[cia-drugs] Congress and Judges Gagged
Congress and Judges GaggedArlen Specter and a CIA torture victim know: Only the Oval Office decides what the law is by Nat HentoffJune 19th, 2006 6:05 AM Arlen Specter, a Republican and an unusually independent chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has been publicly and insistently charging that the president violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act by authorizing the National Security Agency's secret, warrantless eavesdropping on our phone calls and e-mails. The administration's answer, however, was underlined on May 8 by John Negroponte, chief of all the intelligence agencies: This government, he said, is "absolutely not" engaging in warrantless monitoring of domestic calls. Negroponte ignored, as does the president, the further revelation that AT&T and Verizon are collaborating with the NSA to collect millions, actually, trillions, of our phone records (the numbers we call and those who call us)—which are then also linked to FBI, CIA, and other agencies' databases. Despite the concerted opposition of Dick Cheney (who is in charge of the administration's "dark arts," as he calls them), Chairman Specter wants to subpoena AT&T and Verizon to find out who in the administration told them that their complicity—absent any judicial supervision—with the lawless NSA is legal. Even if Specter issues those subpoenas, he appears resigned to the blank wall he'll find, since he says the telephone companies will refer to the "state secrets" privilege and refuse to answer any of his questions that have to do with the NSA. And Dick Cheney has ordered them not to testify. So, once again, as USA Today noted in a May 18 editorial, "Congress may as well be deaf and blind." Arlen Specter has been the only congressional chairman who keeps trying to investigate these felonies committed by the president and NSA. Now he has been blocked by the administration's escape from accountability through "state secrets." (In most of these dismissals, the lawyers for the plaintiffs are not even told what "the secrets" are.) But what of the independent judiciary in our constitutional separation of powers? On May 12, Federal District Judge T.S. Ellis III in Virginia killed a suit by Khaled el-Masri—Khaled el-Masri v. George Tenet, et. al—whose kidnapping and "rendition" by the CIA to be tortured has been repeatedly reported—in detail—in this country and around the world, including the Voice. A broken man because of his ordeal, el-Masri seeks a mere $75,000 in compensation from our government for five months of torture, beginning in December 2003. Moreover, this German citizen was kidnapped by mistake. The agent in charge of the Al Qaeda division of the Counterterrorist Center screwed up because el-Masri has the same name as a person suspected of links to terrorism. "The government is moving to dismiss this case at the outset on the basis of a fiction that discussion in this courtroom of the very same facts being discussed throughout the world will harm [this] nation." If the ruling is upheld on appeal—and it very likely will be, given the two justices Bush has placed on the Supreme Court—the total disappearance of Khaled el-Masri v. Tenet will, as the ACLU's Ben Wizner says, "give a broad immunity to the government to shield even the most egregious activities." Judge Ellis's 17-page ruling is dramatically unusual in showing his discomfort at being shackled by the precedent of previous judges allowing the government to whisper to them, "state secrets" and usurp their roles as judges of the facts and the law. As if to expiate his surrendering of his independence to the administration, Ellis gives a lot of space to el-Masri's claims. He calls them allegations, but they strike me as weighing on his conscience. For example, says Judge Ellis, a "blindfolded" El-Masri—after first having been snatched to Macedonia—"was led to a building where he was beaten, stripped of his clothing, and sodomized with a foreign object [and] dragged naked to a corner of the room [where] he claims he saw seven or eight men dressed in black and wearing black ski masks. "[El-Masri] contends that these men were members of a CIA 'black renditions' team, operating pursuant to unlawful CIA policies at the direction of defendant [then CIA director George] Tenet." The judge continues: "After being dressed in a diaper . . . shackled and dragged to an airplane . . . his captors injected him with a sedative," and he wound up in the notorious CIA interrogation facility, the "Salt Pit," an abandoned brick factory in Afghanistan. For the next four months, "in a small, cold cell," he was repeatedly (and forcibly) interrogated. His hunger strike was broken—like those of the prisoners in Guantánamo—by force-feeding. (This brutal practice, as I have written in previous columns, locks the prisoner in a metal chair where, while being "fed" through a tube, he urinates and def
[cia-drugs] Closing Our Courts: Crying 'state secrets,' the administration seals the courts to avoid scrutiny
Closing Our CourtsCrying 'state secrets,' the administration seals the courts to avoid scrutiny by Nat HentoffJune 9th, 2006 5:35 PM Abandon all hope ye who enter here: the U.S. Courthouse on Foley Square"We have long made clear that a state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of American citizens." Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 2004 "[This] court's decision gives the government a blank check to shield even its most shameful conduct from any scrutiny or accountability." ACLU attorney Ben Wizner, after a Virginia federal district court's dismissal of a case against the CIA's violating American and international law, Khaled El-Masri v. George Tenet, May 19, 2006. The case was shut down because of the government's claim of "state secrets." With Congress refusing to hold the executive branch accountable for even its clear violation of the law in unleashing the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on us—and also collect all our phone records—only the courts remain to guard the constitutional separation of powers. As James Banford, the leading authority on the out-of-control NSA and our other intelligence agencies, says: "You can't get any oversight or checks or balances. Congress is protecting the White House, and the White House can do whatever it wants." (Emphasis added.) But, as for the courts, increasingly the White House—with the full support of the president's faithful vassal Attorney General Alberto Gonzales—has been compelling judges to dismiss cases that could expose the administration's misrule of law. By invoking the "state secrets" privilege, the administration ensures that all documents and reports central to the case at hand are excluded—and the case cannot proceed. For one of a growing number of examples of this gagging of the courts: Late at night on May 26, the alleged Justice Department invoked "state secrets" to shut down the Center for Constitutional Rights case CCR v. Bush, challenging the omnivorous and warrantless domestic surveillance by the NSA. I'll let you know if, in this case, Judge Gerald Lynch of the Southern District of New York goes along with the other judges who have agreed to not even review the evidence before dismissing "state secrets" cases. The government's weapon of "state secrets" was first unsheathed in a 1953 Supreme Court decision, U.S. v. Reynolds, that gave the administration the authority to prevent the disclosure of any information that would, according to the government, endanger national security. Since nearly all judges obey, this darkness extends to the press. As Susan Burgess of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (with which I am affiliated) points out: "The press is denied a chance to inform the public about the workings of the government, and the public loses its ability to scrutinize the basis for the government's assertion of the 'state secrets' privilege"—let alone "the merits of the parties' claims." So you have a stake in the expanding use of what has become the Bush administration's favorite means of staying in the shadows of the parallel legal system it keeps on inventing. In a valuable report, "State Secrets and Executive Power" ( Political Science Quarterly, Spring 2005), William Weaver and Robert Pallitto note that after the Reynolds ruling—from 1953 to 1975—there were only four reported cases in which the government used the "state secrets" bludgeon. There is no exact figure for the increasing vanishing of cases that this administration is deep-sixing because only a small fraction of such cases are reported, since the merits were not decided. It's estimated that the Bush team is responsible for about 30 percent of the executions by "state secrets" since Reynolds. But the unmistakable result, as Weaver and Pallitto write, is that "other than the scarce exception, the privilege is invariably fatal" to getting these cases heard. This is another precedent that the president has set for those of his successors who may also believe, in the endless war on terrorism, that you—their subjects—can't be trusted to know how the Oval Office is keeping you safe, and free, from enemies who want to destroy, as the administration says, "American values." Next week: A federal judge reveals his inner conflicts in shutting down a case whose "state secrets" are already known around the world. But first, an account of what happened when Congressman Edward Markey (D-Massachusetts), a dauntless protector of the Constitution, wrote on May 15 to Kevin Martin, chair of the Federal Communications Commission, reminding him that the NSA's collection of millions of our phone records violates Section 222 of the Communications Act of 1934—which "prohibits the disclosure of such information by telecommunications carriers"—and asking the FCC what it intends to do about it.
[cia-drugs] Greg Palast. Bush "Floridizing" Mexican election July 2, 2006
Americans! Please register now. Call and check your registration status, and latest voting location. Locations change due to redistricting and requirements for disabled access. Registration can be revoked arbitrarily, or if you haven't voted in awhile, or if you have moved. Be sure to vote. Even if there is vote fraud, the exit polls will show it again. In the long run, the cure for fake democracy and 2-party tyranny is exit polls, runoff voting, consecutive term limits, and paper backup ballots with regular audits. Vote early to better insure you get to vote. Drive people to the polls! -Please forward widely. article begins-- http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0607/S7.htm Greg Palast: Stealing Mexico Saturday, 1 July 2006, 1:37 pmOpinion: Greg Palast STEALING MEXICO: Bush Team Helps Ruling Party "Floridize" Mexican Presidential ElectionBy Greg Palast Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller, "ARMED MADHOUSE: Who's Afraid of Osama Wolf?, China Floats Bush Sinks, the Scheme to Steal '08, No Child's Behind Left and other Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Class War." Friday, June 30, 2006 -- GEORGE Bush's operatives have plans to jigger with the upcoming elections. I'm not talking about the November '06 vote in the USA (though they have plans for that, too). I'm talking about the election this Sunday in Mexico for their Presidency. It begins with an FBI document marked, "Counterterrorism" and "Foreign Intelligence Collection" and "Secret." Date: "9/17/2001," six days after the attack on the World Trade towers. It's nice to know the feds got right on the ball, if a little late. What does this have to do with jiggering Mexico's election? Hold that thought. This document is what's called a "guidance"memo for using a private contractor to provide databases on dangerous foreigners. Good idea. We know the 19 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the Persian Gulf Emirates. So you'd think the "Intelligence Collection" would be aimed at getting info on the guys in the Gulf. No so. When we received the document, we obtained as well its classified appendix. The target nations for "foreign counterterrorism investigation" were nowhere near the Persian Gulf. Every one was in Latin America -- Argentina, Venezuela, Mexico and a handful of others. See one of the documents yourself. Latin America?! Was there a terror cell about to cross into San Diego with exploding enchiladas? All the target nations had one thing in common besides a lack of terrorists: each had a left-leaning presidential candidate or a left-leaning president in office. In Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez, bete noir of the Bush Administration, was facing a recall vote. In Mexico, the anti-Bush Mayor of Mexico City, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador was (and is) leading the race for the Presidency. Most provocative is the contractor to whom this no-bid contract was handed: ChoicePoint Inc. of Alpharetta, Georgia. ChoicePoint is the database company that created a list for Governor Jeb Bush of Florida of voters to scrub from voter rolls before the 2000 election. ChoicePoint's list (94,000 names in all) contained few felons. Most of those on the list were guilty of no crime except Voting While Black. The disenfranchisement of these voters cost Al Gore the presidency. Having chosen our President for us, our President's men chose ChoicePoint for this sweet War on Terror database gathering. The use of the Venezuela's and Mexico's voter registry files to fight terror is not visible -- but the use of the lists to manipulate elections is as obvious as the make-up on Katherine Harris' cheeks. In Venezuela, leading up to the August 2004 vote on whether to re-call President Chavez, I saw his opposition pouring over the voter rolls in laptops, claiming the right to challenge voters as Jeb's crew did to voters in Florida. It turns out this operation was partly funded by the International Republican Institute of Washington, an arm of the GOP. Where did they get the voter info? In that case, access to Venezuela's voter rolls didn't help the Republican-assisted drive against Chavez, who won by a crushing plurality. In Mexico this Sunday, we can expect to see the same: challenges of Obrador voters in a race, the polls say, is too close to call. Not that Mexico's rulers need lessons from the Bush Administration on how to mess with elections. In 1988, the candidate for Obrador's Party of the Democratic Revolution (PDR), who opinion polls showed as a certain winner, somehow came up short against the incumbent party of the ruling elite. Some of the electoral tricks were far from subtle. In the state of Guerrero, the PDR was leading on official tally sheets by 359,369. Oddly, the official final count was 309,202 for the ruling party, only182,874 for the PDR. Challenging the vote would have been dangerous. Two top official
[cia-drugs] Fwd: [ctrl] FYI: 500 Rainbow Tribe Members Detained In The Name Of Homeland Security!!!!
Begin forwarded message:From: ICIS-Institute for Cooperation in Space <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>Date: June 30, 2006 11:16:26 PM PDTTo: ICIS-Institute for Cooperation in Space <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>Subject: [ctrl] FYI: 500 Rainbow Tribe Members Detained In The Name Of Homeland SecurityReply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Begin forwarded message:From: Bea Bernhausen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>Date: June 30, 2006 10:49:51 PM PDT (CA)To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]Subject: 500 Rainbow Tribe Members Detained In The Name Of Homeland Security Rainbow Children Detained In The Name Of Homeland Securityhttp://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2006/06/27/18283162.php --They are arresting EVERYONE! Any one on road or in area are being taken to a round up point to be taken to Detention camps! The family has been determined to be a threat to Homeland Security" Please take the time to read this and do your part to help. Details are at the bottom on how to help.Thanks: The Freedom Files w Heretic.XI Have Woken UP!Corporations_Ate_My_BABY!Summary:Since 1972 people from all over the US and the world make a trek to the National Forests for something called "The Gathering Of The Tribes" to express activism mixed with alternative spiritual practices and prayer.The Bush Administration has spent millions of dollars trying to stop the Rainbow Gatherings. 500 people who have been issued citations, are then being herded into "trials" like none anyone has seen before in America.These pseudo trials are likely prototypes for what Homeland Security will use in the cases of insurrection or even a plague. Defendants inexplicably lose the right to a public hearing (this year these hearings are being held behind closed doors in a firehouse garage near the site.)Attorneys and legal observers have been denied the right to even view these trials. The defendants are not explained their rights nor afforded the right to an attorney, the right to summon witnesses, the right to a jury trial, even fresh water!We must understand that if these citizens lose their constitutional right to gather, we all lose such rights. This year the Rainbow Gathering is being used to set precedents that will be turned against drug policy, civil liberty, anti-war or other activists in the near future. Phone Numbers and A list Of Actions You Can Take Are listed at the end of the full story posted below and marked with **asterisks**.Original Post From:- Bulletin Message -From: Fight American FascismEVERYONE!. This is serious businesss. This is not a joke, or anytime to ignore what is really going on. I am posting this again in an attempt to get EVERYONE involved. These people are having all of their rights violated and being thrown into all of those nice prison camps that we have heard so much about. It is your American duty to help these people. I have inclosed latest letter that I recieved right below. PLEASE help in every way possible so we can show the department of Homeland Security that we are not afraid and that they can not do this!From: LEXXMy Original post has been deleted and they will not let me post this any more.At last contact, there are about 2-300 sites on other side of Roadblock. They are arresting EVERYONE! Any one on road or in area are being taken to a round up point to be taken to Detention camps! The family has been determined to be a threat to Homeland Security, so begins the first MASS ARRESTS!THIS NEEDS TO GET OUT VERY SERIOUSLY! THIS IS A WACO TYPE SCENARIO ABOUT TO HAPPEN!PLEASE GET THIS OUT TO EVERY ONE YOU KNOWTHANKS,LEXX==I don't care who you are, or what you're beliefs are, you NEED to help with this in order to protect our freedoms. Please read this article and voice you're support by calling you're representatives and everyone else. I know most of you don't read or act on what I post but PLEASE do it this time. We have now lost our free internet because we didn't do enough, let's not lose our right to assemble.From: LEXXDear Friends and Family,I need your help to protect my family, the collective efforts of tens of thousands of citizens known as the "Rainbow Family." This week, near Steamboat Springs, Colorado, the U.S. Forest Service has taken illegal action to stop this annual assembly for _expression and prayer, in gross violation of the participants essential Constitutional rights.The 'Rainbow' Gatherings have borne a legacy of spiritual & cultural pilgrimage to the National Forests since 1972, the purest exercise of open consensual assembly in our time. The annual 'Gathering of the Tribes' draws thousands over the first week of July, focusing on the 4th as a holy day of prayer for peace and freedom. In recent years small regional events in this mode have emerged, and such gatherings have taken place in many nations around the world.THE GATHERING EXPERIENCE --Some say the "Rainbow" Gathering is the continuation of the idealism
[cia-drugs] Fw: Analysis - Computerized Voting Systems
From: Vicky Davis "It's not the votes that count, it's who counts the votes." -- Josef Stalin -- The issue of paperless, computerized voting systems is about to hit the airwaves again. There is an incredible amount of disinformation regarding these systems. There is also a lot of big money behind the disinformers. The reason is obvious. All you have to do is consider the stakes - and there are no stakes greater than elections for representatives for U.S. federal and state offices. The key questions to consider are: What are the costs? What are the risks? What are the benefits? Simply stated, there is not an honest, experienced computer professional in the world who would advocate computerized, paperless voting because the risks are too great. Computers can't be secured from hacking. That's it. That's all. Who doesn't know that every single major corporation in the country has been hacked at some time? Why do you buy virus software and firewalls? Are they 100% successful? OF COURSE NOT! Consider the population of people who manage voting locations. How technically savvy are they likely to be? (Think of your old Aunt Sally). If these computerized, paperless voting systems are installed in your precinct, you might as well stay home and not bother to vote - because I guarantee you the results of the election will be fixed - not on a precinct by precinct basis - because that's not necessary to swing the election. All it takes is to find statistically significant precincts in statistically significant states. That's not to say that computers can't be used in elections. Computerized voting systems have the potential to be the best thing that ever happened to voting - but only if the systems are well designed with integrity of the ballot as the primary consideration. What does integrity of the ballot mean? It means that the results of electronic voting must be verifiable to both the voter and the candidates who are running for office. This is the crux of the issue with electronic voting. A totally electronic system does not meet the requirements of verifiability for either the voter or the candidates. Integrity of the ballot also means that the results of the election can be audited and proved with 100% certainty that the reported results are correct. Both candidates should be able to perform the audit and arrive at the same results. The only way to ensure integrity of the ballot is to have a hard copy of it - meaning a paper ballot. To ensure integrity of the ballot, a computerized voting system should be a TOOL to produce a PAPER BALLOT that goes into a LOCKED BALLOT BOX. That's the ONLY way that computers should be used in elections. It makes voting easy and it is VERIFIABLE. Any variations on that design should be considered a scam to steal your vote. Because there is so much at stake with these computerized voting systems, the disinformers have a list of possible 'solutions' to offer that they claim will ensure the integrity of the ballot. It's important to understand why they don't meet the requirements for integrity so that no matter who the scammers put on TV to sell you on the idea of computerized paperless voting, you won't be fooled. Open Source In computer systems, there are two forms of instructions that constitute a computer program. There is the source code that is readable by the programmer and there is executable code that is readable by the machine. The process of producing machine executable code from source code is called a compile. A compile produces a file of binary codes (1's and 0's on/off) that the machine understands. The proponents of Open Source believe or pretend to believe that by being able to read the source code, they can find flaws in the code that would make electronic voting more secure and more accurate. They think they will be able to detect cheating as well as bugs. While they might find problems in the source, that secures nothing. The act of compiling the source code changes it so that what is reviewed is not guaranteed to be what is executed on Election Day. Besides, a knowledgeable person can modify the executable code so that it no longer matches the source code anyway. The replacement of the executable code can be a wholesale replacement or a patch. The point is that Open Source is not a viable solution. All it would provide is a false sense of security and it solves nothing in terms of integrity of the ballot. Voter Receipt This is another one of those false sense of security alternatives presented by the disinformers. They try to make people think that voting systems are the same as bank ATM's. The difference obviously is that an ATM is a machine transaction between two entities - both of which have a stake in the accuracy of the transaction. The neighbors of the bank customer are not a
[cia-drugs] Britain off the list when IMF assembles the new world order
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,1810488,00.html Britain off the list when IMF assembles the new world order High-level talks on global trade problems show the irrelevance of the G8 , says Heather Stewart Sunday July 2, 2006The Observer Vladimir Putin will roll out the red carpet for his fellow G8 leaders in St Petersburg later this month, as they gather for their annual chin-wag; but news that the International Monetary Fund has invited a rather different group for high-level talks on global financial imbalances is a reminder that the G8 is no longer where the action is when it comes to the world economy. At the IMF's spring meeting in Washington in April, its member governments gave it new powers of 'multilateral surveillance', allowing managing director Rodrigo de Rato to assemble small groups of relevant countries to discuss in private how to deal with pressing global issues. Mervyn King, the governor of the Bank of England, welcomed the radical reform as a way of opening channels of communication between countries that had previously had little real opportunity to consult each other. The guest list for the first round of talks has now been announced. Around the table will be the US, the eurozone countries (taking up a single seat, instead of three as when Germany, Italy and France fly in for the G8), China, Saudi Arabia and Japan. This select group has been chosen not on sheer economic weight, but because its members are crucial to the vast financial and trade imbalances that the IMF believes could destabilise the global economy. The announcement has been seen as a long-overdue admission that full-scale IMF meetings, with more than a hundred finance ministers making pre-prepared speeches and blaming each other for the state of the world, were achieving very little. At the same time, the most prominent smaller-scale grouping, the G8, with all of its attendant pomp, no longer reflects contemporary reality. At the G8, the US, Russia and Japan sit alongside ministers from Canada and Britain - given life membership through historical ties - and Germany, France and Italy, now bound together in a single currency and trading bloc. China, India and other fast-growing and increasingly influential countries are sometimes invited along to ad hoc meetings - usually, in China's case, to be hectored about the need to float its currency. G8 finance ministers also often take the opportunity for a bout of megaphone diplomacy against the Opec oil producers. Back at the IMF in Washington, the representatives of a new world order are gathering, and Britain won't be there. Gordon Brown is an evangelist for globalisation, preaching to his fellow finance ministers about the advantages of an integrated world economy. But the invite-list for the IMF talks is a reminder that one unavoidable implication of the new economic order is that Britain (quite literally) loses its seat at the table. 'It's clearly the right bunch of countries,' said Stephen King, chief economist at HSBC. China, and more recently oil-producers such as Saudi Arabia, have been piling up US financial assets, helping to fund a yawning current account deficit now worth 7 per cent of GDP for the world's largest economy. In simple terms, the US is spending 7 per cent more than it is earning, much of it on cut-price Chinese consumer goods, while the Chinese are squirrelling away their earnings in dollars and Treasury bills, instead of spending them at home. Japan and Europe, meanwhile, with their ageing populations, have been expanding slowly, and piling up their own savings. Sheer economic logic means these imbalances will have to be resolved but it could happen in what the economists call an 'orderly' fashion, through a smooth depreciation in the dollar and a pick-up in growth elsewhere in the world, including in Europe and Japan; or more dramatically, through a sharp US downturn - perhaps even a recession - whose effects could be devastating. 'The preservation of growth requires the imbalances to get worse, unless the surplus countries really start to spend money,' says Charles Dumas of Lombard Street Research. 'If you take away some miracle burst of spending, you're left with only one way out, and that is to have a big slowdown in the US. I still think that's the most likely outcome.' That's what China, the US, Saudi, the eurozone and Japan have to talk about. The discussions, which could begin within weeks, will be guided by IMF chief economist Raghuram Rajan, who warned in April that, 'far too little is being done in far too many places' to resolve the imbalances. Without concerted action, including a depreciation of the dollar, there was a serious risk of a return to 1930s-style protectionism. De Rato has sketched out an ambitious goal for the new, more private talks, which will take place away from the media scrum of a G8 or an IMF meeting. 'The objective of the
[cia-drugs] Russian ruble fully convertible currency as of July 1
http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=10584144&PageNum=0 Russian ruble fully convertible currency as of July 1 MOSCOW, July 1 (Itar-Tass) -- July 1, 2006 may go down in history as the day of another revolution in Russia. This time, a financial one. Under the governments decision the national currency becomes a fully convertible currency. All restrictions in the sphere of currency control and regulation are lifted. Foreign and off-shore investors will be able to open ruble accounts in banks, and all limitations of ruble-denominated investments will disappear. Under the original plan this was scheduled to happen no earlier than January 1, 2007. As he addressed the Federal Assembly with his state-of-the-nation message last May, President Vladimir Putin called for speeding up the transition process. This measure will allow Russian citizens to invest in both domestic and foreign companies. The transition to the full convertibility is an indication where our financial system stands. It is also one of the fundamental principles of economic development, a sign of certain maturity of the Russian economy. Russia can now say that it is a mature economy, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said. Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Zhukov recalled that oil and gold had begun to be traded on a Russian exchange for rubles. The Central Bank of Russia expects nothing dramatic following the abolition of restrictions on currency transactions as of July 1, though. There will be no drastic change, CBR First Deputy President Alexei Ulyukayev said. Convertibility should also enable Moscow to shift in two or three years from a monetary policy based on exchange rate management to an interest-rate managed policy, in line with most developed countries, said the Financial Times. That was previously impossible, since lack of confidence in the rouble made the dollar the main instrument of Russia's capital markets. Analysts say the transition to the full convertibility of the ruble will be symbolic. It has been announced two weeks ahead of the G8 summit conference in St. Petersburg and days after Russia had agreed with the Paris club of creditor-nations on the early redemption of the 22 billion dollar debt. This agreement indicates that Russia is a major global player, said the director of the analysis department at the Moscow office of the UBS Brokerage company. The move will announce that Russia is a serious global player," said Al Breach, research director at UBS in Moscow. "It has now graduated to being a normal, if not developed, at least upwardly developing, country." Over several years Russian businessmen and bankers have received an ever greater freedom of maneuver. First, the amount of foreign currency exporters were obliged to sell to the state was reduced. Later the measure was canceled altogether. The process of opening accounts in foreign banks has been simplified. Money transfers to other countries and payments are posted much faster these days. Currently the last remaining restrictions on capital transactions are being canceled. Up to this day a Russian individual or legal entity wishing to transfer cash to a foreign account required mandatory reservation of a quarter of the sum involved on a special account at the Central Bank. Foreigners transferring money to Russia for acquiring securities had to deposit a collateral. That measure was conceived as a means of protection against speculative capital, capable of shaking loose the national financial markets. Now all of those restrictions are gone for good. The Ministry of Finance, about to propose amendments to the law on currency control, has said in a statement that this will guarantee the freedom of settlements between residents and non-residents in the foreign economic sphere and prove a long stride towards Russias accession to the World Trade Organization. The daily Novyie Izvestia says that the point at issue is some protocol of intent, though, and for those traveling abroad it is too early to carry only ruble notes in ones wallets. The convertibility of the ruble will not bring about any drastic change in the near future, because there must be a solid basis, and not just a resolution made on paper, a specialist of the Economic Expert Group, Viktoria Voronina, told the daily. First and foremost it is important to develop the domestic financial markets and to strengthen the banking system to enhance
Re: PJM-> [cia-drugs] Was the Invasion of Iraq A Jewish Conspiracy?
--- In cia-drugs@yahoogroups.com, "Michael Donovan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
>
> Months prior to the war the concept of the invasion costing nothing,
to be paid for by Iraqi people, was also put forth by William Safire in
NYTimes.
> It would also be a 'snap', taking only a few battalions (not even
divisions).
>
> General Rummy, General Safire, General Wolfowitz.
>
> donovan
Paul Bremer, who would become the first Iraq occupation czar, spoke in
October 2001 of the US invading Iraq.
Those Greg Palast calls war corporatists are literally Prescott
Auschwitz Bush nazis, or synonymously, Noam Chomsky's "1930's
militarized state capitalism".
Prescott Bush managed the German franchise within 1930's militarized
state capitalism, on behalf of Germany's war capitalists Rockefeller,
Harriman and Ford, before the war and the post-war Marshall Plan. Then
Prescott Auschwitz Bush, instead of being hung at Nuremberg, returned
with Allen Dulles to start the CIA.
Soon, dinner guests of "liberal" cum neocon("Cold War liberal",
"Schlesinger liberal", equals neocon) Joseph Alsop, Vietnam's pied piper
extraordinaire, would find Allen Dulles at the table, and a rack of
generals, not a rack of liberal lamb. So you had a "liberal" neocon
illuminati circle leading the US into Vietnam as into Iraq, and a nazi
dot in that circle, in the form of Allen Dulles dipping the Alsop with
God, and then as now, and perennially, the nazi Bush monarchy. Always
the neocon motivational circle or Round Table surrounding the
unelectable nazi dot in a circle, neocons leading us to war and then
their circle serving as standoff armor as they liberally lead us out of
war. Again. Deja vu. Palast describes the neocon motivational
propagandist circle or Roundtable as taking a few hits as standoff armor
at a later stage.
-Bob D
> - Original Message -
> From: norgesen
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ;
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2006 10:31 AM
> Subject: PJM-> [cia-drugs] Was the Invasion of Iraq A Jewish
Conspiracy?
>
>
>
>
>
> Was the Invasion of Iraq A Jewish Conspiracy?
>
> BY GREG PALAST
> Tikkun Magazine JULY/AUGUST 2006
>
> June 26, 2006
>
>
> Did the Jews do it?
>
> The US Congress will open hearings this week on the War in Iraq -- a
wee bit late one might think. But one question at the forefront of the
minds of many on both the Left and the Right is sure not to be asked:
Did the Jews do it? I mean, after killing Jesus, did the Elders of Zion
manipulate the government of the United States into invading Babylon as
part of a scheme to abet the expansion of Greater Israel?
>
> The question was first posed to me in 2004 when I was speaking at a
meeting of Mobilization for Peace in San Jose. A member of the audience
asked, "Put it together- Who's behind this war? Paul Wolfowitz and
Elliott Abrams and the Project for a "Jew" American Century and, and,
why don't you talk about that, huh? And "
>
> But the questioner never had the full opportunity to complete his
query because, flushed and red, he began to charge the stage. The peace
activists attempted to detain the gentleman-whose confederates then
grabbed some chairs to swing. As the Peace Center was taking on a
somewhat warlike character, I chose to call in the authorities and slip
out the back.
>
> Still, his question intrigued me. As an investigative reporter,
"Who's behind this war?" seemed like a reasonable challenge-and if it
were a plot of Christ-killers and Illuminati, so be it. I just report
the facts, ma'am.
>
> And frankly, at first, it seemed like the gent had a point, twisted
though his spin might be. There was Paul Wolfowitz, before Congress in
March 2003, offering Americans the bargain of the century: a free
Iraq-not "free" as in "freedom and democracy" but free in the sense of
this won't cost us a penny. Wolfowitz testified: "There's a lot of money
to pay for this that doesn't have to be U.S. taxpayer money."
>
>
> A "Free" Iraq
>
> And where would these billions come from? Wolfowitz told us: "It
starts with the assets of the Iraqi people The oil revenues of that
country could bring between $50 and $100 billion over the next two or
three years."
>
> This was no small matter. The vulpine Deputy Defense Secretary knew
that the number one question on the minds of Americans was not, "Does
Saddam really have the bomb?" but "What's this little war going to cost
us?"
>
> However, Wolfowitz left something out of his testimony: the truth. I
hunted for weeks for the source of the Pentagon's oil revenue
projections-and found them. They were wildly different from the
Wolfowitz testimony. But this was not perjury. Ever since the conviction
of Elliott Abrams for perjury before Congress during the Iran-Contra
hearings, neither Wolfowitz nor the other Bush factotums swear an oath
before testifying. If you don't raise your hand and promise to tell the
truth, "so help me, God," you're off the hook with federa
[cia-drugs] Re: Britain off the list when IMF assembles the new world order
If the author says,"the eurozone countries (taking up a single seat, instead of three as when Germany, Italy and France fly in for the G8)", instead of including Britain there, then he can ignorantly say,"Britain won't be there". I suggest he read "Cousins and Strangers" by Oxford chancellor Chris Patten, to bring himself up to date. Then he would notice the euro deputy before noting the absence of the country ministers. "Ugly American" (cloistered provincial moron). -Bob --- In cia-drugs@yahoogroups.com, "Vigilius Haufniensis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,1810488,00.html > > Britain off the list when IMF assembles the new world order > > High-level talks on global trade problems show the irrelevance of the G8 , says Heather Stewart > > Sunday July 2, 2006 > The Observer > > > Vladimir Putin will roll out the red carpet for his fellow G8 leaders in St Petersburg later this month, as they gather for their annual chin-wag; but news that the International Monetary Fund has invited a rather different group for high-level talks on global financial imbalances is a reminder that the G8 is no longer where the action is when it comes to the world economy. > At the IMF's spring meeting in Washington in April, its member governments gave it new powers of 'multilateral surveillance', allowing managing director Rodrigo de Rato to assemble small groups of relevant countries to discuss in private how to deal with pressing global issues. Mervyn King, the governor of the Bank of England, welcomed the radical reform as a way of opening channels of communication between countries that had previously had little real opportunity to consult each other. > > The guest list for the first round of talks has now been announced. Around the table will be the US, the eurozone countries (taking up a single seat, instead of three as when Germany, Italy and France fly in for the G8), China, Saudi Arabia and Japan. This select group has been chosen not on sheer economic weight, but because its members are crucial to the vast financial and trade imbalances that the IMF believes could destabilise the global economy. > > The announcement has been seen as a long-overdue admission that full-scale IMF meetings, with more than a hundred finance ministers making pre-prepared speeches and blaming each other for the state of the world, were achieving very little. At the same time, the most prominent smaller-scale grouping, the G8, with all of its attendant pomp, no longer reflects contemporary reality. > > At the G8, the US, Russia and Japan sit alongside ministers from Canada and Britain - given life membership through historical ties - and Germany, France and Italy, now bound together in a single currency and trading bloc. China, India and other fast-growing and increasingly influential countries are sometimes invited along to ad hoc meetings - usually, in China's case, to be hectored about the need to float its currency. G8 finance ministers also often take the opportunity for a bout of megaphone diplomacy against the Opec oil producers. > > Back at the IMF in Washington, the representatives of a new world order are gathering, and Britain won't be there. Gordon Brown is an evangelist for globalisation, preaching to his fellow finance ministers about the advantages of an integrated world economy. But the invite-list for the IMF talks is a reminder that one unavoidable implication of the new economic order is that Britain (quite literally) loses its seat at the table. > > 'It's clearly the right bunch of countries,' said Stephen King, chief economist at HSBC. China, and more recently oil-producers such as Saudi Arabia, have been piling up US financial assets, helping to fund a yawning current account deficit now worth 7 per cent of GDP for the world's largest economy. In simple terms, the US is spending 7 per cent more than it is earning, much of it on cut-price Chinese consumer goods, while the Chinese are squirrelling away their earnings in dollars and Treasury bills, instead of spending them at home. Japan and Europe, meanwhile, with their ageing populations, have been expanding slowly, and piling up their own savings. > > Sheer economic logic means these imbalances will have to be resolved but it could happen in what the economists call an 'orderly' fashion, through a smooth depreciation in the dollar and a pick-up in growth elsewhere in the world, including in Europe and Japan; or more dramatically, through a sharp US downturn - perhaps even a recession - whose effects could be devastating. > > 'The preservation of growth requires the imbalances to get worse, unless the surplus countries really start to spend money,' says Charles Dumas of Lombard Street Research. 'If you take away some miracle burst of spending, you're left with only one way out, and that is to have a big slowdown in the US. I still think that's the most likely outcome.' > > That's what China, the US, Saudi, the eurozone an
