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, 3105 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  (The Voice is on a short vacation and will return on Thursday. Ed.)

Racial strife in the Caribbean! Britons flee French island of Guadeloupe as rioters turn on white families

February 19  2009

Mail Foreign Service

Britons are among thousands of tourists fleeing Guadeloupe after full scale urban warfare erupted on the French Caribbean island.

Trouble broke out on the island earlier last month after protesters began rioting over high prices and low wages.

But the situation escalated this week after protesters began turning on rich white families as they demanded an end to colonial control of the economy.

The troubles come at the height of the holiday season, with thousands of mainly British, French and American tourists on the paradise tropical island.

                Guadeloupe descends into full-scale urban warfare after demonstrators riot over low wages and white control of the island's economy

Violence has escalated on the Caribbean island as protesters turn their attention to rich white families who they blame for their poor standard of living

Protesters were now targeting 'all white people', with the media in mainland France describing the situation as virtual civil war'.

Guadeloupe is a French overseas department ruled directly from Paris, and authorities in France have sent 300 extra riot police to the island in a bid to quell the violence.

Meanwhile, hundreds of protesters are roaming the streets of the capital Point-a-Pitre, looting shops and restaurants, burning cars and vandalising public buildings.

Holiday resorts along the coast have hired extra security to protect tourists, while the airport is jammed with visitors now trying to get out of the country.

Union leader Jacques Bino was the first man to die in the violence when he was caught in crossfire on Tuesday while driving a car near a roadblock manned by armed youths who had opened fire at police.

Six members of the security forces were injured during shoot-outs with the armed youths as they tried to help emergency teams who were trying to save Mr Bino's life.

Dozens more police and demonstrators have also been hurt in frequent clashes on the capital's streets - which one newspaper describing it as looking like a battlefield'.

Protesters ransacked shops and torched cars as the island descends into full-scale urban warfare

Most shops, banks, schools and government offices are now shut in Guadeloupe and the neighbouring French tourist island of Martinique - where protests are also mounting.

Guadeloupe's socialist opposition leader Malikh Boutih said: 'It is shocking to watch a police force which is almost 100 per cent white confront a population which is 100 per cent black.

'All the same elements of the riots on mainland France in 2005 are present here.

                'We don't have the same concrete buildings, there are palm trees instead, but it's the same dead-end, the same "no future" for young people, with joblessness and a feeling of isolation.' 

The first protests began a month ago when the left-wing union coalition, the Collective Against Exploitation, demanded a £180 a month pay increase for low-wage earners. 

President Nicolas Sarkozy sent his minster for overseas departments to the island to meet with union leaders on response to the demands.

But the racial tensions which have been simmering for decades exploded into full-scale rioting, with colonial descendants who own 90 per cent of the wealth becoming the focus of the violence.

The unrest was further aggravated last week when wealthy white landowner Alain Huyghues-Despointes publicly criticised mixed-race marriages and said he preferred to 'preserve his race'.

In Paris, the violence has provoked divisions in Mr Sarkozy's cabinet with black minister Rachida Data acknowledging that Guadeloupe suffered from 'a problem with the distribution of wealth'.

Laetitia Delaprade, spokeswoman at Voyages Antillais, a Paris-based travel agency that specialises in French Caribbean, said: 'People are scared. No one wants to go there and those that are there want to get out.'

Tourism Authority chief Madeleine de Grandmaison said: 'Tourism is fragile. People are not only cancelling this week, but also for all the months of February, March and April.

'We have a huge deficit of tourists ahead of us. At least 10,000 tourists have cancelled vacations in Martinique and Guadeloupe.'

Authorities struggle to contain the anarchy which has swept across the island

                The Paris-based Association of Tour Operators has now classified Guadeloupe as a 'red zone', meaning it is not endorsing it as a destination.  

A spokesman said: 'Most holidaymakers to Guadeloupe are British, American and mainland French.

'None have been hurt yet but there is the threat of violence in the air and staying there no longer feels comfortable.' 

Guadeloupe's Tourism Committee said that the main airport had also been temporarily closed yesterday because of a lack of workers, but had now reopened.

A spokesman added: 'It is very busy. Every flight leaving the island is is full.'

Unrest in Caribbean has roots in slavery past

February 22, 2009

by Jonathan M. Katz and Danica Coto 

Associated Press

POINTE-A-PITRE, Guadeloupe - Protests that have nearly shut down the French Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique are not just about demands for lower prices and higher wages: For demonstrators they are no less than a battle against the vestiges of slavery.

Afro-Caribbean islanders - most of whose forbears toiled in the sugarcane fields under the yoke of slavery more than 160 years ago - not only resent France's handling of the global economic crisis, they have long resented that slaveholders' descendants control the economy on both islands.

They also suspect that businesses earn too high a profit on goods, most of which are imported.

This resentment against slaveholder descendants, known as bekes (bay-KAY) has lent an especially sharp edge to weeks of demonstrations that at times have erupted in gunfire, arson, looting, and the death of one activist in Guadeloupe.

"They've got the money, they've got the power, they've got Guadeloupe," snapped protester Lollia Naily. "This is not a race thing. It is a money thing and it is a power thing."

Protesters in Martinique also have rejected the bekes, with frequent chants of "Martinique is ours, not theirs!" Bekes own most industries in Martinique - but represent only about 1 percent of the island's 401,000 residents.

Deep economic and social disparities divide France from its overseas possessions: Unemployment in Guadeloupe is about 23 percent, compared with 8 percent on mainland France, and 12 percent of islanders live in poverty, compared with 6 percent of mainlanders, according to the most recent statistics.

The conflict extends beyond the Caribbean: Islanders living in mainland France are relegated to low-level jobs and are absent from senior positions in business, the military and government, revealing a "color fracture in French society," said Patrick Lozes, head of the Representative Council of Black Associations.

Islanders demand that France treat them as equals - wherever they are living - and question why food is more expensive here than on the mainland.

"My ID says I'm French," said 28-year-old Philippe Delag. "Guadeloupe is part of France."

The island certainly looks the part: French flags fly from government buildings, and tiny Citroens and Peugeots whiz along well-maintained highways. Residents switch easily from Creole to French in conversations.

On one concrete median divider in Guadeloupe is the spray-painted message, "We want 200 euros," reflecting protesters' demands for a 200-euro ($250) monthly raise for low-paid workers, who now make roughly euro900 ($1,130) a month.

The French government, which has insisted that any salary increases must come from the private sector, announced it could provide extra government benefits totaling nearly euro200 ($250) extra a month for low-income workers.

And both sides in Martinique have reached an agreement that would lower prices on 100 products by 20 percent. Protest leaders and government officials are still negotiating to lower the costs of housing, gasoline, water and electricity.

But the problems extend beyond economics, protesters say.

Serge Romana, president of an association that commemorates the abolition of slavery in the French territories, said French President Nicolas Sarkozy "must absolutely abolish all traces of neocolonialism and vestiges of slavery in the overseas regions."

Sarkozy himself - who raised islanders' hackles when as interior minister in 2005 he endorsed a bill requiring textbooks to recognize the "positive role" of colonialism - acknowledged last week that old wounds still fester.

"I know the feeling of injustice that you have, given the inequalities and the discrimination," the president said in a television appearance on Thursday aimed at quelling the unrest. "How can we justify monopolies, overly high profits ... and, why not say it, forms of exploitation that should not have any place in the 21st century?"

In Paris, thousands of people took to the streets on Saturday to show their support for striking workers and to pay homage to Jacques Bino, the labor-union activist killed in Guadeloupe last week.

Despite such signs of solidarity, most of France doesn't understand the islanders' demands, Lozes said.

"They don't see it as a demand for justice, but rather as a demand for charity," he said.

Jean-Luc de Laguarigue, a beke, said tensions have festered over generations because France and its islands have not explored the painful past. He said he knows of no slavery museum in France. The subject is generally taboo in schools.

But Laguarigue insisted that bekes no longer represent power and colonial force, and suggested that the islands - not Paris - should decide what is best for them.

The protests are "not a call for war, but for dignity," he said.

On Sunday, mourners dressed in white packed a gymnasium in the cane-growing town of Petit-Canal to hear poems about struggle and rousing songs in homage to Bino, the dead labor-union activist, whose body has been displayed in an open casket on the island for two days.

"We want respect," said Adele Goram, 50, an islander from a nearby town who attended. "We live in France and there should be no difference between France and Guadeloupe."

Several islanders blame the arrival of 450 French riot police for the violence that has erupted during protests - and say it shows how France treats the islands like colonies.

Martinican painter and intellectual Victor Permal described Paris' proposals as "general and blurry" and criticized the decision to send force, saying France has often overreacted when problems arise on the islands.

"The people are starting to gain a clear notion of what belongs to them," Permal said. "So they become conscious that it is not France who should define their path and needs."

--

Danica Coto reported from San Juan, Puerto Rico. Associated Press writers Jenny Barchfield and Dheepthi Namasivayam in Paris contributed to this report.

Editorial

The Government and the Banks

February 21, 2009

New York Times

Bank stocks plunged last week on fears that the government will have to take over battered institutions like Citigroup and Bank of America. That would wipe out the banks’ shareholders — hence, investors’ rush for the exits — and put the government in control of a swath of the financial system. Americans have a visceral horror of the word nationalization. So call it restructuring or majority ownership. Or call it the taxpayers’ due after pouring in hundreds of billions of dollars in capital and guarantees and standing ready to pour in hundreds of billions more. We increasingly believe it is the least bad solution to a truly desperate situation.

Bank losses are mounting, leaving some institutions undercapitalized and — by credible calculations — insolvent. That is a disaster for taxpayers. They need the banks to function, and it is their money on the line to support banks that are too big to fail, like Citi and BofA.

Rescue measures have so far prevented a system-wide meltdown, but they have not reversed the downward slide or revived bank lending. That will not happen until investors have a firm grasp of the losses that everyone knows are on banks’ books — but that the banks are loath to acknowledge.

Done right, a takeover would be a once-and-for-all fix. The government would examine the banks’ holdings to get a realistic assessment of the toxic assets that are crippling the banks — and how much capital each bank needs, not only to survive but to begin lending again.

Institutions that are healthy enough to raise the needed capital from private investors would remain in shareholders’ hands. Those that are too weak would be taken over by the government and recapitalized with taxpayer money. The government would be in charge of restructuring those banks’ finances and operations. Current management would be fired — an appropriate end for executives whose failures have brought their companies and the country to this dark and dangerous point. Because taxpayers would be the owners, they would benefit from the gains to be had when the banks recover.

Critics will charge that government bureaucrats do not have the skills to pull this off. But the United States has a successful history of seizing insolvent banks through the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. The takeovers contemplated here are larger in scale and would be more complex than those that have generally fallen under the F.D.I.C.’s purview. But the notion that the government totally lacks the know-how to nationalize insolvent banks is not valid.

Safeguards must also be built into the process to curtail political meddling in lending and other decisions.

The aim is to clean up the banks efficiently, rather than allow the problems to become bigger, and then — as soon as possible — to sell the banks back to private investors. They will be smaller institutions. And there will be proper regulations in place to ensure that this catastrophe does not happen again.

Taking over big failed banks will be very difficult politically. But technically it could be easier than many of the elaborate rescues that have been tried and proposed.

On Friday, President Obama’s spokesman tried to calm the markets by reaffirming the administration’s preference for a sound privately owned banking system. We share that preference. But it looks as if the best way to get from here to there is for some of the banks to spend some time in the government’s hands.

Truck traffic revives interest in marine shipping

February 22, 2009

by Stevem Szkotak 

Associated Press

NORFOLK, Va. - An idea that dates to Lewis and Clark's trek west is experiencing a rebirth thanks to the truck traffic that increasingly chokes highways: shift more of the nation's freight burden to boats that can traverse rivers, lakes, canals and coastal waters.

Increased concerns about fuel prices and global warming in recent years have revived interest in marine highways from the Erie Canal to the Chesapeake Bay to the coastal waters off Oregon, Massachusetts and Texas.

Proponents envision further expansion of the country's 25,000 miles of navigational waterways by making greater use of the coasts and inland routes, such as the St. Lawrence Seaway, the Great Lakes and the Mississippi and Ohio rivers.

significant expansion of the marine highway system faces several obstacles:

- Many locks haven't been updated in decades to accommodate increased freight traffic. Replacing the nation's lock system would cost an estimated $125 billion.

- A harbor maintenance tax that can add $100 or more on an international cargo container shipped domestically by water. The tax is not collected on cargo moved by trucks or rail, or on U.S. exports.

- The scarcity of U.S. ships to serve domestic ports along short-sea routes. Some blame a federal law that limits shipping between domestic ports to U.S.-built vessels whose crews are at least 75 percent American, a restriction intended to protect U.S. shipbuilders but which critics say has contributed to the industry's decline by stifling innovation.

Despite these infrastructure and regulatory constraints, entrepreneurs are charting a way forward, one tugboat trip at a time.

Ed Whitmore spent 11 years on Wall Street before returning to his native Virginia six years ago for the rough-and-tumble life of a tugboat operator. He took a "broken down, beat-up company" with one belching tug and grew Norfolk Tug Co. into a fleet of 10.

With the help of a $2.3 million federal grant, Norfolk Tug has made once-a-week runs up the James River since December 2008, delivering cargo from oceangoing vessels to the Port of Richmond. Each container loaded on a barge removes one truck from the 90-mile stretch along Interstate 64. Whitmore estimates his business removes roughly 4,000 trucks from I-64 each year.

"It's important to drive an initiative like this forward," said Whitmore, whose French cuffs hark to his days in structured finance.

The "64 Express" already has captured a tiny piece of packaging maker MeadWestvaco Corp.'s huge shipping portfolio. Large rolls of paper from its Covington mill in far western Virginia are trucked to the Port of Richmond and Whitmore's barges for export from the coast.

Lawmakers from coastal states and along likely inland routes such as the Mississippi River and the Great Lakes favor short-sea shipping as a means to economic development and job creation.

"In a day and age when we're trying to save energy and reduce pollution and we're trying to take some of the clutter off our highways, it just makes sense to do it," said Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, D-Md.

The rail and trucking industries don't pay much mind to their much smaller shipping counterpart, though they don't want to see it grow as a result of public policy. "The market should govern how short-sea shipping is used," said Clayton W. Boyce, a spokesman for American Trucking Associations.

Before the development of a national rail system and later an interstate highway system, nearly all the country's goods were shipped on boats. Today, 94 percent of all domestic freight moves on rail or by truck. But not without some cost.

Congestion on roads and rails costs the U.S. economy as much as $200 billion a year and 44 billion person hours, according to the Transportation Department.

One 15-barge tow removes 1,050 tractor-trailers from the highways. And with just a gallon of diesel, a barge can move one ton of cargo 576 miles. A rail car using the same amount of fuel moves that ton of cargo 413 miles, while a truck gets only 155 miles.

Short-sea shipping advocates also point to a strong safety and environmental record.

In 2005 and 2006, spill rates were 6 gallons per 1 million ton-miles for trucks, 3.86 gallons for rail, and 3.6 gallons for barges, according to a Texas Transportation Institute study conducted for federal transportation officials.

When accidents do occur on water, the impact tends to be large. In July, a tug on the Mississippi near New Orleans veered into the path of a tanker, causing a rupture that spilled 283,000 gallons of oil and shut the waterway for days.

The economic stimulus package passed by Congress included $27 billion for road-building projects and $12 billion for rail and other infrastructure improvements - but not a nickel was specifically directed at short-sea shipping.

                Proponents of funding for marine highways, including the chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn., say their next best opportunity will be the debate on the fiscal 2010 federal budget.

For the time being, Chris Osen, vice president of supply management for MeadWestvaco, said his company's commitment to short-sea shipping is based on pragmatism, with an undercurrent of idealism.

"Everything we do has to be the most cost advantageous to us," he said. The company will select a "green route, if all things are equal."

Europe Ignores Obama's Demands for More Troops in Afghanistan  

February 20, 2009

by Matthew Day / Ben Farmer /James Kirkup

The Telegraph/UK

LONDON - Washington had hoped to persuade European allies to contribute more in the wake of the President Barack Obama's election and the announcement this week of the deployment of 17,00 extra American soldiers.

                ---American defense secretary Robert Gates condemned their failure to do so far as "disappointing" with European states promising to deploy no more than just a few hundred extra troops.

Speaking before a meeting of NATO defense ministers in the Polish city of Kraków, Mr Gates said member states must send reinforcements in preparation for the Afghan presidential elections in August.

However in a sign commanders had resigned themselves to receiving few extra combat troops, the NATO chief stressed the need for help in less controversial and safer police training missions.

Jaap de Hopp Scheffer, NATO's secretary general, refrained from calling for more combat troops, explaining that the organization should play a greater role in nation building.

He said: "NATO should give the Afghan authorities an army and police that allow them to take on their responsibilities. The sooner we can finish training the army and police, the sooner the Afghan authorities can take over running their own country."

A resigned Mr Gates conceded that this could be the best America could get from its allies."I guess it will make life easier for those member states that have problems about committing combat troops," he said.

Such a deal would allow European governments to say they are committed to the struggle in Afghanistan but without upsetting public opinion.

Washington has long been frustrated at Europe's lackluster response to repeated American calls for greater assistance.

With public opposition to the Afghan war hardening across Europe, and disquiet in many European capitals over a command structure in Afghanistan that keeps the vast bulk of the 55,000-strong American force separate from NATO, few expect any member to commit significant additional forces.

Poland, which has over 1,000 troops on combat operations in Afghanistan and been a vocal supporter of deployment, also lent its support.

John Hutton, the Defense Secretary, said the UK was considering sending more troops to Afghanistan, but insisted Britain was "playing above our weight" and the onus was on European NATO members to increase their presence. Britain has 8,300 troops in Afghanistan, more than any other European country.

"Our view has always been very clear that Nato needs to do more, the European members of NATO need to do more," he said.

"There needs to be a fairer burden-sharing of responsibilities, particularly in those really hard areas where what we need are combat forces."

He also echoed growing US criticism of Hamid Karzai's government, demanding "change and improvement in Kabul".

"There's no doubt at all that the government in Kabul needs to do more," Mr Hutton said.

"It needs to tackle the problem about corruption, it needs to deal with the problem about drugs which is a poison in Afghan society and making it very difficult for good governance to take hold across the country."

The summit got under way as the Kyrgyzstan parliament voted to close the last remaining US airbase in central Asia.

Some 15,000 American troops and 500 tons of supplies pass through the Manas base each month on the way to and from Afghanistan.

But officials in Kyrgyzstan backed a presidential decree which means the Americans will have to leave within 180 days - after which Russia will take over. Russia recently agreed to give the government more than $2bn (£1.4bn) in aid and loans.

Mr Gates said America would consider paying more rent to continue using a strategic airbase in Kyrgyzstan which is key to its operations.

© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group

Independent on paper, Army charity squeezes soldiers and hoards millions
February 22, 2009
by Jeff Donn   
AP News

 

                As soldiers stream home from Iraq and Afghanistan, the biggest charity inside the U.S. military has been stockpiling tens of millions of dollars meant to help put returning fighters back on their feet, an Associated Press investigation shows.

                Between 2003 and 2007 — as many military families dealt with long war deployments and increased numbers of home foreclosures — Army Emergency Relief grew into a $345 million behemoth. During those years, the charity packed away $117 million into its own reserves while spending just $64 million on direct aid, according to an AP analysis of its tax records.

                Tax-exempt and legally separate from the military, AER projects a facade of independence but really operates under close Army control. The massive nonprofit — funded predominantly by troops — allows superiors to squeeze soldiers for contributions; forces struggling soldiers to repay loans — sometimes delaying transfers and promotions; and too often violates its own rules by rewarding donors, such as giving free passes from physical training, the AP found.

                Founded in 1942, AER eases cash emergencies of active-duty soldiers and retirees and provides college scholarships for their families. Its emergency aid covers mortgage payments and food, car repairs, medical bills, travel to family funerals, and the like.

                Instead of giving money away, though, the Army charity lent out 91 percent of its emergency aid during the period 2003-2007. For accounting purposes, the loans, dispensed interest-free, are counted as expenses only when they are not paid back.

                During that same five-year period, the smaller Navy and Air Force charities both put far more of their own resources into aid than reserves. The Air Force charity kept $24 million in reserves while dispensing $56 million in total aid, which includes grants, scholarships and loans not repaid. The Navy charity put $32 million into reserves and gave out $49 million in total aid.

                AER executives defend their operation, insisting they need to keep sizable reserves to be ready for future catastrophes.

                "Look at the stock market," said retired Col. Dennis Spiegel, AER's deputy director for administration. Without the large reserve, he added, "We'd be in very serious trouble."

                But smaller civilian charities for service members and veterans say they are swamped by the desperate needs of recent years, with requests far outstripping ability to respond.

                While independent on paper, Army Emergency Relief is housed, staffed and controlled by the U.S. Army.

                That's not illegal per se. Eric Smith, a spokesman for the Internal Revenue Service, said the agency can't offer an opinion on a particular charity's activities. But Marcus Owens, former head of IRS charity oversight, said charities like AER can legally partner closely with a government agency.

                However, he said, problems sometimes arise when their missions diverge. "There's a bit of a tension when a government organization is operating closely with a charity," he said.

                Most charity watchdogs view 1-to-3 years of reserves as prudent, with more than that considered hoarding. Yet the American Institute of Philanthropy says AER holds enough reserves to last about 12 years at its current level of aid.

                Daniel Borochoff, president of the American Institute of Philanthropy, said that AER collects money "very efficiently. What the shame is, is they're not doing more with it."

                National administrators say they've tried to loosen the purse strings. The most recent yearly figures do show a tilt by AER toward increased giving.

                Still, Borochoff's organization, which grades charities, gives the Army charity an "F" because of the hoarding.

                The AP findings include:

                _ Superior officers come calling when AER loans aren't repaid on time. Soldiers can be fined or demoted for missing loan payments. They must clear their loans before transferring or leaving the service.

                _ Promotions can be delayed or canceled if loans are not repaid.

                _ Despite strict rules against coercion, the Army uses pushy tactics to extract supposedly voluntary contributions, with superiors using language like: "How much can we count on from you?"

                _ The Army sometimes offers rewards for contributions, though incentives are banned by program rules. It sometimes excuses contributors from physical training — another clear violation.

                _ AER screens every request for aid, peering into the personal finances of its troops, essentially making the Army a soldier's boss and loan officer.

                "If I ask a private for something ... chances are everyone's going to do it. Why? Because I'm a lieutenant," says Iraq war veteran Tom Tarantino, otherwise an AER backer. "It can almost be construed as mandatory."

                Neither the Army nor Sgt. Major of the Army Kenneth Preston, an AER board member, responded to repeated requests for comment on the military's relationship with AER.

                AER pays just 21 staffers, all working at its headquarters at Army Human Resources Command in Alexandria, Va. AER's other 300 or so employees at 90 Army sites worldwide are civilians paid by the Army. Also, the Army gives AER office space for free.

                AER's treasurer, Ret. Col. Andrew Cohen, acknowledged in an interview that "the Army runs the program in the field." Army officers dominate its corporate board too.

                Charities linked to other services operate along more traditional nonprofit lines. The Air Force Aid Society sprinkles its board with members from outside the military to foster broad views. The Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society pays 225 employees and, instead of relying on Navy personnel for other chores, deploys a corps of about 3,400 volunteers, including some from outside the military.

                Army regulations say AER "is, in effect, the U.S. Army's own emergency financial assistance organization." Under Army regulations, officers must recommend whether their soldiers deserve aid. Company commanders and first sergeants can approve up to $1,000 in loans on their own say-so. Officers also are charged with making sure their troops repay AER loans.

                "If you have an outstanding bill, you're warned about paying that off just to finish your tour of duty ... because it will be brought to your leadership and it will be dealt with," says Jon Nakaishi, of Tracy, Calif., an Army National Guard veteran of the Iraq war who took out a $900 AER loan to help feed his wife and children between paychecks.

                In his case, he was sent home with an injury and never fully repaid his loan.

                The Army also exercises its leverage in raising contributions from soldiers. It reaches out only to troops and veterans in annual campaigns organized by Army personnel.

                For those on active duty, AER organizes appeals along the chain of command. Low-ranking personnel are typically solicited by a superior who knows them personally.

                Spiegel, the AER administrator, said he's unaware of specific violations but added: "I spent 29 years in the Army, I know how ... first sergeants operate. Some of them do strong-arm."

                Army regulations ban base passes, training holidays, relief from guard duty, award plaques and "all other incentives or rewards" for contributions to AER. But the AP uncovered evidence of many violations.

                Before leaving active duty in 2006, Philip Aubart, who then went to Reserve Officer Training Corps at Dartmouth College, admits he gave to AER partly to be excused from push-ups, sit-ups and running the next day. For those who didn't contribute the minimum monthly allotment, the calisthenics became, in effect, a punishment.

                "That enticed lots and lots of guys to give," he noted. He says he gave in two annual campaigns and was allowed to skip physical training the following days.

                Others spoke of prizes like pizza parties and honorary flags given to top cooperating units.

                Make no mistake: AER, a normally uncontroversial fixture of Army life, has helped millions of soldiers and families. Last year alone, AER handed out about $5.5 million in emergency grants, $65 million in loans, and $12 million in scholarships. Despite the extra demands for soldiers busy fighting two wars, AER's management says it hasn't felt a need to boost giving in recent years.

                But the AP encountered considerable criticism about AER's hoarding of its treasure chest.

                Jack Tilley, a retired sergeant major of the Army on AER's board from 2000 to 2004, said he was surprised by AP's findings, especially during wartime.

                "I think they could give more. In fact, that's why that's there," said Tilley, who co-founded another charity that helps families of Mideast war veterans, the American Freedom Foundation.

                What does AER do with its retained wealth? Mostly, it accumulates stocks and bonds.

                AER ended 2007 with a $296 million portfolio; last year's tanking market cut that to $214 million, by the estimate of its treasurer.

                Sylvia Kidd, an AER board member in the 1990s, says she feels that the charity does much good work but guards its relief funds too jealously. "You hear things, and you think, "`They got all this money, and they should certainly be able to take care of this,'" she said. She now works for a smaller independent charity, the Association of the United States Army, providing emergency aid to some military families that AER won't help.

                Though AER keeps a $25 million line of bank credit to respond to a world economic crisis, its board has decided to lop off a third of its scholarship money this year. "We're not happy about it," Spiegel says.

China loan turns Russian oil east
February 23, 2009

by John Helmer

Asia Times

                MOSCOW - Officials involved in the Russian oil industry, and the country's state treasury, breathed a sigh of relief as the Chinese and Russian governments announced agreement on a revolutionary shift in future Russian crude oil flows.

                According to the announcement from Beijing last Tuesday, where Deputy Prime Ministers Wang Qishan and Igor Sechin were meeting, China and Russia have finally agreed on terms for a China Development Bank loan of US$25 billion to Russian state oil exporter Rosneft and pipeline company Transneft to finance crude oil shipments over a 20-year period of not less than 241,000 barrels per day (15 million tonnes per annum).

                The fine-print of the financing and oil-supply deals have not been released. However, the availability of $15 billion in 10-year finance for Rosneft and $10 billion to Transneft at a sub-market interest rate of around 6% will guarantee China's priority for East Siberian crude oil deliveries for the foreseeable future.

                The loan and oil-supply agreements implement the inter-government memorandum of understanding signed more than three months ago, on October 29, 2008. They are the second major initiative between Beijing and Moscow, following the Chinese financing in 2004 for Rosneft's acquisition of Yuganskneftegaz in exchange for delivery of 48.4 million tonnes (194,000 barrels per day) between 2005 and 2010.

                For China in the medium to long term, according to one Russian bank, the new deal will "provide an impetus to massive development of Eastern Siberia" from which China is best placed to benefit. "We believe that two options are possible: greater [Chinese] access to the East Siberian fields (currently two upstream projects via a joint venture with Rosneft) and the potential transformation of East Siberian Pacific Ocean pipeline network into a joint stock company, with China getting 49% or 50% control in it."

                If the latter materializes, that would give Beijing a control stake in an oil port to be built at Kozmino Bay, near Nakhodka, on the Sea of Japan.

                Reporting the loan as one of the largest in Russian credit history, a Moscow newspaper speculated that in financing the new Russian oil source, "China will reduce its dependence on deliveries of oil from the Persian Gulf, which currently comprise about 80% of China's oil imports."

                The enormous size of the loan also adds to the strategic influence Beijing will have on the development of the Russian economy in the short term. According to Victor Mishnyakov, oil analyst at Uralsib Bank in Moscow, "We think that the development should offer support for the rouble and underlines our expectations that the devaluation of the rouble is over if crude prices remain at their current level throughout the year."

                Troika Dialog Bank analyst Yevgeny Gavrilenkov reported, "For the balance of payments, this is really positive news," while Mikhail Galkin of MDM Bank commented that it was "a super-favorable loan for Russia".

                At least $9 billion of Rosneft’s debt, due to be refinanced or settled this year, can now be covered.

                Transneft will use part of the money to complete the first stage of its East Siberian Pacific Ocean (ESPO) pipeline for overland oil shipments to China, via Skorovodino to Daqing, due to start next year; and to extend the second stage of the ESPO pipeline to Kozmino Bay with additional capacity to ship up to 1 million barrels per day (50 million tonnes per annum). Transneft was saying last month that lack of finance would force postponement of commissioning of this new Asian oil outlet until 2013.

                China's undertaking means that new Russian oilfields, such as Rosneft's Vankor field in central Siberia, will move oil eastwards to Asian markets, rather than westwards to Europe. This geostrategic shift of Russian energy flow has been a Chinese objective for years. Last week's signing defeats a similar objective pursued by the Japanese government, which has also been lobbying the Kremlin with promises of financing for the ESPO pipeline to the sea.

                John Helmer has been a Moscow-based correspondent since 1989, specializing in the coverage of Russian business.

Conversations with the Crow: Part 68

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 68

Date:  Friday, September 17, 1996

Commenced: 11:35 AM CST

Concluded: 11:55 AM CST

GD: Good afternoon to you, Robert.

RTC: The same, Gregory. How is your son?

GD: Hiding out from his last girlfriend. Apparently, he was careless and now she’s in a family way, as they used to say. This is a constantly recurring theme here.

RTC: Children are either a great pleasure or a great trial.

GD: Yes, I know. My oldest son is the former and my younger one is the latter. Knocked-up brainless females whimpering on the front porch while he hides in the loo or bill collectors sending death threats. I pay his for his car payment, he spends it and then wants more.

RTC: It’s none of my business, Gregory, but do you give it to him?
GD: Usually.

RTC: And the women?

GD: Well, I don’t give it to them. He’s already beaten me to it. He prefers them to be single mothers, desperate, rather ugly and always very stupid. One was deaf, one had an idiot child and another one used drugs. He wouldn’t dare bring them home so I know nothing about the latest one until she turn up on the porch, whining. I do feel sorry for them but I refuse to pay for abortions because I am opposed to abortions. They weep and he whines. I told him that we needed to fix him to stop this but nothing will stop the lies, stories, and spending of my money. He makes plenty of money of his own but always seems to run out of it. The oldest one runs a huge computer service in Germany and always wants to send me money instead of the other way around. Three lovely grandchildren. I would hate to see what the youngest one would produce. Swift would have been in transports of delight and the Yahoos would have been replaced.

RTC: How every do you deal with pregnant and abandoned girl friends?

GD: With patience, Robert, with patience. I convince them that they would not have been happy with them. I imply he is gay or that he really liked to boff sheep. Things like that. I convince them that they could do better trolling a homeless shelter. I do not let them in the house, ever. Fortunately, all of them are well over twenty-one so I don’t have to worry about a visit from the police and DNA tests. He seems to like single mothers pushing thirty and  very desperate. Oh, yes, and he loves to take them to look at houses and visit furniture stores. Builds up the hopes and then into the sack, unprotected and eager. He hates children and they tell me how much little this or that just loves him. Cruel to both of them.  When my father died, we found a thick stack of high-quality credit cards hidden in his shaving kit. My God, nearly a hundred thousands of dollars on them. His wife was in a nursing home and before that, was very rich. He died before he could get to them but I wasn’t so unfortunate. My God, he went crazy. Of course I had to sign them but off we went to Hawaii, Mexico, the Caribbean and everywhere but Canada. They would arrest me over that counterfeiting business if they caught me in Canada. And clothes. Jesus, he has enough in his closets to clothe the homeless of three states.

RTC: And yourself? Not that I mean to pry….

GD: No, I am aware. I have a huge library, a great collection of classical music and some nice china, silver and other things. He goes for what he can eat, drink or screw but I have other goals.

RTC: Ah, when we get old…

GD: No, it isn’t that. I never was one for whoring around. Long after the memories of that messy night in the phone booth or the drunken dinner as some Mexican bistro, I have some Lully to come back to or perhaps return to Gibbons. Well, some day, he’ll find someone more vicious and desperate than he is and legions of the gulled will have their revenge.

RTC: Any grandchildren by him?
GD: No, thank God. He always manages to find money for an abortion. You know, I do get rather tired of the tear jerkers on the porch but I really do feel sorry for them. Frankly, he was the last chance before gravity takes hold of their chubby bodies and the best they can do is to chase after the plumbers or the gardeners. I feel sorry for the children, Robert, I really do, but I dare not get too involved with his messes. I told him once that God would punish him but he only laughed, A good vasectomy can cure a lot of evils but maybe they should start at one ear and run around to the other. Ah well, his mother doesn’t want him back but the dog likes him.

RTC: Why don’t you marry him off to some vicious little Filipino bitch and she’ll make his life hell. A friend of mine was in the Navy and made that error.

GD: The Pubic Bay Beauties? Oh yes. I used to live in San Francisco and saw some of them, purple eye shadow and green nail polish and all, right up close. As angry as I get with him, I don’t think I would wish that fate on him. You know, one of those sluts winds up and you can hear her ten blocks away with the window closed. Wants to move all the family in with you and starts looking like a reject from Mustang Ranch. Well, if I’m lucky, he’ll meet up with one with a well-muscled brother.

RTC: Is he gay?
GD: No, I meant a brother that would beat the crap out of him. Of course, he might like that but then I’d have to pay to have his back stitched up. You can’t win, Robert. We all have our crosses to bear but why is mine made of concrete? By the way, do you know what Jesus’ companion at the crucifixion said to him?
RTC: No but perhaps you’ll enlighten me.

GD: Hey, Jesus, I can see your house from up here!

RTC: Not nice, Gregory,  But entertaining.  How’s your girl friend?
GD: I sent you pictures, didn’t I? Very well. My son hates her. She’s makes his punchboards look like the south end of north bound horses and she’s much smarter than he is. I intend to put her through college and then I suppose she’ll find something better to do but hanging around me won’t do her any good. Of course I told her about some of my little games and she howled with laughter. Someone in town saw us walking along and later told me that my daughter was a real looker. I said it was my granddaughter. Of course that’s closer to the truth. If youth knew, Robert but if age could.

RTC: Very cruel.

GD: Yes, today I am cruel. I’ll put some cayenne pepper is someone’s eye drops and tell them its acid.

RTC: My God.

GD: Well, I had some jerk stealing my really good brandy so I emptied out a bottle of the best, filled it with Old Mr. Boston swill and a good dose of croton oil.

RTC: Pardon?
GD: Croton oil. The strongest laxative known to man. One drop will move a man for a week.

RTC: How much did you spike it with?

GD: A tablespoon.

RTC: You could have killed them.

GD: No, but they had to carry around one of those little round life rings for months. They had a prolapsed rectum and other problems but they never touched any of my brandy again. I told the police that I never drank and the mark used to hang around the playground down the street, eyeing the tender tinies. Enough of that. It was a lot better than rat poison.

RTC: Probably.  I take it he did not pass on?

GD: No, he didn’t. He walked with care for a long time, however Looked like Hopalong Cassidy after a very long ride.

(Concluded at 11:55 CST)