Of Course He Was a Creation of the US Intelligence Agencies

Tools...

60 Minutes Reports BILLIONS "Wasted" in Iraq

Complete Story Here: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/02/09/60minutes/main1302378.shtml

Excerpts Here:

(CBS) The United States has spent more than a quarter of a trillion dollars during its three years in Iraq, and more than $50 billion of it has gone to private contractors hired to guard bases, drive trucks, feed and shelter the troops and rebuild the country...

...Billions of dollars are unaccounted for, and there are widespread allegations of waste, fraud and war profiteering. So far only one case, the subject of a civil lawsuit that goes to trial this week, has been unsealed. It involves a company called Custer Battles...

...There were no banks or wire transfers to pay them, no bean counters to keep track of the money. Just vaults and footlockers stuffed with billions of dollars in cash.

"Fresh, new, crisp, unspent, just-printed $100 bills. It was the Wild West," recalls Frank Willis, who was the No. 2 man at the Coalition Provisional Authority’s Ministry of Transportation.

The money was a mixture of Iraqi oil revenues, war booty and U.S. government funds earmarked for the coalition authority. Whenever cash was needed, someone went down to the vault with a wheelbarrow or gunny sacks.

"Those are $100,000 bricks of $100 bills and that’s $2 million there," Willis explains, looking at a photo of brick-shaped stacks of money wrapped in plastic. "This, in fact, is a payment that we made on the 1st of August to a company called Custer Battles." ...

...Asked if he has any evidence that the accounting system was a little loose, Willis says, "I would describe it as nonexistent."

The $2 million given to Custer Battles was the first installment on a contract to provide security at Baghdad International Airport. The company had been started by Scott Custer, a former Army Ranger and Mike Battles, an unsuccessful congressional candidate from Rhode Island who claimed to be active in the Republican Party and have connections at the White House. They arrived in Baghdad with no money. Yet within a year they landed $100 million in contracts.

"They came in with a can do attitude whether they could or not. They always said yes," Willis says.

Did they have any experience?

"They were not experienced. They did not know what they were doing," Willis says...

..."And the contract looked to me like something that you and I would write over a bottle of vodka," Ballard says. "Complete with all the spelling and syntax errors and annexes, to be filled in later. They presented it the next day, and they got awarded a — about a $15 million contract."

Custer Battles was supposed to provide security for commercial aviation at Baghdad airport, including personnel, machinery and canine teams to screen passengers and cargo. But the airport never re-opened for commercial traffic.

Instead of canceling the contract or requiring Custer Battles to return the money, the Coalition Authority instead assigned them to operate a checkpoint outside the airport.

Asked how they did on that job, Ballard says, "They failed miserably." ...

According to Ballard, the contract required Custer Battles to provide sophisticated X-ray equipment to scan the contents of incoming trucks.

"These were multi-million dollar devices for which they received a considerable cash advance, so that they could procure them and then they never procured this equipment," says Ballard.

As for the bomb sniffing canine teams, Ballard says, "I eventually saw one dog. The dog did not appear to be a certified, trained dog. And the dog was incapable of operating in that environment." ...

..."So neither the dog nor the handler were qualified?" Kroft asked.

"I think it was a guy with his pet, to be honest with you," he replied, laughing.

In a memo obtained by 60 Minutes, the airport’s director of security wrote to the Coalition Authority: "Custer Battles has shown themselves to be unresponsive, uncooperative, incompetent, deceitful, manipulative and war profiteers. Other than that they are swell fellows."

According to a subsequent investigation by the U.S. Air Force, Custer Battles set up sham companies in the Cayman Islands to fabricate phony invoices that it submitted to the Coalition Authority with the intention of fraudulently inflating its profits.

According to a Custer Battles spreadsheet, which was left behind after a meeting with U.S. officials, the company submitted invoices on the currency contract totaling nearly $10 million, when its actual costs were less than $4 million.

Electricity costs of $74,000 were invoiced to the Coalition Authority at $400,000. And those trucks that didn’t work were bought on the local market for $228,000 and billed to the Coalition Authority for $800,000...


...To date, the U.S. government has taken no action to recover any of the missing money.

First, 60 Minutes using the phrase "Billions Wasted" instead of the phrase "Billions Stolen" is "Deceitful".

Second, They didn't seem to pursue the fact that one of the founders "Mike Battles, an unsuccessful congressional candidate from Rhode Island who claimed to be active in the Republican Party and have connections at the White House." Notice the use of the word "claimed"... If Custer and Battles didn't have "connections to the White House" then how come "They arrived in Baghdad with no money. Yet within a year they landed $100 million in contracts."

Third, It looks like little ole Custer and Battles is getting set up to be the poster child and scapegoat for war profiteering in Iraq while Halliburton, Bechtel, Northrup Grumman, and the Carlyle Group and the other big fish walk away scott free to spend YOUR tax money sipping pina coladas on a caribean beach.

Lastly, The American People are such tools... Letting themselves get ripped off by this criminal gang of incompent liars while they watch an average of four hours of television a day still believeing the Iraq war was about weapons of mass destruction and bringing democracy to the middle east. - Etienne

Syria Dumps US Dollar for Euro

From the Reuters' story found Here.

DAMASCUS (Reuters) - Syria has switched all of the state's foreign currency transactions to euros from dollars amid a political confrontation with the United States, the head of state-owned Commercial Bank of Syria said on Monday.

"This is a precaution. We are talking about billions of dollars," Duraid Durgham told Reuters.

The bank, which still dominates the Syrian market although private banks have been allowed to set up in the last few years, has also stopped dealing with dollars in the international foreign exchange flows of private clients.

The United States has been at the forefront of international pressure on Syria for its alleged role in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri a year ago. Damascus denies involvement in the killing.

"It looks like a kind of pre-emptive action aimed at making their foreign assets safer, preventing them from getting frozen in case of any conflict," said a Middle East economist who requested anonymity.

The real reason that the US is whipping up a fight with Iran is that the country is opening a bourse (exchange) in March that will sell oil in Euros vs. crappy-ass depreciating US Dollars(USD). For decades the USD has enjoyed a free ride in that all oil transactions have been priced in USD on both the NYMEX and the International Petroleum Exchange in London (now ICE Futures). Since the majority of countries are oil importers they have had to hold billions of dollars in rapidly depreciating USD keeping those USD off the market. In March these countries (many of which don't like the US anymore thanks to the policies of the WORST PRESIDENT EVER) will now be free to dump their USD for Euro. Add the billions of dollars that the Syrians have just dumped and expect a dollar in free-fall and a war with Iran in March. - Etienne

BYU's Dr. Steven Jones Blows the Roof off Utah Auditorium

Article Here: http://www.rense.com/general69/roof.htm



Excerpts:

On Wednesday, February 1, a quiet, "churchy-looking" gentleman in a white shirt and tie walked into a packed auditorium on the campus of Utah Valley State College and electrified the room like a rock star. The 150-seat auditorium was filled to capacity, with every seat occupied, and people sitting in the aisles from the stage floor to the back of the room. Video cameras on tripods lined the back row. Two documentary-film crews were in attendance, in addition to the school's camera crew, and various independent journalists. Seven "spill-over" rooms, with seating for 40-50 each, were also filled to capacity. On this very conservative campus (in the most conservative county in the most conservative state in the union), where community leaders pulled out all the stops in 2004 to prevent Michael Moore from speaking as part of his anti-Bush, pro-Kerry "Slacker Uprising Tour," Dr. Steven Jones, this pious professor from the Mormon Church-owned Brigham Young University, calmly, gently, gave a simple physics lesson on the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings, the implications of which awed the audience with a sense of world-historical significance, and implied an indictment of the present administration so utterly devastating that it made Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 look like a Bush apologia.



Dr. Jones argues that the physics behind the government's explanation of the collapse of the Twin Towers on September 11 do not make sense, and that a better (and perhaps only) explanation for their collapse was that they were demolished, exactly the way structural engineers bring down large buildings, by pre-positioned explosive devices set off in precise sequences. He argues that the 650 degree Celsius temperature of burning jet fuel would not have been hot enough to even bend the steel girders of the WTC Towers, let alone to melt or evaporate them, as recovered beams indicate. And even if it was hot enough to evaporate the steel, the towers should not have collapsed as they did, pancaking so perfectly into their own footprints. On the rare times when such structures have failed (always due to earthquakes), they have toppled over sideways. The towers would have had to have been perfectly sliced, at every point along a horizontal plane at exactly the same instant, for something even resembling a pancaking effect to occur. And even if they did somehow pancake perfectly into their own footprints due to a structural failure, they would not have done it in the time it took for them to collapse, falling at essentially the speed of an apple dropped from the top of one of the towers, with nothing between it and the ground but thin air. The steel and concrete in the floors that collapsed should have taken some measurable time to break, and thus slowed the collapse somewhat as it unfolded. And even if it did collapse, at super speed, phwack phwack phwack, floor by floor, as fast as an apple falling through the air, impelled by the weight of the decapitated structure above it, its solid steel frame severed like a head by a flaming guillotine, that does not explain the molten steel seen at the Ground Zero clean-up site many days after the event. What could have caused such heat? asked Professor Jones.



And on it went, point by point, for almost two hours. Nothing about the physics of "what we know" about 9/11 seemed to add up. And all that's not to mention the mysterious collapse of the forgotten WTC-7, the third steel-frame building that imploded due to fire, not only that day, but in the history of architectural design--the building that was not hit by a plane, that was surrounded by other buildings equally impacted but structurally undamaged by the collapse of the towers, that, with no jet fuel or violent impact, but allegedly due to a small number of scattered "debris fires," collapsed, pancaking perfectly into its own footprint, looking exactly like video images of buildings being demolished by pre-positioned explosive devices. Playing the one available video of WTC-7 collapsing at slow speed, Dr. Jones used his laser pointer to indicate the explosive "squibs" clearly seen shooting their way up the sides of the building as it collapsed from the top center down. He showed still images of similar micro-explosions on the sides of the Twin Towers, with steel beams clearly visible, ejected out of the sides of the buildings, ahead of the dust, blown out before the above portions collapsed.

WTC7: The Smoking Gun

The Complete Video of Dr. Jones' Seminar Can Be Found Here.

751MB .AVI version of the Seminar can be downloaded Here.

An MP3 version of Dr. Jones Seminar Can be Found Here.

Dr. Jones' Complete Slidedeck from the Seminar: http://www.checktheevidence.com/911/February1bFinal.swf

Dr. Jones Peer-ReviewedResearch Paper on the Physics of 911: http://www.physics.byu.edu/research/energy/htm7.html

Guerrila News Networks Story on Dr. Jones' Utah Seminar: http://www.gnn.tv/blogs/12675/Prof_Jones_Utah_9_11_Seminar_Feb_1_2006

Scholars for 911 Truth's Website: http://www.scholarsfor911truth.org/

Through the Looking Glass

From Jesse's Crossroads Cafe

Bush Busted Lying Yet Again!!!

Reuters Story Here

From the Reuters' Story:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Jack Abramoff said in correspondence made public on Thursday that President Bush met him "almost a dozen" times, disputing White House claims Bush did not know the former lobbyist at the center of a corruption scandal.

"The guy saw me in almost a dozen settings, and joked with me about a bunch of things, including details of my kids. Perhaps he has forgotten everything, who knows," Abramoff wrote in an e-mail to Kim Eisler, national editor for the Washingtonian magazine.

Abramoff added that Bush also once invited him to his Texas ranch.

The messages were made public by the American Progress Action Fund, a liberal activist group. Eisler confirmed their accuracy to Reuters but said he did not intend them to become public.

"They reflect the feeling of frustration he has not just with Bush but with all these guys claiming they didn't know him," said Eisler, who knew Abramoff through a book he wrote about the Pequot Indian tribe.

Abramoff pleaded guilty to fraud charges in early January and is cooperating with prosecutors in a corruption probe that could implicate lawmakers and officials across Washington.

Bush has said he never had a discussion with Abramoff and does not remember having his picture taken with him.

The White House has said Abramoff attended three Hanukkah receptions at the White House.

Eisler said he had seen five photographs of Abramoff with Bush, none taken at Hanukkah parties.

Profit Bubble? Is history about to repeat itself?

The following is from Jesse's Crossroads Cafe ("Need Little, Want Less, Love More") I hate to sound like a broken record folks but... It's going to be Ugly... VERY, VERY, VERY UGLY!!

America’s trade deficit hits all-time high - Stocks & Economy - MSNBC.com

America'’s trade deficit hits all-time high - Stocks & Economy - MSNBC.com




From the article:

WASHINGTON - The U.S. trade deficit soared to an all-time high of $725.8 billion in 2005, pushed upward by record imports of oil, food, cars and other consumer goods. The deficit with China hit an all-time high as did America's deficits with Japan, Europe, OPEC, Canada, Mexico and South and Central America.

The Commerce Department reported Friday that the gap between what America sells abroad and what it imports rose to $725.8 billion last year, up by 17.5 percent from the previous record of $617.6 billion set in 2004.

It marked the fourth consecutive year that AmericaÂ’s trade deficit has set a record and was certain to spark increased debate in Congress over President BushÂ’s trade policies. Since mid-2000 the country has lost nearly 3 million manufacturing jobs and Democrats blame the administrationÂ’s policy of emphasizing free trade agreements...

This Chart is from last year... As you can see we are now off the chart... in the wrong direction..

...America'’s trade deficit set records with much of the rest of the world as well. Among those records was a $122.4 billion gap with the 25-nation European Union, a $92.7 billion deficit with the nations that belong to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, a $76.5 billion deficit with Canada and a $50.1 billion deficit with Mexico. Canada and Mexico are America's partners in the North American Free Trade Agreement. The deficit with the countries of South and Central America rose to a record $50.7 billion last year...

...The rising trade deficits must be financed by increased borrowing from foreigners, who so far have been happy to sell us their products and hold U.S. dollars in payment which they invest in U.S. stock, bonds and other assets. The concern is that at some point foreigners will want to reduce their dollar holdings. If the change occurs at a rapid pace it could send the value of the dollar, U.S. stocks and bond prices all plunging.

Foreign mechant ships arrive in the US filled to the brim with imported goods and head home empty except for US T-Bills in the glove compartment. Foreign countries are improving their competitiveness in manufacturing while the US is deindustrializing. Surely everyone can see this is going to end badly? Got Gold?

Colin Powell's former Chief of Staff admits that case for Iraq war was a "HOAX" on the American people, the international community, and the UN

http://www.rense.com/general69/prewar.htm

NEW YORK, Feb. 3 /PRNewswire/ -- In an interview airing tonight on the PBS weekly newsmagazine NOW, Colin Powell's former Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson makes the startling claim that much of Powell's landmark speech to the United Nations laying out the Bush Administration's case for the Iraq war was false.

"I participated in a hoax on the American people, the international community, and the United Nations Security Council," says Wilkerson, who helped prepare the address.

The NOW report, which airs days before the third anniversary of Powell's speech, examines the serious doubts that existed about the key evidence being used by the American government at the very time Powell's speech was being planned and delivered.

"I recall vividly the Secretary of State walking into my office," Wilkerson tells NOW. "He said: 'I wonder what will happen if we put half a million troops on the ground in Iraq and comb the country from one end to the other and don't find a single weapon of mass destruction?'" In fact, no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq.

After the Downing Street Memo and now Lawrence Wilkerson's confession it is amazing that not only do people still believe Bush and his criminal administration but there are still idiot Americans still driving around with Bush bumper stickers on their cars and defending these murdering war criminals instead of demanding their impeachment, trial, and imprisonment. - Etienne

An Open Letter to Bill Murphy of GATA for his Midas Commentary

Dear Bill,

First, I wanted to congratulate you again on the superb DVD of GATA's GoldRush 21 conference and for publicizing the Credit Agricole Report on the manipulation of the Gold Market. Both are important contributions to ending the Federal Reserve's pyramid scheme and returning the US to sound, honest money sooner rather than later.

More importantly I wanted to give you a report from the front lines on the status of the retail market. Because I blog anonymously to protect my career I can't be specific about the community but can tell you that I deal with with two different retail coin and bullion dealers in my town. Last week I went to purchase silver bullion from dealer #1 and had planned to add about $1,000 to my portfolio in American Silver Eagles. Dealer #1 is a substantial dealer and was totally out of Silver Eagles and had to satisfy my order with Canadian Maple Leafs.



Today I went with a good friend of mine who was buying precious metals for the first time and wanted to start out with ~ $1,000 in gold and silver bullion and we went to coin and bullion dealer #2. We had started to go yesterday during the dip but my friend got tied up on errands and we postponed it for the day. Needless to say it was a decision that ended up costing my friend ~$30-$35 dollars in hindsight.




Dealer #2 was totally out of Silver Canadian Maples Leafs. My friend ended up with one gold Krugerrand, an assortment of one ounce silver rounds, and a 10 ounce Engelhardt bar. When I asked the clerk if people had been buying on the dip she replied that YES they had seen substantial buying yesterday on the dip. The last time that I had been to see dealer #2 shortly after Gold had passed $500 an ounce and had asked if folks were buying and taking possession of physical metal she had told me that yes sales had definitely increased but people were coming in and selling gold as well with the price at 25 year highs. This time she indicated that it was mostly buying.



My take-aways:

1. The fact that two of the best dealers in town can't keep up with retail demand for Silver Eagles and Silver Canadian Maple Leafs means that the hoarding of precious metals has begun in earnest.
2. The suckers that sold at $500 an ounce are kicking themselves and don't have anymore gold to sell or wised up and even with Gold at $545-$566 and what appeared, momentarily, to be a precipitous drop in the market are NOT willing to sell at these prices.
3. Everytime the cartel bombs the gold price they can expect to see the retail market respond and demand more and more physical metal exacerbating their predicament.

Keep up the good work and GO GATA!! - Etienne


"There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion." --Ludwig von Mises

Evidently Freedom isn't Permitted in the People's House

Go GATA!! and Start Hoarding!!

I have just watched a most superb documentary called Gold Rush 21 by the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee or GATA.

I have been buying Gold since March of 2003 and have been following GATA for at least a year before that. I can't congratulate Bill Murphy and Chris Powell enough on a fantastic DVD presentation that not only makes a superb case for exactly how the central banksters have been artifically supressing the price of Gold BUT an equally as good case for the economic importance of Gold to society as honest money! I urge everyone to purchase this video IMMEDIATELY before you see more of your wealth depreciated away by crappy-ass fiat paper currency.



The bombs have already started falling on the central banks with Cheuvreux, The equity broking arm of Crédit Agricole publishing a report entitled: Remonetisation of Gold: Start Hoarding

The report's executive summary says:

"We are raising our mid-cycle gold price estimate to USD900/oz from USD750/oz and see the possibility of a spike to USD2,000, or higher. Covert selling (via central bank lending) has artificially depressed the price for a decade.

"Central banks have 10,000-15,000 tonnes of gold less than their officially reported reserves of 31,000.
This gold has been lent to bullion banks and their counterparties and has already been sold for jewelry, etc. Non-gold producers account for most and may be unable to cover shorts without causing a spike in the gold price.

"There is a supply deficit in the gold market of around 1,300 tonnes per year before any central bank selling and perhaps 700 tonnes per year after 'official' sales but before covert selling. This compares with world gold mine output of only 2,500 tonnes per year. Some central banks, notably Russia, are starting to buy gold.

"Gold acts as an early warning of potential crisis such rising inflationary/deflationary pressures and general confidence in paper currency, especially the U.S. dollar.
A strongly rising gold price could have severe consequences for U.S. monetary policy and the U.S. dollar. History suggests that gold always wins against an inflating paper currency (that is, one subject to excessive supply growth).

"Gold and gold mining stocks are poised for an unprecedented rise in prices and profile. Investors in UK/European equities need to assess the implications for their portfolios. ..."

The Cheuvreux/Credit Agricole report details GATA's findings in Chapter IV, "Analysis of the Gold Market," and concurs in them as "broadly correct."

The complete Cheuvreux report can be found here:
http://www.gata.org/CheuvreuxGoldReport.pdf

I would also recommend:
The Role of Gold in the unified GCC Currency by the Gulf Research Center
and
Not Free, Not Fair published by Sprott Asset Management.

I highly recommend getting some physical gold ASAP!!! Once you have the physical then you can think about rolling your dice with the paper gold but given the very real possibility of a complete collapse of the dollar I don't recommend trusting your family's life to paper promises alone... Etienne

Video - Money, Banking, and the Federal Reserve

For a FREE, brief (41 minutes) and very understandable overview of just how the Federal Reserve is ripping you off see the excellent video Money, Banking, and the Federal Reserve found Here.

The video's description is found below:

Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson understood "The Monster". But to most Americans today, Federal Reserve is just a name on the dollar bill. They have no idea of what the central bank does to the economy, or to their own economic lives; of how and why it was founded and operates; or of the sound money and banking that could end the statism, inflation, and business cycles that the Fed generates.


Dedicated to Murray N. Rothbard, steeped in American history and Austrian economics, and featuring Ron Paul, Joseph Salerno, Hans Hoppe, and Lew Rockwell, this extraordinary new film is the clearest, most compelling explanation ever offered of the Fed, and why curbing it must be our first priority.


Alan Greenspan is not, we're told, happy about this 42-minute blockbuster. Watch it, and you'll understand why. This is economics and history as they are meant to be: fascinating, informative, and motivating. This movie could change America.

The video was created by The Ludwig Von Mises Institute whose misson is described at the Institute's excellent website as thus:

The Ludwig von Mises Institute is the research and educational center of classical liberalism, libertarian political theory, and the Austrian School of economics. Working in the intellectual tradition of Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) and Murray N. Rothbard (1926-1995), with a vast array of publications, programs, and fellowships, the Mises Institute seeks a radical shift in the intellectual climate as the foundation for a renewal of the free and prosperous commonwealth.

It is the mission of the Mises Institute to restore a high place for theory in economics and the social sciences, encourage a revival of critical historical research, and draw attention to neglected traditions in Western philosophy. In this cause, the Mises Institute works to advance the Austrian School of economics and the Misesian tradition, and, in application, defends the market economy, private property, sound money, and peaceful international relations, while opposing government intervention as economically and socially destructive.

The Year in Review by Tom Tomorrow

Pentagon Still Can't Account for $2.6 TRILLION

Testimony before the House Appropriations Committee: Fiscal Year 2002 Defense Budget Request As Given by Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Hugh Shelton, and Comptroller Dov Zakheim, Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, DC, Monday, July 16, 2001.

SEC. RUMSFELD: Mr. Congressman, thank you very much. Your question is, of course, right at the heart of an enormously important issue for the Department of Defense. We have a panel in the Quadrennial Defense Review on this subject. We have met with it twice in the last two weeks. We're obviously going to have to meet with it again. It is a big, broad, complicated subject.

As you know, the Department of Defense really is not in charge of its civilian workforce, in a certain sense. It's the OPM, or Office of Personnel management, I guess. There are all kinds of long- standing rules and regulations about what you can do and what you can't do. I know Dr. Zakheim's been trying to hire CPAs because the financial systems of the department are so snarled up that we can't account for some $2.6 trillion in transactions that exist, if that's believable. And yet we're told that we can't hire CPAs to help untangle it in many respects.

Click Here to see the full testimony

I am constantly amazed at my friends and relatives that can't seem to look past their "West Wing" television / National Public Radio- generated sugar-coated version of reality to realize they are getting ripped off to the tune of TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS!! Don't you think if the same group of inter-generatrional criminals who have been ripping you off for decades to the tune of TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS were smart the first thing they would do would be to buy up the media to ensure that you never found out about it??



The American People are such TOOLS...

More on the missing TRILLIONS Here: http://www.whereisthemoney.org/

More on Media Consolidation Here: http://www.corporations.org/media/

The Christmas Truce of World War I

http://www.rense.com/general69/truce.htm

On Christmas Day, 1914, in the first year of World War I, German, British, and French soldiers disobeyed their superiors and fraternized with "the enemy" along two-thirds of the Western Front. German troops held Christmas trees up out of the trenches with signs, "Merry Christmas." "You no shoot, we no shoot."

Thousands of troops streamed across a no-man's land strewn with rotting corpses. They sang Christmas carols, exchanged photographs of loved ones back home, shared rations, played football, even roasted some pigs.

Soldiers embraced men they had been trying to kill a few short hours before. They agreed to warn each other if the top brass forced them to fire their weapons, and to aim high.

A shudder ran through the high command on either side. Here was disaster in the making: soldiers declaring their brotherhood with each other and refusing to fight.

Generals on both sides declared this spontaneous peacemaking to be treasonous and subject to court martial.

By March, 1915 the fraternization movement had been eradicated and the killing machine put back in full operation. By the time of the armistice in 1918, fifteen million would be slaughtered.

Not many people have heard the story of the Christmas Truce. Military leaders have not gone out of their way to publicize it.

On Christmas Day, 1988, a story in the Boston Globe mentioned that a local FM radio host played "Christmas in the Trenches," a ballad about the Christmas Truce(MP3 Here), several times and was startled by the effect. The song became the most requested recording during the holidays in Boston on several FM stations.

"Even more startling than the number of requests I get is the reaction to the ballad afterward by callers who hadn't heard it before," said the radiohost. "They telephone me deeply moved, sometimes in tears, asking, `What the hell did I just hear?'"

I think I know why the callers were in tears. The Christmas Truce story goes against most of what we have been taught about people. It gives us a glimpse of the world as we wish it could be and says, "This really happened once." It reminds us of those thoughts we keep hidden away, out of range of the TV and newspaper stories that tell us how trivial and mean human life is. It is like hearing that our deepest wishes really are true: the world really could be different.

So why were we fighting World War I in the first place? For the same REAL reason that we fought World War II, The Korean War, Vietnam, Gulf War I, and why we are now in Iraq: So they same group of intergenerational financial criminals can continue to make trillions of dollars at the expense of our dead sons and fathers by arming and controlling both sides of every conflict.

Reflect on the words of Marine Corp Major General Smedley Butler, winner of TWO Congressional Medals of Honor for the capture of Vera Cruz, Mexico in 1914 and at the time of his death the most decorated Marine in US History, and author of War is a Racket

WAR is a racket. It always has been.

It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.

In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.

How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?

Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few – the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.

And what is this bill?

This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.

For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it. Now that I see the international war clouds gathering, as they are today, I must face it and speak out.

Here is Major General Smedley Butler naming names in 1935:

I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902–1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested.

So where are the Smedley Butlers of today? Where are the senior officers in the military and intelligence agencies with GUTS to step forward and tell the American people that there is no Al-CIA-duh?

Find the short and very readable War is a Racket Here: http://lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm

More on the Christmas Truce Here: http://www.lewrockwell.com/vance/vance27.html

Let's all raise a pint for Major General Smedley Butler this Christmas, remember the the soldiers that set down their weapons on the western front of World War I and embraced each other as the BROTHERS that we all are. Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Good Kwanza, and Happy Festivus and peace in 2006!! - Etienne

88% Believe That Bush should Be Impeached

Survey Here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10562904#survey

I know that a survey on the Internet is essentially a self-selected group of voters but I have a hard time believing that an Internet survey is any less accurate that the polls commissioned by the MainStreamMedia that seem to show support for the Bush regime no matter how egregious their conduct.

43,308 is a significant number of responses. My own belief is that ~30% of the US is functionally illiterate and easily swayed by the lies and propaganda of the MainStreamMedia which makes these results all the more significant.

Even the Retards are starting to see through the BullShit. - Etienne

George W. Bush... The Worst President Ever... On the US Constitution

From the December 9th Blog of Doug Thompson, the Founder and Publisher of Capitol Hill Blue found Here: http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_7779.shtml

Last month, Republican Congressional leaders filed into the Oval Office to meet with President George W. Bush and talk about renewing the controversial USA Patriot Act.

Several provisions of the act, passed in the shell shocked period immediately following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, caused enough anger that liberal groups like the American Civil Liberties Union had joined forces with prominent conservatives like Phyllis Schlafly and Bob Barr to oppose renewal.

GOP leaders told Bush that his hardcore push to renew the more onerous provisions of the act could further alienate conservatives still mad at the President from his botched attempt to nominate White House Counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court.

“I don’t give a goddamn,” Bush retorted. “I’m the President and the Commander-in-Chief. Do it my way.”

“Mr. President,” one aide in the meeting said. “There is a valid case that the provisions in this law undermine the Constitution.”

“Stop throwing the Constitution in my face,” Bush screamed back. “It’s just a goddamned piece of paper!”

I’ve talked to three people present for the meeting that day and they all confirm that the President of the United States called the Constitution “a goddamned piece of paper.”

Doug Thompson revisited the topic on December 11th when some questioned the anonymity of the congressional sources Here: http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_7787.shtml

We put our reputation on the line every time we publish a story that depends on information from anonymous sources. Sometimes we get burned and when we do we admit it publicly, take our well-deserved lumps, and move on.

In 2003, we published reports that intelligence professionals had raised doubts about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and questioned claims of a link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. Our detractors claimed we made the whole thing up. Two years later, we were proven right.

Last year, when we published reports on the President’s increasing temper tantrums, the doubters again claimed the reports were fantasy. Yet mainstream media outlets reported the same thing this year. We were right…and we got it first.

We were the first news outlet to identify the names of women who claimed sexual abuse by Bill Clinton when he was attorney general and later governor of Arkansas. We were the first news outlet to report on the ethical problems of many members of Congress in our series: America’s Criminal Class: The Congress of the United States. And we were the first to report on the abuse of underage girls on teen model web sites. Links to all of these award-winning stories can be found on our home page.

That doesn’t mean you should take everything we print as gospel. Never do that with us or any other news source. Do your own research and reach your own conclusions. And consider the record of the sources you use for news and information. We’ve published more than 25,000 stories since going online on October 1, 1994, and we’ve had to retract two of them. That’s a record I’m willing to stand on.

So the next time somebody calls Capitol Hill Blue a “garbage site” or claims I’m a clown, ask them for their qualifications and background. Did they get their information from credible sources or some anonymous poster on a partisan bulletin board or a blogger with a political ax to grind?

My bio can be found on this link. I put my name on everything I write. And I stand behind what I write. I’m an arrogant, stubborn, driven bastard who takes no prisoners and backs down from no one.

When I’m wrong, I admit it. Thankfully, I haven’t had to do that very often.

When I’m right I don’t give a damn who doesn’t like it or what they say about it.

An editor who taught me a lot once said: “If you piss off both sides you’re doing your job.”

That’s good enough for me.

Doug Thompson - Founder and Publisher of Capital Hill Blue

I believe Doug Thompson - Etienne

Follow the Money...

The chart is from The Washington Post who has been ignoring the important aspects of the Abramoff / Randy "Duke" Cunningham scandals, namely: Which companies benefited from what these congressman were doing BESIDES the indians (who just got shook down for protection) Who is doing the best reporting on which Totally Fake Defense Contractors have been getting all that Homeland Security $$$$$????

Mad Cow Morning News: http://www.madcowprod.com/

Top Ten Things You Never Knew About Jack Abramoff: http://www.madcowprod.com/10272005.html

Cunningham Stripped $700 MM from US Defense: http://www.madcowprod.com/11302005.html

911 Truth Movement Finally Covered with Journalistic Integrity

WTC7 Collapsing Perfectly & Symetrically into its own Footprint

On Thursday, December 1st the Fox News affilitate WICZ 40 in Binghamton, New York became the first network affiliate in the United States to air a legitimate journalistic evaluation of the evidence of government and intelligence agency complicity into 911. WICZ Anchor Racquel Asa introduced a story by reporter Doug Kolk which actually gave a fair and balanced overview of the documentary, Loose Change 2, on the unanswered questions of the government and MainStreamMedia's "official story" concerning what actually happened on 911.

In over 4 years of extensive research into 911 I believe this is the first fair & balanced treatment of the discrepencies in the official version as well as the first time that the most powerful existing video evidence of the case for controlled demolition has been presented over the corporately controlled airwaves. The powerful video evidence presented in the WICZ's story included:

* Video footage of World Trade Center 7, which was over 300 feet away and was not hit by an airplane that day, collapsing perfectly and symetrically into its own footprint in an obvious controlled demolition.

* Video footage of explosions proceeding systematically down WTC 1 & 2 directly proceding and evidently causing each building's collapses which is characteristic of the technique of controlled demolition.

* Video footage of New York City firefighters that were on the scene describing distinctly hearing a series of explosions proceeding the collapse and describing the collapse as resembling a contolled demolition in their opinion.

* An examination of the roll played by Larry Silverstein who signed a 3.2 billion dollar 99 year lease 6 weeks before 9/11 and then promptly took out a 3.5 billion dollar insurance policy specifically covering acts of terrorism.

The segment cover's Silverstein's famous quote so long neglected by the MainStreamMedia that a decision was made on the day of 911 to "Pull" the building for safety reasons. Using a term specific to controlled demolition implies that in the immediate hours after the 911 attacks during the most intensive search and rescue operations of the day, with transportation in the city shut down, limited or no cell phones or conventional telephony, Larry Silverstein and other unnamed were able to bring in the sophisticted equipment and personnel required to implode a building into its own footprint and design, wire, test, and execute a flawless controlled demolition of a 47 story skyscraper. One would have thought other "journalists" might have asked some follow up quesitons of Mr. Silverstein and examined the evidence prior to the WCIZ story.

WICZ's groundbreaking report and the footage described above can be found Here:

http://www.wicz.com/news2005/viewarticle.asp?a=282



WICZ followed up the following evening with Part2 of their report which focused on the glaring inconsitencies of the official version of the alleged crash of Flight 77 into the Pentagon. Again the WICZ news team makes history by becoming the first corporate news organization to bring the following facts to light:

* Photos of the small 16ft hole in the Pentagon PRIOR to the collapse of the facade revealing a damage pattern wholely inconsistent with the crash of a 155 ft long Boeing 757 with a 124ft wingspan.

* Video of CNN's initial report from the scene of the Pentagon where the CNN reporter describes "No evidence of a plane crashing anywhere near the Pentagon" and the only pieces of wreckage visible being "small enough that you could pick up in your hand"

* Photos of other airliner crashes illustrating the wreckage consistently found after real crashes and accurately pointing out the official version of the Pentagon crash would be the first time in all of recorded aviation history where an airliner vaporized on impact leaving no trace.

* Photos of a cruise missle strike in Belgrade that displayed more similarities with the actual damage of the Pentagon and other evidence implicating a cruise missle.

* Video of the Osama Bin Ladin "Confession Video" released by the Intelligence Agencies shortly after 911 and a presentation on the obvious inconsistencies with Osama in the "Confession Video" and all previous known photos and videos of Osama Bin Ladin

Part 2 of WICZ's story on Loose Change 2 and the video and photos described above can be found Here:

http://www.wicz.com/news2005/viewarticle.asp?a=291


The entire WICZ News organization should be commended for having the courage to bring this story to the public airwaves and strongly encouraged to continue their investigation into 911. I would encourage everyone that supports a open inquiry into the discrepencies of the official story to communicate with the WICZ news team to both thank them for their courage, salute their journalistic integrity, and confirm that there exists an INTERNATIONAL market for honest journalists that is TAKING NOTE OF WHO CAN BE TRUSTED AND WHO CAN NOT.



Contact information for the WICZ News Organization can be found Here:

Anchorwoman Racquel Asa's email is: racquel.asa@gmail.com

Senior Producer Amy Henry's email is: fox40amy@wicz.com

To Advertise with WICZ Contact the station @ (607) 770-4040

More information on the Loose Change 2 Documentary can be found at: www.LooseChange911.com

Please post widely to give these honest journalists the support they so richly deserve! Well Done WICZ News!! - Etienne