Tuesday March 24th 2009 - links page

Ted Rall: Obama doesn’t talk like Bush; he just acts like him
  ---  http://www.sj-r.com/opinions/x1331535931/Ted-Rall-Obama-doesn-t-talk-like-Bush-he-just-acts-like-him
Must Read - Obama™ Update -- A quote...."NEW YORK — You can’t blame Dick Cheney for being annoyed at Barack Obama. Obama is closing Guantánamo. He’s ordering the CIA to interrogate prisoners according to the rules written in the Army Field Manual, which doesn’t allow torture. He’s even phasing out such classic Bushian phrases as “enemy combatant” and “war on terror.” -- But the dark prince of neoconservatism should relax. Obama’s inaugural address may have promised to “reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals,” but — in all the ways that matter — he’s keeping all of Bush’s outrageous policies in place. Sure, he talks a good game about “moving forward.” But nothing has really changed. From reading your e-mails to asserting the right to assassinate American citizens to bailing out companies whose executives pay themselves big bonuses, Obama’s changes are nothing but toothless rhetoric." -- also posted at ICH  ---  http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22286.htm
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Liquid War - Postcard from Pipelineistan  ---  http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175050/pepe_escobar_welcome_to_pipelineistan
Must Read - A quote...."What happens on the immense battlefield for the control of Eurasia will provide the ultimate plot line in the tumultuous rush towards a new, polycentric world order, also known as the New Great Game. -- Our good ol' friend the nonsensical "Global War on Terror," which the Pentagon has slyly rebranded "the Long War," sports a far more important, if half-hidden, twin -- a global energy war. I like to think of it as the Liquid War, because its bloodstream is the pipelines that crisscross the potential imperial battlefields of the planet. Put another way, if its crucial embattled frontier these days is the Caspian Basin, the whole of Eurasia is its chessboard. Think of it, geographically, as Pipelineistan."
also posted at ICH  ---  http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22292.htm
& CommonDreams  ---  http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/03/25-1
& CounterCurrents  ---  http://www.countercurrents.org/escobar250309.htm
& AsiaTimes  ---  http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/KC26Ag01.html
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Barack Obama warns troops will be in Afghanistan for years - Ahhh, not a suprise to anyone out there, right? - mpg
  ---  http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25239303-5013871,00.html
Obama™ Update -- A quote...."A quote....."BARACK Obama has warned the war in Afghanistan will continue for years, vowing the free world must not back down in the face of "vicious killers". -- Exactly which bunch of "vicious killers" is Obama referring to? - mpg
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Awakening Fighters Rally Against Maliki Govt  ---  http://news.antiwar.com/2009/03/23/awakening-fighters-rally-against-maliki-govt/  ---  Ditto? - mpg
A quote...."Members of Iraq’s Awakening Council rallied north of Baghdad today, complaining that the Maliki government had reneged on the promises of employment after being placed under direct Iraqi control. The United States has transferred the vast majority of the militia’s forces to the Iraqi government since October."
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Iran says West must respect will of Afghan people  ---  http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=2&article_id=100291
A quote...."TEHRAN: Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, ahead of a March 31 conference on Afghanistan, said the West must respect the will of the Afghan people, the official IRNA news agency reported on Monday. Iran has been invited by the United States to attend the conference in The Hague, but has not yet confirmed its participation."
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OSC: Khamenei's Speech Replying to Obama  ---  http://www.juancole.com/2009/03/osc-khameneis-speech-replying-to-obama.html
A quote...."The USG Open Source Center translates Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's response to the Persian New Year's message of US President Barack Obama. For a canny reading of this text, see the blog posting of Iran expert Farideh Farhi.
  ---  http://icga.blogspot.com/2009/03/on-khameneis-response-to-obama.html  ---  See my own first impressions  in my Sunday
  ---  http://www.juancole.com/2009/03/khamenei-adopts-wait-and-see-attitude.html  ---   comments, as well as Michael Jensen's article in the Irish Times.
  ---  http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2009/0323/1224243267383.html
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India begins uphill journey with the SCO  ---  http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KC25Df01.html
Special Note - It could also be titled....India Finally Comes to Her Senses, India STOPS Drinking the Kool-Aid, India Avoids Becoming the US-NRE's Newest Appendage, etc. etc. - mpg -- A quote...."A shift in India's approach to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) has become unavoidable as Indian regional policy in Central Asia painstakingly works its way out of a cul-de-sac. Tentative signs first appeared during the visit by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to Delhi last December and formed part of a rethink against the backdrop of the transition of power in Washington. -- "In a manner of speaking, Delhi began a slow, painful process of edging away from the George W Bush era. A top Indian official said over the weekend that it has become an "uphill task" for Indian diplomacy to cope with US President Barack Obama's policy with regard to Afghanistan."
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Czech Government Falls  ---  http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/41052
Special Note - The US-NRE's financial pox along with it's policy of Empire has claimed another unintended victim.  The US-NRE's wealthy elites seem to do that quite frequently to all those "other" elites they like to call their "friends"- mpg -- A quote...."By Jan Tamas, Prague, Czech Republic -- I am very happy to announce that the Czech government has fallen. The Parliament voted the no-confidence. For us it is a great victory: we knew that the only way to stop the installation of the US radar base was the fall of the government and we worked for more than 2 years in this direction with permanence and coherence. -- A government that represented the interests of the US military industry has fallen."
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Czech Government Falls Over STAR Wars Rader
  ---  http://www.opednews.com/articles/CZECH-GOVERNMENT-FALLS-OVE-by-Bruce-K-Gagnon-090324-192.html
Related Article - A quote...."The Associated Press reports,  ---  http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090324/ap_on_re_eu/eu_czech_government_falls  ---  "The lower house of Parliament voted 101-96 to declare no confidence in the three-party coalition government, after four lawmakers broke rank with their parties and voted with the opposition.  "The government has struggled to resolve deep divisions within Parliament over whether to allow components of a U.S. missile defense shield on Czech territory, and whether to adopt the EU reform treaty to streamline decision-making in the bloc."
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Secret doc exposes Georgia as aggressor  ---  http://www.russiatoday.com/Politics/2009-03-23/Secret_doc_exposes_Georgia_as_aggressor.html
A quote...."The European Union commission on the war in South Ossetia has received a document claiming that this summer's war in South Ossetia was started by Georgia, says Germany’s Spiegel Online." -- also posted at WarInIraq  ---  http://www.iraq-war.ru/article/192982
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Saakashvili under Pressure from EU Probe  ---  http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,615160,00.html#ref=nlint
Related Article - A quote...."An EU enquiry investigating the events of last summer's conflict between Russia and Georgia is shining an unfavorable light on Mikheil Saakashvili. A secret document may prove that the Georgian president had planned a war of aggression in South Ossetia." --  For more on this issue see....American Selective Attention Deficit Disorder (ASADD) - 08-16-08 - mpg
  ---  http://www.reficultnias.org/mikesfiles/blotterminiblogs/americanselectiveattention-blog-mpg-081608
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Spain's retreat from Kosovo raises eyebrows  ---  http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/03/24/europe/spain.php
A quote...."MADRID: When Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero of Spain withdrew Spanish peacekeepers from Iraq in 2004, he got the cold shoulder from former President George W. Bush. So ever since the election of Barack Obama, Mr. Zapatero has relished the prospect of working with a U.S. leader with whom he shares not only a birthday but also, in his view, a progressive agenda and a desire to resolve conflict through dialogue."
also posted at WarInIraq  ---  http://www.iraq-war.ru/article/192914
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Emerging Markets Seek to Dump the Dollar as World’s Main Reserve Currency  ---  http://www.blacklistednews.com/news-3717-0-13-13--.html
A quote...."Emerging markets, led by China and Russia, plan to jointly challenge the U.S. dollar’s role as the world’s sole benchmark currency at the April 2 meeting of the Group 20 nations - a move that underscores the currency’s weakness and fading support around the world. -- The creation of a new reserve currency to be issued by international financial institutions [As long as it's NOT the IMF or World Bank!! - mpg] was one of the measures Russia proposed to the G20 on March 16, ahead of the group’s summit next week."
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Berlusconi blames world recession on the “American influenza virus”
  ---  http://en.mercopress.com/2009/03/25/berlusconi-blames-world-recession-on-the-american-influenza-virus
A quote...."Berlusconi, who donned a train master's hat and posed for cameras in the driving seat of the "Red Arrow", said the crisis originated in the United States but Italy would soon emerge from it thanks to its healthy banks and low personal debt levels. -- "This American influenza, this virus arrived from America, has struck a healthy body... We're all trying to get over it with a bit of aspirin," he said."
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Gazprom to buy out Italian stake in Gazprom Neft - paper  ---  http://en.rian.ru/business/20090325/120723471.html
A quote...."MOSCOW, March 25 (RIA Novosti) - Gazprom may repurchase a 20% stake in Gazprom Neft and former gas assets of the liquidated Yukos oil company from Italian Eni and Enel in a deal worth over $5.5 billion, a business paper reported Wednesday."
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Four Murders at Mieh Mieh Refuge Camp - Who Tried to Kill Palestinian Ambassador Abass Zaki and Why?  http://www.counterpunch.org/lamb03242009.html
Special Note - Some quotes...."Yesterday afternoon, Kamal Medhat, 58, known in Lebanon’s Palestinian Camps affectionately as ‘Kamal Naji’, a senior member of the Palestinian Fatah movement was killed exiting Mieh Meih Camp by a 25-30 kilogram bomb.  The bomb was   hidden in a small roadside shed between two checkpoints, one manned by the Lebanese army and the other at the Kifah el Musallah Camp security check point. According to Fateh intelligence sources, a man on a tall building near the Camp entrance watched Medhat's car approach and detonated it as he passed at almost exactly  2 pm." -- "Fateh sources claim the real target was Abass Zaki, the PLO Diplomatic Representative to Lebanon.  Zaki had left Mieh Mieh, a camp of about 5,000 refugees, about 7 minutes earlier in a nearly identical window-darkened black car to that of his deputy, Kamal Medhat." -- "There is common agreement in Lebanon’s Palestinian community Tuesday morning that the motive for the assassination attempt was to torpedo the growing intra-Palestinian unity moves in Lebanon and in order undermine Lebanon’s recent stability.  Zaki and his colleagues have been working hard for Fatah-Hamas unity in Lebanon. Fatah’s Zaki blamed Israel for the killing and warned it would have serious repercussions in Lebanon and the Palestinian camps.  "Those behind the killing are working in one way or another for Israel," he told the press." -- also posted at CounterCurrents   ---  http://www.countercurrents.org/lamb240309.htm
& Uruknet  ---  http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m52890&s1=h1
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Iran blames Israel for Lebanon blast  ---  http://www.presstv.com/detail.aspx?id=89520&sectionid=351020101
A quote...."Iran's Foreign Ministry Spokesman condemns a recent bomb attack which killed a senior Palestinian official in Lebanon, blaming it on Israel."
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Israel’s war crimes coming to light  ---  http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m52894&s1=h1
A quote...." The Guardian has just published an excellent series  ---  http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/series/gaza-war-crimes-investigation  ---  of articles and videos on Israel’s crimes of war in and on Gaza.  Included in the reports are focuses on attacks on medical workers,
  ---  http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/23/gaza-war-crimes-medics  ---  Israel’s use of drones to target and kill
  ---  http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/23/gaza-war-crimes-drones  ---  with pinpoint accuracy civilians, and Israel’s use of civilians inluding minors] as human shields  ---  http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/23/gaza-war-crimes-medics  ---  during their military operations."
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Movie Review: The Obama Deception  ---  http://www.nolanchart.com/article6163.html
Obama™ Update -- A quote...."For my fellow Americans who don't know what's been going on, there is such a thing as the red pill genre of news and information. The term "red pill" comes from a movie, The Matrix, where a character can choose a red pill to disconnect from the matrix, or a blue pill to remain blissfully ignorant of the matrix -- even forgetting the opportunity to choose one pill or the other. -- While The Matrix was a fictional movie, The Obama Deception is not." -- And here's the movie -- Alex Jones - The Obama Deception  ---  http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7886780711843120756&hl=en  ---  (Full Length - GglVid - 1h/51m/21s  - 031209)
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The Road to DC - Obama's Team of Losers  ---  http://www.counterpunch.org/donnelly03242009.html
Obama™ Update -- A quote...."Back in December, I wrote that “Change we can believe in” was looking suspiciously like Clinton III. I promised I would revisit the issue once there were more points on the data line. Now that we’re 28 years and two months into the “Reagan Revolution,” I’m ready to assess."
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POLITICS-US:  Censorship Seen in Exclusion of Foreign Scholars  ---  http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=46252
Obama™ Update -- A quote...."NEW YORK, Mar 24 (IPS) - A leading legal rights group charged Tuesday that the Barack Obama Justice Department is using immigration law to censor debate by selectively barring U.S. entry to foreign scholars."
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Rockefeller: Internet is “Number One National Hazard”
  ---  http://www.prisonplanet.com/rockefeller-internet-is-%E2%80%9Cnumber-one-national-hazard%E2%80%9D.html
Threats 2 The Web -- A quote...."According to the great-grandson John D. Rockefeller, nephew of banker David Rockefeller, and former Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller the internet represents a serious threat to national security. Rockefeller is not alone in this assessment. His belief that the internet is the “number one national hazard” to national security is shared by the former Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell and Obama’s current director Admiral Dennis C. Blair." -- Looks like the wealthy elites are getting uncomfortable with all the truth being reported on the internet....poor little things. - mpg
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Australian Government adds Wikileaks to banned website list - Linking to flagged sites will cost you
  ---  http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/australia-issues-wikileaks-linking-fine-warning-585894
Threats 2 The Web -- A quote...."The Australian communications regulator has issued a stark warning that websites who link out to 'banned' hyperlinks are liable to fines of up to Aus $11,000 a day. -- The news comes after web forum Whirlpool was threatened with the fine for posting a hyperlink to a blacklisted anti-abortion website."
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New Reports on the Twin Towers Released  ---  http://www.911blogger.com/node/19680
A quote...."One report is a fire engineering assessment completed by Burro Happold in February of 2000. The other two reports were property condition assessments done by Merritt & Harris, Inc. a year or so prior to 9/11. These reports together total hundreds of pages, and I want them widely released so they can be analyzed in light of the NIST reports on the collapses of the Twin Towers. Note that the Merritt & Harris reports are very large files."
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Can Private Security Guards Act As Cops? -- That's Exactly What They May Soon Be Doing On The Far South Side
  ---  http://cbs2chicago.com/local/police.private.security.2.966243.html
A quote...."CHICAGO (CBS) - They're private security guards, already on patrol, but they may soon have the powers of Chicago Police officers. As CBS 2 Chief Correspondent Jay Levine reports, the private security officers now on patrol on the city's Far South Side are expected to have their powers expanded as part of a citywide ordinance now being prepared."
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Monsanto Planting Seeds In the White House?
  ---  http://www.opednews.com/articles/Monsanto-Planting-Seeds-In-by-Asher-Miller-090324-445.html
Obama™ Update -- A quote...."Apparently, President Obama is considering appointing Michael Taylor to head the new Food Safety Working Group. Who's Michael Taylor? From Food Politics (care of Jill Richardson): -- Mr. Taylor is a lawyer who began his revolving door adventures as counsel to FDA. He then moved to King & Spalding, a private-sector law firm representing Monsanto, a leading agricultural biotechnology company. In 1991 he returned to the FDA as Deputy Commissioner for Policy, where he was part of the team that issued the agency's decidedly industry-friendly policy on food biotechnology and that approved the use of Monsanto's genetically engineered growth hormone in dairy cows."
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Credit Bubble Bulletin -- Mistakes Beget Greater Mistakes
  ---  http://www.reficultnias.org/mikesfiles/cachedfiles/mistakesbegetgreatermistakes-noland-atimes-cached-031409
Must Read - A quote...."Our federal government has set a course to issue trillions of Treasury securities and guarantee multi-trillions more of private-sector debt. The Federal Reserve has set its own course to balloon its liabilities as it acquires trillions of securities. After witnessing the disastrous financial and economic distortions wrought from trillions of Wall Street credit inflation (securities issuance), it is difficult for me to accept the shallowness of today's analysis. In reality, the paramount risk today has very little to do with prospective rates of consumer price inflation. Instead, the critical issue is whether the Treasury and Federal Reserve have set a mutual course that will destroy their creditworthiness - just as Wall Street finance destroyed theirs." -- For more on this issue see....Enforcing the Rules -- Too Little, Too Late - 02-27-09 - mpg -- http://www.reficultnias.org/mikesfiles/blotterminiblogs/enforcingtherulestoolittletoolate-mpg-reficultnias-022709
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The biggest Ponzi scheme of all  ---  http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/TPV3/Voices.php/2009/03/24/the-biggest-ponzi-scheme-of-all
A quote...."The United States is the world's largest Ponzi scheme. Americans buy stuff they don't have the money to pay for (because the generators of wealth, the factories, have been shifted overseas by the American oligarchs), and pay for it with IOUs. The rest of the world plays along, because it likes the short-term profits to be made from the insatiable greed of American consumers, and because it has no clue of how to make the merry-go-round stop. Neither the American government nor the United States itself can ever possibly pay what it owes. Never. Yet the prosperity of the rest of the world depends on financiers accepting the American accounts receivable and the American debt paper as being worth close to its face value."
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Corruption World Champs, by Khalil Bendib  ---  http://www.bendib.com/newones/2009/march/small/3-22-Corruption-Champs.jpg
Cartoon
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Geithner Update - Bend Over and Say, "Uncle Sam"  ---  http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22289.htm
A quote...."March 24, 2009 "Information Clearing House" -- -- Timothy Geithner refuses to take underwater banks into receivership and resolve them, but has no problem transforming the FDIC into a hedge fund. Go figure? Here's what everyone needs to know: The US government (you) will provide up to 94 percent of the financing (low interest, of course) for dodgy mortgage-backed assets that no one in their right mind would ever buy so that wealthy and politically-connected banksters can scrub up to $1 trillion of red ink from their balance sheets. Ugh!"
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Down the dark path  ---  http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/KC25Dj03.html
Satire - A quote...."I am in absolutely no possession of any historical evidence that 16th-century English jailers employed modern stand-up comedians to bring a bit of levity to their inheritantly bleak workspaces, but what if they had? What if, as the clock ticked down in the Tower of London before the execution of Sir Thomas More ordered by King Henry VIII in July 1535, a comic, in the style of the late Rodney Dangerfield, was brought in to do stand-up?"
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Fiscal Plan Fails both Markets and Taxpayers  ---  http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/03/24-8
A quote...."Let's be clear: President Barack Obama inherited an economy in freefall and could not possibly have turned things around in the short time since his election. Unfortunately, what he is doing is not enough. -- The real failings in the Obama recovery program lie not in the stimulus package -- though it is too heavily weighted toward tax cuts, and much of it merely offsets cutbacks by states -- but in its efforts to revive financial markets. America's failures provide important lessons to countries around the world that are or will be facing increasing problems with their banks:"
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Geithner’s Public Private Partnership Puts Public Most at Risk  ---  http://www.progressive.org/wx032309.html
A quote...."Tim Geithner’s at it again, doing somersaults, with hundreds of billions of federal money flying out of his pockets in the process, all to distract us from the more sensible course of action, which is to nationalize the insolvent banks."
also posted at CommonDreams  ---  http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/03/24-14
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Democrats prepare to ditch AIG bonus bill  ---  http://wsws.org/articles/2009/mar2009/geit-m25.shtml
A quote...."Within days of the overwhelming passage by the House of Representatives of a bill imposing a 90 percent surtax on bonuses awarded by the insurance giant American International Group (AIG) and other firms that have received government bailout money, the Democratic leadership in both the House and the Senate have signaled they will drop the measure."
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Obama’s auto task force: a collection of Wall Street investors and asset strippers  ---  http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/mar2009/auto-m24.shtml
A quote...."President Obama's auto task force has a March 31 deadline to approve updated restructuring plans by General Motors and Chrysler LLC under terms of the federal loan agreement. The task force—which has the power to revoke the loans and has not ruled out the use of the bankruptcy courts—is pressing for sharp reductions in the wages and benefits of autoworkers and a drastic downsizing of the auto industry." -- also posted at AmericanEveryman
  ---  http://willyloman.wordpress.com/2009/03/24/obama%E2%80%99s-auto-task-force-a-collection-of-wall-street-investors-and-asset-strippers/  ---  -- Contrast that plan of action with how "harshly" they treated the Banksters....with kid gloves and "do you want a cup of coffee along with another million (or trillion) to go with that Lear jet you have" concern. - mpg
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Airlines group predicts big industry losses  ---  http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2009/03/24/business/EU-Airlines-Losses.php
A quote...."GENEVA: World airlines will lose $4.7 billion this year due to the economic crisis, while revenues will drop by more than after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the U.S., a major industry association predicted Tuesday. -- The revised loss estimate, nearly double the previous forecast issued in December, reflects "the rapid deterioration of the global economic conditions," said the International Air Transport Association."
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'No extra cash' for UK economy, Bank of England chief warns
  ---  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/financialcrisis/5043866/No-extra-cash-for-UK-economy-Bank-of-England-chief-warns.html
A quote...."Gordon Brown has little or no scope to pour extra cash into the stricken economy, the Bank of England Governor has said in an unusual intervention on the state of the public finances."
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Monday March 23rd 2009 - links page

Sunday March 22nd 2009 - links page

Saturday March 21st 2009 - links page

The Big Takeover  ---  http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/26793903/the_big_takeover/
Must Read - Obama™ Update -- A quote...."It's over — we're officially, royally f-cked. no empire can survive being rendered a permanent laughingstock, which is what happened as of a few weeks ago, when the buffoons who have been running things in this country finally went one step too far. It happened when Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was forced to admit that he was once again going to have to stuff billions of taxpayer dollars into a dying insurance giant called AIG, itself a profound symbol of our national decline — a corporation that got rich insuring the concrete and steel of American industry in the country's heyday, only to destroy itself chasing phantom fortunes at the Wall Street card tables, like a dissolute nobleman gambling away the family estate in the waning days of the British Empire."   --  also posted at RogueGov  --- http://www.roguegovernment.com/The_Big_Takeover%3A_The_global_economic_crisis_isn%27t_
about_money_-_it%27s_about_power._How_Wall_Street_insiders_are_using_the_bailout_to_stage_a_revolution/14866/0/8/8/Y/M.html
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The virtues of public anger and the need for more  ---  http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/03/21/anger/index.html
A quote...."With lightning speed and lockstep unanimity, opinion-making elites jointly embraced and are now delivering the same message about the public rage triggered this week by the AIG bonus scandal:   This scandal is insignificant.  It's just a distraction.  And, most important of all, public anger is unhelpful and must be contained or, failing that, ignored. -- This anti-anger consensus among our political elites is exactly wrong.  The public rage we're finally seeing is long, long overdue, and appears to be the only force with both the ability and will to impose meaningful checks on continued kleptocratic pillaging and deep-seated corruption in virtually every branch of our establishment institutions.  The worst possible thing that could happen now is for this collective rage to subside and for the public to return to its long-standing state of blissful ignorance over what the establishment is actually doing."
also posted at CommonDreams  ---  http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/03/21-6
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Smoke and Dust  ---  http://willyloman.wordpress.com/2009/03/21/smoke-and-dust/
Photos -- A quote...."Some of you know I am still looking into the use of det cord in the process of controlled demolition in the twin towers.  Well, during the other part of the research I am doing, I noticed something else; color differences between the smoke from the explosions and the dust kicked up from the demoed concrete slabs.  I noticed this first when watching a video of another “top down demolition” filmed years ago."
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Larry Silverstein asks for a bailout  ---  http://rawstory.com/blog/2009/03/larry-silverstein-asks-for-a-bailout/
File this under the "believe it or not category". - mpg -- A quote...."This is the same guy who wanted double his insurance policy's value after the devastating 2001 attacks because each airplane impact, as he said, was actually a separate act of terrorism. -- And that's the Nice on some of the bad press surrounding Silverstein ... Most know him best from his eternally curious comment to PBS shortly after the collapse of WTC 7. -- Is this a worthy use of tax dollars by the Port Authority?" -- Some more quotes from the comments section.....

Friday March 20th 2009 - links page

Some Other Contributors and Their Contributions:
Lehman Brothers - $229,090
JP Morgan Chase & Co - $216,759
Exelon Corp - $194,750
Citigroup Inc - $180,650
Citadel Investment Group - $166,600
UBS AG - $146,150
Time Warner - $142,718
UBS Americas - $106,680
Morgan Stanley - $104,425
Credit Suisse Group - $92,300

"What do you get for pretending the danger's not real.
Meek and obedient you follow the leader
Down well trodden corridors into the valley of steel.
What a surprise!
A look of terminal shock in your eyes.
Now things are really what they seem.
No, this is no bad dream."  --  *Pink Floyd* (sheep)

"No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility."

"The Bill of Attainder Clause was intended not as a narrow, technical (and therefore soon to be outmoded) prohibition, but rather as an implementation of the separation of powers, a general safeguard against legislative exercise of the judicial function or more simply - trial by legislature."  U.S. v. Brown, 381 U.S. 437, 440 (1965)." From *Sweetness & Light dot Com*  http://www.reficultnias.org/mikesfiles/cachedfiles/ichsfundingpage-cached-reficultnias-111908.html

Thursday March 19th 2009 - links page

Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in January indicates that the economy continues to contract. Job losses, declining equity and housing wealth, and tight credit conditions have weighed on consumer sentiment and spending. Weaker sales prospects and difficulties in obtaining credit have led businesses to cut back on inventories and fixed investment. U.S. exports have slumped as a number of major trading partners have also fallen into recession. Although the near-term economic outlook is weak, the Committee anticipates that policy actions to stabilize financial markets and institutions, together with fiscal and monetary stimulus, will contribute to a gradual resumption of sustainable economic growth.

Wednesday March 18th 2009