Wire Report

(WIRE/II) – On March 31, 2010, the New York Times wrote an editorial that briefly expressed horror in response to the Moscow subway terror bombings, then warned that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin might yet again use terrorist attacks to further consolidate his power, and finally lectured Russia that the only way to defeat such extremism was to deal with the underlying causes. Such a sermonizing editorial by any Russian publication after the 9/11 attacks would have engendered outrage in America. Yet the same conclusions and advice that the Times gave to Russia in the wake of its tragedy could equally be applied to post-9/11 U.S. policy.

In the wake of the Moscow subway attacks, the Times opined,

“We are concerned . . . that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will use Monday’s horror as another excuse to further consolidate his authoritarian control of the country.”

“After extremists from Chechnya executed a series of bloody attacks in 2004, then-President Putin pushed through ‘reforms’ supposedly intended to improve Russians’ security. Their effect was to hand the Kremlin, Mr. Putin, and the state security services, from which he came, far too much power to silence a free press and undercut nearly all political challengers.”

Yet similarly, in the aftermath of 9/11, the George W. Bush administration moved swiftly to expand American executive power past the already potent capabilities of the imperial presidency into the realm of a “presidency on steroids.” For example, Bush claimed that during wartime, the president could disregard congressionally passed laws, especially statutes requiring court-approved warrants for surveillance of Americans. Such rule by executive fiat is usually what petty dictators do. Bush also unconstitutionally detained terrorism suspects, including U.S. citizens, indefinitely without trial and then approved torture, which was prohibited by U.S. and international law, on them. So politicians in the United States can also use terrorist attacks to grab more power in the name of enhancing security.

Even more blindly, the Times condescendingly preached to Putin that,

“If Russia is to have any hope of defeating extremism, Mr. Putin is going to have to focus less on promoting his own power and more on the root causes of the conflicts in the Caucuses. He can start by heeding his protégé, Dmitri Medvedev, the current president who has urged that the Kremlin address the underlying inequities that feed militancy, including poverty, joblessness, and official corruption. Brute force alone will not work this time either.”

And this from the flagship newspaper in a country that for many years has refused to examine the root causes of the 9/11 attacks and, in fact, has allowed its politicians to do more of the same. Had the American media and members of Congress actually examined Osama bin Laden’s writings to attempt to honestly determine his motives for attacking the United States, the unnecessary long-term occupation of Afghanistan and the feckless invasion and occupation of Iraq might have been prevented before they made the problem of blowback anti-U.S. terrorism worse. Bin Laden has been clear that he attacks the United States because of its intervention in and military occupation of Islamic lands.

Although it is easy to pick on the Times, the newspaper’s view merely reflects the lack of introspection by the U.S. political elite and American society about the ill effects of a U.S. foreign policy of overseas interventionism and hostile foreign reactions to it. But then the pot should not call the kettle black, but rather try to clean up its own act first.

© 2010 The Independent Institute

Ivan Eland, Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Peace and Liberty, The Independent Institute

Ivan Eland is Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at The Independent Institute. Dr. Eland is a graduate of Iowa State University and received an M.B.A. in applied economics and a Ph.D. in Public Policy from George Washington University. He has been Director of Defense Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, and he spent 15 years working for Congress on national security issues, including stints as an investigator for the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Principal Defense Analyst at the Congressional Budget Office. He also has served as Evaluator-in-Charge (national security and intelligence) for the U.S. General Accounting Office (now the Government Accountability Office), and has testified on the military and financial aspects of NATO expansion before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on CIA oversight before the House Government Reform Committee, and on the creation of the Department of Homeland Security before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Dr. Eland is the author of Partitioning for Peace: An Exit Strategy for Iraq, Recarving Rushmore: Ranking the Presidents on Peace, Prosperity, and Liberty, The Empire Has No Clothes: U.S. Foreign Policy Exposed and Putting “Defense” Back into U.S. Defense Policy, as well as The Efficacy of Economic Sanctions as a Foreign Policy Tool. He is a contributor to numerous volumes and the author of 45 in-depth studies on national security issues. His articles have appeared in American Prospect, Arms Control Today, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Emory Law Journal, The Independent Review, Issues in Science and Technology (National Academy of Sciences), Mediterranean Quarterly, Middle East and International Review, Middle East Policy, Nexus, Chronicle of Higher Education, American Conservative, International Journal of World Peace, and Northwestern Journal of International Affairs. Dr. Eland’s popular writings have appeared in such publications as the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, USA Today, Houston Chronicle, Dallas Morning News, New York Times, Chicago Sun-Times, San Diego Union-Tribune, Miami Herald, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Newsday, Sacramento Bee, Orange County Register, Washington Times, Providence Journal, The Hill, and Defense News. He has appeared on ABC’s World News Tonight,  NPR’s Talk of the Nation,  PBS, Fox News Channel, CNBC, Bloomberg TV, CNN, CNN Crossfire,  CNN-fn, C-SPAN, MSNBC, Canadian Broadcasting Corp. (CBC), Canadian TV (CTV), Radio Free Europe, Voice of America, BBC, and other local, national, and international TV and radio programs.

Allison Bricker

U.S. Government Complicit as Whistleblower’s Evidence on Silver Manipulation Ignored by CFTC

NEW YORK, NEW YORK – Precious Metal Commodity traders from J.P. Morgan’s [Chase] investment bank are using the bank’s massive market share to periodically and in an artificial manner, drive down the price of silver via shorts. This allows the House of Morgan to buttress their physical Silver reserves, as according to some current estimates silver is leveraged at a rate of 100 to 1, meaning that for every ounce of actual silver, there exist 100 paper claims, in a manner similar to the practice of fractional reserve banking¹. Moreover, it allows the House of Morgan to reap additional massive profits off the backs of those caught outside of the short-loop in silver, but even this is not the endgame.

The Smoking Argus is currently awaiting a return call from Mr. Brian Marchiony who is the J.P. Morgan Media Relations contact as of this writing.

Consequently, the House of Morgan gained this massive position in silver as a result of the New York FEDERAL RESERVE rescinding the original offer to provide a collateralized loan to Bear Stearns in favor of a non-recourse loan based on Bear Stearns assets to J.P. Morgan, orchestrated by then New York FED bank President, Tim Geithner. This taxpayer-funded fire sale in March of 2008 resulted in the House of Morgan obtaining all the liquid assets of Bear Stearns and shielded J.P. Morgan’s assets from seizure should the toxic mortgage debt assumed by the taxpayer on behalf of the FEDERAL RESERVE default.²

Fellow readers, it should be easy to recall that during the height of the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme, people wondered just how one man was able to defraud his clients for a period of over 10-years without so much as a whimper from government regulators. However, upon a more thorough investigation, testimony surfaced that the Securities and Exchange Commission [SEC] was indeed aware of Mr. Madoff’s ruse as it was warned by former industry executive, Mr. Harry Markopolos a decade prior, but chose not to act upon the information provided.³

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” George Santayana

Relying on this widely accepted fallacy that government regulation ensures a level playing field and that mistakes are only the result of the “wrong” party being in power, the House of Morgan now looks to escalate the fraud to an entirely new level via its manipulation of a market in the Trillions of dollars. As now comes the case of wealthy London Commodities trader turned whistleblower, Andrew Maguire. Mr. Maguire has uncovered and documented evidence of what will go on to become the largest fraud in human history utterly eclipsing Mr. Madoff, aided yet again by a deafening silence from government.

Beginning in November of 2009, Mr. Maguire notified the Commodity Futures Trading Commission [CFTC] that the House of Morgan was utilizing its taxpayer-funded position in the Silver market to cover and flush its ETC holdings via signaling its traders of the London Bullion Market Association to sell short en masse thereby causing a precipitous drop in price.

The CFTC for those not familiar with this particular alphabet soup agency is an agency of the U.S. government formed in 1975 tasked to investigate and prosecute fraud in the commodities market. Its current chairman, appointed by President Obama is Gary Gensler, who surprise, is yet another Goldman Sachs crony bequeathed a seat of power within our government.

Nevertheless, hoping to offer additional proof so as to solicit some sort of action regarding the Morgan scheme, Mr. Maguire again contacted CFTC Senior Investigator Eliud Ramirez on February 3rd, 2010 to outline the then forthcoming short sale of sliver to take place through to Friday, February 5th upon release of the January unemployment report. As that Friday’s price drop began just as predicted and growing impatient with the lack of a response, Mr. Maguire drafted additional emails in real-time urging the CFTC look into the short sell orders, yet all that he received in return was silence.⁴

Finally, after threatening to go public with the information given to the CFTC, Mr. Maguire received a response from Senior Investigator Ramirez, which stated:

“Thank you so very much for your observations.”

Eliud Ramirez, Senior Investigator
Commodity Futures Trading Commission
February 9th, 2010

Email Correspondence Between Maguire & CFTC

Shortly thereafter he was removed from the witness list to testify before the CFTC and on March 23rd, Mr. Maguire contacted Adrian Douglass of the Gold Anti-Trust Commission [GATA] a private citizen’s action group to solicit their help in blowing the whistle on Morgan’s manipulation of the commodities market. Thus, as Mr. Bill Murphy Chairman of GATA prepared to testify before CFTC commissioners on the systemic problems in the futures commodity market, he revealed Mr. Maguire’s name and portions of his email communications with the CFTC into the record.
[See VIDEO]

When pressed by Commissioner Bart Chilton, who himself was included in the original email communication between Andrew Maguire and the CFTC to provide a specific example of fraud within the market, GATA Chairman Murphy opened the floodgates citing the warning provided to the CFTC by Mr. Maguire regarding the February 5th silver manipulation. Somewhat flustered, Commissioner Chilton then remarked:

“Alright, okay, well that’s more specific than I anticipated.”

Commissioner Bart Chilton
Commodity Futures Trading Commission
March 25th, 2010

The following day with his name now in the public as a whistleblower, Mr. Maguire and his wife were involved in what has been reported as a “bizarre” car accident. Whereby upon their return home from shopping, a car sped out of a side-alley and rammed their vehicle sending both Mr. and Mrs. Maguire to the hospital. Witnesses to the accident attempted to block the suspect, but had to dive out of the way themselves when in an attempt to make a speedy getaway, the suspect almost hit them along with several other parked vehicles on the road. Police in London, then took to the air and finally apprehended the suspect, but as of this writing are still refusing to release any names. Mr. and Mrs. Maguire were released from the hospital the following day and are expected to make a full recovery⁵.

Also as a result of Bill Murphy’s testimony before the CFTA and following the Maguire car accident, multiple old-media outles cancelled interviews with Mr. Murphy as the story was becoming far too hot to handle and perhaps its implications all too foreboding. However not all was lost, Kingworld Media, who broke the Madoff Ponzi scheme secured an interview with both Andrew Maguire and Adrian Douglass of GATA to assist in spreading the word to the public regarding the consequences of the House of Morgan’s material fraud.

Thus, just what is the endgame of such a massive level of fraud and manipulation? Quite simply the suppression of silver and the larger gold market serve to help retain a strong dollar and thus allow the FEDERAL RESERVE, of which J.P Morgan is a shareholder, to continue printing money whilst keeping a lid, at least in the short-term, on runaway inflation. Whether exposed by continued reporting by the New-Media, i.e the blogosphere or by a naked short squeeze, this house of cards shall too fall, just as the mortgage bubble. However, the consequences are of a far greater nature than any previous financial scheme foisted upon the American people.

It is most unfortunate indeed that we are witnessing the literal fleecing of our economy, with the gatekeepers in government put in place to protect markets and consumers against fraud, are merely the sycophants and beneficiaries of the private central bank. Further, it should be no surprise that the servants to the Central Bankers, i.e. Senator Dodd has insulated the FED even further by removing any semblance of a true audit from his “financial reform bill” which of course just renders even more power unto the corrupt 3rd Central Bank of the United States.

Fellow readers, we must continue to work towards excising this parasitic cancer entwined into our system by ending the FEDERAL RESERVE and returning our Republic to sound money in lieu of the useless paper fiat we now so rely. Until this occurs, it will matter not which puppet-in-chief inhabits the oval office as both major party candidates are routinely funded by the very banks that are leeching this Republic dry.

The cost of inaction is to pass on a nation to our children and the larger posterity, a dead carcass utterly resembling nothing of which we knew as children or what the Founding Generation sought to construct. Should we choose the path of least resistance and instead prefer the noxious repugnant odor of apathetic distraction, then and only then will we truly deserve the title of the lost generation. Thus, the question you have to reconcile; is whether peace and contented conformity is so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and economic servitude?

Source(s): ¹Kingworld Interview Andrew Maguire and Adrian Douglass march 30, 2010 • ²Washington Post “Fed Takes Broad Action to Avert Financial Crisis”, By Neil Irwin and David Cho – Monday, March 17, 2008 • ³Digital Journal “Markopolos: SEC knew about Madoff operations 10 years ago By Chris V. Thangham. Feb 5, 2009 • ⁴ Email Correspondence between Andrew Maguire and CFTC, originally obtained by GATA • ⁵New york Post “JPMorgan ‘chase’ story in UK” By MICHAEL GRAY March 29, 2010 •

Allison Bricker

THE REGION, INDIANA – The term neoconservative may have come into more common use during the eight nightmarish years of the Bush Administration, but let us be candid, its core ideology has existed since the founding of the Republic. For there have always been those amongst us who felt that security and obedience is achieved only by pummeling into submission any slight towards the state’s fragile ego executed by the hands of its unsophisticated warmongering political administrators. Whilst Alexander Hamilton might be the pious genesis of the American embodiment towards this philosophy, whereby he was sent to meet his Creator unto the hyper-masculine ritual of pistol dueling, its renaissance began in earnest with the Wilson Administration.

President Woodrow Wilson enabled by the creation of the limitless purse provided by the then newly formed Federal Reserve, collateralized by the confiscation of current and future wages decreed under the 16th Amendment, and unchecked federal authority promulgated by tying Senators to popular knee-jerk sentiment all achieved in 1913, now began a course of “Making the World Safe for Democracy”¹. So fell the first domino in a sustained effort to forever alter American foreign policy into that of a new tradition, one of a perpetual war-footing and imperial expansion.

At the dawn of the Twentieth Century, the American people were very much opposed to intervening in the growing conflict in Europe. However, Woodrow Wilson’s personal ambition wholly contrary to his public rhetoric, was to see American entry into World War I. He saw this as an opportunity to propose his machination for global governance, i.e. The League of Nations. So much was Wilson’s desire towards achieving that end, his Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan resigned in protest², citing Wilson’s Warmongering Diplomacy.

Further, President Wilson so decidedly intolerable of any form of dissent pushed for and achieved a legislative muzzle to stifle Anti-War sentiment in the form of the “Sedition³ and Espionage Acts”. Now with statutory authority, Wilson could jail and silence outspoken opponents of the war, claiming the now tired phraseology of “National Security”. The most famous of theses un-American incarcerations was Eugene Debs, the Cindy Sheehan of his day.

By the middle of the century, the American consciousness was becoming successfully manipulated into lockstep with an interventionist foreign policy. With the Central Authority spewing endless propaganda capitalizing upon the rapid growth of technology, i.e. nuclear annihilation and philosophical boogie-men, ergo “The Communist Red Scare” the state seized upon the manufactured fear to begin its chess game in earnest, funded of course by the private Central Bank. Few things fellow readers make a Central Banker’s eyes gloss over quicker than the thought of mountainous interest payments received on loans required to rebuild a war ravaged nation, continent, et al. As it is said, War is the Health of the State and a secure retirement for the Central Banker.

Fully intoxicated with the rise to superpower status, the Central Authority flexed its muscle under “The Marshall Plan” and thus now began to truly resemble the British tyrants cast off by the Founding Generation not even 200 years earlier.

It remains my conviction that through understanding history in its full prism, We the People can more fully understand the continued saber rattling on Iran and return the neoconservative philosophy to the plane of Hell especially reserved for warmongering tyrants and their Central banker puppet-masters.

While the glorious struggle to reclaim our foreign policy to that of commerce with all, tangling alliances with none will indeed be a difficult task, let us take proper stock of the situation and know that we are making progress. Last week former Vice-President Cheney became so deluged unto his hawkish tendencies that he felt it necessary to reach out to former Democrat and Rand Paul’s Senate primary opponent, Trey Grayson to try and extol the vice that is the Whig neoconservative philosophy.

For while Mr. Cheney is indeed a most tormented soul full of rage, he is no fool; a win for Ron Paul’s son in the Kentucky Senate race will be a referendum on his legacy, the Bush Doctrine. Moreover, it will further solidify that the election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts was not merely dissatisfaction with President Obama, but a wider more raucous, growing dissatisfaction with Statist political philosophy in general. That it will illustrate an awakening and realization that regardless of whether a ‘D’ or an ‘R’ follows a politicians name, government continues to grow exponentially, its vacuous nature devouring our Liberty and the posterity’s financial security.

Further, it is time once and for all to refuse to accept the terms offered by the neoconservatives that those of us who prefer the wisdom of the Founder’s foreign policy, “Blame America”, as it is utter logical fallacy to the first degree.

We do not blame America; we blame the small pricked political looters who seek to enrich themselves whilst standing upon the bloodied corpses of American Soldiers killed in senseless wars upon sovereign nations of which are no threat to us outside of the contrived commotions at the behest of the CIA⁴, i.e. Iran:

Source(s): 1Making the World “Safe for Democracy”: Woodrow Wilson Asks for War – George Mason University, “History Matters” • ²The Resignation of Secretary of State William J. Bryan, 1915 JSTOR • ³Sedition Act of 1918, Brigham Young University Archives • ⁴ “Iranian scientist defects: US covert ops hurt Iran nuclear program” – Christian Science Monitor By Scott Peterson, Staff writer / March 31, 2010

Wire Report

(WIRE/IndInst) – Most Americans just assume that the U.S. government’s actions to protect them from terrorism, if not perfect, are rational, based on sound information and analysis, and undertaken with the intention to protect the most people possible. But the government’s response here to the tragic bombings on the Russian subway should raise questions about such assumptions.

In response to the subway bombings in Russia, the metro subway system in Washington, D.C., increased its security—with transit police and bomb-sniffing canines conducting sweeps through subway stations and railroad yards. Yet the subway bombers in Russia are likely Chechens or other peoples in the North Caucuses seeking independence from Russia. Although the Chechen rebels have relied on funding from al-Qaeda and Doku Umarov, the Chechen insurgent leader, has several al-Qaeda emissaries on his staff, the Chechens are attacking Russia because the Russians continue a brutal suppression of Chechen aspirations for independence.

As with most local groups affiliated with al-Qaeda—for example, al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia (Iraq), al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and al-Qaeda in the Maghreb (North Africa)—the Chechens focus on local issues, rather than attacking U.S. territory. So the Chechens are unlikely to want to attack—and probably don’t have the ability to bomb—the Washington subway system. So why did Washington subway security ramp up after the Moscow bombings? It was either reflexive irrationality that a similar attack might occur here or the government demonstrating that it’s “doing something” to illogically nervous American commuters.

Probably both of these factors had something to do with it. Remember the hysteria after 9/11, when young National Guardsmen were deployed in some U.S. airports with assault rifles? One could only hope they weren’t given any ammunition and that it was all for show. Or how about the short-lived banning of electronic tickets and prohibition on getting out of your seat during the last 30 minutes of every flight into the nation’s capital?

Government action often seems to be reactive, whether rational or not, after a major incident, especially in the very publicly visible realm of air travel. After the shoe-bomber incident, the government required us to take off our shoes and have them X-rayed. After the terrorist plot to mix chemicals for a bomb once on the plane, liquids were limited to three-ounce containers. The Christmas underwear bomber will eventually give us all full-body scanners. Yet one can walk onto an Amtrak train with no security at all and a cruise ship with much less intensive scrutiny than air travel. An easily sinkable cruise ship going down could kill over a thousand people, and a train bombing could kill hundreds, as it did in Spain. In part, airline security gets more government effort because more people fly than take trains or cruise ships, thus resulting in more pubic awareness of security in that sector. Regardless of the threat, politics directs that lots of government attention be paid to air security.

More important, the government also guards things that are unlikely to be attacked, which should lead the average citizen to wonder if it even understands the threat from al-Qaeda central, which is trying to attack U.S. targets. For example, ironically and tragically in Washington, D.C., concrete barriers and a beefed-up police presence have “bunkerized” the Jefferson Memorial, which is supposed to be a tribute to the rhetorical champion of American liberty. Yet al-Qaeda usually attacks symbolic economic (the World Trade Center in New York) or political (the U.S. national military command at the Pentagon) targets. Despite the propaganda of George W. Bush, al-Qaeda does not attack the United States because of its freedom.

When Bush kept repeating this nonsense, Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda’s heinous leader, put out an angry message denying it and reiterating that he attacks the United States because of its “infidel” occupation of Muslim lands and its support for corrupt Middle Eastern dictators.

Silence concerning or the deliberate muddling of al-Qaeda’s motives for attacking the U.S. by American politicians and media allows the American government to avoid being held accountable for its contributory negligence in causing horrific terrorist blowback, such as the 9/11 attacks. The excessive security at the Jefferson Memorial shows the lengths that the government will go to maintain the charade.

If terrorism is to be stopped, the underlying causes have to be eliminated. In the case of Russia, it has to somehow recognize Chechen self-determination. In the case of the United States, an honest debate has to finally occur about the blowback effects from an unnecessarily interventionist and militarized U.S. foreign policy abroad. A nation’s foreign and defense policies are supposed to make its people and territory safer, not less secure.

© The Independent Institute 2010

Ivan Eland, Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Peace and Liberty, The Independent Institute

Ivan Eland is Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at The Independent Institute. Dr. Eland is a graduate of Iowa State University and received an M.B.A. in applied economics and a Ph.D. in Public Policy from George Washington University. He has been Director of Defense Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, and he spent 15 years working for Congress on national security issues, including stints as an investigator for the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Principal Defense Analyst at the Congressional Budget Office. He also has served as Evaluator-in-Charge (national security and intelligence) for the U.S. General Accounting Office (now the Government Accountability Office), and has testified on the military and financial aspects of NATO expansion before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on CIA oversight before the House Government Reform Committee, and on the creation of the Department of Homeland Security before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Dr. Eland is the author of Partitioning for Peace: An Exit Strategy for Iraq, Recarving Rushmore: Ranking the Presidents on Peace, Prosperity, and Liberty, The Empire Has No Clothes: U.S. Foreign Policy Exposed and Putting “Defense” Back into U.S. Defense Policy, as well as The Efficacy of Economic Sanctions as a Foreign Policy Tool. He is a contributor to numerous volumes and the author of 45 in-depth studies on national security issues. His articles have appeared in American Prospect, Arms Control Today, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Emory Law Journal, The Independent Review, Issues in Science and Technology (National Academy of Sciences), Mediterranean Quarterly, Middle East and International Review, Middle East Policy, Nexus, Chronicle of Higher Education, American Conservative, International Journal of World Peace, and Northwestern Journal of International Affairs. Dr. Eland’s popular writings have appeared in such publications as the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, USA Today, Houston Chronicle, Dallas Morning News, New York Times, Chicago Sun-Times, San Diego Union-Tribune, Miami Herald, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Newsday, Sacramento Bee, Orange County Register, Washington Times, Providence Journal, The Hill, and Defense News. He has appeared on ABC’s World News Tonight,  NPR’s Talk of the Nation,  PBS, Fox News Channel, CNBC, Bloomberg TV, CNN, CNN Crossfire,  CNN-fn, C-SPAN, MSNBC, Canadian Broadcasting Corp. (CBC), Canadian TV (CTV), Radio Free Europe, Voice of America, BBC, and other local, national, and international TV and radio programs.

The Smoking Argus

Rep. Paul Texas Straight Talk TRANSCRIPT (PDF 212KB)

In this week’s “Texas Straight Talk”, Dr. Paul discusses the looming financial problems facing Greece and her people due to their overwhelming public debt and asks if due to current laws prohibiting access to such information whether the American taxpayer via the FEDERAL RESERVE could unknowingly be financing the bailout of Greece.

He uses this most recent example to call for a full and transparent audit of the FEDERAL RESERVE via passage of H.R. 1207 and S. 604. Both bills now pending will insure that the FEDERAL RESERVE’s dealings with foreign central banks and governments are available for scrutiny to both Congress and the American People. Further, Dr. Paul makes plain the absolute immoral nature and unConstitutionality of a private central bank issuing a wholly Fiat currency whereby the American taxpayer is put up as collateral. (FULL TRANSCRIPT)

Related Material(s):
	Rep Ron Paul, Texas Straight Talk – Is the FEDERAL RESERVE Financing the Bailout of Greece? TRANSCRIPT (PDF 212KB)

Source(s): Official Webpage of Representative Ron Paul • MinnesotaChris YouTube Channel

Wire Report

Jacob G. Hornberger – Founder & President, The Future of Freedom Foundation

Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. He was born and raised in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in economics from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree from the University of Texas. He was a trial attorney for twelve years in Texas. He also was an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught law and economics. In 1987, Mr. Hornberger left the practice of law to become director of programs at The Foundation for Economic Education in Irvington-on-Hudson, New York, publisher of The Freeman.In 1989, Mr. Hornberger founded The Future of Freedom Foundation. He is a regular writer for The Foundation’s publication, Freedom Daily. Fluent in Spanish and conversant in Italian, he has delivered speeches and engaged in debates and discussions about free-market principles with groups all over the United States, as well as Canada, England, Europe, and Latin America, including Brazil, Cuba, Bolivia, Mexico, Costa Rica, and Argentina. He has also advanced freedom and free markets on talk-radio stations all across the country as well as on Fox News’ Neil Cavuto and Greta van Susteren shows. Most recently, he has regularly appeared as a commentator on Fox News’ legal commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano’s Internet-based show Freedom Watch. His editorials have appeared in the Washington Post, Charlotte Observer, La Prensa San Diego, El Nuevo Miami Herald, and many others, both in the United States and in Latin America. He is a co-editor or contributor to the eight books that have been published by the Foundation.

(WIRE/FFF) – What happens when the military is used in a police capacity? You get a “war on terrorism,” one in which people think that the laws of war now apply to the situation. But in actuality, nothing could be further from the truth. What you actually get is a criminal-justice problem that inevitably goes horribly awry, causing the problem to escalate into a deadly and destructive horror story.

Consider the war on drugs. Most everyone concedes that drug dealing and drug possession are federal criminal offenses. Drug offenses are listed as crimes in the U.S. Code. People who are caught violating them are arrested, indicted by a federal grand jury, and prosecuted in U.S. District Court. The Bill of Rights requires the government to accord drug defendants all the rights and guarantees of the Bill of Rights, including trial by jury and due process of law. Incompetent, irrelevant, and illegally acquired evidence is excluded from the trial. The defendant is presumed innocent and must be found not guilty unless the government provides sufficient evidence to convince the jury that the defendant is guilty. Cruel and unusual punishments are prohibited. The defendant has the right to remain completely silent, before, during, and after the proceeding.

Now, consider the following scenario. In a concerted effort, a couple thousand members of powerful Latin American drug cartels cross the Mexican border into the United States. Employing automatic weapons, bombs, and grenades, they begin killing DEA agents, federal judges, and local cops and blowing up federal buildings in retaliation for U.S. military actions against drug cartels in Colombia and DEA actions in Mexico. The drug gangsters slip back into the populace, only to engage in more assaults in the following weeks.

The local cops take on the drug gangs, but they are clearly outgunned. The state governors ask the president to send the U.S. military to help them out. The president persuades Congress to suspend the posse comitatus law, and he reassigns U.S. military forces fighting the drug war in Colombia to the U.S. southern border.

Question: Does the military’s participation in the drug war automatically change the drug war into a real war, like World Wars I and II and the Vietnam War?

Answer: No. The matter continues to remain one of criminal-justice. The gangsters are violating laws against murder, mayhem, drug dealing, illegal entry, and no doubt dozens of other criminal laws on the books. But the fact that the military is being employed to assist the police doesn’t mean that the matter is now governed by the laws of war. The gangsters do not become enemy combatants. They remain criminal suspects.

The military is simply being used in a police capacity, albeit one employing much more force than the cops employ. But in principle the situation remains the same: when the military is used in a police capacity, it is still subject to all the rules and processes that govern the police. When the military takes one of the drug suspects into custody, the suspect is entitled to all the rights and guarantees that drug suspects are entitled to when the police take them into custody.

Why don’t we use the military to enforce the drug war and other federal crimes here in the United States? Why is there a policy against it? After all, the U.S. military is used to wage the drug war in Colombia, and the Mexican government employs its military to fight the drug war in Mexico. Why don’t we do the same thing here?

The reason is that the mindset of a law-enforcement officer is completely different from that of a soldier.

The mindset of policeman is: apprehend the suspect and bring him to justice, which means a trial to determine whether he’s guilty, and, in the process, do your best to ensure that innocent bystanders are not hurt.

The mindset of soldier is: kill the enemy and win the war. The killing of innocent bystanders is acceptable as collateral damage, especially if the action results in the killing of the enemy and protection of U.S. troops.

That brings us to the subject of terrorism. Like drug dealing, terrorism is a federal criminal offense. No one can deny that. It has long been listed in the U.S. Code as a crime. That’s why terrorists are indicted in U.S. District Court and accorded all the rights and guarantees in the Bill of Rights, just like drug defendants. It’s why such famous terrorists as Ramzi Yousef, Zacharias Moussaoui, Jose Padilla, and Timothy McVeigh, to name only a few, were indicted, tried, and convicted in federal court.

In fact, the Yousef case provides a good example for analysis. He’s the man who committed the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, an attack which, in principle, was no different from the subsequent attack on the same building 8 years later, on September 11.

After attacking the WTC, Yousef, a foreign citizen, escaped from the United States. In 1995, Pakistani law enforcement agents learned that he was holed up in Pakistan, arrested him, and extradited him to the United States, where he stood trial for terrorism in U.S. District Court and convicted. He is now serving a life sentence without possibility of parole in a federal penitentiary.

Was Yousef’s attack on the WTC an act of war? No. It was a federal criminal offense. When he was taken into custody, he wasn’t taken to a prisoner of war camp. He was instead turned over to U.S. law-enforcement agents.

Let’s suppose that Yousef had been located in an area of Pakistan in which he was protected by 3,000 compatriots who had conspired with him to commit the terrorist attack. Would the large size of co-conspirators convert the attack into an act of war? Again, the answer is no. It doesn’t make any difference whether a criminal act has 2 co-conspirators or a thousand. It still remains a criminal act, albeit one involving a larger conspiracy.

Suppose that Yousef and his gang were armed with automatic weapons and that the Pakistani police and military were unable to take him into custody. Let’s say that the Pakistani government invites the U.S. government to send in its military forces to take Yousef into custody. The U.S. military enters the country, attacks Yousef and his cohorts, and takes him into custody.

Has the matter now been converted into a war, like World Wars I and II and the Vietnam War, simply because the U.S. military is involved and doing the apprehending?

Again, the answer is no. The issue of war does not turn on whether a nation’s military branch is used to subdue and apprehend a suspected criminal. Once the military took Yousef into custody, it would be required to do what the police did — turn him over to the authorities for trial. By subduing and apprehending Yousef, the military has simply functioned in a police capacity, albeit one with overwhelming force.

Consider Al Capone and his gang during Prohibition. They used machine guns against local cops and federal agent Elliot Ness and his “untouchables.” Did that constitute war? Of course not. But what if it had been necessary to bring the military into the situation to overcome Capone’s massive firepower? Again, the military would simply have been operating in a police capacity and, thus, subject to the rules that govern the police.

The problem though, as I mentioned earlier, is that the military, because it has a different mindset than the police, will inevitably treat the matter differently than the police. For example, the police will stake out a building for days where they suspect that a criminal suspect is holed up. That’s not what the military would do. If they are reasonably certain that the suspect is in the building, they would simply drop a bomb on it. And if it turned out that the suspect was killed in the blast, the military would consider the operation to be a success, even if a several innocent bystanders were killed in the process.

All this brings us to Osama bin Laden and the military invasion of Afghanistan.

The attack on the World Trade Center on 9/11 was, in principle, no different from the attack on that same building in 1993. Again, terrorism is a federal criminal offense. As the suspected planner of the 9/11 attacks, bin Laden was in no different position from people who conspired with Ramzi Yousef to commit the 1993 attacks.

After the 9/11 attacks, President Bush demanded that the Afghan government turn over bin Laden to U.S. officials, just as Pakistan had turned over Ramzi Yousef to U.S. officials. If the Afghan government had complied with Bush’s request, then U.S. law dictated that bin Laden be treated the same way as Yousef and, for that matter, 9/11 conspirator Moussaoui, were treated — that is, indicted in U.S. District Court and prosecuted for conspiring to commit a terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.

However, the Afghan government refused to unconditionally comply with Bush’s demand. For one thing, there was no extradition agreement between the United States and Afghanistan. Nonetheless, the Afghan government expressed a willingness to deliver bin Laden to an independent third party for trial if the U.S. government provided evidence establishing bin Laden’s complicity in the attacks, the type of evidence that would have been required in an extradition hearing.

Bush refused those conditions and emphasized that his demand for bin Laden was unconditional. The Afghan government refused. At that point, the United States attacked Afghanistan. Thus, that involved the U.S. military in two separate actions: a war against the Afghan government for refusing to comply with Bush’s extradition demand and a police action to apprehend Osama bin Laden.

The action against the Afghan government constituted war, like World Wars I and II. It was a conflict between two nation states. Clearly it was an illegal war, given that it was waged without the congressional declaration of war required by the Constitution but it was a genuine war nonetheless.

Not so, however, with respect to the military action intended to apprehend bin Laden. Like our examples regarding Ramzi Yousef, Al Capone, and the Latin American drug gangs, that action remained a police action, one in which the military was being used in a foreign country to employ its overwhelming force to bring a suspected criminal to justice.

The problem arose when the U.S. government made no attempt to distinguish between legitimate prisoners of war and suspected terrorist criminals. Instead, it intentionally conflated the two and then defaulted into making all them — Afghan soldiers and al-Qaeda members alike as “illegal enemy combatants.”

At the same time, of course, was the massive war-on-terrorism propaganda that the Bush administration issued after the 9/11 attacks. In the fear-laden environment of post 9/11, federal officials embarked on a big hype campaign in which they convinced people that this particular criminal offense was either a criminal offense (which is precisely why they indicted and prosecuted 9/11 co-conspirator Moussasoui in federal court) or an act of war, at the option of U.S. officials. At the same time, by conflating the prisoners of war taken captive in the war against Afghanistan with suspected members of al-Qaeda taken captive, U.S. officials succeeded in confusing the separate issues of war and criminal justice in people’s minds.

Thus, we have the horribly muddled situation today, one in which some people are saying that some suspected terrorists should be treated as criminal defendants, while others are saying they should be treated as illegal warriors, while others are saying that the government should continue to have the option of treating them either way. Perhaps the most bizarre suggestion came from those who said that the Detroit bomb suspect should have been turned over to the military for torture and then returned to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution in federal court.

We now also have a warped dual-track judicial system with respect to suspected terrorists. One track involves criminal prosecution in the federal judicial system established by the Constitution, where people are presumed innocent and the Bill of Rights applies. The other track involves criminal prosecution in an alternative, competing military tribunal system established by the Pentagon, one in which people are presumed guilty of terrorism, subjected to torture and abuse, and tried in kangaroo proceedings where the Bill of Rights does not apply. The government has the arbitrary, ad hoc power to decide which track people are going to be subjected to.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the horrific consequences of the Bush administration’s decision to employ the military to apprehend bin Laden, unlike the case with Ramzi Yousef several years before.

In Yousef’s case, no bombs were dropped on Pakistan. U.S. officials waited patiently for two years before he finally turned up and was taken captive, with no loss of life to innocent bystanders.

Contrast that with the horrific mess in Afghanistan. In the midst of all the anger and hatred that people all over the world now have for the United States, it’s easy to forget the outpouring of sympathy and friendship that came from all over the world after 9/11, including from the Muslim community. If U.S. officials had simply waited out the situation, as they had with Yousef, bin Laden would have been isolated. That is, he could never have travelled freely and there were countless people all over the world sympathetic to the United States who would have been willing to turn him, especially for a sizable reward. His recruiting efforts would have been limited to people who were angry with U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East (e.g., unconditional support of Israel, the sanctions against Iraq, etc.)

Instead, the Bush administration sent in the military — the people with the mindset of “kill the enemy even if it kills innocent bystanders,” which produced massive death and destruction in Afghanistan, which in turn converted all that sympathy and friendship for the United States into widespread anger, hatred, and rage, which in turn greatly fueled bin Laden’s recruiting efforts. And, oh, by the way, even after 8 long years of death and destruction in Afghanistan, they still haven’t apprehended bin Laden.

Finally, I should also point out that the terrorism-is-war crowd has never answered a critically important question: How is the war on terrorism expected to end? That is, how do we know when all the terrorists in the world have been killed? Or, better yet, how do the terrorists surrender? Does the president of the TAW (the Terrorist Association of the World) sit down on a U.S. ship and sign the surrender papers, just like Japanese military officials did at the conclusion of World War II? Yes, that is ridiculous, but it goes to show what the terrorism-is-war paradigm has led us to — perpetual military conflict, along with perpetual death and destruction, along with ever-increasing military expenditures, along with ever-growing infringements on civil liberties.

It’s time to bring the military home and end its role as domestic and international cop.

© 2001-2010 The Future of Freedom Foundation. All rights reserved.

Allison Bricker

Synopsis:

Global warming alarmists want Americans to believe that humans are killing the planet. But Not Evil Just Wrong, a new documentary by Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney, proves that the only threats to America (and the rest of the world) are the fl awed science and sky-is-falling rhetoric of Al Gore and his allies in environmental extremism.   The film warns Americans that their jobs, middle-class lifestyles and dreams for their children will be destroyed if the government rushes to judgment and imposes job-killing regulations on an economy already mired in recession.

Not Evil Just Wrong exposes the deceptions about global warming that scientists, politicians, educators and the media have been force-feeding the public for years, including fear-mongering about floods and dying polar bears. The documentary shows how environmentalists are pushing the same kind of anti-human propaganda that triggered a ban DDT and condemned millions of children to death by malaria, a story recounted in the documentary. Not Evil Just Wrong asks: Is carbon dioxide the new DDT and are we taking the same risks with our future?

Source(s):

Wire Report

SINGAPORE/PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — INTERPOL and the United Nations have partnered to secure international commitments for greater support for the role of police in peacekeeping operations worldwide. This increased support is seen as a key element to restoring the rule of law in post conflict zones, fragile states and achieving sustainable peace.

Secretary General Ronald K. Noble described INTERPOL’s partnership with the UN as “an alliance of all nations” that would commit INTERPOL to deliver international police expertise, more skilled police personnel and frontline access to its global resources in countries suffering or recovering from conflicts, in order to help them achieve and build peace and combat transnational crime.

“If UN peacekeepers assigned to post-conflict zones or fragile states are asked to perform police-like functions and to combat transnational crime, then more peacekeepers should come from the ranks of police and be given access to INTERPOL’s global databases,” said INTERPOL Secretary General Noble.

At a meeting of more than 60 justice, interior and foreign affairs ministers with senior law enforcement officers from around the world, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon spoke via video of ‘the need for greater respect for the rule of law’ in the world’s most troubled parts, describing INTERPOL as ‘a natural partner’ to restore stability following war and to address the challenges on the ground.

Representing the UN at the meeting, Under-Secretary-General Alain Le Roy said that UN co-operation with INTERPOL had been reinforced by the recognition of “a clear link between crime and conflict” and the fact that serious and organized crime was prevalent in many conflict areas.

Secretary General Noble told the assembly, “In the framework of our partnership with the UN, INTERPOL will provide deployed police peacekeepers with access to the world’s only secure global police communications system; global police databases including names of criminals, fingerprints, DNA profiles, stolen passports, and stolen vehicles; and specialized investigative support in key crime areas, including fugitives, drugs, terrorism, trafficking in human beings and corruption.”

The ministers in attendance are endorsing a special Declaration which will set a roadmap for police to play its full role in meeting today’s peacekeeping challenges.

Source: INTERPOL

CONTACT: INTERPOL General Secretariat, 200, quai Charles de Gaulle • 69006 Lyon France • +33-(0)-4-72-44-76-01 •Fax: +33 (0)4 72 44 71 63

Jeff Lewis

One of the great lines from Saturday Night Live was delivered many years ago by Martin Short’s brilliant comedic character, “Ed Grimley”, when he described a situation as,” Doomed as doomed can be!” That summarizes my prognosis on the theocratic regime that has ruled Iran since 1979. With events of this past week, the disciples of the world’s first cyber revolution have passed the point of no return.

WARNING: Graphic Video

The graphic scene of the young woman, Neda, bleeding to death from a fatal gunshot on the streets of Tehran has become the symbol of the upheaval caused by the controversy surrounding the recent national election. Civilian control apparatus is in high gear as the ruling clerics attempt to quell the insurrection of hundreds of thousands of protesters who have taken to the streets throughout the country. Wounded demonstrators are being beaten savagely, pulled out of their houses at night, and even arrested at hospitals. Some families trying to reclaim the dead bodies of murdered relatives are being charged a fee for the bullets expended by security forces that remain logged within the victim’s corpse.

The Iranian authorities are taking every step possible in interfering with electronic transmissions from all sources that are broadcasting messages to the world about the emerging atrocities of governmental suppression of the dissenting demonstrators. The Guardian Council issued a statement that there were no fraudulent voting incidents and the supreme leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, said all those people who continued to demonstrate would be dealt with as traitors.

Republican Senators John McCain (AZ) and Lindsey Graham (SC) are criticizing Obama’s tepid response as a failure to lead on an issue that should require him to be aggressive in his denunciation of Iran’s rulers. Other Republican members of Congress are carping at Obama about not leading the free world’s outrage over the unfolding events in Iran, notably Mike Pence (R-IN). Representative Pence compared President Obama’s reticence to Ronald Reagan’s bold declaration to Gorbachev regarding tearing down the Berlin Wall, in 1987. Not all Republicans are as quick to demagogue the issue, however. Indiana Senator, Richard Lugar, ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, feels Obama is wise to keep his cool, for now, as events continue to unfold. Pat Buchanan, MSNBC’s right wing firebrand, praised Obama’s stance as did Conservative columnist George Will on last Sunday’s ABC regular broadcast. Mr. Will even criticized Obama’s detractors by name.

MSNBC, CNN, and all the major old-media networks, have interviewed dozens of guests including Iranian expatriates, college faculty, and American citizens with family still living in Iran. The old-media has called for America to be supportive of the demonstrators, but not to overplay their hand and provide Ahmadinejad with the excuse to castigate the U.S. as “The Great Satan” that is fueling the discord in their country, as has been done since the 1979 revolution. In his Cairo speech, President Obama admitted the CIA’s role in deposing a popularly elected government in Iran in 1953. Iranians have also not forgotten that the U.S. supported their archenemy, Saddam Hussein, in their brutal war with Iraq in 1982 where over a million Iranians were casualties.

Most of Obama’s critics do not take into account the history of unpopular U.S. involvement in Iran over the last sixty-years. The short sightedness of that view was articulated last Thursday during an interview on MSNBC’s, “Hardball”, with host Chris Matthews and Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss (GA). Senator Chambliss said he thought that America’s previous transgressions against Iran happened long enough ago that they were largely forgotten by the Iranians of today. Matthews missed an opportunity for a great follow up question to Chambliss when he failed to ask the Georgia Senator, “When did Georgians stop remembering General Sherman?”

For his part, President Obama has steadily ramped up his criticism of Iran’s ruling theocracy, but in his news this past Tuesday, he allowed that events are continuing to unfold. However, the days of government by theocracy in Iran are numbered. This youthful generation in Iran, those 30 and under, which amounts to over sixty percent of the country’s total population, are the products of the emerging technology that is changing how the world interacts. It will take several months to make changes in Iran sufficient to quell this culture of the future, but one thing is for certain, history does not have a reverse gear.

China is next.

Allison Bricker

NAJMARAI, PAKISTAN – Reuters¹ and Al Jazeera² are reporting that up to  eighty people were killed in U.S. drone missile attacks on Tuesday in the village of Najmarai, located in the South Waziristan along the Afghan border. The attacks came just as those in attendance were leaving after offering prayers for the funeral service of Niaz Wali, as suspected Pakistani Taliban commander. Eyewitness reports indicate three missiles fired from unmanned Pentagon drones:

“I saw three drones, they dropped bombs”
Sohail Mehsud
resident of Makeen

A Pentagon spokesman wholly denies any such drone attack was carried out. However, Pakistani television is also reporting the attack, which if proven would be the twentieth drone attack so far in 2009. The Pentagon believes that regardless of claims of national sovereignty by Pakistan and the death of civilians, the drone attacks are necessary in the tribal region of Pakistan, which the Pentagon believes is a major staging ground for Taliban attacks into Afghanistan.

Map of Region Click to Enlarge

Additionally, Qari Hussain told the Associated Press that Baitullah Mehsud, the intended target of the attack was not even present at the funeral, but that five of those killed out of the eighty were associates of Mehsud’s. Moreover the U.S. government has had a standing $5million Dollar reward for information leading to the capture of Mehsud who is suspected of planning the assassination attempt of former Pakistani Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto.

Consequently, the Pakistan army was also attempting to capture Mehsud and had launched air raids and artillery barages on suspected Taliban bases in the region earlier in the month. Tuesday’s attack also coincided with the assassination of Qari Zainuddin, a key rival of Mehsud’s.

Reporting for the Al Jazeera news network, Kamal Hyder indicates the drone atacks may backfire and instead incite further anger towards Americans saying:

“It may play into the hands of elements like Mehsud because the attack took place on a funeral – there are cultural sensitivities,”

“Such attacks are likely to complicate the situation for the Pakistani military because they have to be equally sensitive to public opinion in that area – something that is not going to be helped by the drones.”

Kamal Hyde
Reporter
Al Jazeera News Network

The increasing frequency of the drone attacks are already drawing heavy criticism from both Pakistanis and their government.

Source(s): ¹Reuters India “FACTBOX – U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan” published June 24th, 2009 • ²Al Jazeera ‘US drone’ hits Pakistan funeral