TBR News February 7, 2016

Feb 07 2016

The Voice of the White House

Washington, D.C. February 8, 2016: ”Communicants have asked me why we use Russia Today (RT) as a source. Many Americans are taught that Russians are evil and not be to be believed. RT is Russian and has a Russian point of view but it is quite accurate and is a counter-balance to, let us say, the New York Times. The American media is not as polished as the Russian and while the Russian news sites only have to be attentive to the Kremlin, American media not only listens to official Washington but various controlling  domestic business interests as well.

The Smolensk Incident

by Harry von Johnston, PhD

In April, 2010, a jet airliner with the top leadership of Poland, was trying to land at an airport outside of Smolensk, Russia.

The Polish governmental leadership was planning to take part in a ceremony marking the murder, on Stalin’s direct orders, of many Polish officers and other prominent people who had been taken prisoner by the Russians in 1940. The plane crash was certainly not an accident but Polish beliefs that the incident was the result of Russian plolttings is entirely incorrect.

What is correct is that the landing beacons on the airfield, beacons on the ground, were deliberately readjusted to give a false altitude, thus misleading the pilot and making him believe his altitude was higher than it was. Now, the question is que bono? Who was to benefit from this action? Not Putin who was trying to establish a decent relationship with Poland. After the successful Russian incursion into a pro-Washington Georgia and the feeling in Eastern European countries that the American military evacuation of that country in the face of Russian military advances indicated an inability on the part of the US to counter Russian actions.

The deliberate killing of top Polish leaders on Russian territory was meant to serve as an object lession to those of wavering loyalty to the CIA’s program of Russian encirclement.

This is a bankrupt policy that has clearly failed.

And the Poles cannot put a CIA operator, or hired hand, in jail.

They might terminate him with extreme prejudice if they could lay their hands on him but they would have to go to Vienna to do it.

Vienna, Austria?

No, Vienna, Virginia.

Will Poland ever uncover the truth about the plane crash that killed its president?

Many Poles still believe the Smolensk air crash, in which President Lech Kaczyński died in 2010, was the result of Kremlin foul play. Now the party led by Kaczyński’s twin brother, Jarosław, is back in power, and searching for answers

February 7, 2016

by Alex Duval Smith

The Guardian

The tips of the birch trees barely pierced the fog. The aerial visibility on the approach to Smolensk in western Russia was just 200 metres. On its final approach, the Tupolev’s warning system repeatedly sounded: “Pull up, pull up.” But the crew of the aircraft appeared to react too late. At 10.41am on 10 April 2010, it crashed a few hundred metres short of the runway, killing all 96 people aboard.

The plane was carrying the Polish president, Lech Kaczyński, his wife, the country’s central bank chief, several MPs and its most senior military figures.

Poland fell into deep mourning, unmatched since the darkest days of the second world war. In 2011, a government inquiry blamed bad weather and pilot error. But Kaczyński’s 66-year-old twin brother, Jarosław, has never let go of his conviction that the tragedy was the result of Kremlin sabotage. Last Thursday, it came as no surprise that the Law and Justice party he leads – back in power for the first time since the crash – has launched a new inquiry.

Speaking at a ceremony to announce the new investigation, the Polish defence minister, Antoni Macierewicz, hinted at an explosion as a possible cause, saying that the plane had disintegrated above ground before crashing. “There is no doubt that these circumstances are not only a sufficient reason, but one that makes it compulsory to re-examine this tragedy,” he said, as he stood with relatives of the dead in front of a large screen with the words: “They are waiting for the truth, we owe them that.”

But the re-examination is risky. Poland is on the far-eastern flank of the EU and Nato. The stakes are higher than they were at the time of the crash, nearly six years ago. Poland has been one of the most outspoken critics of Russian policy towards the pro-Russian separatist rebellion in eastern Ukraine. At the same time, Law and Justice is hostile to Brussels, where the European Council president is Donald Tusk – prime minister of Poland from 2007 to 2014. His government is accused by Jarosław Kaczyński of having exposed Lech to danger through poor planning of the trip and by failing, after the crash, to ensure the Russians did not tamper with forensic evidence. By extension, the shadow of the Smolensk air disaster even looms over David Cameron as, in tandem with Tusk, his plan to avoid a Brexit involves assuaging the worries of potential Polish benefit claimants in Britain.

But the Law and Justice government will not allow political pragmatism to get in the way. The Polish government accuses Russia of blocking its attempts to carry out a full investigation, by failing to give it access to two air traffic controllers’ testimonies, and to hand over the black box flight recorders and wreckage. Last month, the foreign minister, Witold Waszczykowski, said in an interview with weekly pro-government magazine wSieci that the Polish government had renewed its request to Moscow for the wreckage to be returned: “In the case of a negative answer, we will build international pressure,” he said.

I think that if Russia has not shared credible information for years, if Russia manipulates the investigations, does not return the wreck, they put suspicion on themselves. When someone acts like this it means they have something to hide,” Waszczykowski added.

The new commission of inquiry is due to start work in March. It has 21 members, many of them engineers or technical experts, and four advisers from abroad. The news of its launch worries many Poles, including opposition politician Ryszard Petru. He says the new inquiry is “all about revenge and to send a few people to prison”.

While in opposition, Law and Justice party members produced evidence of foul play, often in online videos whose accuracy is impossible to verify. The films include people presented as experts using props such as crushed tins and sausages to explain that the aircraft exploded mid-air before crashing. Many of the films have been dismissed as using old footage, taken off the internet. One newspaper even reported an expert claiming that a fog-making machine had been used to create poor conditions of visibility at Smolensk.

Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, chairman of the Farmers’ party, told the Polish press agency: “The commission will create more versions, maybe more myths, and scars will be ripped open for the families of the victims. It will lead to a deepening of the divisions among Poles.”

After the crash, many widows and relatives joined Law and Justice, with some building political careers and even entering parliament. Others reacted negatively to Law and Justice’s mission to keep probing the cause of the crash. On Thursday, Małgorzata Sekula-Szmajdzińska, widow of deputy speaker Jerzy Szmajdziński, told television channel TVN24: “This [new investigation] is just politics. I do not want to have anything to do with it.’’

Smolensk is significant in Polish history because it is close to the place where Stalin’s secret police shot some of the 22,000 Polish officers and intellectuals they executed in 1940. The massacre is an enduring symbol of Poland’s suffering at Soviet hands, and Lech Kaczyński had been flying in to commemorate it. On the 10th day of every month, friends and family of the Smolensk victims light candles in their memory on the paved forecourt outside the president’s residence in Warsaw.

Reminders of Smolensk are constant in Poland. Many relatives of the victims have accepted the findings of the initial inquiry. But others, especially people close to the Kaczyński clan and Law and Justice, continue to seek culprits. Next month a court case initiated by victims’ relatives resumes against Tusk’s former chief of staff and two of his aides.

Others still, such as Macierewicz, deputy leader of Law and Justice, have expanded their political careers around surviving twin Jarosław Kaczyński’s tireless quest to disprove claims that his brother put undue pressure on the pilot, Arkadiusz Protasiuk, to land, despite atrocious weather conditions.

Jacek Kucharczyk, president of the Institute of Public Affairs in Warsaw, believes the reason for the crash is far more prosaic. He says: “Lech Kaczyński’s ratings were down. He was flying to Smolensk to open his election campaign. He was determined to be on time. Nobody wanted to take responsibility for diverting the plane. The media had made a joke of Kaczyński’s planes always breaking down.”

The Kaczyński twins had been features of Polish life long before Lech’s presidency, or the Smolensk crash. As 13 year-olds, they played the leads, Jacek and Placek, in The Two Who Stole the Moon, a 1962 children’s film. As adults, they remained impossible to tell apart, except for the cat hairs that could sometimes be spotted on Jarosław’s dark clothes. Of the two, Lech was the more likable, with a sense of humour and fun, and a successful marriage. Jarosław cannot drive or use a computer, seems to live as a recluse and is an eternal bachelor. But he was always politically more astute than his brother. They needed one another.

In the past, it was very easy to ridicule the Kaczyńskis as the Two Who Stole the Moon,” says Kucharczyk. “Now Jarosław is dangerous. He seems to be using his brother’s memory, and he may be vengeful. He is dangerous because he is not elected but is ever-present in Polish political life, and we do not know what is going on in his mind.”

Macierewicz has cast himself as the main champion of the sabotage theory. In March this year, he seemed to hint for the first time at a clear Russian motive for downing the plane. “Putin is fully responsible for this tragedy,” he told the European parliament. “It was the first salvo in a war which today is going on in the east of Europe, and which is ever more dramatically nearing the EU and Nato borders.”

Since coming to power in the 25 October parliamentary election, Law and Justice has expanded the Kaczyński cult. In December, the Polish parliament held a commemorative regional conference in Lech’s honour. MPs commemorated the 10th anniversary of his oath of office and President Andrzej Duda named a conference hall after him. Swiftly after the election, the Tusk-era Miller investigation into the Smolensk crash was removed from the Polish government’s website.

A number of recent legal changes, rushed through since Law and Justice came to power, may also serve Kaczyński’s plan to keep memories alive of the Smolensk tragedy. The European Commission is investigating the legality of the government’s apparent attempts to hamper the work of the constitutional tribunal – the highest court in the land – and a move to sack public broadcasting chiefs.

Other legal changes rushed through in the past three months include new internet snooping powers for the police and, last week, a move to shift the attorney general’s office into the justice ministry. There has been no suggestion that the law changes have deliberately been carried out ahead of the launch of the new Smolensk investigation. But each could in its way prove useful if, as Petru claims, the Law and Justice government has already written the conclusion of the new inquiry.

Even if the government does not have a preconceived outcome in mind, analysts say Law and Justice is keeping alive the memory of the Smolensk disaster as a power ploy, feeding into a romantic nationalistic notion that those who died in the crash are “the fallen”, thus assimilating them into a tragic nation’s history; its latest, perfect heroes.

Kucharczyk says: “The focus on Smolensk fits in with the Polish proclivity for celebrating mass deaths and disasters. We are very good at that. Law and Justice is the party of national mourning. The crash somehow struck a chord with the national psyche, if you believe in such things.”

Add the birch trees piercing the thick fog on the plain, the setting at Smolensk and the Russian bogeyman. These are the ingredients of a perfect cold war drama for a nation with a lasting need for martyrs.

Conversations with the Crow

On October 8th, 2000, Robert Trumbull Crowley, once a leader of the CIA’s Clandestine Operations Division, died in a Washington hospital of heart failure and the end effects of Alzheimer’s Disease. Before the late Assistant Director Crowley was cold, Joseph Trento, a writer of light-weight books on the CIA, descended on Crowley’s widow at her town house on Cathedral Hill Drive in Washington and hauled away over fifty boxes of Crowley’s CIA files.

Once Trento had his new find secure in his house in Front Royal , Virginia, he called a well-known Washington fix lawyer with the news of his success in securing what the CIA had always considered to be a potential major embarrassment. Three months before, July 20th of that year, retired Marine Corps colonel William R. Corson, and an associate of Crowley, died of emphysema and lung cancer at a hospital in Bethesda, Md. After Corson’s death, Trento and his Washington lawyer went to Corson’s bank, got into his safe deposit box and removed a manuscript entitled ‘Zipper.’ This manuscript, which dealt with Crowley’s involvement in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, vanished into a CIA burn-bag and the matter was considered to be closed forever

After Crowley’s death and Trento’s raid on the Crowley files, huge gaps were subsequently discovered by horrified CIA officials and when Crowley’s friends mentioned Gregory Douglas, it was discovered that Crowley’s son had shipped two large boxes to Douglas. No one knew their contents but because Douglas was viewed as an uncontrollable loose cannon who had done considerable damage to the CIA’s reputation by his on-going publication of the history of Gestapo-Mueller, they bent every effort both to identify the missing files and make some effort to retrieve them before Douglas made any use of them.

Douglas had been in close contact with Crowley and had long phone conversatins with him. He found this so interesting and informative that he taped  and later transcribed them.

These conversations have been published in a book: ‘Conversations with the Crow” and this is an excerpt.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Conversations-Crow-Gregory-Douglas-ebook/dp/B00GHMAQ5E/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1450147193&sr=8-1&keywords=conversations+with+the+crow

 

 

Conversation No. 68

Date: Wednesday, February 19, 1997

Commenced: 8:46 AM CST

Concluded: 9:30 AM CST

 

GD: You called me, Robert. Role reversal here. Is something up back there?

RTC: Yes, in a way. I’ve been keeping my eye on a growing negative situation here that directly affects you and indirectly affects me. This is going to be a little prolix, so I was wondering if you had a tape recorder handy and might hook it up so you can make some sense of all this later. You ought to listen to it, make notes at your convenience and then we can talk about things after you do this. Is this possible? The recorder?

GD: Yes, I have one over on the shelf. I’ll just go and get it.

RTC: Well, I’m not going anywhere.

(Pause)

GD: I got it and put a tape in it. Let me hook the mike up to the phone here….OK now fire away.

RTC: Very well, let’s get started. I begin by telling you something we both know and this is that you are most unpopular back here, at least in certain circles. For example, Wolfe hates you and keeps telling me I ought not to talk to you. How odd that Kimmel tells me the same thing and so does Joe Trento. Do you have any dealings with him, by the way?

GD: No. I’ve heard the name. He wrote a book with you once if I recall.

RTC: Yes, Joe and his wife.

GD: Not very deep writers, are they?

RTC: No, Trento is like Bill. So eager to be part of a larger picture, so desperate to be noticed, so unimportant. Wolfe is only a government librarian but he, too, had delusions of grandeur. And Tom…Poor Tom was once the golden boy and now he is getting older and he is going to have to retire.

GD: I talk to him quite often, Robert, and I’ve been of help to him and his family over the Pearl Harbor business.

RTC: Yes, I know that, but you are not on his good side for several reasons. In the first place, he views you as subhuman and only puts up with you for the same reason the others do…They want something from you. What they want is to get any papers Mueller might have given you and in the end, they want you to be quiet about him. Now Jim Critchfield wants you dead.

GD: Why so?

RTC: It’s all about Mueller. Now let me go on for a time here. I know and you know that Mueller worked for the CIA. Critchfield’s SS boys recruited him in ’48 and he came here. We hired him, in spite of the fact he ran the evil Gestapo, because he was a genuine expert on Soviet intelligence and very effective. Russia, officially, is our convenient enemy. Convenient, because everyone makes money because they threaten to invade us or atom bomb New York. Of course, they were going to do no such thing, but a frightened public is generous with funds to its protectors. So we hired Mueller. That, in and of itself, is a major scandal. The left wing, the Jews and anyone the Gestapo arrested would howl the house down if they ever found out about this. The other little problem is that no one alive, aside from myself and you, knows the name Mueller was given when he came over to us. This was a large secret and only a few knew. Harry Truman knew, Beetle Smith1 knew and so did Jim Critchfield and myself. And, of course, Mueller and his wife, who worked for us, too. So we have a situation that could prove to be very, very embarrassing for many people. Mueller is dead and his wife will say nothing but then we have you in the equation. You met him in California and his wife knows you. Apparently, you two hit it off. His wife, who doesn’t approve of you because she is afraid of you, tells us you two were thick as thieves. So much for that. You used your entrée to write a book on him. My dear sweet Jesus, what a stink you made. Mueller was dead and forgotten and along came you, a loose cannon, and tore off the scabs of time. It takes bureaucracies a long time to react. But to save their collective asses, they do react. Initially, Bill was all gung ho about you because your book supported his ‘Widows’ book and he clearly identified Mueller’s Swiss-based CIA interrogator…

GD: Kronthal.

RTC: Absolutely, and when Bill talked with you about this after reading the book, you gave him some inside information on Kronthal you got from Mueller. This was private information and you could never have made it up. Bill was sold and got me involved in this. Of course, I didn’t tell them that we had known each other previously, albeit rather casually. You know, the Costello business.

GD: I recall.

RTC: And suddenly it began to dawn on certain elevated people in our organization that you might know far more than you should. And your book, which was interesting, but not too revealing about our methods and activities, got out, you became a person of real interest. A question here, Gregory. Did Mueller ever mention the Kennedy business to you?

GD: Yes. I was having lunch with him when it happened. As I recall, we were having a late lunch at Stickney’s Hickory House in Palo Alto when Mueller started staring at the restaurant television set which was behind and above me. He said, ‘I see they shot your President in Dallas.’ I turned around and watched the uproar for a minute and then the food came. At one point, a little later, Mueller called me and asked me if I had been watching television and I said I had. He asked me if I had noticed Oswald being walked through crowded corridors in the Dallas police station and I said I had. He said that Oswald was not guilty, and those who did it were trying to get him killed by exposing him to strangers. And he did get shot in the same surroundings the next day. Mueller said that the business was now over and that Ruby would also either hang himself in his cell or be knifed in jail by an inmate wanting fame and fortune. When I told him much later that Ruby died of cancer, Mueller only laughed and said that he preferred the heart attack and that cancer took too long to work.

RTC: Astute. Anything else?

GD: Nothing that I remember.

RTC: You see, Gregory, Mueller was involved in the business.

GD: I was having lunch with him when it happened and I had known him for some time before, Robert. Was he?

RTC: Mueller was hired by us as probably the best expert on Soviet intelligence alive. When Jim Angleton learned that the most important secrets, the President’s Daily Briefing material was all over Moscow, he went over the edge. Only a very few people ever saw that paper. I suggested that he have these salted with different information prior to distribution. This bit of fiction in one report and that in another. That way, Jim found out that the leaks came from the White House. That’s when we dragged Mueller out of retirement and he pinpointed Bolshakov, the top KGB operative in this country, as the conduit. And a little bit of snooping discovered that Bobby Kennedy was in regular touch with Bolshakov. Obviously, the material went from JFK to RFK to Bolshakov to Nikita in Moscow. That’s when it was decided to remove Kennedy, in fact, both Kennedys. We got the President and Hoover got Bobby. The latter was more in the line of revenge, but the President had to be stopped. And of course, he was. Mueller knew this and we, or rather they, are terrified as to what else he might have told you.

GD: He never told me any of this.

RTC: But of course we don’t know that, do we? So the plan has been to gain your confidence, promise you much, get even closer to you and then find out if you have any papers or tapes on any of this, but especially the Kennedy business.

GD: And then they’ll shoot me.

RTC: Oh no, not that. With Critchfield in play, I told him that if any harm came to you, he would suffer terribly, so I doubt if anyone would shoot you. They would lie to you, con you, trick you and maybe break into your house and steal anything that might make trouble. Did you get anything from Mueller?

GD: Oh yes, much.

RTC: And safe? And by safe, I don’t mean cunningly hidden in the attic or cellar or, worse, in a local storage facility under your name. You know what I mean.

GD: Oh, I do indeed. I did not fall off the turnip truck yesterday, Robert. Very safe.

RTC: After Mueller died, we talked to his widow and went through all his papers, but they were very thin and there were a lot of things missing that she had remembered seeing. Most important were documents with Mueller’s new name. I told you, they don’t know that name…

GD: But they know his wife, so they must know the name.

RTC: Good chap here, but he had a number of names and his married name was not the same as our cover. Anyway, old papers were missing and then after we found out about you and your friend Laegel, we became very concerned. Laegel died in ’66 and you had vanished into thin air.

GD: I went to Europe under a false identity. I have dozens of them.

RTC: Vanished and so on. And then the book. That got everyone’s bowels in a ferment, Gregory and that’s why Bill got a hold of you.

GD: But you got me earlier.

RTC: That was on another matter entirely, but fortunate for both of us in the end.

GD: All this over Kennedy?

RTC: Kennedy’s demise and our employment of the Gestapo head and some very sensitive things he knew and had been involved in. And what he might have told you and, most important, what he might have given to you such as papers, files or the like. You can understand why you began to hear from Tom Kimmel of the FBI and others, can’t you? And weren’t they so pleasant and jovial with you?

GD: Certainly.

RTC: Of course, they were. And invitations to come to Washington to talk at historical conferences where you met all kinds of interesting people. And how many of these nice, attentive people have asked you about what Mueller might have given to you, or told you about really interesting historical happenings?

GD: Kimmel and Andrew Grey…

RTC: Yes, one of ours. You obviously didn’t oblige them, but then they got Bob Wolfe into the act. A fellow historian with, very important for your future researches, because he had access to government files.

GD: I always wondered why a professional Jew with strong ties to the Holocaust industry would be so smarmy with me. It figures.

RTC: And were you overwhelmed by the attention? By the free hotel rooms? By the dinners for you?

GD: I take what I can get, Robert.

RTC: And give?

GD: I give nothing, Robert, that I don’t want to give. Oh, yes, many little questions about Mueller and who he might have been and did I have his address in California and so on. But they knew where he was living after all.

RTC: They wanted to know what you knew. Kimmel told me, and Bill confirmed it and I learned myself first hand, that you can get on the phone and talk for three hours. Very interesting, very much in the know, but you never, ever let anything slip. This drives them all crazy, Gregory.

GD: Oh, yes, I am aware. For example, someone, whose name is not your business, would give me the name of a very sensitive government operation, and I mean very sensitive. But just the name and nothing else. I would casually drop it into a conversation with Wolfe, Andrew or Tom but just a drop, not a discussion. No response, of course. It was too new and too important for them to know about it. Then I would wait a few weeks and guess what? I would get a smarmy call from Wolfe, Andrew or Tom, or sometimes all three, with a query. Say, one or all of them would say, last week you mentioned Operation Bunghole. That’s really interesting because just yesterday someone was talking about it to me. What more do you know about it? I mean just between the two of us?

RTC: How did you get out from under that one?

GD: I would say, Oh yes, Operation Bunghole! Yes, well, it’s…oh, excuse me Robert, Andrew or Tom, but the UPS man is at the door with some packages and I have to get off. Let me get back to you on this. And of course I don’t and the next time they call on this, I say, Oh that thing. Such cold coffee. Let me tell you about the giant eagles we have around here. They just grabbed some small kid out of the parking lot and flew off with him! Is that what I should have done, Robert?

RTC: You are a very evil person, Gregory, causing so much trouble. I love it.

GD: But they obviously didn’t, did they?

RTC: No, you drove them crazy. Your natural arrogance coupled with the confusion you sowed among them has not made you a popular person.

GD: Good. Mueller would have loved it as much as we both do.

RTC: Well, that’s some background. You are beginning to get some of these people very annoyed.

GD: The Wolfe and Kimmel people?

RTC: No, the people they work for. There will, I think, be some intense efforts to get their hands on you. Someone said getting anything from you was like trying to pick up some mercury from a table top. You slide this way and that and nothing can be done. They know you have something, but just what is a mystery. Keep it that way, Gregory. It’s insurance. And on that subject, I have been going through all of my files and I am going to ship you some really interesting material. Some of it, as I promised, has to do with the Kennedy business, but the rest covers sundry other matters. I’m going to have my son ship these to you, because I am long past dragging heavy boxes to the post office. Now when you get these papers, be very sure to put them in a very safe place and tell no one about them. And here is more information for you. Do not trust your son in any way.

GD: Are you serious? My son?

RTC: Yes, because of the name. They can use his name at one point. I have to tell you this and I realize it may have an adverse effect on you, but it’s important. Bill told me that he has approached your son and offered him a job with the CIA.

GD: You really must be joking. He has no academic background and would never pass a security clearance.

RTC: It doesn’t matter. He has been offered a consultant job at forty thousand a year and has more or less accepted. Bill said he was more than willing to work with him, and through him, the Company. They want cooperation in the event you start to push them or they even suspect you are about to pull off their covers. He is not too friendly to you and, of course, the money matters. Once he served his purpose, naturally, the job would disconnect. Tell him nothing and never let him know that you got anything from me. If he quizzes you about your relationship with me or gets interested in specifics, be on your guard and do not trust him. I don’t say you should walk away from him, but just watch yourself.

GD: Not surprising. He’s clever but a coward and would never come at me from the front. But he has had so much trouble with the law such as having fake driver’s licenses, huge bills and the like that I doubt if any government agency would hire him if he used standard employment techniques. He never mentioned Bill or his offer and I did not know he had talked with Corson. He talked with Kimmel and Wolfe, but not Bill. Well, it’s a disappointment, considering what it cost me to raise him and pay his bills, but not a surprise. His favorite game is to knock up his girl friends, walk off and then expect me to pay for the abortion. Or the bill I knew nothing about. Or the car he ran into the week before. That sort of thing. He’s very clever, but totally amoral and I don’t trust him to the corner, Robert, but I thank you for the input. Now, I can stuff him with disinformation which, as it comes from the inside, just has to be right. I should be able to squeeze a few dollars out of the swine, if I play it right, and I can always find ways to get them after people I don’t like. I mean I can tell my kid that so and so has the papers and plans to blackmail Langley with them. Then we can read the paper about a terrible gas explosion or a car wreck somewhere, and another enemy is crisped.

RTC: Yes, well, you know the game.

GD: Of course I do. What did they say during our Glorious Revolution? Trust in God but keep your powder dry? Trust in no one, not even God, and keep your knife sharp. I don’t suppose you’d like to fill me in on your surprise?

RTC: Not on the phone, Gregory.

GD: They might be listening, but I doubt it. I’m using a special phone. But they might be listening to you. If they are, Wolfe, Andrew or Tom, kiss my royal ass.

RTC: Don’t do that, Gregory. They might.

(Concluded at 9:30 AM CST)

 

Exclusive: Zika virus discourages many Americans from Latin America travel

February 7, 2016

by Jeffrey Dastini

Reuters

The rapidly spreading Zika virus is discouraging many Americans from traveling to Latin America and the Caribbean, with 41 percent of those aware of the disease saying they are less likely to take such a trip, a Reuters/Ipsos poll shows.

The poll is the latest sign the virus, suspected to be linked to thousands of birth defects in Brazil, could depress travel to popular cold-weather getaways in the coming months.

Airlines and cruise ship operators have yet to report drops in bookings because of Zika, and analysts have downplayed the impact that newly sedentary parents-to-be could have on their revenue.

Still, awareness of the mosquito-borne virus has surged to nearly two-thirds of Americans, according to the poll of 1,595 adults in the United States conducted Feb. 1-5. That compares with 45 percent who had heard of Zika in a Reuters/Ipsos poll from late January.

“I am actively trying to get pregnant with my husband, so I am a little bit concerned,” said Erica, a respondent who said she was bitten by a mosquito during a January trip to the U.S. Virgin Islands, where Zika has been reported.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has advised pregnant women to avoid travel to areas with an active outbreak of Zika, and the World Health Organization has declared an international emergency over the disease.

Erica, who asked only to be identified by her first name for personal reasons, said she no longer plans to visit Jamaica this summer to celebrate her wedding anniversary.”We’ve definitely gone back to the drawing board on that,” she said, referring to the island, which is on the CDC warning list.

Of those aware of the virus, 41 percent said they were less likely to travel to Puerto Rico, Mexico or South America in the next 12 months because of Zika, the poll found. Some 48 percent said Zika had not changed the likelihood of their visiting those destinations, while others did not know.

Six out of 10 Americans aware of Zika said the virus concerned them, including 18 percent who said they were very concerned, according to the poll.

“It’s contagious, and it’s new,” said respondent Toni Brockington, 42, who lives near Fort Bragg, California, and had considered visiting Mexico before learning about the outbreak. “The virus, along with the reports of violence and drugs and tourist ransoms, is making it less and less attractive.”

Much remains unknown about Zika, including whether the virus actually causes the birth defect microcephaly. Brazil is investigating the potential link between Zika infections and more than 4,000 suspected cases of microcephaly, a condition marked by abnormally small head size that can result in developmental problems.

Researchers have identified evidence of Zika infection in 17 of these cases, either in the baby or in the mother, but have not confirmed that Zika can cause microcephaly.

The poll of Americans’ concerns and travel plans have a credibility interval – a measure of accuracy – of 3.8 percentage points.

(Reporting by Jeffrey Dastin in New York; Editing by Christian Plumb and Lisa Shumaker)

 

I’d bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding’ – Trump at debates

February 7u, 2016

RT

The Republican debates have wrapped up in New Hampshire, with some formidable bickering, topped by poll leader Donald Trump’s comment that he would “bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding.”

Trump is also the person who recently in November said he does not care if torture doesn’t work, because “they deserve it anyway.”

On Saturday, he continued in the same vein. “I’ll tell you what, in the Middle East, we have people chopping the heads off Christians. We have people chopping the heads off many other people. We have things that we have never seen before, as a group…  I would bring back waterboarding and I’d bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding.”

His opponent, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, went as far as saying he does not believe the notorious practice of simulated drowning to be torture. “It is enhanced interrogation… It does not meet the generally recognized definition of torture.” He later added, however: “I would not bring it back in any sort of widespread use.”

However, despite this national alarm over waterboarding and the Bush era’s murky history – or even the Obama administration’s somewhat disappointing failure to prosecute those who sanctioned it, many Americans still seem to be betting on the one candidate who is most in favor of such methods.

Trump has left Ted Cruz and Florida Senator Marco Rubio far behind in the polls, gaining twice their numbers. But some suspect Trump’s 32 percent may not be that inexplicable. Political analyst Eric Draitser believes the Republican rhetoric amounts to fear mongering, where everyone tries to use the party’s traditional tactics to score points.

Well, they’re playing to a very conservative and reactionary element in the United States, one that sees threats from radical Islam; that sees threats from the Middle East, from ISIS and all of these things as existential threats to the United States, and they’re playing on that,” Draitser told RT.“What is so deeply cynical about all of this – whether they’re talking about waterboarding and terrorism… the heroin epidemic or the growing scourge of heroin use – [is] never asking the question – ‘where is the heroin coming from?’: Afghanistan. ‘Where are the terrorists coming from?’ All of the countries the United States has been bombing and destroying,” he continued.

While Trump may understand political theater better than anyone on either side of the spectrum, he’s also being accused by Republicans of being a loose cannon.

Draitser believes people should unite behind someone who is a serious opponent to Trump – such as the establishment-friendly Marco Rubio – and somehow also prevent Trump from going with a third party. Because, if Trump leaves the Republicans, this may eventually pave the way for Hillary Clinton’s victory.

In this way, the internal divisions among the Republicans seem to be of great importance. Just a few months ago, people were willing to concede that the very establishment-friendly Hillary had all but won. However, the tide appears to be changing, as many Americans still view her as, basically, Wall Street, next to someone like Sanders, who is now almost exactly tied with her. 

The other candidates seemed to be using other issues to try and score what little they could to compete.Trying to slow down the Florida senator ahead of the New Hampshire primaries on Tuesday, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie blasted him for lacking leadership skills and experience, and even likened him to Obama.

“We’ve watched it happen, everybody. For the last seven years. The people of New Hampshire are smart. Do not make the same mistake again.”

Rubio’s accomplishments were actually near the top of the agenda, together with Islamic State, the epidemic of heroin use, economic recovery and, of course, immigration.

As for the three front-runners, it was Trump, Rubio and Ted Cruz who really got the debates going. And it was terrorism and immigration that took center-stage. While Trump is still the front-runner, things could change: the billionaire mogul came in second in Iowa recently, and some believe he may not have what it takes to win New Hampshire.

   

Financial despair, addiction and the rise of suicide in white America

The death rate for white Americans aged 45 to 54 has risen sharply since 1999, but Montana officials wrestle to explain reasons why the state has the highest rate of suicide in the US at nearly twice the national average – and it’s rising

February 7, 2016

by Chris McGreal

The Guardian

Kevin Lowney lies awake some nights wondering if he should kill himself.

I am in such pain every night, suicide has on a regular basis crossed my mind just simply to ease the pain. If I did not have responsibilities, especially for my youngest daughter who has problems,” he said.

The 56-year-old former salesman’s struggle with chronic pain is bound up with an array of other issues – medical debts, impoverishment and the prospect of a bleak retirement – contributing to growing numbers of suicides in the US and helping drive a sharp and unusual increase in the mortality rate for middle-aged white Americans in recent years alongside premature deaths from alcohol and drugs.

A study released late last year by two Princeton academics, Anne Case and Angus Deaton, who won the 2014 Nobel prize for economics, revealed that the death rate for white Americans aged 45 to 54 has risen sharply since 1999 after declining for decades. The increase, by 20% over the 14 years to 2013, represents about half a million lives cut short.

The uptick in the mortality rate is unique to that age and racial group. Death rates for African Americans of a similar age remain notably higher but continue to fall.

Neither was the increase seen in other developed countries. In the UK, the mortality rate for middle-aged people dropped by one third over the same period.

This change reversed decades of progress in mortality and was unique to the United States; no other rich country saw a similar turnaround,” the study said.

Deaths from poisonings by drugs or alcohol have risen dramatically to push lung cancer into second place as the major killer with a sharp increase in suicides now a close third.

Lowney lives in Butte, Montana, where local officials see the Princeton study’s findings reflected in their community but struggle to explain them. The state has the highest rate of suicide in the US at nearly twice the national average and rising – up 7.3% in 2014. Those most likely to kill themselves are 45 to 65 years old.

What’s been lacking in our town is an explanation for why this demographic in particular has been dying by suicide,” said Karen Sullivan, health director for Butte and the surrounding county, Silver Bow. “We want to take a look at what we’ve got going on in Butte. Is it economic in nature? Is it middle-aged white people discontented with where they landed in life? Is it isolation? A lack of a social network? Is it drug and alcohol issues? What do we have going on?”Other officials see a number of interconnected forces at work and the rising rate of middle-aged deaths as indicative of crisis wider than those who kill themselves.

Growing economic inequality and increasing financial struggles are intertwined with other issues such as health and addiction. Some people living on low incomes hesitate to go to the doctor even if they have medical insurance because of the cost of out-of-pocket expenses. Chronic conditions can go untreated and become debilitating.

Pain is a driver of alcohol abuse and addiction to opioid painkillers, which in turn is feeding a growing heroin epidemic in the US. Stress and mental health issues are sometimes driven by constant worries about money and fear for the future as growing numbers of Americans look into a financial abyss at retirement.

What has changed?Karl Rosston, Montana’s suicide prevention coordinator, said there are a number of constants that contribute to a historically high suicide rate throughout the Rocky Mountain region from social isolation to the availability of guns and a reluctance to seek mental health care.

But all of those are longstanding issues in Montana. So what’s changed to drive up the rate of people taking their own lives in recent years?

Probably the biggest reason is socio-economic. We have about 150,000 people in our state that don’t have access to any type of healthcare which is a major issue. We have a lot of people living in poverty. Wages are not going up at the same pace as rising health costs, rising cost of living and inflation,” said Rosston.

Definitely you see a lot of people that all of a sudden they hit 45 or 50 and they don’t see retirement as a bonus. They see something that they’re going to have struggle with and they’re not going to be able to retire.”

Sullivan sees that as tied up with “the expectation that as a middle-aged white person you would outdo your parents economically and socially and that didn’t occur”.

Lowney is typical of those baby boomers who have seen expectations dashed. His grandfather immigrated from Ireland to work as a miner when Butte was renowned as “the richest hill on earth” for the copper beneath. His father, Jerry, was raised in impoverished conditions but by the 1950s had moved up the social scale working as a civil engineer in a Butte hospital. He owned a house and a car. He had eight children, of which Kevin was the youngest, and retired on a comfortable pension without debt.

Kevin Lowney has not been so fortunate. He has never owned a house and is drowning in medical debt attributed to hospital costs and doctors office visits to treat his failing health.

I was a very hard working American. Overly hard working American. This is what brought down my health,” he said.

Lowney studied to be a mining engineer but Butte’s copper mines shut down in the 1980s, taking with them well paid union jobs. The mine was bought out and reopened a few years but with a smaller, non-unionised workforce on an income dependent on the price of copper. By then Lowney had switched to a business degree and landed a job in California as a salesman for a food delivery company.

Lowney returned to Butte in 2002 and went to work for Walmart as a cashier. His health continued to deteriorate.

Rising healthcare costs

In one year I had surgery on both hands, bladder cancer surgery, hernia surgery. My heart was starting to fail. I developed diabetes. High blood pressure. Enormous stress,” he said.

Lowney had health insurance but still ran up tens of thousands of dollars in medical bills. In 2007 he applied for a disability grant. It took five years to be approved during which time he relied on food stamps and other small grants he was entitled to as a single parent raising his teenage daughter.

When the disability allowance came through in 2012, payments were backdated to the date of his application. But almost all of that lump sum immediately went to clear some of his outstanding medical bills. That still left him more than $40,000 in debt to doctors and hospitals.

I have never drinked. I’ve never smoked. I’m a very strong Catholic and I practice those values. No way is this from any immorality on my part,” he said. “Here I am, I’ve worked hard all my life, put myself through college, raised three kids, been a single parent at different times in my life. Now I’m bankrupt. Not only bankrupt but with a remaining huge debt.”

Except Lowney isn’t legally bankrupt because he says he can’t afford the $1,200 fee to file the paperwork. His only income is the $1,481 month disability grant. He lives in sparsely furnished two-storey public housing. On the wall next to the kitchen door is a picture of Lowney with former president Jimmy Carter when the pair were working as volunteer house builders for Habitat for Humanity in Mexico.

We put up 100 homes in Tijuana in one week blitz,” he said. “The irony is I’m now living in public housing myself. Which, by the way, I’m very thankful for.”

Much of his income still goes to pay for medical treatment including the two trays on his living room table of an array of pills to treat his various conditions.

I still pay at least $300 a month in medications,” he said. On top of that there are bills for regular visits to the hospital. Some months, he relies on the local food bank to feed himself.

In searching for explanations for why the US is alone among developing countries in grappling with a rising death rate among its middle-aged white population, Lowney contrasts his situation with a cousin, a fisherman in Ireland who was injured in a work accident at sea and spent a year in hospital.

He told me it cost him 39 euros. That’s all because of the health system they have in Ireland,” he said.

Lowney ran up most of his debts before President Obama’s healthcare reforms. They have been a big leap forward for many Americans by, among other things, preventing insurance companies from cutting people off mid-treatment or capping payments for expensive medications, such as for cancer. But even with subsidized rates for low-income families, a trip to the doctor can still prove expensive because most insurance policies require holders to pay the first few thousand dollars each year before coverage kicks in.

That has put many people in the position of paying for insurance but being unable to afford to go to the doctor.

According to the Butte-Silver Bow Community Health Needs Assessment for 2014 23% of people in Montana have no health insurance.

But the report said that even among those with insurance, nearly 40% faced obstacles to receiving needed healthcare. About one-third said they could not afford the cost of the doctor or prescription. Nearly 8% said they lacked transport to get to a clinic. More than 11% said they skipped or reduced prescription doses in order to save money.

Kristen Ryan is among them. She works with children with disabilities in Butte. Her husband is a maintenance engineer at an elementary school but has two additional part-time jobs, including bar shifts, to bring in extra cash.

It’s to keep our head above water, to keep our kids in clothes and hot lunches. We make too much money to get help but it still is difficult,” she said.

The couple owns a small house Ryan bought when she was single but it only has two bedrooms to house four children and they cannot afford to buy a bigger place.

Ryan and her husband both have health insurance through their jobs but they hesitate to go to the doctor because they have to meet the first $5,000 of treatment costs.

It has to be something pretty significant for me to go and the same for my husband,” she said. “I see that in my husband where his back will hurt or he’s got a funky foot and sometimes he’s in a lot of pain but he won’t go because he knows that it’s going to end up costing a lot of money just to see the doctor.”

Chronic pain and suicide

The Princeton study and Rosston both identified chronic pain as a big driver of suicide among middle-aged people.

The typical death certificate that I often read is a typical 55-year-old male who is having chronic pain issues in his back and is not being treated,” he said. “We know nationally that about 30% of the people who die by suicide have issues of chronic pain or chronic illness. We saw even higher numbers in Montana.”

The increase in chronic pain has been tied to the surge in abuse of opioids such as Oxycontin, which have taken hold across the United States. That has contributed to a sharp rise in unintentional poisonings from drugs and alcohol which have risen by about 160% nationally since 1999. Montana has 82 painkiller prescriptions for every 100 people.

Case and Deaton say that “addictions are hard to treat and pain is hard to control, so those currently in midlife may be a ‘lost generation’ whose future is less bright than those who preceded them”.

Sullivan thinks it is less bright for other reasons. She said for many the prospect of retirement is a fresh crisis.

Where people landed in life, expecting to exceed what their parents accomplished, really is at play in our country,” she said. “Once you retire, you’re on a fixed-income when life becomes more interesting and not in a good way. What do you do with your limited income?”

Lowney had to cash in his small pension of $17,500 to pay medical bills. Ryan sees no prospect of retiring.

My job cut the employer contribution to my pension a couple of years ago. I prefer not to think about that because I know I don’t have anything. It’s very small. It’s not going to be enough to live on,” she said. “I think public housing or something like that might be in our future as we get older because I don’t know that we’re going to be able to do it on our own.

We owe my mother-in-law quite a bit of money because sometimes more goes out than comes in. You don’t expect to have to borrow from your parents at this age. You would hope that they would be able to borrow from you if they needed to but that’s just not the way that it’s turned out.”

The Princeton study also notes that a higher proportion of middle-aged suicides are among people who have less than a university education, suggesting they are more likely to be in lower income jobs and more severely affected by growing economic inequality. Rosston sees that in Montana too.

I actually review every single suicide that occurs in the state and we see that a very high percentage – about 80% – had less than a college degree. That may correlate with the type of jobs, the labour jobs, that they had because with only a high school education or maybe just a little bit of college you’re more likely to be in those labour intensive jobs,” he said.

Tracy Thompson heads the Laborers’ International Union of North America in Butte. She used to be a construction worker and then held a job at a pulp mill in Missoula, to the west of Butte, until it shut down in 2009.

We lost four people to suicide when they closed their doors. These were individuals making $50,000 or $60,000 a year, maybe more. All of a sudden they’re forced into early retirement or to find employment elsewhere. One guy had worked there for 30 years. We were all shocked he took his life,” she said. “You see it all around. You see a guy dies at 53. What did he die of?”

According to the Butte-Silver Bow Community Health Needs Assessment for 2014, more than one-third of residents show symptoms of chronic depression.

I grapple with depression,” said Ryan. “I take an anti-depressant. I find my situation very stressful. I find that I have trouble sleeping. I have to tell myself not to think about it so I can go to sleep. It’s hard not to be able to do for your kids what you want to be able to do.

I’ve heard that the majority of Americans are afraid of even a $500 emergency. They’re one broken refrigerator away from not being able to make it. That’s us.”

That may go some way to explain the differing middle aged death rate with other developed countries that have extensive welfare systems, free or cheap health care and greater support for pensioners. The proportion of US pensioners living in poverty is more than double that in Germany and nearly six times that of France. Few western Europeans are fearful of losing their homes to pay medical bills.

Sullivan also thinks there may be something else unusually American at work.

I’ve watched white males rule this country from the beginning. The power that this traditional white male used to have is decreasing. We’ve evolved and white males aren’t necessarily at the root of power anymore. Everything from the Oregon military takeover to the abuse people have hurled at our president, I think a lot of that is at play,” she said.

I’ve watched white males rule this country from the beginning. The power that this traditional white male used to have is decreasing. We’ve evolved and white males aren’t necessarily at the root of power anymore. Everything from the Oregon military takeover to the abuse people have hurled at our president, I think a lot of that is at play,” she said.

African Americans on the other hand have long struggled against inequality and have generally held fewer assumptions about social advancement, which may explain why the same increases in suicides and drug and alcohol deaths have not been seen among middle aged black people.

Rosston said that whatever the causes, the increased numbers of suicides reflects a mental health crisis that is not being addressed in part because of a lack of professionals but also because of a reluctance to seek their help.“We have a very high shortage of mental health professionals in our state, specifically psychiatrists. About 80% of the people who take psychotropic medication in Montana have never even spoken to a psychiatrist,” he said. “Also, there’s a stigma when it comes to mental illness. We have that kinda cowboy mentality, frontier mentality of taking care of your own, and people see depression as a weakness.

The words I often see when I review suicides is that the person thought they were a burden. That they weren’t serving a purpose anymore or they’re tired of dealing with things. When you feel that way, you’re not going to ask for help.”

In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1-800-273-8255. In the UK, the Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14. Hotlines in other countries can be found here.                

 

Record number give up US citizenship, green cards – US Treasury

February 7, 2016

RT

For the third year in a row the number of people renouncing their citizenship or abandoning green cards has beaten the record set the previous year, US Treasury Department data reveal. The surge is likely the result of stringent US tax policy.

A record-breaking 4,279 individuals decided to call it quits with the US in 2015 in comparison to 3,415 people the previous year, according to a US Treasury report released on Friday.

The list of individuals deciding to expatriate is published on a quarterly basis by the Internal Revenue Service. The latest one contains the names of 1,058 US citizens and permanent residents that gave up their passports in the period from September to December.

The underlying cause behind the massive increase in renunciations is believed to be the Foreign Accounts Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), which came into force in 2010. The law imposes harsh penalties for non-compliance, even if people aren’t dodging it on purpose, Andrew Mitchel, an international lawyer who analyzes IRS data, told the Wall Street Journal.

An increasing number of Americans appear to believe that having a US passport or long-term residency isn’t worth the hassle and cost of complying with US tax laws,” he said.

At the time, President Obama hailed the law as a “global standard” in countering tax evasion. It was passed by Congress in the wake of a scandal involving UBS AG bank, following disclosures made by banker–turned-whistleblower Bradley Birkenfeld in 2009

He testified that UBS had enabled its American customers to defraud the US tax authorities. The revelations forced UBS to admit it had encouraged illegal financial activity and was obliged to pay a staggering $547 million to settle the case.

The probe resulted in a US government clampdown on banks. The bankers were requested to unveil any information concerning US citizens’ accounts abroad. More than 180,000 banks complied with the government’s demands. The encroachment on foreign banks prompted many of them to scrap business with Americans living abroad, causing some US citizens overseas to give up their passports.

Since the law has come into effect, US authorities have collected $13.5 billion from foreign banking institutions and Americans in taxes and penalties.

The United States is the only nation within the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development that subjects its citizens to taxes irrespective of their place of residence.

 

 

 

 

 

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