The Slaughterhouse Informer

A Compendiium of Various Official Lies, Business Scandals, Small Murders, Frauds, and Other Gross Defects of Our Current Political, Business and Religious Moral Lepers.

Presenting a new magazine that contains material that is not found elsewhere and is very difficult to post on the Internet. The ‘Voice of the White House’ will appear in each issue containing material not found on TBR News for very obvious reasons.This publication will appear once a week, on Wednesday, every week, will be ten pages in length and is available by subscription only. The price is $5.00 a month and can be paid via PayPal or by check, sent to ‘Morris Productions, 1350 E. New Yort St. Ste A2-190, Aurora, Il 60504.’ If you don’t like it, and Bush supporters can read the Drudge Report for free, you can cancel at any time.

Civil insurrection in America and government countermeasures: The official papers

By Bradley Moscrip

An in-depth study of official American plans to construct FEMA detention centers in America and specific recent U.S. Army domestic counterinsurgency plans. Here is a sampling of the ebook contents:

Gun Control by Confiscation

As the American general population is known to be the most heavily armed in the world, immediately upon the declaration of Martial Law and the execution by the military of counterinsurgency programs, it has been determined that the BATF, will begin the process of rounding up all rifles, pistols and so-called assault weaponry from the civil population. Lists of gun collectors obtained from firearms dealers, gun magazine subscription lists and other sources will be the basis for these mass confiscations. Gun owners will be supplied documentation by the BATF showing which pieces have been confiscated so that in the future, they will be told, they can recover their weapons when the state of emergency has passed. In actuality, weapons that do not have a high value or are not suitable for arming loyalist police forces, will be destroyed by order

This study is available from tbrnews at $5.00 by PayPal  

The Voice of the White House

                Washington, D.C., February 8, 2009: “The make-up of the current professional White House staff is quite different from that of the Bushies. Far fewer nutty Christian babblers, the disappearance of far-right fascists, and best of all, the Decider has moved out and into a covenanted neighborhood (no blacks allowed) in Dallas from whence great silence will reign. Now, back to a favorite theme: Bernie Madoff. Yes, no one wants to talk about where Bernie hid all his money. We know he hid it in Israeli banks and investment firms where it is very safe from seizure by American authorities. What has not been made public is who in Israel, and the United States, knew what Bernie was up to and, more important, when he was up to it. No swindled investor will ever get back a cent of the stolen money and the authorities in the U.S. and Israel are frantically hoping for a fatal heart attack in the very near future. After all, we cannot dare question Israeli authorities. Why? Well, for threatened  political punishment from such groups as AIPAC for daring to even look cross-eyed at Israel  let alone make their banks give money back. I intend to keep on about this subject until the American public becomes fully aware of it and I have dug up a nearly complete listing of those whom Bernie ripped off. I attach the link to this posting.”

http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/madoffclientlist020409.pdf

WARNING: DO NOT GOOGLE SEARCH FOR "TZIPORA MENACHE"!!!!‏

I had sent a number of people a story from the Pakistan Daily about a supposed Israeli spokeswoman "Tzipora Menache" who supposedly said: "We control the stupid Americans. You can criticize God in America, but not Israel." I do not know if she is a real person, but it has been revealed that this news story is a plant by Jews, or Israelis, to attack people who are critical of Israel. 

Rense.com says that if you Google "Tzipora Menache" you will find a supposed informational site which will insert a virus on your computer if you click on it. So, DO NOT SEARCH FOR TZIPORA MENACHE ON THE WEB!!! This story is, for certain, a hoax put out by Jews to encourage people who dislike Israel and its actions in Gaza to Google this name and thus pick up a virus.

This has happened to me before, with sites which supposedly promote a balanced view of the German military and the history of the Third Reich, without raving like rabid dogs about the evil Nazis and the 795 million Jews they gassed - you open those supposed informational sites and get a virus. The Jews obviously want to scare people off from accessing any information or alternative views other than those which regard all Germans as vile murderers. Jews are also infuriated about historical books that show that the CIA once hired many former Gestapo people to work for them in the intelligence field. Books like this are routinely trashed by their in-house bloggers and book reviewers.

Now they want to scare people off from accessing anything critical of Israeli atrocities in Gaza.

Here is what Rense has to say:

http://www.rense.com/general85/quote.htm

PLEASE BE WARNED: THE TZIPORA MENACHE QUOTE IS A TEASER DESIGNED SOLELY TO DESTROY YOUR COMPUTER!! 

This destructive game, I note, can be played by others. Input from readers would indicate that a number of pro-Israeli sites are slated for similar treatments. Wonderful! A cyber-war won’t result in using phosphorous artillery against Arab day care centers and hopefully, there will be blessed silence from the pig farm.

Mexican drug violence spills over into the US 

February 9, 2009

by Alicia A. Caldwell

Associated Press

Just as government officials had feared, the drug violence raging in Mexico is spilling over into the United States.

U.S. authorities are reporting a spike in killings, kidnappings and home invasions connected to Mexico's murderous cartels. And to some policymakers' surprise, much of the violence is happening not in towns along the border, where it was assumed the bloodshed would spread, but a considerable distance away, in places such as Phoenix and Atlanta.

Investigators fear the violence could erupt elsewhere around the country because the Mexican cartels are believed to have set up drug-dealing operations all over the U.S., in such far-flung places as Anchorage, Alaska; Boston; and Sioux Falls, S.D.

"The violence follows the drugs," said David Cuthbertson, agent in charge of El Paso's FBI office.

The violence takes many forms: Drug customers who owe money are kidnapped until they pay up. Cartel employees who don't deliver the goods or turn over the profits are disciplined through beatings, kidnappings or worse. And drug smugglers kidnap illegal immigrants in clashes with human smugglers over the use of secret routes from Mexico.

Life in Juárez, where drug violence has created the equivalent of a failed state on our doorstep.

November  29, 2008

by Arian Campo-Flores and Monica Campbell

NEWSWEEK

                Late one night in January, an ambulance escorted by five unmarked squad cars pulled up to Thomason Hospital in El Paso, Texas. Out leaped more than a dozen armed federal agents to protect the patient—Fernando Lozano Sandoval, a commander with the Chihuahua State Investigations Agency. He'd been pumped full of bullets just across the Mexican border in Ciudad Juárez by gunmen believed to have been hired by a drug cartel. Lozano Sandoval's sole hope of survival was the medical team at Thomason, the only level-one trauma center for nearly 300 miles. U.S. authorities took no chances; in Mexico, assassins regularly raid hospitals to finish off their prey. Throughout Lozano Sandoval's three-week treatment at Thomason (which proved successful), the Americans funneled visitors through metal detectors, posted guards outside the commander's room and deployed SWAT teams armed with assault rifles around the hospital's perimeter. Officers "were ready for war if it should go that route," says El Paso Police Chief Greg Allen.

                Lozano Sandoval was the first in a string of victims of Mexico's spiraling violence to show up at Thomason this year. Twice more, authorities beefed up security at the hospital to the strictest level—in June, when a high-risk Mexican national was brought in anonymously, and in July, when two Mexican police officials were airlifted to the border and driven across. Beyond those cases, 43 additional patients wounded in Juárez have been treated at Thomason this year, including a 1-year-old girl who was pinned against a wall by a truck involved in a drug-related shooting. All the patients have been dual citizens of Mexico and the United States or have had the proper documentation to enter the country, says a Thomason spokeswoman. Yet legal issues are beside the point for many El Pasoans. A recent posting in an online forum on border violence summed up the fear of many: "It is only a matter of time before the Mexican drug dealers send assassination squads over to Thomason hospital." The traffickers already occasionally kidnap Mexicans who have fled north to escape threats of violence in Juárez.

                The border between El Paso (population: 600,000) and Juárez (population: 1.5 million) is the most menacing spot along America's southern underbelly. On one side is the second-safest city of its size in the United States (after Honolulu), with only 15 murders so far in 2008. On the other is a slaughterhouse ruled by drug lords where the death toll this year is more than 1,300 and counting. "I don't think the average American has any idea of what's going on immediately south of our border," says Kevin Kozak, acting special agent in charge of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement's office of investigations in El Paso. "It's almost beyond belief." Juárez looks a lot like a failed state, with no government entity capable of imposing order and a profusion of powerful organizations that kill and plunder at will. It's as if the United States faced another lawless Waziristan—except this one happens to be right at the nation's doorstep.

                The drug war in Juárez escalated dramatically at the start of the year when the Sinaloa cartel—which originated in the Pacific state of the same name—began trying to muscle in on the Juárez cartel's turf. The focus of the fight, which has also drawn in the formidable Gulf cartel, is the city's prized "plaza," or drug-smuggling corridor. Mexican President Felipe Calderón responded to the turmoil by dispatching 3,000 balaclava-clad soldiers and federal police to the state of Chihuahua, where Juárez is located, earlier this year. Yet the narcotraffickers, with their vast arsenal of high-powered weaponry, haven't shied from taking them on. (Or trying to buy them off: the cartels have infiltrated virtually every law-enforcement institution in the country, from local police departments to the Mexican attorney general's office.) The result has been an orgy of violence, growing more public and more spectacular by the day. Beheadings, burnings, dismemberments and mutilations have become routine.

                On a recent weekday night, reports of yet another execution in Juárez crackled over a police scanner. Two brothers had been shot in a squatter neighborhood called Mexico 68. At the crime scene, one of them lay dead on the sidewalk, his red T shirt pulled up to expose a chest riddled with 9mm bullets. The other, who had barely survived, was evacuated by ambulance. A group of teenage girls straining against the yellow police tape recounted what they'd seen. A silver GMC Yukon SUV roared up to the victims' home, one of the rear tinted windows was lowered and a gunman emptied his pistol. "It was the Aztecas," one of the girls whispered, referring to the Barrio Azteca gang, which got its start in El Paso and is reportedly allied with the Juárez cartel. The group "controls and terrifies" the neighborhood in its battle against affiliates of the Sinaloa cartel, the girl said. "Shhh!" one of her friends cautioned. "It's the truth," said the girl, who requested anonymity for safety reasons.

                The cartels operate largely with impunity. Police who defy them are eliminated, as in the case of Oscar Campoya, a municipal cop who was shot dead by assassins in March as he left a local precinct. Despite the presence of several witnesses, including fellow officers, there have been no arrests (only 2 percent of violent murders in Mexico are solved, according to government figures). Mario Campoya, the victim's brother, says Oscar had been pressured relentlessly by other members of the force to cooperate with the drug gangs, but had refused.

                To try to remedy things, Juárez Mayor José Reyes demanded that the city's police department clean house earlier this year. More than 400 cops have been dismissed, and every officer must now undergo drug tests and background checks. "Corruption is so strong within the force, there are so many inside deals, that the criminals hardly worry about getting caught," says Reyes. "I realize that firing cops and turning them out on the street is dangerous, but it's worse to have them within the police force." Next on his agenda: to acquire better equipment for law enforcement and redouble enlistment efforts. Large billboards around the city feature a black-masked, machine-gun-toting officer along with a boldface message: JUÁREZ NEEDS YOU!

                Yet authorities face a ruthless enemy. Cartel capos have made clear they'll go to whatever length necessary to eliminate opponents. In early November, armed men stormed a Red Cross operating room in Juárez, ordered the doctors and nurses performing surgery on a 25-year-old gunshot victim to leave and then killed him. Oscar Varela, head of the city's Hospital General, says high-risk patients are now treated in a restricted, bulletproof area guarded by cops.

                Violence has long plagued Juárez. This, after all, is the city where hundreds of women were mysteriously murdered in the 1990s. But recently the bloodshed has taken on an anarchic quality. The absence of authority has opened the way for hordes of criminal gangs—some of them offshoots of the cartels; others, bands of opportunistic street thugs—to carve out specific rackets, like kidnapping, human trafficking and car theft (more than 1,500 vehicles were reported stolen in October alone). Another burgeoning activity is extortion. Business owners are ordered to pay as much as $2,000 per month in protection money; if they refuse, their establishments are torched with Molotov cocktails. That happens regularly; the city is dotted with shuttered restaurants and clubs still blackened with soot. Juárez "is a lawless territory," says Sergio González, a Mexico City-based expert on the border region. "And I'm afraid it might only get worse."

                That prospect stokes alarm among many residents in El Paso because of the city's close bond with Juárez. The two places are deeply interwoven by culture, trade and geography. Stand atop a hill on either side of the border, and the urban tapestry below unfolds like a single metropolis with a barely visible divide at the river. Many area residents hold dual citizenship and have relatives in both countries. Each day, 200,000 people cross the Rio Grande along one of five bridges connecting the two cities. Executives of the Mexican maquiladoras (factories) who live in El Paso head south, while juarenses shopping for sneakers and stereos head north. Mexican nationals spend about $2.2 billion per year in El Paso, and before the bloodbath began, Americans fueled a vibrant tourism economy in Juárez.

                Then there are the illicit links. Going back to Prohibition, Juárez has helped sate the ravenous American appetite for contraband. These days, the West Texas corridor is a key shipping and distribution center for drugs destined for various markets across the United States. According to a recent report by the Justice Department's National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC), 6 cartels, 129 midlevel organizations and 606 local groups engage in drug-trafficking activities in the binational region. As part of an elaborate, highly compartmentalized operation, some outfits specialize in transportation, others in enforcement and still others in retail sales. Guided by spotters on the Mexican side equipped with binoculars and cell phones, many shipments cross the bridges into El Paso alongside legitimate commerce. Once in the city, the goods are deposited in stash houses before being sent elsewhere.

                Given the permeability of the border, it's not hard to imagine violence seeping over as well. American officials insist that's highly unlikely. The cartels "cannot operate here with impunity," says ICE's Kozak. "One reason we don't see that type of violence here is that it would never be tolerated." El Paso is crawling with federal law-enforcement agents—including representatives of ICE, the FBI, Customs and Border Protection and the Drug Enforcement Administration—and all are monitoring events to the south like hawks. An ICE-led, multiagency Border Enforcement Security Task Force that launched in El Paso in 2006 and specializes in criminal organizations has arrested more than 1,500 individuals and seized six tons of narcotics as well as countless weapons. Tangling with American authorities, says Kozak, "is not good for [the cartels'] business."

                True enough, but the United States is less insulated than some might think. According to the NDIC report, the increased bloodshed in Juárez "could spill into the [West Texas] region," since it raises the threat that drug-trafficking organizations will "confront law-enforcement officers in the United States who seek to disrupt these DTOs' smuggling operations." (The report cites several armed encounters that took place on the American side in 2006.) The cartels' tentacles already reach deep into El Paso. Local banks are full of drug money, says Claudio Morales, who heads special operations at the El Paso County Sheriff's Office. "We're one of the poorest regions along the border, yet El Paso has some of the largest cash transactions" in the country. Many cartel henchmen are known to have moved their families to the Texas city to insulate them from the carnage back home—though that still leaves the families vulnerable to kidnappers. Kids whose relatives have been killed in the violence are showing up at the Children's Grief Center of El Paso. "We have a lot of kids that are really traumatized," says executive director Laura Olague. "There's a lot of secrecy, or fear, that whoever killed their parents or loved ones would come look for them."

                Authorities, too, worry that narco leaders could order hits on city residents. "We've had that type of intel," says Kozak. Among the prime targets could be Mexican cops, who are fleeing the violence in greater numbers and seeking political asylum in the United States (such requests are rarely granted, since the laws are aimed at victims of state-sponsored persecution). For now, drug organizations prefer to abduct their quarry in the United States and spirit them across the border before harming or killing them. Kozak says that in the past year, a half-dozen kidnappings tied to narcotraffickers have taken place in El Paso. One of them involved Miguel Rueda, a convicted smuggler who failed to pay a drug debt. According to a criminal complaint filed in U.S. district court, Rueda was told to meet a former accomplice, Ricardo Calleros-Godinez, at a gas station in El Paso in February. After picking up Rueda, Calleros-Godinez allegedly pulled a gun on him, duct-taped his eyes, mouth, hands and legs, and drove him to a house in Juárez. Four or five days later, Rueda reportedly settled the debt through a transfer of family land and was freed. (He's now in Texas state prison serving a sentence on cocaine charges.)

                The criminal group that perhaps best illustrates the porousness of the border is the Barrio Azteca gang. Founded in the 1980s in state prison in El Paso, the organization now counts thousands of members in Mexico and the United States and is believed to be affiliated with the Juárez cartel. Authorities say the gang has a penchant for brutality and engages in everything from extortion to trafficking to assassination. The Barrio Aztecas are "the wild card in all this," says Samuel Camargo, a supervisory special agent with the FBI in El Paso. "That probably has the most potential for violence here"—and it's an American creation. In January, the U.S. Attorney's Office brought racketeering charges against more than a dozen of the gang's members, and a trial began in early November.

                All the talk of bloodletting has made El Pasoans warier than ever of their southern neighbors. Amity has given way to division. The turn of events anguishes Veronica Escobar, an El Paso County commissioner. Her office window overlooks Juárez, where she used to buy Christmas presents as a child and where, until this year, she used to celebrate her birthday. "I feel so sad that our sister city is struggling through this period in their history that's horrific." Just a few miles across the river in Juárez, a carpenter named Francisco (who wouldn't give his last name) lives on a hill from which he can see the lights of downtown El Paso twinkle at night. He yearns to take his children north one day. "I've had enough of this," he says. "Enough with these gangs and their ruthless rats." Residents on both sides of the border share his disgust—and his dread that the violence will never let up.

"War on terror": Can Bush's signature phrase last?

February 6, 2009

by Matt Spetalnick

Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The "decider" is gone. "Axis of evil" is out. Can "war on terror" be far behind?

As President Barack Obama moves to roll back his predecessor's rhetoric as well as his policies, the phrase that came to define George W. Bush's post-September 11 call to arms is losing ground in the war of words.

While the new administration hasn't dumped "war on terror" from its vocabulary, there are signs that use of the term has been deliberately limited as Obama seeks to repair the United States' image abroad, especially in the Muslim world.

"It may be only symbolic but it signals that Obama is serious about avoiding the kind of Bush-style foreign policy that proved so divisive," said historian David Greenberg, an expert on presidential communication at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

Bush first spoke of a "war on terror" after the September 11 attacks of 2001, turning it into his administration's shorthand for what he envisioned as a broad, U.S.-led global fight against al Qaeda and allied Islamist groups.

But the approach soon became controversial because of what international critics saw as an arrogant with-us-or-against-us philosophy overly dependent on military force and what many Muslims decried as an attack on Islam.

The 2003 invasion of Iraq, the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal and the U.S. military detention camp at Guantanamo drew more overseas criticism of Bush's policies.

Since taking office on January 20, Obama has moved swiftly to reverse some of Bush's practices, ordering the closing of Guantanamo and an end to harsh interrogation of terrorism suspects and dispatching a peace envoy to the Middle East.

He has also reached out to the Muslim world, seeing toned-down rhetoric as crucial to winning over moderates.

NO MORE "ISLAMIC FASCISTS"?

That doesn't mean "war on terror" has been banned from the new administration's lexicon. Obama, in fact, has used it once in public since taking office, and his press secretary Robert Gibbs has uttered it several times.

But the strategy is to avoid the Bush administration's broad-brush rhetoric and focus the tough talk on specific Islamist groups while making Afghanistan, not Iraq, the central battlefront.

"This president is not going to be branding anybody Islamic fascists," said Martin Medhurst, professor of rhetoric at Baylor University in Texas, referring to Bush's short-lived 2006 use of a term that deeply offended many Muslims.

Newsweek magazine reported this week that administration officials were brainstorming alternatives to "war on terror." The White House would not confirm that.

Obama and his aides have made clear, however, he wants to convey a realistic view of a long fight against terrorism and not a war without end.

So far, he has cast the battle in terms such as an "enduring struggle" and taken pains to avoid harsher rhetoric used by his predecessor. Bush, who had famously called himself the "decider," once dubbed Iran, Iraq and North Korea as an "axis of evil," a grouping critics derided and Obama rejects.

Despite that, analysts caution that if Obama stops calling the anti-terrorism fight a war altogether, he will face a conservative backlash accusing him of giving in to America's foes. "He's going to have to tread carefully," Medhurst said.

In keeping with his deliberative style, that's exactly what Obama has done. Asked about the "war on terror" phrase, Obama told CNN this week: "It is very important for us to recognize that we have a battle or a war against some terrorist organizations. But that those organizations aren't representative of a broader Arab community, Muslim community."

"Words matter in this situation because one of the ways we're going to win this struggle is through the battle of hearts and minds," he added.

And if Obama decides to decommission the phrase, he may find that words -- and acronyms -- also matter in the vast bureaucracy he now commands.

Inside the U.S. government and military, "Global War on Terror" has taken the form not just of a security operation but of a set of initials -- GWOT -- embedded in everything from news releases to internal memos.

(Editing by Patricia Wilson)

Economy Sheds 598,000 Jobs

February 6th, 2009

Financial Times, Ltd

The US economy lost more than half a million jobs in January for the third month running, figures showed, marking the deepest cut in 34 years. The number of jobs lost last month reached 598,000, while the unemployment rate – 4.4 per cent before the credit crisis — jumped to 7.6 per cent in January, its highest level since 1992. Economists had expected non-farm payrolls to drop by 525,000 and the unemployment rate to rise to 7.5 per cent, up from 7.2 per cent the month before. The total number of job losses since the recession began in December 2007 has now reached 3.6m, with half of this decline occurring during the last three months, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The number of US workers claiming unemployment benefits for the first time surpassed 600,000 last week, reaching a new 26-year high as companies continued cutting workers.

Initial jobless claims reached 626,000 in the week ending January 31, up from 591,000 the week before, labour department figures showed. The results pointed to further job losses in February and undercut an earlier report from the ADP Employer Services survey signalling that the deterioration in the labour market began to slow.

As unemployment has increased US workers have become more productive. According to government figures, productivity, excluding farmers, increased by 3.2 per cent from the third to the fourth quarter as hours worked shrank and output grew.

Meanwhile, businesses continued to cut back on spending in December as factory orders fell for the fifth straight month. Orders declined by 3.9 per cent to $362.4bn, more than economists predicted. This marked the longest streak of declining orders since records began in 1992.

Overall factory orders rose by 0.4 per cent in 2008, the weakest year since they fell by 1.8 per cent in 2002.

Cracking the case of the poison processed peanuts

February 9, 2009

by Calvin Woodward 

Associated Press

WASHINGTON - A century ago, at the dawn of food safety laws, inspection amounted to little more than opening a bin of flour and looking for something wiggly.

It's a different story now.

Solving the case of the poison processed peanuts took marathon work by federal scientists, clues in Canada, Oregon, Ohio and Connecticut, and a breakthrough in Minnesota at the hands of public health hotshots known as Team Diarrhea.

So labyrinthian has the nation's food production and distribution network become that a salmonella outbreak that has sickened 575 people in 43 states and resulted in the recall of more than 1,500 foods is traced to one plant making a mere 1 percent of the county's peanut products.

It's a far cry from 1906, year of the Pure Food and Drug Act, when Americans got most of their food from local farmers, grew some of their own and turned to processed products mainly for simple staples.

Those weren't necessarily the good old days. Shady operators packed sawdust and talcum into grains and sugar to add bulk. Toxic chemicals were used as preservatives. Much was foul and filthy before modern refrigeration and sanitation.

But when maggots munched in a sack of barley, it wasn't much of a mystery who let that happen.

In contrast, the peanut potboiler has posed a series of mysteries: a whatdunit, a whodunit, and the still-urgent question, where did it all go? Now the government has added another layer of intrigue to one of the largest recalls in history. It's accused the peanut plant of shipping products the company knew had tested positive for salmonella.

THE WHATDUNIT

A chain of events has to play out for the feds to discover an outbreak of foodborne illness. Sick people have to go to the doctor. The doctor must order tests. The lab must perform the tests correctly, then report the results to state or local authorities who must tell the federal government.

Then the real detective work begins.

The peanut case quickened the pulse of federal scientists on Nov. 12, more than a month after people started getting sick, when the federal Centers for Disease Control detected a cluster of salmonella cultures with an unusual genetic fingerprint reported from 12 states.

That was "a blinking light," Dr. Ali Khan, assistant surgeon general, told Congress.

PulseNet, a national network for finding patterns in widely dispersed foodborne bacterial illness, offered additional clues when four more states reported the cluster.

Then on Dec. 2, scientists began examining a second salmonella cluster with a similar genetic makeup, reported from 17 states. The two clusters turned out to be the same.

"December is when the alarm bells go off," Khan said.

To solve a whatdunit, public health officials need to know what type of salmonella has caused an outbreak and what food is carrying it. There are more than 2,500 kinds of salmonella, each divided into subtypes.

For a while, chicken was suspected, as well as peanut butter.

Enter Team Diarrhea.

Last year, aggressive gumshoe work by Minnesota health officials helped pinpoint hot peppers as the source of a national salmonella outbreak wrongly blamed on tomatoes.

Investigating the new outbreak, they discovered in late December that some of the patients they interviewed lived or had eaten at one of three places - a nursing home, another long-term care institution and an elementary school.

Those places shared a food distributor in North Dakota. And they had only one product in common on their shelves - an Ohio brand of peanut butter sold to institutions.

That was one eureka moment. More would come.

Minnesota officials subsequently found salmonella in an opened five-pound container of peanut butter at the nursing home. It turned out to be the same strain as the one in the outbreak.

Not everything was falling into place. The peanut butter could have been tainted at the nursing home after it was opened. Not all victims in the country had eaten at an institution. Indeed, some hadn't eaten peanut butter at all out of a jar.

Gabrielle Meunier, whose 7-year-old son Christopher spent nights in the hospital sick from the outbreak in Vermont, told lawmakers the mystery poison might have been identified much sooner if the government had a secure Web site where victims could communicate with each other.

"Had I had an opportunity to talk to other mothers whose children were sick, and compare what they had eaten, I have no doubt we could have cracked this case back in early December," she said.

The inevitable delay between someone's illness and its reporting to the feds meant that no one had an up-to-date picture at any one time.

As Khan put it: "I look at this as akin to driving while looking at the rear view mirror."

Still, the outbreak strain of salmonella typhimurium had been identified and peanuts were known to be the culprit in some way.

Leads were taking federal officials and their state counterparts across the country ever closer to the source. Only by knowing who caused this could it be stopped.

THE WHODUNIT

The tainted peanut butter found in Minnesota carried the King Nut label and that company was quickly investigated by the Food and Drug Administration, as were other suppliers to institutions. King Nut issued a precautionary recall.

This trail also led farther back to the plant that supplied the peanut butter to King Nut - the Blakely, Ga., operation of Peanut Corp. of America. An initial round of recalls was announced by Peanut Corp. The company's products leave the plant in containers of up to 1,700 pounds for peanut butter, and 35 pounds to entire tanker trucks for its peanut paste.

Those supplies go to hundreds of companies for reprocessing as ingredients in well over 1,000 foods.

In mid-January officials in Connecticut found the outbreak strain in a previously unopened jar of King Nut peanut butter, made by the Blakely plant. Federal officials say this was the first strong indication that the peanut butter was contaminated before it left the plant.

How to explain the fact that some victims hadn't eaten peanut butter in a school, at a nursing home or out of a jar at all?

Scientists were looking hard at that question. First, they determined that many victims had eaten other products containing peanut butter as an ingredient.

Then they focused on two brands of prepackaged peanut butter crackers. Both were made at one plant, and that plant had been supplied with paste by the Peanut Corp. operation.

Now the investigation had crossed borders. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency retrieved intact packages of crackers from a patient in Canada who had bought them in the U.S. A test found the outbreak strain of salmonella in the crackers.

Three more intact packages bought by a victim in Oregon were tested, too, and found to be contaminated.

One mystery solved. And rapidly unfolding events at the Blakely plant would soon settle the whodunnit.

The FDA said its inspection, ending Jan. 27, found two salmonella strains at the plant. Although different from the outbreak strain, the discovery was telling. So was the observation of roaches, mold, a leaking roof and other sanitation problems.

The government, which says the outbreak might have contributed to eight deaths, has started a criminal investigation. The company denies any wrongdoing.

WHERE IT WENT

As well as tracing the contamination back to the source, officials have to follow serpentine trails forward to try to figure out all the final destinations. The list of recalls, and possibilities, keeps growing.

Recalls now include cookies, crackers, cereal, candy, ice cream, pet treats and much more.

In addition to having its products spread through the marketplace, Peanut Corp. has been a supplier to the government.

Federal officials said Friday they are shipping 660,000 new emergency meal kits to Arkansas and Kentucky after discovering many packages they sent earlier, to help people recover from an ice storm, contained the recalled peanut butter.

The Agriculture Department said it had shipped some of the company's potentially contaminated peanut butter and peanuts to eight states, including school lunch programs in California, Minnesota and Idaho, in 2007. The department has suspended business with the company.

Also Friday the government said a closer examination of company records shows that in 2007, it shipped chopped peanuts after salmonella was confirmed by private lab tests. In other cases, officials said, the company sold products that had tested positive without waiting to receive a second round of testing that eventually came back negative.

That raised another question about Peanut Corp. executives, one familiar to Washington from its own history of political scandal: What did they know and when did they know it?

NATO Forced out of Kyrgyzstan

February 7, 2009,

russiatoday
.
            The Kyrgyzstan government’s decision to close a NATO airbase on its territory has upset Washington. Although it now needs the parliament’s and president’s approval, the closure looks a done deal.

                The Manas base in Kyrgyzstan has been used for years by the Pentagon as a major supply depot for NATO troops in Afghanistan. The Kyrgyz government has already approved the closure of the base, and the decision just needs to be ratified by the president. Judging by the mood among many politicians as well as the locals, the closures seems inevitable.

                “It's been eight years since the launch of the Manas base. At that time there was severe fighting in Afghanistan, they were using bomber air forces,” said Aybek Sultangaziev, spokesperson for the Kyrgyz Prime Minister.

                “But today the situation in Afghanistan has changed – it has its own government, president and parliament. We think the air base has accomplished its mission,” he added.

                Locals in a village near Manas say the base is harmful for the local environment. There have been incidents when US planes have jettisoned excess fuel directly onto the village.

                “We are living here and raising our children. Why do we need this US air base?” one of the villagers wonders. “We don't need it at all. We are living in a peaceful time. I remember how frightening it was when American planes were flying above our heads.”

                Some of the locals also fear that the US may engage in a war with Iran and if that were to happen, they are afraid the base might come under attack in the future.

                Washington has been using the Manas base since 2001 to provide assistance to its operations in Afghanistan. Initially it was planned that the base would have been used just for one year, but then that time was extended to eight years.

                There have been also reports of many civilian casualties in Afghanistan, and Kyrgyz authorities say they don’t want to be involved in that.

                There have also been a number of incidents near Manas between locals and foreign troops, such as fights, traffic accidents, and in the latest case an American soldier shot and killed a Kyrgyz citizen. The soldier has not yet been prosecuted because the staff of the base enjoys diplomatic immunity.

More co-worker couples losing both incomes at once

February 8, 2009

by Melissa Nelson 

Associated Press

It is a well-known risk to lack diversity in an investment portfolio. Now, couples employed by the same company are learning a similar lesson, the hard way.

As layoffs mount across the country and in all sectors, couples who are co-workers are increasingly vulnerable to losing their families' twin sources of income at once. The lack of variety in job skills can also make it difficult to bounce back, especially in a struggling industry.

Such hard times have befallen Clarkston, Mich., high school sweethearts Victor and Lauri Cox, who married in 1976 and soon took jobs at the General Motors plant; Pam Podger and John Cramer, who met as reporters at The Fresno Bee in California in 1991; and Chad and Lindsey Lewis, who prospered while selling homes for a Tampa builder but now face a more than 60 percent drop in there combined income.

                Chad Lewis said the experience "hit us really hard," forcing them to dip into savings in order to afford health insurance and other necessities. But they have found a silver lining: "There is someone there to rely on, to go through this with you."

It may seem harsh for an employer to lay off both spouses simultaneously. But companies risk lawsuits and union contract violations if they consider workers' family status in determining who to eliminate.

And whatever the financial risks, it is simply unrealistic to expect couples who fall in love on the job or while studying the same field in school to be thinking about revenue diversification, said Stephanie Coontz, a family studies professor at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash.

"I imagine that people will try to be more thoughtful about not putting all their economic eggs in the same basket, but I doubt if they will start trying to meet people outside their field just for economic reasons," Coontz said.

People searching for a lifetime partner say the idea of choosing mates based on their careers would add too much complication to an already difficult process.

"Most of the single people I know are happy just to find another single person they get along with let alone worry about what kind of job they have," said Margaret Warren, 45, a Pensacola artist and computer consultant who dates a restorer of antique automobiles.

It was a shared love of journalism that helped spark romance between Pam Podger and John Cramer.

When the Roanoke Times in Virginia began cutting costs and offering early retirements last year, the couple thought they had found safe harbor and a fresh start out West at The Missoulian, a 28,000-daily and 32,000-Sunday circulation newspaper in Missoula, Mont.

Less than 10 months later, the publisher laid them off, unsettling the new life they had begun with their two toddlers.

"Do I wish one of us had a sudden yen to go into medicine, law, business? Sure, some days," Podger said.

Podger now freelances and teaches part time, while her husband has a part-time job at a smaller paper owned by the same publisher.

Such double layoffs would have been extremely rare just a couple of generations ago.

Before the 1970s, families weathered economic downturns by sending the non-working spouse, typically wives, into the work force. But today roughly 53 percent of all married couples, and 64 percent of married couples with children under age 18, rely on two incomes, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

In theory that should have increased financial security. Instead, couples often use the extra income to buy bigger homes, nicer cars and other luxuries, said Rick Harper, director of the University of West Florida's Haas Center for Business Research.

"In the 1980s, both spouses worked and the savings rate for families went from 12 and 14 percent to essentially zero," Harper said. "In this decade, households smoothed over the rough spots by taking equity out of their homes. Now there is no equity left to take."

There are no statistics on the number of couples who have both lost jobs. Nearly 3 million jobs were eliminated last year alone. On Friday, the Labor Department said 11. 6 million were unemployed in January.

                But this deep and lengthy recession is revealing a pitfall that could not have been foreseen when high school sweethearts Victor and Lauri Cox married in 1976. They very soon landed jobs at the General Motors plant in their hometown of Clarkston, Mich., and figured they had found financial security.

For three decades, that was true. Victor Cox made good money pulling parts for shipment to dealerships worldwide. Lauri worked at a GM supplier and later at the plant. But last August they were both laid off.

                GM has since found positions for the couple at an Ohio plant, but they are the among the lowest in seniority and will be the first laid off if that plant cuts production. The stakes are considerable: the Coxes are still paying a mortgage on their Michigan home, renting a town house in Ohio and worried about their children - ages 23, 20, 17 - who are back in Michigan trying to finish school and find jobs in uncertain times.

Victor said he occasionally thinks it would might have been easier financially if his wife were a nurse or a teacher - something other than an auto worker.

"When we aren't working, we watch the news and think about whether we are going to have a job. We are hoping and praying that they (GM) don't declare bankruptcy," Victor Cox said.

Conversations with the Crow: Part 64

Editor’s note: When this series was prepared, a number of conversations were deliberately redacted because they were either very personal in nature or, more important, contained specific material which we felt might have considerable impact and present potential danger in publication. Now that all of the conversations are being readied for publication, along with illustrative specific notes, we are publishing many of the hitherto off-limits examples. Enjoy  them!

                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 a well-known Washington fix-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.

                The  small group of CIA officials gathered at Trento's house to search through the Crowley papers, looking for documents that must not become public. A few were found but, to their consternation, a significant number of files Crowley was known to have had in his possession had simply vanished.

                When published material concerning the CIA's actions against Kennedy became public in 2002, it was discovered to the CIA's horror, that the missing documents had been sent by an increasingly erratic Crowley to another person and these missing papers included devastating material on the CIA's activities in South East Asia to include drug running, money laundering and the maintenance of the notorious 'Regional Interrogation Centers' in Viet Nam and, worse still, the Zipper files proving the CIA’s active organization of the assassination of President John Kennedy..

                A massive, preemptive disinformation campaign was readied, using government-friendly bloggers, CIA-paid "historians" and others, in the event that anything from this file ever surfaced. The best-laid plans often go astray and in this case, one of the compliant historians, a former government librarian who fancied himself a serious writer, began to tell his friends about the CIA plan to kill Kennedy and eventually, word of this began to leak out into the outside world.

                The originals had vanished and an extensive search was conducted by the FBI and CIA operatives but without success. Crowley's survivors, his aged wife and son, were interviewed extensively by the FBI and instructed to minimize any discussion of  highly damaging CIA files that Crowley had, illegally, removed from Langley when he retired. Crowley had been a close friend of James Jesus Angleton, the CIA’s notorious head of Counterintelligence. When Angleton was sacked by  DCI William Colby in December of 1974, Crowley and Angleton  conspired to  secretly remove Angleton’s most sensitive secret files our of the agency. Crowley did the same thing  right before his own retirement , secretly removing thousands of pages  of classified information that covered his entire agency career.

                Known as “The Crow” within the agency, Robert T. Crowley joined the CIA at its inception and spent his entire career in the Directorate of Plans, also know as the “Department of Dirty Tricks,”: Crowley was one of the tallest man ever to work at the CIA. Born in 1924 and raised in Chicago, Crowley grew to six and a half feet when he entered the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in N.Y. as a cadet in 1943 in the class of 1946. He never graduated, having enlisted in the Army, serving in the Pacific during World War II. He retired from the Army Reserve in 1986 as a lieutenant colonel. According to a book he authored with his friend and colleague, William Corson, Crowley’s career included service in military intelligence and Naval Intelligence, before joining the CIA at inception in 1947. His entire career at the agency was spent within the Directorate of Plans in covert operations. Before his retirement, Bob Crowley became assistant deputy director for operations, the second-in-command in the Clandestine Directorate of Operations.

                One of Crowley’s first major assignments within the agency was to assist in the recruitment and management of prominent World War II Nazis, especially those with advanced intelligence experience. One of the CIA’s major recruitment coups was Heinrich Mueller, once head of Hitler’s Gestapo who had fled to Switzerland after the collapse of the Third Reich and worked as an anti-Communist expert for Masson of Swiss counterintelligence. Mueller was initially hired by Colonel James Critchfield of the CIA,  who was running the Gehlen Organization out of Pullach in southern Germany. Crowley eventually came to despise Critchfield but the colonel was totally unaware of this, to his later dismay.

                Crowley’s real expertise within the agency was the Soviet KGB. One of his main jobs throughout his career was acting as the agency liaison with corporations like ITT, which the CIA often used as fronts for moving large amounts of cash off their books. He was deeply involved in the efforts by the U.S. to overthrow the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile, which eventually got him into legal problems with regard to investigations of the U.S. government’s grand jury where he has perjured himself in an agency cover-up

After his retirement, Crowley began to search for someone who might be able to write a competent history of his career. His first choice fell on British author John Costello (author of Ten Days to Destiny, The Pacific War and other works) but, discovering that Costello was a very aggressive homosexual, he dropped him and tentatively turned to Joseph Trento who had assisted Crowley and William Corson in writing a book on the KGB. When Crowley discovered that Trento had an ambiguous and probably cooperative relationship with the CIA, he began to distrust him and continued his search for an author.

Bob Crowley first contacted Gregory Douglas  in 1993  when he found out from John Costello that Douglas was about to publish his first book on Heinrich Mueller, the former head of the Gestapo who had become a secret, long-time asset to the CIA. Crowley contacted Douglas and they began a series of long and often very informative telephone conversations that lasted for four years. . In 1996, Crowley , Crowley told Douglas  that he believed him to be the person that should ultimately tell Crowley’s story but only after Crowley’s death. Douglas, for his part, became so entranced with some of the material that Crowley began to share with him that he secretly began to record their conversations, later transcribing them word for word, planning to incorporate some, or all, of the material in later publications.

In 1998, when Crowley was slated to go into the hospital for exploratory surgery,  he had his son, Greg, ship two large foot lockers of documents to Douglas with the caveat that they were not to be opened until after Crowley’s death. These documents, totaled  an astonishing 15,000 pages of CIA classified files involving many covert operations, both foreign and domestic, during the Cold War.

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.

                All of this furor eventually came to the attention of Dr. Peter Janney, a Massachusetts clinical psychologist and son of Wistar Janney, another career senior CIA official, colleague of not only Bob Crowley but Cord Meyer, Richard Helms, Jim Angleton and others. Janney was working on a book concerning the murder of Mary Pinchot Meyer, former wife of Cord Meyer, a high-level CIA official, and later the mistress of President John F. Kennedy.  Douglas had authored a book, ‘Regicide’ which dealt with Crowley’s part in the Kennedy assassination and he obviously had access to at least some of Crowley’s papers. Janney was very well connected inside the CIA’s higher levels and when he discovered that Douglas had indeed known, and had often spoken with, Crowley and that after Crowley’s death, the FBI had descended on Crowley’s widow and son, warning them to never speak with Douglas about anything, he contacted Douglas and finally obtained from him a number of original documents, including the originals of the transcribed conversations with Robert Crowley.

                In spite of the burn bags, the top secret safes and the vigilance of the CIA to keep its own secrets, the truth has an embarrassing and often very fatal habit of emerging, albeit decades later.

                While CIA drug running , money-launderings and brutal assassinations are very often strongly rumored and suspected, it has so far not been possible to actually pin them down but it is more than possible that the publication of the transcribed and detailed Crowley-Douglas conversations will do a great deal towards accomplishing this.

                These many transcribed conversations are relatively short because Crowley was a man who tired easily but they make excellent reading. There is an interesting admixture of shocking revelations on the part of the retired CIA official and often rampant anti-social (and very entertaining) activities on the part of Douglas but readers of this new and on-going series are gently reminded to always look for the truth in the jest!

Conversation No. 64

Date: Sunday, June 30, 1996

Commenced: 2:11 PM CST

Concluded: 2:23 PM CST

GD: Good  afternoon, Robert.

RTC: Gregory. How does it go with you?

GD: I got a nasty letter from my wife today. For some reason, she wants me to send her money. I havenʼt seen her in eighteen years but she still feels I owe her something.

RTC: Are you divorced?
GD:L No Sheʼs a fanatic Catholic and that is not to be discussed. I couldnʼt take her so I left. Sorry about that./ Mass three times a day, seven days a week. Her priest told me she was crazy. Her father told me, once he got to know me, that if he had known me better earlier, he would have warned me off.

RTC: He is with us?

GD: My father-in-law? No, the Admiral died seven years ago. I liked him but as pretty as his daughter was, I couldnʼt stand the fanatic religious face she finally revealed to me. Wanted to bring the boy up as a priest but I talked him out of it. More reason to hate me. He wanted to be a police detective so I called up the local police commissioner, who was a friend of mine, and got him a job. Now he runs the biggest private law enforcement computer system in Germany. Ah, the stories he could tell. Well, he, at least, likes me. He told me he would have taken off the way I did and does not hold this against me. He told her to shove it and left. My God, the bitch ranted at me for a week about that. I mean I was over here but she got onto the phone and I finally had to change my number. Women, Robert, are either at your feet or at your throat. My first wife was very attractive but she married me for money and when I wouldnʼt cut loose any of it for her worthless family, she made my life miserable and took off. I envy you your stable, peaceful domestic life, believe me. Moved her hippo mother in, cats shitting all over the kitchen, screaming, filthy underwear in the bathroom and so on. They were doing some insulation work on the apartment and I stuck a load of angel hair spun glass insulation into her bras and panties. There she was, scratching herself frantically in public. That stuff is wonderful. I put some in my dadʼs gold socks once and his feet looked like cured hams after 18 holes in the hot sun. Anyway, she left and I swore I would never marry again but I did. I thought with the little head and not the big one.

RTC: Yes, my life is placid and comforting, Gregory, but yours must have been something a psychiatrist would have delighted in.

GD: I should have taken her out on the boat and chunked her over somewhere. I didnʼt but I should have. The second one was even better looking that the first but she was a religious nut. I have met Protestant nuts but not many Catholic ones. It was my luck to marry one. She hid it, of course, but once we were legally wed, the evil secret emerged. I was going to buy her knee pads to keep her from getting callous pads like a camel. Well, I really think I ought to be nicer to my hand. My latest one is just eighteen and very good looking. I am putting her through law school and she will probably leave me but for the time being, all is relative happiness. Unlike the others, this one is very intelligent  so we can talk. Trying to get her interested in classical music. Not ʽA Weekend With Bachʼ or ʽCouperin on the Jewsʼ Harpʼ but the real thing. God knows, I have at least a thousand recordings to assuage me in my old age and she is actually beginning to listen to some of them. Well, one hopes but probably in vain.

RTC: This must be your day to confess your sins, Gregory.

GD: Not my sins but the sins of others. My current one started life in a trailer park but has moved outward and upward. Pretty soon, sheʼll realize her potential and she will go on to better things but right now, all is fine.

RTC: Bring her with you back here, why not?

GD: This one could charm the socks off the statue of Lincoln. What a politician she would make. Well, enough domestic tranquility. I sent you the latest manuscript on Mueller so once you and Bill have read it, why not give me your comments. For better or worse. I would send it over to Langley but it would take those stone lawn dwarves a year to get past the second page. Well, the bell just went off on the oven so the roast baby is probably ready for the table.

RTC: I hope you are jesting, Gregory. If they are listening, you might have unexpected visitors.

GD: Oh yes, about a month after they hear this. At any rate, enjoy yourself and Iʼll get back to you tomorrow.

(Concluded at 2:23 PM CST)

Zionism versus Bolshevism.

A Struggle for the Soul of the Jewish People

February 8, 1920

by the Rt. Hon. Winston S. Churchill.

Illustrated Sunday Herald

International Jews.

In violent opposition to all this sphere of Jewish effort rise the schemes of the International Jews. The adherents of this sinister confederacy are mostly men reared up among the unhappy populations of countries where Jews are persecuted on account of their race. Most, if not all, of them have forsaken the faith of their forefathers, and divorced from their minds all spiritual hopes of the next world. This movement among the Jews is not new. From the days of Spartacus- Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, and down to Trotsky (Russia), Bela Kun (Hungary), Rosa Luxembourg (Germany), and Emma Goldman (United States), this world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilisation and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing. It played, as a modern writer, Mrs. Webster, has so ably shown, a definitely recognisable part in the tragedy of the French Revolution. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the Nineteenth Century; and now at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their heads and have become practically the undisputed masters of that enormous empire.

Terrorist Jews.

There is no need to exaggerate the part played in the creation of Bolshevism and an the actual bringing about of the Russian Revolution: by these international and for the most part atheistical Jews. It is certainly a very great one; it probably outweighs all others. With the notable exception of Lenin, the majority of the leading figures are Jews. Moreover, the principal inspiration and driving power comes from the Jewish leaders. Thus Tchitcherin, a pure Russian, is eclipsed by his nominal subordinate Litvinoff, and the influence of Russians like Bukharin or Lunacharski cannot be compared with the power of Trotsky, or of Zinovieff, the Dictator of the Red Citadel (Petrograd), or of Krassin or Radek -- all Jews. In the Soviet institutions the predominance of Jews is even more astonishing. And the prominent, if not indeed the principal, part in the system of terrorism applied by the Extraordinary Commissions for Combating Counter-Revolution has been taken by Jews, and in some notable cases by Jewesses.

The same evil prominence was obtained by Jews in the brief period of terror during which Bela Kun ruled in Hungary. The same phenomenon has been presented in Germany (especially in Bavaria), so far as this madness has been allowed to prey upon the temporary prostration of the German people. Although in all these countries there are many non-Jews every whit as bad as  the worst of the Jewish revolutionaries, the part played by the latter in proportion to their numbers in the population is astonishing

The Root Causes of the Mid-East Conflicts

February 8, 2009

by Kyle Plonsky

                With the savage Israeli bombing and artillery attack on the civilian population of Gaza under the specious excuse of “anti-terrorist” actions, there are very few people, outside of Israel, who actually understand the underlying reasons for this decades-long and very bloody struggle between Israel and all of her Arab neighbors. Many historians are, in fact, well aware of the underlying  factors but few, if any, would dare to discuss them in light of the savage retaliation that would immediately be visited upon them by pro-Israeli entities.

Forced out of Roman-controlled Judea by the Romans following a long and bloody series of revolts, internal massacres and destructive activities, the Jews were eventually expelled from Judea and went to reside in various places such as Alexandria, Egypt.

                These deportees are today known as Sephardic Jews and are the descendants of the original Semitic inhabitants of Judea.

                Another, larger, group of Jews are called Ashkenazi and are the direct descendents of the Khazar tribes of Central Asia. Originally nomadic peoples, the Khazars were located on the west bank of the Caspian Sea, noted for their savage behavior and in about 700 AD, were converted by their king to Judaism.

                Defeated by the Russians, the Khazars spread to Russia, what is now Poland and other eastern European areas. They are not Semitic by background and today, 95% of the citizens of Israel are descended from these nomads, which were composed of Mongols, the occasional Swedish rus or Viking and other diverse ethnic groups.

                The oft-repeated claim by Israel that they were the original inhabitants of Judea or Palestine is, from a historical point of view, entirely false.

                Modern Zionism was the creation of Theodor Herzl (1860-1904) a Hungarian Jewish writer who advocated a Jewish state in Palestine. That the area was occupied, as it had been for thousands of years, by Arabs, themselves of Semitic origins, did not seem to bother the modern Zionists at all.

                Following the end of the Second World War when huge masses of Eastern European Jews had been displaced from their countries in Poland, the Baltic states, Hungry, Romania, Greece, Germany, Austria and other European countries, they decided to move to Palestine and form their own state.

                From 1944 through 1948, the entire area was subject to a literal reign of terror as large groups of DPs (Displaced Persons) descended on Palestine, wreaking havoc on the area. Murders, kidnappings, bombings, counterfeiting, bank robberies, blowing up hotels full of people and drive-by shootings were commonplace.

Eventually, the disruptions proved to be too much for the British, who occupied Palestine after the First World War and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire which once controlled it, withdrew and in 1948, the state of Israel was proclaimed.

                A detailed chronicle of these events was prepared by the United Nations in 1948 and covers the period from November 6, 1944 through September 17, 1948 and is a concise and very detailed coverage of the events in Palestine. It is far too long to post but can be found, in its entirely, at:http://www.tbrnews.org/Archives/a1973.htm#002

                To anyone not conversant with this detailed background, who wonders why the Palestinians, and later the entire Arab Middle East world hates Israel, a study of the UN report immediately puts the motivating factors behind the long-ongoing bloodshed in accurate perspective.

What is past is certainly prologue.

Year and region where Jews have been expelled since 250 A.D.

YEAR                                          PLACE

250 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  Carthage
415 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  Alexandria
554 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  Diocese of Clement (France)
561 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  Diocese of Uzzes (France)
612 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  Visigoth Spain
642 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  Visigoth Empire
855 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  Italy
876 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  Sens
1012 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Mainz
1182 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - France
1182 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Germany
1276 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Upper Bavaria
1290 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - England
1306 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - France
1322 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - France (again)
1348 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Switzerland
1349 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Hielbronn (Germany)
1349 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Saxony
1349 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Hungary
1360 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Hungary
1370 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Belgium
1380 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Slovakia
1388 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Strasbourg
1394 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Germany
1394 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - France
1420 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Lyons
1421 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Austria
1424 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Fribourg
1424 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Zurich
1424 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Cologne
1432 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Savoy
1438 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Mainz
1439 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Augsburg
1442 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Netherlands
1444 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Netherlands
1446 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Bavaria
1453 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - France
1453 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Breslau
1454 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Wurzburg
1462 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Mainz
1483 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Mainz
1484 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Warsaw
1485 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Vincenza (Italy)
1492 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Spain
1492 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Italy
1495 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Lithuania
1496 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Naples
1496 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Portugal
1498 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Nuremberg
1498 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Navarre
1510 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Brandenberg
1510 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Prussia
1514 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Strasbourg
1515 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Genoa
1519 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Regensburg
1533 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Naples
1541 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Naples
1542 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Prague & Bohemia
1550 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Genoa
1551 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Bavaria
1555 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Pesaro
1557 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Prague
1559 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Austria
1561 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Prague
1567 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Wurzburg
1569 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Papal States
1571 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Brandenburg
1582 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Netherlands
1582 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Hungary
1593 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Brandenburg, Austria
1597 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Cremona, Pavia & Lodi
1614 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Frankfort
1615 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Worms
1619 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Kiev
1648 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Ukraine
1648 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Poland
1649 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Hamburg
1654 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Little Russia (Beylorus)
1656 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Lithuania
1669 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Oran (North Africa)
1669 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Vienna
1670 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Vienna
1712 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Sandomir
1727 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Russia
1738 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Wuertemburg
1740 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Little Russia (Beylorus)
1744 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Prague, Bohemia
1744 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Slovakia
1744 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Livonia
1745 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Moravia
1753 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Kovad (Lithuania)
1761 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Bordeaux
1772 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Deported from Imperial Russia to the Pale of Settlement (Poland/Russia)
1775 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Warsaw
1789 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Alsace
1804 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Villages in Russia
1808 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Villages & Countrysides (Russia)
1815 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Lübeck & Bremen
1815 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Franconia, Swabia & Bavaria
1820 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Bremen
1843 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Russian Border Austria & Prussia
1862 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Areas in the U.S. under General Grant's Jurisdiction
1866 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Galatz, Romania
1880s - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Russia
1891 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Moscow
1919 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Bavaria (foreign- born Jews)

1920-1938-- - - - - - - - - - - -  Poland (emigrated Polish-born Jews)
1938-45 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - German Controlled Areas

1941-44-- - - - - - - - - - - - - - France

1944-- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  Hungary
1948 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Arab Countries

1948-51 -- - - - - - - - - - - - -   Forced deportation of Jewish Polish DPs from Germany by US military

Does Israel have its back against the wall?
A conflict with Turkey would mean the suicide of Israel 
February 5, 2009

by Ahmet Turan Ayhan 

                Israel lost the war in Lebanon in 2006 in military aspects and lost the war in Gaza (2008) in ethical aspects. If we consider domestic politics in Israel, it seems as though political parties will not meet their expectations in terms of collecting votes. Maybe Israel will achieve the political aims it has planned in the short term, but it will suffer because of its image as a “murderer state” in the long term. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan communicatively expressed “the truth that all the people on the planet agree on” to Israeli President Shimon Peres in Davos. Actually his reaction to the Israeli president in Davos created a bigger impression than leaving the Davos meeting. In diplomatic language, the phone call made by Israeli President Peres to Erdoğan indicating that he was not offended by what happened can only be evaluated as the desire to shift from the image of a “murderer state” to a more personal one. We should underscore that predictions about the future that await Israel are not definite. Israel incited the reaction of the world with the barbarian slaughter it carried out, and it appears that Israel’s propaganda, which deliberatively reduces Gaza to “Hamas,” cannot be handled even by Nobel Peace Prize winner Peres.

                As long as Israel does not trigger a new process after the crime against humanity it committed in Gaza, it will start to eat up its own energy internally. Above all, a political crisis with Turkey in this period would mean the suicide of Israel. The Israeli policy that drives the country forward is its friction with “radical Iran” and its challenges against Iran. So, a conflict with Prime Minister Erdoğan, who takes initiative for stability and peace in the region and who has become one of the most respected leaders in the world — a conflict with Turkey — would be the end of Israel’s survival strategy in the region. Can Israel take such risk, which may cause it to turn from a country that holds the initiative and produces policy into a country that is shaped by others’ policies? Essentially the situation is that. At this stage, it should be stated that Israel may find itself in such a situation whether it wants to or not, since international developments that are likely to take place imply that this may take place. Peres’ phone call to Erdoğan to express his sorrow over what happened was not for nothing. The thing that Peres could not handle, more than Erdoğan’s personality, was the strength and success of Turkish diplomacy under the leadership of Erdoğan.

Toxic Gases Caused World's Worst Extinction

February. 4, 2009

by Michael Reilly,

Discovery News

An ancient killer is hiding in the remote forests of Siberia. Scientists are starting to uncover the remnants of a supervolcano, that was walled off from western eyes during the Soviet era and that rained Hell on Earth 250 million years ago, killing 90 percent of all life.

Researchers have known about the volcano -- the Siberian Traps, for years. And they've speculated that the volcanic rocks, which cover an area about the size of Alaska, played a role in runaway global warming that led to the end -- Permian mass extinction, the worst dying the planet has ever seen.

Now a team of researchers led by Henrik Svenson of the University of Oslo in Norway have performed a series of experiments, showing the volcano employed an arsenal of deadly weapons during its 200,000-year-long assault on the biosphere.

Prime among them was carbon. Searing magmas from the volcano intruded into the Tunguska Basin in eastern Siberia, a region laden with thick deposits of coal, oil and gas. Heat from the molten rock baked the hydrocarbons, turning the area into the world's largest fossil fuel-burning plant. In all, the volcano may have belched as much as 100,000 gigatons of carbon into the air (all of humanity emits about eight gigatons of carbon annually).

That's more than enough to cause a global climate apocalypse. But the team also wanted to know what happened when lava infiltrated the area's abundant salt deposits. When heated in a laboratory to 275 degrees Centigrade (527 degrees Fahrenheit), the salts released a host of toxic gases, chief among them methyl chloride, an efficient ozone-killer.

"This is the first geologically realistic evidence that ozone collapse during the end-Permian could have actually happened," Svenson said.

But there is still a lot of uncertainty surrounding the findings, Linda Elkins-Tanton of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said.

"There is evidence of a large number of genetic mutations in the fossil record around this time," she said, which could be the result of an onslaught of ultraviolet radiation due to a weak ozone layer. "But the idea of ozone destroyers is pretty new. The question is whether or not the eruptions were powerful enough to inject gases into the stratosphere."

The answer may come from close examination of hundreds of pipe-like structures strewn throughout the Tunguska Basin. Often 300 meters (984 feet) in diameter, the pipes are believed to be ancient volcanic craters left over after the lethal mix of carbon and chlorine gases exploded into the atmosphere.