporary bargain buying opportunities...MORE...LINK

Corporatists and globalization advocates are outsourcing America into national bankruptcy

A Greater Threat Than Terrorism
Outsourcing the American Economy
(Information Clearinghouse) -- By Paul Craig Roberts --

Is offshore outsourcing good or harmful for America? To convince Americans of outsourcing's benefits, corporate outsourcers sponsor misleading one-sided "studies."

Only a small handful of people have looked objectively at the issue. These few and the large number of Americans whose careers have been destroyed by outsourcing have a different view of outsourcing's impact. But so far there has been no debate, just a shouting down of skeptics as "protectionists."

Now comes an important new book, Outsourcing America, published by the American Management Association. The authors, two brothers, Ron and Anil Hira, are experts on the subject. One is a professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology, and the other is professor at Simon Fraser University.

The authors note that despite the enormity of the stakes for all Americans, a state of denial exists among policymakers and outsourcing's corporate champions about the adverse effects on the US. The Hira brothers succeed in their task of interjecting harsh reality where delusion has ruled.

In what might be an underestimate, a University of California study concludes that 14 million white-collar jobs are vulnerable to being outsourced offshore. These are not only call-center operators, customer service and back-office jobs, but also information technology, accounting, architecture, advanced engineering design, news reporting, stock analysis, and medical and legal services. The authors note that these are the jobs of the American Dream, the jobs of upward mobility that generate the bulk of the tax revenues that fund our education, health, infrastructure, and social security systems.

The loss of these jobs "is fool's gold for companies." Corporate America's short-term mentality, stemming from bonuses tied to quarterly results, is causing US companies to lose not only their best employees-their human capital-but also the consumers who buy their products. Employees displaced by foreigners and left unemployed or in lower paid work have a reduced presence in the consumer market. They provide fewer retirement savings for new investment.

Nothink economists assume that new, better jobs are on the way for displaced Americans, but no economists can identify these jobs. The authors point out that "the track record for the re-employment of displaced US workers is abysmal: "The Department of Labor reports that more than one in three workers who are displaced remains unemployed, and many of those who are lucky enough to find jobs take major pay cuts. Many former manufacturing workers who were displaced a decade ago because of manufacturing that went offshore took training courses and found jobs in the information technology sector. They are now facing the unenviable situation of having their second career disappear overseas."...MORE...LINK

Entire unregulated derivatives market is corrupt, and at the center of the country's financial meltdown

Fraud: It’s Much Bigger Than Goldman Sachs
(USAWatchdog.com) -- By Greg Hunter --

Goldman Sachs was charged with fraud last week by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The investment bank says the charges are “unfounded in law and fact.” Regulators allege “Goldman wrongly permitted a client that was betting against the mortgage market to heavily influence which mortgage securities to include in an investment portfolio, while telling other investors that the securities were selected by an independent, objective third party,” SEC Enforcement Director Robert Khuzami said in a statement. In other words, Goldman and a hedge fund client put together a ball of sub-prime crap designed to fail and bet against it. Goldman also took out insurance on those same mortgage backed securities from AIG–yes, the same AIG taxpayers bailed out to the tune of $180 billion. Goldman was paid a total of nearly $13 billion from AIG at the direction of Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. What a mess and it is going to get much worse before it gets better.

Plaintiff attorneys are preparing for a deluge of future lawsuits written about in this recent Reuters article: The SEC’s charges against Goldman are already stirring up investors who lost big on the CDOs, according to well-known plaintiffs lawyer Jake Zamansky. “I’ve been contacted by Goldman customers to bring lawsuits to recover their losses,” Zamansky said. “It’s going to go way beyond ABACUS. (name of Goldman security in question) Regulators and plaintiffs’ lawyers are going to be looking at other deals, to what kind of conflicts Goldman has.” (Click here for the full Reuters story.) Also, the UK and German governments are asking for their own investigation into Goldman Sachs deals.

If you think this was the only shady deal dreamed up by Wall Street banks, you have another thing coming. All of the big banks have been selling securities called derivatives for at least two decades. Derivatives are usually bundles of debt. There are derivatives for mortgages, car loans, credit cards, student loans and all types of government debt, to name a few. Derivatives are complex, but when it comes right down to it, you can sum them all up as debt bets.

Derivatives are a $600 trillion market according to the Bank of International Settlements. (Some say the BIS estimate of the derivatives market is actually more than $1,000 trillion!) And here is the best part–derivatives are totally unregulated. That means there are no standards, no guarantees and no public markets. With no public market, there is no real way to price this kind of Wall Street alchemy. You just have to trust the person selling the “security.” Take the Goldman fraud case, for example. If there was a public market, Goldman would have never been able to pack crap loans into a security and sell them. The regulation and guarantees would not have allowed it. After all, regulations, guarantees and a public market make selling derivatives a lot less profitable. That’s why Wall Street has been fighting regulation of the derivatives market for years...

Without unregulated derivatives, we would not have had the financial meltdown, mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would not have failed, and we would not have problems with Greek debt and other sovereign debt. How can this $600 trillion dollar market be unwound? So far, taxpayers and investors around the world have been picking up the tab. Now it may be Wall Street’s turn to pony up some dough. Don’t be surprised if some of them get taken down by their own toxic financial waste...MORE...LINK

On the anniversary of OKC bombing, still many uninvestigated questions about federal involvment

RDR: Murrah bombing survivor says feds involved in blast that killed 168 in '95 OKLAHOMA CITY
(Red Dirt Reports) -- By Andrew W. Griffin --

While Oklahoma and the rest of the world respectfully remembers the 168 people who died in the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building here in Oklahoma City, one survivor of the April 19, 1995 blast, Jane Graham, wants her questions about what really happened that day answered once and for all.

Graham, a native of Chicago who was working for the HUD office on the ninth floor of the Murrah building that morning told Red Dirt Report that there was a lot of strange things going on in the weeks leading up to the bombing, things that she shared numerous times with federal agents, things she felt were ignored. This included the presence of maintenance workers she did not recognize, military people in the parking garage and more unusual activity.

But one of the key figures – the bomber himself – Timothy McVeigh, was spotted in the federal building on a number of occasions.

“It was a couple of weeks before the bombing. I had seen McVeigh in the building prior to the bombing, around the first week of April.”

McVeigh, Graham said, rode up in an elevator with her while she was heading to her office one morning.

“He was in military fatigues,” Graham told Red Dirt Report. “I looked at him and said ‘hi’ and he simply looked straight ahead. He got off on the sixth floor. I turned to someone else on the elevator and said, ‘Well, he’s certainly not very friendly.”

Another time, Graham said, he was in the elevator again and got off on the ninth floor, where the Secret Service and BATF offices were located...

Fast-forward to the day before the bombing, Graham said she was running late to work and as she came downstairs she ran into two men in General Services Administration uniforms, one of whom was older and was asking the other man “how does this work?”...

Graham said that as a survivor and one with information, she wanted to help the investigators have as much information as possible. But as she shared her story, about the fatigue-wearing McVeigh figure, the mysterious men inside the Murrah building and in the parking garage, she was largely ignored if it did not follow the official story involving McVeigh and the Ryder truck bomb.

“I was stonewalled,” Graham said. “No one wanted me to draw a picture, take a look at a picture or describe him.”

Added a clearly frustrated Graham: “Never to this day did I hear from anyone.”

Graham said her co-workers who survived largely don’t want to believe the government was involved in the bombing.

Graham, meanwhile, has her strong suspicions about the government and their complicity. She said her father was the secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO labor organization in Chicago and when he was asked if he wanted to lead the group, he said he would have more influence controlling the funds.

“It’s all about power and control,” Graham said, adding, “This has nothing to do with a foreign government. I am utterly convinced the ATF and the FBI are involved in the bombing of that building.”...MORE...LINK

As their epic swindle unravels, campaign against banksters and their confederates taking on a life of its own

Now we know the truth. The financial meltdown wasn't a mistake – it was a con
(The Observer) -- By Will Huton

Hiding behind the complexities of our financial system, banks and other institutions are being accused of fraud and deception, with Goldman Sachs just the latest in the spotlight. This has become the most pressing election issue of all

The global financial crisis, it is now clear, was caused not just by the bankers' colossal mismanagement. No, it was due also to the new financial complexity offering up the opportunity for widespread, systemic fraud. Friday's announcement that the world's most famous investment bank, Goldman Sachs, is to face civil charges for fraud brought by the American regulator is but the latest of a series of investigations that have been launched, arrests made and charges made against financial institutions around the world. Big Finance in the 21st century turns out to have been Big Fraud. Yet Britain, centre of the world financial system, has not yet levelled charges against any bank; all that we've seen is the allegation of a high-level insider dealing ring which, embarrassingly, involves a banker advising the government. We have to live with the fiction that our banks and bankers are whiter than white, and any attempt to investigate them and their institutions will lead to a mass exodus to the mountains of Switzerland. The politicians of the Labour and Tory party alike are Bambis amid the wolves.

Just consider the roll call beyond Goldman Sachs. In Ireland Sean FitzPatrick, the ex-chair of the Anglo Irish bank was arrested last month and questioned over alleged fraud. In Iceland last week a dossier assembled by its parliament on the Icelandic banks – huge lenders in Britain – was handed to its public prosecution service. A court-appointed examiner found that collapsed investment bank Lehman knowingly manipulated its balance sheet to make it look stronger than it was – accounts originally audited by the British firm Ernst and Young and given the legal green light by the British firm Linklaters. In Switzerland UBS has been defending itself from the US's Inland Revenue Service for allegedly running 17,000 offshore accounts to evade tax. Be sure there are more revelations to come – except in saintly Britain.

Beneath the complexity, the charges are all rooted in the same phenomenon – deception. Somebody, somewhere, was knowingly fooled by banks and bankers – sometimes governments over tax, sometimes regulators and investors over the probity of balance sheets and profits and sometimes, as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) says in Goldman's case, by creating a scheme to enrich one favoured investor at the expense of others – including, via RBS, the British taxpayer. Along the way there is a long list of so-called "entrepreneurs" and "innovators" who were offered loans that should never have been made. Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman's CEO, remarked only semi-ironically that his bank was doing God's work. He must wake up every day bitterly regretting the words ever emerged from his mouth...MORE...LINK