It’s not just UFOs, Watergate, and newspapers that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has gotten their fingers into, Richard Shultz has shown their unending proclivity to stick their fingers into every fabric of our and other societies.
THE SECRET WAR AGAINST HANOI, Richard H. Shultz, Jr., Copyright 1999. Harper Collings Publishers, Inc., 101 East 53rd Street, New York, N.Y. 10022, 390 pages.
The truth of the matter is that it is not just the Kennedy and Johnson’s use of the “agency” but as a matter of fact the agency has directed Americans into endless successions of premeditated and wanton connections that are continual and unrelenting.
Of course, the CIA has had a long-recorded history going back many years to September 1947 and the Counterintelligence Corps (CIC) of the U.S. Army. Since then, “intelligence’’ has become metastasized into the very cellular structure of its operation and become a lecherous brain function.
SAFE FOR DEMOCRACY: THE SECRET WARS OF THE CIA, John Prado, Copyright 2006, Ivan R. Doe Publisher, 1332 North Halsted Street, Chicago, Ill., 60622
“The story of the secret wars is an important component of the American experience,’’ says Prados, ‘’in the years since World War II. It is also a feature of the histories of those many lands where secret warrior applied their trade…the time has come for taking stock, and that evaluation may begin here.’’ (p. xvi)
Unfortunately, neither book have included all the facts, especially since they have excluded or not recognized major Unidentified Flying Object cases (UFOs) which includes famous and sensational UFO case histories, UFO landings and crashes.
Perhaps, from the beginning (and President Harry Truman), the government recognized the ultra-seriousness of the UFO question and its many crashed crafts.
TRUMAN WAS NO STRANGER
During Truman’s first year in office, 1953, a least ten alien disks crashed with along 20 dead and four live aliens. Out of this, four were found in Arizona, two in Texas, one in New Mexico, one in Louisiana, one in Montana, and one in South Africa. (Case: McGill. ca).
Secret Executive Memorandum NSCS410 Majestic Twelve were partially composed of 35 members of the Council of Foreign Relations, six persons as executive members on the Council of Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission, called the Senior Interagency Group (SIG).
The sightings of July 26–27 also made front-page headlines, and even led President Harry Truman to personally call Capt. Ruppelt and ask for an explanation of the sightings. Ruppelt, remembering the conversation he had with Capt. James, told the President that the sightings might have been caused by temperature inversion, in which a layer of warm, moist air covers a layer of cool, dry air closer to the ground. This condition can cause radar signals to bend and give false returns. However, Ruppelt had not yet interviewed any of the witnesses or conducted a formal investigation.[19]
CIA historian Gerald Haines, in his 1997 history of the CIA’s involvement with UFOs, also mentions Truman’s concern. “A massive buildup of sightings over the United States in 1952, especially in July, alarmed the Truman administration. On 19 and 20 July, radar scopes at Washington National Airport and Andrews Air Force Base tracked mysterious blips. On 27 July, the blips reappeared.”[20]
Shortly before midnight on Saturday, July 19, 1952, air-traffic controller Edward Nugent at Washington National Airport spotted seven slow-moving objects on his radar screen far from any known civilian or military flight paths. He called over his supervisor and joked about a “fleet of flying saucers.” At the same time, two more air-traffic controllers at National spotted a strange bright light hovering in the distance that suddenly zipped away at incredible speed.
At nearby Andrews Air Force Base, radar operators were getting the same unidentified blips—slow and clustered at first, then racing away at speeds exceeding 7,000 mph. Looking out his tower window, one Andrews controller saw what he described as an “orange ball of fire trailing a tail.” A commercial pilot, cruising over the Virginia and Washington, D.C. area, reported six streaking bright lights, “like falling stars without tails.”
The sightings and radar tracking’s continued until 3 A.M. By then witnesses on the ground and in the air had observed the UFOs, and at times all three radar sets had tracked them simultaneously.
Exciting and scary as all this had been, it was just the beginning of an incredible episode. The next evening radar tracked UFOs as they performed extraordinary “gyrations and reversals,” in the words of one Air Force weather observer. Moving at more than 900 miles per hour, the objects gave off radar echoes exactly like those of aircraft or other solid targets. Sightings and tracking’s occurred intermittently during the week and then erupted into a frenzy over the following weekend. At one point, as an F-94 moved on targets ten miles away, the UFOs turned the tables and darted en masse toward the interceptor, surrounding it in seconds. The badly shaken pilot, Lt. William Patterson, radioed Andrews AFB to ask if he should open fire. The answer, according to Albert M. Chop, a civilian working as a press spokesperson for the Air Force who was present, was “stunned silence. . . . After a tense moment, the UFOs pulled away and left the scene.”
As papers, politicians, and public clamored for answers, the Air Force hosted the biggest press conference in history. A transcript shows that the spokesperson engaged in what amounted to double-talk, but the reporters, desperate for something to show their editors, picked up on Capt. Roy James’ off-the-cuff suggestion that temperature inversions had caused the radar blips. James, a UFO skeptic, had arrived in Washington only that morning and had not participated in the ongoing investigation.
The David Icke Guide to the Global Conspiracy—and how to end it. David Icke Books LTD, 185a High Street, Hyde-Isle of Wright, PO 33 2PN, UK, Isle of Wright, PO 33 2PN, UK, IFO @ David Icke Books and Company, UK. 2007. 629 pages.
David Icke is a very prolific writer and has written many books on the topic of reality, its many mystical and undiscovered elements and how they control reality and force us to blindly bow to evil acts. Comparing our DNA (and how little science knows about it) to a computer, in which ‘chakra’ vortices connect the human body showing that the body is a computer system. The brain, in effect, is a biological computer, highly sophisticated, contending with a vast web of interconnecting frequencies or ‘dimensions’ of life.
Part I: The Groundwork
Humans are a ‘computer construct’ — and not who we really are. Mankind appears to be a struggle between pure awareness and being a computer program-personality awaiting to be triggered. The body is a biological computer that is constantly storing and processing information. Reactions are stored in cells that act like computer chips which we must transcend to become Masters. We can also have ‘interference’ or ‘frequencies’ and dimensions in ‘residual self-images’ as ‘ghost phenomenon.’ Our awareness then continues its eternal existence in ‘loops’ as ghostly projections At death, says Icke, ‘consciousness is more expansive than ever. The body/brain is a receiver/transmitter of information DNA is a receiver/transmitter of information; we are consciousness-awareness; we are conscious-awareness. Infinite love as infinite awareness: everything else is an illusion. Death, says ICKE, does not exist There is only life, only awareness. All else is only an illusion.
Death, says Icke, does not exist. There is only life, only awareness. Scientists, says Icke, are nothing but ‘programmed minds.’ The energy fields in which we’re aligned brings manipulation. Telepathy is a language of awareness. It is the same for physical ‘mountains.’ Hills can be sacred places. It is the energy/truths amid the symbols and the metaphysical, spiritual transformation: interdimensional doorways through which entities —the ‘gods’—can move in and about this reality: quantum physics, ‘ley line’ networks which crisscross the planet in ”power centers” of vortex points. Even a mountain can be an energy of consciousness. ‘Humanity,’ ‘wood,’ ‘trees,’ or a ‘mountain,’ are all ONE.
” One consciousness, one cosmos, one infinity through an intuitive and distinctive resonance.” We are All-Knowing, but certain programs block us from seeing that Infinite Awareness. Computed ‘thinks;’ only in division and only as One.
Decoding RealityAccording to David Icke
Atoms are not solid but filled with empty space. An illusion held together by our minds, says Icke. The illusion of solidity. Television consists only of the TV screen; otherwise, images exist only as mathematical ‘codes.’ Like the TV and computer screen, our world exists in the form we invent. Electronic signals in which the brain decodes. It is constructed in our brains — our energy matrix. Frequency matrices. Solidity is a hologram and an illusion. It is a decoded wave to patterns into a holographic reality.
Every point of the hologram is a smaller version of the whole. A body can be grown from a single cell. Cells are said to have their own verson of the brain—it is a hologram. ‘Shadow People’ have advanced knowledge and can deceive us by manufacturing holograms. Our body-computers are tuned to a more complicated ‘cosmos wide ban.’ The Matrix. Anything that is computerized or uses radio waves depends on semiconductors—a semiconductor liquid-crystal encasing every living cell. Computer chips, a crystal with gates and channels. Crystalline DNA holding the generic memory. When they open and close at the wrong time—the cells can be pulled by persons and substances that lead to disease. The brain edits reality according to beliefs: A reality-experience to fit believers. We are imprisoned by belief. By Reality Filters. What is thought and what is actually said. There is no limit to how we can be manipulated; our access to the ‘matrix’ is being manipulated in the same way. The hidden hands. We are allowed a limited range because of closed-down chakra channels. Energetic “Auric” eggshells of fer-encrust and rigid belief, only challenged by life-changing events. Fear causes our energy fields to fall into ‘slow-vibration’ density, dense people.
The body hologram is seventy percent water which affects us energetically. Infinite awareness as All possibility in what we choose to ‘decode’ into our holographic experience. We are not human —only Infinite Awareness and all Possibilities of the Matrix, the Supper Hologram which is information coded into the illusory sequence.
Live ‘ants,’ we pickup frequencies of an unknown blueprint. A specific vibratory wavelength, we can ‘see’ the digital and mathematical construct. The ancients knew of the ‘Farinacci’ proportion in nature. All number in the digital annex. All life is biology, and all biology is physiological and chemistry that is moving and consensus.
False Theories
Manipulation of numbers, language and symbols but encoded with fake, dark Matrix reality. Stephen Marquardt, an American who studied Fibonacci and PHI sequences, said ”all life is biology,” and biology is also physiology. All physiology is chemistry—all chemistry is physics— and all physics is math. Icke also adds: ”All math’s are energy and all energy is consciousness.”
The Time Illusion
New Scientist. Quantum Gravity computers: an “I”…all is One. Karma is a construct not natural. The Matrix is like a DVD movie on the observer’s perspective. Time is a perception and not real. All is relative to the observer: There is no time. All, a special perception, like The international Date Line. Sense is in the mind of the Knowers. There, subatomic particles can combine. All particles are the same One. No more absolutes. All is NOW. Panoramic view of life. No more ‘I cant’s”.
The Matrix is a trap. A fly paper. Same old stuff but different densities; also, on a ‘subconscious level.’ The Matrix of illusory reality. Matrix Internets. Oneness. Infinite Love. Left and right polarity. Every reality a dream. Perception of history should be beyond regular history. It has become a Tower of Babel. Global society is caught in a time loop. All of global society had come from a single mother about 200,000 B.C. when extraterrestrials interbed; the Nephilim as shown in the Book of Enoch. Besides characters such as Azakel, human embryo had gills, tails. The Jewish text told of Haggadah— the Garden of Eden where the Serpent walked upright and was the Mother of the Nephilim. Elite families existed.
We have a difficult time explaining ‘junk’ DNA because it has an origin in the extraterrestrials—off-world. It was Professor Sam Chang who said that DNA was programmed as if in a Petry dishes. Here it existed as Big and Basic Code. Evolution is not what we hold it to be.
The Golden Age of the Great flood also entails Cata chasmic. events. Interdimensional fodder. There were Wars of the Gods. Upheavals about 13,000B.C, says Icke, such as the destruction of Atlantis and MU. Nordic types, but also Reptilian creatures in the continents of Lemuria. And the Anunnaki. There, Enki warned Ziusudra of the flood and that of a ‘great ship’ would be needed to carry the beasts and birds. In the Scriptures, it is told as Noah, but almost identical tales are found in Iraq and Egypt and other countries. Eleven or more. The Azores.
Atlantis sank and Plato told of the end, says Icke, at about 11, 000 B.C. The islands of the Pacific show the remnants. Earth’s past colossal geological upheavals demonstrate the Fall of Mankind. Survivors went to other lands between two rivers (Iraq).
Anunnaki
Reptilian gods return and this can be seen in the Sumerian tales. The Old Testament speaks of the ‘gods” (plural). EDIN – the abode of “the righteous ones” that had great knowledge. The Anunnaki were a reptilian race, says Icke, and Enki was the lord of the Earth. Much of the true history was hidden. Mammi (as in Mama-Ma) lay the foundation for the Biblical Mary. Also, there was Lulu (one who has been mixed). Adair was seen at the base of the spine, the bottom chakra. The dust of the ground. (Sumerian), Anunnaki, slave race. Bapedi people as Shuma (slaves). This came about in Atlantis and Lemuria. There were abductions leading into control of minds. The brain was R-Complex of the Ruling Families; seeded royal bloodlines. Carl Sagan speaks of this in his book The Dragons of Eden. Who descended? AWWIM. Giant people like Goliath. Twelve feet tall – or more. Sons of Anak. In the Septuagint: Angeles. In Egypt, they were called Watchers in the Book of Enoch. They were the seventh generation from Adam, says Icke. Giants mentioned in the Book in Enoch. Son of Lamech who had eyes that shone like the Sun. Part of the Sun-God worship. They were Reptilian hybrids and eventually led to the Freemasons and their Enochian founder Dr. Ruthrey Nay.
Kingdom of Serpents
Texts speak about Astra Ships that flew in the solar system. Spoken about in Yeoman Thomas Colemen Sheppard photos in a vault in the White Beach Nawi Facility in Okinawa, Japan. The Children of the Serpent. The Brotherhood of the Snakes that led to the Mystery Schools. And the Fish gods. Black Magic. All this contained in the royal bloodlines. They were ‘shape shifters.’ The Nephilim people of MU- Motherland. Serpent Kings. Shapeshifting Negas and Alpha Dragons. The Great Flood ended a Golden Age.
King Aurthur talks about Uther Pendragon. and Merlin the magician. The word Messeh (fat of the crocodile) foretold of the origin of the word Messiah. These were descendants of the dragons. Crereps mentioned in Athens as humans with serpent tails and were kings of Sumer. They were changelings that ruled to 240,000 BC.
Origin of the Draco star system origin. The Pleiades star system. Fetuses’ manifestations of Reptilian type development. Part of the term Blue Bloods as evident when copper-based blood turned turns green when oxidizing. Reptilian underground bases are part and parcel of the Nordics. Tales of Agartha and Shamballa. The term Ki-Gal: Great below being with the gods.
The 2021 movie The Snakes.
Little People
The Little People of Ireland, sometimes resembled in the Grey UFO accounts. and found in Norse Germanic legends. Also told in Big Foot stories and legends of the Yeti which shunned sunlight, similar to the Dracula story. Again, crossbreeding. These people were banished from the surface of the planet. Also seen in tales of the Frog Prince and the Snake Queen. All part of the Masonic hybrid elite.
Part II:Crime Syndicates
The crime syndicates are a form of ‘slavery.’ Multilayered taxation is also part and parcel. The debit/credit scam: All part of the Debt-Credit scam. Much like a Wall Street pyramid computer program, there is a global dramatization. Our human bodies are not physical but ‘in’ our heads, vibration codes in a holographic veil of bloodlines. in a genetic ‘space suit.’
Reptilians are outside these dimensions and beyond normal ‘light.’ They possess hybrid ”body computers.” In a ‘hub scape,’ there exists a Serpent Son; what are called ‘hybrid body computers.” It is a global dramatization in which Dionysus operates at certain frequency levels under the cover of human form and in societies much like ours. And they have longer lives programmed to survive an agenda. These are illustrated in projects Mkultra and Monarch.
Well known reptilian forms are seen in Mayan forms of “the people of the Serpent.” The story of Itzamar.
Kathy O’brien talks about the Neocons and “mind-altering drugs.” Mass media is highly affected by this. Reptilian lower-class of the Hive Mind. There are a number of movies that highlight the Reptilians and the existence of ‘black-eyed’ people. It involves Black Magic. can this reality be seen in kings and queens, and leading politicians.
Book of Revelations
In the Biblical Book of Revelations there is talk of more material, such as the Book of Enoch. Nephilim such as the Semjaza, a part of the Nephilim. There you can read about ”blood-drinking.” Satanism. Massive blood-sacrifice as vibrational sustenance. Part of the mammalian codes, terror with a lot of Rena line in blonde and blue-eyed ‘cattle.’ One can read about this in Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut.
In the Bohemian Grove, there exists ‘rooms’ dedicated to the Owl Mother-goddess Ninti. This goes back to Enki and Molech and Baal rituals. One can find ‘links’ with most of our major political names. Many became Presidents of the United States.
Through ‘Occult Incest,’ persons are hidden beneath other names and parents, such as Dracula and Draco, and such as Vlad — Wallachia in Romania and the Order of the Dragon used in the Holy Roman Empire in 1431. “The son of him who had the Order of the Dragon.” There, existed much fear and power. It is all part of a global system, as also seen in the Matrix movie, the 9/11 fear and also paedophage.
This all feed off of emotions located at the bottom of the spine. Kundalini. No empathy. These are not rue Americans but all part of a global conquest and the Mystery Schools
Another Jesus
The Illuminati was opened by the Jesuits and Opus Dei. In the history of Tony Blair is a trail of DNA samples. The Serpent and the Sun.
A. Waddel spoke of Mu/Lemuria and King Sargon and Manis Myja. It involved ‘the ends of the earth.’ In Denmark it was called Gothland. It involved the Christian cathedens of the Mystery Schools. This dated to the Mystery Schools of the Babylon empire — 2000 BC to 1600 BC in a France gateway. All part of Opus Dei, the Knights Templar and the Moevingian kings. A Priest King, as mentioned in the work TheHoly Blood and The Holy Grail.
There, Jesus married Mary Magdalene and had a child and started the bloodline of the Moevingian kings and the Sicambian Franks in France. A chosen people symbolized by the fleu-de-Lis called the Serpent’s Son; a Babylonian trinity later turned into the Christian Trinity.
Charlemagne was to rule. It was called by Alexander ‘The Serpent’s Son,’ and the father was Ammon. Philip Eugene de Rothschild. A royal family through endogamy. Nimrod of Babylon whose wife was Queen Semiramis. In the Boof of Enoch, the baby is called Crush and the virgin mother was Queen Ishtar, Virgin Mother Marduk and the son was Naki, a son also called Brutus.
In Babylon, it was Enki, and also Britain’s reptilian Rom. It was a trinity of Nimrod, Romulus, Remus and Marduk. The Romans created Christianity through King Saigon and the Akkadian kings. It was a retelling of Moses and rewritten Judaism. The Sun worship of the Mystery Religions: Son of the Sun, and Babylonian Mystery religion. A Babylonian ‘trinity.’ Semiramis’s Mother Mary of Ubaid culture. Gods and goddesses, the world around. Half human and half reptile. Babylonian Mystery religion. A form of Jesus but taken from Nimrod and Saturn worship as mentioned in Babylonian Mystery religion.
A New Trinity
In the front of the Roman church is an obelisk which symbolizes the phallus of Baal and Nimrod. The obelisk is Baal’s ‘shaft.’ In the Egyptian stories, it was Osiris—a virgin Isis: Jesus, a Sun symbol as an Attis of Phrygia, Dionysus, Bacchus, Baccus, Mithra and Horus. These stood for the twelve disciples and were tempted by Set.
Easter Ceremonies
Easter ceremonies were a part of Sun worship; it was also represented by the ‘Christmas tree.’ Pinecones were part of Janus in the Janus Cybele, a Dagon ‘Easter Egg.’
In the Nicene Creed there was the Halo-Sun wheel. In the legend of Quetzalcoatl, born of a virgin, Shanivar, an Indian deity. Christos, which was Krisna’s father, a carpenter. He died on a tree, hanging between two thieves. This was long before stories about Jesus.
Old Testament
There are tales in the Old Testament told around Samson in Islam where Jesus was ISA in the House of Virgo (virgin) and the Moon Goddess, Nanna.
In the Babylonian priesthood, there was use of Rosary beads.
All this demonstrates ‘under-cover bloodlines,’ where covert control is mixed with Secret Society and the Plumed Serpent.
Christopher Columbus
Columbus belonged to secret societies. Queen Isabele of Castile and the Inquisition of 1478 were based on the credo of Mutawa and the Mother Lodge of 1719 in London and the Great Queen Street. Another of the secret societies was the Hell Fire Club and the St. Andrew’s Free Mason Lodge (Edward Proctor). and John Hancock. There was John Hancock’s Sun Symbol at 10 Downing Street. Under George Washington statue was the Greek god, Zeus. Wahington, D.C was dedicated to the New Troy. The new Rome. The capital lines were made according to the Human Skull Hill. Also called the Golgotha City of London. Venus, Columbia was fashioned as – Colombe. District of Semiramis or the Dove of Babylon Columbine. High School. One can also see this manifesting in the Statue of Liberty and the River Seine and its massive flood at Point d’ alma.
More on hybrid blood lines: Royal ancients in Somer in Mesopotamia, a network carrying Egypt, Greece, Rome and others. They led the esoteric and wanted a One World Government, microchipped, with bloodlines coming out of Sumer, but with no sides and controlling all sides.
This was part of the Rothschilds’ dynasty and was Sumerian until Raymond Baur in 1760 and Rockefeller and the hexagram-six-point—Ra —Sun god.
Enki
Goes as far back as Enki in the book of Enoch and the many EL endings; Asael, Kabbalah. This involved German royalty and Prince William of “Hesse -Hanau.” Hessian troops and the Rosicrucian Order. A succession of married bankers — Worms, Sichel and Bey Fus. This was all front management for the Federal Reserve and Tresurary Reserve and the Treasury Secretary. Alexander Hamilton.
In 1913 the appearance of Schiff and the Rothschilds appeared. John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil and Averill Harriman.
Part III: The Conspiracy deepens
Standard Oiland the Rothschilds
The Rothschilds appeared in 30 countries. Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland. This all goes back to the Sumerian and the Khazars, which also includes the Chinese and the Sumerians and their camels. They are found in Eastern Europe. These are ancestors of the Jews; not connected with Israel.
Khazar Sea/Caucasian
Leo the Khazar leads to the Biblical Cain (Kain). Sumerian Jews. Magyars. Hungarian, and not Semitic, rather Caspian and the Black Sea.
Nimrod’s sons — Magor and Hunor; the Scythians; the Huns; Magog; Subban Turi.
Noah’s Ark
The Ark actually started in Poland with a European origin of the ‘Skull Cap.’ Khasars and the Franks. It was of Polish origin and the Frans—Ashkenazi Jews that came into power. It was the creation of Israel. A Rothschild fiefdom through Evelyn Rothschild. Seven families were funded gofers. The Opium Wars. Louis Walter Rothschild. There was Weizmann. in Britain, it was the Round Table. There was Cecil Rhodes. Alfred Milner and the Belfour Declaration and the Versailles Peace Conference in Paris in 1919. The Weimar Republic and the Round Table. The Treaty of Versailles. The new Is-ra-el. The Arab revolt. The Thule/ Vril societies. The House of Windsor.
Hitler Speaks
Demonic possession. The spirit of Charlemagne was in the homeland in Palestine. We see it in Prescott Bush and the Harriman Empire of the Union Banking Corporation (UBC) and Fritz Thyssen. The Rockefeller family and the Nazi Josepf Mengele and the Wilhelm Institute which were full of Khazr-Sumerian Nazis working together in ancestry. There was the Rosenbergs and the Jewish World Congress 1897.
Rudolf Kommer was Aaryan (Sun Aryan), controlled by Mago Warburg and I G. Farden and Paul Warburg and the Union Pacific Railroad, which tried to stop anti-Nazi propaganda. The Rothschild bank was connected to the Kuhn, Loeb and Company. This was also connected to Jacob Schiff and his transferring 600 Zionists to Palestine. Israel was a party to this through Minister Yitzhak Rabin who wanted to drive them out. The Stern Gang and the Moledet Party saw to it that men were treated as cattle. There was Prime Minister Sharon where men were treated like animals’ by Prime Minister Sharon in apartheid Israel with Castle Coste. A garrison state by a sycophant and a hierarchical Menachem Begin.
Palestinians were treated like Beasts
Yitzhak Shamir began the practice of ‘head smashing.’ Treated people like vermin. Israel became a ‘Law Unto Itself;’ a chosen race and a law unto themselves. A chosen race of genetic origin. Replaced by Jewish names and favored by Hitler style: fascism. Nazi-style fascism to mule Israel. Mordechi Vanunu was once again arrested. Being a Nazi-style Israel is real. Mordechai Vanunen no longer a fascist mule but is real. No Jewish ‘grace’—just fascism.
Range of Variation
Biologically, there is no ‘Jewish race,’ just a ‘faith.’ Israelites are thoroughly hybridized. They ‘need’ the myth. Arthur Koestler said that the Israelites are thoroughly hybridized and they ‘need’ the myth to hide their true agenda.
Global War
Albert Pike said a world war was the quintessential goal. It would come about through Arab countries. Billions of dollars will be spent. This was wished by Giuseppe Mazzini and a World War III. There will be many voluntaries. There will be an arduous attempt to exterminate all Christians and Atheists. Such a movement will be seen in Canadian front man Jacob Schiff and Kuhn Loeb and company. They helped fund the Russian revolution, connected with Schiff Loeb and company,
Part IV: Globally Bankrupt
The cost of water and food will become globally bankrupt. Bennito Mussolini hijacked the food once before. Thee needs to be a CAP on the rich-poor divide. This was highlighted by Boe Goldof in 1985 who told of ‘The Sting’ on the European community using Federal Reserve buy-outs.
Icke warned of such things as Montauk, One World Religion, Project Blue Beam, and the serge of Monastic Holographic projection, Christian-Zionist movement, the coming battle of Har Megiddo, the Mayan-Calendar, The Project Blue Beam Project, the serge of Monastic -Holographic Projection, Cellular, Mammalian, Familian Cycles in Time Loops, coming into sync, cracking the concrete, so to speak, in Magnus-Channeling. Brian Clough talks about The Body Computer, along with Dr. Laurie Nadel, Ernest Rossi.
Infinite awareness occurs in the NOW illusion of it, and we are only aware of it in matrix movements and the different forms of the ALL through eggshell cracking. This can be seen in unique DNA codes of the Magnon in higher frequencies away from FEAR. Your ‘freedom’ is not ‘my freedom.’ Energy is now in a slow vibration. The topic should be the spending on and the education of children.
Barack Obama (when he was President) had become our Naked Emperor. Now we have no hope at all; we are riding a carousel horse at a circus. It is a diversion technique of Mass Mind-control. They are all blank pages. Same stable promising an auto cure. But as Webster Tarpley said, he was just a front man demagogue and greatly hyped. He was part of the Obama Matrix being sold to the people. He was chosen to enslave, as well as the advisor on Wall Street and the National Economic Council and most Think Tanks.
David Axelrod and the rest were all part of the Chicago ‘cesspool’—Men in Black and Sock Puppets leading us into global tyranny and nightmare.
David Icke is a former sports broadcaster, ex-footballer, professional conspiracy theorist, and author of more than twenty books. Icke has lectured in more than 25 counties and has produced tons of DVDs about his theories over the years. He was born in 1952 to Barbara and Beric Icke a medical orderly for the Royal Air Force. The family lived in a terraced house in Leicester’s Lead Street and was so poor that they had to hide and pretend no one was home whenever the council man came looking for the rent. In a 2003 interview, he said that he still gets a fright when he gets a knock on his door. As a child he went to Whitehall Infant School before he proceeded to Whitehall Junior School. He has said that he never put much effort in school and it was not until he made the junior school’s football team that he was successful at anything. He became a goalkeeper for the junior school as he believed that it was his way out of poverty. He then proceeded to Crown Hills Secondary Modern from where he got spotted by Coventry City in 1967. He also played for Oxford United and Northampton Town before he got rheumatoid arthritis that made a career in football untenable. He retired from the sport in 1973.
His first job was as a reporter for the Leicester Advertiser before he moved on to work for Leicester News Agency and then went on to work as a reporter for the BBC. His first assignment with the BBC was as a presenter for Programmed Newsnight sports program. He worked for the BBC as a sports presenter on TV during the 1980s and 90s and also worked as a spokesman for the Green Party. He then published “It’s a Tough Game Son,” a book about breaking into a footballing career in 1983. It was in 1990 that he visited a psychic who told him that he had been born for a specific purpose. He soon started getting messages from the spirit dimension. In 1991 he said that he was the Son of God and prophesied that the earth would be struck by earthquakes and tidal waves on Wogan, a prime-time BBC show. His assertions turned him from one of the most beloved sports presenters in the UK into a figure of public ridicule. He was let go by the BBC when he publicly refused to pay the Community Charge – a kind of local tax which put his employer in a difficult position.
His Wogan Interview in 2003 marked Icke’s break with his former life though it planted the seed of defiance and made him into the man he is today. It gave him the courage to develop and propagate his ideas without a care of what society thought of him. In 1991 he published “The Truth Vibrations” which drew from his experiences in Peru, and became wildly popular. In the two years between 1992 and 1994, he became a prolific author penning five books four of which were published in 1993 alone. In 1992 he published “Love Changes Everything” a theosophical novel that tells of the origins of planet Earth. In the work, he channels the work of Deborah Shaw to speak with a lot of admiration for Jesus. In his 1993 work “Days of Decision” he questions how historical Jesus Christ is though he reluctantly acknowledges the existence of the spirit of Christ. “In the Light of Experience.” an autobiography chronicling his experience was published in the same year. He then followed these up with “Heal the World” that was published in 1993. In 1994 he published “The Robot’s Rebellion” which was a novel that contained the paranoid clichés and beliefs that Icke has become known for. The novel claimed that there was an extra-terrestrial and shadowy cabal that had made a plan for world domination. His unified conspiracy theory mixes in everything you could think of in what he calls the “Babylonian Brotherhood.” The Brotherhood is a conspiracy that has members from the banking system, the scientific community, members of the media and the militaries and religions of the world. These work under organizations such as the World Bank, the Rothschild family, the United Nations. The Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderberg Group, the Freemasons, and the Illuminati among others.
David Icke’s “And the Truth Shall Set You Free” is an explosive novel that has proved very accurate in telling the future events of the 21st century. Icke tells the real story of global events and how they shape human existence. He exposes the astounding web of interconnected manipulation of world history that shows that a few organizations, secret societies, and a few people control the world. They control the media indoctrination machine, engineer regional and international wars, control the market for hard drugs, drive violent revolutions, and sponsor political assassinations and terrorist events all across the world. Almost all of the human-made catastrophes of the 20th century and going as far back as the Babylonian and Egyptian ancient empires can be traced to the same shadowy cabal. The names of the Global Elite that have been setting the agenda in recent times are some of the very well-known people in our modern societies. Icke provides an esoteric exposition of a worldwide conspiracy and provides what he believes is the only solution that will make it possible for human beings to break free from the tentacles of the conspiracy. He writes to inspire people to open the door of the mental prison and come out of the indoctrination to walk in freedom.
“The Biggest Secret” is one of Ickes most explosive and powerful books he has ever written. Just like in his other works, he exposes the interconnected nature of the secretive cabal of blue bloods that have controlled the Earth for millennia. In high detail, he writes about major events including the creation of the major religions and how the Global elite have been suppressing the esoteric knowledge that could set free humanity from the emotional and mental prison. In the book, Icke exposes the true origins of the major world religions including Christianity and Islam. He also explains that the Global Elite has suppressed a lot of scientific information, which is why the world has been undergoing a period of incredible transformation and change. The book also exposes the astonishing and true background of the British Royal Family including events in their history such as the 1997 murder of Princess Diana of Wales. He makes his assertions from meticulous research gathered from unique contacts in the royal family, including a close confidant of the murdered princess
David Icke’s “Alice in Wonderland and the World Trade Center Disaster” is a novel about the monumental lie that is the official story of 9/11. Icke asserts that the story that was told to the American public and the world after the events of September 11 were a fantasy of anomaly, untruth, contradiction, and manipulation. He spent the better part of ten years researching the events of that day and traveled to more than 40 countries to find the truth. Icke takes apart the official version including the subsequent war on terrorism and the cover story of Bin Laden being responsible for the attacks. He asserts and shows that Americans need to look closer to home to find the people responsible, rather than sending Americans thousands of kilometers into the remote Hindu Kush to find a man supposedly hiding in a cave. He gives an explanation of why the terrorist attacks were planned and what the Global Elite intended to achieve. David says that it is only by exposing the deceit and the lies of 9/11 and the people behind it can we honor the memory of the dead and their families. Icke asserts that the real goal of the attacks was to create a fascist state that is based on total surveillance and control. However, he does say that the people of the world can change the world and win it back from the Global Elite and their evil machinations.
There were 600 Yemen-Jewish babies in a Jewish-Israel state. Esrael, says Icke, is a racist state. Jack Bernstein was noted for wanting a one-world government control by Zionists and International Bankers. It was said that this was just Zionist propaganda. The first choice was Ashkenazim as defended by the Anti-Defamation league.
Worked with Hitler
The B’Nai Brit worked with Hitler. They funded the Russian revolution along with the ADL in order to keep the lid on the official story. When they made new enemies—they kept the lid on solidarity through the Mystery Schools and Sumer in a remake of Russian Dolls. The Masons up to the 33rd Degree.
Hybrid People
They were a hybrid place and people. A number of ‘Blue Degrees.’ The Illuminati are hidden through and through to protest their origin and identity as Adepts. The Adept Illuminati are actually hidden for their own benefit. Majority of the members are clueless. Most have control of the media and finance to the extent of totality.
Knights Templar
They have many disguises, such as the Knights Templar and Malta, Priory Sion, Opus Dei, and the Teutonic Knights of the Nazi regime. The Watchtower of the Jehovah’s Witness. Also, the Saint Bernard Cistercian Order. It reached into France with the French St. Clair family, Rosslyn Castle and the Temple District of the City of London.
All sides were in debt to them through the Templar taxes and requested ‘tithes’.
Friday the Thirteenth
The famous ‘purge’ was on Friday the 13, 1302, and began with Jacques de Molay and Bartolomeo Perestrelo who had a daughter who married Christopher Columbus. Columbus had access to maps which eventually led to the discovery of America. That access was also known as Le Serpent Rouge (The Serpent of Blood). This also led to the Knights of Malta. and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Knights of Roades, and Ignatius Loyola seminaries (bad seed in Latin).
Believe Only the Church
Father Alberto had 25,000 seminarians in 112 countries. In the Loyola Book it asks you to ‘believe only the Church,’ even if it is untrue (1548). This is all based on an oath recorded by Malachi Martin in in 1999. There is a secret church consisting of Lucifer The code there is INRI and asks you to ‘spy’ on your own brethren and to trust no one.
A lot of this started with Adam Weishaupt on May 1, 1776, and Mayer Amschel Rothschild, which was part of this organization. A Jesuit blueprint. It required these changes and Mayer Amschel Rothschild was an orthodox Ashkenazi where people fight each other but all sides were in control.
In 1785, a courier, carrying special documents, was struck by lightning, and the documents spoke of sexual bribery used in blackmail and bribery and murder; used for student indoctrination and enticement for scholarships. The people were scouted-out and placed in government positions and controlling places in mass communication.
In 1798, John Robinson wrote the Proofs of Conspiracy that revealed ‘tools’ that could be used: Sin is a virtue and that a mysterious ‘order’ will rule the world in cycle that resembled the Five Points of the Pentagram.
This program included the Hell Fire Club which consisted of Jesuit Nazis which consisted of the Burgs of the Oder of the Knights of Malta. many were escaped Nazis through 30,000 ratlines. These had interconnecting networks of global bankers such as the IMF, Nicholas Biddle, Bill Clinton, and Jews at Georgetown University, which had been attended by Herbert Walker Bush. Please note Stony Hurst College.
Reinard Gelen was a part of the CIA Knights of Malta. James Jesus Angleton worked with the CIA, as did Kim Philby. Allen Dulles was associated who was a brother who was a priest in the Skull and Bones; the tomb at Yale in which the skull of the Indian renegade Geronimo was secreted. John Kerry tells us about his initiation where he had to reenact death imagery and rebirth.
This Order was the heart of America in American National Security Advisors. They hide behind a false story, such as the elitist Safari Club and the Pinay Circle or the Bilderberg Group of May 1954, also continued in Le Cercle as part of the vehicles of Freemasonry and the Scottish and New York Rites and many others. These are all traced back to Babylon and its inner core groups such as P-2, the 1981 Geli Mossad and many other different groups.
The death of Pecorelli and the laundering of money, God’s Banker, was murdered and Robert Calvi, was also murdered. Involvements concerning Ellie de Rothschild and Licia Gelli’s Villa membership lists. which avoided textbook inquiries. Gladio, Kissinger, Haig, Pope John Paul I, St. Paul, all died from mysterious and unknown causes of the Hidden Hand. This was all propaganda due to Silvio Berlusconi who owned Finland investments. Please refer to Victor Marchetti and the 1973 book The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence about this secret cult that controls the world. This included the Round Table, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, the Bilderberg Group, The Council on Foreign Relations, The Trilateral Commission, and the Cub of Rome. Mentioned by Carroll Quigley and Cecil John Rhodes as the Devil’s Peak and the Society of the Elect.Bill Clinton was such a Rhodes Scholar. Alfred Milner expanded it to include Averell Harriman, and LordVictor Rothschild, Sir Douglas Home, Lionel Rothschild, as frequent visitors to Carrington and Hambros Bank. There were also connections with Henry Kissinger, Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and Robert Zoellick: these were all Bilderberg puppets, both inner and outer circles. In 1979, this included John Prescott and Margaret Thatcher—Thatcher was ousted in 1979.
Lord Armstrong and Jesuit Robert Mugabe were associated with mass murder in a Zimbabwe-Chatham House, RIIA, CFR, James Perloff in a ‘roll-call’ of CFR members. There were 74 members including Harriman, the Bush Bank, the Harold Pratt House and John J. McCloy. These heads came together building the same bloodline. The CIA supported the Mujaheddin and Walter Mondale. Cojoined were Alan Greenspan, Peter D. Sutherland, D.P. and Goldman Sachs.
Many tax-exempt organizations were a part of this. Thyssen Copany and Congressman such as Carroll B. Reece. There was a common policy. Parties involved were Carnegie Trustees, Alger Hiss, Kathryn Casy, Samuel Johnson, Bill Clinton (whose wife trailed an unusually large dead-body count).
There were crooked Sleight-of-Hand elections which centralized power through Transnationals with power for only a few at the top. The Reptilian Hybrids.
Clinton-Blair sanctions of Iraq became under suspicion in the 1990s. The William J. Clinton Foundation created a new Mark II under Condoleezza Rice and Rodham Clinton at the helm. The System continued with Rupert Murdoch, Citigroup, The Rockefeller Foundation, and the Clintons. All over-layered with crooked elections.
Transnationals
Corporations become interlocked in a pyramid of manipulation for a few at the top. These were the Reptilian Hybrids. The capstone to this pyramid is the most elite: The Twelve Families and the Twelve Followers, including Coburg and Gothe sperm banks. In Arizona, these are even wilder.
There is talk of Marguis de Lebeaux and the Pinnacle of the Draco who ‘do’ as they are told. All these employees and institutions do as they are told. Power positions always go to the right people. Ordo Ab Chao. Problem-Reaction-Solution. There is a certain amount of arrogance in totalitarian tiptoeing. Free trade using diversion techniques, says Icke. when making Money out of Nothing. Like when crediting King Hammurabi, and the stories of the Knights Templar.
There is a whole hidden history in Black Nobility going back to Venice and the Banco of Lombard Street and the Gold trade and the Gold Smith; notes were submerged in debt; the Fractional Reserve System. The culprits reserved your wealth as their own under this myth, which goes back to Nathan Rothschild’s Battle of Waterloo in 1815. This led into the Mossad’s Boom and Bust system when they called in loans to repay loans. Controlled banking; all part of the central banking system and the private banking cartel and the taxation of people; It was coordinated corruption involving the Monetary Fund and the Bank of England.
Recall Wiam Orange in 1694 and Jekyll Island in 1910, leading to the event of Senator Nelson Aldrich, Paul and Max Warburg, as well as the trail of I.G. Farben, Nina Leoh, Frieda Schiff, the Federal Reserve Bill of 1913-–all part of the private banks.
Similarly, there was Paul Volcker, Alan Greenspan and the Federal Reserve and IOUs to the BIS. Senator Thomas Benton Rothschild was part of the cabal that owned the dollar by using Counterfeit notes in 1930. The same for banks in 1998 and the World Central Bank today. We are being forced to have a World Central Back even today. All property at their mercy. They are Neptune’s and so ludicrous, says Icke, in rigging the system with Cartelism.
Look at the Diamond Market, says Icke. DeBeers was started in 1871. Lord Salisbury and Lord Roseburg ordered the mines consolidated in 1888 which led to the war with the Boers (Prince Rose and Croix Lodge N0. 30), which also led to the Rosicrucian 1897 Union of South Africa. Further details can be found with Alfred Milner, Ernest Oppenheimer, Namibia and the Anglo-American Corporation. Ernest Oppenheimer was Chairman in 1929. All were hybridlike cattle that worked to justify the prices they demandedthrough indoctrination of the public using dubious marketing strategy, even movies. Debeer companies used blatant untruths and even terrorism in 200 merchants using unusually prices—artificially high. The Anglo-American Corporation dealt in Black Markets of alluvial diamonds in a coup supported by the CIA and a Mobius diamond cartel—one big cartel.
The same with the Gold Industry.
All Going Morally Bankrupt but most arduously and innately involved in control and domination of mankind!
Part IV: Cracks in the Egg—The Global Cadence
The costs of water and food on global levels heading for bankruptcy for the average person. Benito Mussolini did his share of hijacking of the food chain. A Cap is needed on the rich -poor divide. Bob Geldof in 1988 spoke of a ‘sting’ operation in the European economy. The Federal Reserve buyouts. The General Electric Corporation where Dr. Ana and Charles really own the body and pay only a royalty on patented ‘seed banks.’ They are without a license to operate a food control where corporations no longer operate as Corporations by and for the people. The Crown Temple fallaciously tries to remove the problem. Instead, there is only ‘death in the woods,’ while the attempt to cover their tracks. It is bigger than you think as they try programming the language, creating a blueprint for conquest.
The Personnel
Donald Ramsfield, Dick Chaney, Paul Wolfowitz, Lewis Libby, John Bolton, Elliot Abrams, Dov Zakeim, Douglas Faith, Richard Perle, Michael Ledom, John Negroponte, Zalmay Kha lazed and Jed Bush. Still all part of the Sumerian – Khazar mafia.
The Story of Flight 11, Flight 175, Flight 77 and Flight 93.
Flights 11, 175 and 93 are still some of biggest Norad mysteries in the lap of Michel de Montaigne and Donald Rumfield and the bombshell caused by ‘boy Bush.’ There were many omissions by the investigation Commission in an Alice in Wonderland matrix. Why did the hijacking not start while the planes were landed? The disappearance of and tampering with the Black Boxes is open to question. Flight 77 did not crash into the Pentagon, but may have been a separate missile, not the plane. And the fall of the buildings themselves appear to be “controlled demolition.” The extra building, No. 7, was circumspectly collapsed when someone said to ”pull it.” Flight 93 is suspected of being passengerless and pilotless and operated by someone on the ground.
There is growing evidence that the said pilots were trained by aviation schools that had close ties with the CIA.
The roots of 9/11 have to do with a George Orwell reality and fake democracy and law enforcement elitism, part of a Superstate agenda. One of the movements may have to do with a United Europe and further treaties of Rome. John Foster Dulles and Dean Acheson spoke of a ‘Eura ton’ and Monumental but bogus referendums: the Soviet Union of Europe and the European Commission. Icke says these were ‘useful idiots.’ Dark Eyes but EU sellouts of the North American Trade Agreement which was not real ‘free trade.’ There is no “super corridor” but only, according to George Shultz, a national flux of people in a World Bank.
It is all part of the New World Order upon Americans and others where their freedoms are at stake. It is all a partnership in crime. Parties involved are Lord Keyes, Gatt, The Bechter Group, Robert Zoellick and the IMF: all centralized and uniform in the Problem-Reaction-Solution. Also, Margaret Thatcher, the Bush-Clinton drug ring. Vincent Foster, the Rose Law Firm. Larry Nichols, The Social Democratic Party (SDP), Victor Rothschild, MI5, and a lot of Ivy League, and Tony Blair who became part of the Shadow People in 1953.
It was all Rule by Sycophants: The R-Complex. This included the Queen, The Labour Party, The Manchurian Candidates Abu Nidal and Cho Seung-Hu, Paul McKenna, Cathleen Ann O’brien, The Warren Commission, Project Monarch, MKUltratrist Lampe and Missouri Representative Wayne Cox, Lt. Colonel Michael Aquino.
In this Castle of Kings was Azazel, Hillary Clinton, Timothy McVeigh—were all part of a global sickness where DARPA was experimenting with ‘thought tracking and manufacturing of reality.’ With Chem Trails, we are poisoning the skies, some are Barium alloys. Dr. Nick Begich speaks of the Hive Mind, a Left-Brain prison—all part of the Bush Cabal.
Carlos Castaneda talks of ‘force whispering’ and the use of subliminal images in Double thinking. Nick Griffin and C.D Seane say that this can be found in diet soda, fluoride imputations, Big Pharma. Dr. Andrew Wakefield sees this as all part of a global fascism He reminds us of IPCC experiments and talk of Sunspots about 1893.
Edward Maunder, Professor Ian Clerk, Tim Ball and Al Gore speak about returning to a medieval ‘warm period.’ Nigel Lawson, Professor Philip Scott, Professor Patrick Michaels likewise wish to invent a Gobal Waring Club. Professor Patrick Michaels speculates this will all be outlined by ‘computer crazies.’ Professor David Adams talks about climate change leading to ‘another dimensional awareness.’
Symbolic Interlude. Now That’s Prophecy. Neo-Nazi Cops. 9/11 – The Big Lie. Lying for a Living. The Miracle Factory. The Seamless Web. The Conspiracy Allude. Free Trade as We Tell You. Fake Democracy. The Super State Agenda. The Wall. The Sycophant versus Britain. Made in Manchuria. Whose Word is in your Head? The Hive Mind. Computer Access. The Carbon Con. The Shift.
Small quotes are permitted by reviewers with all credits to this article
Barker, as lover’s would, was aware that Oswald had penetrated the “heart of the groups in New Orleans who were serious about killing Kennedy…(as well as) an elite circle of even more powerful men, mostly from Texas, composed of politicians, whose fanatical patriotism was mixed with monetary ambitions and a lust for power.” (p. 419)
Oswald was deliberately enmeshed in two operative teams: one to shoot Kennedy, and one to “abort” the event. The complexity of such an operation boggles the imagination (p. 519).
CALLED FOR A PERSONAL STUDY
“Lee,” I said, “I know you’re used to leading three lives, or thirty, but I’d rather tell the truth.” “Ah,” he said, “You’re still not use to it, like I am…false trails, false records, fake names.” (Judyth Baker and Lee Oswald, July 19, 1963, as they spoke about events [page 402].)
Only after a serious study of the book with its plush, intimate facts and comments–in their entirety–taken in detail and systematically–will readers come to appreciate and understand the complex threads of conspiracy.
Barker could possibly–the same as Oswald–have been selected for the destiny they entered at an early age, and perhaps it was more than coincidence that they met in New Orleans (“I was useful because I was almost untraceable, since I wasn’t a doctor yet…,” p. 182).
David Ferrie had spoken of such projects that involved human control:
“…he had more to tell us about mind control and the experiments on people, frequently without their knowledge,” said Baker. “Yes, American citizens were being used as guinea pigs by their own government.”
“These things never die,” said David Ferrie. “It’s an iron-clad law that it takes more energy to stop a government program than to start one. This is self-perpetuating.” (p. 217)
The prospect that the inner-workings of men and society have become victim to hidden and minute control from sinister forces should have frightened us all.
JUDYTH ANSWERED CRITICS
Judyth Baker discovered numerous scandalous and false accusations against her on the Internet and in the media; she has attempted to answer and correct as much of the criticisms and attacks as she could over the years. The extensive coverage of those rebuttals was beyond the scope of this article, but some websites (out of a multitude) were available:
Jeffrey Holmes, 2010: “Far be it for someone to actually read the book before writing a review. Do the research, as I have, and you will begin to see the whole picture here.
“I am a New Orleans researcher and own a tour company, after doing extensive legwork for a number of years it becomes quite clear as to what was happening in New Orleans in the early 60’s.
“When it comes to facts, Me & Lee and Dr. Mary’s Monkey are both historical documents that help fill out the truth behind the assassination of JFK. Do yourself a favor and be a true investigative journalist, although you may not like what you find.”
Judyth Vary Baker said: “I was told to keep my mouth shut if I wanted to stay alive, and I did so for decades; but I finally realized that if I did not speak out during my lifetime, I would have no way of defending the book. I had decided to go to the grave, originally, with what I knew, and to simply let my son publish the book posthumously. Then I would not have to battle the forces that could (and did) ruin my life.
“However, two factors came into play to change my mind about going to the grave before this vital information about Oswald was released to the public: 1) my son was unaware of the milieu in New Orleans, and in the nation, in 1963, and, worse, knew almost nothing about the lies and falsehoods circulating about Oswald. He would be unable to defend the book. 2) I realized that he would not understand the value of the materials I had saved from the past, and how they helped me achieve the feat of remembering the conversations. A streetcar ticket dated April 28, for example, would have little meaning for my son, whereas for me, it evoked a host of sharp, strong memories, including key conversations.”
Trine Day publisher, Kris Millegan, said: “The saddest thing is that we have no Fourth Estate today, simply propaganda founts trumpeting books such as Case Closed and most recently Vincent Bugliosi’s Reclaiming History that uphold the highly discredited official story… (his book completely ignores) astounding verifiable historical revelations…the forces and men who killed President Kennedy are still getting away with it.”
A sampling-catalog of a few synchronistic highlights from Judyth Baker’s memoir typified the extent and mystery of the Kennedy fiasco:
# There were actually “six” tramps arrested in Dallas on November 22, 1963. One of the tramps was a suspected Chauncey Holt, a mafia asset. He was one of three arrested but then released without charges. Holt was photographed in front of the Trade Mart on August 16, 1963 with Lee Oswald. Holt was a disguise artist who made Oswald’s fake IDs. He worked on CIA projects such as Operation Mongoose (p. 462).
# George de Mohrenschildt, geologist, and handler of Oswald, had dated Jackie Kennedy’s mother. “Jackie Bouvier Kennedy called him ‘Uncle George’ when she was young; George also knew Ruth Paine’s father.” (p. 393)
# “The Texas Theater was owned by (billionaire) Howard Hughes, who had strong ties with the CIA.” (Judyth Baker) Connected with Oswald’s arrest, a witness reported seeing an “Oswald double” leave through the back door of the theater and entering a police car on November 22, 1963. (p. 537)
# Oswald attended and talked at a Russian seminar on July 27, 1963. Jesuit “spies” concerned about the Sadinistan insurrection Latin America infiltrated the seminar. Bobby Kennedy also sent an inquiring Jesuit priest. The CIA and Mafia asked Oswald to discourage the insurrection. Oswald said the spies worked for Aristotle Socrates Onassis, a Greek shipping magnate who later became the husband of Jackie Kennedy, John Kennedy’s widow (pp. 416, 421).
# Over the years a number of researchers had suggested that David Atlee Phillips (CIA psyops expert in Operation Sherwood and PBSUCCESS), alias Maurice Bishop, was involved in planning the JFK assassination. CIA agent E. Howard Hunt named Phillips as a participant in the assassination (p. 521).
# “Wild Bill” Donovan, a leading American Cancer Society official was also the Founding Father of the CIA. Donovan was also a friend of Alton Oschner (p. 459).
# Oswald’s uncle, Charles (Dutz) Murret, died in 1964, a bad year for witness-deaths.
# Oswald showed Judyth a pistol that was ‘not’ a semi-automatic pistol. Authorities claimed that that a semi-automatic weapon shot Officer J.D. Tippet.
# Robert Gene Baker, a powerful Washington insider, Billie Sol Estes, a powerful Texas businessperson, and Vice-President Lyndon Johnson, were instrumental in the Assassination. Hit man Malcom Wallace was involved in eight murders connected to Lyndon Johnson. Wallace’s fingerprint “was found on a box of books stacked in the so-called ‘sniper’s nest’ in the Texas School Book Depository…” “…later in life, after LBJ’s death, Estes admitted to secretly funneling millions of dollars to LBJ, and that it was LBJ who ordered the murder of President John F. Kennedy…” (pp. 522-523)
BLOOD-THIRSTY GAME
“The pursuit of power is a blood-thirsty game that knows few rules,” said fellow assassination researcher Edward Haslam, “It kills to silence. It punishes those who get in the way. It threatens those who might speak up. Lee was a casualty of this ugly game. His death preserved their secrets.” (Forward, Me & Lee, November 2009)
“…if Oswald was not the shooter, then it is questionable if the plotting in the New Orleans actually resulted in the assassination,” summarized investigative journalist Jim Marrs. “The New Orleans plot was real enough, but the true assassins remain masked behind the smoke from the Grassy Knoll…events in New Orleans in the summer of 1963 reveal the murderous interconnections of the major players in the assassination.” (p. 566)
A WILDERNESS OF CHICANERY
“Contrary to published accounts, Lee Harvey Oswald was a patriot who loved his country,” said publisher Kris Millegan in the dedication to Me & Lee. “He submersed himself in an officially-sanctioned covert arena where one’s inventive ‘legend’ becomes entry into a netherworld of intrigue, compartmentalization, secret operations and contrived situations…whichever guise is called up by a taskmaster giving the high sign through the shadows of plausible deniability: A wilderness of chicanery, deceit and double/triple crosses.”
Footnotes on JFK, Lincoln, J.P Morgan and personal synchronistic events: an extraordinary component
THE HARDCORE DEFINITION
The late psychoanalyst Carl Jung examined the magic and elegant world of what he called “synchronistic events” and “meaningful coincidence”: “temporally coincident occurrences of acausal events,” “connecting (togetherness) principle,” and “acausal parallelism.” Jung introduced the concept as early as the 1920s, but gave a full statement of it only in 1951 in an Eranos lecture, and in 1952, published a paper, Synchronizität als ein Prinzip akausaler Zusammenhänge (Synchronicity – An Acausal Connecting Principle), in a volume with a related study by the physicist (and Nobel laureate) Wolfgang Pauli.
THE UNDERLYING PRINCIPLE
It was a principle that Jung felt gave conclusive evidence for his concepts of archetypes (universal symbolic representations and imagery) and the collective unconscious(a consciousness shared by all mankind, similar to the akashic records [in Indian religion, a supposedall-pervading field in the ether in which a record of pastevents is imprinted]). It was descriptive of a governing dynamic that underlies the whole of human experience and history–social, emotional, psychological, and spiritual. These are concurrent events that first appear to be coincidental but later turn out to be causally related (seem to take on real and intimate, personal meaning) and are termed incoincident.
Jung believed that many experiences perceived as coincidence were not merely due to chance but, instead, suggested the manifestation of parallel (real) events or deliberate circumstances reflecting this “governing dynamic” (the akashic all-pervading consciousness).
One of Jung’s favorite quotes on synchronicity was from Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll, in which the White Queen says to Alice:
“It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards.”
“A simple example of synchronicity is when you suddenly think about someone you haven’t seen for a few years and just after you have the thought, that person calls you. At the other end of the scale are visions or dreams where the person sees an event that either occurred but which they did not witness, or one that occurs after they ‘see’ it.”
Coincidental events, which are later found to be causally related (but concrete events), were termed “Incoincident” because “a grouping of events connected by meaning need not have an explanation in terms of a concrete sense of cause and effect.”
It maintained that just as events may be connected by a causal line, they may also be connected by meaning. “Therefore it cannot be a question of cause and effect, but of a falling together in time, a kind of simultaneity,” said Jung.
Jung believed that many experiences that are coincidences due to “chance” in terms of causality, but suggested the manifestation of parallel events or circumstances (seeming unrelated happenings that suddenly mean something and have a personal connection somehow) in terms of meaning, reflecting this governing dynamic.
The JFK assassination was rife with such coincidence:
The John Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln assassinations, for instance; below was a short sampling, out of many Lincoln/Kennedy coincidences:
Abraham Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846. John F. Kennedy was elected to Congress in 1946.
Abraham Lincoln was elected President in 1860. John F. Kennedy was elected President in 1960.
The names Lincoln and Kennedy each contained seven letters.
Both were particularly concerned with civil rights.
Both opposed the International Bankers: Kennedy gave Executive Order 11110 on June 4, 1963, which would have wiped out the Federal Reserve. Lincoln fought Rothschild’s attempts to finance the Civil War; warned people about the National Banking Act (later, through the efforts of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton and Thomas W. House [agent for the Rothschild’s], Lincoln’s efforts were nullified).
Both of their wives lost their children while living in the White House.
Both Presidents were shot on a Friday.
Lincoln was shot in the Ford Theater. Kennedy was shot in a car made by the Ford Motor Company (a Lincoln, no less)
Both successors were named Johnson.
Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln, was born in 1808. Lyndon Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy, was born in 1908.
Their first names both contained six letters.
A week before Lincoln was shot, he was with friends in Monroe, Maryland. A week before Kennedy was shot, he was with his friend Marilyn Monroe.
Lincoln’s last child, Tad, had his funeral held on July 16, 1871. Later he was exhumed and moved to a different gravesite. Kennedy’s son JFK Jr. was lost at sea on July 16, 1999. Later he was found, brought up, and then re-buried at sea.
Apparently, Lincoln had a dream several days before the assassination that he had been killed. He told his wife that he had seen himself in a casket.
In addition, Lincoln’s son Tad had a pet turkey named Jack. Tad asked his father not to kill the turkey for Thanksgiving. Although Harry S Truman started the official tradition, Lincoln was the first to “pardon” a Thanksgiving turkey.
RMS TITANIC
Jung’s “meaningful coincidences” led into broader connections, as can be seen below:
There were “four” fiction books written on the sinking of liners similar to the ill-fated and famous RMS Titanic. All of the books were written before hand:
The SinkingofaModernLiner by W.T. Stead in 1886 (Stead died on the “actual” Titanic in 1912).
Futility: TheWreckoftheTitan by Morgan Robertson in 1898.
TheShipsRun by M. McDonnell Bodkin in 1908 (named The Titanic).
TheWhiteGhostofDisaster (called the Admiral) which described the sinking of the Titanic-like Admiral; the book was being distributed ‘before’ the real Titanic was set out to sail in 1912.
All of these fiction stories displayed actual resemblances to the real Titanic.
J.P MORGAN OWNED THE TITANIC
The coincidences went even further.
Three elite and wealthy businesspersons that opposed the Federal Reserve Bank, Benjamin Guggenheim (mining and machinery), Isa Strauss (co-owner of Macy Stores), and Colonel Jacob Astor (owner of the Waldorf Astoria) were all deceased on the Titanic voyage in 1912.
Mogul J.P. Morgan owned the Titanic and the Silver Star Ship Lines.
Morgan was very much in favor of the Federal Reserve Bank.
On April 14, 1912, the Titanic struck an iceberg and all opposition to the Federal Reserve was eliminated. Lincoln was also dedicatedly opposed to the International Bankers. His opposition to the scheming financiers also ended on April 14 (the same day of the week in history as the Titanic sinking and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln).
(In December of 1913, the Federal Reserve System came into being in the United States. Eight months later, the First World War began. John Kennedy’s murder ended his opposition to the Federal Reserve; following his death, escalation of the Vietnam War began.)
Jacob Astor, a Titanic victim, funded and befriended electronics genius Nikola Tesla, but when Morgan discovered that Tesla was going to give his inventions to the public, outside of Morgan’s monopolies, Morgan began to blackball Tesla and ruin Tesla’s career (Tesla’s history, in itself, contained some extraordinary events; of which is beyond the scope this article).
(“The Captain of the Titanic was Edward Smith. He was a Jesuit and worked for J.P. Morgan. Anyone could be a Jesuit and their identity not be known. Smith “was a ‘Jesuit Tempore co-adjustor…a priest of the short robe…J.P Morgan was also a priest and put Smith in charge of captaining the Titanic…” [From NationalGeographic ‘The Secrets of the Titanic,’ {1986}]:
“When the ship departed southern England, on board was Francis Browne. He was the most powerful Jesuit in all of Ireland and the ‘Jesuit Master of Edward Smith.” Here is Jesuit treachery at its finest. The provincial Father Francis Browne boards the Titanic, photographs the victims, most assuredly briefs the Captain concerning his oath as a Jesuit, and the following morning bids him farewell…’ [Eric J. Phelps, VaticanAssassins Halcon Unified Services, p. 247].
“Captain Smith believed this high-ranking ‘Jesuit General’ was God. Browne instructed him on what to do in the North Atlantic waters. ‘Edward Smith was given orders to sink the Titanic and that’s exactly what he did.’ According to Jesuit secret philosophy, the innocent can be massacred for the greater good; the end justifies the means.”)
The above examples portrayed the intricate and on-going phenomena called “meaningful coincidence” that seemed limitless and unending; a few more examples brought the topic closer to home: real-life coincidences of Steve Erdmann in the JFK scenario:
# Judyth Baker, at the age of eight, had a pet lapdog named “Sparky.” At the approximate age of nine, I also adopted a mongrel pet dog that I named “Sparky.” Mobster Jack Ruby, Jacob Rubenstein, was also nicknamed “Sparky.”
# Judyth was 15 months older than Steve Erdmann. On November 22, 1963, she was 20 years, 7 months years-of-age. I was 19 years, 4 months.
# My dog “Sparky” lived until about late 1963, near the time of Kennedy’s death. About that time, “unseen” teenage “thugs” attacked and disabled Sparky and he had to be put to death. These ‘criminals’ (I had suspects…SE) apparently were very “jealous” of my dating a girl who later became my first wife, and when confronted by a property-protective Sparky, decided to “kick and beat” my dog.
# “Sparky” Rubenstein had a history of violence and having been involved in dramatic confrontations (not to mention the shooting of Lee Oswald). “…in his youth, his old buddies from Chicago called him ‘Sparky’ because of his short temper.” (p. 553.)
# My first-purchased home was on Louisiana Avenue in St. Louis in the early 1970s. David Ferrie’s apartment was on Louisiana Parkway in New Orleans in 1963. There was also a Louisiana bus line in New Orleans (p. 426), as well as a Louisiana Avenue (p. 207).
# My father, Steve Erdmann, Sr., passed away 10 months after my birthdate, two months short of a twelve-month period. Lee Oswald’s father died “two months” before Oswald’s birthdate.
# Grandfather Steve Erdmann died on April 29, my father died on April 21: Judyth met Lee Oswald on April 26.
# When Steve Erdmann was about six-years-of-age, Steve Erdmann’s mother, Clara Erdmann, placed Steve into a Manchester, Missouri Lutheran orphanage (next to the St. Paul Lutheran church). It was a temporary provision; she wanted to relocate and “get back on her feet” (“…Lee explained that his father had died a few months before he was born… [His] mother struggled with financial problems so severe…,” p. 135). Steve stayed at the orphanage for about a three-year period. Lee Oswald was placed in the Lutheran Bethlehem orphanage in New Orleans at the age of three.
# Judyth Baker was working at Pencham Laboratory on November 22, 1963, where one man expressed the “hope that somebody in Dallas would shoot him (Kennedy).” When the Last Rites were given to the President, cheers went up from the laboratory workers; Judyth’s employer exclaimed “Good!” He later berated Judyth for being a “Goddamned Communist!” (pp. 526-527) Steve Erdmann was working at a customer-counter in St. Louis where employees discussed the murder as it came out. One of the customers exclaimed: “It’s about time somebody shot that son-of-a-bitch!”
# Lee Oswald and Steve Erdmann both shared a somewhat tumultuous early life and marriage consisting of abuse, instability, and some deceit: “I am used to harpies in my life,” Lee commented, “my mother and my wife are both experts in the department.” (p. 152)
Life seemed to be a sea of mystery and quantum connection that forever lingered beyond our finite grasp. Manuscript space prohibited further inquiries into the strange world of coincidence, personal lives and world events. That waited upon the readers’ next step into that private void.
“Caution” was named as the Commodore of your sailing.
Photo above of Stephen Erdmann, Independent Investigative Journalist
A Review of Reviews of the Great Gatsby
By: Steve Erdmann
The classic story by the late Scott Fitzgerald (Fitzgerald, Scott. The Great Gatsby. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991) has fallen on bad times in the hands of merciless and savage idiot-reviewers of the latest rendering and movie by Director Baz Luhrmann. Demonstrating a total lack of empathy of a classic and well-venerated story, or lack of general literary sense, the purpose and honor of said reviewers can only be questioned and their insensivity heralded as further proof of modern-day barbarism.
Poor Brandi Stephens finds herself mystified that a well-liked masterpiece holds ingredients that are asthma and cold to her: complication and characters; Subtract these two literary tools, and you will have the perfect novel. “I am still reading the book, so maybe it will get better.”
Martha Conneilly queries that it has “words” in the story – and a lot of them: I can imagine that dinner-time, or even a romance (?) in her family can be a very silent and boring event. And she has the ‘best support’ for her viewpoint – her Book Club – and that is saying a lot: When your book club gives a ‘thumbs down’ on an alleged Classic, you know it has to be saying something about the quality of the author! “It was too ‘wordy’. Members of the Book Club that I am involved in did not give it a good review. What makes it a ‘classic’?”
“A Costumer” reviewer/reader, who obviously has dredged the depths of human action and is the epitome of a pensive and analytic connoisseur of art, grasps Fitzgerald’s insight into human nature; some added advice: it helps immensely to have the correct story in mind, in any analysis. “I was disgusted with it. The characters in the story were worthless wastes of human flesh.”
Iaiam,A Kid’s Review, and Suzanne C solidly place their feet into the author’s shoes, they seem well-prepared to see the story through the author’s eyes. No misunderstanding possible here. Surely, if the novel had any relevance to our modern-age, these two readers would have surely been able to have seen it. They have a handle on plenty other ‘insights’ to this literary world of the Roaring Twenties: they clearly demonstrate that the book was not written for their specific audience.
Clearly, Bay Area User has more of a depth and acumen; he or she is able to fit into the author’s shoes – except for the bulging bunions on his or her feet. ‘Old’ literature; probably, they would say, the same goes for the Bible or Shakespeare.
Luhrmann stated that he planned it to be timelier due to its theme of criticizing the often irresponsible lifestyles of wealthy people. While Scott Fitzgerald couldn’t see 2008 and the modern financial crisis, his vision undoubtedly expanded beyond the 1920s to live again in the bosom of modern-day catastrophe.
“In reality, the American Dream is based on nothing but immoral wealth and materialistic desires for the pleasures in life. However, once at the top, there is nowhere to go but down. And, for those who took the easy road of immorality to reach the American Dream, the ride down is nothing short of a ride from Hell.”
This reviewer seems to have grasped part of Fitzgerald’s “vision,” unlike our earlier reviewers. Surely, the reviewers can share in this revelation that wealth in the story was no guarantee of happiness; that in the long search for sanctity, Jay Gatsby lost sight of where his dream was going. And don’t you feel sadness that his quest was so near and yet when he had it in hand, it suddenly disintegrated before his eyes because of an innate flaw in his plan? Has that ever happened to our reviewers? And have not our reviewers ever found themselves in love – only to find that ‘love’ evaporate due to some miscalculation, some bit of misapproiated tweaking that just could not pull it through, like a thread slipping from a needle-eye?
Says another insightful reviewer: “Gatsby becomes fabulously wealthy, but he doesn’t care about money in itself. He lives in a beautiful mansion and dresses beautifully, but everything he does is for love. He invents a hero called Jay Gatsby and then inhabits this creation, just as we hope to reinvent ourselves, someday, any day now, almost certainly starting tomorrow.”
Has the reviewer ever had dreams – and those dreams become so paramount that no one – no man, women or child – would interfere with that tempest in a human heart? And have they not seen that tempest, that battle, in many a Classic novel or tale?
The book opens in the words of Nick Carraway: reserve judgment long enough as to learn something you might miss, there are worlds where other readers have been, other authors have been, that can tell you much about the world, new horizons and reality:
“In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.”
“Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.” “Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parceled out unequally at birth.”
Reserving judgment, parceling out hope, reaching the ‘unreachable star’ of human love and understanding (The Man La Mancha) are things, as Scott Fitzgerald may have seen, we too can grasp if we really strive to.
Answers to Eric Lundgren’s Questionnaire:
Question No. 1: Ans.: I try to be unique yet universal, capture the genre and the mood and tone of various authors into my own work, yet leaving my definite ‘stamp’. Since I derive inspiration from multiple sources, my writing can reflect different styles.
Question No. 2: Ans.: A lot of good and bad happened to me in my childhood that has shaped my worldview. I am primarily a slice of ‘time’ from World War II through the Space Age. One of the big events in my early life while in an orphanage was watching the atomic bomb tests on TV out in Nevada.
Question No. 3: Ans.: Certainly, science-fiction/fiction is often prophetic. Reality can often be stranger than fiction, or visa versa. I do believe that there is a psychic/paranormal side to humanity and that quantum physics is beginning to scientifically prove that.
Question No. 4: Ans.: Michael John Moorcock, James Dickey, Philip K. Dick, H.G. Wells; Richard S. Shaver and Ray Palmer of AMAZING STORIES fame, and his inauguration of FATE Magazine. There are so many.
I remember Jim Keith writing this book. At the time, he was also working on an article for the coming issue of Steam shovel Press. Jim contributed regularly to the magazine and stayed in phone contact for research help and to chat conspiracy. He mentioned that he was trying to summarize all of his current thinking in a single themed manuscript.
The original Saucers of the Illuminati, in fact, may have been Jim Keith’s last contribution to the zine world. The original book had an 8×10 format, spiral bound and resembled more a magazine than a book. Then, many people who knew Keith at all knew him primarily through his small circulation “fan” magazines (although it is hard to conceive of a conspiracy/UFO cover up “fan”), Dharma Combat being the most well-known but certainly not the only example.
(Keith)
My purpose for authorizing this informal edition was to get into print certain interesting connections that I had made between occult philosophy, the lore of UFOs, and the totalitarian New World Order – ideas that I had discussed at length with other researchers and that were already twinkling into being in a firmament of articles by some of those worthies. I was a little… paranoid is not the word I seek… concerned that by the time a proper paperback edition of Saucers was ushered into being, that I might be accused of plagiarizing myself.
As it turned out, my worry was largely unfounded, and little of what I wrote about in ’93 has been grappled with, understood, or even mentioned in the conspiracy or UFO press, much less by the New York Times. I take this to be positive proof that I was on the right track.
Actually, my sense is that the ideas in Saucers tend to jump disciplines from political conspiracy, to UFOs, to the occult, to synthesize the information in each. The researchers in those varied disciplines almost never have any truck with and so are confounded by their adjoining truck stops in arcane research. The Left-Hand Path doesn’t know what the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy is doing, you might say. But these topics are, at the deepest levels, intertwined and clarify the notions of the others.
Another matter: the ideas in Saucers of the Illuminati are dangerous, not to mention extremely weird, and stray very close to Things You Are Not Supposed to Think. In fact, in current polite-read mind controlled – society you are not even supposed to think that there are things that you are not supposed to think… Do you follow?
Since the lightning appearance and disappearance of the researcher’s edition of Saucers in 1993 copies have been completely unavailable, aside from a pirate edition that was rumored to have been put into print. That unavailability created a few misunderstandings about the book. Some speculated in print and on the Internet that the book was too incendiary, too Politically Incorrect, and that it went so quickly out of print because it was suppressed by the CIA or the Men in Black or some such.
Those things have been known to happen in the annals of conspiracy research, of course, but not in this case. Simply, when I might have been expanding the text of Saucers to a length more appropriate for a paperback, I was doing lots of other things: writing nine other books, chasing the wolf of velvet fortune, things like that.
But I finally got around to the revision in 1998. Now here is the bells and whistles version of Saucers, with a lot of material not included in the book’s original incarnation. Since the first appearance of the book, a great deal in the text has been clarified, and the revised work reflects new theories, new understandings obtained, and an arsenal of new smoking guns. Also included in this edition is the text of “UFOs at the Edge of Reality,” a lecture delivered in Atlanta, Georgia in 1995.
I admit it. Saucers of the Illuminati is my strangest and most controversial work. That fact has been underlined by the largely uncomprehending and sometimes hostile reviews given to the first edition. The book may also be the most true that I have written.
Hold on to your brains. Maybe the world is ready for this stuff now.
Rock, Nevada, north of Reno, his hometown, and broke his knee. He went to the Washoe Medical hospital there and died during surgery on September 7 at 8:10 PM, when a blood clot released and entered his lung. In addition to co-authoring The Octopus with Kenn Thomas, Keith wrote many other popular books on conspiracy topics, including Mind Control/World Control, Black Helicopters I and II, OKC Bomb, Saucers of the Illuminati, Casebook on Alternative 3, Casebook on the Men In Black and many others. He was well-known and well-loved among the readers of conspiracy literature, and Thomas is receiving a great outpouring of grief and condolences from Keith’s many fans around the world.
One of the underlying themes of Keith’s works is that the UFO phenomenon is, in fact, of entirely earthly origin and has its roots within a parallel program of technological development. Keith maintained a steadfast commitment to the earthly-origin theory, and he believed that there was a concerted effort to put forth the extraterrestrial hypothesis into the public consciousness.”
Thank you for the kind words about Jim. He was a dear friend of mine and an important person to the world. The loss is immeasurable. He was not just the co-author of “The Octopus,” but a dharma combatant who demonstrated time and again that the world is far more multi-dimensional, far more interesting, than the pablum that usually passes for news, information and normal discourse. Unfortunately, it is also far more dangerous.
One alleged site of production of the Nazi UFOs is a series of tunnels buried under the Jonas Valley in Thuringia, central Germany. Here, under the command of SS General Hans Kammler, legions of slave labourers worked to bring the Fuhrer’s fantasies into existence.
The respected German science magazine has reported how “advanced” the programme was as scientists toiled in secret factories to produce the “wonder weapon” to win the war. The magazine quotes eyewitnesses who saw a flying saucer marked with the German Iron Cross flying low over the Thames in 1944. “America also treated the existence of the weapons seriously,” it said.
Research done in Third Reich archives points to a secret factory in the Jonas Valley complex. Now officially sealed off, authorities play a cat-and-mouse game with UFO hunters. Why else would the Americans take away everything they found and place the results under a 100-year secrecy order?
The US believed Germany could use it to drop weapons on New York — a target the Fuhrer obsessed on as the war progressed. At the time the New York Times reported on a “mysterious flying disc” with photos of the device seen travelling at extremely high speeds over the city’s high-rise buildings.
“Apparently that machine was capable on its maiden flight of travelling 2,000km,” added the PM report. “The Germans had destroyed much of the paperwork of their activities but there are numerous hints that it did indeed exist.”
The Nazi UFO project was driven by engineers Rudolf Schriever and Otto Habermohl and was based in Prague between 1941 and 1943. Initially a Luftwaffe project, it eventually fell under the control of armaments minister Albert Speer before being taken over once again in 1944 by Hans Kammler. Eyewitnesses captured by Allies after the war claimed to have seen the saucer fly on several occasions. Joseph Andreas Epp, an engineer who served as a consultant to the Schriever-Habermohl project, claimed 15 prototypes were built. He described how a central cockpit surrounded by rotating adjustable wing-vanes formed a circle. The vanes were held together by a band at the outer edge and were set in rotation by small rockets placed around the rim. Once rotational speed was sufficient and lift-off was achieved, horizontal jets or rockets were ignited.
A German official recorded that at the Prague-Gbell aerodrome in September 1943, he saw inside a hangar “a disk 5-6 metres in diameter. Its body is relatively large at the centre. “Underneath it has four tall, thin legs. Colour: aluminum. Height: almost as tall as a man. Thickness: some 30 to 40cm. Along with my friends, I saw the device emerge from the hangar. “It was then we heard the roar of the engines, we saw the external side of the disk begin to rotate and the vehicle began moving slowly and in a straight line toward the southern end of the field. “It then rose almost one metre into the air. After moving around some 300 metres at that altitude, it stopped again. Its landing was rather rough. Later, the ‘thing’ took off again, managing to reach the end of the aerodrome this time.”
German engineer Georg Klein claimed that two types of flying disks had been created by the Nazi scientists. Georg Klein, who went on to have a distinguished postwar career as an aeronautical engineer, said : “I don’t consider myself a crackpot, or eccentric, or fantasy prone person. This is what I saw with my own eyes — a Nazi UFO.”
In his “The Hunt for Zero Point“ Nick Cook describes the discovery of “the greatest mystery since the invention of the atomic bomb”. The author, an aviation specialist in the leading military magazine Jane’s Defense Weekly, reveals that American researchers are not only working on revolutionary antigravation techniques, but have already deciphered the secret of the gravity. Only the sensational discovery, which fundamentally changed both transport and weapon technology, had been kept secret for years.
Cook, too, first learns of it through mysterious circumstances. One day he stumbles over a quotation from armor expert George S. Trimble, vice president of the “G project” at Martin Aircrafts. Trimble claimed as early as 1956 that the taming of gravity could be achieved “about the same time as was necessary to build the atomic bomb.” What was he playing with?
There would be, for example, those Nazi scholars who, in the service of the SS, explored the possibility of antigravity and time travel. What became of the head of these armament projects, SS Obergruppenführer Hans Kammler?
Many clues suggest that SS Obergruppenführer Hans Kammler escaped to the United States with his findings and made them available to the US military.
It is quite conceivable that in the late fifties, somewhere in the expanse of the American prairie, a secret research laboratory was set up, which, like the Manhattan project, aimed at mastering the power of the atomic bomb.
Had this effort been successful? Is the anti-gravity technology perhaps already in use? In his researches in the laboratories of the armaments industry, in the corridors of the Pentagon, and in the tunnels of former Nazi research centers, this suspicion is confirmed by Cook. Although he is unable to provide any firm proof, the journalist discovers something else in his research: the feeling of a great mystery, “a black heart”. Cook can properly “feel the fear that clings to it”.
And yet the shielding is not complete. Even the attentive observer of scientific literature could not escape the fact that our schoolbook knowledge stands before a revolution.
Astronomers have been observing for a number of years that the universe is expanding much faster than previously thought – a finding many people explain by the action of a kind of cosmic antigravity that drives the galaxies apart. The astronomers emphasize again and again that this force has no influence on earthly masses and only becomes effective at great cosmological distances. But who knows?
The so-called zero-point energy of the vacuum also stimulates wild speculation. According to quantum mechanics, nothingness is not empty, but full potential. Just wonder how big this zero point energy (ZPE) is. “Some say that there is enough energy in a shoe box to allow the whole world to explode,” says Cook’s book, “others think that you can not even boil an egg with the whole ZPE of the world.”
Do Podkletnov know more? In 1992, the Russian emigrant reported that he had discovered a method for shielding gravity at the Tampere Technical University in Finland. For this purpose, Podkletnov had a disk of a special superconducting material rotated over a strong magnetic field. At over 5000 revolutions per second, measurements with a super fine scale, lost samples suspended above the disc up to one percent of their weight!
Although the professional world is still skeptical about these results, the American physicist Ning Li soon waited for a theoretical explanation: the rotating superconductor had a “gravito-magnetic” effect, a phenomenon which Einstein had already predicted. Similar to a moving electric charge, a magnetic field is generated, according to the theory of relativity, rotating matter must also influence the gravitational field. Although the effect according to Einsteinstheorie should be so small that it would be detectable only in the universe. Ning Li could not convince Nasa to repeat Podkletnov’s groundbreaking experiments.
The fact that these attempts failed for many years and Ning Li does not want to comment on the whole subject any more, can only be explained by the power of the “black heart” that Nick Cook could guess in his research.
Yevgeny Podkletnov also felt his strength. The anti-gravity pioneer lost his job at the Tampere Technical University and has to pursue his research on his own. He recently revealed to a reporter of the New Scientist that he had now developed a “pulse generator”, which could throw down an upright book at a distance of one kilometer. Unfortunately, a visit to the facility is not possible because it is located in a security zone of the Moscow University. In addition, he is obliged to “silence” for “patent reasons”.
But the progress can not be stopped. This is also known by the Nasa researchers, who work in the “Breakthrough in Drive Technology” department. In the meantime, they have realized that Podkletnov’s experiment apparently only works when the rotating superconducting disk has a very specific chemical composition – and the Russian physicist has so far kept this mixture secret. But for a generous check, he has now betrayed his special recipe to an American company, who had an exact copy of his antigravation apparatus made for Nasa for 600,000 dollars. These days, the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, is about to begin the experiments, and it is only a matter of months before the official confirmation of Podkletnov’s breakthrough discovery is made.
Only the scientific community still struggles against the impending paradigm shift. The physicist and book author Hans Christian von Baeyer, who teaches in the USA, considers the antigravitation to be as likely as “the possibility that your office is exploding today”. Even Lawrence M. Krauss, who analyzed the physics of Star Trek and is a science fiction expert, considers NASA’s work as an “nonsense”. As chairman of a corresponding NASA advisory board, he would at any rate do his utmost to “end this stupid project”.
Is there only the arrogance of the mainstream physics establishment behind such statements? Or are they merely distraction maneuvers to conceal the truth of that “dark mystery” that Nick Cook has tracked?
The photocopied pages had obviously come from some long-forgotten schlock popular science journal. I had stepped away from my desk only for a few moments and somehow in the interim the article had appeared. The headline ran :The G-Engines Are Coming.
I glanced around the office, wondering who had put it there and if this was someone’s idea of a joke. The copier had cut off the top of the first page and the title of the publication with it, but it was the drawing above the headline that was the giveaway. It depicted an aircraft, if you could call it that, hovering a few feet above a dry lake bed, a ladder extending from the fuselage and a crew member making his way down the steps dressed in a U.S.-style flight suit and flying helmet—standard garb for that era. The aircraft had no wings and no visible means of propulsion.
I gave the office another quick scan. The magazine’s operations were set on the first floor. The whole building was open-plan. To my left, the business editor was head-down over a proof-page checking copy. To her right was the naval editor, a guy who was good for a windup, but who was currently deep into a phone conversation and looked like he had been for hours.
I was reminded of a technology piece I’d penned a couple of years earlier about the search for scientific breakthroughs in U.S. aerospace and defense research. In a journal not noted for its exploration of the fringes of paranormality, nor for its humor, I’d inserted a tongue-in-cheek reference to gravity—or rather to antigravity, a subject beloved of science-fiction writers.
“For some U.S. aerospace engineers,” I’d said, “an antigravity propulsion system remains the ultimate quantum leap in aircraft design.” The implication was that antigravity was the aerospace equivalent of the holy grail: something longed for, dreamed about, but beyond reach—and likely always to remain so.
Somehow the reference had escaped the sub-editors and, as a result, amongst my peers, other aerospace and defense writers on the circuit, I’d taken some flak for it. For Jane’s, the publishing empire founded on one man’s obsession with the detailed specifications of ships and aircraft almost a century earlier, technology wasn’t something you joked about.
The magazine I wrote—and still write—for, Jane’s Defence Weekly, documented the day-to-day dealings of the multibillion-dollar defense business. JDW, as we called it, is but one of a portfolio of products detailing the ins and outs of the global aerospace and defense industry. If you want to know about the thrust-to-weight ratio of a Chinese combat aircraft engine or the pulse repetition frequency of a particular radar system, somewhere in the Jane’s portfolio of products there is a publication that has the answers. In short, Jane’s was, and always has been, about facts. Its motto is: Authoritative, Accurate, Impartial.
It was a huge commercial intelligence-gathering operation; and provided they had the money, anyone could buy into its vast knowledge base.
I cast a glance at the bank of sub-editors’ work-stations over in the far corner of the office, but nobody appeared remotely interested in what was happening at my desk. If the subs had nothing to do with it, and usually they were the first to know about a piece of piss-taking that was going down in the office, I figured whoever had put it there was from one of the dozens of other departments in the building and on a different floor. Perhaps my anonymous benefactor had felt embarrassed about passing it on to me?
I studied the piece again.
The strapline below the headline proclaimed: “By far the most potent source of energy is gravity. Using it as power, future aircraft will attain the speed of light.” It was written by one Michael Gladych and began: “Nuclear-powered aircraft are yet to be built, but there are research projects already under way that will make the super-planes obsolete before they are test-flown. For in the United States and Canada, research centers, scientists, designers and engineers are perfecting a way to control gravity—a force infinitely more powerful than the mighty atom. The result of their labors will be antigravity engines working without fuel—weightless airliners and space ships able to travel at 170,000 miles per second.”
On any other day, that would have been the moment I’d have consigned it for recycling. But something in the following paragraph caught my eye.
The gravity research, it said, had been supported by the Glenn L. Martin Aircraft Company, Bell Aircraft, Lear “and several other American aircraft manufacturers who would not spend millions of dollars on science fiction.” It quoted Lawrence D. Bell, the founder of the plane-maker that was first to beat the sound barrier. “We’re already working on nuclear fuels and equipment to cancel out gravity.” George S. Trimble, head of Advanced Programs and “Vice President in charge of the G-Project at Martin Aircraft,” added that the conquest of gravity “could be done in about the time it took to build the first atom bomb.”
A little further on, it quoted “William P. Lear, the chairman of Lear Inc., makers of autopilots and other electronic controls.” It would be another decade before Bill Lear went on to design and build the first of the sleek business jets that still carry his name. But in 1956, according to Gladych, Lear had his mind on other things.
“All matter within the ship would be influenced by the ship’s gravitation only,” Lear apparently said of the wondrous G-craft. “This way, no matter how fast you accelerated or changed course, your body would not feel it any more than it now feels the tremendous speed and acceleration of the earth.” The G-ship, Gladych explained, could take off like a cannon shell, come to a stop with equal abruptness and the passengers wouldn’t even need seat belts. This ability to accelerate rapidly, the author continued, would make it ideal as a space vehicle capable of acceleration to a speed approaching that of light.
There were some oblique references to Einstein, some highly dubious “facts” about the nature of subatomic physics and some speculation about how various kinds of “antigravity engines” might work.
But the one thing I kept returning to were those quotes. Had Gladych made them up or had Lawrence Bell, George S. Trimble and William “Bill” Lear really said what he had quoted them as saying?
Outside, the rain beat against the double-glazed windows, drowning the sound of the traffic that crawled along the London to Brighton road and the unrelenting hum of the air conditioning that regulated the temperature inside.
The office was located in the last suburb of the Greater London metropolis; next stop the congested joys of the M25 ring road and the M23 to Gatwick Airport. The building was a vast redbrick two-story bunker amid between-the-wars gray brickwork and pebbledash. The rain acted like a muslin filter, washing out what little ambient color Coulsdon possessed. In the rain, it was easy to imagine that nothing much had changed here for decades.
As aviation editor of JDW, my beat was global and it was pretty much unstructured. If I needed to cover the latest air-to-surface weapons developments in the U.S.A., I could do it, with relatively few questions asked. My editor, an old pro, with a history as long as your arm in publishing, gave each of us, the so-called “specialists” (the aviation, naval and land systems editors), plenty of rope. His only proviso was that we filed our expenses within two of weeks of travel and that we gave him good, exclusive stories. If I wanted to cover an aerospace and defense exhibition in Moscow, Singapore or Dubai, the funds to do so were almost always there.
As for the job itself, it was a mixture of hard-edged reporting and basic provision of information. We reported on the defense industry, but we were part of it, too—the vast majority of the company’s revenue coming from the same people we wrote about. Kowtowing was a no-no, but so was kicking down doors. If you knew the rules and played by them you could access almost any part of the global defense-industrial complex. In the course of a decade, I’d visited secret Russian defense facilities and ultrasensitive U.S. government labs. If you liked technology, a bit of skulduggery and people, it was a career made in heaven. At least 60 percent of the time I was on the road. The bit I liked least was office downtime.
Again, I looked around for signs that I was being set up. Then, satisfied that I wasn’t, but feeling self-conscious nonetheless, I tucked the Gladych article into a drawer and got on with the business of the day. Another aerospace and defense company had fallen prey to post-Cold War economics. It was 24 hours before the paper closed for press and the news editor was yelling for copy.
Two days later, in a much quieter moment, I visited the Jane’s library. It was empty but for the librarian, a nice man way past retirement age who used to listen to the BBC’s radio lunchtime news while gazing out over the building’s bleak rear lot.
In the days before the Internet revolution, the library was an invaluable resource. Fred T. Jane published his first yearbook, Jane’s Fighting Ships, in 1898; and in 1909 the second, Jane’s All The World’s Aircraft, quickly built on the reputation of the former as a reference work par excellence for any and all information on aeronautical developments. Nigh on a century later, the library held just about every book and magazine ever put out by the company and a pile of other reference works besides.
I scanned the shelves till I found what I was looking for.
The Jane’s All The World’s Aircraft yearbook for 1956 carried no mention of antigravity experiments, nor did successive volumes, but that came as no great surprise. The yearbooks are the aerospace equivalent of Burke’s Peerage or the Guinness Book of Records: every word pored over, analyzed and double-checked for accuracy. They’d have given antigravity a very wide berth.
For a story like this, what I was looking for was a news publication.
I looked along the shelves again. Jane’s had gotten into the magazine publishing business relatively recently and the company’s copies of Flight International and Aviation Week ran back only a few years. But it did have bound volumes of Interavia Aerospace Review from before the Second World War. And it was on page 373 in the May 1956 edition of this well-respected publication, in amongst advertisements for Constellation airliners, chunky-looking bits of radar equipment and (curiously for an aviation journal) huge “portable” Olivetti typewriters, that I found a feature bylined: Mr. “Intel”, Washington, D.C., with the headline: “Towards Flight without Stress or Strain…or Weight” Beneath it ran the strapline: The following article is by an American journalist who has long taken a keen interest in questions of theoretical physics and has been recommended to the Editors as having close connections with scientific circles in the United States. The subject is one of immediate interest and Interavia Aerospace Review would welcome further comment from initiated sources. — Editors.
The article referred to something called “electro-gravitics” research, whose aim was to “seek the source of gravity and its control.” This research, “Intel” stated, had “reached a stage where profound implications for the entire human race are beginning to emerge.”
I read on, amused by the tone and wondering how on earth the article had come to be accepted in a mainstream aerospace journal.
“In the still short life of the turbojet airplane [by then, 1956, little more than a decade], man has had to increase power in the form of brute thrust some twenty times in order to achieve just twice the speed. The cost in money in reaching this point has been prodigious. The cost in highly specialized man-hours is even greater. By his present methods man actually fights in direct combat the forces that resist his efforts. In conquering gravity he would be putting one of his most competent adversaries to work for him. Antigravitics is the method of the picklock rather than the sledgehammer.”
Not only that, the article stated, but antigravity could be put to work in other fields beyond aerospace. “In road cars, trains and boats the headaches of transmission of power from the engine to wheels or propellers would simply cease to exist. Construction of bridges and big buildings would be greatly simplified by temporary induced weightlessness etc. Other facets of work now under way indicate the possi- bility of close controls over the growth of plant life; new therapeutic techniques, permanent fuelless heating units for homes and industrial establishments; new sources of industrial power; new manufacturing techniques; a whole field of new chemistry. The list is endless …and growing.”
It was also sheer fantasy.
Yet, for the second time in a week I had found an article—this time certainly in a publication with a solid reputation—that stated that U.S. aerospace companies were engaged in the study of this “science.” It cited the same firms mentioned by Gladych and some new ones as well: Sperry-Rand and General Electric among them. Within these institutions, we were supposed to believe, people were working on theories that could not only make materials weightless, but could actually give them “negative weight”—a repulsive force that would allow them to loft away “contra-gravitationally.” The article went further. It claimed that in experimentation conducted by a certain “Townsend T. Brown” weights of some materials had already been cut by as much as 30 percent by “energizing” them and that model “disc airfoils” utilizing this technology had been run in a wind tunnel under a charge of a hundred and fifty kilovolts “with results so impressive as to be highly classified.”
I gazed out over the slate rooftops. For Interavia to have written about antigravity, there had to have been something in it. The trouble was, it was history. My bread-and-butter beat was the aerospace industry of the 1990s, not this distant cozy world of the fifties with its heady whiff of jet-engine spirit and the developing Cold War.
I replaced the volume and returned to my desk. It should have been easy to let go, but it wasn’t. If people of the caliber quoted by Gladych and Interavia had started talking about antigravity anytime in the past ten years I would have reported it—however skeptical I might be on a personal level. Why had these people said the things they had with such conviction? One of them, George S. Trimble, had gone so far as to predict that a breakthrough would occur in around the same time it took to develop the atomic bomb—roughly five years. Yet, it had never happened. And even if the results of “Townsend T. Brown’s” experiments had been “so impressive as to be highly classified,” they had clearly come to naught; otherwise, by the 60s or 70s the industry would have been overtaken by fuel-less propulsion technology.
I rang a public relations contact at Lockheed Martin, the U.S. aerospace and defense giant, to see if I could get anything on the individuals Gladych had quoted. I knew that Lawrence Bell and Bill Lear were both dead. But what about George S. Trimble? If Trimble was alive—and it was a long shot, since he would have to be in his 80s—he would undoubtedly confirm what I felt I knew to be true; that he had been heavily misquoted or that antigravity had been the industry’s silly-season story of 1956.
A simple phone call would do the trick.
Daniella “Dani” Abelman was an old media contact within Lockheed Martin’s public affairs organization. Solid, reliable and likable, she’d grown up in the industry alongside me, only on the other side of the divide. Our relationship with the information managers of the aerospace and defense world was as double-edged as the PR/reporter interface in any other industry. Our job was to get the lowdown on the inside track and, more often than not, it was bad news that sold. But unlike our national newspaper counterparts, trade press hacks have to work within the industry, not outside it. This always added an extra twist to our quest for information. The industry comprised hundreds of thousands of people, but despite its size, it was surprisingly intimate and incestuous enough for everyone to know everyone else. If you pissed off a PR manager in one company, even if it was on the other side of the globe, you wouldn’t last long, because word would quickly get around and the flow of information would dry up.
But with Abelman, it was easy. I liked her. We got on. I told her I needed some background on an individual in one of Lockheed Martin’s “heritage” companies, a euphemism for a firm it had long since swallowed whole.
The Glenn L. Martin Company became the Martin Company in 1957. In 1961, it merged with the American-Marietta Company, becoming Martin-Marietta, a huge force in the Cold War U.S. defense electronics industry. In 1994, Martin-Marietta merged again, this time with Lockheed to form Lockheed Martin. The first of the global mega-merged defense behemoths, it built everything from stealth fighters and their guided weapons to space launchers and satellites.
Abelman was naturally suspicious when I told her I needed to trace an ex-company employee, but relaxed when I said that the person I was interested in had been doing his thing more than 40 years ago and was quite likely dead by now.
I was circumspect about the reasons for the approach, knowing full well if I told her the real story, she’d think I’d taken leave of my senses.
But I had a bona fide reason for calling her—and one that legitimately, if at a stretch, involved Trimble: I was preparing a piece on the emergence of the U.S. aerospace industry’s “special projects” facilities in the aftermath of the Cold War.
Most large aerospace and defense companies had a special projects unit; a clandestine adjunct to their main business lines where classified activities could take place. The shining example was the Lockheed Martin “Skunk Works,” a near-legendary aircraft-manufacturing facility on the edge of the California high desert.
For 50 years, the Skunk Works had sifted Lockheed for its most highly skilled engineers, putting them to work on top secret aircraft projects.
Using this approach it had delivered some of the biggest military breakthroughs of the 20th century, among them the world’s first Mach 3 spyplane and stealth, the art of making aircraft “invisible” to radar and other enemy sensor systems.
But now the Skunk Works was coming out of the shadows and, in the process, giving something back to its parent organization. Special projects units were renowned for bringing in complex, high-risk defense programs on time and to cost, a skill that had become highly sought after by the main body of the company in the austere budget environment of the 1990s.
Trimble, I suggested, might be able to provide me with historical context and “color” in an otherwise dry business story. “Advanced Programs,” the outfit he was supposed to have worked for, sounded a lot like Martin’s version of the Skunk Works.
Abelman said she’d see what she could do, but I wasn’t to expect any short-order miracles. She wasn’t the company historian, she said dryly, but she’d make a few inquiries and get back to me.
I was surprised when she phoned me a few hours later. Company records, to her surprise—and mine—said that Trimble was alive and enjoying retirement in Arizona. “Sounds hard as nails, but an amazing guy by all accounts,” she breezed. “He’s kinda mystified why you want to talk to him after all this time, but seems okay with it. Like you said, it’s historical, right?”
“Right,” I said.
I asked Abelman, while she was at it, for all the background she had on the man. History or not, I said, trying to keep it light, I liked to be thorough. She was professional enough to sound less than convinced by my newfound interest in the past, but promised she’d do her best. I thanked her, then hung up, feeling happy that I’d done something about it. A few weeks, a month at the outside, the mystery would be resolved and I could go back to my regular beat, case closed.
Outside, another bank of gray storm clouds was rolling in above rooftops that were still slick from the last passing shower.
I picked up my coat and headed for the train station, knowing that somewhere between the office and my flat in central London I was going to get soaked right through.
The initial information came a week later from a search through some old files that I’d buried in a collection of boxes in my basement: a company history of Martin Marietta I’d barely remembered I’d acquired. It told me that in 1955 Trimble had become involved in something called the Research Institute for Advanced Studies, RIAS, a Martin spin-off organization whose brief was to “observe the phenomena of nature…to discover fundamental laws…and to evolve new technical concepts for the improvement and welfare of mankind.”
Aside from the philanthropic tone, a couple of things struck me as fishy about the RIAS. First off, its name was as bland as the carefully chosen “Advanced Development Projects”—the official title of the Skunk Works. Second, was the nature and caliber of its recruits. These, according to the company history, were “world-class contributors in mathematics, physics, biology and materials science.”
Soon afterward, I received a package of requested information from Lockheed Martin in the mail. RIAS no longer existed, having been subsumed by other parts of the Lockheed Martin empire. But through an old RIAS history, a brochure published in 1980 to celebrate the organization’s “first 25 years,” I was able to glean a little more about Trimble and the outfit he’d inspired. It described him as “one of the most creative and imaginative people that ever worked for the Company.”
I read on.
From a nucleus of people that in 1955 met in a conference room at the Martin Company’s Middle River plant in Maryland, RIAS soon developed a need for its own space. In 1957, with a staff of about 25 people, it moved to Baltimore City. The initial research program, the brochure said, was focused on NASA and the agency’s stated goal of putting a man on the moon. But that wasn’t until 1961.
One obvious question was, what had RIAS been doing in the interim? Mainly math, by the look of it. Its principal academic was described as an expert in “topology and nonlinear differential equations.”
I hadn’t the least idea what that meant.
In 1957, the outfit moved again, this time to a large mansion on the edge of Baltimore, a place chosen for its “campus-like” atmosphere. Offices were quickly carved from bedrooms and workshops from garages.
It reminded me of accounts I’d read of the shirtsleeves atmosphere of the early days of the Manhattan Project when Oppenheimer and his team of atom scientists had crunched through the physics of the bomb.
And that was the very same analogy Trimble had used. The conquest of gravity, he’d said, would come in the time it took to build the bomb.
I called a few contacts on the science and engineering side of Lockheed Martin, asking them, in a roundabout kind of way, whether there was, or ever had been, any part of the corporation involved in gravity or “counter-gravitational” research. After some initial questions on their part as to why I should be interested, which I just about managed to palm off, the answer that came back was a uniform “no.” Well, almost. There was a guy, Boyd Bushman, one contact told me, a scientist who worked in the combat aircraft division in Fort Worth who would talk eloquently about the mysteries of Nature and the universe to anyone who would listen. He’d also levitate paper clips on his desk. Great character, but a bit of a maverick. “Paper clips?” I’d asked. “A maverick scientist levitating paper clips on his desk? At Lockheed Martin? Come on.” My source laughed. If he hadn’t known better, he’d have said I was working up a story on antigravity. A 1999 FBI memo established that Boyd Bushman was indeed employed at Lockheed Martin (LM). The man’s claims of holding Top Secret clearance while working as a Senior Specialist were also verified. Please note, however, LM expressed concerns to the FBI of what “may be an ongoing attempt to elicit LM proprietary or classified information” surrounding Bushman:
I made my excuses and signed off. It was crazy, possibly dangerous stuff, but it continued to have me intrigued.
I called an old friend who’d gained a degree in applied mathematics. Tentatively, I asked whether topology and non-differential linear equations had any application to the study of gravity.
Of course, he replied. Topology—the study of shape in physics—and nonlinear equations were the standard methods for calculating gravitational attraction.
I sat back and pieced together what I had. It didn’t amount to much, but did it amount to something?
In 1957, George S. Trimble, one of the leading aerospace engineers in the U.S. at that time, a man, it could safely be said, with a background in highly advanced concepts and classified activity, had put together what looked like a special projects team; one with a curious task.
This, just a year after he started talking about the Golden Age of Antigravity that would sweep through the industry starting in the 1960s.
So, what went wrong?
In its current literature, the stuff pumped out in press releases all the time, the U.S. Air Force constantly talked up the “vision”: where it was going to be in 25 years, how it was going to wage and win future wars and how technology was key.
In 1956, it would have been as curious as I was about the notion of a fuel-less propulsion source, one that could deliver phenomenal performance gains over a jet; perhaps including the ability to accelerate rapidly, to pull hairpin turns without crushing the pilot and to achieve speeds that defied the imagination. In short, it would have given them something that resembled a UFO.
I rubbed my eyes. The dim pool of light that had illuminated the Lockheed-supplied material on Trimble and RIAS had brought on a nagging pain in the back of my head.
The evidence was suggesting that in the mid-50s there had been some kind of breakthrough in the antigravity field and for a small window in time people had talked about it freely and openly, believing they were witnessing the dawn of a new era, one that would benefit the whole of mankind. Then, in 1957, everyone had stopped talking about it. Had the military woken up to what was happening, bringing the clamps down?
Those in the know, outfits like Trimble’s that had been at the forefront of the breakthrough, would probably have continued their research, assembling their development teams behind closed doors, ready for the day they could build real hardware.
But of course, it never happened.
It never happened because soon after Trimble, Bell and Lear made their statements, sanity prevailed. By 1960, it was like the whole episode never took place. Aerospace development continued along its structured, ordered pathway and antigravity became one of those taboo subjects that people like me never, ever talked about.
Satisified that everything was back in its place and as it should be, I went to bed.
Somewhere in my head I was still tracking the shrill, faraway sounds of the city when the phone rang. I could tell instantly it was Abelman. Separated by an ocean and five time zones, I heard the catch in her breathing.
” It’s Trimble,” she said. “The guy just got off the phone to me. Remember how he was fine to do the interview? Well, something’s happened. I don’t know who this old man is or what he once was, but he told me in no uncertain terms to get off his case. He doesn’t want to speak to me and he doesn’t want to speak to you, not now, not ever. I don’t mind telling you that he sounded scared and I don’t like to hear old men scared. It makes me scared. I don’t know what you were really working on when you came to me with this, Nick, but let me give you some advice. Stick to what you know about; stick to the damned present. It’s better that way for all of us.”
Towards Flight without Stress or Strain… or Weight
by Mr. “Intel”, Washington D.C.
The following article is by an American journalist who has long taken a keen interest in questions of theoretical physics and has been recommended to the Editors as having close connections with scientific circles in the United States. The subject is one of immediate interest and Interavia Aerospace Review would welcome further comment from initiated sources. — Editors.
Washington D.C., March 23, 1956
Electrogravitics research, seeking the source of gravity and its control, has reached a stage where profound implications for the entire human race begin to emerge. Perhaps the most startling and immediate implications of all involve aircraft, guided missiles — atmospheric and free space flight of all kinds.
If only one of several lines of research achieve their goal — and it now seems certain that this must occur — gravitational acceleration as a structural, aerodynamic and medical problem will simply cease to exist. So will the task of providing combustible fuels in massive volume in order to escape the earth’s gravitic pull — now probably the biggest headache facing today’s would-be “space men”.
And towards the long-term progress of mankind and man’s civilization, a whole new concept of electrophysics is being levered out into the light of human knowledge.
There are gravity research projects in every major country of the world. A few are over 30 years old. Most are much newer. Some are purely theoretical and seek the answer in Quantum, Relativity and Unified Field Theory mathematics — Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, New Jersey; University of Indiana’s School of Advanced Mathematical Studies; Purdue University Research Foundation; Goettingen and Hamburg Universities in France, Italy, Japan and elsewhere. The list, in fact, runs into the hundreds.
Some projects are mostly empirical, studying gravitic isotopes, electrical phenomena and the statistics of mass. Others combine both approaches in the study of matter in its super-cooled, super-conductive state, of jet electron streams, peculiar magnetic effects or the electrical mechanics of the atom’s shell. Some of the companies involved in this phase include Lear Inc., Gluhareff Helicopter and Airplane Corp., The Glenn L. Martin Co., Sperry-Rand Corp., Bell Aircraft, Clarke Electronics Laboratories, the U.S. General Electric Company.
The concept of weightlessness in conventional materials which are normally heavy, like steel, aluminium, barium, etc., is difficult enough, but some theories, so far borne out empirically in the laboratory, postulate that not only can they be made weightless, but they can in fact be given a negative weight. That is: the force of gravity will be repulsive to them and they will — new sciences breed new words and meanings for old ones — loft away contra-gravitationally.
In this particular line of research, the weights of some materials have already been cut as much as 30% by “energizing” them. Security prevents disclosure of what precisely is meant by “energizing” or in which country this work is under way.
The American scientist Townsend T. Brown has been working on the problems of electrogravitics for more than thirty years. He is seen here demonstrating one of his laboratory instruments, a disc-shaped variant of the two-plate condenser. A localized gravitic field used as a ponderamotive force has been created in the laboratory. Disc airfoils two feet in diameter and incorporating a variation of the simple two-plate electrical condenser charged with fifty kilovolts and a total continuous energy input of fifty watts have achieved a speed of seventeen feet per second in a circular air course twenty feet in diameter. More lately these discs have been increased in diameter to three feet and run in a fifty-foot diameter air course under a charge of a hundred and fifty kilovolts with results so impressive as to be highly classified. Variations of this work done under a vacuum have produced much greater efficiencies that can only described as startling. Work is now under way developing a flame-jet generator to supply power up to fifteen million volts.
Such a force raised exponentially to levels capable of pushing man-carrying vehicles through the air — or outer space — at ultrahigh speeds is now the object of concerted effort in several countries. Once achieved it will eliminate most of the structural difficulties now encountered in the construction of high-speed aircraft. Importantly the gravitic field that provides the basic propulsive force simultaneously reacts on all matter within that field’s influence. The force is not a physical one acting initially at a specific point in the vehicle that needs then to be translated to all the other parts. It is an electrogravitic field acting on all parts simultaneously.
Subject only to the so-far immutable laws of momentum, the vehicle would be able to change direction, accelerate to thousands of miles per hour, or stop. Changes in direction and speed of flight would be effected by merely altering the intensity, polarity and direction of the charge.
Man now uses the sledge-hammer approach to high-altitude high-speed flight. In the still-short life-span of the turbo-jet airplane he has had to increase power in the form of brute thrust some twenty times in order to achieve just a little more than twice the speed of the original jet plane. The cost in money in reaching this point has been prodigious. The cost in highly-specialized man-hours is even greater. By his present methods man actually fights in direct combat the forces that resist his efforts. in conquering gravity he would be putting one of his most competent adversaries to work for him. Anti-gravitics is the method of the picklock rather than the sledge-hammer.
The communications possibilities of electrogravitics, as the new science is called, confound the imagination. There are apparently in the ether an entirely new unsuspected family of electrical waves similar to electromagnetic radio waves in basic concept.
Electrogravitic waves have been created and transmitted through concentric layers of the most efficient kinds of electromagnetic and electrostatic shielding without any apparent loss of power in any way. There is evidence, but not yet proof, that these waves are not limited by the speed of light. Thus the new science seems to strike at the very foundations of Einsteinian Relativity Theory.
But rather than invalidating current basic concepts such as Relativity, the new knowledge of gravity will probably expand their scope, ramification and general usefulness. It is this expansion of knowledge into the unknown that more emphasizes how little we do know; how vast is the area still awaiting research and discovery.
The most successful line of the electrogravitics research so far reported is that carried on by Townsend. T. Brown, an American who has been researching gravity for over thirty years. He is now conducting research projects in the U.S. and on the Continent. He postulates that there is between electricity and gravity a relationship parallel and/or similar to that which exists between electricity and magnetism. And as the coil is the usable link in the case of electromagnetics, so is the condenser that link in the case of electrogravitics. Years of successful empirical work have lent a great deal of credence to this hypothesis.
Dear Robert,
If Nazis had antigravity saucers, which is very possible, due to simplicity of old physics involved, what crashed in Roswell was an American replica.
Check out Annie Jacobsen. Interestingly, she claims that what crashed in Roswell, was a Russian antigravity saucer, and the small bodies were NOT Aliens :
Steve Erdmann’s Dissenter/Disinter Group Editorial Comments
“Warning” to those who join the Dissenter/Disinter Group: Facebook’s new algorithm automatically ‘subtracts’ members rather than add them correctly! It was not like this a few months ago. This has been reported to Facebook numerous times, without result! An accounting has been started today of all members added to the Dissenter/Disinter Group to document their miscreant functioning. I ask ‘you’ computer programming and mathematician experts out there: what kind of accounting is Facebook using and how would you address this problem? Please help me investigate this and make complaints. A Facebook Help Desk comment on Google says they are “scrubbing-out” non-active Group members: Who and why are they making those indiscriminate decisions (they don’t do that with Friends on Timelines): sounds more like censorship, that would actually be a private matter between Administrators and the members, and not done arbitrarily and against their will (why even try to get members if they’re going to be knifed in the back (or, solicit new members to a Group)?
******* SE – Once again, we try to explain (as we have done in the past several times) our general approach to news, the media, politics. Here is a reproduction of private comments in a reply to one of my critics:
“We like some of your ideas, facts, and thoughts, and we welcome them – if presented within reason and decor. This is what we don’t like and try to avoid: Stephen Erdmann: We promote very few human endeavors in an absolute sense, Russian or otherwise, as all fail and all fall within the scope of the loop of human evil and frailty. We look for those foes that all humankind seems to be battling from ‘any’ corner they are hunkered in.
“This Group is not a ‘platform’ for one single person’s private opinions or ‘sermons.’ It is a ‘forum’ whereby ‘all’ have an opportunity to add to the ongoing investigation. Hopefully, most will participate and not just become ‘observers.’ Likewise, this Group will not become monopolized by the thinking and propaganda of just one individual – this was not its purpose.
“We are not affiliated with the KKK or any other political faction said that many times, over and over, as well as has explained why we present all sides of news and media questions, without censorship, if possible. We are against the Military/Industrial/Corporate/Complex/Matrix (MICCM) and all its ‘isms,’ ‘cants,’ ‘crats,’ ‘cans,’ and ‘doms.’ All it takes to see this and prove it, is to use your mouse or enter scroll and have a strong browser and investigate back to 2011. We refuse to become any one person’s private, personal pulpit (that is why you have your own Timeline). We allow most to speak their minds continually here — even to the point of opulently and often stuporous ferociousness — over and over — but apparently that is not good enough for a few. It takes a strong mind and will to live under the 1st Amendment and really abide by it.
“When I say ‘we,’ I usually mean ‘me’ – though I am speaking editorially on behalf of all those members who follow and agree with the Preamble religiously — they get the idea and message — and are giving me their full support.
“All the twisting, stretching, and manipulating of my stated words and intended feelings will not help these matters, and being completely uncompromising, unreasonable and deliberately uncouth certainly won’t help either.
“Please, read my text and postings in their full context and their entirety, if possible, to adjust to the real story and picture I present. Don’t settle for ‘half-baked’ interpretations or careless understanding.
“When any one person begins to use these spaces as solely his or her private podium to demonized (and shout down or otherwise badger) all other voices, he will be informed and given a mandate to cease and desist. This is a ‘forum’ Group and that connotes some fairness and inspection and equipoise of one’s behavior: we hope that each member will reflect on their behavior and not allow it to become effluvium.”
(This does not mean we will allow boring, tiring, inaccurate propaganda about the alleged Israel-cabal of so-called Zionism, which in many cases is far too short-sighted when it concerns the worldwide Military-Industrial-Corporate-Complex-Matrix (MICCM). Well documented pieces on ‘how’ Zionism is part and parcel of the “overall” MICCM, might be tolerated; but, singling out propaganda trying to prove Hitler was virtuous and the killing of the Jewish population as justified, will not be tolerated.
We do not automatically share anti-Semitic views and do not state everyone should or does. In fact, those that appear to be promoted from a Hate standpoint usually won’t coexist on this Group. This Group does not endorse, knowingly, anti-Semitic propaganda per se and any Hate Speech that is the basis for it.)
We are here to promote ‘news’ from all different angles and sources, it is not my or anyone else’s purpose to knowingly or even unknowingly ‘prejudge’ the news, unless it becomes so apparent it is false there is no other alternative. But getting to that point can be a rocky and wearisome struggle. We have no prejudice about exposing ‘multiple’ viewpoints, because we realize that reality is multi-sided, often multidimensional, complicated and not always easily discernible: so we present many sides of that struggle. If you read my editorial comments, you should see that I have no particular stake in the sordid political fights and feel such political ‘gamesmanship’ is illusory and almost impossible. Some people feel that such deception is beyond their party, club or faction. You may feel yours is Holy, as well. I doubt that sanctimoniousness. Only the strong-minded need to tread here. That closed-mindedness of “my viewpoint only” needs to be “taken down.”
It won’t help to distance yourself from exercising your 1st Amendment Rights or having a scientifically critical viewpoint of the way life really is. Being Cheshire Cats or Mad Hatters, neither, or the way humans use delusion to cover the crimes of fellow humans down through the centuries. They now call Hollywood La-La Land for a reason. We all want to be ‘happy,” or try to be, and relish the moments that can be described as such—who wouldn’t?— but the age-old conflicts that are weighing down on so many in society, like maimed soldiers with PTSD — can’t foolishly ignore the conflicts.
A lot of people don’t want to fall into the greedy hands and the vicious, heartbreaking, devastating grip of the Legal Cabal and lawyers who eagerly waiting your downfall and falter into the henchmen hands and courtroom manipulations of distorting reality and controlling your life in as much pain and anguish and loss as possible. You have to example the alternatives, but when confronted, especially with prior knowledge, it might be best to look to each other rather than the Powerbrokers and the Big Brothers. Unfortunately, many are just babes in the woods and don’t know yet what is about to befall them.
It’s all about the money and how the Legal Cabal can control the situation; children are used as hostages for ransom, the court room their playground to reconstruct reality: Orwell’s ‘1984’ further realized, and you will, like Winston, if they have their way, “come to love Big Brother.”
It’s all part of a political ‘game’ that they develop in the courtroom to recreate a ‘reality’ that is used against you (much like the political world in George Orwell’s ‘1984’), been saying that for some time now; and the bigger “gunslinger” and ‘stick-carrier’ more or less wins. Not much different then olden medieval jousts or Roman gladiator fights.
There is a big difference between a source that publishes outright invented news, and a source—or sources—that you just “don’t like,” or says things that are philosophically different than your views or opinions. Things said on the Left spectrum and the Right Spectrum may annoy us, but they have the Constitutional Right to speak and be heard by willing listeners (you can always turn a deaf ear to the opinion). Myself, I think both sides of the “aisle” are filled with evil intentions and hogwash, but that shouldn’t prevent me printing interesting ‘tidbits,’ unless I decide one day to go completely “off the grid.”
Political terms, names and meanings have evolved, changed, and transformed over the years as many other concepts that have also transmogrified. Some “liberal” concepts once seemed to uphold “freedom,” ‘free speech’ and protected ‘human rights’: now have turned into a ‘power-based’ ‘force’ to change society, even if by ‘radical’ or ‘militant’ means. Some blatantly attack those idealistic overtures the Founding Fathers alluded to (some hiding behind those precepts but being actually treacherous to them). Conservatives tried to parade themselves as preserving the principals that were expounded underlying the Founding Fathers up to and through the Bill of Rights, have much, in the same way, become the lair of the wealthy and ultra-rich which want to control the masses, preserve their power and wealth, and hide behind a disguise of being the protectors of the Rights of Mankind, when they are only another power-based ‘force’ for control and greed using the slavery to the masses. They have far surpassed the British overlords the colonialists fought. All of these have become Monsters.
(I know from experience that security guards are nothing but Whipping Boys, a ‘buffer’ between the Security Guard company, the police and the Landowner (they have three (3) bosses). They are the ‘Fall guys,’ if anything goes wrong, it is their job to take the heat, to not make the Landlords or the company to look bad (nor the police, who often treat them as low, second-class citizens and nothing more). They are given a whole list of phony ‘rules’ to make them robots to ‘slice the heat’ and put on a good ‘public face’ (often at low or very moderate wages), sometimes in very dangerous and life-threatening situations. It is Crony Capitalism at its worst; most guards will not admit this for fear of losing their jobs. They could really tell you some stories: but it would expose the ‘system.’ They are allowed to do what they have to do in order to ‘protect’ this ‘status quo and system.’ I am quite sure this goes beyond the Security Guard profession, and the same mentality exists in most businesses and professions, one way or the other.)
Yes, we have covered this phenomena every now and then since 2011. I’ve been through the Divorce Racket (and other rackets) over the years and have tried to speak out in various formats and scenarios; it all follows a common thread. It makes one wonder why we are fighting each other, rather than the ‘common enemy.’ That enemy is hard to see and I’ve done what I can to expose it and make it visible. These pages are open to fellow dissidents and ‘explorers’ and ‘exposers.’ You’re welcome to tell your stories here and add to the exposition. It is all part of a megalith monster I call the Military-Industrial-Corporate-Complex- Matrix (MICCM).
Those that have been through an unwanted divorce, and even a wanted one, to some degree, are aware of the trauma, nervous fatigue, and other psychological damage done—along with other life incidents—resulting in a form of PTSD. I would be the last one to tell someone how to live, as there are too many factors. Avoid elitist nay-sayers who are usually the cause of the problem that you are in, as they are usually narcissists. There is an ‘upside’ to these battles, and it is usually found within you somehow and can be reinforced by fellow victims, possibly.
Concerning a separate and special Right for Women Manifesto: Don’t know why it has to be signature by “women” as these are basic Human Rights for all mankind, male or female, which, unfortunately many women, in their symbiotic and parasitic alliance with the Legal Industry Cabal, causes them to tarnish and violate those basic Rights for both Men and Women. See how far these Rights go without falling into the trap (as they have already been) of being used or overtaken by the MICCM and other Legal Industry Masterminds which only serve their own Power, Profit and Prestige.
You are seeing the dark crevices of the Legal Cabal and its influence over humans. It is not a female/male thing, necessarily, but an allowance of human perversity personified by the workings of the Legal Industry. You are experiencing the gun-ho workings of the system on individuals, as many men have experienced, but the system forces on everyone for profit and power. It is as old as “slavery.”
“Outspoken” should pertain to those who are proven to be true heroes opposing physical and psychological dangers, as opposed to brats and punks, calling themselves adults, trashing, and destroying others for very vain and greedy purposes.
It is equally infuriating to be unnecessarily misquoted and misunderstood, when an opponent or debater is just flouting his ingrained and innate propaganda brainwashed into him from birth and is making no attempt to truly analyze and comprehend what you are telling them. Sometimes, their minds are so closed, they just ignore anything you say or do. Instead of approaching the arguments from “in your shoes,” they continue to be the little robots our society has invented and further spiel the usual venom and grade-school invectiveness in which they have ‘not’ tried to unlearn.
I am at a point in my life that I want to undo the evils that I forgot or refused to fight against in my life, and give others a choice to do the same, before it is too late, utilizing my 1st Amendment Rights and no longer turning a blind eye to the fates of the world. To teach others to ‘think’ and discover and use their mind, not to become simple sheep and blind slaves to those who control their reality: Take off their masks, those little deceiving priests!
People get stuck in very old ideologies, concepts and “isms” and refuse to move out of those ‘boxes.’ We always like to think that we are the ones that are wearing the ‘white hats,’ and are the ‘only’ ones that know how to wear them and, even, the only ones that know where to ‘buy’ them: when they are just grey, smudged, soiled and fraying old hats that have been passed around for generations through many, many secret hands.
“Some kind” of compromise and “understanding” is always needed when these debates appear and try to look at “root” problems and not bring up too many private situations; and even then, always be willing to compromise and see each other’s point-of-view. Other than that, as I have said many times previously, the terms “fascist, liberal, left, right” are thrown around too loosely and with no historical meaning, always being projected from each person’s “private boxes.”
We shouldn’t condemn ‘socialism’ any more than ‘conservatism’: both are aimless, meaningless terms that don’t reflect the hidden agendas they are used for: fascist control and imperial elitism, the real enemy. At least ‘socialism’ had a true and genuine use in history well before America came into being and the bastardization of political terms. Most “political sensations” are nothing but masks to hide our inner evils and to gang together and destroy each other rather than help each other. A lot of national patriotism is the same baby-gook. We tend to fall for false histories, rather than the real histories: take off your masks little priests! Stop living in a world of ancient slogans and worn-out propaganda created by deceptive brain controllers and illusory political ideals.
Putting your full faith behind any one political party or personage is like trying to find virtue in a whorehouse: there are no such animals. Tyrannical and fascistic thinking are par for the course in any arena of life: it is the way humanoids operate. Ideologies are things only on ‘paper’: the real world should circumnavigate those illusory dreams and get down to the true facts; take off your masks, little priests.
I am the real oddball: and I have been sick and tired of the masking and erroneous parading of the so-called “Political Parties” for some time; watching the circus of flying monkeys never changes, even when one monkey is somewhat likable and seems to be alien to all the rest, it never changes. Still, we forge ahead and root and rant like the Romans at the Coliseum.
‘Pure’ Capitalism has never existed, nothing politically and socially has ever existed as ‘pure.’ It is easy to write something on paper and claim it is pristine and infallible, but quite another to see it operate in cold, stark reality. So-called Americanism as Capitalism was corrupted right out of the gate (i.e., see past postings and comments elsewhere). It is nice to write idealistic doctrine, but quite another thing to see it corrupted, inadequate, and having no fail-safe due to the monstrosity of the human condition. I know all about the dictionary definition but applying it to real human accomplishments is a pipedream, daydream, fable that has never really existed in all practically. I ‘sure as hell’ see proof of that every day.
So-called “Capitalism” has had its problems too, part of which redesigning what is a theory on ‘paper’ and inventing it according to our own evil images, in the form of Crony Capitalism, Fascism, etc., etc. Like so much in life, there never has been “pure” Capitalism (like there have never been ‘pure’ heroes, or ‘pure’ religion, or ‘pure’ politics) because any such “ism” is run by nefarious and weak and inhumane “humans.” We have a classical bent to destroy, pervert and warp the things about us. It is just one of many fairy tales and play-toys that humans like to toss around and manipulate. Looking for this Holy Grail (like looking for the Golden Fleece) is ‘fun’ and can be used to bolster our usual Id Monsters (to take a metaphor from the movie FORBIDDEN PLANET), but it is in no way ‘reality.’
Capitalism is a cheap term used on paper only, a fairy-tale used by mega-Monsters to wave in the face of others and hide behind their own magnanimous quests to control and prosper—it is a concept on paper, an ideology, that does not truly represent what is actually being done in reality. Crude Crony Mercantilism as a guise to hide under a fictitious Capitalism might be another way to describe it, but no matter what term you use, it has never really existed, any more than “pure” Communism, “pure” Christianity, or other “pure” ‘isms’ which we use to mask the real person or the real institution as it should be nakedly exposed for what it “is” and for what is really being done in all their corrupt and inglorious actions. Being a Monster in any fashion, no matter, how wealthy or powerful, does not justify its existence, Might does not Make Right, as history blatantly shows, and the defense of such corruption and any extension or characteristic of it only shows the evil it is and continues to become. Thank you Dorian Gray.
Fighting each other instead of the common enemy: what a waste! Some members are correct when they say America has strong fascist elements, but America is “not” the ‘only’ place that this evil does and can take root. We are overemphasizing the wrong places, time and things! Why is it that vampires can’t see themselves in the mirror?
It would appear that “enslavement” — or slavery — is a universal, ingrained mechanism of human nature — a very cruel and often contradictory facet of humans: which we can see today as it is incorporated, mechanized and used in our Modern World; and it is aimed at and applied “to all humans” (except for those who try to rule and use enslavement).
The vile vindictiveness that the public is confronted with by many judges in the legal system goes beyond the words “fair and equal justice,” where the lives of citizens become mere playthings in the Westworld-type of robotic recreation on the floors of the courthouse. The worldwide multi-billion-dollar Legal Industry has permeated every fiber of our lives and directed our realities to the dictates of this despotic Puppet-Master. Ask any divorce man or domestic court victim, they will attest that a man has only five (5) foes when he enters the system: his lawyer, her lawyer, the judge, her innate sexuality and the status quo.
Many live in their little “isms” they were raised in from birth and do not look beyond or question who are the core sponsors (do you have a mirror; can you look in a mirror?). They do not realize how intricately they are crafted and brainwashed. They are robotized goose-stepping zombies, and there is no changing. The MICCM has trained them well.
No concept or leaf is left alone by the MICCM: it is part of evil human nature, even so-called national pride or patriotism. Look down through history and see how often humans have used these for evil and destructive purposes.
The human being is love-challenged and intelligence-challenged and has proved themselves as such down through history. The humans believe that owning tons of money makes them superior to their fellow creatures and creating millions of enslaved and blindly devoted employees makes themselves even better rulers and elitists. It has always been that way, on the micro and macro levels; they also abhor psychological mirrors and will even kill to the death if their empires are challenged, taking millions of fellow humans to their death. They “group” in mutual ‘clubs’ as a way to protect and even ‘mask’ their true natures.
Reality is shifting beneath your very own feet: what we have been taught about the righteousness of the Left or Right, Democrats or Republicans, this ‘wing,’ or that ‘wing,’ and we do not reflect the innate and basic social realities that are taking place before our own eyes. In my years since July 27, 1944, based on my experience and the questions I have asked, and my eyes have seen, we have been deluded over and over, from the day we were born. See my past comments. When confronting attorneys in private and putting hard questions to them, often in confidence, many have said there is no real freedom, anywhere, in any party — that they are in control and they hold allegiance to no one but their Bar Association cabal. Right out of Orwell’s 1984, but only worse and complete. This: because all “isms” are under the evil rule of the “Humans.” Humans that glorify every evil act they do as good and pure: it won’t change, and we won’t challenge it unless we see the real “enemy.” We will continue to form “clubs” (social and physical) — and expound those clubs — with power and greed and evil to be used as ‘clubs’ against each other — until this final Truth becomes too evident to deny.
These lawyers have opened a Pandora’s box. In my meetings with attorneys, they have shown hardened, darkened commitment to fascistic, despotic rule by corporate giants and big business, in stark, no-uncertain-terms—those terms are evident in the elements of its manufacture, such as Fire-At-Will laws and the disrespect of Human Rights.
An editor from the Wall Street Journal hit the nail right on the head: it is all about money. You pay enough so your lawyer can split a little off for the other lawyer and the judge, and after paying a small fortune, you get some of what you want. It is all a recreated reality done in the court room to the tune of the dollar bill. It is sad, that is true, but this is the way humans operate. Sometimes, however, one lawyer just does not want to look bad to the other lawyer, or the judge, and will sell you out just to keep in tight with the Club. The Legal Cabal is very much a part of the MICCM and controls our reality, it’s a “‘Big Club,’ and you are not in it!” (Carlin). I mentioned one time to an editor of the Wall Street Journal that perhaps a RICO suit should be brought against the Bar Association, and he asked how I would get the money to do that, and that, here again, it is a lawyer suing fellow lawyers; it ain’t going to happen. How can we get over this insurmountable wall? I’ll join in a Foundation to fight lawyers, if others will come with me. Let me know.
Note the synchronistic similarities between corporate “government,” popular “government,” social “government,” corporations as “people,” corporate “government” bribing and sleeping with “popular government,” all mixed in what I call the Military/Industrial/Corporate/Complex/Matrix (MICCM) “Government.”
We don’t understand “government.” We think it is a separate entity, alone and separate from us. Government is the darkest, evilest, macabre parts of our own psyche, and when those elements ‘group’ in the various forms and combinations (such as the MICCM) and materialize, we see the Monster ‘we’ have become. In the science-fiction thriller THE FORBIDDEN PLANET, it was called monsters of the ‘id.’ Until we see the true ‘enemy’—us—we will never, ever come to terms or defeat it.
Part of the problem is our throwing terms around for loose and lop-sided reasons without any real background or roots. These are enormously powerful people in the IMF and the United Nations, they are not a bunch of poor people trying to grub-up a livable wage for themselves. All this talk about entitlements: some of these ‘official’ people are born-and-breed aristocracy; they don’t know what it is like to live in the slums of India, Africa or the lowest of the low. It is a matter of the wealthy controlling the masses, and it is usually the wealthy that profit and the masses that suffer. They spend billions of media-propaganda-dollars guaranteeing that ‘that’ brainwashing is successful so the masses don’t attack them and “keep the lowly in their place.” That is the way it has always been! What is so sad, is when some of these executives, in a “little-bit-than-better-CEO-middle-class-salary,” actually have convinced themselves they are on the “winning side”—yes, they are actually safely on the side of the “elite”—that is ‘their’ team—and yet they don’t realize or are not aware that this is all self-delusion and they are only a few steps away—in actuality—from their very own destruction as outsiders also. It is all part of the programming by the MICCM.
It is exceedingly difficult and painful to suddenly realize that lullabies and fairy stories are things that are used to placate us and even control us, stories put down on paper, while they make us feel good and justified, are usually used by ourselves against ourselves as weapons hurting or obscuring ourselves. But we keep trudging on, programmed to believe that our ‘pipe dreams’ will come true and the scribbling we have made—or were programmed to make–mean something and will fly off the paper into reality. We can always pretend and hope.
(An aside: We have a ban on personal and unreasonable attacks on each other, or any other excuse one would try to come up with. If some are allowed to attack private family and friends, then any one is allowed to.
Attacks on one’s personal parents, children, or relatives are not allowed for whatever reason one can imagine. No posting or site or Group justifies hitting below the belt: if your arguments are good, they will not sink this low. That is not just espousing another opinion: instead, that is vicious attack.
We welcome all civil comments. We are running into, now and then, more and more, the questionable muck that is so often displayed across the Internet that ‘free speech’ is confused with slander, personal attacks and just being downright nasty and unkind for no other reason. We are happy to see you are not one of them.)
(I am not so sure the Reich disappeared but was transformed into the Fourth Reich, and the transformation and partnerships went further and further: the constant transmogrifications and transformations with partners sleeping in same bed. All the “isms” have blended into sub-Rosa deals: you are dealing with one huge Industrial/Military/Corporate/Complex/Matrix [MICCM]. The Party system is a mask, as are so many other masks. “Take off your mask, little priest,” says murderer Errol Childress to detective Rustin Spence in TRUE DETECTIVE, a mask we all wear and deny. ######################################## “He’s saying to take off the mask of his persona. They both know that the whole concept of being a ‘person’ is an illusion, and that everything just repeats over and over again, that good and evil will always exist, and yet Rust continues to fight the ‘good’ fight, because that’s simply his role. He is aware that it is futile, and yet continues this masquerade nonetheless. Errol is telling him to take off his mask and reveal his ‘true’ self; that the darkness is really within him. That this is all just a play, created by himself. A dream that he had within a locked room. And the only way to reveal this truth is in death.” ################### https://www.quora.com/True-Detective-Season-1-Episode-8-Why…
It is sad if we still have to use the terms Liberal and Right as human qualifiers, as if it is a baseball sport, instead of just looking at the people as humans and just look at the facts: without all the banner- “my side versus your side” – waving. Slogans are masks to hide the evil, take off your masks little priests.
How in the world do the readers/members equate “non-coercion” with capitalism, when capitalistic countries have far more than a share of human torment and inhumanity? The fact is: there are no ‘pure’ systems of human relations that are devoid of evil and human mistreatment, be that capitalism or other. A lot of corruption happens in this system, and others, that can’t be gainsaid or explained away with fluffy, pie-in-the-sky make-believe. We need to take off our masks!
I think there is far more fear of the wealthy right-wing tyranny taking over America than the poor, underprivileged underclass swarming the Elite-ruling class. This fear of the “reds” coming to get our money was instilled in the 30-50’s to fight Communism by Intelligence operations in America. You are stuck in an era that was not all-together true. I don’t think presenting you with other evidence will do much good, if you are not willing to move out from behind that propaganda.
Having no great love for the current Parties, or any “ism,” does not mean I cannot pick out those bits and pieces and statements of logic that seem – seem – to point to good directions. It doesn’t mean I am giving “WHOLEHEARTED” endorsement of any Party or organization: just respecting some things that they occasionally say that are reasonable. History – true history – exists as bits and pieces in a large jigsaw puzzle; it is up to us to locate and assemble those pieces in honest efforts.
This should be an independent look at facts and issues, not “wings”: this is not a Kentucky-Fried restaurant. And this so-called “Right wing”—that must be a spicy part of the bird—or are they just Muppets dressed in white robes and gold halos floating around with their all-powerful wands and gimmicks?
This Group is not a hodgepodge of confused (nor a melting pot of all kinds of), aimless political quips and slander: do not come here to just “get something off your chest” – speak with purpose, clarity, and humanity and reason: childish tantrums belong in the alley. We need some new, innovative, investigation and reasoning: not the same old, worn-out, repetitive, ageless tantrums about Left versus Right. If we cannot change – we are lost.
Members are always welcome to state their detailed reasons for disagreement, but usually none are forthcoming. We encourage members to post their own analysis and other areas of news, no matter how disconcerting; but, apparently, most just rather be by-standing critics that have little to say of value.
If you want further specifics other than what is said here: you need to help locate those persons and names and pin down their actual substance and actions: nothing is being handed on a silver-platter, and we ask all to add further names and specific items; you are welcome to do that. Readers are welcome to speak up and demonstrate their findings, rather than vaguely complain. Sometimes, specific and detailed questions bring forth specific and detailed answers, bad questions, bad answers.
I don’t necessarily believe Putin or “anybody”: I try to present a lot of interesting comments and facts with not so much an unduly “prejudgment” so as to get opinions from all sides, rather than censor from some hidden or inner sanctum crap-pot of judgmental facts; and then I sometimes let the chips fall where they may.
(Please read and follow the Preamble, it is there for a reason. While we abhor censorship, but we do have rules: this is not a “let it all hang out” assembly with wild and ravishing comments. Use reason and purpose and humanity.
For all those out there who occasionally complain about the choice of content [and I am fighting the heavy-hand of the 1st Amendment and no censorship as well]: please submit – submit content that you would like to see, be active to this extent, and not just bystanders and curbside spectators.)
We welcome all the stories of tragedy in the lives of people who have encountered the Power Cabal. Most people are unaware of the day-to-day destruction of the family and other ‘taboo’ topics because the Powers-That-Be are not predicated upon its disclosure and they rather hide the cold, stark and naked facts: it would expose their true, evil intentions. Your stories can be told here.
Sadly, corporate enterprises, such as FACEBOOK, are trending to follow in the insanity of despotic corporatism, viewing their use of robots and censorship and Kangaroo Courts: It doesn’t make it right, known as Might Makes It Right syndrome. People have always fought back against this type of tyranny—and always will—unless they are Brain Washed or become corporate lackeys or henchmen. Here is one better: ultimately, your reality is controlled by lawyers and the Bar Associations in a Grand Cabal—what do you do, just give up the spirit and allow them total, complete control? As time goes on, and the technological tools advance and the wealth of the elites also grow, so do the means and tactics of the Power Elites, advancing in tow — step by step, to your demise.
That’s foolish! Obviously, Facebook doesn’t say: “you must agree to pointless censorship and reckless use of rules and unreasonable and dark, unanswerable human treatment and censorship”; they allege to act in a fair and reasonable manner and answerable to common decency and humanity. It is the least that American society expects. True, no one is reasonable and especially those in power, and only corporate lackeys and those of dark, like-minded mentally would agree with it anyway. Some of us have been mistaken, but it is not the first time, and, in our goodwill and generosity, we make false assumptions all the time—–it still does not make it right, but only to the like-minded.
We dance around some of the “core” problems and dress our dance in all kinds of (getting to be) “worn out” slogans, chants, and aimless threats, some very inaccurate, often, pretending to be on the “right side” of history — as the ground is shifting beneath our feet and the very reality of things is and has changed drastically in the matrix before our very eyes. More to come.
Good that you aren’t “complying,” that is not like you Ron Schmidt, because it seems to be Facebook’s “official” policy to allow this junk to happen often; religion, corporatism, and a whole host of tyrannical and power-derived ‘isms’ — even ‘capitalism’ — operate basically the same: fear, control, subjugation, etc. It is the way humans work and have been operating for eons. But Ron doesn’t really believe this “system” of humans can be evil and maybe, just maybe, we signed on to their Terms of Service (TOS) when we bought into this mass deception, and since we “bought in” to this grand Status Quo, we should have no complaint (Sovereign Immunity, “Don’t Question the King,” Boss, Dictator, President, etc., etc.), complaining won’t get you to the Top (investigating the system, the boss, etc.), only compliance will so sell your soul to the TOS, you hoe. Besides, it doesn’t really matter said an EEOC lawyer: they can make the rules, break the rules, apply them incoherent any way they like (and from the looks of the dirty politics going on nationally and internationally, that is obvious)! You just have to live with it!
Robert Glenn: True, men and affairs are like peas in the pod, on down the line. They carry that pistol and then are told not to use it. But here is the irony of those situations, unless they are gay: they are doing it with “females.” It takes two to have sex, unless you are into riding the pony by yourself. But sadly, we are also told these “females” are forever innocent, victims, forced into sex by evil-overbearing-seductive males. I’ve met many females when I was single: not at all innocent, dumb, uncreative, brainless sex partners. In fact, I recall being seduced five or six times. Some, I even turned down (to my chagrin and even threats). But that was all my fault too for not allowing seduction. A guy just can’t ‘win,’ and to emphasize the point the Legal Cabal Pimps will see that you get the point and learn that lesson in the back-alley called the court system. Have a nice day?
You corporate lackey! We know all about the propaganda of corporatism! We’ve heard the slogans and the doctrines and the weird terms of corporations as ‘people,’ and how they have so much Power and can get away with murder and inventing and corralling laws and the making and breaking of laws. And you are right ‘in’ there! We see it— and so do many others — quite differently — crony capitalism — phony capitalism — whatever term you feel happy and comfortable about. Nobody in their right mind willingly sells their soul to the devil (except you!). We’ve been over this — with you — and other numbskulls — and we know from where and how you are coming. You probably feel just fine and dandy with the bullshit Facebook has been promoting, and some more that kind, or the other antics that corporate social media is using. You have all the answers but not the soul of America, and its ugly, dark, corporate underbelly. You are right at home (but not here) and probably could care less.
Stephen ErdmannRon Schmidt (April 9, 2018) Hey Ron, corporations are different than citizen houses and families. There is a dichotomy and a hierarchy involved that is apparently over your head, but it can involve crimes, and if any ‘person’ commits a crime (and corporations are ‘persons’ now) he pays penalties and infractions, and from the looks of things, corporations are not devoid of that and even further looking shows they have many legal suits and case files against them. If they can do no wrong, why is this all taking place? Apparently, what corporations want, and what ‘reality’ is doing and seeing are two different things. There are many other fine distinctions happening, but they are well over any corporate lackey’s head as most of those have their heads stuck so far up the respective corporate butts, they can’t see the light of day! It has been called by many different names, white collar crime, and monopolization, money laundering, on and on and on.
Trump has a specific personality his own, entirely, how can it be any different; do you want him to ‘pretend’ to be a person that he really isn’t, and what might that be? Listen, this Group, site, and profile, as well as many others on Facebook and the Internet say they are for originality, free-thought, free speech, free actions, and then when a President of the U.S. says he is his own person and unique, you slam him. It is okay for ‘you’ to be that way and not a President? If he does something dastardly, it will be exposed, but this wild and constant minute-to-minute character assassination (in the land of the Free, innocent until proven guilty) that appears nothing but a propaganda machine; and dirty politics isn’t any good either, at all. And who might and has been accusing us freethinkers on Facebook of being “unbalanced” as it goes with the territory.
Male and female have that innate animal urge to destroy their neighbors. Animals do it out of necessity to survive. Humans do it out of that unidentifiable element in the deep part of their spirit that must be evil, to be satiated, and quenched, for no other purpose than to gain control, Power, and conquest for pleasure. Both men and women have this ID Monster element; though females have evolved to perform an ‘added’ psychological mechanism and gimmick that males have not evolved into, giving them an added ‘edge’ of attack and destruction. My MiiMii and Dexter, even my outdoor Blackie, do not do these things, because they are civilized animals, not monstrous humans. It is interesting to note, one instance when I was a Security Guard at a bank, I could listen in on the conversations of the female bank tellers, and they had gotten into an unrehearsed, completely free conversation amongst themselves about females and how destructive they were in their actions and the games they play. True history and life, unveiled and unprompted, can be a powerful life-lesson.
Stephen Erdmann: June 12, 2018: Sadly, trying to find honest and reputable “politicians” is like trying to find a sinless prostitute in a whorehouse, or trying to find the best apple in a barrel of really rotten apples, or….it just is not possible. My Timeline, and the Dissenter/Disinter Group, and my Editorial Comments there, make it very clear: Partisan Politics (in fact, all ‘isms’ and ‘ologies’) is a zero-sum game which reveals only the masquerade that humans operate behind and mask themselves (only paper-tigers, bound up with phony White Hats, pretty ribbons, and decorative paper) — in short, these games of political ‘tag’ are worthless, history is always written by the winners and also distorted by the participants to cover all and subvert all the full facts. Of course, not everyone agrees with me, and most blindly march forward waving the banner of their ‘club,’ ‘group,’ ‘religion,’ etc., etc., blind to the obvious fact that humans do more historical damage to fact-finding than constructive help because of the continuous ‘masquerades.’ One reason we need the 1st Amendment and more impartial fact-finding historians (if such can even possibly exist). Until then, misplaced hero-worship and self-aggrandized ‘ologies’ will forever continue to distort the picture, perhaps without hope.
Some Groups are quite paranoid and hyperventilated, suspecting all people and persons to some curious agenda they ‘have’ or suspect others of having. The JFK groups are mostly like that, being a landscape of suspicion, unreasonable debate, slander, attack and wild accusations. That doesn’t say much for fair and sane investigation, tending to be grade-schoolers and parochially petty. I tend to shy away from such radical and wild climates, not doing science or any one any good: Mostly private “in” Groups, if you are friends of friends of friends, or know same or even if you associate with the wrong people they dislike (not the basis for good journalistic enquiry). Good luck.
But I repeat myself.
(We go back to 2011, for genuine researchers and not just spectators, so use a powerful browser and go searching. Good luck.)
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Dissenter/Disinter Magazine goes back to 1967 when I gave birth to a little fanzine that seemed to be my contribution to the media flavor of that time: the Viet Nam war, the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination, the late Jim Moseley’s Saucer News, Ray Palmer’s provoking Search Magazine and Hidden World series, as well as a line of “controversy” radio programs such as Long John Nebel, Suspense, Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, with television shows such as Science Fiction Theater and Twilight Zone. In St. Louis in the 60s there was WIL “Steve Clark” controversy radio. There was a section of the media that was renaissance to the investigating of the more curious and often sinister elements at that time, and it gave birth to me and others that have continued in that vein to this day (many will include Coast to Coast radio and Alex Jones and others to this list). We still try to contribute to the emblem of “controversy and protest” as a way of getting to the truth.
Subsequently, in the years following, my life embodied further “discovery” of these “realities” of the mysterious Powers-that-Be (which were quite depressing and decorated with flight-or-fight syndromes), and my waking hours were consumed with survival and making “ends meet” (as with so many of the population, I did not have the luxury of always devoting myself to media publishing or even schooling). That story may or may not be left to my memoirs (and my Timeline), if at all.
We try not to “conform” to predispose or status quo “images” that people have in their heads or were born with. We approach all topics from different viewpoints and suggestions, because we realize solutions are never black and white (I hail back to H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, George Orwell, Charles Fort (http://www.experienceproject.com/
…/Protest-The-Use-…/2923915), Info Journal, and a host of New Age and Protest scientists [study my Timeline]). We offer a forum for discussion, within reason. Questions are always open. I, personally, am ‘independent’ politically, neither bowing to the Left or Right, and neither do I encourage others to bow to them either (or any “ism”). It is a matter of finding out who the tyrants are and how much you relinquish to being a slave. Others may participate from their own level of evaluation, that is their right; but I cannot “endorse” everyone’s politics or religion. We offer a platform to search these things out (in a civil and humane fashion: see Preamble) through questioning and debate. How do you see applying censorship in Groups and Timelines? Use it every time something grinds against your personal opinion? And what about the next person? And the next person? Seems that our Founding Fathers grappled with these questions as well. It is amazing with all the common threads of agreement that ‘can’ be found in fighting tyrannical government and evil conspiracies, we are tearing each other apart, for some reason, over petty feuds and personality squabbles that detract from common core efforts (those little nuggets of gold that make us all as one in protest). We (we are speaking editorially) hope we are able to stand in a “common core” against Tyranny and the evils that are associated with it.
In the end, we are all brothers and sisters.
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And, yes, I tend to be an activist: A political activist is someone who is involved in the political process for the sake of promoting, impeding or raising awareness of a certain issue or set of issues. Political activism typically involves engagement beyond just voting, whether it be through protest, demonstration or lecture.
******* . PRIVACY Warning: Steve Erdmann: . Due to the fact that Facebook has chosen to involve software that will allow the theft of my personal information, I do declare the following: on this day, September 28, 2016, in response to the new Facebook guidelines and under articles L.111, 112 and 113 of the code of intellectual property, I declare that my rights are attached to all my personal data, drawings, paintings, photos, texts etc… published on my profile. For commercial use of the foregoing my written consent is required at all times. Those reading this text can copy it and paste it on their Facebook wall. This will allow them to place themselves under the protection of copyright. By this release, I tell Facebook that it is strictly forbidden to disclose, copy, distribute, broadcast, or to take any other action against me on the basis of this profile and/or its contents. The actions mentioned above apply equally to employees, students, agents and/or other staff under the direction of Facebook. The contents of my profile include private information. The violation of my privacy is punished by the law (UCC 1 1-308 – 308 1 -103 and the Rome Statute). Facebook is now an open capital entity. All members are invited to post a notice of this kind, or if you prefer, you can copy and paste this version. If you have not published this statement at least once, you will tacitly allow the use of elements such as your photos as well as the information contained in your profile update.https://www.facebook.com/groups/171577496293504/ ##https://www.facebook.com/stephen.erdmann1.
NOTE: Many members and readers say this is worthless and of no legal value. I borrowed it from another Group. Worth a try. SE.
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May 21, 2018. About 3:50 p.m. Greg Ross I’ve shot better than you. Your fat ass easy target
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May 23, 2018: Comment on Travis Smith: Stephen Erdmann – Nationalism is a fiction created by ‘insiders,’ and like the doctrines of religions, despite their pompous-sounding slogans and professed emblems, usually has gone astray, and even covered evils of the professors that use them. The Founding fathers professed noble causes and principles, but they also had a ‘dark side,’ some of them, and many say they ‘really’ did not break away from the British Commonwealth and Throne. In the name of “goodness,” in the name of “Nationalism,” most countries wage war and so-called ‘defense’ against other countries. Some horrendous crimes are hidden under those banners. What if it is all a joke, a hoax, a deception, and ‘this’ is the way that the human “being,” animal, operates, suffocated by and paying homage to their inner ID Monsters?
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Stephen Erdmann” June 17, 2018. A general comment not directed at anyone in particular: We just don’t reproduce what each person might consider brand-spanking-undisclosed-news items never-seen-before that might titillate their subjective fancies, we achieve and denote and collect interesting tidbits that might be of general interest, usually very up-to-date and of interest. If you want the fantasy that strikes your innermost wishes, start your own library, we don’t cater to just one person.
Stephen Erdmann: June 19, 2018: Need to tell you the story of Walter Lembeck, one of the smartest savvy CEO’s that was married to a judge’s daughter, who turned on him, causing him to lose his children in a custody battle, and the ‘system’ and the judge brought down the whole cabal to protect the judge’s daughter. Walter only put up with that for so long: he studied night and day in the Law Library (and studied court sessions), and became a very ‘intimating’ pro se lawyer and expert, and began winning many filings he made and eventually won his children back and made his ‘ex’ pay some costs—but it didn’t end there. No, the story didn’t end there, unfortunately, and the full force of the cabal was brought against him, his losing property, jobs, and his children once again. Walter borrowed about 300,000 to 600,000 dollars from his mother to file and fight to the local Supreme Court all the way to the national Supreme Court; which they refused to hear his case. Destitute and defeated, he did the only thing he could do to save himself from destruction—he eventually remarried his ex-wife, and last I heard was back in good (?) graces and remarried to his ex-wife: What kind of ending would you call that? We need to talk to Walter, if he is still living, to find out. Life is scary and strange.
Steve Erdmann to Anna Benjamins, June 22, 2018: Anna, as you probably know by now, several weeks ago, the UFO Digest Magazine was hit by hackers. Since the tech company is in Canada, it is difficult for RM to get readily in touch with them to work on the problem. His last message to me was that “he needed to get in touch with Dirk’s wife about the company but haven’t heard back from her.” Please contact him and help him in any way possible, it is imperative that we get the magazine back in operation. Please keep in touch about this and contact RM as well.
Stephen Erdmann: June 22, 2018: The noble ideas that the Founding Fathers enveloped in the Bill of Rights were universal and sanctioned for all people, everywhere in as much as the Fathers were very aware of urban life, and not just rural lives, around the globe, big cities, complex governments—they were aware of these things also as they pondered and wrote the Bill of Rights. They were often educated lawyers from Britain and other places of higher education. It really wasn’t framed by rural people at all. Those who want to tamper with these noble and holistic ideas are fools that are rather tyrannical in their primitive thinking to destroy and reconstruct with as much damage and power as they can get.
Stephen Erdmann: June 23, 2018: This is a growing problem across the broad scope of the media everywhere. It is happening to Facebook, YouTube, and the Internet in general—which has been invented and control by the government from the beginning. People don’t realize how controlled their lives are across the span of living, and from birth. It is the way that despots and tyrants operated from time immemorial. We need a spiritual and universal awakening. Every day, another victim is added to the list, and occasionally, they wake up to the tyranny and slavery when it hits them personally, but not enough or often. Contact me and my Foundation to fight back: independenterdmann@gmail.com or locate me at https://wordpresscom507.wordpress.com or Facebook (if they allow it and don’t censor it). We are under attack!
Stephen Erdmann: June 23, 2018: What should have been plain to most citizens long ago, but apparently not, neither party nor partisan politics are void of and free from tyrannical thinking and the enslavement of the “controllers.” They all want to wear the “White Hat,” when in reality, all hats are smudged, dark, dirty, greasy ‘hats.’ Apparently, everyone is lacking ‘mirrors’ in their homes and domains! The illusion of “my gang versus your gang, and my gang is right” should have long ago passed into oblivion, but we cling to the myths and deception and mind-manipulation taught to use by our enslavers and from birth. Our Controllers and enslavers depend on that stupidity and our lack of spiritual insight. They want us as crude and dumbed-down Orwellian Paroles to manipulate. It has been that way through history. Trying to measure the “good” points versus the “bad” points could be a skill attempted for a professional and advanced historian, but it does little for now in viewing “my side is holier than your side” misconceptions to date. As culprit, Errol Childress told detective Rust Cohle in the TV series TRUE DETECTIVE: “Take off your mask, little priest!”
Stephen Erdmann: June 23, 2018: Geneva Hagen Any way you cut it, the Founding Fathers had put hard and long-thought into the Bill of Rights and it was meant for posterity and to be universal. When I speak of tyrannical-thinking, I am speaking in generalities and point it at all people with these ugly ID Monster “Masks” that hide their errors and evil vanities. There are those who wish the worst for themselves and their fellow man all under the disguise of self-righteousness, holiness, and Control of others, misguided they be in their inflated worth to destruct the Bill of Rights. If there be a way to perfect those, if even possible, so be it; but the UN can’t even follow their own guidelines for Human Rights. This is because the human being is basically ‘vampires’ that never see their own image in the mirror. This is why even the culprit Errol Childress said to detective Rust Cohle in the TV series TRUE DETECTIVE: “Take off your mask, little priest!”
Stephen Erdmann: July 3, 2018:
Becky Olmstead Becky Olmstead: Travis Smith …um…yea….men don’t make good hookers 😉
Peter Corlis Peter Corlis: power corrupts
Peter Corlis Peter Corlis: But I’ve seen many good men taken to the cleaners in divorce settlements…
Stephen Erdmann: The story to human cruelty can only be divided between females and males, humans are stinkers and fallen creatures. There are many examples of the ‘techniques’ that females use, and in their evolutionary past, they have grown added ‘edges’ of cruelty. Because of their physically weaker bodies, they have adopted strong and more cunning psychological mechanisms to combat things they consider threats. A symbiotic relationship has developed between them and the Legal Industry. You see this symbiotic machination in nature all the time.
Once, when I was a security guard at a bank, the female tellers were speaking amongst themselves, openly and unrehearsed, as to that added ‘cruelty’ ‘edge’ that females possessed. It was the frank and candid conversation with no holds barred; all those female tellers were agreeing that their sex contained those extra aspects of cruelty and their sex was by-far experts at these gimmicks and evils.
In another case, a man was confronted with divorce when his wife involved him in litigation and was trying to obtain the family home and custody of his children. She had many lovers and had been conspiring with an attorney secretly for many years. His lawyers told him that he had no chance to win unless he obtained concrete proof. This he did with a telephone tap and recording over a number of weeks in which he not only recorded the lovers but the cruelty of female friends and neighbors who equally conspired to sabotage the man. At one point in the tape, the wife suggested placing poison in the husband’s soup. The conspiracy was astounding.
This is no fiction—it is completely true—I heard the uncensored tape. The conspiracy is astounding. It involved not only neighbors and supposed friends of the wife, but attorneys that she was seeing for years and years, planning on the caper. So much for the goodness of attorneys. A few weeks after he had finally paid off the house mortgage, he was presented with the divorce petition.
This same female, now single and having married a wealthy businessman (who died from cancer?), has set her sights on doing everything possible, true to her nature, to destroy the love and caring of her children for their father. And there also was some hoaxing involved in the use of Parental Alien Syndrome (PAS): the story never seemed to end. But I believe you are getting the picture, and that we’ll save for another time.
Typically, as a metaphor, a dinosaur monster charges the cave in which the caveman and his wife and children exist. The cavewoman screams and shouts instructions at the husband to attack and destroy the monster—to which he does to protect his family. He was physically stronger—but who do you think was actually in control of the situation? The real puppeteer?
Of course, we are not saying males are innocent creatures, no human or homo sapien is! Both can and do evil acts; there are an evolutionary difference that have their own special and inherent peculiarities, and as the saying goes ‘Viva la difference!” —- but maybe not so happy as some ‘differences’ can be deadly and scary and uncharted. Uncharted! There has been very little scientific ‘study’ about the aforementioned “edge.”
July 23, 2018. To Tony Elliott and Emil Donofrio: Stephen Erdmann: Both of you philosophers are wrong and also correct, I’ve said all I can say in my pinned Editorial Comments, spoken from the heart and my own life experiences. People live in rigged ‘boxes’ taught from birth and most won’t budge an inch to get out of them. I still have isolated prejudices myself that I am working on. Emil is certainly correct: no one—no one–has created true Capitalism, and they are not living in a real ‘Capitalism.’ It is an unreal, phony doctrine that Capitalists hide behind and mask their evil intentions. So, in reality, these people are living in a fairytale that never actually is taking place, other than what is on paper. To bolster that belief, these people use all kinds of slogans and banners and parade about under “Nationalism” and a lot of flag-waving and political sermons. However, likewise, all nations—every one of them–do the same thing. They do it for Power, for Money, for Control (name me one communistic or socialistic nation that doesn’t). You see, humans work this way, it is their innate mindset. It leads to all kinds of hidden agendas and Black Projects and political intrigue. We can hope and wish for some buried element of a soul, some hidden decency behind it all—but just how realistic is that when we see the harsh reality about us telling us the true story? Progressives, Socialism, Communism are also just ‘paper’ doctrine and we actually see that they, very much like their capitalistic counterparts, are probably identical, and these people also are based on Power, Money, and Control. And all these human savages will do almost anything to keep it that way. And then add the further hidden ingredient of ‘global’ partnering in these hidden and evil endeavors, and you might as well throw out that entire band standing and preaching out the window.
July 26, 2018/ Steve Erdmann on J. Elbert Whitlow’s Timeline. Stephen Erdmann:
Alex Johnson: Bingo, you got that right, as I said above, it is the ‘taboo’ to look at women as anything but innocent, helpless, holy little angels, even after they had committed all kinds of crimes and evil acts, we just keep them on a pedestal. Took millions of years to get that programmed.
The Legal Cabal ‘must’ define love and marriage because they are the ones that construct reality in the courtroom; literally, invent it. And it is set-up to facilitate this way because of the ‘money.’ If they can’t control the situation to make their ‘profit,’ they will construct ‘any’ human endeavor to control and profit from it. No escape. That is one reason they invented “Palimony” because people started living together outside of marriage to escape their greedy grasp, and they invented Palimony to fill that gap. You see how their minds work. Not just in personal relationships, but in every corner of society: control, control, control, greed, greed, greed.
August 18, 2018 in Group to Tony Elliott: The more basic and even accurate cause of human slavery and suppression goes far beyond any “ism” or philosophy, it is despotism and tyrannical thinking and that is global. Trying to put human evil and the human ID Monster in nice, neat little ‘boxes’ only shows our failure to recognize the real culprit and the basic evil involved. All ‘leaders’ have shared this evil trend since history recorded. There is no political “safe haven,” and what is written on ‘paper’ is nothing but masks that hide this innate manipulation.
October 7, 2018. Stephen Erdmann: This is ridiculous: democrats are pitch-perfect, holy, never make mistakes, are rational blameless creatures__ this goes against science, history and almost every other testimony. Ford was even speaking in a phony little girl- pity-me-pity-me voice, had a growing history of CIA and radical Left involvement, and this in our latest findings of Deep State Mind Control and deceptions of the Military-Industrial-Corporate-Complex-Matrix world that we sadly find ourselves in. Take a long cold look at history (which the mobsters and radical Left or Right refuse to do): humans are savages and all their doctrines and “isms” are just ‘masks’ to hide their evil behind. Turning politics into a savage mob action with verbal and physical ‘attacks’ belies any good intentions. It only gets worse, never better. Connecting the dots are only for the more intelligent historians, and they won’t shy away from finding the true culprits, which, sadly, are on both political aisles and even beyond all politics. Females and radical feminists always did have the upper hand against males with their innate sexuality which evolved over the eons and promote this symbiosis with the Legal Cabal. They are not now, and never have been, the powerless, innocent angles their mob-actions make them out to be. Even males will sell-out to protect this ‘TABOO’ under some misguided White Knight fantasy. Ask many of males that have had to confront the Legal Cabal and discover they have only five (5) foes when they are shanghaied into court: 1) His lawyer, 2) her lawyer, 3) the judge, 4) her innate sexuality, and the status (deceptive and hidden and masked) quo.
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Facebook, June 16, 2019
Stephen Erdmann: I will share this, I just found my daughter at home, finally after many attempted visits; a totally different person than I last saw her and not at all like the little girl I knew at one time. Someone has been working hard on her behind the scenes, but I understand this is what happens to men and people that have been caught in the clutches of the Legal Cabal. It is called Parental Alienation Syndrome. I am beginning to understand some of the missing pieces and how — after five court modifications and sessions (each one is like a new divorce) —an attempt was by Jefferson City to even, after all these ‘finalized’ sessions, to collect more support (was disallowed and rebuked by a city of St. Louis judge). That would be session number six. She said I had abandoned her. Seems to me to have been the other way around, by her mother and other people. I would have gladly opened my arms and heart to her, if they would have just approached me in a respectful and proper way, rather than demonized and threaten me (as if I did not have enough to survive under.) There is so much more – much more – to the story, so much more – but no one to listen.
Any time the government and the Legal Cabal get their fingers in to your life, you are screwed, they will make you a slave or the court – men -women – any breathing person. They will try to destroy your life, take control to their satisfaction and profit. Same thing happens to men: there are just as many horror stories. The government does not care, it is all done to their agendas, I’ve lived with this for most of my life, as well as millions of other persons. It is not a lone-happening story but the slavery most people are living under and do not realize this, men, women, children, cats, dogs, anything that is breathing. I’ve been trying to fight it.
June 18, 2019: I have found, in most divorce alienation, that the legal system is only another factor that is further nails in the coffin, another wheel in the mechanization’s, added weight, that usually works against the participants. It certainly doesn’t help them, other than the legal system’s professed doctrines and advertised publicity. Add on to that, when one parent becomes the target of the narcissism and inherent psychosis of the other parent who, not only allows, but fosters and grows, and even programs (using their full power, availability. and ingenuity) the events — “that” becomes a powerful tool of the system. I have two daughter cats that I would in no time desert or do ill to. How much better animals are compared to the savagery of humans, and we could learn so much from them. What is also sad, is that my children will not now learn about the horrid details that I know about: the affairs and conspiracy that my ex-wife was involved in, ugly, cutting stories, for which I sought counseling to save the marriage and even had a remarriage in the church: all for naught, it was as if it was somehow planned behind the scenes as if a sheep led to the slaughter. In my case, even having being caught (the lovers eventually squealed on her) she wanted to get the paid-off family home (a lot of overtime) for her and her lover (s). They will never know how the stark and convoluted reality of all this hurts: you wouldn’t believe this, unless you saw it in a movie. And the deep scares it has left. The forlorn dreams of reconciliation with my children, which were killed many years ago, unbeknownst to me.
December 31, 2019: The connection between December 25th Pagan celebrations of Winter solstice, — the “gods” of antiquity, — “the sun dying, “– “Cursed Nimrod/Christmas’s Tree,” the Satanic Infanticide Tree, — and today Pauline god of Jesus Christ.
Pagan societies, such as the Carthaginians, ancient Greece and Rome had a very different view about the value of human life than we do today. They legalized and encouraged killing their children as religious sacrifices to their gods almost universally. Nor can it be said to be simply a practice to preserve few resources to save the whole culture, but it was practiced by rich, poor citizens and slaves.
Leading pagan leaders and philosophers also encouraged the practice of Infanticide. Cicero defended the Infanticide by referring to the Twelve Tables. Plato, Aristotle and Cornelius Tacitus recommended infanticide as legitimate state policy. (Histories 5.5.). Even Seneca, otherwise known for his relatively high moral standards, stated, “we drown children at birth who are weakly and abnormal.” (De Ira 1.15.) There is no dispute among historians and informed laypersons that Infanticide was incredibly widespread in the ancient pagan world.
In both approaches, infants were particularly vulnerable to infanticide by those that should have been protecting the helpless, were the ones who were killing them. It was very uncommon for even wealthy, upper-class families to have more than one daughter in ancient Greece and Rome. An inscription found in Delphi illustrates this quite well. Of more than 600 second-century families, only one percent had raised two daughters. It was openly approved, encouraged and a very common practice, as it was justified by law and advocated by philosophers in the Pagan society. (Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity, pages 97-98 & 118. See also: Durant, op. cit., page 56; Susan Scrimshaw, “Infanticide in Human Populations: Societal and Individual Concerns,” in Infanticide; Comparative and Evolutionary Perspectives, eds. Glenn Hausfater and Sarah Hardy, page 439)
In Greece and ancient Rome a child was virtually its father’s chattel-e.g., in Roman law, the Patria Protestas granted the father the right to dispose of his offspring as he saw fit. In Sparta, the decision was made by a public official. The Twelve Tables of Roman Law held: “Deformed infants shall be killed” (De Legibus, 3.8.). Of course, deformed was broadly construed and often meant no more than the baby appeared “weakly.” The Twelve Tables also explicitly permitted a father to expose any female infant. (Stark, op. cit., page 118.).
According to Plutarch, the Carthaginians “offered up their own children, and those who had no children would buy little ones from poor people and cut their throats as if they were so many lambs of young birds; meanwhile the mothers stood by without a tear or moan.” (Moralia 2.17.). According to Wikipedia, “Infanticide was common in all well studied ancient cultures, including those of ancient Greece, Rome, India, China, and Japan” with many forms: a parent directly killing the child, usually by drowning. The infant was simply held underwater until it was dead. Relatively quick, inexpensive, and the water muffled the cries; In other forms, the family would simply take the child out beyond the city and abandon it to die from exposure to the elements. In sum, pagans practiced infanticide.
On a certain day during winter solstice of December 25th, pagan societies in ancient times would make a list of all the things they wanted to the false god of prosperity for the upcoming year according to the list they’d written. They would line up with their children in their hand and they would heat their hands on this horror cast idol iron of the god of prosperity’s burning statue’s hot hands until their hands were red as a fire brand, then place and burning their babies and small children alive on the burning idol statue’s hot hands of the god of prosperity as an offering for prosperity. Amidst the hideous stench of burning flesh, and the screams and cries of hundreds of babies pierced the night air, until nothing remained except charred ashes. The people in the ancient world would begin to celebrate their false gods (they worshiped many) This practice was known in the bible as making your children pass through the fire. It was ritual child sacrifice and absolutely cursed by the One God of Abraham, Ishmael and Isaac.
Various ancient celebrations honoring this most blood-thirsty false gods prevalent today such as Christmas Eve, Baby New Year (the symbol of the child-victim), and the Janus false god (January) New year’s Eve macabre pagan holiday are tied to one another and have come down to the today world Christmas traditions celebrated on December 25th honoring the Jesuits and Molechian Zionists New World Order who want 90 per cent of the whole world dead in Purim (star pentagon) human sacrificed to Lucifer according to the Georgia Guidestones.
Early Christian documents reveal that there was a clash of cultures when Christianity converted previously pagan Romans and Greeks by instructing them that infanticide was immoral and murder. (The Didache, 90 -110 CE). Another early Christian document, the Epistle of Barnabas (130 CE), also explicitly condemned infanticide and prohibited its practices as necessary parts of the “way of light.” Moreover, by the end of the second century, “Christians were not only proclaiming their rejection of abortion and infanticide, but had begun direct attacks on pagans, and especially pagan religions for sustaining such crimes,” as the accepted practice. (Stark, op. cit., page 125., Robin L. Fox op. cit., page 350).
But so long as Christianity remained a disfavored–and sometimes persecuted–religion, their appeals to the pagan government to act against infanticide were ineffectual in changing government policy. This Christian ‘brotherly love’ has been minimized as a reason for turning to the Church, as if only those who were members could know of it. In fact, it was widely recognized,” according to Durant, “in many instances Christians rescued exposed infant, baptized them, and brought them up with the aid of community funds.” Through these efforts, Christians worked to diminish some of the causes of infanticide. (Fox,op. cit., page 324., Durant, op. cit., page 598.) Clearly, one unique and valuable contribution of Christianity to Western Civilization was its opposition to infanticide. “but these patterns persisted among pagans far into the Christian era.” (Stark, op. cit., page 97-98)
Christmas Tree “Cursed Nimrod’s Tree,” the Satanic Infanticide Celebration Tree on December 25th. Christmas trees were originally decorated with burning candles made from the fat of the burned bodies of child sacrifice victims. Instead of Christmas balls, decapitated heads of sacrificial child victims were hung from the tree. Caroling was originally done by rotund old fat naked singers engaging in licentious behavior. Instead of Santa, they worshiped death, the grim reaper with his scythe (false god Saturn) who demanded child sacrifice. It is a grotesque blood splattered gore fest of barbaric sadistic delight for devil worshippers
The bible forbids putting up the Christmas tree: Jeremiah 10:1-4. Deuteronomy 16:21, Acts 17:29, just as is repeated over and over in the Qur’an that Nimrod cast Abraham on fire, and the bible says in book of chronicles, ‘the kings would not get rid of the high places, the idols, groves and other items of pagan worship and after their deaths, they did wickedly in the sight of the Lord. They will burn in hell for their involvement in paganism.’ The Christmas tree is Zaqqoum, the cursed tree as depicted in (the Qur’an17:60, 37:62 -68, 44:43, 56:52), inimical to the Abrahamic Monotheistic Tree of Ishmael & Isaac.
The Zaqqoum “Cursed Nimrod’s Tree” that springs out of the bottom of hell’ is known when Nimrod married Semiramis (i.e. Dumez and Inanna). The Anunnaki used to marry their first- and second-degree relatives, in order to preserve their “royal” blood and the right to the throne. Semiramis later became known as Ishtar, which is pronounced… Easter. Ishtar and Moloch like all other Anunnaki “gods”, because of his long life span, they were known by many names throughout history, among which: Molech, Nimrod or Ba’al (which was the highest possible title, meaning Lord). But his first name was Morduch, and he was the son of the supreme Anunnaki leader on Earth, Enki, and his wife Damkina.
The Zaqqoum began shortly after the flood with the birth of Tammuz as the reincarnation of Nimrod. When Nimrod/Dumez died, his cousin-wife Semiramis/Inanna, claimed that a full-grown evergreen tree sprang overnight from a dead tree stump. And the New Year is coming in as a young child portrayed as children ready to be sacrificed. The New Year’s still to come are Victims of child sacrifice were always heavily veiled so that their parents would not recognize when their child was burned. The pagan Romans honored the false god, Saturn, who was usually depicted holding a scythe (death’s sickle). Saturn IS the grim reaper, the figure that emerges from and who is looking after children and demanded them for child sacrifice. It wasn’t just the romans, even some Israelites and pre-Islamic Ishmaelites (Arab Jahiliyyah) turned from the One God of Abraham, Ishmael and Isaac, and even offered their children in sacrifice to this vile bloodthirsty Saturn false gods.
It’s pagan chronic pedophiles infanticide filth! The recent kings of the North in the Illuminati and Freemasonry Occult still practicing a chilling representation of “Father Time” and “Baby New Year” that can be found in many illustrations from the 19th century. Father Time is Saturn, the god of time is standing in front of a large clock, holding his scythe illustrated that the old years kids are passing away as full-grown raped, tortured and murdered, their bodies wrapped in burial shrouds. They do so as the Illuminati and Freemasonry occult privacy pact so they won’t rat out group activities of the coven. If they ever betray the occult privacy pact, they are ousted with their names flashed across the world news channels as being a pedophile to completely destroy them.
It is a reason why we have human sacrifices all over the planet, in some of the most prevalent cultures, is because the Anunnaki required them. Hundreds of thousands of children are kidnapped every single year, most times with the help of the highest religious institutions such as the Vatican, NWO Secret Evil Agenda in Britain and USA and practiced it behind closed doors by powerful secret societies such as the Illuminati, Skull & Bones and the highest-ranking Freemasons. They are sacrificed and dedicated for Purim blood sacrifices to Lucifer (Moloch) on Wars for Business Religion (profit and power). The burial sites for the bones and ashes of sacrificed children have been unearthed. These places were known as Tophet’s.
Now, there are two versions of the story, one stating that Dumez’s anniversary was on December 25th and his spirit would visit the evergreen tree every year on this date to leave gifts upon it. The second version states that the son of Semiramis, Tammuz, by his dead husband, Dumez, was born on December 25th. Whatever version is true, two things are clear: the Zaqqoum “Christmas tree” is in fact “Cursed Nimrod’s Tree” and December 25th is a Satanic celebration! Inanna image was idolized in the statue of Lady Liberty. (See: The Secret Worship of the Illuminati: The Statue of Liberty is Anunnaki Goddess Inanna.)
“Do not kill your children for fear of poverty; it is We Who provide for them as well as for you. Killing them is surely a grave sin.”(the Qur’an 17.31)
The “gods” of antiquity. Though romans quit offering human sacrifice early on, but blood was still spilled for the “gods” of antiquity by the gladiators during the saturnalia celebrations in December and even Africans predominantly worshipped Saturn and were too killing their children to this ruthless fictional representation of false god Saturn (Satan) that he set up to deceive people. A false god Saturn is satanic child killing deity and had attributes most similar to Satan himself. Christmas is his religious festival. Participation in Christmas celebrations gives honor to this evil of false god Saturn.
Other “gods” of antiquity is Che mosh, the horned one (aka Molech, Krampus: the false god of witches, etc.) was represented as a huge cast iron statue in the shape of a horned god with an extended hands as if he is ready to receive something. It was known as the god of prosperity. Also, Krampus is a Christmas devil companion of Santa (i.e. anagram for Satan) who punishes children by beating them with a stick or steals them in his sack. Google images of Nimrud bags/sacks. It is currently Israel Secret Intelligence Service’s (ISIS) sacks filled with human heads. https://www.google.com/search?q=images+of+nimrud+“bags”&safe=strict&client=opera&hs=kd0&sa=X&biw=1326&bih=626&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=9ZuISWvXdU5iSM%253A%252CuemyzHna9GmHlM%252C_&vet=1&usg=AI4_-kQoRVQx82kGwdPRAXmy4-inuKK_qg&ved=2ahUKEwjUzrDIheDmAhWe6nMBHcWcD-UQ9QEwAHoECAoQBg#imgrc=9ZuISWvXdU5iSM:
The figure resembles another horned being, that of Moloch (i.e. Anunnaki “god” Morduch) who was also given children through fire or to a giant throne. But that is another pagan/Anunnaki “Easter. Celebration” that was adopted by modern religions. The “gods” then used to eat the fresh hearts of the sacrificed children and drink their adrenaline-filled blood. Today’s highest ranking prelates still conduct these rituals in secret ceremonies, while the rest of them are required to conduct an open phony version of the same ritual, the liturgy/mass.
The “gods” of antiquity were flesh and bones Anunnaki and the so called “pagan” religions that followed all the grotesque elements of this hideous gods are contained in worshipped them under different names and almost identical cult rituals. This cannibalistic traditions and occult rituals of the Liturgy/Mass is the most prevalent of all today’s the so called “pagan” religions that followed, worshiped them under different names and almost with identical occult rituals of paganism (i.e. the worship of the Anunnaki colonizers “flesh and bones”), and including Christianity, in which all Christians across the planet are required to pretend drinking the blood and eating the flesh of – allegedly – Jesus Christ. The bishop clothes, miter and staff of today’s prelates are identical to those of the Babylonian priests of Dagon, which represented their god-fish Dagon (i.e. Enki wearing his astronaut suit and staff-shaped weapon).
The connection between the Pagan celebrations of Winter solstice, “the sun dying” and the today Pauline god of Jesus Christ.
According to popular tradition, Christmas is celebrated on 25 th December to honor the birth of Jesus. However, no records exist in the Bible or elsewhere to suggest that Jesus was actually born on this date, which raises the important question – why is Christmas celebrated on 25 December? In fact, the selection of this date has its root in both Persian and paganism gods traditions.
The Catholic Encyclopedia admits “there is no month in the year to which respectable authorities have not assigned Christ’s birth.” Since it appears unlikely that Jesus was born on 25th December, it raises the logical question of why Christmas is celebrated on this date. The answer points back to the Romans’ pagan celebrations of the winter solstice. Two celebrations in particular took place around December 25 – the Saturnalia, and the birthday of the Sun god, Mithra (Catholic Encyclopedia). The Saturnalia festival began on 17 th December and later expanded with festivities through to the 25 December. It paid tribute to Saturn, the agricultural god of Sowing and Husbandry, and was associated with the renewal of light and the coming of the new year. The holiday was celebrated with a sacrifice in the Temple of Saturn, a public banquet, followed by private gift-giving, continual partying, and a carnival atmosphere
Followers of the cult of Mithras, which became popular among the military in the Roman Empire from the 1 st to 4 th centuries AD, are believed to have celebrated his birthday on 25th December, which was the most holy day of the year for many Romans. The worship of the Sun god, Mithra (proto-Indo-Iranian ‘Mitra’), has its origin in Persia, from around the 6 th century BC, and was later adapted into Greek as ‘Mithras’. The most popular hypothesis is that Roman soldiers encountered this religion during military excursions to Persia.
While it is widely accepted that the Mithraic New Year and the birthday of Mithras was on 25 December and was celebrated on this day as part of the Roman Natali’s Invictus festival, others have argued that the Natali’s Invictus was a general festival of the sun, and was not specific to the Mysteries of Mithras. Nevertheless, it is clear that 25 December was an important day for the Romans and revolved around a celebration of the sun.
There are, however, a number of reasons to suggest that Jesus was probably not born in December. Firstly, Luke 2:8 states that on the night of Jesus’ birth ” there were also in that same country shepherds living out of doors and keeping watches in the night over their flocks.” Many scholars agree that this would have been unlikely in December, as shepherds would have been keeping their flock under cover during the cold winter months. Some scholars have stated that shepherds would not watch their flock overnight in December but would keep them under cover. ‘The Good Shepherd’ from the early Christian catacomb of Domitila/Donatella (Crypt of Lucina, 200-300 CE). ( Wikimedia Commons ). Secondly, it is written in the Bible that Joseph and Mary travelled to Bethlehem to register in a Roman census (Luke 2:1-4). However, such censuses were not taken in winter, when temperatures often dropped below freezing and roads were in poor condition.
The Pagan solstice dates to celebrate the return of the sun (…son) were absorbed into the Christian calendar so that there would be a link to encourage pagans to give up their beliefs and gods and move to Christianity. Some claim to have found a lot of pangamic parallels and similarities with Christianity, particularly in the cult of the god Attis. Attis was associated with the goddess Cybele. The cult of Attis was a religion which involved orgiastic rites and rituals. The priests of the religion, the Gallai, were eunuchs. This requirement was part of a re-enactment of one of the principle myths regarding Attis and Cybele. It is also claimed that Attis was born on December 25th and that he was born of the virgin, Nana, and that Attis died on a tree and rose from the dead. Or of Isis, the Egyptian goddess who fed the Nile with her tears and, in the past, was responsible for nurturing Pharaoh and giving him his divine power to govern Egypt effectively. Mithra, the sun-god of Mithraism, said to be born on December 25th, but also Osiris, Horus, Hercules, Bacchus, Adonis, Jupiter, [Nimrod]/Tammuz, and other sun-gods were also supposedly born at what is today called the ‘Christmas’ season, the winter solstice!” (“The Two Babylon’s” by Alexander Hislop, p.93)
When King Constantine converted to Christianity in the fourth century, he had quite a challenge ahead of him with regard to converting an empire full of pagans. It was therefore decided to celebrate the birth of Jesus on a date that was already sacred according to pagan traditions. So as a compromise with paganism and in an attempt to give the pagan holidays Christian significance, it was simply decided that the birthday of the Sun God would also be the birthday of the Son of God. The Catholic Encyclopedia quotes an early Christian with saying, “O, how wonderfully acted Providence that on that day on which that Sun was born…. Christ should be born”.
Isa al-Masih (Christ) is stolen from us and renamed because King Constantine felt his god was superior to the Christ and it was done to make it easier for his Pagani Empire to convert..
Bibliography of the late, great aftermath of the 2008 financial Wall Street Crisis
In 2008 a financial crisis enveloped America and spread to the world. We apparently had not learned “our lesson” from previous financial crises. This one involved fancy Wall Street shorts and options and insurance, almost as if “someone” at the “top” – (“someone[s]”) – wanted to play with the markets and make a lot of money – also by controlling – not only the people in America but people all over the world; indeed, like a deadly virus out of a Bruce Willis 1995 Twelve Monkeys movie where James COLE sees 99% of the population whiped out or THE 2011 Rise of thePlanet Of The Apes movie where the 113 serum has a viral effect on humans, whipping out the human race, the 2008 financial crisis also spread around the world.
The following is a cavalcade of events in the news outlining the cause, progression and fruition of that “versus”.
Bradley Keoun and Phil Kuntz – Aug 22, 2011 – 7:19 AM EST
Chief executive officers from eight of the largest U.S. banks receiving government aid testify at a House Financial Services Committee hearing in Washington, D.C on Feb. 11, 2009.
Aug. 22 (Bloomberg) — The Federal Reserve’s unprecedented effort to keep the economy from plunging into depression included lending banks and other companies as much as $1.2 trillion of public money. The largest borrower, Morgan Stanley, got as much as $107.3 billion, while Citigroup Inc. took $99.5 billion and Bank of America Corp. $91.4 billion, according to a Bloomberg News compilation of data obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, months of litigation and an act of Congress. Erik Schatzker and Sara Eisen report on Bloomberg Television’s “Inside Track.” (Source: Bloomberg)
Aug. 22 (Bloomberg) — Robert Eisenbeis, chief monetary economist at Cumberland Advisors Inc., talks about $1.2 trillion of public money the U.S. Federal Reserve secretly loaned to Wall Street banks and other companies. Eisenbeis, speaking with Mark Crumpton on Bloomberg Television’s “Bottom Line,” also discusses the outlook for Fed monetary policy and the U.S. economy. (Source: Bloomberg)
Aug. 21 (Bloomberg) — Robert E. Litan, a former Justice Department official who in the 1990s served on a commission probing the causes of the savings and loan crisis, now vice president at the Kansas City, Missouri-based Kauffman Foundation, Richard Herring, a finance professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Roger Lister, a former Fed economist who’s now head of financial-institutions coverage at credit-rating firm DBRS Inc., and Kenneth Rogoff, a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund and now an economics professor at Harvard University, talk about the U.S. government’s $1.2 trillion bailout of the banking system and the outlook for regulatory overhaul of the industry. (Source: Bloomberg)Play Video
Aug. 22 (Bloomberg) — Neil Barofsky, former special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program and a Bloomberg Television contributing editor, talks about the Federal Reserve’s emergency loans during the financial crisis. Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s effort to keep the economy from plunging into depression included lending banks and other companies as much as $1.2 trillion of public money, according to a Bloomberg News compilation of data obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, months of litigation and an act of Congress. Barofsky speaks with Erik Schatzker on Bloomberg Television’s “Inside Track.” (Source: Bloomberg) Play Video
Aug. 22 (Bloomberg) — Charles Peabody, an analyst at Portales Partners LLC, and Bloomberg reporter Bradley Keoun discuss the Federal Reserve’s emergency lending programs and the capital position of U.S. banks. They speak with Erik Schatzker and Michael McKee on Bloomberg Television’s “Inside Track.” (Source: Bloomberg)
Wall Street Aristocracy Got $1.2 Trillion From Fed
Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp. were the reigning champions of finance in 2006 as home prices peaked, leading the 10 biggest U.S. banks and brokerage firms to their best year ever with $104 billion of profits.
Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp. were the reigning champions of finance in 2006 as home prices peaked, leading the 10 biggest U.S. banks and brokerage firms to their best year ever
Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs; Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase and Co.; Robert P.Kelly, CEO of the Bank of New York; Ken Lewis, CEO of the Bank of America; Ronald E. Logue, CEO of State Street; John Mack, CEO of Morgan Stanley; Vikram Pandit, CEO of Citigroup; and John Stumpf, CEO of Wells Fargo, testify during the House Financial Services oversight hearing of the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP). Two weeks after Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.’s bankruptcy triggered a global credit crisis, Morgan Stanley countered concerns that it might be next to go by announcing it had ‘strong capital and liquidity positions.’
Two weeks after Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.’s bankruptcy triggered a global credit crisis, Morgan Stanley countered concerns that it might be next to go by announcing it had ‘strong capital and liquidity positions.’ A Wall Street sign stands outside the New York Stock Exchange in New York, U.S. The loans dwarfed the $160 billion in public bailouts the top 10 got from the U.S. Treasury, yet until now the full amounts have remained secret.
A Wall Street sign stands outside the New York Stock Exchange in New York, U.S. The loans dwarfed the $160 billion in public bailouts the top 10 got from the U.S. Treasury, yet until now the full amounts have remained secret. Citigroup Inc., along with Morgan Stanley and Citigroup Inc., were the biggest borrowers under seven U.S. Federal Reserve emergency-lending programs.
Citigroup Inc., along with Morgan Stanley and Citigroup Inc., were the biggest borrowers under seven U.S. Federal Reserve emergency-lending programs. The Federal Reserve provided as much as $1.2 trillion in public money to banks and other companies from August 2007 through April 2010 to head off a depression.
The Federal Reserve provided as much as $1.2 trillion in public money to banks and other companies from August 2007 through April 2010 to head off a depression. Source: Bloomberg
Morgan Stanley, along with Citigroup Inc., and Bank of America Corp., were the biggest borrowers under seven Fed emergency-lending programs. The three banks’ combined $298.2 billion in hidden Fed loans was triple what they received in publicly disclosed bailouts from the U.S. Treasury.
Morgan Stanley, along with Citigroup Inc., and Bank of America Corp., were the biggest borrowers under seven Fed emergency-lending programs. The three banks’ combined $298.2 billion in hidden Fed loans was triple what they received in publicly disclosed bailouts from the U.S. Treasury. Bank of America Corp., along with Morgan Stanley and Citigroup Inc. was one of the biggest borrowers under the U.S. Federal Reserve’s emergency-lending programs. The three banks’ combined $298.2 billion in hidden Fed loans was triple what they received in publicly disclosed bailouts from the U.S. Treasury.
Bank of America Corp., along with Morgan Stanley and Citigroup Inc. was one of the biggest borrowers under the U.S. Federal Reserve’s emergency-lending programs. The three banks’ combined $298.2 billion in hidden Fed loans was triple what they received in publicly disclosed bailouts from the U.S. Treasury. The Royal Bank of Scotland took $84.5 billion in loans from the U.S. Federal Reserve’s emergency-lending programs.
The Royal Bank of Scotland took $84.5 billion in loans from the U.S. Federal Reserve’s emergency-lending programs. UBS AG, Switzerland’s biggest bank, got $77.2 billion in loans from the U.S. Federal Reserve’s emergency-lending programs.
UBS AG, Switzerland’s biggest bank, got $77.2 billion in loans from the U.S. Federal Reserve’s emergency-lending programs. Goldman Sachs Group Inc., the fifth-biggest U.S. bank by assets.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc., the fifth-biggest U.S. bank by assets. U.S. Federal Reserve borrowings by Societe Generale SA, France’s second-biggest bank, peaked at $17.4 billion in May 2008, four months after the Paris-based lender announced a record 4.9 billion-euro ($7.2 billion) loss on unauthorized stock-index futures bets by former trader Jerome Kerviel.
months after the Paris-based lender announced a record 4.9 billion-euro ($7.2 billion) loss on unauthorized stock-index futures bets by former U.S. Federal Reserve borrowings by Societe Generale SA, France’s second-biggest bank, peaked at $17.4 billion in May 2008, four trader Jerome Kerviel.
Finance ‘Aristocracy’ Took $1.2 Trillion in Loans
U.S. Federal Reserve borrowings by Societe Generale SA, France’s second-biggest bank, peaked at $17.4 billion in May 2008, four months after the Paris-based lender announced a record 4.9 billion-euro ($7.2 billion) loss on unauthorized stock-index futures bets by former trader Jerome Kerviel.
U.S. Federal Reserve borrowings by Societe Generale SA, France’s second-biggest bank, peaked at $17.4 billion in May 2008, four months after the Paris-based lender announced a record 4.9 billion-euro ($7.2 billion) loss on unauthorized stock-index futures bets by former trader Jerome Kerviel. Citigroup Inc. (C) and Bank of America Corp. (BAC) were the reigning champions of finance in 2006 as home prices peaked, leading the 10 biggest U.S. banks and brokerage firms to their best year ever with $104 billion of profits.
By 2008, the housing market’s collapse forced those companies to take more than six times as much, $669 billion, in emergency loans from the U.S. Federal Reserve. The loans dwarfed the $160 billion in public bailouts the top 10 got from the U.S. Treasury, yet until now the full amounts have remained secret.
Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s unprecedented effort to keep the economy from plunging into depression included lending banks and other companies as much as $1.2 trillion of public money, about the same amount U.S. homeowners currently owe on 6.5 million delinquent and foreclosed mortgages. The largest borrower, Morgan Stanley (MS), got as much as $107.3 billion, while Citigroup took $99.5 billion and Bank of America $91.4 billion, according to a Bloomberg News compilation of data obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, months of litigation and an act of Congress.
“These are all whopping numbers,” said Robert Litan, a former Justice Department official who in the 1990s served on a commission probing the causes of the savings and loan crisis. “You’re talking about the aristocracy of American finance going down the tubes without the federal money down the tubes without the federal money.”
Foreign Borrowers
It wasn’t just American finance.
Almost half of the Fed’s top 30 borrowers, measured by peak balances, were European firms. They included Edinburgh-based Royal Bank of Scotland Plc, which took $84.5 billion, the most of any non-U.S. lender, and Zurich-based UBS AG (UBSN), which got $77.2 billion. Germany’s Hypo Real Estate Holding AG borrowed $28.7 billion, an average of $21 million for each of its 1,366 employees.
The largest borrowers also included Dexia SA (DEXB), Belgium’s biggest bank by assets, and Societe Generale SA, based in Paris, whose bond-insurance prices have surged in the past month as investors speculated that the spreading sovereign debt crisis in Europe might increase their chances of default.
The $1.2 trillion peak on Dec. 5, 2008 — the combined outstanding balance under the seven programs tallied by Bloomberg — was almost three times the size of the U.S. federal budget deficit that year and more than the total earnings of all federally insured banks in the U.S. for the decade through 2010, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Peak Balance
The balance was more than 25 times the Fed’s pre-crisis lending peak of $46 billion on Sept. 12, 2001, the day after terrorists attacked the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon. Denominated in $1 bills, the $1.2 trillion would fill 539 Olympic-size swimming pools.
The Fed has said it had “no credit losses” on any of the emergency programs, and a report by Federal Reserve Bank of New York staffers in February said the central bank netted $13 billion in interest and fee income from the programs from August 2007 through December 2009.
“We designed our broad-based emergency programs to both effectively stem the crisis and minimize the financial risks to the U.S. taxpayer,” said James Clouse, deputy director of the Fed’s division of monetary affairs in Washington. “Nearly all of our emergency-lending programs have been closed. We have incurred no losses and expect no losses.”
While the 18-month U.S. recession that ended in June 2009 after a 5.1 percent contraction in gross domestic product was nowhere near the four-year, 27 percent decline between August 1929 and March 1933, banks and the economy remain stressed.
Odds of Recession
The odds of another recession have climbed during the past six months, according to five of nine economists on the Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research, an academic panel that dates recessions.
Bank of America’s bond-insurance prices last week surged to a rate of $342,040 a year for coverage on $10 million of debt, above where Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. (LEHMQ)’s bond insurance was priced at the start of the week before the firm collapsed. Citigroup’s shares are trading below the split-adjusted price of $28 that they hit on the day the bank’s Fed loans peaked in January 2009.
The U.S. unemployment rate was at 9.1 percent in July, compared with 4.7 percent in November 2007, before the recession began.
Homeowners are more than 30 days past due on their mortgage payments on 4.38 million properties in the U.S., and 2.16 million more properties are in foreclosure, representing a combined $1.27 trillion of unpaid principal, estimates Jacksonville, Florida-based Lender Processing Services Inc.
Liquidity Requirements
“Why in hell does the Federal Reserve seem to be able to find the way to help these entities that are gigantic?” U.S. Representative Walter B. Jones, a Republican from North Carolina, said at a June 1 congressional hearing in Washington on Fed lending disclosure.
“They get help when the average businessperson down in eastern North Carolina, and probably across America, they can’t even go to a bank they’ve been banking with for 15 or 20 years and get a loan.”
The sheer size of the Fed loans bolsters the case for minimum liquidity requirements that global regulators last year agreed to impose on banks for the first time, said Litan, now a vice president at the Kansas City, Missouri-based Kauffman Foundation, which supports entrepreneurship research.
August 24, 2011 – By Keith Fitz-Gerald, Chief Investment Strategist, Money Morning
Lloyd Blankfein, chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS), has hired high-profile criminal defense lawyer Reid Weingarten. This is a game changer even if we don’t yet know where the fire is. Blankfein has led the firm for six years and spent the past two dealing with allegations of conflicts of interest and fraud. A Senate report released in April said Goldman dumped subprime loan exposure onto unsuspecting clients during the mortgage meltdown and then in 2010 gave Congress misleading testimonials about the firm’s actions. So far, Blankfein has not been accused of any crime or crimes. That means, and I cannot stress this strongly enough, that he is innocent in the court of law – even if he is held slightly above pond scum in the court of public opinion for his and Goldman’s role in causing the financial crisis. Under the circumstances, I cannot help but wonder:
Is the U.S. government’s investigation into Goldman Sachs (and other financial houses) gaining momentum and has the government notified Blankfein that he is a person of interest in one or more of those cases?
Is there a whistleblower inside Goldman, or are there key players who have “rolled over” in an attempt to protect themselves?
Is Blankfein retaining Weingarten personally on his nickel? If so, at whose direction? (I also can’t help but wonder if Goldman’s interests and those of its senior executives have separated as a result of the increased legal scrutiny…)
Could Blankfein have some sense of what’s in the wind and simply be making a preemptive grab to obtain the best counsel before others who also will need criminal counsel do the same thing?
Or is there something as simple as a conflict of interest that has yet to emerge publicly?
At this point there are more questions than answers…but I have a feeling this won’t remain the case for long. Allegations against Goldman of trading against its clients and favoring certain clients over others will not fade quietly into the night this time around, with the global financial crisis having wiped a whopping $28 trillion from global markets in 2008. The news of Blankfein’s hire pushed down Goldman shares 4.7% late Monday to close at $106.51.
August 24, 2011 – By Keith Fitz-Gerald, Chief Investment Strategist, Money Morning
I hate to sound alarmist, but it looks as though the European banking system – and consequently the global banking system – is edging its way towards another epic collapse. That means in just a few short months, stocks could be back at their 2009 lows while gold prices travel north of $2,500 an ounce. This is the worst-case scenario that’s been bandied about ever since Europe’s debt problems first came to light. How do we know that this is what’s happening? Because somebody is having trouble obtaining the money they need — and they just borrowed it from the lender of last resort. The European Central Bank (ECB) last week lent $500 million dollars to an undisclosed Eurozone bank through a credit mechanism that had been dormant for the past 12 months, with the exception of one $70 million draw in February. This comes as no surprise – the warning signs have always been there. In fact, I warned Money Morning readers just a few weeks ago that the Eurozone could have its own American International Group Inc. (NYSE: AIG) – or worse, its own Lehman Bros. Holdings Inc. (PINK: LEHMQ) – lurking somewhere in the shadows. Still, while this may not surprise you, it certainly surprised the heck out of the rose-colored glasses crowd that can’t seem to understand the European sovereign debt crisis is finally about to wash up on our shores. That’s why stocks in the United States and around the world have taken such a brutal beating recently. Officially the story is about the renewed worries over Europe’s debt crisis and U.S. data that suggests we’re once again sliding into a recession. But what’s really happening is that global traders are moving quickly to liquidate holdings and raise cash while they can. That’s why so-called risk assets like stocks, corporate bonds, industrial metals, oil and higher-yielding junk instruments are tanking, as gold, the dollar and the yen are bucking up. The U.S. Federal Reserve already is engaging in damage control. President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York William Dudley has said the risks of a double-dip recession are “quite low,” despite anemic growth. And it’s been rumored that U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke will telegraph new monetary stimulus measures Friday during his speech in Jackson Hole, WY. But really, who are they kidding? This crisis has nothing to do with liquidity (which is how the central bankers are trying to fight it) and everything to do with solvency (which is how they should be fighting it). Not only are the risks of a global recession mounting by the minute, but I believe the concentration of risks is approaching critical mass.
A Return to 2008. First take a look at the Euribor-OIS swap (the spread between the Euro Interbank Offered Rate and the Overnight Indexed Swap). This swap, widely regarded as a gauge of fear in the European banking system, is at levels we haven’t seen since April 2009, and is climbing rapidly towards levels we experienced during 2008 at the height of the financial crisis. These rates, along with the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR), represent a sort of feedback mechanism similar to the body’s circulatory system. If the system goes into “shock” there will be a negative, self-sustaining reaction. At the same time, shorter-term euro basis swaps have fallen to the lowest levels we’ve seen since Lehman Bros. blew up. The premium that European banks are paying to borrow in dollars through the swaps market is at its most extreme level since the credit crisis of 2008. The cost of converting euro-based payments into dollars as measured by the three-month cross-currency basis swap fell as much as 93 basis points below the Euro Interbank Offered Rate (Euribor), indicating a higher premium to buy dollars. Historically, anything in the neighborhood of -150 basis points suggests imminent bank failure. Meanwhile, funds parked in the ECB’s “deposit facility” are rising, which means they aren’t being lent to other banks. Funds at the ECB deposit facility hit their highest level – $209.3 billion (145.2 billion euros) – earlier this month. And ECB data shows commercial banks parked $154.4 billion (107.2 billion euros) in the central bank’s deposit facility last Friday, up from $130.5 billion (90.5 billion euros) on Thursday. This suggests banks are more concerned with having liquidity available to them via “official” sources rather than the open markets.
Remember, banks only make 0.75% on their deposits at the ECB, which is a smaller return than what they’d receive by lending to other banks. This suggests banks value the return of their money more than the return on their money. This happened before, most recently in Japan in the 1990s. I remember living in Japan at that time, and things got so bad that the spreads on overnight deposits actually went negative for short periods. That is, Japanese banks actually paid the Bank of Japan (BOJ) to hold their money because they were scared to hold it themselves. Finally, non-U.S. bank reserves on deposit at the Federal Reserve declined from $900 billion on July 13 to $758 billion as of Aug. 3. I’ve done some calling around and heard from two confidential sources that the level may have fallen as low as $500 billion this week, which would be a near-50% drop in only weeks. According to the Fed, foreign banking institutions hold approximately 25% of all commercial banking assets in the United States. That makes me think EU banks are calling money home not because they want to but because they need to.
Shah Gilani, Capital Waves Strategist, Money Morning
Fears of a banking crisis and rolling contagion are making global stock and bond markets extraordinarily volatile – and with good reason. Another financial meltdown, on par with what we saw in 2008, is looming large on the horizon. One of two potential triggers could ignite a new banking crisis, a rapid contagion, and a second financial meltdown:
One or more of the troubled European countries could default outright.
Or a major money center bank could be turned away from the interbank borrowing market by its peers.
The panic resulting from either catalyst could start at any time. And it would spread like wildfire. (August 26, 2011).
(Porter Stansberry. August 19, 2011) When credit is expanded far enough in excess of savings, you get a collapse. It happens every time. It shouldn’t surprise anyone. Sooner or later, creditors look around and begin to ask themselves a critical question: Can these debts really be financed? Will I ever get my savings back? If credit has been expanded radically beyond savings (as it has in the U.S.), the answer is invariably no. That’s what S&P was warning about two weeks ago. And that means credit will be harder and harder to get in the U.S.
Currently, the total-debt-to-GDP ratio in the U.S. is almost 400%. (Total debt is the combined federal, state, municipal, corporate, and individual debt in the U.S.) Crushing debt loads have already destroyed the real estate market and led to an economic decline. For now, the government has stepped up to replace the private borrowing and spending. As a result, we’re now spending close to half our GDP merely on interest and government taxes. This simple fact should give everyone a reason to worry about the future of our country. Spending half your production each year on the government and interest payments doesn’t leave much to live on or invest for the future.
In Europe, the problem is a bit different… and slightly more technical. Most of the debt in Europe is held by the big banks, not the sovereigns. Look at just two French banks, for example. Credit Agricole and BNP Paribas have combined deposits of a little more than 1 trillion euro. But they hold assets of 2.5 trillion euro. Those assets equal France’s entire GDP. And those are only two of France’s banks. Right now, the tangible capital ratios of these banks have fallen to levels that suggest they are probably bankrupt – like UniCredit in Italy and Deutsche Bank in Germany. BNP’s tangible equity ratio is 2.85%. Credit Agricole’s tangible equity ratio is 1.41%. (UniCredit’s is 4.42%, and Deutchse Bank’s is 1.92%). These banks have long been instruments of state policy in Europe. They’ve funded all kinds of government projects and favored industries. Making loans is far more popular with politicians than demanding repayment for loans. As a result, these banks are left with nothing in the kitty to repay their depositors. If there’s a run on these banks (and there will be), how will they come up with money that’s owed? No one’s saying. (But I’ll tell you in a moment…)
The numbers are similar across most of Europe’s biggest banks. And the money that’s owed is staggering. The reason the market fears these debts so much is that there’s no clear mechanism to increasing the money supply enough to paper them over, as there is in the U.S. As strange as it may seem, investors prefer the U.S. Treasury market precisely because they know there’s nothing to stop the Fed from buying as many Treasury bonds as the market wants to sell. On the other hand, in Europe, there’s no guarantee whatsoever that the ECB will continue to buy the sovereign bonds – and there are even rules that explicitly forbid the ECB from financing bank bailouts.
What’s the end game? How will this huge mess be sorted out? The essential problem is there’s too much credit and too little money. So a lot more money is going to be created. Two great depositories of the world’s bad debt are Europe’s banks and the U.S. Treasury. Europe’s banks will need trillions of euro (yes, trillions) to regain safe capital ratios. And the U.S. Treasury will need trillions of dollars to refinance its upcoming repayment schedule. Both will be accomplished by the actions of the U.S. Federal Reserve. Step one will be the extension of swap lines to the European Central Bank (ECB) by the Federal Reserve, which will allow the Fed to buy between $2.5 trillion-$5 trillion worth of “riskless” ECB notes. These notes will allow the ECB to bail out Europe’s banks, which will in turn begin to buy U.S. Treasuries to repair their capital ratios.
The big unknown in this scenario is whether or not the Germans will approve this massive inflation. I can’t know whether they will go along or not. But several of their biggest banks need a bailout, which leads me to believe they will eventually get on board. Whatever the final details, the goal is clear – a massive increase in the size of the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet and a correspondingly huge increase in the world’s money supply. And that’s what you’re seeing when you look at the prices of gold and silver. How will we get from here to there exactly? I can’t know. It may be done piecemeal, one quantitative-easing program and bank bailout at a time. Or it might happen with some kind of grand new compromise – a kind of Bretton Woods II solution. But just remember where we must end up… Europe’s banks have to be recapitalized. And the U.S. Treasury has to be refinanced. The only way to accomplish this that has any chance of being approved by the democracies in question is via the printing press. That’s why I continue to warn about inflation. That’s why I continue to advocate buying gold and silver. That’s why I’m bearish on stocks (especially bank stocks). And that’s why I think it’s prudent for you to take steps to safeguard your property and your family – especially if you live in a big city. The population won’t be ignorant of what’s happening. The message will be clear: Governments and bankers have the right to steal from the whole world via inflation. That will probably inspire the crowds to do the same.
Martin Hutchinson, Global Investing Strategist, Money Morning : By now, you’ve probably taken note of the growing bubble in Treasury bonds. The yield on the 10-year Treasury bond fell below 2% for the first time in 50 years in the wake of the U.S. credit rating downgrade. That’s irrational, and more importantly, dangerous. A Treasury bond bubble is a unique creature. In fact, it’s never been seen before, so determining its fate requires some careful thought. But what’s absolutely certain is that U.S. Treasuries are not a safe haven investment – far from it. Treasury bonds carry five very dangerous risks – including negative yields, higher inflation, panic selling, an outright collapse, and default. So let’s take a closer look at those risks before determining the best way to profit. First, real yields on Treasuries, after accounting for inflation, are now negative. Not only are nominal Treasury yields below the current inflation rate, but 10-year Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS) have traded on a yield of less than zero. That is very unusual and economically distorting. Long-term bond yields in the zero-inflation 19th century never fell below 2.2%, which is to be expected. The guy who provides the money should get paid for doing so. However, any reversion to historical patterns would cause a major bond bear market. Ten-year Treasury yields would rise to the 5% to 6% range – even if inflation gets no faster – giving investors a 27% mark-to-market loss. Of course, inflation will accelerate. The consumer price index (CPI) inflation is up 3.6% from last year. And it’s likely to rise much further as a result of the Federal Reserve’s loose monetary policies. If inflation were to rise to 10%, which is perfectly plausible, bond yields would have to rise to 12% to 13%, giving investors a 59% mark-to-market loss as well as eroding the value of their principal. Yet there’s an even greater threat than inflation, and that’s the U.S. budget deficit. The United States is currently running an annual $600 billion balance of payments deficit. That deficit is being financed through the sale of Treasuries to foreign buyers. Should foreign buyers cease buying, the dollar would have to fall to equalize the payments balance, perhaps by 20%. As a dollar investor, you might not mind this (though it would increase inflation). But foreign investors will hate it. The likely result would be the panicked selling of Treasuries, which would cause yields to rise sharply and prices to fall. Finally, there’s the risk of an outright default. Short-term, that’s an infinitesimal risk – but a risk nonetheless.After all, Treasuries used to be thought of as “risk free.” Now, following the S&P downgrade, they are considered “low risk.” If the public repeatedly elects politicians who can’t or won’t take effective action to cut spending, particularly in the entitlements area, then debt eventually will spiral out of control and become impossible to repay. You’re probably free from this risk in five-year Treasuries, but not in 30-year Treasuries. Theoretically, governments can’t go bust in their own currency, since they can always print money. But that’s nonsense. There comes a point at which you have to wheel the stuff around in barrows to buy groceries – as was the case in Germany in 1923. At that point, governments have to default – there’s no alternative. With such a broad collection of risks, Treasuries should be avoided like the plague. One or more of these five wealth-destroying events will almost certainly come to pass. (August 29, 2011)
Welcome to the fine-tuned machine that is Deception, INC. Hello. My name is Robert Williams. (1 877.242.1730. 1 410.223.2650. +1 410.230.1266.; +1 410.223.2650. WallStreetDaily.com – CustomerService@WallStreetDailyInfo.com. I’m the Publisher of a progressive Investment Research Group whose mandate it is to gather intelligence and conduct thorough and unbiased investigations.) With that in mind, I’d like to show you how the G-20 Pittsburgh Summit just pushed an extraordinary event into motion.
Although the event will prove highly lucrative for some investors, before I go any further, I must warn you…This particular event exposes the truth behind a 7,500-person, ultra-discreet enterprise that I call Deception, INC. and how it controls the affairs of virtually the entire human race. It exposes how world governments and banks are now intimate business partners .It reveals how trillions of dollars of our money – as well as the money of future generations – is being funneled into the accounts of global banking titans .And, may I dare say, Deception, INC.’s actions even reveal a crack in our proudest institution of all – capitalism. When you hear what’s happening, you’re likely to feel as outraged as me. (Losers of a rigged game often become very angry.)Worse yet, it’s all happening at a time when trillions in debt threatens the health of the world economy and our personal wellbeing. In a moment, I’m going tell you about the chokepoint in this incredible story – the $615 trillion spinning around Deception, INC.’s new private wealth exchange. And how the recent G-20 Pittsburgh resolution……and Congress’ subsequent legislation – Public Law 111-203 – gives us an irresistible opportunity to ‘skim’ that market for potentially life-changing gains .In its very first week of trading, $12.8 billion in transactions passed through Deception, INC.’s private exchange. Over the next few minutes, I’ll show you how to profitably position yourself alongside this historic event .I’ll even show you how to protect yourself from the six ingenious ways Deception, INC. cons us out of trillions of dollars. But first, here’s an unprecedented look behind Deception, INC.’s shadowy curtain…
Deception, INC. – Founded in C. 1979 As Americans, we have a pretty tough mindset. As long as we feel like policymakers have our best interests in mind, we’ll accept a finicky economy with high unemployment and low wages. We’ll even accept losses to our standard of living for long stretches of time. Such has been the case for years. And, to date, there hasn’t been any significant social upheaval. Heck, we can even accept that income inequality exists, as long as we feel like we’re still getting a fair share of the pie. BUT… When you add a perception that the economic game is rigged… That those with great wealth and power will always block our way, no matter how hard we try to get ahead… THEN we get angry. Very angry. Today, one in every eight Americans is enrolled in the food stamps program. Yet, a year after the financial crisis, one subsidiary of Deception, INC. paid its employees an average of nearly $600,000 per person, capping off its best year ever. Starting salaries for Deception, INC.’s big-time congressional or White House contacts has ballooned to about $500,000. In 2006, Deception, INC.’s top 25 trading managers earned nearly $600 million, on average, with the richest raking in $1.7 billion. Since Deception, INC.’s founding, of all the new financial wealth created by the American economy in the ’80s, ’90s and early 2000s…
42% of it has gone to the top 1% of the population…
94% has gone to the top 20%…
And the bottom 80% has to split the rest – a measly 6% of our nation’s income.
Now, to be fair, I don’t begrudge anyone from earning a good living. Well-founded ambition is what helped build this country. But after you see the facts, I think you’ll agree with me that Deception, INC.’s influence on the system has totally rigged it in favor of a precious few… And that those few enjoy too much power and influence over the size of our wallets. In the weeks ahead, I plan to leverage my position as a Publisher to get word to policymakers that we’re fed up. But for now, this grassroots effort begins here, with you. As I mentioned earlier, there are a few profitable countermeasures that every American should be taking, which I’ll cover in detail. Of those countermeasures, one is the extraordinary result of the Pittsburgh G-20 Summit… …where world leaders paved the way for Deception, INC. to launch a massive $615 trillion wealth exchange. The formal legislation took effect in July 2011. Understand, though, our extraordinary opportunity here wouldn’t be possible without the cozy relationship that banks and government are currently enjoying. Indeed, banks and government are dancing a very close waltz. Sure, if you look at economic history, governments and banks have always had to co-exist. Their actions have always directly influenced the financial wellbeing of the people. And the power between the two has always teetered back and forth, with each enjoying the upper hand for periods of time. However, today these kindred souls – banks and government – seem more unified than ever. The tug-and-pull relationship of years past seems replaced by an outright moneymaking enterprise – one that’s wreaking havoc with our nation’s precious wealth ladder. Now, many people – even the ones closest to me – think I ought to keep my mouth shut on this. They’re advising me to bury this research and get on with the business of publishing innovative investment ideas. I’ll concede that Deception, INC. is powerful. But, with all due respect to my inner circle, I’m staying the course and taking this information public. Knowing what I now know……I can’t sit idly by and watch the biggest con game in human history……one that’s taking money from my pocket… my family’s pocket… my friends’ pockets… and my friend’s friends’ pockets……and funneling it into Deception, INC.’s cash-filled coffers. Besides, an incredible investment opportunity is parked before us right now, directly as a result of the situation, which means my research firm is satisfying its mission. Sure, it may mean giving up a bit of my privacy. But Deception, INC.’s actions over the last 30 years – especially the last 10 – have sent income inequality spinning out of control in the United States… It’s presently at an all-time high… It’s getting worse at an alarmingly hurried pace… And quietly becoming an embarrassing national plague. The top 0.01% – that’s one-hundredth of 1% – now earn 6% of all U.S. wages. These folks are Deception, INC.’s biggest ‘Benefactors.’ And this is increasingly their world. Your Money Gets its ‘Last Rites’ So what exactly is Deception? And who are these Benefactors I just alluded to? According to Thomas Dye’s, Who’s Running America?, in the United States… …less than 7,500 individuals control “almost three-quarters of the nation’s industrial assets, almost two-thirds of all banking assets and more than three-quarters of all insurance assets.” Working together under one banner, these 7,500 individuals – the Benefactors – along with the publicly elected (or appointed) lawmakers who enable their actions, form what I call ‘Deception, INC.’ The end product is the most dominant ‘for profit’ enterprise the world has ever known. By virtue of owning a monopoly on money, which I’ll detail in a moment, Deception, INC. has silently turned us into pigeons. Its invisible hand influences everything… …the stock market… …bond market… …real estate market… …commodities market… …emerging markets… …venture capital money… …IPOs… …politics… …lending practices… I assure you, it’s endless. While the rest of us battle being marginalized – competing against cheaper labor in other parts of the world… …Deception, INC.’s Benefactors live in 40,000 square-foot mansions, throw million-dollar birthday parties and enjoy every conceivable sociological advantage……like having access to the very best moneymaking information. According to Forbes magazine, in the days following Wall Street’s cataclysmic meltdown……Deception, INC.’s 400 richest Benefactors still enjoyed a cumulative wealth of $1.27 trillion – more than the estimated cost of achieving universal healthcare for the entire country for the next decade. By contrast, middle-class America is greatly suffering. You see, for most of us, our homes represent our ONE truly major investment. So while Deception, INC.’s top brass build opulent mansions and fly private jets, the most recent data on home prices (June 2011) was a nightmare for the rest of us. The data showed yet another big month-over-month decline in the value of homes across the United States. Home prices have lost about a third of their value since the 2006 peak, with Las Vegas being the hardest hit. Prices there are down 57% from the peak. Worse yet, with three years of inventory still sitting on the market, there’s no relief in sight.
As I write this, about five million borrowers are at least two months behind on their mortgages. And more will miss payments as Americans struggle with job losses and loans worth more than their home’s value. Many Americans don’t know this, but… After Wall Street politely accepted the taxpayers’ gift of life – the $700 billion bailout… …Deception, INC. lobbied against a proposal to allow those very same taxpayers the option of declaring bankruptcy rather than losing their homes to foreclosure. To date, Congress has NOT extended a rope for American homeowners to hang onto. Worse still, Wall Street took the 0% emergency loan – extended to it by the Federal Reserve and reinvested it in Treasury bills and other government securities to earn another quick fortune. So, in effect, Wall Street borrowed from the government, lent those funds back to the government, and earned the spread. Deception, INC. gets a healthy cut of the proceeds, of course. In an interview with “60 Minutes,” famed author, Michael Lewis, called this practice – one still happening today – an “elegant form of theft.” He’s right. But the mutual cooperation – dare I say complicity – between government and banking is what’s intriguing here. As I’ll show you, I’m only scratching the surface of a system rigged to favor the superrich. The hyper concentration of wealth at the top has been 30 years in the making. But since the year 2000, cash is flying out of our pockets even faster. If you go back through our nation’s history, the current situation has no precedent prior to the late 1970s – when Deception, INC. began growing its roots. And that’s why I’m rushing you this message. How, in a representative democracy, can public officials favor such a small slice of Americans for so long? And how can we get in on their gravy train? The truth, when you hear it, may shock you.
Robin Hood in Reverse? For the record, the financial crisis is only the latest example of a system rigged to favor the superrich. The Katrina hurricane disaster, and the subsequent travesties regarding government aid and insurance payouts, predates the financial crisis by a full three years. What’s particularly noteworthy, however, is that the middle class – even the upper middle class and ‘well off’ – are feeling the pinch these days, just as much as the poor. Regrettably, it’s like Robin Hood in reverse… he U.S. Department of Agriculture is forecasting that enrollment in the food stamp program will exceed 43 million Americans in 2011 – smashing the all-time record. Over one recent three-day period, approximately 10,000 people showed up to apply for just 90 jobs making washing machines in Kentucky for $27,000 a year. In 1950, the ratio of the average executive’s paycheck to the average worker’s paycheck was about 30-to-1.Since the year 2000, that ratio has exploded to between 300- to 500-to-1. Once great blue-collar manufacturing cities, like Detroit, have turned into rusted-out poverty zones. Meanwhile, Deception, INC. Benefactors earn millions off of the cheap labor in third-world nations. As I already said, the rate at which income is leaving our pockets and speeding into the pockets of the Benefactors is greatly intensifying. This past decade was absolutely unique because it represented the very first time in history that the economy expanded for six consecutive years (2001-2007), YET… During that very same period, household incomes declined and poverty levels rose! Such behavior in wages is completely unnatural. However, when you tighten the lens, things make a lot more sense… …between 2002 and 2007, the top 1% of American earners – Deception, INC.’s top brass – saw their incomes RISE by 10%. Yet policymakers are doing nothing to stem the tide. In fact, if anything, they’re the enablers of this dark enterprise. In the days ahead, my research firm will do its part to raise public awareness regarding this massive redistribution of wealth, including broadcasting an open letter to Congress. I’ll show you how you could take your own action, as well – should you choose to – in a moment. But, for now, you simply need to ask yourself the following question… “How much more am I willing to take?” Because knowing where Deception, INC.’s dollars are flowing means having opportunities. And my team’s research just yielded your first one. I’ll explain exactly what this investment is so you can decide if it’s suitable for you. I’ll even show you how you could begin taking advantage of it, starting immediately… For the record, Deception, INC. has already virtually rigged it for massive profits… so this is something you’ll likely want to learn more about right now.
How to Spot a Benefactor in Less Than 60 Seconds The top 0.01% of Americans, who I bluntly call the Benefactors, now individually earns more than $35 million a year. They earn $1 out of every $17 – the group’s highest amount since data collection began in 1913. They’re NOT celebrities, athletes, entertainers, or artists. Rather, the vast majority are CEOs or other high-level executives, with a growing number of them coming from finance and banking. (Surprised?) They’re getting fabulously richer while the rest of us hold steady or get worse. They increase their wealth in good times and in bad times. When the market tanked two years ago, Wal-Mart workers lost about 18% of their 401(k)s’ value. Yet Wal-Mart’s CEO saw gains of $2.3 million in his $47 million retirement plan. Such compensation inequality is the ‘new normal.’ In the last 30 years – during an era of unprecedented economic expansion – the Benefactors reaped massive gains. Yet the economy virtually stopped working for middle- and working-class Americans, as their wealth compounded at a rate of only 1.5%, annually. Get this… From 1979 to 2006, the average American household income increased from $47,900 to $71,900 – a modest 50% increase in 30 years. Over the same period, the Benefactor’s income increased from just over $4 million per year to nearly $24.3 million – a 507% increase! As one former Benefactor said in his book, The Other Side of Wall Street… “It was as if a magical money tree blossomed overhead and all I had to do was reach higher if I wanted – or needed – more.” Before I get to the solutions, including how to start reaping the fruits of THEIR proverbial money tree, let me back up a bit… …and show you in the simplest terms possible what’s going on, why I’m so concerned and what I believe will happen in the next six months… Battling the Ever Present ‘Money Monopoly’
The income gap between the Benefactors and the rest of country hasn’t been this big since the 1920s. Their power resides in the ability to control money. Besides controlling the actual creation of money, policymakers along with the Benefactors – Deception, INC. – have firm control over where the money flows, as well. It’s a virtual ‘money monopoly,’ as nearly every conceivable financial channel is under Deception, INC.’s influence. And we’re all paying the price. The Benefactors’ actions sparked the collapse of the housing market, which caused the recession. And now 14.1 million Americans are out of work. Then, by influencing policy, the Benefactors persuaded the Federal Reserve to crank up the printing presses to pay for the bailout, which led to food-price inflation. And now nearly 44 million Americans – a record – rely on food stamps. In the name of ‘The War on Terror,’ ‘The War on Drugs,’ ‘Homeland Security’… or whatever else… …the government has appropriated itself virtually unlimited spending power, which allows it to funnel wealth wherever it sees fit. All the while, the banking establishment has commandeered everyone’s credit. With YOUR finances under their control, the banks can earn tons of new money by simply allocating more credit… charging higher fees… …even rewarding former politicians for their service in promoting the banks’ interests (more on that in a moment). If economic history has taught us anything, going all the way back to the first banknote issued in Europe in 1661, it’s this… When the easy money of a deep-pocketed government comes into contact with the moneymaking ambitions of a cash-thirsty banking sector, a deep fault line develops. In our present case, the fault line formed as an unintended, dark enterprise that I call Deception, INC. It’s One Colossal Ponzi Scheme. The hidden cost to you and me is that the Benefactors don’t spend their money at a rate fast enough to keep the economy humming along. For example, in 2007, Kenneth Lewis earned around $100 million as the CEO of Bank of America. To spend it all, he’d have to buy $273,972.60 worth of goods and services every day, including weekends. If you dedicated 12 hours of every day to spending money, you’d still have to spend $22,831 every hour… or $380.52 every minute. Don’t expect it to ever happen. Consequently, every penny the Benefactors don’t spend simply turns into greater wealth for them. And we’re boxed out. According to Forbes, the wealthiest 400 Americans’ average net worth was $3.9 billion in 2008 – more than six times larger than it was in 1985. The bottom 80% of American earners have a net worth of around only $82,000, with many folks stuck with a negative net worth. As you may have figured out by now, CREDIT is the central tool of Deception, INC Cynical as it may seem, Deception, INC.’s response to rising income inequality – whether carefully planned or not – is to loan you tons of money. So while the Benefactors increase their net worth in real dollars terms – day in and day out… The rest of us enjoy only the mirage of having more. Interest rates are held artificially low so the banks can extend us easy credit. Then, on the banks’ dime, we buy homes, cars, boats, swimming pools – anything we want. And we feel content, like we’re genuinely sharing in this country’s wealth pie. Only we’re not. Deception, INC. didn’t invent this ploy… Extending easy credit has been used throughout history to address the deeper anxieties of the middle class. With that in mind, the current chapter on aggressive lending began writing itself in 1980 – around the very same time that the Benefactors net worth started ballooning. By 2001, Americans owed as much as their entire after-tax income. But the situation was getting far worse, far quicker… Over the next six years, by 2007, the typical American household owed 138% of its after-tax income. In other words, we were collectively underwater as a nation. The debt came racing in from everywhere – credit cards, auto loans, student loans… most of us used our homes as virtual ATM machines. Between 2002 and 2007, American households extracted $2.3 trillion from their homes – just as the Benefactors hoped we would. Our personal debts – roughly $16 trillion – now account for 29% of total U.S. debt, which is around $55 trillion… and counting. You can see how effective this debt strategy is. And the Benefactors don’t just use it on individuals… not a chance! The power of debt is intoxicating enough to use at the country level, too. I’m sure you think that sounds crazy, but as I’ll show you, it’s already happening. You’re Not Supposed to Know This, BUT… Here’s a dirty little secret – one which public policy is now tailored around. Capitalism is not self-sufficient. To sustain itself, capitalism requires constant expansion and exploitation of new markets. Yet, at the same time, there are hard limits on regional (even planetary) resources. Knowing this, it’s easy to appreciate why the Benefactors created ‘emerging markets.’ Emerging markets have become one of the most coveted strategies the Benefactors use to expand their ever-increasing net worth. Such virgin resource-rich markets, like say, Malaysia, represent perfect venues for spawning more wealth. The Benefactors employ the very same debt strategy to emerging nations as they do with consumers. That means encumbering them with debt in return for funding development projects. When these emerging nations are unable to repay, a Deception, INC.-friendly agency – like the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank – imposes ‘structural readjustment’ programs. As any economist can tell you, these programs typically favor western banks… take away control of natural resources… and depress incomes of the local population…In some emerging economies, the progress made in health and education over the past 50 years is actually being reversed in order to pay back debts. Inside the World’s Greatest Con Game The most pressing concern for us is knowing where Deception, INC.’s money is heading next, so we can align ourselves alongside the historic launch of their wealth exchange. But I also promised to get you up to speed on the six ingenious tactics Deception, INC. uses to fleece America. As I’ve already said, the speed at which our money is being redistributed to the Benefactors – especially since the year 2000 – has never been witnessed before. In fact, between 2001 and 2006, over 53% of national income was going to the top 1%, meaning more than 50 cents of every dollar pocketed by Americans during that timeframe accrued to the richest 1 in 100 households. Even their neighborhoods are more resilient. U.S. home prices have fallen 33% since the housing bubble burst in 2006 – more than they did during the Great Depression. Yet prices in Washington, D.C. – Deception, INC.’s headquarters, of course – are up 4% over the last year, representing the only major metropolitan area to enjoy an uptick in prices. For the record, according to data from the Census Bureau, suburban Washington touts seven of the top 20 highest-earning counties in the country. New York and New Jersey – the Benefactors’ headquarters – have five counties in the top 20. Prior to 2008, most of us had faith in the system – a system “too big to fail.” However, as the illusion of financial stability started to fade – so, too, did our confidence. How could we have been so blind? Well, without further ado, here are the six ways the most powerful moneymaking enterprise on Earth is able to LEGALLY con us out of our money. Con Game #1: Easy Credit Piling you up with debt is unequivocally the sun in which the Benefactors’ world rotates around. I’ve already given you all the facts. But here’s a tip for lawmakers… Until the middle class is expanding its wealth, too – in real dollars – the economy has absolutely no chance of ever regaining its past glory. Enough said. Con Game #2: Pro Big-Bank Legislation The subject matter here could fill an entire book. But 1999’s repeal of the Glass Steagall Act, which was passed in 1933 to control a banks’ ability to speculate, looms incredibly large. Likewise, policymakers’ 2004 decision to relax the 1975 Net Capital Rule was also instrumental in amassing great wealth at the top. The rule acted as a wonderful safeguard for all of us by limiting the amount of debt Wall Street firms were allowed to carry – with the upper limit being about 12 times their total assets. However, when Capitol Hill gave the ‘okay’ to relax the rule, the Benefactors embarked on an unprecedented period of profiteering. When Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns collapsed, they were leveraged by over 30-to-1! The biggest beneficiary of the watered-down standards was Goldman Sachs. In 2006, its profits jumped by 70% over the prior year, to $9.5 billion – the biggest ever for a Wall Street firm. It doled out an extraordinary $16.5 billion in compensation that year, which works out to an average of nearly $622,000 for each employee. Con Game #3: Favorable Tax Treatment President George W. Bush rigged the estate tax by substantially increasing the amount of tax-free money someone can pass on to his heirs – from $1 million in 2001 to $3.5 million in 2009. The Obama administration has not restored the exemption, choosing instead to keep it at $3.5 million. Such policy only benefits the richest 2% of Americans. Even more suspicious, some of the country’s wealthiest hedge fund managers and private-equity fund managers are taxed at a rate of only 15% – LESS than what most of the middle class pays. They’re able to do it by exploiting a little-known tax loophole. After repeated attempts by Congress to close the loophole, both Democrats and Republicans have always chosen to preserve it. I believe the loophole has been preserved to ensure that the Benefactors’ generous campaign donations keep pouring in. My point here is that the Benefactors aren’t richer ONLY because their paychecks are growing… They’re also richer because the government taxes them much less heavily than it once did. Con Game #4: The Stock Market Most of the assets held by the Benefactors are in stocks, bonds and other financial instruments. As such, in 2009, when the market bounced back after the Great Recession, these ‘elite’ enjoyed staggering increases to their net worth. By contrast, the cornerstone asset of middle-class America is its homes, the value of which is still plummeting four years after the economy’s peak. In 2007, the average CEO of the 350 largest publicly traded companies earned more than $12 million a year. A sizeable chunk of that income came via stock options, whose details are usually kept hidden from shareholders. Sometimes a CEO can create MASSIVE stock market gains simply by cutting jobs or announcing plans to slash wages. They even ‘backdate’ their stock options, which means getting compensated retroactively – when the options were worth the most. In the early 1990s, when the Financial Standards Accounting Board, which oversees accounting practices, tried to rein in ‘backdating,’ it was thwarted by a bipartisan coalition in the Senate. Con Game #5: Buying Political Influence Why didn’t politicians do more in the face of the financial crisis, hiding behind rhetoric like, “Too big to fail?” It may have to do with Deception, INC.’s ability to buy political influence. In 2009, the financial industry spent more than $300 million in its efforts to lobby Congress. Lobbying may be the ultimate proof of a rigged game because it’s here where we’re able to trace a direct connection between the Benefactors and lawmakers. Lobbyists are paid to persuade legislators to vote for legislation in favor of big corporations and banks. In the 1970s, only a small percentage – about 3% – of retiring members of Congress went on to become lobbyists. But by 2009, more than 30% did, as the profession grew incredibly lucrative. The Benefactors are very generous when it comes to buying influence – former chairs of congressional committees and subcommittees are paid upwards of $2 million a year to influence legislation in their former committees. Between 1998 and 2004 – when the Benefactors’ power was greatly intensifying – more than 2,200 former federal officials registered as lobbyists, according to the Center for Public Integrity. And according to the Center for Responsive Politics, spending on lobbyists escalated from $1.44 billion in 1998 to $3.47 billion in 2009. Still don’t believe Deception, INC. exists yet? Then try and explain why banks, realtors and insurers have 940 former federal employees – 70 of which are former members of Congress – on their payrolls as lobbyists. Now can you appreciate just how much the deck is stacked against you? Con Game #6: Proprietary Technology Without question, technological shifts have played a MAJOR role in this relentless redistribution of wealth. For starters, the internet serves as the perfect venue for Deception, INC.-sponsored firms to reach greater audiences, and, in turn, earn a larger economic return. But for actual proof of a rigged game, look no further than the arrival of supercomputers, which have shockingly increased capital flows on Wall Street. And rewritten the rules of trading in the process. Prior to 1998, million-share trading days were the norm on Wall Street. But today, Wall Street trades a few BILLION shares every day – magnifying the possibilities for gains. These supercomputers run fantastically sophisticated algorithms, too. And they work! For example, during the first quarter of 2010, four of the biggest banks in the United States – Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup – had a ‘perfect quarter,’ with zero days of trading losses. Wouldn’t it be nice to share such an advantage? Now, here’s where we zero in on our opportunity… You see, technological advantages have also led to the development of innovative new financial products – ones that usually have no appeal to everyday investors, like us. But for Deception, INC., these exotic creations are godsends – capable of spawning mind-boggling profits. I’m talking about derivatives. For the next seven to 10 years, the derivatives market represents absolution for the Benefactors – a way to exponentially expand their profit base without ever manufacturing, drilling, refining, exporting, importing, developing, building, or engineering a thing. And regulators have already paved the way for this to happen… You see, in September 2009, the leaders of the world’s largest economies met in Pittsburgh in what turned out to be perhaps the most significant G-20 Summit in history. In response to the financial crisis, the new, larger group – which proclaimed itself the guardian of the world economy – resolved to… “Work together to ensure that our fiscal, monetary, trade and structural policies are collectively consistent with more sustainable and balanced trajectories of growth.” One of the G-20’s highest priorities was to rein in the massive $615 trillion derivatives market. Prior to the financial crisis, the Big Banks traded derivatives between themselves, with absolutely no oversight. Regulators were virtually blind to the TRILLIONS upon TRILLIONS of dollars running through the financial system. Meanwhile, the Benefactors made a fortune in this cryptic market. Deception, INC.’s richest fiefdom, for sure – the size of the derivatives market is equivalent to 41 times the United States’ GDP. Recall, mortgage-backed securities – a tiny sliver of the larger derivatives market – are what precipitated the financial crisis. And the public outcry against these newfangled securities has been intense. For a while there, it even looked like regulators might pull the plug on the derivatives market altogether. But after some passionate lobbying, the Benefactors ultimately won out. (Was there ever any doubt?) In Pittsburgh, G-20 leaders agreed that… All standardized derivatives contracts should be traded on exchanges or electronic trading platforms by the end of 2012, at the latest.” And when the Dodd-Frank Act – Public Law 111-203 – was signed into law by President Obama on July 21, 2010, the financial system was, in effect, rigged for Deception, INC. to control another decade of profits. Nearly the exact same legislation was passed in Europe, as well. The gears toward achieving this mandate are already in motion, handing us a monumental opportunity. SEC Chairman Mary L. Schapiro recently said… “The derivatives marketplace has grown dramatically over the past three decades to become enormous and truly international. Since the early 1980s, when the first swap agreements were negotiated, the global notional value of this marketplace has grown to just over $600 trillion. However, [until now] derivatives were largely excluded from the financial regulatory framework by the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000.”
Again, understanding that capitalism must constantly be fed new markets to devour… the G-20 resolution put yet another market on a silver platter for the Benefactors. This market all but guarantees Deception, INC. of its next decade of profits. Although passed a year ago, The Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act just took effect – in July 2011. In layman’s terms, under the legislation, by 2012 derivatives contracts will be forced to pass through an official exchange. In doing so, a third party – an official clearinghouse – will assume the risk should one party default. In other words, Dodd-Frank makes certain that the irresponsible actions of AIG, which ignited the financial crisis, can never happen again. Recall, AIG underwrote the trillions of dollars in mortgage-backed securities during the housing boom. Yet when their value crashed, the venerable insurance giant was unable to pay up. Under Dodd Frank, such an outcome becomes virtually impossible. As you’d expect, the banking industry’s biggest names dominate derivatives activity. JP Morgan, Bank of America, Citibank, Goldman Sachs and HSBC Bank USA account for 96% of the total industry. And they’re eyeing the derivatives market as a salvation of sorts in these lean times, as it generates some of the easiest profits in finance. For now, I’ve recommended that my readers face the sobering reality that policymakers, for whatever reason, took measures to preserve the Benefactors’ foremost cash cow. Until you do the same, your anger is likely to cloud the opportunity now sitting before you. Also, every solution I mention from this point forward is perfectly legal and safe to implement, too. Course of Action #1: Follow Deception, INC.’s Money My analysts have identified an ingenious way to profit from Deception, INC.’s massive derivatives market without ever going within earshot of an actual derivative. So please take careful notice that within the past year, a milestone event occurred… A brand-new exchange was launched, exclusively trading the largest segment of the derivatives market. Only months old, early estimates put the potential value of the exchange in the neighborhood of $10 trillion. But why haven’t you heard about it? Why were there no cameras? No press? And no celebrities ringing the opening bell? Because the Benefactors don’t want you to know it exists. As I’ve been telling you, this market is the biggest moneymaking cog in Deception, INC.’s wheel. It’s how the Benefactors plan to expand their profit base over the next seven years, at least. And the less you know about it, the less likely you are to influence public opinion against it. For now, forget about the fact that $12.8 billion in transactions passed through the exchange in its first week of trading and, instead, concentrate on the number ONE… As in, ONE tiny company runs the entire exchange, handling every single order over its brand-new electronic trading platform. Forty-one banks are presently live on the platform, with heavyweights like Barclays Capital, Deutsche Bank and JP Morgan providing streaming prices. The amount of capital firing across this cryptic market is staggering. And among the Goliaths there sits ONE small, virtually unheard of company facilitating Deception, INC.’s next decade of profits. Imagine earning a cut on every trade. It’s hard to draw a historic comparison for such a unique event… But the Chicago Mercantile Exchange – facilitators of the largest futures and options exchange in the world – went public in 2002. And the stock went from $39 to over $700. Intercontinental Exchange – another proprietor of futures and over-the-counter exchanges – went public in late 2005 with a stock price of $26. To date, it’s been as high as $185. But making such comparisons to this hyper-unique opportunity isn’t really fair. You see… s a whole, the $615 trillion derivatives market dwarfs the futures, options and over-the-counter markets individually. he under-the-radar company executing the derivatives trades over its new electronic platform is tiny – only 1/30th the size of industry giants like Bank of America. And… billions in unrealized trading revenue is still NOT priced into the stock. When combined, these three factors make for a potentially massive rise in the stock price. Realize that this didn’t happen overnight… The electronic platform was nine years in the making. And this little company’s been an up-and-comer in international banking since the late 1990s. I expect the coming months to mark a historic turning point for the company. Shareholders could see their net worth explode. For investors with risk capital, this speculation has a real chance to make serious gains. You May Never See Anything Like it Again in Your Lifetime. By now, I suspect you appreciate the rare nature of this occasion. I can’t predict the future, but this may indeed be the only time it happens in our lifetime. That’s why I’d like to rush you an urgent report on this opportunity right away, called…How to Win a Rigged Game: Wall Street’s Underground Exchange Goes Live. In the report, you’ll get all the details regarding how this innovative small-cap company flew under the radar on its way to dominating a brand new, multi-trillion-dollar electronic market. And how its shares could be set for one the biggest price moves of any stock – on any exchange – over the next seven to 10 months. The report also reveals why BlackRock – the newly crowned King of Wall Street – loaded its house account with 32 million shares of this company’s stock. But perhaps most important… The report outlines how perfectly positioned the company is within the enormously lucrative derivatives market. At the end of the day, how many chances do you truly get to make money at such an early stage of the game? You know, when the profit potential is at its peak? I don’t want to tip my hand too much more, or I risk undermining the exhaustive research my team did to find this opportunity. So please refer to the report…How to Win a Rigged Game: Wall Street’s Underground Exchange Goes Live. I assure you that it includes all the critical information you need to take advantage of this milestone event, including the company’s ticker symbol. Give the research some consideration… I believe it holds every detail required to benefit from the unfolding events. The best part is, you can review this research today by simply taking a risk-free trial subscription to my flagship monthly newsletter, The White Cap Report. When you accept this invitation, I’ll immediately give you access to the report. It took nearly a year to compile this research on Deception, INC. Specifically, finding out who the Benefactors are… what impact they’re having on our wealth… and what they’re planning to do next. Now that we’ve identified the Benefactors, we’re tracking their money flows. With a virtual GPS on their cash, we’ll report where it’s heading every single month in The White Cap Report. The truth is, we’re already zeroing in on another opportunity with the potential to be even bigger than what’s happening with the Dodd-Frank legislation.
Course of Action #2: Trade Like a Benefactor
As much as my group is known for its progressive research, it’s also an advocate of innovative trading strategies – ones capable of generating entirely new streams of personal income. You see, my staff includes best-selling author and former New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) market maker, Lee Lowell, who serves as the group’s Income Expert. I recently conducted an annual review of Lee’s track record and its results were extraordinary – a documented 96% win rate! Last year, Lee recommended 27 trades, and 26 of them generated an average cash payment of roughly $500. Over a year’s time, Lee’s picks led to cash payouts of:
$450 from Verizon
$362 from Sunoco
$300 from DuPont
$500 from Electronic Arts
$300 from Home Depot
$300 from Dow Chemical
$400 from General Electric
$300 from JC Penney
$395 from International Paper
$350 from Best Buy
And that’s just a few of the big name, high-probability trades Lee has shown readers how to collect cash from. For clarity’s sake, like the Benefactors, Lee only recommends using a strategy that can be ‘rigged’ in your favor… With that in mind, you can imagine why I look forward to his internal performance audit every year – the results are all the proof Lee needs that his innovative strategies work. In fact, I was astonished to see that in 2009 and 2010, Lee’s readers had the opportunity to collect anywhere between $11,806 and $47,225 depending on how much they chose to invest. How could anyone turn down a cash infusion like that? When I talk about things like this, I’m always reminded of an email I received from one of Lee’s loyal readers named Barry Morris. Barry said that he and his son, just average folks from South Carolina… not professional traders or Benefactors… collected an astounding $145,000 in 2009 using Lee’s strategies. That’s $12,083 a month! I know a ton of recent college graduates who’d be overjoyed to earn that much in a year. You can find Lee Lowell’s columns in The White Cap Report by accepting my risk-free trial offer to the newsletter. If you choose to sign up, I’ll also give you immediate access to Lee’s two brand-new strategy reports… You’ve probably heard of my group’s Chief Investment Strategist, Louis Basenese. He’s the market’s foremost innovation and technology expert. And sleuthing-out innovation has been his life’s pursuit since helping handle over $1 billion in assets while on Wall Street. Louis’ readers have recently had the opportunity to close out gains on up-and-coming innovators, like…
162% on APKT – a facilitator of lightning-fast internet solutions.
100% on ASYS – a manufacturer of wafers used in the solar industry.
107% on IDCC – a wireless technology firm with over 8,000 patents.
139% on TDSC – an ingenious 3-D printing company.
152% on IO – a seismic imaging company in the oil and gas industry.
Right now, Louis is urging readers to prepare, as the next wave of innovative technology swarms the market in the coming weeks. Wednesday, August 31, 2011 In Today’s Issue: Stock Market: The Case for Higher Prices… Good News: The Commodity Price Cycle and S&P 500 Both on Track… European Recession: Will There Be One? European Recession: Will There Be One? The Leong Side of the Market, by George Leong, B. Comm. If you think we have it bad here, just take a glance at Europe, where investing in stocks has become a chore full of patient and sleepless nights. In Germany, the most significant country in the eurozone, the benchmark DAX is down over 25% since late July. Just in one month! Things do not look promising. Stock markets across Europe are tanking and, as I have said, Europe is not a place to park your capital based on my global economic analysis. There was more evidence of an economic downfall in Europe after the European Union’s economic sentiment index fell for the sixth straight time. Germany showed the biggest decline. Without a recovery in Germany, the eurozone is in trouble, but we know that. The reality is that growth around the world is stalling and the fear is that it could worsen and drive another recession or deepen existing recessions in many regions in Europe. And, with the existing debt and deficit issues, it will be hard for the governments to focus on driving growth. The aftermath could be several more years of economic stalling in Europe. This is a big problem, as Europe has over 500 million people and is a major economic zone.
September 1, 2011.
Why the European Union May Have Only a Week to Live: By Shah Gilani, Capital Waves Strategist, Money Morning. The clock may be ticking on the future of the European Union (EU). After being shaken to its core by the sovereign debt crisis, the entire Eurozone now runs the risk of blowing up within a week. Germany’s highest court, the German Federal Constitutional Court, on Sept. 7 rules on the legality of German participation in the euro rescue fund that was established to bail out Greece. If the court rules that Berlin’s commitment to the European Financial Stability Facility(EFSF) goes against EU law, or worse, against the German constitution, the entire Eurozone could collapse. Think of the Eurozone as a minefield full of bombs that have long lay dormant, but are all still very active. Now, Germany’s court ruling – itself a single bomb timed to go off next Wednesday – could ignite a massive chain reaction. Germany: The Eurozone’s Bomb Squad: Peripheral Eurozone countries like Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Spain, and Italy (the PIIGS) are in serious trouble and European banks face monumental liquidity and balance sheet issues. So far, only Germany’s singular fiscal conservativism and economic strength have kept the EU from self-destructing. But now the Eurozone’s only legitimate bomb squad may be hanging up its lead-suits, pliers, and contagion containers. What’s at issue for the Constitutional Court is whether Berlin broke the EU’s Maastricht Treaty, which unequivocally stipulates that member states cannot assume each other’s debts. And, more germane to German citizens and the center-right coalition government, will be the Court’s ruling on whether German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to fund the bailout facility circumvented constitutional requirements to put such fiscal matters before the German parliament. And while the court isn’t ruling directly on the EU’s currency – or Merkel’s support of it – the decisions rendered will have consequences for the euro’s future and by extension, the EU as a whole.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011 5:33 PM. Last April, Goldman Sachs settled with the SEC for $500 million over the synthetic collateralized debt obligation (CDO), Abacus. Even then, we predicted the mortgage lawsuits would get worse. We’ve written about the topic several times in these pages, so I will summarize the ordeal today…The SEC alleged Goldman sold investors a CDO without disclosing that hedge fund Paulson & Co. helped design the CDO and was shorting it. Buyers of the Abacus CDO (ACA Financial and German bank IKB) lost nearly $1 billion as mortgages plummeted. A synthetic CDO, by definition, must have someone on the long and short side. It is simply a bet on the direction of a pool of underlying mortgages. The buyers (huge financial institutions) should have known an investor was taking the other side of the bet. The Goldman lawsuit was just the beginning, we argued. Once the investigations moved on to CDOs containing real mortgages, we’d see real damage…wow, it seems clear to me suing Goldman about this issue – a case involving a synthetic CDO that the regulator will probably lose – is simply raising a red herring. Left unexamined is the much larger issue: the extraordinary amount of fraud in mortgage underwriting between 2004 and 2007. – April 21, 2010 S&A Digest. The real fireworks will come in the investigations over CDOs containing bona fide mortgages. These vehicles were completely riddled with fraud and insider dealing. Then, almost half of them were sold to Fannie and Freddie, now owned by Uncle Sam. When you defraud the sovereign, watch out. We think the fines are going to get a lot bigger… and we’d be surprised if Morgan Stanley survives. Interestingly, we also think the amount of fraud in the mortgage security industry means it’s unlikely the insurance on these bonds will remain in force. And that means the $30 billion or so of implied losses mortgage insurer MBIA faces may never be paid out. That’s a big number for a stock with a current market value of only $1.35 billion and assets of $25 billion. – July 16, 2010 S&A Digest In June, Bank of America announced it would pay $8.5 billion to settle claims from investors who lost money on mortgage-backed securities they bought before the crash. A group of investors (including giants like Black Rock, PIMCO, and MetLife) alleged mortgages they purchased from Countrywide (which Bank of America bought in 2008 for $4 billion) were filled with loans that didn’t meet the stated quality standards. The investors also alleged Countrywide didn’t keep accurate records of the loans. Yesterday was the last day to file objections to the Bank of America settlement. And there’s a long list of objectors. Goldman Sachs said the settlement lacks enough information to prove all “similarly situated” investors were treated equally. The Federal Housing Finance Agency, which regulates Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are also objecting to the settlement… as are dozens of other mortgage investors. Why the objections? We don’t know for certain… But we’d guess the objectors also took huge write downs on mortgages they purchased from Countrywide. And they want a higher recovery. This week, U.S. Bancorp, a trustee for a $1.75 billion Countrywide mortgage pool, separately sued Bank of America to make it buy back the mortgages. AIG, the insurer, is also suing Bank of America for $10 billion in a separate case involving mortgage-backed securities. Bank of America has huge potential liabilities with these outstanding lawsuits. And the bank doesn’t make any money… It lost $3.2 billion over the past three years. It’s had negative net income for the past two years. That’s why it’s scrambling to raise capital. The bank took $5 billion from Warren Buffett. It sold half its stake in China Construction Bank for around $8 billion. Today, news arose that Bank of America will sell its correspondent mortgage business (through which it purchases loans from smaller lenders, sells them, then continues servicing them). Bank of America decided to exit the business about six weeks ago. The business employs more than 1,000 people. And it was responsible for 47% of Bank of America’s mortgage originations in the first quarter of 2011. It is a huge retreat,” said Guy Cecala, publisher of the trade journal Inside Mortgage Finance. “Exiting correspondent altogether will reduce their volume significantly.”Europe in Limbo as Asian Fear Rises: The Leong Side of the Market, by George Leong, B. Comm. http://www.profitconfidential.com/gurus/ September, 2011The situation in Europe continues to focus on the debt and growth, along with the funding. And, until it calms down in Europe, markets will likely remain shaky on this side of the Atlantic. There is talk that Greece may need to leave the European Union due to its failure to satisfy financial targets set in place as a condition for receiving emergency capital from its European neighbors. I thought this could be a possibility given that I did not believe that the stronger nations of Germany and France would want to continue to fund the poor countries. The reality is that growth in both Germany and France has suffered with the focus squarely on saving the PIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Greece, and Spain). In my global economic analysis, this trend cannot continue much longer or Europe will falter and fall into a deeper or new recession. The problem is that ousting Greece would not be viewed as a positive signal to the rest of the world, as it could signal a domino effect that could lead to other countries also leaving, which is not what you want to see. The European Central Bank (ECB) maintained its benchmark lending rates at 1.50% at the Thursday meeting. But the situation is cloudy in the eurozone, after the ECB cut its gross domestic product (GDP) growth forecast. Of course, this is not a surprise given the recent downgrades in Europe. Morgan Stanley cut its global GDP forecasts for 2011 and 2012 and added that the U.S. and the eurozone were “dangerously close to a recession.”The Money Masters: Behind the Global Debt Crisis – by Adrian Salbuchi. New Dawn Magazine No. 128 (September-October 2011). In fact, if we look at matters in their proper perspective, we will see that most national economies are pretty much intact, in spite of having been badly bruised by the financial collapse. It is Finance that is in the midst of a massive global collapse, as this Model of “Ponzi” Finance has grown into a sort of malignant “cancerous tumour” that has now “metastasised,” threatening to kill the whole economy and social body politic, in just about every country in the world, and certainly in the industrialised countries.The above comparison of today’s financial system with a malignant tumour is more than a mere metaphor. If we look at the figures, we will immediately be able to see signs of this financial “metastasis.” For example, The New York Times in their 22 September 2008 edition explains that the main trigger of the financial collapse that had exploded just one week earlier on 15 September was, as we all know, mismanagement and lack of supervision over the “Derivatives” market. The Times then went on to explain that twenty years earlier, in 1988, there was no derivatives market; by 2002 however, Derivatives had grown into a global 102 trillion Dollar market (that’s 50% more than the Gross Domestic Product of all the countries in the world, the US, EU, Japan and BRICS nations included), and by September 2008, Derivatives had ballooned into a global 531 trillion Dollar market. That’s eight times the GDP of the entire planet! “Financial Metastasis” at its very worst. Since then, some have estimated this Derivatives global market figure to be in the region of One-Quadrillion Dollars…Naturally, when that collapse began, the caretaker governments in the US, European Union and elsewhere, immediately sprang into action and implemented “Operation Bail-out” of all the mega-banks, insurance companies, stock exchanges and speculation markets, and their respective operators, controllers and “friends.” Thus, trillions upon trillions of Dollars, Euros and Pounds were given to Goldman Sachs, Citicorp, Morgan Stanley, AIG, HSBC and other “too big to fail” financial institutions… which is newspeak for “too powerful to fail”, because they hold politicians, political parties and governments in their steel grip.All of this was paid with taxpayer dollars or, even worse, with uncontrolled and irresponsible issuance of Public Money bank notes and treasury bonds, especially by the Federal Reserve Bank which has, in practice, technically hyper-inflated the US Dollar: “Quantitative Easing” they call it, which is Newspeak for hyperinflation.So far, however, like the proverbial Naked Emperor, nobody dares to state this openly. At least not until some “uncontrolled” event triggers or unmasks what should by now be obvious to all: Emperor Dollar is totally and completely naked.7 When that happens, we will then see bloody social and civil wars throughout the world and not just in Greece and Argentina.By then, however, and as always happens, the powerful bankster clique and their well-paid financial and media operators, will be watching the whole hellish spectacle perched in the safety and comfort of their plush boardrooms atop the skyscrapers of New York, London, Frankfurt, Buenos Aires and Sao Paulo…By Jack Barnes, Global Macro Trends Specialist, Money Morning , October 10, 2011: Frankfurt-based Deutsche Bank AG (NYSE: DB) is about to be critically wounded by the European banking crisis. So it’s time to sell Deutsche Bank AG (**), before the region’s financial system falls apart.Europe’s Coming Capital CrunchMany European banks don’t have enough money to survive a Greek default. They hold huge amounts of their home sovereign’s debt, as well as debt of their troubled Eurozone neighbors. Any write-down of those holdings will slam their balance sheets. These banks were already overleveraged when the financial crisis started in 2007, and they have relied on outside sources like the United States to maintain core capital ratios. In the 2008 crash, the European banks turned to the U.S. Federal Reserve for trillions of dollars of liquidity injections. They also used sources like U.S. money market funds for short-term loans – commercial paper that matures in less than 270 days – to cover capital loaned out at longer maturities. In May 2011, U.S. money market funds had an average 40% of holdings in European commercial bank paper. But then U.S. banks, afraid of the unfolding European sovereign debt drama, let these short-term loans mature. This brought the capital back home and took an estimated $350 billion in liquidity out of the European banking system.October 12, 2011. By Keith Fitz-Gerald, Chief Investment Strategist, Money Morning. Do you want to know the real reason banks aren’t lending and the PIIGS have control of the barnyard in Europe? It’s because risk in the $600 trillion derivatives market isn’t evening out. To the contrary, it’s growing increasingly concentrated among a select few banks, especially here in the United States. In 2009, five banks held 80% of derivatives in America. Now, just four banks hold a staggering 95.9% of U.S. derivatives, according to a recent report from the Office of the Currency Comptroller. The four banks in question: JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM), Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C), Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC) and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS). Derivatives played a crucial role in bringing down the global economy, so you would think that the world’s top policymakers would have reined these things in by now – but they haven’t. Instead of attacking the problem, regulators have let it spiral out of control, and the result is a $600 trillion time bomb called the derivatives market. Think I’m exaggerating? The notional value of the world’s derivatives actually is estimated at more than $600 trillion. Notional value, of course, is the total value of a leveraged position’s assets. This distinction is necessary because when you’re talking about leveraged assets like options and derivatives, a little bit of money can control a disproportionately large position that may be as much as 5, 10, 30, or, in extreme cases, 100 times greater than investments that could be funded only in cash instruments. The world’s gross domestic product (GDP) is only about $65 trillion, or roughly 10.83% of the worldwide value of the global derivatives market, according to The Economist. So there is literally not enough money on the planet to backstop the banks trading these things if they run into trouble. Short-term borrowing costs would skyrocket and liquidity would evaporate. That would cause a ricochet across the Atlantic as the institutions themselves then panic and try to recover their own capital by withdrawing liquidity by any means possible. And that’s why banks are hoarding cash instead of lending it. The major banks know there is no way they can collateralize the potential daisy chain failure that Greece represents. So they’re doing everything they can to stockpile cash and keep their trading under wraps and away from public scrutiny. What really scares me, though, is that the banks think this is an acceptable risk because the odds of a default are allegedly smaller than one in 10,000. But haven’t we heard that before? Although American banks have limited their exposure to Greece, they have loaned hundreds of billions of dollars to European banks and European governments that may not be capable of paying them back. According to the Bank of International Settlements, U.S. banks have loaned only $60.5 billion to banks in Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy – the countries most at risk of default. But they’ve lent $275.8 billion to French and German banks. And undoubtedly bet trillions on the same debt. There are three key takeaways here:There is not enough capital on hand to cover the possible losses associated with the default of a single counterparty – JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM), BNP Paribas SA (PINK: BNPQY) or the National Bank of Greece (NYSE ADR: NBG) for example – let alone multiple failures.That means banks with large derivatives exposure have to risk even more money to generate the incremental returns needed to cover the bets they’ve already made.And the fact that Wall Street believes it has the risks under control practically guarantees that it doesn’t.October 14, 2011. By Shah Gilani, Capital Waves Strategist, Money Morning. I’ve already expressed my desire to embrace the Occupy Wall Street movement. I said last week that I would join in whole-heartedly if I knew exactly what the protesters were trying to achieve. But I don’t know – and I’m not convinced they do, either. Still, that doesn’t mean we should dismiss them entirely. After all, there are millions of Americans who sense there’s something terribly wrong with our capitalist system, but they can’t pinpoint exactly what it is either. But I can. Bad actors have done bad things to good institutions and our capitalist system. Today, I’m going to let you in on who three of those bad actors are. You see, part of the problem is that when we think of the “bad guys” on Wall Street, or in Washington for that matter, we don’t often think of specific people. We talk about “them” as faceless men we might imagine sitting in luxurious high-rises chewing on cigars and laughing as they rake in millions, or even billions of dollars on the backs of hardworking Americans. I intend to fix that. I want to shed light on the faces of the people who are gaming the system and lay out before you the tools they’re using to get away with it. So, I’m going to start today with three of the biggest perpetrators of the mess we’re in. The Three Bears.There are hundreds of bad actors on Wall Street, but three in particular tell the inside story of how appallingly corrupt our country has become. They are: Robert Rubin, who spent 26 years at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS), before becoming Treasury Secretary in the Clinton administration.Lawrence Summers, who came out of the World Bank and was Deputy Secretary of the Treasury under his pal Rubin before becoming Treasury Secretary himself in 1999.And Phil Gramm, once a practicing economist who served as a Republican Senator for Texas from 1985 to 2002.These are the men who – with help of then-Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan – interfered with the Commodities and Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), an important regulatory body, to squash any regulation of derivatives. And now the notoriously murky derivatives market, which was hugely responsible for the 2008 financial crisis, has grown into a $600 trillion trouble spot for the economy. This group of very influential and powerful men made sure there was no oversight of derivatives products and markets. None. While that was an incredible gift to Wall Street’s biggest banks and hedge funds, the Three Bears (I call them that because their actions drove us into the systemic economic bear market from which we’re still struggling to emerge) weren’t nearly done. The Beginning of the End. in April 6, 1998 Citicorp and Travelers Group announced that they would merge into a single company. But there was a problem. At the time, such a merger would have violated the Glass Steagall Act. If you’re not familiar with it, the Glass Steagall Act is – or rather was – a piece of Depression-era legislation that established the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) and mandated the separation of commercial banks, investment banks, and insurance companies. It incorporated other practical and prudent regulations enacted to safeguard investors and the public , as well. But , lessons learned from the Depression were eventually forgotten – or maybe more precisely, steamrolled by a sweeping deregulatory movement that took root in 1980. On the day of the announced combination, Traveler’s chairman, Sandy Weill, addressed impediments to the merger in the New York Times, noting that current law would allow the new Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C) time to divest itself of assets in order to comply with Glass-Steagall. However, ominously he added: “We are hopeful that over time the legislation will change.” Just one year later, it did. The same powerful group of influence-peddling government insiders overturned Glass-Steagall in November 1999, so the illegal merger didn’t have to be reversed. The law that obliterated the prudent separation of FDIC-backed commercial banks and swing-for-the-fences investment banks became known as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. This act is what paved the way for giant, financial super firms that are so intertwined in the financial markets they’re now all considered “too-big-to-fail.” In Eerie Epilogue. So what happened to our three players? Were they penalized or held accountable for the undermining of our economy and the implosion of markets? No. They were rewarded. Robert Rubin went to work for the new Citigroup as a senior advisor of the firm. Rubin made $126 million in cash and stock during his eight years of service, while the bank leveraged itself up by using depositor money. It had to be bailed out in 2008. Lawrence Summers reportedly took some $20 million from D.E. Shaw & Co., a giant hedge fund that dabbles in derivatives, for a two-year stint doing something nobody at the firm could confirm. And Phil Gramm, the venerable Texas senator, upon retiring from that powerful position, immediately became vice chairman of the investment bank division of UBS AG (NYSE: UBS). Yes, UBS – the same Swiss bank that in 2008 had to be backstopped by the Swiss National Bank when its overleveraged and derivatives-laden balance sheet imploded. The same bank that later paid $780 million to settle criminal charges over its conspiracy to defraud the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and federal government of legitimately owed taxes. These are the kinds of things that are taking place every day thanks to Wall Street’s influence over our executive and legislative branches of government. And you better believe that average Americans and the Occupy Wall Street protestors can sense that, and they know they should be angry. They just can’t put their finger on why. I can because I’m a Wall Street guy who spent 30 years working within the system. I studied economics and started my career as a trader on the floor of the Chicago Board of Options Exchange (CBOE). I ran the futures and options division of a giant international money-center bank. I’ve done everything from trading bonds and mortgage-backed securities to running my own hedge funds. And I have hundreds of stories full of corruption and greed – just like this one. Not everyone on Wall Street is a bad actor. Most of the professionals working in the capital markets across America are good and honest people. But, there are kingpins and kingmakers whose greed is so disgusting they will sink America for their own fistful of dollars. It’s time we had better insights into what’s really going on and time to indict some of these bad actors. Editor’s Note: Money Morning Capital Waves Strategist and retired hedge-fund manager Shah Gilani became a national icon in 2008, as he dissected the shady workings of Wall Street, uncovering how the greed of a few brought down the economy of our entire country.He’s since launched a new publication calledWall Street Insights & Indictments. His goal simply is to show you what’s really going on in the markets, so you can “know the story” and make some money. October 13, 2011.THE CLINK. Hedge-Fund Boss Gets 11 Years.Former hedge-fund tycoon Raj Rajaratnam has been sentenced to 11 years in prison and fined $10 million for insider trading, the longest-ever such sentence. Rajaratnam, the founder of Galleon Group, got tips from a network of insiders in Goldman Sachs, Google, Intel, and other companies. Prosecutors say he made $72 million from insider trading, while Rajaratnam’s lawyers say it was only $7.4 million. The Economist says good riddance to the “know-it-all” billionaire—and praises a new boon for regulators looking to crack down on trading abuses. By Bob Van Voris, Patricia Hurtado and David Glovin – Oct 12, 2011 11:00 PM CT, Thu Oct 13 04:00:00 GMT 2011: Galleon Group LLC’s Raj RajaratnamPeter Foley/Bloomberg. Raj Rajaratnam, co-founder of Galleon Group LLC. Raj Rajaratnam, co-founder of Galleon Group LLC. Photographer: Peter Foley/Bloomberg Oct. 13 (Bloomberg) — Douglas Burns, a formal federal prosecutor, talks about Galleon Group LLC co-founder Raj Rajaratnam’s sentencing today for masterminding the biggest hedge-fund insider trading scheme in U.S. history. Burns speaks with Erik Schatzker and Stephanie Ruhle on Bloomberg Television’s “InsideTrack.” (Source: Bloomberg) Oct. 13 (Bloomberg) — Galleon Group LLC’s Raj Rajaratnam will be sentenced today for masterminding the biggest hedge-fund insider trading scheme in U.S. history, facing a federal judge who has broad discretion in setting his punishment. Sarah Eisen reports on Bloomberg Television’s “InsideTrack.” (Source: Bloomberg). Galleon Group LLC’s Raj Rajaratnam will be sentenced today for masterminding the biggest hedge-fundinsider trading scheme in U.S. history, facing a federal judge who has broad discretion in setting his punishment. U.S. District Judge Richard Holwell in Manhattan presided over the jury trial in which Rajaratnam was convicted of 14 counts of securities fraud and conspiracy. He will consult federal sentencing guidelines and his own “gut feeling,” one legal expert said. Read it at Bloomberg.These Three Men Represent Everything That’s Wrong with Wall StreetbyShah GilaniI’ve already expressed my desire to embrace the Occupy Wall Street movement. I said last week that I would join in whole-heartedly if I knew exactly what the protesters were trying to achieve. But I don’t know – and I’m not convinced they do, either. Still, that doesn’t mean we should dismiss them entirely. After all, there are millions of Americans who sense there’s something terribly wrong with our capitalist system, but they can’t pinpoint exactly what it is either. But I can. Bad actors have done bad things to good institutions and our capitalist system. Today, I’m going to let you in on who three of those bad actors are.You see, part of the problem is that when we think of the “bad guys” on Wall Street, or in Washington for that matter, we don’t often think of specific people. We talk about “them” as faceless men we might imagine sitting in luxurious high-rises chewing on cigars and laughing as they rake in millions, or even billions of dollars on the backs of hardworking Americans. I intend to fix that. I want to shed light on the faces of the people who are gaming the system and lay out before you the tools they’re using to get away with it. So, I’m going to start today with three of the biggest perpetrators of the mess we’re in. The Three Bears.There are hundreds of bad actors on Wall Street, but three in particular tell the inside story of how appallingly corrupt our country has become. They are: Robert Rubin, who spent 26 years at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS), before becoming Treasury Secretary in the Clinton administration. Lawrence Summers, who came out of the World Bank and was Deputy Secretary of the Treasury under his pal Rubin before becoming Treasury Secretary himself in 1999. And Phil Gramm, once a practicing economist who served as a Republican Senator for Texas from 1985 to 2002.These are the men who – with help of then-Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan – interfered with the Commodities and Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), an important regulatory body, to squash any regulation of derivatives.And now the notoriously murky derivatives market, which was hugely responsible for the 2008 financial crisis, has grown into a $600 trillion trouble spot for the economy.This group of very influential and powerful men made sure there was no oversight of derivatives products and markets. None. While that was an incredible gift to Wall Street’s biggest banks and hedge funds, the Three Bears (I call them that because their actions drove us into the systemic economic bear market from which we’re still struggling to emerge) weren’t nearly done.The Beginning of the EndOn April 6, 1998 Citicorp and Travelers Group announced that they would merge into a single company. But there was a problem.At the time, such a merger would have violated the Glass Steagall Act. If you’re not familiar with it, the Glass Steagall Act is – or rather was – a piece of Depression-era legislation that established the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) and mandated the separation of commercial banks, investment banks, and insurance companies. It incorporated other practical and prudent regulations enacted to safeguard investors and the public , as well. But, lessons learned from the Depression were eventually forgotten – or maybe more precisely, steamrolled by a sweeping deregulatory movement that took root in 1980. On the day of the announced combination, Traveler’s chairman, Sandy Weill, addressed impediments to the merger in the New York Times, noting that current law would allow the new Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C) time to divest itself of assets in order to comply with Glass-Steagall. However, ominously he added: “We are hopeful that over time the legislation will change.”Just one year later, it did.The same powerful group of influence-peddling government insiders overturned Glass-Steagall in November 1999, so the illegal merger didn’t have to be reversed. The law that obliterated the prudent separation of FDIC-backed commercial banks and swing-for-the-fences investment banks became known as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act.This act is what paved the way for giant, financial super firms that are so intertwined in the financial markets they’re now all considered “too-big-to-fail.”An Eerie EpilogueSo what happened to our three players? Were they penalized or held accountable for the undermining of our economy and the implosion of markets? No. They were rewarded. Robert Rubin went to work for the new Citigroup as a senior advisor of the firm. Rubin made $126 million in cash and stock during his eight years of service, while the bank leveraged itself up by using depositor money. It had to be bailed out in 2008. Lawrence Summers reportedly took some $20 million from D.E. Shaw & Co., a giant hedge fund that dabbles in derivatives, for a two-year stint doing something nobody at the firm could confirm. And Phil Gramm, the venerable Texas senator, upon retiring from that powerful position, immediately became vice chairman of the investment bank division of UBS AG (NYSE: UBS). Yes, UBS – the same Swiss bank that in 2008 had to be backstopped by the Swiss National Bank when its overleveraged and derivatives-laden balance sheet imploded. The same bank that later paid $780 million to settle criminal charges over its conspiracy to defraud the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and federal government of legitimately owed taxes.These are the kinds of things that are taking place every day thanks to Wall Street’s influence over our executive and legislative branches of government. And you better believe that average Americans and the Occupy Wall Street protestors can sense that, and they know they should be angry. They just can’t put their finger on why.I can because I’m a Wall Street guy who spent 30 years working within the system. I studied economics and started my career as a trader on the floor of the Chicago Board of Options Exchange (CBOE). I ran the futures and options division of a giant international money-center bank.I’ve done everything from trading bonds and mortgage-backed securities to running my own hedge funds. And I have hundreds of stories full of corruption and greed – just like this one.Not everyone on Wall Street is a bad actor. Most of the professionals working in the capital markets across America are good and honest people. But, there are kingpins and kingmakers whose greed is so disgusting they will sink America for their own fistful of dollars.It’s time we had better insights into what’s really going on and time to indict some of these bad actors. By Shah Gilani.Oct 14, 2011.EU Finance Summit Awash in Crises. Oct 26, 2011 12:46 PM EDT. Europe’s leaders finally admit that something must be done with the continent’s banks. Europe’s dirty secret is that its banks have long been even more of a mess than America’s—they were among the biggest investors in America’s toxic subprime assets, and then went big time into the now-toxic bonds of over-indebted states; hence the 62 percent plunge in the Euro Stoxx Financials Index since March, compared with minus-21 percent for the Dow Jones financials. France, which probably has the shakiest banks of any major European economy, to this day has refused to force them to recapitalize and shrink. The plan, as leaked to the Financial Times today, involves a $140 billion bank bailout (though the IMF and others estimate recapitalization needs to be much higher). But it’s a weak plan, full of vague “shoulds” and “oughts” that will likely leave too many loopholes for the banks and their investors to evade forced recapitalization and the absolutely necessary debt-to-equity swaps. The way the bailouts are set up now, they could allow France and others to pass the cost of bank bailouts to Europe’s taxpayers, potentially making the debt crisis worse.Third, in order to prevent contagion to other over-indebted countries, such as Italy and Spain, outlines are emerging for a plan to issue “bond insurance.” Here’s how it works: a bailout fund, possibly leveraged to as high as 2 trillion euros, would cover the first 20 percent or so of any losses by investors on bonds issued by individual European countries. That plan, first put forward by German financial-sector lobbyists, could end up expensive for taxpayers. Bond insurance makes sense, but the cheaper—and more effective—alternative would be not to cover any first loss on any bond, but provide only a kind of catastrophic risk insurance for the worst defaults. That would put a floor on potential losses—and raise bond prices—at a far lower risk to Europe’s taxpayers, says Achim Dübel, a German bond-market expert who developed the plan.Fourth, European leaders are trying to show they’re a little more serious about cutting deficits and lowering their debts. Germany and France are leaning on Italy, whose $2.5 trillion national debt is the world’s third highest after America’s and Japan’s, and whose government bonds are stable only because the ECB is massively buying them. After Greece, Italy is another poster child for what’s wrong with the European Union. The moment the ECB started intervening in the markets to support Italian bonds, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi backed off on a set of planned reforms that would have started to get Italy’s debt under control. It’s an open secret that Berlin would prefer Berlusconi out and a new government in power to push through a backlog of economic reforms that would allow Italy to regain the confidence of investors. Perhaps taking the hint, Berlusconi today started talking about early elections.Italy illustrates perfectly the deeper crisis, which the current plans don’t solve. Many of Europe’s semi-socialist governments simply do not know how to roll back spending, and have been even less eager to pass the kinds of market-opening economic reforms that would raise growth and make it easier to pay back debt. France, which together with its wobbly banks is the elephant in the room of the euro crisis, has never passed a serious reform to its pensions, civil service, or employment laws in the last 60 years. Greece, despite the crisis, has barely even begun to privatize or start collecting back taxes. The problem is that once any comprehensive bailout deal is signed, power will shift back to the debtors, as Europe has no mechanism to force a Sarkozy or Berlusconi to reform. The paradox, therefore, is that without the pressure of the current crisis, the much deeper crisis will continue to fester. (Stefan Theil is Newsweek’s Berlin bureau chief and covers European politics, business, and economics. He has reported from more than 20 countries and written for Foreign Policy, the Financial Times, The New Republic, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and Die Welt.) For inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at editorial@thedailybeast.com.Without warning, Lloyd’s – the world’s oldest insurance market – announced that it has withdrawn its money from European banks. The reason? According to Lloyd’s, the banks are in danger of failing as Europe’s debt crisis continues to intensify. The company’s Finance Director, Luke Savage, put it simply: “If you’re worried the government itself might be at risk, then you’re certainly worried the banks could be taken down with them.” Which European governments is Lloyd’s talking about? They’re not saying. But it IS interesting to note that Lloyd’s didn’t just withdraw its money from Greek banks; it withdrew its money from banks all over Europe! One thing you can be sure of, though: When the world’s oldest insurance company…A firm that for 323 years has made its living by accurately calculating the odds of future disasters…When that company suddenly takes its money and runs, it’s a MASSIVE red flag for investors – a clear sign that the beginning of the end is near! Lloyd’s has every reason to worry. In addition to the government debt crisis that’s threatening to destroy European banks, a huge credit crisis is spreading across the continent, as well. Spanish and Italian banks are rejecting massive numbers of loans and charging customers more as the sovereign debt crisis continues to drive their own borrowing cost higher. Any way you look at it, this shrinking of European credit markets is the worst kind of downward spiral:The government debt crisis is making it harder and more expensive for banks to borrow money; the banks are passing those higher costs along to borrowers.Corporations have to pay more to borrow; their cost of doing business is rising.Consumers can’t or won’t borrow at higher rates, so corporate earnings plunge.As corporate earnings evaporate, the taxes they pay also plummet.Falling tax revenue cause the government’s deficits to explode higher, driving the banks’ cost of borrowing even higher.And so, the death spiral continues… My urgent online video will show you what to do right now… If you think Europe’s woes aren’t going to spill over onto our shores – THINK AGAIN! In fact, we believe that the United States is about to get slammed.In some key aspects the U.S. is now in WORSE shape than Brazil, Russia, Greece or Spain have ever been. Consider the high-risk gambles that super-investor Warren Buffett calls “financial weapons of mass destruction.” I’m talking about special kinds of investments called “derivatives.” They were a major cause of the real estate and debt crisis that nearly wiped out all of our largest banks in 2008 — along with the entire U.S. economy. Russia’s banks never exposed themselves to large amounts of these financial time bombs. Neither did Brazil’s banks. And you’d think that, after the 2008 meltdown, U.S. banks would have learned their lesson. But you’d be wrong. According to the Comptroller of the Currency, a division of the U.S. Treasury Department — U.S. banks held $176 trillion in derivatives at the height of the debt crisis in 2008. Today, U.S. banks hold $244 trillion in derivatives — nearly 40% more. That fact alone places the U.S. in greater danger than many other countries, past or present. U.S. debt and obligations are now OVER $120 TRILLION! America is also in great danger for another big reason. Washington is now sitting on the largest pile of debt in the history of civilization: About $14.5 trillion and counting. They are the men and women who directly advised presidents of both major parties, including President Obama, and all of them have since departed from their office. They recently wrote that that the next debt crisis could, and I quote “Dwarf 2008!” That’s an absolutely shocking assertion: In 2008, Wall Street came within a hair of a massive, devastating meltdown. Virtually ALL of our largest banks were pushed to the brink of failure. The entire country was only a few hours away from a fatal collapse. Now, these ten former White House advisors are warning that this next debt crisis could dwarf the last one. Why? What could cause that? They say it’s precisely the monumental event I just told you about: The fact that one day foreigners may simply stop lending more of their money to the United States. And these ten former presidential advisers are not the only ones ringing the alarm bells. Senator Mark Warner says, “We’re approaching financial Armageddon.” Senator Joe Manchin calls this crisis “A fiscal Titanic.” Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is warning that this crisis is “the biggest threat to our national security.” Economist Robert Samuelson warns that this crisis has the power to trigger “An economic and political death spiral.” Democrat Erskine Bowles, who headed up the president’s deficit commission, warns that this crisis is “like a cancer; it’s truly going to destroy the country from within.” Senator Mike Crapo says it is “a threat to not just our way of life, but to our national survival.” It has the power to “ … guarantee that this nation becomes a second-rate power with less opportunity and less freedom.” And David Walker — the former U.S. Comptroller General and director of the Government Accountability Office says: “The bottom line is: We’re not Greece. But we could end up with the same problems!” And mind you, these men are not extremists. They have nothing to gain by trying to scare you. They are merely following the facts to their logical conclusion. That’s what I’ve done in this report. The warnings I’ve given you are based on nothing more — and nothing less — than economic reality and historical fact. My research team and I have simply crunched the numbers and let the chips fall where they may — just like we did when we issued “D” ratings on nearly every big bank and savings and loans that subsequently failed. Just like we did when we gave a “C” rating to the United States. We have no political axe to grind. We are not beholden to Republicans, Democrats, or any other political party. Nor do we owe allegiance to Wall Street or any of the thousands of banks, companies and countries that we rate. In fact, most of them would probably prefer that we just kept our mouths shut. One giant company even threatened my life by saying “Weiss had better shut up or get a body guard.” But to quote Harry Truman, “I never give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it’s hell.” Our loyalty is with the people — consumers, savers, investors and everyday citizens. Martin D. Weiss, Ph.d. Publisher, Safe Money Investor Service; 15430 Endeavour Drive Jupiter, FL 33478, 800-236-0407, 561-625-6685 (Fax).November 4, 2011. By Shah Gilani, Capital Waves Strategist, Money MorningDid you hear the story about MF Global? No, not the headlines about its bankruptcy – the real story. If you haven’t heard it yet, it goes something like this. MF Global became a primary dealer only eight months ago. “Primary dealer” is an elite status. It means the firm is one of only 22 government bond dealers that trades directly with the Federal Reserve’s New York trading desk. Only, the Federal Reserve doesn’t regulate or oversee MF Global, the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) does – or rather is supposed to. But, even more incongruously, the CFTC isn’t the first overseer of MF Global . It ceded that responsibility to the CME Group Inc. (Nasdaq: CME), which owns and operates the largest futures exchanges in the United States. The designated self-regulatory organization for more than 50 futures brokers, CME was supposed to be the cop on the beat. However, t he not-so-funny thing about the relationship between MF Global and the CME Group is that MF Global recently boasted on its Website that it “was the top broker by volume at CME’s metals and energy exchanges in New York and in the top three at its Chicago exchanges.” So, is it any wonder that the CME just last week audited MF Global’s segregated customer funds and found them to be in compliance?These are the same supposedly segregated funds which the CME is now saying may have been tampered with. According to the CME: “It now appears that [MF Global] made subsequent transfers of customer segregated funds in a manner that may have been designed to avoid detection insofar as MF Global did not disclose or report such transfers to the CFTC or CME until early morning on Monday October 31, 2011.” How much money are we talking about? About $633 million – or 11.6% out of a segregated fund requirement of about $5.4 billion. Do you see what I’m driving at? So the real story is, the Federal Reserve, which doesn’t regulate MF Global but regulates all banks in the United States, lets a futures commission merchant with investment bank wannabe desires become an insider in its dealings. Meanwhile, a private for-profit enterprise that runs the self-regulatory apparatus that oversees its own customers steps in for a federal agency that’s supposed to be in charge of commodities, futures and derivatives markets. And that’s only the tip of the iceberg. Let me jump on the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) next, because you aren’t going to believe this, either.Subterfuge at the SECIt’s come to light recently that the SEC has been blatantly violating federal law for decades.Since at least 1992 through 2010, the SEC has destroyed more than 9,000 documents that by law were supposed to be saved and turned over to the National Archives and Records Administration and kept for 25 years. The documents were records of enforcement cases where, after preliminary inquires, it was decided not to pursue full-blown investigations. When the SEC has information – an anonymous tip or insights from a whistleblower, for instance – that could lead to an investigation, the subjects are pursued as “matters under inquiry,” or MUIs. A couple of examples of MUIs that went nowhere include: The several tips the agency received that Bernie Madoff was running a Ponzi scheme; the anonymous tip on Ernst and Young letterhead that said Lehman Bros. Holdings Inc. (PINK: LEHMQ) was cooking its books; or the MUIs on insider trading, fraud, and market manipulation at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS), Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC), American International Group Inc. (NYSE: AIG), and SAC Capital Advisors, to name a few others. But since none of these MUIs morphed into full-blown investigations, the SEC decided to destroy all records pertaining to these inquiries rather than hand them over to the National Archives, as federal law requires. When confronted with the unauthorized disposal of federal records, thanks to a couple of steadfast and honest lawyers in the enforcement branch of the SEC, the agency said it was “not aware of any specific instances of the destruction of records.” What’s shocking and sickening is that even while addressing the Archives’ inquiry into the missing documents, the SEC somehow forgot to disclose to the keeper of federal records its policy to “destroy all such documents” when no further action is warranted. Too bad for the SEC an internal investigation by SEC Inspector General H. David Kotz brought to light the agency’s directive to destroy certain MUIs, along with the discovery of MUIs on old hard drives that somebody accidentally forgot to erase and destroy. Why wouldn’t the SEC keep records of enforcement activities? Why would they destroy critical data and information that could be used in the future to pursue cases that re-surfaced and could lead to bone-crushing conspiracy or racketeering charges, if not even the simple garden variety securities law violations? With any luck, we just might find out. The SEC could and should face criminal charges for breaking federal law. There’s a powerful push by a quiet group of angry journalists to get to the bottom of this, and I’m one of them. So, expect to hear more about this as we press on for the truth. In the meantime, it’s high time we take a good look at regulators and not just regulations to see where the cracks are in the prudential governance of markets, financial institutions, and most importantly, individuals who are responsible for decisions that break the law or grossly impact markets and our economy. After all, it’s not just regulations we need to worry about – it’s the regulators too.[Editor’s Note: Money Morning Capital Waves Strategist and retired hedge-fund manager Shah Gilani became a national icon in 2008, as he dissected the shady workings of Wall Street, uncovering how the greed of a few brought down the economy of our entire country.He’s since launched a new publication calledWall Street Insights & Indictments. His goal simply is to show you what’s really going on in the markets, so you can “know the story” and make some money. And the best part is, it’s absolutely free. Just sign up by clicking here. You’ll also receive Gilani’s latest report: “5 Ways to Trade the Coming EU Collapse – And Make a Killing”.]By NASSIM NICHOLAS TALEB: Published: November 7, 2011I HAVE a solution for the problem of bankers who take risks that threaten the general public: Eliminate bonuses. More than three years since the global financial crisis started, financial institutions are still blowing themselves up. The latest, MF Global, filed for bankruptcy protection last week after its chief executive, Jon S. Corzine, made risky investments in European bonds. So far, lenders and shareholders have been paying the price, not taxpayers. But it is only a matter of time before private risk-taking leads to another giant bailout like the ones the United States was forced to provide in 2008. The promise of “no more bailouts,” enshrined in last year’s Wall Street reform law, is just that — a promise. The financiers (and their lawyers) will always stay one step ahead of the regulators. No one really knows what will happen the next time a giant bank goes bust because of its misunderstanding of risk. Instead, it’s time for a fundamental reform: Any person who works for a company that, regardless of its current financial health, would require a taxpayer-financed bailout if it failed should not get a bonus, ever. In fact, all pay at systemically important financial institutions — big banks, but also some insurance companies and even huge hedge funds — should be strictly regulated. Critics like the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators decry the bonus system for its lack of fairness and its contribution to widening inequality. But the greater problem is that it provides an incentive to take risks. The asymmetric nature of the bonus (an incentive for success without a corresponding disincentive for failure) causes hidden risks to accumulate in the financial system and become a catalyst for disaster. This violates the fundamental rules of capitalism; Adam Smith himself was wary of the effect of limiting liability, a bedrock principle of the modern corporation Bonuses are particularly dangerous because they invite bankers to game the system by hiding the risks of rare and hard-to-predict but consequential blow-ups, which I have called “black swan” events. The meltdown in the United States subprime mortgage market, which set off the global financial crisis, is only the latest example of such disasters. Consider that we trust military and homeland security personnel with our lives, yet we don’t give them lavish bonuses. They get promotions and the honor of a job well done if they succeed, and the severe disincentive of shame if they fail. For bankers, it is the opposite: a bonus if they make short-term profits and a bailout if they go bust. The question of talent is a red herring: Having worked with both groups, I can tell you that military and security people are not only more careful about safety, but also have far greater technical skill, than bankers. The ancients were fully aware of this upside-without-downside asymmetry, and they built simple rules in response. Nearly 4,000 years ago, Hammurabi’s code specified this: “If a builder builds a house for a man and does not make its construction firm, and the house which he has built collapses and causes the death of the owner of the house, that builder shall be put to death.”No such pain faces bailed-out, bonus-taking bankers. The period from 2000 to 2008 saw a very large accumulation of hidden exposures in the financial system. And yet the year 2010 brought the largest bank compensation in history. It has become clear that merely “clawing back” past bonuses after the fact is not enough. Supervision, regulation and other forms of monitoring are necessary, but insufficient — consider that the Federal Reserve insisted, as late as 2007, that the rapidly escalating subprime mortgage crisis was likely to be “contained.” What would banking look like if bonuses were eliminated? It would not be too different from what it was like when I was a bank intern in the 1980s, before the wave of deregulation that culminated in the 1999 repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, the Depression-era law that had separated investment and commercial banking. Before then, bankers and lenders were boring “lifers.” Banking was bland and predictable; the chairman’s income was less than that of today’s junior trader. Investment banks, which paid bonuses and weren’t allowed to lend, were partnerships with skin in the game, not gamblers playing with other people’s money. Hedge funds, which are loosely regulated, could take on some of the risks that banks would shed under my proposal. While we tend to hear about the successful ones, the great majority fail and their failures rarely make the front page. The principal-agent problem they have isn’t a problem for taxpayers: Typically their investors manage the governance of hedge funds by ensuring that the manager is hurt more than any of his investors in the event of a blowup. I believe that “less is more” — simple heuristics are necessary for complex problems. So instead of thousands of pages of regulation, we should enforce a basic principle: Bonuses and bailouts should never mix. Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a professor of risk engineering at New York University Polytechnic Institute, is the author of “The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable.” He is a hedge fund investor and a former Wall Street trader.October 14, 2011 By Shah Gilani, Capital Waves Strategist, Money Morning. I’ve already expressed my desire to embrace the Occupy Wall Street movement. I said last week that I would join in whole-heartedly if I knew exactly what the protesters were trying to achieve. But I don’t know – and I’m not convinced they do, either. Still, that doesn’t mean we should dismiss them entirely. After all, there are millions of Americans who sense there’s something terribly wrong with our capitalist system, but they can’t pinpoint exactly what it is either. But I can. Bad actors have done bad things to good institutions and our capitalist system. Today, I’m going to let you in on who three of those bad actors are. You see, part of the problem is that when we think of the “bad guys” on Wall Street, or in Washington for that matter, we don’t often think of specific people. We talk about “them” as faceless men we might imagine sitting in luxurious high-rises chewing on cigars and laughing as they rake in millions, or even billions of dollars on the backs of hardworking Americans. I intend to fix that. I want to shed light on the faces of the people who are gaming the system and lay out before you the tools they’re using to get away with it. So, I’m going to start today with three of the biggest perpetrators of the mess we’re in.The Three BearsThere are hundreds of bad actors on Wall Street, but three in particular tell the inside story of how appallingly corrupt our country has become. They are:Robert Rubin, who spent 26 years at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS), before becoming Treasury Secretary in the Clinton administration.Lawrence Summers, who came out of the World Bank and was Deputy Secretary of the Treasury under his pal Rubin before becoming Treasury Secretary himself in 1999.And Phil Gramm, once a practicing economist who served as a Republican Senator for Texas from 1985 to 2002.These are the men who – with help of then-Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan – interfered with the Commodities and Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), an important regulatory body, to squash any regulation of derivatives.
This group of very influential and powerful men made sure there was no oversight of derivatives products and markets. None.
While that was an incredible gift to Wall Street’s biggest banks and hedge funds, the Three Bears (I call them that because their actions drove us into the systemic economic bear market from which we’re still struggling to emerge) weren’t nearly done.The Beginning of the EndOn April 6, 1998 Citicorp and Travelers Group announced that they would merge into a single company.
But there was a problem.
At the time, such a merger would have violated the Glass Steagall Act. If you’re not familiar with it, the Glass Steagall Act is – or rather was – a piece of Depression-era legislation that established the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) and mandated the separation of commercial banks, investment banks, and insurance companies. It incorporated other practical and prudent regulations enacted to safeguard investors and the public , as well.
But , lessons learned from the Depression were eventually forgotten – or maybe more precisely, steamrolled by a sweeping deregulatory movement that took root in 1980.
On the day of the announced combination, Traveler’s chairman, Sandy Weill, addressed impediments to the merger in the New York Times, noting that current law would allow the new Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C) time to divest itself of assets in order to comply with Glass-Steagall.
However, ominously he added: “We are hopeful that over time the legislation will change.”
Just one year later, it did.
The same powerful group of influence-peddling government insiders overturned Glass-Steagall in November 1999, so the illegal merger didn’t have to be reversed. The law that obliterated the prudent separation of FDIC-backed commercial banks and swing-for-the-fences investment banks became known as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act.
This act is what paved the way for giant, financial super firms that are so intertwined in the financial markets they’re now all considered “too-big-to-fail.”An Eerie EpilogueSo what happened to our three players? Were they penalized or held accountable for the undermining of our economy and the implosion of markets? No. They were rewarded.
Robert Rubin went to work for the new Citigroup as a senior advisor of the firm. Rubin made $126 million in cash and stock during his eight years of service, while the bank leveraged itself up by using depositor money. It had to be bailed out in 2008.
Lawrence Summers reportedly took some $20 million from D.E. Shaw & Co., a giant hedge fund that dabbles in derivatives, for a two-year stint doing something nobody at the firm could confirm.
And Phil Gramm, the venerable Texas senator, upon retiring from that powerful position, immediately became vice chairman of the investment bank division of UBS AG (NYSE: UBS).
Yes, UBS – the same Swiss bank that in 2008 had to be backstopped by the Swiss National Bank when its overleveraged and derivatives-laden balance sheet imploded. The same bank that later paid $780 million to settle criminal charges over its conspiracy to defraud the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and federal government of legitimately owed taxes.
These are the kinds of things that are taking place every day thanks to Wall Street’s influence over our executive and legislative branches of government. And you better believe that average Americans and the Occupy Wall Street protestors can sense that, and they know they should be angry. They just can’t put their finger on why.
I can because I’m a Wall Street guy who spent 30 years working within the system. I studied economics and started my career as a trader on the floor of the Chicago Board of Options Exchange (CBOE). I ran the futures and options division of a giant international money-center bank.
I’ve done everything from trading bonds and mortgage-backed securities to running my own hedge funds. And I have hundreds of stories full of corruption and greed – just like this one.
Not everyone on Wall Street is a bad actor. Most of the professionals working in the capital markets across America are good and honest people. But, there are kingpins and kingmakers whose greed is so disgusting they will sink America for their own fistful of dollars.
It’s time we had better insights into what’s really going on and time to indict some of these bad actors.[Editor’s Note: Money Morning Capital Waves Strategist and retired hedge-fund manager Shah Gilani became a national icon in 2008, as he dissected the shady workings of Wall Street, uncovering how the greed of a few brought down the economy of our entire country.He’s since launched a new publication calledWall Street Insights & Indictments. His goal simply is to show you what’s really going on in the markets, so you can “know the story” and make some money. And the best part is, it’s absolutely free. Just sign up by clicking here. You’ll also receive Gilani’s latest report: “5 Ways to Trade the Coming EU Collapse – And Make a Killing”.]A Bilderberg Leader Mario Monti Takes Over Italy in ‘Coup’ by Alex NewmanGlobal Research, November 17, 2011; THE New American -2011-11-16Italy’s new Prime Minister Mario Monti (with wife at left), who rose to power in what critics called a “coup d’etat,” is a prominent member of the world elite in the truest sense of the term. In fact, he is a leader in at least two of the most influential cabals in existence today: the secretive Bilderberg Group and David Rockefeller’s Trilateral Commission. Nicknamed “Super Mario,” Monti is also an “international advisor” to the infamous Goldman Sachs, one of the most powerful financial firms in the world. Critics refer to the giant bank as the “Vampire Squid” after a journalist famously used the term in a hit piece. But its tentacles truly do reach into the highest levels of governments worldwide.
Italy’s Political Crisis
Following the Italian government’s descent into the economic abyss that saw bond yields soar to record highs as the euro-zone began to come apart at the seams, ex-Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi decided to step down. And late last week, President Giorgio Napolitano asked Monti to form a new government. On November 16, the new Prime Minister — who will also serve as Italy’s “Economy Minister” — announced that he was appointing an array of bankers, technocrats, and lawyers to lead the emerging government. After unveiling proposed reforms later this week Monti and his unelected team will face Parliament in a confidence vote.
Some of the nation’s political parties have already said they support the new leadership. But others, including loyal members of Berlusconi’s party, complained of a “coup d’etat” engineered by bankers and the European Union.
“The truth is that there was a big operation, an ‘Italian Job,’ to get Berlusconi out of the way by forcing him to resign,” complained former Interior Minister Roberto Maroni, comparing Berlusconi’s ouster to the movie of that same name made in1969 and remade in 2003. While the ex-Prime Minister was not technically forced to resign, he said it was an act of “responsibility.”
Monti: Insider Extraordinaire
Listed as a member of the “steering committee” on the official Bilderberg website, critics say Monti has “establishment” written all over him. The shadowy group he helps lead includes a roster of the world’s real power brokers — media magnates, royalty, military leaders, big bankers, heads of state and government, key CEOs, and more.
The elite members gather once a year in total secrecy, sparking innumerable theories and widespread concern. In 2011 the group met in Switzerland and attracted more scrutiny than in the past.
But despite the attendance of influential reporters, editors, and media power houses, very little of substance was publicly revealed. It is known, however, that Bilderberg played a crucial role in erecting the increasingly powerful supranational regime in Brussels.
Monti is also the European Group chairman of the infamous Trilateral Commission, according to theorganization‘s website. The secretive group, which also lists among its members some of the most influential members of the world elite, was supposedly founded to bring about closer “cooperation” between North America, Europe, and Japan.
The Commission was founded in 1973 by the infamous banker and power-broker David Rockefeller. “Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure — one world, if you will,” Rockefeller wrote in his 2002 autobiography. “If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.”
Monti is also a prominent leader of more than few smaller “think tanks” promoting more “integration,” big government, and globalism. He has been a long-time and consistent supporter of an “economic government” for the EU, as well as more Brussels meddling in social policies.
His career has included academia, politics, banking, and more. And he has held several prominent positions within the European Union apparatus including the job of European Commissioner for Internal Market, Financial Services, Financial Integration, and Taxation.
The Rescue Plan
“I would like to confirm my absolute serenity and conviction in the capacity of our country to overcome this difficult phase,” Monti proclaimed recently. And he will have plenty of help.
The European Central Bank has started to do everything possible to rescue the profligate Italian government – albeit quietly. According to Bloomberg, the ECB began buying up huge quantities and sizesof the regime’s bonds this week.
“There are no real buyers,” European interest-rate strategy chief Mohit Kumar with Deutsche Bank told the news service. Analysts suspected that the ECB move was designed to bolster confidence in the new Italian government and its leader.
Monti’s first task will be to satisfy EU rulers by imposing massive new taxes on the Italian people. Tough “austerity” measures will follow soon after that. He said more growth — a tough task with new and higher taxes — will be his priority.
“I hope that, governing well, we can make a contribution to the calming and the cohesion of the political forces,” Monti explained after meeting with union bosses.
The Italian government is currently drowning in trillions of euros worth of debt — well over 100 percent of GDP. And the market seems largely unwilling to loan it more money without EU prodding, guarantees, and huge yields.
EU and euro-zone advocates are doing everything possible to avoid a calamity that could bring down their precious supranational government and its regional currency. But Italy, as the third-largest euro-zone economy, is simply too big to bail out, according to experts — even with the emerging “dictatorship” mechanism designed to save bankrupt governments and banks using taxpayer money.
Monti could have until 2013 — the next scheduled election — to implement his “reforms,” assuming he gets his way. Critics, however, are calling for new elections to be held as soon as possible.
Critics, Greece & the Future
While Italy will now be governed by the very definition of an “insider,” Greece faces a similar situation. Its new Prime Minister, Lucas Papademos, was the vice president of the ECB and even worked for the Federal Reserve. He has also been a member of the Trilateral Commission for over a decade.
But critics are outraged. “The rise of bankers and unelected technocrats to power in Greece and Italy shows how the unfolding crisis of the euro-zone is undercutting democracy,” complained Costas Panayotakis, a professor of sociology at the New York City College of Technology at CUNY.
Italian activists had harsh words for Monti, too. “The proposed new coalition government headed by Mario Monti can be a fatal trap for Italy’s future,” explained Campaign for World Bank Reform leader Antonio Tricarico. “If most of political forces from the right and the left would support it, the European Commission and the European Central Bank – whose agenda Monti represents – will rule Italy without any opposition for the years to come, beyond any minimum standard of democratic accountability.”
Analysts said installing pro-EU and single-currency rulers in Greece and Italy was aimed at quieting the growing calls for the euro-zone to be dismantled. But it remains unclear whether they will succeed as the economic crisis continues to spiral out of control across Europe. Alex Newman is a frequent contributor to Global Research.Global Research Articles by Alex Newman.November 23, 2011. By Dr. Kent Moors, Global Energy Strategist, Money Morning:I am in Frankfurt, Germany right now attending three days of meetings, and I must say they’re shaping up to be quite interesting. The focus is on structuring a new financial and organizational approach to developing Polish shale gas. A successful outcome would have an impact on both continental energy sources and the ongoing European debt crisis. And the stakes have become even higher in the past several weeks. In focus this week are the rising energy needs across Europe and what securing considerably greater sources of domestic natural gas will mean to the debt crisis. Meanwhile, we have to consider the potential for some North American companies to generate significant profits by meeting these growing energy demands. As I noted during my last advisory trip to Poland, Warsaw has decided to fast- track its shale gas development. With reserves now estimated to be much higher than initially thought, the country has the opportunity to become self-sufficient and to start exporting gas to other European countries and elsewhere as early as a decade from now. That would have a serious impact on the energy balance in Europe as a whole. With the prospects of additional domestically produced energy, the balance of payments will be improved, and with it the debt picture. Now reinvigorating the Polish picture is not going to do this on its own. Here is where it gets very interesting. What takes place in Poland will expand elsewhere into Western Europe. There are shale gas reserves in Germany, Hungary, Austria, France, the Baltic countries, Sweden, and even the U.K. Political opposition has suspended activities in France, and the Greens in Germany have given notice that they intend to target shale gas operations after their successes in phasing out the country’s nuclear power stations. Poland, however, has no significant opposition to drilling. At least, not at the moment. But as I advised the government in September, that situation is likely to change as the number of wells increases. In order to combat any opposition, the country is going to need to access to drilling technologies developed in the Western Hemisphere, technologies that address the primary concerns about hyrdofracking and horizontal drilling. The North American Advantage. The eight- to 10-year head start North America has had on the rest of the world means there have been significant technological and operational developments in the U.S. and Canada to meet a number of the environmental and logistical problems related to hy drofracking and horizontal drilling. It’s these two advances that have ushered in this whole new world of energy in the United States. Now eight to 10 years may not sound like a huge advantage…Three Measures of Success: Three primary issues are on the table this week. First, companies need to be established in both Poland and more broadly in Europe to coordinate the required field exploration, preparation, drilling, water usage, drilling, processing, environmental protection, supply and support dynamics, gas storage, pipeline networks, terminals, compressor stations, and a range of other matters from training personnel to protecting the transparency necessary in a democratic environment. Second, companies need to have access to funding in ways that will prevent Poland (and other European countries as well) from being dependent upon outside finance. This must be a European Union (EU)-based financing scheme to parallel European-controlled field development and drilling programs. Third, the Polish-then-broader-Europe requirements include immediate access to North America’s “generationally leading” technology. It is at this point that an attitude I have held with companies for years will become operational. The development of shale gas reserves elsewhere in the world will comprise one of the most profitable applications of technology, know-how and experience ever seen. Structural Requirements Ahead. Let me be very clear on this score. U.S. and Canadian companies are set to make significant returns from the Polish experiment – both in Poland itself, and as the applications there move across borders into neighboring states. But this will have to remain a Polish (or German or Austrian or Hungarian) initiative translated into in an EU-wide opportunity. The trick is to structure this as a win-win creation of joint ventures, limited liability companies, holding strategies, and other approaches. Outside companies coming into pan-European major plays like this cannot succeed merely by setting up European-based subsidiaries. This must be a European company in which an American or Canadian company has a vested, but not controlling, interest. The advantage to the European market is access to technology and expertise. The advantage to the outside company is a very lucrative potential revenue flow and an expansion of such work moving forward.November 30, 2011: By David Zeiler, Associate Editor, Money Morning ; With credit drying up across Europe we may finally see the Eurozone experience its “Lehman moment” – a replay investment banking collapse that triggered the 2008 financial crisis. Indeed, European banks are having a harder time getting money – part of the fallout from the Eurozone debt crisis – and the resulting credit crunch could freeze business activity, cause bank runs and plunge Europe into a deep recession that would badly damage the global economy. “The Continent is headed towards deflation if there’s not enough money circulating throughout their financing and banking systems,” said Money Morning Capital Waves Strategist Shah Gilani. “This all becomes self-fulfilling at some point. It’s a very dangerous situation, not just for Europe, but for the whole world.” A global financial crisis would derail the struggling U.S. recovery and pinch the profits of many multinational corporations. Fresh data this week from the European Central Bank (ECB) showed the M3 Eurozone money supply actually shrank in October by 0.6%, its steepest drop since January 2009 – the height of the Lehman Brothers crisis. A shrinking money supply is one of the early warning signals that credit availability is drying up, making it difficult or impossible for banks, businesses, and consumers to obtain loans. “This is very worrying,” Tim Congdon from International Monetary Researchtold The Telegraph. “What it shows is that the implosion of the banking system on the periphery is now outweighing any growth left in the core. We are seeing the destruction of money and it is a clear warning of serious trouble over the next six months.” Signs of capital draining from European banks abound. The bank bond market is already frozen. European banks in the third quarter were only able to sell bonds worth 15% of what they sold in the same period in the previous two years, according to Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C). In the past six months, U.S. money market funds have withdrawn 42% of their money from European banks. And loans to French banks have fallen 69% since the end of May, according to Fitch Ratings. Even retail customers have started to pull their money out. “We are starting to witness signs that corporates are withdrawing deposits from banks in Spain, Italy, France and Belgium,” an analyst at Citigroup wrote in a recent report. “This is a worrying development.” How It Happened. The current credit crunch has its roots in the Eurozone debt crisis; the big European banks such as BNP Paribas SA, Commerzbank (PINK: CRZBY) and Societe Generale SA (PINK: SCGLY) hold much of the debt from Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain (PIIGS) that has forced a series of bailouts and fiscal emergencies. But the billions of euros worth of PIIGS government bonds were considered part of the banks’ assets; it could be used as collateral to serve the banks’ various activities. When the Eurozone debt crisis struck, faith in the value of the PIIGS bonds plummeted, which made it almost impossible to use as collateral. “The discounting of sovereign debt meant that there was less money in the European banking system,” writes John Carney, senior editor of CNBC. “If a one million euro bond previously held as a money-equivalent is now worth just 600,000 euros, the holder has lost 400,000 euros. Multiply that across the banking system, and you have millions of euros of money-equivalents simply vanishing.” Carney said the situation is similar to the impact of the decline in value in the United States of mortgage-backed securities back in 2008. The Bernanke Remedy. However, during the 2008 financial crisis, the U.S. Federal Reserve stepped in to prop up the banks as well as the mortgage market by infusing them with cash. Although the Fed’s European equivalent, the ECB, has continued to buy up PIIGS government bonds in a partially successful attempt to restrain rising bond yields, it has resisted taking action on the scale of the Fed. “This is what happened in the United States in 1930-33,” said Money Morning Global Investing Strategist Martin Hutchinson. “It also happened to a very limited extent in 2008-09. In a real crisis, the interbank lending market seizes up, which collapses even broad money supply. It is the one situation in which the [U.S. Fed Chairman Ben] Bernanke remedy – print the stuff like a madman – works.” But even then, Hutchinson said, the ECB should avoid PIIGS bonds in favor of bonds from more financially stable nations such as Germany, France, Finland and the Netherlands. In fact, the European banks have begged the ECB to do more, particularly more aggressive buying of government bonds. As it is, the big banks are dependent on the ECB; just two weeks ago they took out out $333 billion worth of one-week loans – the largest amount since April 2009. But more drastic action from the ECB appears unlikely, with opposition coming from within the central bank as well as from a German government fearful of triggering inflation. The best that is expected near-term is a December interest rate cut, which won’t do nearly enough. Money Morning‘s Gilani is pessimistic the ECB even has the power to fix the deeper issues, or whether stronger ECB intervention could do anything to prevent the Eurozone’s looming “Lehman moment.” “The ECB doesn’t have the authority to print enough money to ameliorate the situation,” Gilani said. “Buying bonds is a Band-Aid. The real structural problems facing Europe are going to require wholesale lifestyle changes that won’t get done in a year or two. ECB meddling will only serve to extend the problem while they pretend things will sort themselves out.”November 30, 2011. By Shah Gilani, Capital Waves Strategist, Money Morning: The average American has no idea how protected the big banks in this country really are. For the most part we don’t even blink when we are lied to publicly by their CEOs. Maybe that’s because the biggest bank in the world, the U.S. Federal Reserve, which happens to be a creation of and 100% beholden to the banks that it is a master shill for, also lies to us and covers up Wall Street’s misdeeds. How else can you explain the Federal Reserve’s practice of secretly feeding billions of dollars to big banks, and then looking the other way while those same banks lie to the public about their strength so they can raise desperately needed equity and borrow in the debt markets? Why else would the Fed prop up Bear Stearns long enough for JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM) to buy it, and then prop up JPMorgan? Why else would the Fed prop up Merrill Lynch for the benefit of Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC), and then prop up Bank of America as Merrill dragged it down. And why else would the Fed prop up Wachovia just so it could be taken over by Wells Fargo & Co. (NYSE: WFC) – yet another bank that would come to need even more help? Power and Ponzi Schemes: The pat answer from the Fed is that propping up failed banks long enough to be taken over by “healthy” institutions is better for the system than letting them fail. On the surface that’s true, but it’s what’s under the surface that’s destroying America’s free market foundation. Here’s what’s come as a result of the Fed’s actions: The “Super-Six” – JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C), Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS) and Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) – which held $6.8 trillion, or about half the industry’s assets in 2006, had increased their holdings by 39% to $9.5 trillion as of September 2011. So what’s really going on is that the country’s biggest banks, which weren’t healthy when their CEOs lied to us (as they still do), have gotten even bigger. With size comes power – the power to pay lobbyists, the power to pay for legislators, and the power to change regulations. These banks don’t always get what they want exactly when they want it, but they do eventually get what they need to make money hand over fist. The whole thing reminds me of a Ponzi scheme. The Federal Reserve might as well be Bernie Madoff and the banks “feeder funds” in this nationalized scheme to perpetuate the channeling of depositor money into banks and investor money into bank stocks and debt securities. For the chain to be broken the Federal Reserve is going to have to be overhauled – seriously overhauled – and big banks are going to have to be broken up, once and for all. The Truth Comes Out. .How deep is the scheme to keep banks growing and their power expanding? The numbers speak for themselves.
The Fed did everything it could to hide its books from public view, but Bloomberg LP sued the central bank, and in so doing, forced the Fed to comply with the Freedom of Information Act.
Thank you, Bloomberg, this nation owes you a debt of gratitude.
Why would banks or corporations take money they didn’t need? Because it was essentially free – well not exactly free, since they had to pay about 1% interest in some cases and one-tenth of one percent in other cases.
Still, you can make good money borrowing practically for free and investing that money in anything interest bearing. That includes the toxic assets on many borrowers’ books that they didn’t have to sell because they got financing to keep them on their books. Oh, and that’s still happening, a lot.
You see, part of the big lie was that it would take $700 billion of Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) money to aid our stricken banks. Of course, that was front money, or money that the public could see. What the public couldn’t see was how bad things really were, because it couldn’t see how much taxpayer money the Fed was shelling out.
Nor could Treasury officials see it, nor could legislators writing new bank regulatory rules to ensure this wouldn’t happen again.
But it will happen again. It’s just a matter of time.Fixing the Fed for GoodThere is only one solution to our banking problems, which are the root of our economic problems.
The Fed needs to have only one mandate, which is price stability. It should be an open, audited, and transparent apparatus serving the public – not banks.
And, as far as banks go, the more the merrier. Break up all the too-big-to-fail institutions. No bank should be able to hold more than 5% of the whole industry’s assets, and if that gives any one bank too much power, cut the number later on.
It’s time we woke up to the lies we’re being told by the Fed and the banks. It’s time to break the chains that enslave us as a free-market nation.December 2, 2011Money Morning staff reportsThe Eurozone debt crisis has replaced the U.S. financial crisis as the disaster du jour. But make no mistake: U.S. taxpayers will be paying the tab for the U.S. crisis for years.
That’s evidently not true of the banking sector, however, whose massive financial-crisis windfall is just now coming to light.
In its January issue, Bloomberg Markets magazine reveals that – at the March 9, 2009 nadir of the financial crisis – the U.S. Federal Reserve had committed $7.77 trillion to rescuing the American financial system. That total was more than half the value of all that was produced in the U.S. economy for that entire year.
While this was going on however, it was a deep, dark secret. The Fed never let on, for instance, that American banks were in such deep trouble that they required a combined $1.2 trillion on Dec. 8, 2008 – “their neediest day,” Bloomberg said.
But here’s the best part: Many of the biggest banks have ended up doing great as a result of the central bank’s largesse.
Here’s why: Because these “emergency” Fed loans gave banks access to ultra-low (well-below-market) interest rates between August 2007 and April 2010, banks worldwide were able to earn an estimated $13 billion.
Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, told Bloomberg that banks seemed to have it both ways.
Banks “were either in bad shape or taking advantage of the Fed giving them a good deal,” he said. “The former contradicts their public statements. The latter – getting loans at below-market rates during a financial crisis – is quite a gift.”
Shah Gilani, a financial-crisis expert and Money Morning columnist who edits the free Wall Street Insights & Indictmentsnewsletter, put it more simply: “The average American has no idea how protected the big banks in this country really are. Maybe that’s because the biggest bank in the world is the U.S. Federal Reserve. And it happens to be a creation of – and 100% beholden to – the banks that it is a master shill for. It also lies to us and covers up Wall Street’s misdeeds.”
What follows is a “power ranking” of the 20 banks that saw their outstanding loans peak at more than $25 billion – and some insight on how this Fed lending enabled Wall Street to profit, even as Main Street suffered.1. Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) Borrowing at the Peak (Date): $107 billion, Sept. 29, 2008. With worldwide financial markets in a meltdown mode, Morgan’s apex of loans from U.S. Federal Reserve offerings came just two weeks after Lehman Brothers, its erstwhile competitor, had filed for the biggest corporate bankruptcy in U.S. history (more on that in a moment).
2. Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C) Borrowing at the Peak (Date): $99.5 billion, Jan. 20, 2009. Talk about being money hungry. The first installment of money from the better-known Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) wasn’t nearly enough to stop Citi’s bleeding – which is why, in January 2009, Citi required a second infusion of bailout money. No surprise here … that’s also when Citi’s Fed-facilities borrowing reached its apex.
3. Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC) Borrowing at the Peak (Date): $91.4 billion, Feb. 26, 2009. Like Citi, Bank of America was a TARP double-dipper. It also snapped up two companies – Merrill Lynch and Countrywide Financial Corp. – that, too, were borrowing billions from the U.S. central bank.
4. Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC (NYSE ADR: RBS) Borrowing at the Peak (Date): $84.5 billion, Oct. 10, 2008. At No. 4, the highest-ranking foreign bank on this list, RBS also got a hefty bit of support from its native United Kingdom government.
5. State Street Bank (NYSE: STT) Borrowing at the Peak (Date): $77.8 billion, Oct. 1, 2008. The old business adage tells us to cut out the middleman. But not State Street. In fact, Bloomberg News reports that State Street initially served as a middleman, tapping into the central bank’s liquidity facilities to help money-market funds meet soaring redemption demands (collecting a fee for its trouble, of course) – but finally turned to the Fed for help, too.
6. UBS AG (NYSE: UBS) Borrowing at the Peak (Date): $77.2 billion, Nov. 28, 2008. A double-dipper of sorts, too, European banking heavyweight UBS achieved this distinction by getting help from the Fed and also receiving a substantive aid package from the Swiss government.
7. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS) Borrowing at the Peak (Date): $69 billion, Dec. 31, 2008. Goldman Sachs execs may not have been celebrating on New Year’s Eve, when its Fed loans hit their apex. That was also the close of the month that saw Goldman report its first quarterly loss since its 1999 IPO.
8. JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM) Borrowing at the Peak (Date): $68.6 billion, Oct. 1, 2008. Like BofA, JPMorgan used the crisis as a cover for a shopping spree. And like BofA, JPMorgan snapped up two other substantive central bank borrowers – Bear Stearns (which it had rescued a bit before this) and Washington Mutual (acquired after a Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) seizure in September 2008).
9. Deutsche Bank AG (NYSE: DB) Borrowing at the Peak (Date): $66 billion, Nov. 6, 2008. It may have been Germany’s biggest bank, but it was one of the U.S. central bank’s biggest debtors: During the 439 days it held Fed liquidity money, Deutsche Bank maintained one of the largest average daily balances at $12.5 billion, according to Bloomberg News.
10. Barclays PLC (NYSE ADR: BCS) Borrowing at the Peak (Date): $64.9 billion, Dec. 4, 2008. Borrowing by the London-based Barclays topped out only a couple of months after a failed first attempt to buy out Lehman Brothers. No matter. That led to a killer deal that enabled Barclays to snap up some of the failed U.S. brokerage firm’s sweetest assets.
11. Merrill Lynch Borrowing at the Peak (Date): $62.1 billion, Sept. 26, 2008. By the time Merrill Lynch maxed out its central-bank borrowing, the “bullish-on-America” broker had given the nod to a buyout deal from Bank of America. Just a couple months later, the double-whammy of a gargantuan fourth-quarter loss coupled with the revelation of 11th-hour bonus payments to top execs ended the regime of then-CEO John Thain.
12. Credit Suisse Group (NYSE ADR: CS) Borrowing at the Peak (Date): $60.8 billion, Aug. 27, 2008. Another example of U.S. taxpayer money at work as this Swiss bank got a big boost from central-bank bucks. As Forbes magazine most delicately stated: “Swiss bank … was helped out by U.S. dollars. Credit Suisse had a sizable average daily balance of $13.3 billion – for the 386 days it was in hock to the Fed.”
13. Dexia SA Borrowing at the Peak (Date): $58.5 billion, Dec. 31, 2008. Another foreign bank that required U.S. rescue, this French-Belgium-Luxembourg bank didn’t seem to learn its lesson: Dexia is once again under pressure – this time over its exposure to the European financial crisis.
14. Wachovia Corp. Borrowing at the Peak (Date): $50 billion, Oct. 9, 2008. By the time Wachovia’s central-bank borrowing hit its apex, it was the rope in a takeover tug of war that pitted Citi against Wells Fargo. Wells ultimately prevailed, and snapped up Wachovia.
15. Lehman Brothers Holdings (PINK: LEHMQ) Borrowing at the Peak (Date): $46 billion, Sept. 15, 2008. Lehman’s borrowing peaked on the same day that it filed for the biggest corporate bankruptcy in U.S. history. The company, with more than $690 billion in assets, “became a victim, in effect the only true icon to fall in a tsunami that has befallen the credit markets,” Manhattan Bankruptcy Judge James Peck said after a seven-hour bankruptcy hearing that was held exactly one week later.
16. Wells Fargo & Co. (NYSE: WFC) Borrowing at the Peak (Date): $45 billion Feb. 26, 2009. Not surprisingly, Wells Fargo’s borrowing apex was reached a couple of months after the already referenced buyout of Wachovia. Because it had to absorb the trashed assets of a stumbling Wachovia, Wells Fargo had to take a big hit to its earnings for the final quarter of that year.
17. Bear Stearns Borrowing at the Peak (Date): $30 billion, March 28, 2008. The Fed couldn’t do enough for a Bear Stearns: Not only did the central bank lend money from its still-new liquidity program, it also helped broker the sale to JPMorgan at a bargain price. All the Fed had to do was assume $29 billion in lousy mortgage-backed assets in a facility dubbed “Maiden Lane” (because of the street that runs beside the New York Federal Reserve in Manhattan).
18. BNP Paribas SA Borrowing at the Peak (Date): $29.3 billion, April 18, 2008. Yet another foreign bank – this one France’s largest – BNP Paribas was in hock to the U.S. central bank for two years – a relationship that started in December 2007. And like Dexia, another foreign bank that required central bank rescue, BNP also failed to learn its lesson: Data from Barclay’s Capital says BNP has the largest exposure to Greek debt of any French bank.
19. Hypo Real Estate Bank International AG Borrowing at the Peak (Date): $28.7 billion, Nov. 4, 2008. Bloomberg News reports show that this German commercial lender was yet another “double-dipper:” It tapped into U.S. Fed loans through the New York-based unit of a banking subsidiary. Hypo also reaped billions in guarantees and emergency credit from its home government.
20. Fortis Bank Borrowing at the Peak (Date): $26.3 billion, Feb. 26, 2009. Until it was broken into pieces, nationalized and pieces of it sold to … of all institutions … BNP Paribas, the banking arm of Fortis also snagged billions from the governments of Belgium and Luxembourg.[Editor’s Note: If you’re fed up with the rampant corruption, double-dealing, and protection of Wall Street by Washington (at the expense of the taxpayers on America’s Main Street, then you need to read Shah Gilani’s Wall Street Insights & Indictments newsletter. As a retired hedge-fund manager, Gilani is a former Wall Street insider who knows where all the bodies are buried.December 5, 2011. By Keith Fitz-Gerald, Chief Investment Strategist, Money MorningOne of the biggest problems with Wall Street’s malfeasance is how the ruling elite view legal settlements – as little more than an acceptable cost of doing business.
Well, no more.
Thanks to Judge Jed Rakoff we may see some real regulatory action leading to good old-fashioned investigations, perp walks, and even jail for the guilty.
I’m not talking just about the Bernie Madoffs or the Raj Rajaratnams either. I’m talking about potentially CEOs and even entire corporate boards.
Judge Rakoff recently rendered a 15-page decision rejecting the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) $285 million settlement with Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C) over toxic mortgages, calling it “neither reasonable, nor fair, nor adequate, nor in the public interest.”
This is important because settlements like these have been a farce for years – little more than the financial equivalent of a parking ticket and having about as much impact.
In fact, in a world where banking secrecy is paramount and investment firms like Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS), JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM), Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC) and others rule the roost, they’re little more than obfuscations of the truth.
The investigations into these banks are toothless or highly secretive at best. Rarely does the public see anything even remotely resembling full disclosure.
Instead we’re supposed to be placated by headlines insinuating that the SEC, the National Futures Association (NFA) and more than 20 other regulatory agencies are looking out for our best interests.
Who are they kidding?A Drop in the BucketRemember the $550 million fine Goldman was forced to pay for its role in toxic credit default swaps (CDOs)? At the time it was the largest ever levied.
SEC officials couldn’t stumble over themselves fast enough nor get enough sound bites. I recall lots of PR shots with earnest-looking people evidently proud of themselves for having made Goldman pony up at the time.
And the mainstream press loved it. But there was one tiny problem.
The firm booked $13.3 billion that year. Paying off the SEC in a settlement that neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing was an acceptable cost of doing business that amounted to a mere 4% of revenue.
The proposed Citi settlement was much the same. It would have required Citi to give up $160 million of alleged ill-gotten profits, $30 million of interest, and a $95 million kicker for negligence.
Bear in mind, Citi reported full-year net income of $10.6 billion on revenue of $60.5 billion in 2010 which means that, like the Goldman fine, the settlement is a drop in the bucket at a mere 1.50% of net income.I think Judge Rakoff’s ruling has been a long time coming. And I love the fact that he specifically called out the Citi settlement as too lenient – especially when it also potentially allows Citi to skate on reimbursing investors for the $700 million the firm lost as part of its toxic mortgage trading.
You may not realize this, but private investors cannot bring securities claims based on negligence. In my mind, they should be able to, but for now this is the way the law stands.
The way I see it, Rakoff’s decision finally gets at the core of what caused the financial crisis: toothless regulators beholden to the very powerful elite they were supposed to keep in check.
I am all too glad to see him show the public the first glimpse of backbone we’ve seen yet.
Washington, are you watching and listening?Sitting on the Bench, Swinging for the FencesJudge Rakoff noted in his ruling that there is an “overriding public interest in knowing the truth.” Yes, there is. And as Judge Rakoff put it, the SEC’s core duty is to “see that the truth emerges.” In the event that it doesn’t as part of the settlement process, “courts must not, in the name of deference of convenience, grant judicial enforcement, to the agency’s contrivances.”
I did some checking and I learned that this is not the first time Rakoff has stuck it to the SEC.
Apparently, he’s the one who made headlines when he initially rejected the BofA settlement related to that bank’s shotgun takeover of Merrill Lynch & Co., a fact I’d forgotten.
At the time, Rakoff rejected the SEC’s $33 million BofA settlement on the grounds that it punished shareholders. The SEC then came back with a much more realistic $150 million agreement.
Some think Rakoff has gone too far. They worry that judges have no business interfering in agreements ostensibly reached by private parties.
But I disagree. I believe the SEC is the public.
And the public has the right to know about any case where the transparency of the financial markets (or lack thereof) has so impacted the markets as to destroy the wealth of millions of hard working people and bring the global markets to the edge of oblivion.
Frankly, I’d love to shake Judge Rakoff’s hand.
I hope what he’s done encourages judges to finally stand up for the body of law they supposedly represent and the public that it’s intended to protect.December 16, 2011. By Keith Fitz-Gerald, Chief Investment Strategist, Money MorningOn Wednesday, Fitch Ratings Inc. downYgraded its credit ratings on five of Europe’s biggest banks, and while that decision made headlines, it’s not the most important story to come out of Europe this week.
The real story, which the mainstream media is neglecting, is that there are signs of an underground run on Europe’s banks.
Almost nobody’s talking about it, but there are indications money is already moving out of the European Union (EU) faster than rats abandoning a sinking ship.
Not through the front door, mind you. There are no lines, no distraught customers and no teller windows being boarded up – not yet, anyway.
For now the run is through the back door, and there are four things that make me think so:Italy’s planned ban on cash transactions over 1,000 euros, or about $1,300.French, Spanish, and Italian banks have run out of collateral and are now pledging real assets.Swiss officials are preparing for the end of the euro with capital control measures.Europe’s CEOs are actively preparing for the end of the euro despite governmental reassurances.Signs of a RunLet’s start with Italy and Prime Minister Mario Monti‘s plans to restrict cash transactions over 1,000 euros (down from the current limit of 2,500 euros, or about $3,200).
Ostensibly the move is about reducing tax evasion by prohibiting the movement of large sums of cash outside the official transactional system, but I think it speaks to something far more sinister – namely that the Italian government knows things are going to get far worse than they’re publicly admitting.
Consider: Cash is a stored value mechanism. There’s not a lot of it because at any given point in time, most of it is on deposit with banks in any country. That’s as true in Italy as it is here in the United States when real interest rates are positive during “healthy” times.
But when real interest rates turn negative, people are likely to withdraw cash and stuff it quite literally under mattresses or in coffee tins. (Real interest rates are the official lending interest rates as adjusted for inflation.)
In such an environment, holding cash in a bank becomes nothing more than an imputed tax and a disincentive for deposits. It’s also a significant thorn in the side of central bankers who want to control their country’s money supply, because cash can operate outside the system and, specifically, logjam reform efforts.
The reason is really pretty simple. If you have negative real interest rates, and cash transactions are largely restricted or removed altogether, then the only way to effectively use cash is to withdraw it and spend it… immediately.
In other words, by limiting cash transactions to 1,000 euros or less, Italy is putting into place a punitive financial control fully intended to keep money moving in a system lest it become worthless or worse – hoarded and worthless.
Now let’s move on to banks.Banking BreakdownMany investors have never thought about it before, but there are really only three sources of funding for a bank:Money that’s effectively “lent” to the bank by customers placing their assets on deposit;Short-term money market funds;And long-term bonds or securitized products based on long-term paper sold to bond investors.Together, the three funding sources are like the legs on a stool – lose any one of them and the stool will topple over because it is no longer balanced. Cut the legs down and the stool collapses – that’s what is happening now.Individuals, pension funds and institutions alike are withdrawing funds from Italian, Spanish and French banks. Money has long since left Greece, Ireland, and Portugal.
Thing is, though, it’s not just European money that’s fleeing. Various reports from The Economist, Bloomberg, CNBC and others suggest that American financials may have pulled more than 40% of their funds from all European banks and nearly two-thirds of their total deposits away from French banks. This is drying up short-term lending capacity and driving up interbank lending costs.
At the same time, money managers the world over are selling their European bonds. This is driving prices lower and yields higher to the point where the cost of debt is now prohibitive (bond prices and yields move in opposite directions). As a result, new bank bond issuance may be down as much as 85% over the past two years, which further hobbles cash hungry European banks.
Finally, facing a near total loss of short-term financing alternatives and having run out of short-term liquidity needed to operate, a number of EU banks are reportedly having to pledge real assets as collateral for badly needed loans.
Normally, banks would use loans, leases or receivables to accomplish the same thing. The fact that they’re now having to throw in real estate, their own property, and other assets into the mix signals extreme levels of financial stress that are far worse than what’s been disclosed publicly.Bracing for the InevitableSwiss Finance Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf noted to the Swiss Parliament that she’s got a working group examining capital controls and negative interest rates as a means of preventing an economy-crushing Swiss franc appreciation when the euro fails. That’s not if the euro fails, but when the Euro fails.
This is an especially dire sign because capital control measures like those the Swiss officials are considering are inevitably the end of any failed monetary system.
European CEOs and their companies are taking matters into their own hands by actively preparing for the destruction of the euro.
Some, like German machinery maker GEA Group AG (PINK: GEAGY) are limiting the maximum funds on deposit with any single bank. Others, like Grupo Gowex, are moving cash and deposits to Germany away from Spanish banks (and Grupo Gowex is a Spanish company based in Madrid, so this is especially telling). BMW plans to cut production by 30% while also tapping into central bank reserves. According to Chief Financial Officer Friedrich Eichiner, the company is already reducing its leasing portfolio to cope with the potential decrease in car values that would impact its borrowing capacity.
As for what all this means for our money, that’s pretty clear – think SAFETY FIRST. The return of your capital is far more important than the return on your capital at the moment.
Here’s what I suggest.Buy dollars – I know they’re a bad long-term bet, but short-term, they’re the best looking horse in the global glue factory as long as the euro is under pressure.Stick with what you have in place now and manage risk with trailing stops. Confine new stock purchases to high-growth, low-debt emerging markets rather than low-growth, high-debt developed markets.Short gold and oil in the short-term. Both are priced in dollars, which means both will fall as the dollar rises in conjunction with panic in the EU.Purchase inverse funds that track the broader markets. If the euro fails, it will tank the broader markets. Then, once it becomes clear that the world will live on, the markets will disconnect from Europe and begin to rise again in earnest.Run the other way if people tell you that banks are a great investment. They are speculative at best given the number of skeletons still in the closet.Euro Crisis: Britain’s Financial Arsonist Returns to the Scene of the Crime. By Finian Cunningham. URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28204. Global Research, December 14, 2011. The incendiary finance capitalism unleashed by Britain 25 years ago is at the heart of Europe’s raging debt woes.You either have to admire British Prime Minister David Cameron’s brass neck, or wince at his arrogant stupidity. The smart money is probably on the latter option.For here you had the British leader heading to the European Union summit convened last week to “salvage” the EU from its the terminal debt crisis – a crisis that is threatening the survival of the Euro single currency, the political future of the European Union and may even be sounding the death knell for the faltering capitalist world economy.Yet, given the stakes involved, all Cameron wanted to do was exploit the crisis in order to claw further concessions for the City of London’s stock exchange. Such self-serving opportunism was rebuffed by his German and French counterparts, whereupon Cameron stomped his feet and declared that Britain would exercise its veto over EU plans for tighter fiscal controls on member states. The British veto may now hamper the EU’s ability to assuage the financial markets, which are daily extracting pounds of flesh with exorbitant rates of borrowing on government bonds.Not that the leaders of the other 26 EU states are acting as noble knights in shining armour, vying to protect their populaces from further economic suffering. The revised EU treaty they have in mind will only deepen that suffering by expanding austerity and cutbacks for the majority of people across Europe. The fiscal and economic policies of member states will henceforth be dictated by the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund. That is, national sovereignty supposedly serving the people, according to their votes, is to be replaced by the rule of unelected bankers and technocrats. In a very real way, the debt crisis of Europe is serving to usher in a dictatorship of finance capitalism. As Paul Craig Roberts noted recently on Global Research with regard to the EU – “the banks have taken over” [1].Ironically, it is German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her French collaborator, Prime Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, who are foremost in marching mainland Europe into the arms of this dictatorship.However, Cameron’s one-man crusade at the EU summit was no act of Churchillian defiance to defend the rights of the people in the face of financial fascism. Britain under this present Conservative leader has been bludgeoned with one of the most draconian austerity budgets inflicted anywhere across Europe, wielded without mercy against workers and aimed deliberately at placating first and foremost the finance markets. Indeed, Cameron’s government is one of the main advocates of deeper social spending cuts for the rest of Europe.So the notion that the British leader was in some way making a fight-them-on-the-beaches kind-of stand towards other European leaders/quislings of finance capital is risible.And what is even more risible is that the sole objective of Cameron and his foreign secretary William Hague was to secure concessions for the City of London. Many people in Europe have good reason to believe that it is the City of London and its brand of finance capitalism that has created and provoked the debt crisis in the first place.It was Cameron’s much-admired predecessor Margaret Thatcher who oversaw the systematic deregulation of the London Stock Exchange, starting in 1986 with what became known as the “Big Bang” – the wholesale removal of controls on financial transactions. From then on, the British economy went from one based on manufacture and production to one hallmarked by financial speculation. London became the money capital of the world, outflanking New York. The financialisation of other economies would follow the British slash-and-burn economic path, as the new culture of predatory financiers and investors used speculative profiteering to gut manufacturing bases.The deregulation of financial markets was a showpiece policy of subsequent British governments, whether Conservative or Labour. It spawned a plethora of “financial innovations” such as hostile takeovers, downsizing, short selling and derivative trading, whereby money and debt were recycled and multiplied fictitiously – with inevitable catastrophic consequences. This of course is the ineluctable, historic dynamic of late capitalism. The system tends to mount up massive poverty and thereby becomes incapable of producing goods and services because the conventional profit system becomes exhausted. That is why late capitalism has more and more turned into a form of debt-ridden financial arson in order to recklessly eke out the last reserves of profit.In previous centuries, it was England that innovated industrial capitalism. At the end of the 20th Century it was the British (and their Anglo-American culprits) who have the dubious honour of unleashing finance capitalism on the rest of the world. The new brand of capitalism can be traced directly to the collapse of banks and institutions, such as Barings, Lehman Brothers and Long-Term Capital Management, and to the collapse of pension funds and property assets dragging millions of people into debt. And now this particular British innovation of incendiary capitalism can be traced to the collapse of entire countries.The spectacle of bankrupt David Cameron swaggering over to Europe to ask equally bankrupt European governments for more deregulatory concessions for the City of London is about as stupefying as an arsonist returning to the scene of the crime – and asking for more gasoline.Finian Cunningham is Global Research’s Middle East and East Africa correspondent. cunninghamfin@yahoo.com.November 25, 2011. By Kerri Shannon, Associate Editor, Money Morning. While most Americans will have to pinch pennies to come up with extra cash this holiday season, our leaders in Congress won’t have much to worry about. Despite failing to deliver on a number of promises and assignments, like developing a debt-reduction plan, members of the House of Representatives and the Senate will still receive their annual salary of $174,000. Plus, many will make millions more through investment gains. If you are surprised to discover that 58% of our congressional leaders have the investment savvy to turn a six-figure salary into millions, don’t feel bad.
You see, there’s more to that story: Our friends in Washington aren’t competing on a level playing field .
According to a Nov. 13 CBS News “60 Minutes” report, our elected leaders in Congress may be using information gained from their “insider” positions to make highly profitable trades in the stock market.
If you or I used “inside” information to profit in the U.S stock market, we could expect a visit from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the U.S. Justice Department. And those “visits” would only represent the start of our troubles.
The same would be true for a corporate executive, a member of the executive branch , or even a federal judge. In every case, the use of inside information would be considered a punishable criminal act.
But, it’s a completely different story for Congress, where those same laws simply don’t apply. For those elected leaders in Congress, this form of insider trading may well be unethical. But it’s also completely legal.
Congressional leaders, even though privy to non-public information, are not considered corporate insiders, and so can trade on such insights and escape penalty. Congressional staffers and lobbyists also are exempt.
Just look at U.S. Rep. Spencer Bachus, R-AL, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.According to a Nov. 13 “60 Minutes” report, Rep. Bachus attended closed-door briefings in September 2008 with then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke. Congressional leaders in those meetings were warned that a “global financial meltdown” was about to occur.
The very next day, Bachus bought stock options that allowed him to profit if and when the economy tanked. A financial disclosure showed that he turned a profit trading General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE) during the financial crisis.
Or look at Rep. John Boehner, R-OH, one of the members of Congress who bought health insurance stocks during the 2009 healthcare debate. Rep. Boehner fought against a government-funded insurance plan that would compete with publicly traded companies in the private sector. And those private-sector insurers saw their share prices escalate after the provision died in Congress – and after Rep. Boehner had already purchased the related stocks.
Former Rep. Dennis Hastert, R-IL, made $2 million from selling land he owned after receiving a federal earmark to build a parkway near his property. Former Sen. Judd Gregg, R-NH, helped get $70 million in funds to go toward redeveloping a U.S. Air Force base in which he and his brother had a commercial interest. And Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, bought shares of the 2008 Visa Inc. (NYSE: V) initial public offering (IPO) – while legislation affecting credit card companies was debated in the House. That’s just a taste of the legal insider trading going on by our elected representatives. “This is yet another prime example of how Congress passes laws that apply to us as citizens, but exempts themselves,” Money Morning reader Scott S. wrote to us. “No wonder why many of them spend hundreds of thousands to get elected to a position that pays less than $200,000; the benefits far outweigh the salary… all at the expense of the people they were elected to represent.”A $6.3 Billion Bet Gone Bad. By Louis Basenese, Chief Investment Strategist. In yesterday’s column, I took the time to explain Wall Street’s newest accounting trick – re-hypothecation.
Today, I want to share how it led to the loss of $1.2 billion in customer funds and the ultimate demise of MF Global (Other OTC: MFGLQ.PK). And more importantly, what we should take away from this unfortunate situation…
Greed is Good?
MF Global’s problems didn’t start with re-hypothecation. They started with something much simpler – greed.
The firm wanted to make a bet that eurozone bonds would remain default free. I’ll concede that’s a smart bet, given the formation of the European Financial Stability Facility.
Essentially, MF Global was banking on a European version of “too big too fail” – betting that the indebted eurozone countries were too important to the global economy to let them default.
But a smart bet doesn’t translate into a risk-free bet. And leverage only magnifies risk, which is something MF Global learned the hard way.
You see, MF Global didn’t invest a modest amount in bonds of some of Europe’s most indebted nations (Italy, Spain, Belgium, Portugal and Ireland). It invested $6.3 billion. That’s equal to more than five times the firm’s book value!
Now, you might be asking yourself, how in the world was MF Global able to make such an outsized bet? With off-balance sheet transactions, of course.
(Remember, that’s how Wall Street typically tries concealing its transgressions. Case in point: Enron and special purpose entities.)
In this case, MF Global was specifically using “repurchase and reverse repurchase transactions to maturity” to keep its actions off the balance sheet.
I won’t bog you down with the details of repo-to-maturity trade. Here’s the gist…
MF Global buys a ton of European bonds with high yields maturing in 2012. It then turns around and uses those bonds as collateral to borrow money at very low interest rates.
The way this trade works out is simple…
Until the bonds mature, MF Global earns the spread – the difference between the high interest it receives on the bonds and the low interest rates it pays on the borrowed funds. When the bonds mature, MF Global uses the principal received to pay off its loans. Simple as that.
But it sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it?
Well, it seemed a bit surprising to MF Global’s CEO, Jon Corzine, too. In the firm’s most recent earnings conference call, he said, “The spread between interest earned and the financing cost of the underlying repurchase agreement has often been attractive even as the structure of the transaction themselves essentially eliminates market and financing risk.”
In other words, such risk free trades shouldn’t exist. And ultimately, they don’t.
Can You Say, “Margin Call?”
The big risk inherent in MF Global’s repo-to-maturity trades was liquidity.
At any point, MF Global’s lenders could require more collateral. And that’s exactly what they did, as the debt crisis in Europe became more uncertain.
The only problem? MF Global didn’t have any cash of its own lying around to meet the margin calls. So it pledged its customers’ funds – via re-hypothecation – as additional collateral.
The straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back came from the New York Fed.
Earlier in the year, the New York Fed designated MF Global a primary dealer, allowing it to trade directly with the bank in the buying and selling of United States government debt.
With worries mounting about MF Global’s solvency, the Fed issued a margin call of its own on Friday, October 28. And the jig was up.
MF Global filed for bankruptcy protection on Monday, October 31. Ever since then, we’ve been unearthing the details surrounding the company’s ultimate demise.
Bottom line: Leverage cuts both ways. Wall Street’s elite always seem to forget about this fundamental principle time and again. Perhaps it’s because they’re always investing with other people’s money instead of their own?
Nevertheless, let MF Global’s bankruptcy be yet another reminder that there are no risk-free trades. And that’s why we should relentlessly favor position-sizing over making outsized bets.December 22, 2011. Occupy Wall Street, Consider This My Gift to You… by Shah Gilani. Dear Reade. Out of far left field, I see something coming that I never expected.It’s more like the coming together of pieces of a puzzle that have eluded us for too long.By the way, Occupy Wall Street, if you’re listening, and I hope you are, and you’re still floundering (which I know you are) without a cause that anybody can really wrap their heads around, drop your drums, chants, and wanderings, and make the coming together of this puzzle what you’re protesting.And make what could result what you are demanding.Because, really, this could be the mother lode.The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is accusing six former executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac of playing down the risk to investors of their firms’ aggressive fast-forward into subprime mortgages… which caused them to implode spectacularly.Two separate civil suits, filed last Friday, allege that the executives “knowingly misled investors” who owned shares in the companies and were thus deprived of critical information against which meaningful investment decisions are generally made.The two wards, currently under U.S. conservatorship (life support attended by a wet-nurse), were themselves spared being sued, on account of their signing civil non-prosecution agreements and promising to cooperate and not dispute allegations (and also not have to admit nor deny wrongdoing). Yet the SEC is seeking financial penalties, disgorgement, and an order barring guilty parties from serving as officers or directors of any public companies in the future against the implicated executives.The SEC faces an uphill battle based on one word – “subprime.”The problem is, subprime has never been legally defined.You know what it means, I know what it means, everybody knows what it means, without knowing its exact definition. But if there’s no definition of subprime, defense lawyers will counter that it’s not possible to sue based on a standard that has never been defined.How about we compare mortgages to cars and subprime to clunkers. If you’re on my used car lot and I offer you two cars at the same price and don’t tell you one is a clunker, is that fair? You wouldn’t need me to define “clunker.” If I said one was a clunker, you would simply choose the other car; after all, it’s the same price.There is a difference, there’s a big difference.Over on the Fannie and Freddie lots between 2006 and 2007, they were loading up on clunkers and not telling anyone what they were stocking. In fact, they were saying things like, “basically (we) have no subprime exposure” in the single-family realm.They lied.One of the reasons they were loading up on subprime was because Wall Street banks were eating their lunch by buying up subprime loans, packaging them, and selling them to investors hand over fist, and Fannie and Freddie wanted in on that very lucrative business. It’s not that they hadn’t dabbled in subprime before; they had. But as they saw stresses in the marketplace on the better mortgages in their portfolios, they still loaded up on far weaker credits; also known in the business as SUBPRIME.So what’s next?There are going to be a lot of emails and other testimony coming out about who knew what when, and who lied to who to make how much.It’s going to be fun to watch this thing unfold.But the whole point of this piece of the puzzle coming to light is that, to make their bonuses bigger and their options worth more, these executives leveraged their essentially “private” companies knowing that their losses would be “socialized” (paid for by taxpayers) if their bets fell apart.Their lies are no different than the lies told to investors by the big banks during the credit crisis (and most of the time, for that matter).Yes, if the SEC wins their cases, there’s hope that the lying executives of our biggest banks (and, if there is a God, the liars at the Federal Reserve, too) will be brought to justice for misleading not only their investors, and the American public that bailed them out, but also Congress (not that they would ever lie), who crafted legislation to save us from another financial catastrophe without knowing how the banks and the Fed lied to us all.Thanks to Bloomberg LP and Fox News Networks LLC – who sued the Fed to get them to cough up data under the Freedom of Information Act – we know just how much they all lied.We now know the bankers were telling lies to our faces while being propped up by the backdoor boys at the Fed. Heck, most Fed regional bank presidents didn’t know, the Treasury Secretary didn’t know. Nobody but the bankers and the Fed knew that they were lying to us.Again, courtesy of Bloomberg, here’s what they were saying, when they were saying it, and how much money they got from the Fed to keep their doors open on the exact dates that their borrowings peaked:On September 21, 2008, Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack said, “Morgan Stanley is in the strongest possible position.” By September 29, 2008, they had borrowed $107 billion from the Fed and took another $10 billion in TARP money.On January 16, 2009, Citicorp CEO Vikram Pandit said, “We have an irreplaceable franchise.” By January 20, 2009, they had borrowed $99.5 billion from the Fed and took $45 billion in TARP money.On January 22, 2009, Bank of America CEO Kenneth D. Lewis said, “The diversity and strength of our company is allowing us to continue to invest in our business to drive future profit growth.” By February 26, 2009, they had borrowed $91.4 billion from the Fed and took $45 billion in TARP money.On December 16, 2008, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein said, “Our deep and global client franchise, experienced and talented people and strong balance sheet position our firm well.” By December 31, 2008, they had borrowed $69 billion from the Fed and took $10 billion in TARP money.On February 23, 2009, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said, “We believe we have a fortress balance sheet.” By February 26, 2009, they had borrowed $48 billion from the Fed and took $25 billion in TARP money.On March 6, 2009, Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf said, “We couldn’t feel better about the future.” Meanwhile, as of February 26, 2009, they had borrowed $45 billion from the Fed and took $25 billion in TARP money.They are all liars. They should all be prosecuted for misleading their investors, the public, and Congress.It was these very banks that were feeding crap to Fannie and Freddie and at the same time competing with them to grow the whole pie for all their bonuses and stock options.It was a giant scheme – don’t you get it?And because they are such good liars they, the banks, and the Fed will tell us and Congress that we can’t handle the truth and they lied to us to protect us from the reality of how bad things really were.Really? We need to be protected from the truth so we can continually be lied to so they can all make more money?Sure, that’s why total assets held by the country’s above-named biggest banks have risen 39% since 2006. That’s why average banker pay in 2010 was the same as it was in 2007. That’s why banks spent 33% more money lobbying Congress from 2006 through 2010. That’s why Dodd-Frank isn’t completed and never will be. That’s why America has become a sinkhole.And speaking of sinkholes…No, I’m not going to point to that former MF Global leader Jon Corzine, who used to brag that he co-authored Sarbanes-Oxley when he was a U.S. Senator (such an august body!), which hopefully he will be hung by, along with the entire gallery of rogues above who deserve the gallows… no, not him.Time out…In case you Occupy Wall Streeters missed the other pieces of the puzzle, there was the list of lies the bankers foisted on us while being aided and abetted by the lying Fed and how they should all come under the axe of Sarbanes-Oxley, after all, it is still the law of the land. Those are the pieces of the puzzle that need to come together.But, alas, I digress once again; back to Freddie and Fannie.No doubt you knew that Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 1999, a House member since 1979, author of the Contract With America, and the distinguished first House member in history (he will like this, he is an historian, did you know?) to be disciplined (and fined $300,000) for ethics violations. (He actually faced 84 charges during his, did I say “distinguished,” term, and quit before he could be kicked out of that, did I already say “august,” body).When he “quit” he said, “I’m willing to lead, but I’m not willing to preside over cannibals.” Good for him! Because once freed, the august historian was called upon to eat at the august table of Freddie Mac.Of course, he didn’t approach them. He says, “I was approached to offer strategic advice.” Nice work for $1.6 million if you can get it, being an “historian” I mean. And offering The Freddie …”advice on precisely what they didn’t do.”He actually said that.Oh, what they didn’t do, now I get it.The Newton bomb must have been talking about Freddie not raising the fees it charged back in 1995.You probably don’t remember, but back then some actually, really august members of the House wanted Freddie and Fannie to raise their fees to make them more competitive with private mortgage outfits. There was serious concern back then that the Government Sponsored Enterprises were too enterprising and, with their de facto government backing, could raise money cheaper than private outfits and outcompete them in their rather large business space.But Newt-to-the-rescue – the same Newt who said, “I’ve never done a favor for Fannie or Freddie” saw to it that the proposed fees would never see the light of day. Ah, all in a day’s work over at our august Capitol.Is he a liar? I would never accuse anyone of being a liar, you know me… so let me put it nicely… He is a liar.Where was I?A $6.3 Billion Bet Gone Bad. By Louis Basenese, Chief Investment Strategist. In yesterday’s column, I took the time to explain Wall Street’s newest accounting trick – re-hypothecation. Today, I want to share how it led to the loss of $1.2 billion in customer funds and the ultimate demise of MF Global (Other OTC: MFGLQ.PK). And more importantly, what we should take away from this unfortunate situation…Greed is Good? MF Global’s problems didn’t start with re-hypothecation. They started with something much simpler – greed. The firm wanted to make a bet that eurozone bonds would remain default free. I’ll concede that’s a smart bet, given the formation of the European Financial Stability Facility. Essentially, MF Global was banking on a European version of “too big too fail” – betting that the indebted eurozone countries were too important to the global economy to let them default. But a smart bet doesn’t translate into a risk-free bet. And leverage only magnifies risk, which is something MF Global learned the hard way. You see, MF Global didn’t invest a modest amount in bonds of some of Europe’s most indebted nations (Italy, Spain, Belgium, Portugal and Ireland). It invested $6.3 billion. That’s equal to more than five times the firm’s book value! Now, you might be asking yourself, how in the world was MF Global able to make such an outsized bet? With off-balance sheet transactions, of course. (Remember, that’s how Wall Street typically tries concealing its transgressions. Case in point: Enron and special purpose entities.) In this case, MF Global was specifically using “repurchase and reverse repurchase transactions to maturity” to keep its actions off the balance sheet. I won’t bog you down with the details of repo-to-maturity trade. Here’s the gist… MF Global buys a ton of European bonds with high yields maturing in 2012. It then turns around and uses those bonds as collateral to borrow money at very low interest rates. The way this trade works out is simple… Until the bonds mature, MF Global earns the spread – the difference between the high interest it receives on the bonds and the low interest rates it pays on the borrowed funds. When the bonds mature, MF Global uses the principal received to pay off its loans. Simple as that. But it sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it? Well, it seemed a bit surprising to MF Global’s CEO, Jon Corzine, too. In the firm’s most recent earnings conference call, he said, “The spread between interest earned and the financing cost of the underlying repurchase agreement has often been attractive even as the structure of the transaction themselves essentially eliminates market and financing risk.” In other words, such risk free trades shouldn’t exist. And ultimately, they don’t.Can You Say, “Margin Call?” The big risk inherent in MF Global’s repo-to-maturity trades was liquidity. At any point, MF Global’s lenders could require more collateral. And that’s exactly what they did, as the debt crisis in Europe became more uncertain. The only problem? MF Global didn’t have any cash of its own lying around to meet the margin calls. So it pledged its customers’ funds – via re-hypothecation – as additional collateral. The straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back came from the New York Fed. Earlier in the year, the New York Fed designated MF Global a primary dealer, allowing it to trade directly with the bank in the buying and selling of United States government debt. With worries mounting about MF Global’s solvency, the Fed issued a margin call of its own on Friday, October 28. And the jig was up. MF Global filed for bankruptcy protection on Monday, October 31. Ever since then, we’ve been unearthing the details surrounding the company’s ultimate demise. Bottom line: Leverage cuts both ways. Wall Street’s elite always seem to forget about this fundamental principle time and again. Perhaps it’s because they’re always investing with other people’s money instead of their own? Nevertheless, let MF Global’s bankruptcy be yet another reminder that there are no risk-free trades. And that’s why we should relentlessly favor position-sizing over making outsized bets.Monday, January 9, 2012.12:00 a.m… The Wall Street JournalNew York TIMES: Wall Street Prepares to Take Sharp Pay Cut. By LIZ RAPPAPORT And COLIN BARR. A dismal year means Wall Street is about to take a big hit to its wallet. As banks prepare to report fourth-quarter results and make final bonus decisions for 2011, total compensation is likely to be the lowest since 2008, when the financial crisis destroyed some firms and left many survivors on government life support. While still lofty compared to the rest of the U.S., pay for some Wall Street workers will be the lowest in years, at a time when critics have been lashing out at what they deem excessive finance-industry compensation.At Goldman Sachs Group Inc., many of the roughly 400 partners can expect to see their 2011 pay cut at least in half from 2010, according to people familiar with the situation. Pay for some employees in the New York company’s fixed-income trading business will shrink by 60%, with some workers getting no bonus, these people said.Morgan Stanley is expected to shrink bonuses for some investment bankers and traders by 30% to 40% from 2010, said people familiar with the matter. Pay worries have been mounting up and down Wall Street for months amid lower trading revenue, languid deal-making, new regulations and anxiety about the global economy. Other pressures include weak financial-company stock prices and sour public sentiment that culminated in the Occupy Wall Street encampment in New York.J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., one of the biggest banks, is set to report earnings Friday, followed next week by Goldman and other major banking firms.For most of 2011, Wall Street executives offered few specifics about how the lackluster year would affect compensation, especially the large portion that will be paid out as bonuses in the coming weeks.Each quarter the banks set aside a percentage of revenue for benefit costs. Through the first three quarters of 2011, total compensation and benefit costs at 34 publicly traded financial firms tracked by The Wall Street Journal were on pace for a record-high $172 billion. The calculation is based on the companies’ reported results and projections by analysts.But industry observers expect that when all is said and done for the year, many firms will adjust their benefit costs sharply downward, partly to appease shareholders frustrated by soft profits.If the companies apply the same ratio for 2011 as 2010, overall compensation and benefits for last year would be $159 billion for the 34 companies tracked by the Journal, the smallest total since 2008.At Goldman, average compensation per employee would fall 10.7% to $385,000 for 2011 from $431,000 in 2010 if the New York company keeps its payout rate steady in the fourth quarter. In 2007, Goldman employees received an average of $661,000 each, and people throughout the firm are bracing for disappointment.Analysts who follow Goldman expect the securities firm’s revenue to fall 23% for 2011 compared with 2010, according to a survey by FactSet Research Systems Inc.For the typical Goldman partner, pay for 2011, including base salary and bonus, is likely to range from $3 million to $6.5 million, according to people familiar with the matter. In better years, payouts have been at least twice as high, these people said.On Friday, Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Brad Hintz said he expects Goldman to earn just 77 cents a share for the fourth quarter, down from his previous estimate of $3.15 a share. “We do not expect a robust recovery in 2012,” Mr. Hintz wrote.More ominously, executives at some financial firms foresee longer-term changes as a result of economic and regulatory shifts that will limit profitability.“Companies definitely have to realize the party as they know it is over,” said Rose Marie Orens, a senior partner at Compensation Advisory Partners, a New York firm that works with compensation committees at public-company boards.In many cases, pay cuts on Wall Street will come mostly at the top because that is where the largest bonuses are paid. Before the crisis, financial firms competed aggressively to attract and keep up-and-coming talent to groom for the future.As a result of the looming cuts, though, some midlevel employees at investment banks might make more than their managing-director or executive bosses this year, said people familiar with the matter.Wall Street has always reined in pay when times are tough, but competition for star traders and investment bankers discouraged firms from making big overall changes. In the wake of the financial crisis, some firms shrank bonuses and increased base salaries to bend to political pressure. Regulators argued that heavy reliance on bonuses encouraged excessive risk-taking.A broader reckoning is under way now amid widespread cost-cutting. In the second half of 2011, two dozen major global banks and securities firms made plans for a total of 103,000 job cuts.For many Wall Street executives and staff, the new pay structures and cuts in company perks already have hampered their lifestyles. Instead of large cash payouts each year, bankers now are getting more and more of their own companies’ shares. Some cash-strapped employees have sold second homes or gotten loans from their companies to pay bills, said people familiar with the matter.For now, companies are still using larger chunks of their revenue for employee pay. The Journal’s analysis projects that 36% of revenue will go toward compensation and benefits in 2011, up from 33% in 2010.The analysis assumes that the banks, securities firms, asset managers, exchange operators and other companies for the fourth quarter will hold steady the percentage of revenue used for compensation as in the first three quarters.They don’t always do this, however: In each of the past two years, Goldman has reduced its pay ratio in the fourth quarter, holding down compensation and boosting profits.One bright spot this year could be bonuses given out in stock. The stock-price slide that battered most financial firms in 2011, wiping out $295 billion in market capitalization from the 34 companies in the Journal’s analysis, means that stock-based bonuses about to be doled out will be cheap compared with previous years. That could mean a big windfall down the road for employees if financial firms’ stocks climb.—Aaron Lucchetti contributed to this article.Write to Liz Rappaport at liz.rappaport@wsj.comFannie Mae CEO to resignBy James O’Toole@CNNMoneyJanuary 10, 2012: 6:13 PM ETFannie Mae CEO Michael Williams.NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Fannie Mae CEO Michael Williams plans to resign, the government-controlled mortgage giant said Tuesday.
Williams, who took over as president and CEO of the troubled company in 2009, will continue as CEO until Fannie Mae’s board names a successor.
The firm did not provide a specific reason for Williams’ departure; in a statement, Williams said only that he had decided that “the time is right to turn over the reins to a new leader.”
Williams will leave behind a firm still struggling to get its finances in order.
In November, Fannie Mae (FNMA, Fortune 500) reported a net third-quarter loss of $5.1 billion. The loss forced the firm to ask for another $7.8 billion in funding from the Treasury Department, a request that took its bailout total to $112.6 billion.
Federal regulators put Fannie Mae and fellow government-sponsored enterprise Freddie Mac (FMCC, Fortune 500) into conservatorship during the financial meltdown in September 2008. The sister companies now depend on government help to cover losses on the mortgages they own or guarantee.
In October, Freddie Mac CEO Ed Haldeman also announced plans to step down at some point this year.
Williams and Haldeman have faced scrutiny in recent months for their hefty paychecks, granted even as their firms rely on taxpayer support. The targets for their 2011 pay, which will include deferred compensation, are set at about $6 million a piece.
In December, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged six former executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, including former Fannie CEO Daniel Mudd and former Freddie chief Richard Syron with securities fraud. The SEC alleges that the executives misrepresented the firms’ holdings of high-risk mortgage loans ahead of the financial crisis. Can anyone save Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac?By Paul R. La Monica@lamonicabuzzJanuary 11, 2012: 1:45 PM ET.Former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson put mortgage agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into conservatorship in 2008. But little progress has been made since to help them.NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — It has been more than three years since then Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson fired his famous metaphorical bazooka and the federal government seized control of mortgage agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.Sadly, Fannie and Freddie are still a cause for worry and a source of national embarrassment.Late Tuesday, Fannie Mae said that CEO Mike Williams was stepping down sometime this year. That follows the news late last year that Freddie Mac CEO Ed Haldeman was also planning to leave.Former Fannie CEO Daniel Mudd and former Freddie CEO Richard Syron have each been charged with fraud by the Securities and Exchange Commission.Both agencies, which play key roles in helping to secure financing for homeowners, have continued to rack up sizeable financial losses over the past few years. It is estimated that their bailout will eventually cost taxpayers as much as $124 billion through 2014.Yet, not much has been done to try and change the two companies for the better. There was shockingly little in the way of actual reform for Fannie (FNMA, Fortune 500) and Freddie (FMCC, Fortune 500) in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act that became law in 2010.Several members of Congress, including former Senator Chris Dodd and House Rep. Barney Frank, have been accused of conflicts of interest regarding Fannie and Freddie. Lawmakers have repeatedly denied that this played a role in the lack of any major new regulations for Fannie and Freddie.But the biggest problem is that the full government control of Fannie and Freddie makes the agencies convenient legislative tools for members on both sides of the aisle.Turning foreclosures into rentalsFor example, Congress finally agreed on a temporary extension of the payroll tax cut late last year. But to help finance that, Fannie and Freddie were forced by their overseer, the Federal Housing Finance Authority (FHFA), to raise fees they charge lenders to guarantee new loans.“The problem is that Fannie and Freddie are the cookie jar for Congress. What is going to need to happen is that Fannie and Freddie need to be moved out of conservatorship or this won’t end,” said Anthony Sanders, senior scholar with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va.“Every time you look at the news and see Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae in a headline, you wince about what Congress and FHFA are going to ask them to do next,” Sanders added.Others argue that politicians need to rethink housing policy overall.0:00 / 03:12 How Fannie Mae spruces up foreclosuresIt may be heretical for an elected official to suggest that renting is the new American dream. But as long as home ownership is still held up as the pantheon of financial success and a goal for all Americans, expect more of the same from Fannie and Freddie.“Originally, Fannie and Freddie were born out of a sensible goal to create more liquidity in the housing market. But they got co-opted for political reasons,” said Joseph Mason, professor in the department of finance at LSU’s E. J. Ourso College of Business in Baton Rouge.“Nobody in Washington has backed off the populist proposition that everyone should own a home. Until that changes, nothing will change at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,” he added.So what’s the solution for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? They need to be weaned off the government dole. Instead of having FHFA (foofa!) be their master, the free market should take that job.Fannie and Freddie must go. Here’s how.Yes, I realize that’s asking the same people who helped contribute to the 2008 financial calamity to become more involved again. But that’s still a better alternative than the status quo.“You would hope that over time there is greater private sector participation in the mortgage financing business. It’s not going to happen now given the state of the market, but continuing to use Fannie and Freddie to stimulate housing is not feasible,” said Brian Levitt, economist with OppenheimerFunds in New York.“We have to realize the way things worked before will not work in the future,” Levitt added.Exactly. What incentive is there for a bright, capable CEO to come work for Fannie or Freddie as long as the government is the ultimate boss?To be fair, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have cleaned up their balance sheets a bit in the past few years. They have not made the same mistakes in regard to financing bad credit risks as they did during the housing boom.But as long as older loans are a problem, who would want to lead Fannie or Freddie? It’s a thankless job. Both Williams and Haldeman were criticized for their salaries. Who needs that grief?“Fannie and Freddie probably will have a revolving door with CEOs for awhile until something is done on a permanent basis to fix them,” Sanders said. “Legacy loans are killing Fannie and Freddie. It’s an untenable position for executives right now.”But it’s not so untenable for politicians and bureaucrats. That’s the problem.The Political Scene. The Obama Memos. The making of a post-post-partisan Presidency. By Ryan Lizza. January 30, 2012 On a frigid January evening in 2009, a week before his Inauguration, Barack Obama had dinner at the home of George Will, the Washington Post columnist, who had assembled a number of right-leaning journalists to meet the President-elect. Accepting such an invitation was a gesture on Obama’s part that signaled his desire to project an image of himself as a post-ideological politician, a Chicago Democrat eager to forge alliances with conservative Republicans on Capitol Hill. That week, Obama was still working on an Inaugural Address that would call for “an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics.”Obama sprang coatless from his limousine and headed up the steps of Will’s yellow clapboard house. He was greeted by Will, Michael Barone, David Brooks, Charles Krauthammer, William Kristol, Lawrence Kudlow, Rich Lowry, and Peggy Noonan. They were Reaganites all, yet some had paid tribute to Obama during the campaign. Lowry, who is the editor of the National Review, called Obama “the only presidential candidate from either party about whom there is a palpable excitement.” Krauthammer, an intellectual and ornery voice on Fox News and in the pages of the Washington Post, had written that Obama would be “a president with the political intelligence of a Bill Clinton harnessed to the steely self-discipline of a Vladimir Putin,” who would “bestride the political stage as largely as did Reagan.” And Kristol, the editor of the Weekly Standard and a former aide to Dan Quayle, wrote, “I look forward to Obama’s inauguration with a surprising degree of hope and good cheer.”Over dinner, Obama searched for points of common ground. He noted that he and Kudlow agreed on a business-investment tax cut. “He loves to deal with both sides of the issue,” Kudlow later wrote. “He revels in the back and forth. And he wants to keep the dialogue going with conservatives.” Obama’s view, shared with many people at the time, was that professional pundits were wrong about American politics. It was a myth, he said, that the two political parties were impossibly divided on the big issues confronting America. The gap was surmountable. Compared with some other Western countries, where Communists and far-right parties sit in the same parliament, the gulf between Democrats and Republicans was narrow.Obama’s homily about conciliation reflected an essential component of his temperament and his view of politics. In his mid-twenties, he won the presidency of the Harvard Law Review because he was the only candidate who was trusted by both the conservative and the liberal blocs on the editorial staff. As a state senator in Springfield, when Obama represented Hyde Park-Kenwood, one of the most liberal districts in Illinois, he kept his distance from the most left-wing senators from Chicago and socialized over games of poker and golf with moderate downstate Democrats and Republicans. In 1998, after helping to pass a campaign-finance bill in the Illinois Senate, he boasted in his community paper, the Hyde Park Herald, that “the process was truly bipartisan from the start.”A few years later, Obama ran for the U.S. Senate and criticized “the pundits and the prognosticators” who like to divide the country into red states and blue states. He made a speech against the invasion of Iraq but alarmed some in the distinctly left-wing audience by pointing out that he was not a pacifist, and that he opposed only “dumb wars.” At the 2004 Democratic Convention, in Boston, Obama delivered a retooled version of the stump speech about ideological comity—“There is not a liberal America and a conservative America; there is the United States of America!”—and became a national political star.In 2006, Obama published a mild polemic, “The Audacity of Hope,” which became a blueprint for his 2008 Presidential campaign. He described politics as a system seized by two extremes. “Depending on your tastes, our condition is the natural result of radical conservatism or perverse liberalism,” he wrote. “Tom DeLay or Nancy Pelosi, big oil or greedy trial lawyers, religious zealots or gay activists, Fox News or the New York Times.” He repeated the theme later, while describing the fights between Bill Clinton and the Newt Gingrich-led House, in the nineteen-nineties: “In the back-and-forth between Clinton and Gingrich, and in the elections of 2000 and 2004, I sometimes felt as if I were watching the psychodrama of the Baby Boom generation—a tale rooted in old grudges and revenge plots hatched on a handful of college campuses long ago—played out on the national stage.” Washington, as he saw it, was self-defeatingly partisan. He believed that “any attempt by Democrats to pursue a more sharply partisan and ideological strategy misapprehends the moment we’re in.”If there was a single unifying argument that defined Obamaism from his earliest days in politics to his Presidential campaign, it was the idea of post-partisanship. He was proposing himself as a transformative figure, the man who would spring the lock. In an essay published in The Atlantic, Andrew Sullivan, a self-proclaimed conservative, reflected on Obama’s heady appeal: “Unlike any of the other candidates, he could take America—finally—past the debilitating, self-perpetuating family quarrel of the Baby Boom generation that has long engulfed all of us.”Obama was not exaggerating the toxic battle that has poisoned the culture of Washington. In the past four decades, the two political parties have become more internally homogeneous and ideologically distant. In “The Audacity of Hope,” Obama wrote longingly about American politics in the mid-twentieth century, when both parties had liberal and conservative wings that allowed centrist coalitions to form. Today, almost all liberals are Democrats and almost all conservatives are Republicans. In Washington, the center has virtually vanished. According to the political scientists Keith T. Poole and Howard Rosenthal, who have devised a widely used system to measure the ideology of members of Congress, when Obama took office there was no ideological overlap between the two parties. In the House, the most conservative Democrat, Bobby Bright, of Alabama, was farther to the left than the most liberal Republican, Joseph Cao, of Louisiana. The same was true in the Senate, where the most conservative Democrat, Ben Nelson, of Nebraska, was farther to the left than the most liberal Republican, Olympia Snowe, of Maine. According to Poole and Rosenthal’s data, both the House and the Senate are more polarized today than at any time since the eighteen-nineties. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/01/30/120130fa_fact_lizza#ixzz1kOxrNpDRAmerica’s Financial DoomsdayAn historic, world-changing event is about to crush the U.S. economy and stock market.It will destroy the income, savings, investments and retirements of millions of Americans. It will plunge vast numbers of families into the nightmare of poverty … hunger … and homelessness.Only a minority of investors will survive intact. And some will actually build their wealth in the process. In this video, I’m going to reveal some very disturbing facts about America’s economic decline and how it’s now threatening your financial security. These facts are so shocking, that I’ve decided to present them to you in a special format that is absolutely clear and fully documented, starting right now …I’m Martin Weiss, founder of Weiss Research.You may know my company because every day, more than 500,000 people get our financial publications.And hundreds of thousands more have used our Weiss Ratings on banks, insurance companies and stocks to help make prudent financial decisions. You may also know us because we’ve been on TV and in the newspapers a lot lately:We were the first rating agency in the word to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing BUT the truth about the financial mess the United States government has gotten itself into.But my story is definitely NOT unique …More recently, this kind of crisis has also struck a very powerful European nation.After its leaders made the same mistake ours are making now, the country’s bonds collapsed in value, interest rates exploded to over 200%. In just six months, its stock market plunged 75%. The common people suffered tremendously: A staggering 60% of the workforce was paid only partially and received their paychecks months after they were due.As the economy collapsed, millions of average citizens fell victim to crime and corruption. The police demanded bribes for traffic violations — both real and imagined.Organized crime syndicates divvied up the country into their own private fiefdoms, profiting from protection rackets, prostitution, smuggling, narcotics-peddling and even murder for hire. The government itself admitted that the criminals owned or controlled about half of the country’s private businesses. A friend of mine said:“Many banks, including some of the largest in the country, shut down. They closed their doors forever. Our savings were wiped out. “All people could do about it was to go to their banks and hammer on locked doors. “Other people demonstrated on the streets. They carried their devalued money in miniature coffins and marched past our central bank.”All this happened in the 1990s — in Russia, formerly one of the most powerful nations on the face of the Earth. Of course, the U.S. is not Russia; we have far stronger democratic institutions. And our economy is far larger than Brazil’s, but when a nation’s larders make the same mistakes Brazil and Russia made, the consequences are invariably going to be similar. The people of Brazil and Russia paid dearly for their leaders’ blunders. Barring a miracle, the American people are also about to pay a very big price.Europe is suffering through this same kind of crisis RIGHT NOW!For a sneak preview of the doomsday event about to strike the United States, just look at the catastrophe taking place in Western Europe right now. In Greece, a friend of mine reports: “Everywhere in Greece, home values are plunging. Unemployment is soaring. One in four Greeks, including over 450,000 children, live in poverty. Crime is exploding.“Athens is beginning to look like a ghost town. Everywhere you look, shop windows are boarded up. Of those that are still open, most are running going-out-of-business sales.”Greece is not alone!But Greece is not alone! In Spain, similar stories are being told in Madrid, Barcelona and 50 other cities across the country.Tens of thousands of workers have taken to the streets to protest a problem they thought they’d NEVER see again in their lifetime: Not just 10% official unemployment like we’ve recently seen in the U.S. — but 21% official unemployment! A friend of mine in Madrid says:“You wouldn’t believe what I’m seeing here on the streets of Madrid. Beggars outnumber tourists and protesters outnumber beggars. “In front of Parliament, riot police stand watch to protect lawmakers from angry mobs. All over the country, in Viscaya, Cataluña, Andalucía, we see the same thing.”In Ireland, the government faced immediate default and was forced to impose harsh austerity measures that plunged the country into depression.In London and cities all across England, similar kinds of austerity measures recently triggered the worst riots of modern times. Entire neighborhoods went up in flames. Even large commercial buildings were set on fire, and left in ruins. Worse, this financial and social crisis is threatening to spread to countries like Italy, France and even Germany. Now, you may be thinking, “But we’re different! Nothing like that could ever happen here.”I assure you: The people of Brazil, Russia, Greece, Ireland and Spain never dreamed it could happen there, either!The truth is our own leaders have made the same financial blunders that their leaders made. As my Greek friend says: “You can’t save a nation that’s drowning in debt by throwing more debt at it any more than you could save a drowning man by throwing more water on him.” Look, in every one of these countries, the pattern is clear:First, the government spends everything it has. Next, the government borrows all it can from its people.Then, it borrows still more from foreign countries and banks. Finally … The debts become so onerous and horrendous that they trigger the doomsday event:The U.S. is now in WORSE shape than Brazil, Russia, Greece or Spain have ever beenConsider the high-risk gambles that super-investor Warren Buffett calls “financial weapons of mass destruction.”I’m talking about special kinds of investments called “derivatives.” They were a major cause of the real estate and debt crisis that nearly wiped out all of our largest banks in 2008 — along with the entire U.S. economy.Russia’s banks never exposed themselves to large amounts of these financial time bombs. Neither did Brazil’s banks. And you’d think that, after the 2008 meltdown, U.S. banks would have learned their lesson. But you’d be wrong.According to the Comptroller of the Currency, a division of the U.S. Treasury Department — U.S. banks held $176 trillion in derivatives at the height of the debt crisis in 2008. Today, U.S. banks hold $244 trillion in derivatives — nearly 40% more. That fact alone places the U.S. in greater danger than many other countries, past or present.U.S. debt and obligations are now OVER $120 TRILLION!America is also in great danger for another big reason. Washington is now sitting on the largest pile of debt in the history of civilization: About $14.5 trillion and counting.Hard to visualize what that much money looks like? Maybe this will help …If you asked your bank to give you a stack of $100 bills worth one million dollars, it would look like this — a neat little pile of money …One billion dollars looks a LOT more impressive. But here’s what one trillion hundred-dollar bills would look like. And this is our current national debt: $14.5 trillion.It’s a positively staggering amount of money.And it doesn’t even begin to include the debts Washington inherited from Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae or all the money Washington owes to seniors for Social security and Medicare, or to veterans and government pensioners. Add that in, and Washington’s total obligations are over $120 trillion. But it’s not just the sheer size of our nation’s debt that’s so frightening. It’s the fact that it’s mushrooming so rapidly — at a speed that’s far greater than anything we’ve ever seen: Washington is now growing the debt by AT LEAST $1 trillion each and every year. Now, at this point, you’re probably thinking: “But surely — our leaders will ultimately do the right thing and STOP bankrupting us — right?”But the reality is that Washington has consistently made the opposite choice. The die was cast in 2008, when the housing bubble burst and giant banks were going bust. At the time, the U.S. government could have simply allowed those who had made the big gambles to suffer the natural consequences of their actions. Instead, Washington bailed out the banks, absorbed those bad debts, and spent trillions of dollars to fight the recession.Washington lies, the economy dies.At the time, some people thought that was a god idea. But look what happened.In just 12 months between 2007 and 2008, Washington TRIPLED the federal deficit from $161 billion to $459 billion. Of course, our leaders swore on a stack of Bibles that this was a one-time-only event, needed to fight the recession.They lied. Washington tripled the deficit AGAIN … to $1.4 trillion in 2009.Then, again, they solemnly promised that this, too, was temporary — for emergency purposes only. But that was a lie, too. The 2010 deficit was $1.3 trillion. Plus, the deficit for 2011 is the biggest of all: More than $1.5 trillion.And in a double-dip recession, the deficit could surge to $2 trillion dollars.All these dramatic changes and all these lies are what inevitably lead to the doomsday event that is now on the near horizon for America. Still skeptical? Then consider this shocking change …We’ve sold our American birthright for a mess of porridge.In the past, Washington always borrowed nearly all the money it needed from its own citizens. But in recent years, it has borrowed most of the money from foreigners, especially China, and now it owes foreigners over $4 trillion dollars.That’s over four times MORE than it owed foreigners when the U.S. plunged into recession in the early 2000s. But it still hasn’t been enough. The White House and Congress wanted to spend even more money than Americans and foreign investors would loan us — combined.The Fed declared WAR on the value of your money!So the Federal Reserve printed hundreds of billions of paper dollars and loaned most of that money to the Treasury, too.How many hundreds of billions of dollars? Let me put it into perspective for you.Remember 1999, when everyone was worried that the Y2K bug would crush our economy? Well, to avert a collapse, the Fed printed $73 billion to keep the banks from collapsing. That’s the first blip on this chart.Now let’s go to 9/11, when the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington paralyzed the economy, the Fed printed another $40 billion. That’s the second blip on the chart.Every time, the Fed cranked up the printing presses, financial experts went ballistic. They said the amounts were so huge; they might diminish the dollar’s value. And sure enough, the value of the dollar did plunge. But that was only a drop in the ocean compared to what the Fed has been doing lately. Since the big debt disaster of 2008 — when the giant Lehman Brothers failed. The Fed has printed more than $1.6 TRILLION dollars.That’s twenty-two times MORE money than the Fed created during Y2K.And it’s FORTY-ONE times more than it printed after 9/11!That’s why the buying power of your money is cratering.That’s why your cost of living is soaring.That’s why butter has jumped 22%, gasoline has soared 35%, and coffee has skyrocketed a mind-boggling 42% — all in a single year!And that’s also why America is headed for the financial doomsday I will soon describe to you. But first …SHOCKER: You’re only HALF as rich as you think you are!Look at silver! Since the Federal Reserve began its latest money-printing binge at the height of the debt crisis, the price of silver more than quadrupled. And look at gold; it has more than doubled in price! But all this is only the beginning. In Brazil, Russia, Greece and Ireland what happened next was that revenues and tax collections began to fall. It became impossible for those governments to repay its debts. And here again, the United States is following a similar pattern: Despite the massive amounts of money Washington has thrown at it, the U.S. economy is sinking — and government revenues are falling — AGAIN! The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics that long-term unemployment in the United States is now at catastrophic levels. More than 14 million Americans are now out of a job — and every week, hundreds of thousands more get their pink slips. And once someone loses a job, it takes an average of more than 25 weeks — nearly half a year — to find a new one. That’s not just “a little bit” worse than during prior recessions. It’s more than 2.5 times worse than during the big recession in the mid-1970s. And it’s also far worse than during the financial crisis of 2008-2009. Plus, the housing crisis that triggered this great recession in the first place is now growing more severe.Consider the conclusions of Case-Shiller, the real estate industry’s most trusted source of home price information:They report that the median price of a home is down more than 31% and is still plunging. That’s right. The price of existing homes in America has fallen BELOW the lowest level it reached in depths of the Great Recession of 2008-2009! In short, despite the trillions Washington has blown on stimulus and bailouts, we are now staring down the barrel of a huge double-dip recession.That’s especially scary this time around. Because this time, the government isn’t putting money into the economy with more stimulus.The government has no choice but to take money OUT of the economy with budget cuts! And as the economy falls, instead of collecting more from taxes, it collects LESS.The money Washington so desperately needs to pay the interest on its debt simply vanishes.Look, throughout history, we’ve learned that when a nation becomes this deeply indebted and in this much economic trouble, the next step is always the same:In every case, the next step is the monumental event, the far greater calamity that I promised to tell you about.COMING NEXT: The moment when all hell breaks loose … So what is the ultimate catastrophe that doomed the people of Russia and Brazil to decades of poverty! So what is the ultimate catastrophe that doomed the people of Russia and Brazil to decades of poverty and dependence?What is the next bombshell that’s beginning to explode in Europe, destroying the people’s wealth and threatening to rob them of their personal freedoms?What is the historic, life-changing, world-changing event that is also about to vaporize massive amounts of wealth and potentially threaten our liberties right here in the United States of America?It’s the singular moment in time when the last investor willing to loan money to the government calls it quits.It’s when the government can no longer borrow and simply runs out of money. That’s the moment when all hell breaks loose. No, I’m not talking about what would happen if Congress simply failed to raise the debt limit like it almost did in August of 2011. That was a just a sneak preview of the true big event still dead ahead. I’m talking about, a sudden rejection of U.S. debt by the world’s investors — a creditors’ revolt that suddenly leaves Washington with no choice but to live within its means.Think about that: What would happen right now if our federal government was no longer able to find more willing lenders, no longer able to borrow money?Before you answer though, remember this: Washington has to borrow nearly half of every dollar it spends today.It has to borrow nearly half of every dollar it spends on national defense, and homeland security. It has to borrow nearly half of every dollar it pays in Social Security, Medicare benefits, and unemployment benefits, plus half of what it gives to U.S. veterans, government pensioners, the poor and the disabled.And it has to borrow half of every dollar it spends to repay money it borrowed five years ago … ten years ago … even 30 years ago.What will happen when global investors deny our application for yet another loan? When the Chinese and other foreign lenders say “No more!” to losing their shirts as Washington guts the value of the dollars they earn?When they simply say: “Sorry — but America’s line of credit is CANCELLED. Washington’s loan application is DENIED!”This is not far off. The warning signs are already here …Warning sign #1: According to Beijing officials, China, the world’s largest buyer and holder of U.S. government securities, has suffered a loss of $271.1 billion between 2003 and 2010 as a result of the dollar’s steady depreciation. Warning sign #2: In June of 2011, China’s National Development and Reform Commission announced it could lose another $578.6 billion if it continues to hold these huge loans to the U.S. Will they continue to suffer these losses passively?The answer is … Warning sign #3: Two high officials — Zhou Xiaochuan, the head of China’s central bank and Xia Bin, a member of the monetary policy committee of the central bank — are ready to bolt.Both recently made it clear that they could easily get away with a huge reduction in the amount of U.S. treasuries they own.I repeat: This is already beginning to happen!Other nations are also shifting their reserves from U.S. Treasuries to gold and silver, plus oil, coal, and other tangible assets.Mexico, Russia and Thailand have recently bought well over 100 tons of gold instead of U.S. treasuries. Even Tanzania is planning to shun the dollar and shift its reserves into gold!Gains of 245% … 369% … and more are possible!Put simply, that fateful day — when Washington is no longer able to borrow the money it desperately needs is speeding toward us like a runaway freight train.This is why Congressman Ron Paul recently issued this somber warning:“At the present time the Chinese have backed off from what they’re loaning us, interest rates are starting to go up, inflation factors are coming up. “Believe me, that next step is a currency crisis because there will be a rejection of the dollar. The rejection of the dollar is a big, big event.”Congressman Paul is correct.The worst-case scenario …When Washington can no longer borrow money, it will have no choice but to immediately slash spending. And since nearly half of every dollar it spends is borrowed, our leaders will have no choice but to radically reduce, delay or even cancel payments to seniors, veterans, the poor, the disabled and pensioners.Millions who count on government checks will suddenly find themselves on the ropes, struggling to survive. Therefore, with government programs slashed or cancelled …With consumers paralyzed in fear … With the U.S. economy in intensive care … With tax revenues plunging, and …With global investors refusing to lend more money to Uncle Sam … Here is the worst-case scenario — the scenario I fear the most … Hunger and homelessness explode to pandemic levels from coast to coast. The victims take to the streets. Rallies turn into demonstrations … then, into protests … and finally, into riots. With law enforcement severely crippled by the spending cuts, crime skyrockets.With fire departments running at austerity levels, cities burn.With emergency services and hospitals out of money, people die.As we saw in Brazil and Russia, Washington has no choice but to restore order by taking away your personal freedoms. And never forget this final, devastating fact: No bank … no government … no group of nations … is rich enough to save America.Members of Congress: “Armageddon” “A Fiscal Titanic” “A Death Spiral”Still finding all this hard to believe? Then consider these ten former heads of the Council of Economic Advisors.They are the men and women who directly advised presidents of both major parties, including President Obama, and all of them have since departed from their office. They recently wrote that that the next debt crisis could, and I quote “Dwarf 2008!”That’s an absolutely shocking assertion: In 2008, Wall Street came within a hair of a massive, devastating meltdown. Virtually ALL of our largest banks were pushed to the brink of failure. The entire country was only a few hours away from a fatal collapse. Now, these ten former White House advisors are warning that this next debt crisis could dwarf the last one. Why? What could cause that?They say it’s precisely the doomsday event I just told you about: The fact that one day foreigners may simply stop lending more of their money to the United States. And these ten former presidential advisers are not the only ones ringing the alarm bells. Senator Mark Warner says, “We’re approaching financial Armageddon.”Senator Joe Manchin calls this crisis “A fiscal Titanic.”Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is warning that this crisis is “the biggest threat to our national security.”Senator Mike Crapo says it is “a threat to not just our way of life, but to our national survival.” It has the power to “ … guarantee that this nation becomes a second-rate power with less opportunity and less freedom.”And David Walker — the former U.S. Comptroller General and director of the Government Accountability Office says:“The bottom line is: We’re not Greece. But we could end up with the same problems!” And mind you, these men are not extremists. They have nothing to gain by trying to scare you. They are merely following the facts to their logical conclusion.That’s what I’ve done in this report. The warnings I’ve given you are based on nothing more — and nothing less — than economic reality and historical fact. My research team and I have simply crunched the numbers and let the chips fall where they may — just like we did when we issued “D” ratings on nearly every big bank and savings and loans that subsequently failed.Just like we did when we gave a “C” rating to the United States.We have no political axe to grind. We are not beholden to Republicans, Democrats, or any other political party. Nor do we owe allegiance to Wall Street or any of the thousands of banks, companies and countries that we rate. In fact, most of them would probably prefer that we just kept our mouths shut. One giant company even threatened my life by saying “Weiss had better shut up or get a body guard.”But to quote Harry Truman, “I never give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it’s hell.” Good luck and God bless! Martin D. Weiss, Ph.d. Publisher, Safe Money Investor Service. Safe Money Report 15430 Endeavour Drive Jupiter, FL 33478 800-236-0407 561-625-6685 (Fax)Flashback: Romney Pleased With Geithner, Backed TARPTuesday, 31 Jan 2012 11:27 AMBy Jim MeyersMore ways to share…MixxStumbledLinkedInVineBuzzflashRedditDeliciousNewstrustTechnocrati0 Mitt Romney said three years ago that he was “pleased” with the appointment of Timothy Geithner as Treasury secretary — even after it came to light that Geithner had not paid the taxes he owed.
A newly discovered video of Romney’s appearance on “Fox and Friends” also shows the former Massachusetts governor and current GOP presidential candidate saying he thought the TARP was the “right thing to do” — and calling the $1 trillion stimulus package “necessary.”
President-elect Barack Obama announced on Nov. 24, 2008, the nomination of Geithner, the president of the Federal Reserve of New York, for the Treasury secretary post. Soon thereafter, it disclosed that Geithner had failed to pay $35,000 in self-employment taxes for the years 2001 to 2004, which he termed an honest mistake.
During Romney’s interview with the Fox News Channel, he was asked whether he still thought Geithner was the “right guy” for the job.
“When I heard about his announcement I must admit I was pleased,” Romney responded.
“He’s a person of accomplishment and skill. I think he’s a very bright individual and obviously we’re learning as much as we can about his tax dealings in the past and his level of integrity.
“I think it’s appropriate to really delve into this matter. If they find it was an honest mistake, then I think he should be confirmed. If they find it was deliberate tax evasion, that’s a very different matter. Then a person would not be qualified.
“I certainly hope it turns out just to be an honest mistake.”
Earlier, Romney had expressed support for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), signed by President George W. Bush in October 2008, which allowed the Treasury Department to buy or insure troubled assets, including bank holdings.
Asked whether he still supported it, Romney said: “TARP was the right thing to do. TARP was designed to keep our financial system from collapsing.
“You have to have a financial system for an economy to run and TARP was designed to keep our financial system from crumbling.”
It was pointed out that TARP had bailed out banks so they could lend money, but instead had largely kept the money or used it to buy other banks.
Romney commented: “The end result was to make sure that we don’t lose our banking system. The first responsibility of a bank is not to make loans. The first responsibility of a bank is to be able to repay the depositors their deposit.
“Banks are being cautions because they’re concerned about whether loans they have already made are going to be repaid, and that’s something we can hardly be highly critical of.”
He also commented on the Obama-supported stimulus package, which eventually would cost more than $1 trillion: “If we’re going to have a stimulus plan, which I think is necessary, it should have as its centerpiece a tax reduction, which creates incentives to grow and add jobs.” Read more on Newsmax.com: Flashback: Romney Pleased With Geithner, Supported TARPFebruary 2, 2012 Bankers Committed Fraud to Get Bigger Bonuses by Shah GilaniDear Reader, In case you didn’t catch the article titled “Guilty Pleas Hit the ‘Mark'” in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, I’m here to make sure you don’t miss it. This is too good. Three former employees of Credit Suisse Group AG (NYSE:CS) were charged with conspiracy to falsify books and records and wire fraud. They were accused of mismarking prices on bonds in their trading books by soliciting trumped-up prices for their withering securities from friends in the business. By posting higher “marks” for their bonds in late 2007, they earned big year-end bonuses. What a shock! What’s not a shock is that, after a bang-up 2007, Credit Suisse had to take a $2.85 billion write-down in the first quarter of 2008. No one knows how much of that loss was attributable to the three co-conspirators, who were fired over their “wrongdoing.” Two of the three accused pleaded guilty. Also not shocking is the reason David Higgs – one who pleaded guilty – gave for his actions. He said he did it “to remain in good favor” with bosses, who determined his bonus, and who profited handsomely themselves from his profitable trading and inventory marks. As for Salmaan Siddiqui, the other trader who pleaded guilty? His attorney Ira Sorkin, the former SEC enforcement chief, said of his client, “What he did was the result of his boss and his boss’ boss directing him to do it.” You know what else is shocking? Everyone was dong this at all the brokerages, investment banks and commercial banks that had trading desks… and only three people have been charged. What’s even more shocking (though not to me) is that the “system” has been engineered over years to allow banks to hold riskier and riskier securities, with more and more leverage, and, in the most egregious affront to sense and safety, be allowed to mark their inventories (including exotic instruments that no one really knew how to price) based on internal “models” and extrapolated scenarios. Whatever that means. Everyone up the chain, from the trader making bets to his boss, his boss’ boss, all the way up to the chairman, eats off the same plate. And you know what they say about where you eat… Marking your trading book within the bounds of what you can get away with isn’t exactly condoned, but neither is it frowned upon – especially at year-end, when bonuses are being calculated. After all, you’ll always have next year to trade out of losses or turn them into winners. It’s about getting paid and how much. But don’t just blame the traders and their bosses. Blame the politicians and the regulators who tore up sound Depression-era banking laws and coddled big banks by “desupervising” them when deregulation didn’t deliver the whole train to the station. Find out where the mortgage-backed securities boom really started, who greased some of the steepest slopes, and why and how everything leads back to bonuses. How Deregulation Ended Honesty in the Banking Sector Here’s what happened, in broad strokes (borrowed from articles I’ve written for MoneyMorning.com). In 1988, the Basel Accord established international risk-based capital requirements for deposit-taking commercial banks. In a byproduct of the calculations of what constituted mortgage-related risk (traditional mortgage loans have long maturities and are illiquid), lenders were expected to set aside substantial reserves; however, “marketable securities” that could theoretically be sold easily would not require much in the way of reserves. To free up reserves for more productive pursuits, banks made a wholesale shift from originating and holding mortgages to packaging them and holding mortgage assets in a securitized form. That lessened asset-quality considerations and ushered in the new era of asset-liquidity considerations. Meanwhile, over at the U.S. Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the appointment of free-market disciple Wendy Gramm (wife of then-U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Tex.)) as chairman would result in her successful 1989 and 1993 exemption of swaps and derivatives from all regulation. These actions would turn out to be consequential in the reign of terror that was to come… In 1993, with her agenda accomplished, Wendy Gramm resigned from her CFTC post to take a seat on the Enron Corp. board as a member of its audit committee. We all know what happened there. (Wait a minute; I did say she was on the audit committee, right?) Of course, Enron’s fraud and implosion became the poster child for deregulation run amok. It ultimately helped spawn Sarbanes-Oxley legislation, which has its own issues, but nonetheless has prevented all kinds of fraud and inappropriate behavior on account of the fact that top executives have to attest to the veracity of, and sign off on, all financial documents and other “stuff.” Now, don’t lose any sleep over the fact that of all the CEOs and CFOs and other muckety-muck multi-multi-millionaire executives that ran and still run the too-big-to-fail banks and the banks and investment banks that did fail or were merged (because they failed but were valuable to banks who wanted to make themselves bigger so they would never be allowed to fail) ever were charged with any crime under Sarbanes-Oxley. Why shouldn’t you worry? Because, silly, there’s a concerted effort to do away with the law. After all, don’t you know, it hampers business from creating jobs, which we desperately need? Hold on. Sorry. I just returned from the bathroom, where I was getting sick. Anyway, the constant flow of money to lobbyists and into legislators’ campaign coffers was paying off for banking interests. The Fed, under Chairman Greenspan, along . With Robert Rubin and Larry Summers, was methodically deconstructing the foundation of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act. The final breaching of the wall occurred in 1998, when Citibank was bought by Travelers. The deal married Citibank, a commercial bank, with Travelers’ Solomon, Smith Barney investment bank, and the Travelers insurance business. There was only one problem: The deal was clearly illegal in light of Glass-Steagall and the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956. However, a legal loophole in the 1956 BHC Act gave the new Citicorp a five-year window to change the landscape, or the deal would have to be unwound. Phil Gramm – the fire breathing free-marketer, Texas senator, and then-chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs (and loving husband of Wendy) – rode to the rescue, propelled by a sea of more than $300 million in lobbying and campaign contributions. In 1999, in the ultimate proof that money is power, U.S. President Bill Clinton signed into law the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act, at once doing away with Glass-Steagall and the 1956 BHC Act, and crowning Citigroup Inc. (NYSE:C) as the new “King of the Hill.” From his position of power, Sen. Gramm consistently leveraged his Ph.D. in economics and free-market ideology to espouse the virtues of subprime lending, where he famously once stated: “I look at subprime lending and I see the American Dream in action.” If helping struggling borrowers pursue their homeownership dreams was such a noble cause, it might have been incumbent upon the senator to not block legislation advocating the curtailment of predatory lending practices. Oh well. Let’s not quibble with a Senator. From 1989 through 2002, federal records show that Sen. Gramm was the top recipient of contributions from commercial banks and among the top five recipients of campaign contributions from Wall Street. (See my article “How Subprime Borrowing Fueled the Credit Crisis.”) Since moving on from the Senate in 2002 to mega-universal Swiss banking giant UBS AG (NYSE:UBS), where he serves as an investment banker and lobbyist, Gramm makes no apologies. “The markets have worked better than you might have thought,” he has been quoted as saying. “There is this idea afloat that if you had more regulation you would have fewer mistakes. I don’t see any evidence in our history or anybody else’s to substantiate that.” On April 28, 2004, in a fitting (and perhaps flagrant) final act of eviscerating prudent regulation, the SEC ruled that investment banks could essentially determine their own net capital. The insanity of that allowance is only surpassed by the fact that the SEC allowed the change because it was simultaneously demanding greater scrutiny of the books and records of what were the holding companies of investment banks and all their affiliates. The tragedy is that the SEC never used its new powers to examine the banks. The idea was that Consolidated Supervised Entities (CSEs) could use internal “models” to determine risk and compliance with net capital requirements. In reality, what the investment banks did was essentially re-cast hybrid capital instruments, subordinated debt, deferred tax returns, and securities with no ready market into “healthy” capital assets, against which they reduced reserve requirements for net capital calculations and increased their leverage to as much as 30:1. (Here’s “How Wall Street Manufactures Financial Services Products,” an insider’s look at how greed on Wall Street results in unscrupulous investment instruments.) When the meltdown came, the leverage and concentration of bad assets quickly resulted in the shotgun marriage of insolvent Bear Stearns Cos. to JP Morgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM), the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holding, the sale of Merrill Lynch to Bank of America Corp. (NYSE:BAC), and the rushed acceptance of applications by Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) and Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) to convert to bank holding companies so they could feed at the taxpayer bailout trough and feast on the Fed’s new smörgåsbord of liquidity handouts. There are no more CSEs (the SEC announced an end to that program in September). The old investment bank model is dead. The motivation for bankers to undermine and inhibit prudent regulation is inherent in banker compensation incentives. The Journal of Financial Research sums up the problem on compensation by concluding: “Firm characteristics that influence managerial compensation include leverage (as a measure of observable risk) market-to-book ratio of assets, size and shareholder return. Evidence suggests that Bank Holding Companies may be exploiting the deposit insurance mechanism because leverage is a significant factor in their results for incentive-based components of compensation. Our results strongly support the view that fundamental shifts in business activities of Bank Holding Companies have influenced their compensation strategies.” And we wonder if bankers are good people or merely compensation and bonus whores… You do the math. As far as telling you what’s wrong with America – a lot of you wrote in to say you DO want to know – this is part of it. But we can see this part clearly. What we can’t see is how we really got here, where here is, and where we’re going next. You’ll get that on Sunday. Not because I want to ruin your Super Bowl Sunday. But because I hope you pass it along to the friends you’ll gather with later in the day, and before the beer flows and the game starts, maybe you’ll ask yourself and ask your friends… is this really happening? Shah.February 3, 2012By Shah Gilani, Capital Waves Strategist, Money MorningWhat may be good news for delinquent credit card holders may also be really bad news for banks.
It turns out the “robo-signing” of foreclosure affidavits is just the tip of the iceberg.
In what one judge called “robo-testimony,” falsely attested-to statements by bank document custodians have been submitted in courts around the country by banks trying to win judgments against delinquent credit card debtors.
Apparently, tens of millions of credit cards issued by banks have not been accompanied by good recordkeeping, either.
Chasing down delinquent borrowers in court requires original credit agreements and accurate payment histories to verify outstanding balances and claims.
As it turns out, banks aren’t providing them – either to the courts or to third-party debt collection companies that buy uncollected debts for pennies on the dollar.
As a result of these shoddy practices, judgments already granted to banks could be overturned and they could be sued by state attorney generals or pursued by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The same banks could even be potentially charged by the Justice Department under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Statutes for selling dubiously documented accounts to debt collection companies.
While some debtors will take comfort in what they read here, investors in banks may want to question how legal issues and regulatory investigations will impact their stocks.Questionable bank documentation submitted to courts may be the reason JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM) abruptly abandoned over 1,000 debt collection lawsuits in April 2011.
However, debtors whose pending cases were dismissed aren’t out of the woods yet. All of Chases’ suits were dismissed “without prejudice,” meaning Chase can re-file the cases in the future. A Debt Collector’s Dirty Trick The only relief long-delinquent borrowers have is the statute of limitations imposed by most states on debt collection.
Statutes of limitation, which are typically between two and 15 years, are by themselves no guarantee that debt collection agencies, which buy accounts from banks, won’t try to still collect.
Some debt collection companies entice delinquent borrowers who are beyond their statute of limitation requirements to make payments by offering to reduce the whole amount owed.
Their aim is to get the borrower to make even a single payment. It’s an old trick.
By paying anything on a debt that is past the statute of limitations, the debt is brought back to life again and the statute of limitations clock starts all over from the date of the new payment.
It’s why debtors are browbeaten and enticed to make payments through mailings, harassing calls, and “transfer of balance” offers for new credit cards, which requires old debts to be rolled into the new credit agreement.
The industry term for restarting the clock on old debts is called “re-aging.”
The Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection calls it illegal and abusive.
Last month the FTC and the Justice Department settled with one of the country’s biggest debt collection companies in a case with repercussions for the entire debt collection industry.
Asset Acceptance Capital Corp., which the FTC had charged with violations of federal law – including that it “failed to tell debtors they couldn’t be sued” when they tricked them into making payments to “re-age” old debts – was fined $2.5 million without admitting or denying wrongdoing.
I contacted Erik Kardatzke of the Coral Gables, FL, law firm Debt Defense, P.L., a prominent debtor-rights defense attorney who was quoted in a June 2011 Wall Street Journal article about Chase’s dismissed suits, to ask about new pending lawsuits.
“I don’t see any pending suits by JPMorgan Chase or any of the attorneys or law firms that usually work for them,” he said. “I mean, not a single one. This is highly unusual.”
Kardatzke is a former debt collection attorney who became disillusioned with the practices of credit card companies and debt collectors preying on consumers.
“I would see victims of predatory lending who would charge $300 on a credit card, and be sued for $3,000 four years later based upon late charges, over the limit fees and 30% interest. I noticed that there was rarely an attorney defending consumers and decided to fill that need,” he told me.
The FTC, upon fining Asset Acceptance, announced additional enforcement actions are pending.
They are now joined by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which has the authority to go after banks for abusive collection tactics. Another Headache for Bank StocksAll this attention on banks’ credit card collection efforts isn’t going to help their revenues and earnings.
Not only could credit card borrowers stop paying if they don’t believe banks have proper documentation to go after them, but debt collection companies could sue banks for knowingly providing them inadequate or falsified debtor information when they bought uncollected accounts.
The big banks haven’t been able to settle charges over their robo-signing of foreclosure documents, which by some estimates could amount to over $25 billion in fines and consumer remuneration in some form or another.
Now, with charges of illegal robo-testimony being used to win court judgments in credit card collection cases, the banks now face another huge legal battle with potentially enormous bottom line consequences.
Robo-signing is just the beginning for the banks. [Editor’s Note: If you’re fed up with the rampant corruption, double-dealing, and protection of Wall Street by Washington (at the expense of the taxpayers on America’s Main Street), then you need to read Shah Gilani’s Wall Street Insights & Indictments newsletter. As a retired hedge-fund manager, Gilani is a former Wall Street insider Monday, February 06, 2012What If We’re Beyond Mere Policy Tweaks?The nation’s ills cannot be fixed by thousands of pages of regulation or more policy tweaks. Only a profound cultural transformation can address our problems.The mainstream view uniting the entire political spectrum is that all our financial problems can be fixed by what amounts to top-down, centralized policy tweaks and regulation: for example, tweaking policies to “tax the rich,” limit the size of “too big to fail” financial institutions, regulate credit default swaps, lower the cost of healthcare (a.k.a. sickcare), limit the abuses of student loans to pay for online diploma mills, and on and on and on.But what if the rot is already beyond the reach of more top-down policy tweaks?Consider the recent healthcare legislation: thousands of pages of obtuse regulations that require a veritable army of regulators staffing a sprawling fiefdom with the net result of uncertain savings based on a board somewhere in the labyrinth establishing “best practices” that will magically cut costs in a system that expands by 9% a year, each and every year, a system so bloated with fraud, embezzlement and waste that the total sum squandered is incalculable, but estimated at around 40%, minimum.Does anyone really think that the lack of another centralized Federal fiefdom and thousands of pages of additional regulation is what ails sickcare? Of course not. In effect, we as a society have completely lost the ability to honestly admit a problem exists and that the solution is not to paper it all over with more regulation and insatible, ever-rising debt-based funding, paid for by our children, grandchildren, and their children.Consider the National Security State, busily constructing rectangular mountains of office space to house its vast, unchecked, oversight-free Empire. Does anyone actually know what tens of thousands of highly-paid people are doing in all these sprawling fiefdoms of National Security? And I don’t mean the Pentagon or the NSA–the buildings sprouting all over the tonier bits of D.C. and its suburbia are the metastasizing results of the “green light” given to anything remotely connected to GWOT–the global war on terror, the war that by definition can never be declared won or even ended, the war that always requires more funding lest one “event” slip through the cracks.If nobody in the elected chain of command actually knows where all this “black budget” money is going, what are the odds it’s being spent wisely and prudently?“No meaningful oversight” inevitably leads to abuse of budget and power. If we haven’t learned that, then we are well on the way to financial and political self-destruction.Consider the Glass-Steagall Act, at 37 pages in length, and the 2,319-page monstrosity of corrupted Federal power, the “Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act:” (Source)Back in December, Nick Schulz helped put the size of the 2,074-page healthcare bill into some historical context by comparing its length to some previous bills that rank among the most consequential in U.S. history, like the 82-page Social Security Act of 1935 and the 74-page Civil Rights Act of 1964.Now that Congress has passed the “Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act,” it might be a good time to compare the 2,319-page financial reform bill (245 pages longer than the healthcare bill) to the previous bills listed below (and see graph) that are considered among the most consequential legislative acts for banking and finance.1. Federal Reserve Act (1913) – 31 pages.2. Glass-Steagall Act (1933) – 37 pages.Though few have delved into the ramifications of this monstrous power-grab, it seems that the Executive Branch has grabbed potentially unprecedented powers with little if any oversight by Congress–all in the supremely Orwellian pursuit of “consumer protection.”If a 37-page bill took care of the problem in 1933, why can’t the same 37-page bill be re-instated? Why, indeed. The reason is that the bill impedes the flow of public funds to favored cartels and opportunities for financial looting by these cartels, and so a monster is created that nobody understands and which limits or simply overwhelms oversight by elected officials outside the Imperial Presidency.The entire financial and political infrastructure is corrupt. Perhaps it is time to note that the most thoroughly, venally, pervasively corrupt nations on Earth all have abundant regulations against corruption.Regulations don’t stop or limit corruption, fraud and embezzlement by magic. Sickcare is beyond being “fixed” by thousands of pages of policy tweaks, limitations and regulations. The financial system is beyond being “fixed” by thousands of pages of arcane regulations that only serve to obfuscate the looting and predation while enshrining another vast Federal fiefdom that harvests the national income while accomplishing nothing of substance.Regulation only functions if the culture and the society have a value system and a will to enforce it. The American people have lost those values and the will. Complicity reigns supreme. Instead we support going through the motions of adding layers of bureaucratic bloat, and listening to Soaring Rhetoric (TM) from bloviated politicos who promise us “prosperity,” “recovery” and all the rest without any sacrifice or engagement.Going through the motions never solved anything. 2,000-page regulatory thickets are one thing, and one thing only: purposeful obfuscation via complexity. ( America Is Just Going Through the Motions (November 19, 2010):A profound realization hit me last night: America is just going through the motions now–of reform, of healthcare, of everything. America’s leadership–both its elected and appointed officials, and its “shadow” Financial Power Elite leadership (the corporatocracy of crony Capitalist cartels and rentier/speculative parasites) are just going through the motions of financial reform. And the American public is resigned to just going through the motions of accepting the travesty of a mockery of a sham that is called “reform,” too, even as they understand in their bones that nothing has been fixed and the next financial crisis has already been cooked into their future.One of our few reliable voice of reason in the world of finance, Simon Johnson, has already laid bare how the the next financial crisis and inevitable bailout of the banking parasites will unfold. His article in The New Republic Way Too Big To Fail reveals how the “too big to fail” banks have shredded the wet paper bag of “reform” Congress went through the motions of conjuring up: they are quickly expanding globally, beyond the reach of any mere nation-state’s grasp.Let’s be honest, shall we? There never was any fire for real reform of the financial sector. It was all rote, a foul, stupid play-act, a passionless pantomime of “caring” and fake-“progressiveness” displayed for propaganda purposes.Real reform occurs when the political class of toadies, sycophants, leeches and cowards is forced by a near-universal public outrage to pass simple, powerful legislation and the budgetary resources to enforce that legislation. For example, the landmark environmental laws of the 1970s. Rivers in America used to catch fire before this Federal legislation; now they don’t. There was a true passion and desire in the nation to clean up the industrial pollution that was destroying the nation’s commons.There was no real fire for financial reform in the politico class. All they had to do was wait out the public’s outrage over TARP and then get down to the business of collecting contributions from financial players and their armies of toady-lobbyists.So Washington went through the motions of “reform” and the regulatory agencies went through the motions of “enforcing” existing regulations. But nobody was indicted, no RICO suits filed on behalf of the defrauded, no billion-dollar penalties slapped on those who carted off tens of billions in embezzled, ill-gotten gains, and no perps forced into bankruptcy.In other words, nothing got done except another layer of useless, overpaid bureaucracy was added to the bloated, overstuffed Federal payroll.The exact same dynamic is visible in the “healthcare” (a.k.a. sickcare) “reform.” 2,000 pages of mind-numbing slicing and dicing of the vast flood of national treasure that flows to the sickcare cartels, and nary a single word on the actual health of the American public, which continues to deteriorate on multiple fronts.The “reform” is to add multiple layers of bureaucracy and additional costs on a bloated, out-of-control system in which 50% of the money is already wasted on fraud, needless procedures/meds and paper shuffling.It was all about going through the motions of reforming a system everyone knows is beyond dysfunctional.The painful truth is that we are far beyond the point where policy/legalist regulatory tweaks will actually fix what’s wrong with America. The rot isn’t just financial or political; those are real enough, but they are mere reflections of a profound social, cultural, yes, spiritual rot.This is the great illusion: that our financial and political crises can be resolved with top-down, centralized financial reforms of one ideological flavor or another. It is abundantly clear that our crises extend far beyond a lack of regulation or policy tweaks. We cling to this illusion because it is easy and comforting; the problems can all be solved without any work or sacrifice on our part.Our complicity in the corruption is never mentioned: our votes for kleptocractic politico toadies who promise us that our share of Federal swag will not be sacrificed, our interest payments to the banking cartel/oligarchy, our acceptance of bogus statistics, bogus “reforms” and ceaseless propaganda as legitimate, and lastly, our silence in the face of destructive deficits, lest our share of the swag be cut.This is how once-great Empires end: toothless regulations are passed by bought-and-paid-for legislatures for the purposes of perception management, and a populace addled by constant entertainments and staged combats in the Coliseum listlessly pursues their “right” to bread and circuses of distraction.If this recession strikes you as different from previous downturns, you might be interested in my new book An Unconventional Guide to Investing in Troubled Times (print edition) orKindle ebook format. You can read the ebook on any computer, smart phone, iPad, etc. Click here for links to Kindle apps and Chapter One.Jesse’s Café Américain“You have lived longer than I have and perhaps may have formed a different judgment on better grounds; but my observations do not enable me to say I think integrity the characteristic of wealth. In general I believe the decisions of the people, in a body, will be more honest and more disinterested than those of wealthy men.” Thomas Jefferson, August 26, 1776, Letter to Edmund PendletonPosted byJesseat12:50 AM06 February 2012MF Global Collapsed in the Face of a $310 Million Margin Call Made by ‘Undisclosed Party’
The margin call was predicted here about day two as I recall. The question in my mind is the extent that JP Morgan and any of their other bankers and credit line holders played in this.
It will be interesting to see how this case progresses from the Giddens-Freeh bankruptcy team and into the hands of the regulators and Justice Department.
So far (for the past three years) the Obama Administration has been adverse to looking too far into these sorts of cases before throwing a waiver or settlement without admission of any guilt on the table.Bloomberg MF Global’s $310 Million Margin Call Exceeded Its Market Value By Matthew Leising February 06, 2012, 8:33 PM EST Feb. 7 (Bloomberg) — MF Global Holdings Ltd., the futures broker that filed the eighth-largest bankruptcy in October, faced a $310 million margin call on its final day that exceeded its market value. Calls for payments tied to bets MF Global made on European sovereign debt increased Oct. 24 and continued through Oct. 31, the day the futures broker formerly run by Jon Corzine filed for bankruptcy protection, according to a report yesterday from James Giddens, a trustee overseeing the brokerage’s liquidation. MF Global had a market value of $198 million on Oct. 28 as it held $6.3 billion in European sovereign-debt trades.
After tracing 840 transactions of $327 billion in the company’s final days, Giddens is still analyzing where some of the $1.2 billion in missing customer money “ended up,” he said in the report. Corzine’s firm failed after credit-rating downgrades, a record quarterly loss and revelations about its $6.3 billion European debt tradeunnerved investors. The missing money has sparked Congressional hearings and former customers have said it undermined confidence in the futures industry.
“For three months, our investigative team has worked to understand what happened during the final days of MF Global when cash and related securities movements were not always accurately and promptly recorded due to the chaotic situation and the complexity of the transactions,” Giddens said in a statement.
The trustee didn’t disclose the identity of the counterparties making the margin calls. The trades were cleared through LCH.Clearnet Ltd., according to an MF Global contingency plan drafted before its failure. In the plan, which was designed to address the effects of a credit-rating downgrade on the company’s solvency and liquidity, MF Global questioned whether it should move the debt trades out of LCH.Clearnet.
“How will LCH respond, how much in excess margin will be required, time period, can/will they force us out?” the brokerage questioned in a section of the plan titled “immediate decision making required.” The undated plan indicated the company could move some of the cleared positions to the over- the-counter market, where it could get more favorable terms.
Congress, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department are investigating events surrounding the collapse of MF Global, including the disappearance of the customer funds…I think it is time now to take a maximally defensive position, which for me at least means hedged gold bullion positions and cash. The bullion hedge is to guard against a liquidation event as opposed to an equity correction.
If volumes stay light the wiseguys can keep lifting this up, burning the shorts. So do not get ahead of this, but keep your powder dry if you trade, and if not, start packing up in advance of a move to higher ground. It sure is taking them a long time to spit this one out, isn’t it? We stole your money, we own the system, and there is nothing you can do about it, you pipsqueaks, so just STFU and take what we choose to give you.
Given the timing and the likely parties involved, these transfers, even when they do not involve the theft of customer funds, with the withholding of third party cash transfers by the intermediaries, done among insiders in the last week of a bankruptcy, have the appearance of a fraudulent conveyance.
Given that quite a bit of this money was undoubtedly held by MF Global’s bankers, who were almost certainly aware of and may have helped to precipitate the bankruptcy, we might even have a criminal conspiracy to defraud the customers and other creditors in addition to the civil actions appropriate in a fair and unbiased bankruptcy proceeding.
There is also some evidence that certain customers were privately warned by the bankers, or perhaps even parties in the company itself, a few weeks in advance, and were able to withdraw their funds from the company before it failed. Some right wing money men come to mind, among others.
This suggestion by the trustee that the MF Global personnel took the customer money unknowingly, ie. by mistake, would be hilarious if it was not being used to describe so malicious and unspeakable lapse in stewardship by the privileged, wealthy people in stealing the livelihoods from farmers and cattle ranchers among others.
What surprises me almost more than anything is that these jokers are willing to risk bringing down the financial system for a measly billion dollars, which is a fraction of what they take in personal bonuses in a good year. Is this some sort of perverse adherence to the Ferengi rules of acquistion? “Once you have their money, never give it back.”
If this stands, then nothing, no assets, held by the Anglo-American financial system are safe. When the next crisis comes, they will take what they want, starting with foreign holdings, working their way up the power and influence pyramid from there. And you can talk to the back of their hand if you don’t like it.Reuters MF Global shortfall worsened as bankruptcy neared Mon Feb 6, 2012 2:18pm EST Feb 6 (Reuters) – The trustee liquidating MF Global Holdings Ltd’s broker-dealer unit said the shortfall in commodity customer accounts began five days before the company’s bankruptcy and grew in the days leading up to the Chapter 11 filing.
James Giddens, the trustee for MF Global Inc, said in a statement that his investigation has revealed that MF Global personnel might not have known of the shortfall at the time. (Anyone in the business must be rolling on the floor laughing at this one. Oops, sorry, we inadvertently took the customer money by mistake, a simple $1.2 billion error, and its too late to give it back to the right persons. But we’re dreadfully sorry for our innocent mistake. – Jesse)
He said he has traced a majority of cash transactions, totaling more than $105 billion, made in the last week prior to MF Global’s bankruptcy on Oct. 31, 2011. Giddens said he is working with third parties to seek more complete information about transfers to “select” parties prior to that bankruptcy.
Giddens also said it is unknown when he will be able to make more distributions to former customers.
The difference amongst the three measures revolves around the treatment of workers who desire a real full time job, but have to either settle for a part time position and other forms of under-employment that may technically qualify as a ‘job’ but not as a ‘living,’ or who have simply been removed from the government’s official attention span.“The seasonally-adjusted SGS Alternate Unemployment Rate reflects current unemployment reporting methodology adjusted for SGS-estimated long-term discouraged workers, who were defined out of official existence in 1994. That estimate is added to the BLS estimate of U-6 unemployment, which includes short-term discouraged workers.
The U-3 unemployment rate is the monthly headline number. The U-6 unemployment rate is the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) broadest unemployment measure, including short-term discouraged and other marginally-attached workers as well as those forced to work part-time because they cannot find full-time employment.” Read the rest of John Williams’ Shadowstats here.
My own estimation is that the recovery is flat-lining here and is vulnerable to a double dip which, if it does occur, will be blamed on some exterior factor such as slack European demand, problems in the emerging markets, or China. But it is still too soon to tell from the numbers.
In terms of historical perspective, the great reformer Obama is much more like Herbert Hoover or Nelson Rockefeller than a Franklin Roosevelt. He resembles a moderate Republican despite all the hysterical rhetoric from the far right.
The economy has not been reformed, and most of the problems that caused the collapse in the first place are still operating. As the corporate lobbyists were able to weaken financial reform in Dodd-Frank, so they continue to monopolize the conversation and policy discussions with their money.
I do not see genuine change happening until and unless the human misery increases enough to trigger a reaction, mass protests, or some other serious challenge to the status quo and the apathy of the fortunate. And I have quite a bit of confidence that the one percent will continue to obsessively power forward as the economy dries up until they achieve a pyrrhic victory. Winning.
This applies not only to the US but several other western countries, particularly the UK. It is also true for China which despite the gloss of their miracle economy in the western corporate media remains largely a narrow oligarchy sitting on top of a virtual slave labor camp, with a few showcase exceptions. And the western oligarchs love it. As Bill Gates said, ‘This is my kind of capitalism.’Posted byJesseat11:22 AM05 February 2012SEC Allows Some of America’s Biggest Wall St. Banks To Continually Flout the Law The NY Times has discovered that the Banks that were rescued by the public have turned into serial fraud offenders. JP Morgan is near the top of their ranks, with Goldman Sachs and Bank of America not far behind. Only Citigroup seems to have fallen out of favor. This is not news to any of the regular patrons of the Cafe, but it is good to see the mainstream media taking notice. Perhaps they might have a look at the Silver manipulation investigation that the CFTC has been sitting on for over three years. Not to mention the outrageous theft of customer money by MF Global and the Banks.
Obama talks a good game, and presents a moral face through the media, but an examination of his actions and his record shows that his administration serves the monied interests to the detriment of the public interest. In many cases they are merely following the same practices begun in the Clinton Administration and carried on by Bush. It is a bad situation indeed when the ‘reformer’ elected by the people has failed to reform.
He may not be as brazen and open as his Republican opponents in promoting the interests of the Wall Street, perhaps, and certainly is not as favorable to Big Oil, but the corruption of justice for all in American politics seems to have become pervasive over the last fifteen years. NY TimesS.E.C. Is Avoiding Tough Sanctions for Large Banks By Edward Wyatt February 3, 2012 WASHINGTON — Even as the Securities and Exchange Commission has stepped up its investigations of Wall Street in the last decade, the agency has repeatedly allowed the biggest firms to avoid punishments specifically meant to apply to fraud cases.
By granting exemptions to laws and regulations that act as a deterrent to securities fraud, the S.E.C. has let financial giants like JPMorganChase, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America continue to have advantages reserved for the most dependable companies, making it easier for them to raise money from investors, for example, and to avoid liability from lawsuits if their financial forecasts turn out to be wrong.
An analysis by The New York Times of S.E.C. investigations over the last decade found nearly 350 instances where the agency has given big Wall Street institutions and other financial companies a pass on those or other sanctions. Those instances also include waivers permitting firms to underwrite certain stock and bond sales and manage mutual fund portfolios.
JPMorganChase, for example, has settled six fraud cases in the last 13 years, including one with a $228 million settlement last summer, but it has obtained at least 22 waivers, in part by arguing that it has “a strong record of compliance with securities laws.” Bank of America and Merrill Lynch, which merged in 2009, have settled 15 fraud cases and received at least 39 waivers.
Only about a dozen companies — Dell, General Electric and United Rentals among them — have felt the full force of the law after issuing misleading information about their businesses. Citigroup was the only major Wall Street bank among them. In 11 years, it settled six fraud cases and received 25 waivers before it lost most of its privileges in 2010…
Read the rest here. S.E.C. Is Avoiding Tough Sanctions for Large Banks Meredith B. Cross, the S.E.C.’s corporation finance director, says the purpose behind offering waivers to Wall Street firms that had settled fraud or lesser charges is to protect investors.By EDWARD WYATTPublished: February 3, 2012 WASHINGTON — Even as the Securities and Exchange Commission has stepped up its investigations of Wall Street in the last decade, the agency has repeatedly allowed the biggest firms to avoid punishments specifically meant to apply to David Ruder, a former S.E.C. chairman. By granting exemptions to laws and regulations that act as a deterrent to securities fraud, the S.E.C. has let financial giants like JPMorganChase, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America continue to have advantages reserved for the most dependable companies, making it easier for them to raise money from investors, for example, and to avoid liability from lawsuits if their financial forecasts turn out to be wrong.An analysis by The New York Times of S.E.C. investigations over the last decade found nearly 350 instances where the agency has given big Wall Street institutions and other financial companies a pass on those or other sanctions. Those instances also include waivers permitting firms to underwrite certain stock and bond sales and manage mutual fund portfolios.JPMorganChase, for example, has settled six fraud cases in the last 13 years, including one with a $228 million settlement last summer, but it has obtained at least 22 waivers, in part by arguing that it has “a strong record of compliance with securities laws.” Bank of America and Merrill Lynch, which merged in 2009, have settled 15 fraud cases and received at least 39 waivers.Only about a dozen companies — Dell, General Electric and United Rentals among them — have felt the full force of the law after issuing misleading information about their businesses. Citigroup was the only major Wall Street bank among them. In 11 years, it settled six fraud cases and received 25 waivers before it lost most of its privileges in 2010.By granting those waivers, the S.E.C. allowed Wall Street firms to have powerful advantages, securities experts and former regulators say. The institutions remained protected under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, which makes it easier to avoid class-action shareholder lawsuits.And the companies continue to use rules that let them instantly raise money publicly, without waiting weeks for government approvals. Without the waivers, the companies could not move as quickly as rivals that had not settled fraud charges to sell stocks or bonds when market conditions were most favorable.Other waivers allowed Wall Street firms that had settled fraud or lesser charges to continue managing mutual funds and to help small, private companies raise money from investors — two types of business from which they otherwise would be excluded.“The ramifications of losing those exemptions are enormous to these firms,” David S. Ruder, a former S.E.C. chairman, said in an interview. Without the waivers, agreeing to settle charges of securities fraud “might have vast repercussions affecting the ability of a firm to continue to stay in business,” he said.S.E.C. officials say that they grant the waivers to keep stock and bond markets open to companies with legitimate capital-raising needs. Ensuring such access is as important to its mission as protecting investors, regulators said.The agency usually revokes the privileges when a case involves false or misleading statements about a company’s own business. It does not do so when the commission has charged a Wall Street firm with lying about, say, a specific mortgage security that it created and is selling to investors, a charge Goldman Sachs settled in 2010. Different parts of the company — corporate officers versus a sales force, for example — are responsible for different types of statements, officials say.“The purpose of taking away this simplified path to capital is to protect investors, not to punish a company,” said Meredith B. Cross, the S.E.C.’s corporation finance director, referring to the fast-track offering privilege. “You’re not seeing the times that waivers aren’t being granted, because the companies don’t ask when they know the answer will be no.”Others, however, argue that the pattern is another example of the government being too soft on Wall Street as it has become a much larger part of the economy in recent decades.President Obama, in his State of the Union address, asked Congress last week for tougher laws that make “the penalties for fraud count.” Federal judges in New York and Wisconsin recently criticized the S.E.C. for its habit of settling cases by allowing companies to promise not to violate the law in the future.The commission has frequently turned the other cheek when the companies again settle similar fraud cases. S.E.C. officials have defended that practice by saying they do not have the resources to take cases to court rather than settle. They recently asked Congress to toughen laws and to raise financial penalties for fraud violations.But the repeated granting of waivers suggests that the agency does in fact have tools it often does not use, critics say. Close to half of the waivers went to repeat offenders — Wall Street firms that had settled previous fraud charges by agreeing never again to violate the very laws that the S.E.C. was now saying that they had broken.Page 2 of 2)Senator Charles E. Grassley, an Iowa Republican who serves on committees that oversee the S.E.C., said he was baffled that the agency had recently asked Congress for more enforcement powers when it had ceded much of the power it already had. “It’s really hard to see why the S.E.C. isn’t using all of its weapons to deter fraud,” he said. “It makes already weak punishment even weaker by waiving the regulations that impose significant consequences on the companies that settle fraud charges. No wonder recidivism is such a problem.”The Times analysis found 11 instances where companies that had settled fraud cases had actually lost the special privilege for fast-track stock or bond offerings, versus 49 times that the S.E.C. granted waivers from the punishment to Wall Street firms since 2005. The analysis counted 91 waivers since 2000 granting immunity from lawsuits, and 204 waivers related to raising money for small companies and managing mutual funds.The S.E.C. does not maintain a central database of how many companies lose special status or are denied waivers. Its records of granted waivers are scattered across several databases on its Web site.JPMorganChase is among the big Wall Street firms that have been granted multiple waivers with nearly every settlement of S.E.C. fraud charges. Last July, it agreed to pay $228 million to settle civil and criminal charges that it cheated cities and towns by rigging bids with other Wall Street firms to invest the money raised by several municipalities for capital projects.JPMorgan received three waivers related to that case for privileges that it otherwise would have lost. But the S.E.C. said the company’s fraudulent actions didn’t involve misleading investors about JPMorgan’s business.“That distinction doesn’t do it for me,” said Richard W. Painter, a corporate law professor at the University of Minnesota and the co-author of a casebook on securities litigation and enforcement. “If a company has trouble telling the truth to investors in one batch of securities it is underwriting, I would not have confidence that it would tell the truth to investors about its own securities.”Despite six securities fraud settlements in 13 years, JPMorgan rarely if ever lost any special privileges. It has been awarded at least 22 waivers since 2003, with most of its S.E.C. settlements generating two or more. In seeking the reprieves, lawyers for JPMorgan stated in letters to the S.E.C. that it should grant a waiver because the company has “a strong record of compliance with the securities laws.” The company declined to comment for this article.Citigroup is one of the rare Wall Street giants that has lost significant privileges recently. In October 2010, the bank paid $75 million to settle charges that it misled investors in 2007 about the size of its holdings of assets backed by subprime mortgages. The company told investors that it had about $13 billion of those risky investments on its balance sheet, when it really had more than $50 billion, according to the S.E.C.Because those accusations involved Citigroup’s statements about its own financial well-being, the company lost for three years the ability to insulate itself from lawsuits over mistaken predictions about its business. It also lost, for the same three years, the exemption for “well-known seasoned issuers,” which allowed it to quickly raise capital in the securities markets. As a result, Citigroup has had to file thousands of pages of new documents with the S.E.C. and wait weeks for the agency’s approvals to make itself eligible to sell stocks, bonds and other securities to the public.Citigroup declined to comment on whether the sanctions have had any effect on its business.Wrangling over waivers is an important part of the negotiations when companies accused of fraud discuss a settlement with the S.E.C., and sometimes it can involve a form of corporate plea bargaining to a lesser charge.In 2009, the S.E.C. was negotiating with Bank of America over charges that it had failed to disclose to shareholders that billions of dollars in bonuses were being paid to Merrill Lynch executives just as Bank of America was bailing out the firm.Because the S.E.C. charges involved fraudulent statements by both Bank of America and Merrill Lynch about their financial status, the merged company was in danger of losing its special privileges for both offerings and forecasts. According to a report by the then-S.E.C. inspector general, H. David Kotz, the waiver issue “was of such importance to B. of A. that the settlement became contingent on B. of A.’s receipt of the waiver.”Bank of America apparently won the argument but would not comment on it. It settled the case by agreeing to a $150 million payment. The S.E.C., however, decided not to charge the bank with fraud, which could have endangered the bank’s special status. Instead, the S.E.C. charged Bank of America with violating disclosure rules for shareholder materials and proxies, and Bank of America kept its privileges.S.E.C. officials said they would not discuss how they arrived at specific settlements and declined to comment on the Citigroup, JP Morgan or Bank of America settlements.Thomas Lee Hazen, a securities law professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said that it is understandable that the S.E.C. might relax some potential sanctions on Wall Street firms — where it appears that lessons have been learned, or when a fine is thought to be sufficient punishment.“The ripple effect of having a sanction that could shut them down or could seriously impede a company’s operations would seriously affect a lot of innocent customers,” he said. “It’s a very fine balance. That’s not to say that the S.E.C. is striking the balance properly. That is in the eye of the beholder.”GOP Seeks ‘Pelosi Provision’ in Insider Trading BillWednesday, 08 Feb 2012 02:38 PMBy Dan WeilMore ways to share… Mixx Stumbled LinkedIn Vine Buzzflash Reddit Delicious Newstrust Technocrati 4 House Republican leaders hope to add a provision to the congressional insider trading bill that would forbid members of Congress from gaining special entrance into initial public offerings (IPOs) of stock. The plank is known as the “Pelosi provision,” a House GOP aide told The Hill.
Pelosi participated in Visa’s 2008 IPO under shady circumstances. While she denied any wrongdoing, a “60 Minutes” report last year cited her and several other members of Congress, suggesting Pelosi and her husband benefited from the Visa IPO at the same time Congress was considering fresh rules for credit card companies.
The “Pelosi Provision” may spark opposition from Democrats. The current legislation has broad support from both sides of the aisle. Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill declined to comment on the planned provision. “We look forward to reviewing the text of the bill Leader [Eric] Cantor is writing in secret,” he told The Hill.
The Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act, originally offered in the House, has now reached 283 co-sponsors, including 99 Republicans. The Senate overwhelmingly passed its version last week.
Democrats accused Cantor of slowing work on the bill last year, but he has put it at the top of the agenda for 2012.
Read more on Newsmax.com: GOP Seeks ‘Pelosi Provision’ in Insider Trading Bill. Version of this article appeared in print on February 3, 2012, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: S.E.C. Is Avoiding Tough Sanctions For Large Banks.Sam Zell: Government Hinders Housing Recovery, Creates Mortgage ‘Moral Hazard’Thursday, 09 Feb 2012 07:30 AMBy Forrest JonesMore ways to share…MixxStumbledLinkedInVineBuzzflashRedditDeliciousNewstrustTechnocrati0Government intervention in the housing sector is doing more harm than good and is actually hurting recovery instead of helping it, says real estate mogul Sam Zell.
President Barack Obama has proposed expanding government efforts to allow millions of struggling homeowners refinance their mortgages.
The problem with government intervention is that it doesn’t allow the market to correct itself and fully recover, Zell says.
“Rather than let the elements of the business world take care of the problems, we basically stopped the process of creating market clearing,” Zell tells CNBC. “Had we allowed the market to clear without trying to stop reality…we would have a healthy housing market today.”
One problem facing the housing sector today is that it’s too easy for distressed homeowners to walk away and leave the bank holding the property, Zell says.
“We are the only country in the world where you can borrow money on a house and walk away from it. Everywhere else, all the people in Europe, all the people who borrow money in Brazil, they’re all personally liable for 100 percent of the debt. So by virtue of not being personally liable, we’ve created a giant moral hazard,” Zell says.
That has to change.
“Would I change the policy? Absolutely … I think you have a giant moral hazard that must be eliminated. If you borrow money to buy a house, how you cannot be responsible?”
Experts say Republicans in Congress will kill President Obama’s home refinance proposal anyway due to its increased participation of government in the housing sector.
“The president pretty clearly signaled that [the program] would need some kind of congressional action,” says Brian Gardner, senior vice president of Washington research at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, according to U.S. News & World Report.
President Obama’s 2013 budget sets much of the agenda for the stormy election season ahead. These points will help you make sense of the chaos. Congress Sets the Budget:The fact is Congress, not the president, ultimately controls the federal purse strings. While much hoopla will accompany President Obama’s 2013 budget, presidential budget proposals often serve more as a political billboard than a framework for how money is collected and spent by the government.
So President Obama’s budget will provide talking points for his 2012 re-election campaign and targets for the Republicans who seek to defeat him.
“Every budget proposal is partly a serious policy document and partly a political statement,”Stan Collender, a former staffer for both the House and Senate Budget Committees, told msnbc.com.
No Budget, No Problem:Not only can Congress reject the president’s budget, it doesn’t even have to vote on it. Congress has little incentive to vote on the budget this year. In addition to Republican opposition, many Democrats in swing districts won’t want to go on record voting for any kind of tax increase.
Last year the Senate rejected President Obama’s 2012 budget by a 97-0 vote.
In fact, Congress has not approved a budget for over 1,000 days, getting by with stopgap spending bills in the interim.
A Taxing Issue: As expected, President Obama’s 2013 budget includes tax increases for the wealthy. That will keep tax issues in the spotlight this year, since Republicans have vowed to oppose tax increases of any kind.
The president included the so-called “Buffett Rule,” which creates a 30% minimum tax for anyone making $1 million or more. It would replace the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT).
More controversial is the proposal to tax dividends as ordinary income for those making $250,000 and up. Now the top dividends rate is 15%. President Obama would also raise the top rate on taxes on capital gains from 15% to 20%.
Those proposals will help President Obama position himself as a defender of the middle class against the rich, while giving the GOP ammunition to accuse him of “class warfare.” Another Year Older and Deeper inDebt: Although President Obama will say his budget includes $4 trillion in deficit reductions over the next decade, Republicans will tell you that the 2013 budget deficit is $1.33 trillion.
That’s the fourth straight year the president’s budget deficit has exceeded $1 trillion. Expect to hear a lot about it, as the Republicans will waste no opportunity to remind Americans of President Obama’s promise in 2009 to cut the deficit in half.
It also could reignite the debate over the national debt, which is now over $15 trillion and equal to the country’s annual gross domestic product.
Fuzzy Math: You’d think the government would at least be able to keep accurate figures on how much money it spends, but no. It literally depends on whom you ask.
For example, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) put 2010 spending by the Department of Health and Human Services at $854 billion. The Census Bureau says the figure is $944 billion. Differences in accounting methods account for the whopping $90 billion discrepancy.
And that doesn’t get into all the accounting voodoo in the budget itself, which often relies on unrealistic assumptions.
“To Washington, these are rounding errors,” Pete Sepp, executive director of the Alexandria, Virginia-based National Taxpayers Union, told Bloomberg News. “To the rest of America, this is real money that could help real people with real problems.” http://pro.stansberryresearch.com/1202CHINAPSI/EOILN223/?o=628313&s=632713&u=55292360&l=391971&r=MiloMore ways to share… Mixx Stumbled LinkedIn Vine Buzzflash Reddit Delicious Newstrust Tell my politician Technocrati newsletter@globalresearch.ca via globalresearch.ccsend.com Obama’s Eligibility…Not One Shred of Authentic Verifiable Evidence By Craig Andresen on March 4, 2012 at 1:22 pm In the wake of Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s press conference regarding his Cold Case Posse’s investigation into Obama’s documents, we are left with some questions. These questions are NOT new questions but they bear asking again and now, since an official law enforcement agency has finally investigated and issued a report, perhaps these questions gain in validity. Yes, many others have raised these questions and rightfully so. The questions began nearly 4 years ago but, for the sake of sticking to the documents in question, we will confine our points to questions raised within the last year. On April 25th 2011, Obama “released” his “official certificate of live birth” in a press conference from the white house briefing room. Nearly immediately, those who knew of such things as computers, graphics, layering and such, called into question the process employed in creating this birth certificate. Not for a minute should their efforts be discounted in questioning the validity of it. Indeed, they set the stage for this official law enforcement investigation and without doubt, they deserve credit for their work. The difference is, while they did indeed know their stuff, they were not affiliated with an official law enforcement investigation and therefore, were ripe for ridicule, ripe for what we now KNOW was UNWARRANTED ridicule. Now, to the questions regarding the long form birth certificate which MUST be asked, AGAIN, because of the OFFICIAL LAW ENFORCEMENT INVESTIGATION, conducted by the office of Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Maricopa County Arizona. 1) If a REAL and AUTHENTIC certificate of live birth exists, showing Barack Obama to have been born in Hawaii on August 4th, 1961, why then produce a forgery? Answer 1) He wasn’t born in Hawaii on August 4th, 1961. Answer 2) He was born in a foreign country. Answer 3) Barack Obama Sr. is not his real father. All of these are possibilities in and of themselves or perhaps a combination of them are true. Whatever the truth might be, one truth is clear; there would be no reason whatsoever to manufacture a forged certificate of live birth if an authentic document exists. 2) Since the document in question IS a forgery, WHO forged it? Answer) Sheriff Arpaio clearly stated neither he nor his Cold Case Posse is accusing Obama himself of creating the forgery but he also made clear, they HAVE identified a “Person of Interest” in the creation of the forgery. 3) Did Obama know that he was presenting a forged certificate of live birth on April 25th, 2011? Answer 1) Yes he did. Answer 2) No, he was duped. To believe he was duped, one would have to believe that Obama believed everything which was on that forged certificate was true. He would have to believe he was indeed born in Hawaii, on August 4th, 1961, that Obama Sr. was his father etc when in fact either some of it or all of it was a lie told to him, we can only suspect, by his mother and his family and throughout the years, no one related to him or no one who was a close family friend who knew the truth ever imparted that truth or alluded to it, to Obama. If Obama DID know the document was forged, he perpetrated a fraud upon the American public from the white house briefing room on April 25th, 2011. 4) When was the forged document created? Answer 1) In 1961 Answer 2) In 2008 Answer 3) In 2011 As the technology employed to create this forgery didn’t exist in 1961, it could not have been forged at that time. Had the forgery been created in 2008 or there about, when Obama decided to run for president, why not release it at THAT time rather than wait more than 2 more years? It seems most likely that the forgery was created shortly before its release in April of 2011 in direct response to Trump’s vow to investigate the matter. Now, let’s look at the other document in question regarding the Arpaio investigation…The Obama Selective Service Registration card. Sheriff Arpaio’s Cold Case Posse was able to confirm, just as they did with the long form birth certificate, that the Selective Service Registration card, with 100% certainty, is a forgery. Here are the questions: 1) Why forge a Selective Service Registration card? Answer 1) The authentic card could not be found. Answer 2) Obama never registered for Selective Service. As other cards can easily be found including cards from those who registered for Selective Service in the same United States Post Office as the forged card indicates Obama registered, it would appear to be HIGHLY improbable that Obama’s card has gone missing. It seems much MORE likely that Obama never registered, as was required by law, for Selective Service. 2) When was the forged Obama Selective Service Card created? Answer 1) In 1980 Answer 2) In 2008 Answer 3) in 2011 Here again, if an authentic Selective Service Registration card was ever filled out by Obama in 1980, it would exist today and no forgery would be needed. It is doubtful that the forgery was created in 2011. Most likely, the forgery was created in 2008 as Obama was approaching the nomination. The Cold Case Posse showed how it was most likely created with the focus being the pica date stamp. Since a 1980 (note the 4-digit year number) did not remain in existence in 2008, a 2008 pica date insert was cut in half and the 08 (note the 2 digit year number) was inverted (turned upside down) to record as 80 (again, note the 2 digit year number) which is not at all in accordance with a real pica date stamp used by the United States Post Office. 3) Who forged the Obama Selective Service Registration card? If, as it seems most likely to be, that the Obama Selective Service card forgery was created in 2008, it would appear most likely that it was created by someone within the DNC. This, if it is indeed the case, would be because in the vetting process, at some point, when it became apparent that Obama would be the nominee, certain documents which should exist relating to him, simply didn’t exist and to cover for these missing documents, i.e., the Selective Service Registration, forgeries were then created. 4) Did Obama know his Selective Service Registration card was forged? Answer 1) No, he was duped Answer 2) Yes he did. Only Obama himself would know for sure whether he ever registered for Selective Service. If he did, an authentic Selective Service Card would be in existence today. If he did not, he would know it and the forged Selective Service Registration card in his name, would be known by him, to be a forgery and as that card has been displayed for years, as his, he would have known for years that a forged Selective Service Registration card was being purported as authentic in his name. Finally, the microfilm issue highlighted in the Sheriff Arpaio press conference. One of the questions investigated by the Cold Case Posse revolved around possible entry into the U.S. by Obama’s mother. Anyone entering the United States, citizen, or foreigner, is required to fill out an official card through INS. It is thought that, sometime within the first week of August 1961, Stanley Ann Dunham may have entered the United States from overseas bringing with her, a baby. Suspiciously missing from the INS records thus far investigated was that very week. Microfilm reel #184 shows only a couple of cards before that reel goes blank. Reel #185 picks up with August 8th, 1961. Missing completely are August 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th, 1961. 1) When did that week’s record go missing? 2) Who removed that week’s record? 3) Why is it missing? At this point, we have no idea when that single week’s portion of the INS microfilm record went missing. As to who was responsible, we can only guess it rises to a higher level than the DNC. While it would be relatively simple for the DNC to create forged documents to stand in for nonexistent documents, the INS is a federal bureau and missing records are far different from records which never existed. It seems necessary for someone within the INS to have removed any portion of the INS records. This would mean that someone else would have had to facilitated in the call for that portion of the record to have been removed. Did money change hands in this process? Did someone high up in the government instruct someone at INS to remove that portion of the record? Those are questions which now need to be asked and answered. As to WHY that week’s microfilm record is missing, we can only guess that it showed something which would not be conducive to Obama and his election to the office of president. That portion of the INS record could have shown Stanley Ann Dunham and baby arriving in the United States. While this portion of the microfilm record pertains to entries through or across the pacific, the records pertaining to Atlantic entries has not yet been provided but, considering Stanley Ann Dunham then lived in Hawaii, the Pacific entries would be most important. This of course would indicate that the Barack Obama who was elected to the office of President in 2008, may well have been born on foreign soil and regardless of his father’s citizenship status, is FAR, FAR away from being constitutionally eligible to serve as either the President or Vice President of the United States. Connecting the Dots It must be pointed out that connecting these dots is my doing and was not part of the Sheriff Arpaio press conference nor has it been eluded to by the Cold Case Posse. The dots can indeed be connected given the results made known from the Cold Case Posse because of the Arpaio investigation and to do so, we must go back to the top of this article. The long form birth certificate displayed by Obama on April 25th, 2011, has been shown, via this investigation, to be a forgery. If Obama was born outside the country, which may well be indicated by the missing week’s record of microfilm provided by INS, Obama would be a foreigner. As a foreigner, he would not have filed a Selective Service Registration necessitating the need for a forged Selective Service Registration card to be created and if a foreigner, an authentic certificate of live birth simply would not exist in Hawaii which would then have to be provided, in April of 2011, as a forged document. The idea that Obama is a foreigner is also bolstered by another piece of information garnered by the Cold Case Posse. It was clearly stated that the Posse is in possession of a legal affidavit stating that when introduced to Bill Ayers, Obama was introduced as a FOREIGN STUDENT looking for financial aid about his education. From this, only 2 conclusions can be made. 1) Obama WAS indeed a foreign student which would mean he was NOT a United States citizen.2) Obama was masquerading as a foreign student in which case he was perpetrating a fraud. Given the forged birth certificate, the forged Selective Service Registration, and the weeks’ worth of missing INS microfilm records, and his introduction to Ayers as a foreign student, it becomes more probable in connecting the dots, that Obama was indeed foreign born. Anyone, regardless of party affiliation, who is aware of this information and either dismisses it as bull, ignores it or does not, for any reason, believe a full congressional investigation is warranted is actively assisting in the perpetration of fraud and is, in fact, actively engaged in the dismantling of our Constitution. This includes sitting Members of Congress, the media, the RNC, the DNC and citizens at large. Combine what we have been presented via an official law enforcement agency’s investigation with other evidence acquired via investigations such as the apparent fraud regarding Obama’s Social Security number and the only credible conclusion can be that we have no idea who the man occupying our oval office really is. Any state or private entities pursuing the removal of Obama’s name from 2012 ballots must use this evidence, acquired through the Arpaio Cold Case Posse in their legal challenges. The Inescapable Conclusion Forget the valid arguments regarding Obama being ineligible due to the “Natural Born Citizen” clause contained in the Constitution resulting from his father’s lack of citizenship status. At this point, now more than 3 years into his term… Not one single shred of authentic evidence has been presented to prove Barack Obama is even a United States CITIZEN. We have a forged birth certificate, a forged Selective Service Registration, what by all accounts is a fraudulent Social Security number, missing INS records, sworn legal affidavits indicating he was a foreign student…But not one single verified, authentic document proving Obama to be even a United States citizen. Not one. For those who believe this to be purely partisan, think again. If all that is requires for a liberal to serve as President is a handful of forged and fraudulent documents than so too would a conservative be able to point to forgeries and fraud as “proof” of citizenship. If a foreign citizen, of any political party is allowed to serve either as a Member of congress or as President or Vice President, our republic is finished. If, upon such 100% certainty of forgery as exists with Obama’s birth certificate and Selective Service Registration, as shown by a law enforcement entity and verified by forensic document experts is allowed to be considered nothing but a distraction or not worthy of a full and immediate intensive congressional investigation, as it regards our Constitution, national security and the Presidency, duplicity on the part of the Members of congress in allowing the possibility of a foreign national to serve as President today or in the future will be precedent setting. For additional information please see: http://www.thenationalpatriot.com/obamas-eligibility-not-one-shred-of-authentic-verifiable-evidence/#more-4447http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_for_Worldwide_Interbank_Financial_Telecommunication Browse Search QuizzesGamesOn This DaySubscribeLogin Great RecessionARTICLEIntroduction & Quick FactsFAST FACTSADDITIONAL INFOHomePolitics, Law & GovernmentEconomics & Economic Systems Great Recession economics [2007–2009] Alternate titles: global recessionPrint Cite Share More BY Brian Duignan | View Edit HistoryFAST FACTSFacts & Related ContentDate: December 2007 – June 2009 Location:United StatesContext:mortgagesubprime mortgagefinancial crisis of 2007–08austeritysubprime lendingSee all facts and data →Great Recession, economic recession that was precipitated in the United States by the financial crisis of 2007–08 and quickly spread to other countries. Beginning in late 2007 and lasting until mid-2009, it was the longest and deepest economic downturn in many countries, including the United States, since the Great Depression (1929–c. 1939). The financial crisis, a severe contraction of liquidity in global financial markets, began in 2007 as a result of the bursting of the U.S. housing bubble. From 2001 successive decreases in the prime rate (the interest rate that banks charge their “prime,” or low-risk, customers) had enabled banks to issue mortgage loans at lower interest rates to millions of customers who normally would not have qualified for them (seesubprime mortgage; subprime lending), and the ensuing purchases greatly increased demand for new housing, pushing home prices ever higher. When interest rates finally began to climb in 2005, demand for housing, even among well-qualified borrowers, declined, causing home prices to fall. Partly because of the higher interest rates, most subprime borrowers, the great majority of whom held adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs), could no longer afford their loan payments. Nor could they save themselves, as they formerly could, by borrowing against the increased value of their homes or by selling their homes at a profit. (Indeed, many borrowers, both prime and subprime, found themselves “underwater,” meaning that they owed more on their mortgage loans than their homes were worth.) As the number of foreclosures increased, banks ceased lending to subprime customers, which further reduced demand and prices. As the subprime mortgage market collapsed, many banks found themselves in serious trouble, because a significant portion of their assets had taken the form of subprime loans or bonds created from subprime loans together with less-risky forms of consumer debt (seemortgage-backed security; MBS). In part because the underlying subprime loans in any given MBS were difficult to track, even for the institution that owned them, banks began to doubt each other’s solvency, leading to an interbank credit freeze, which impaired the ability of any bank to extend credit even to financially healthy customers, including businesses. Accordingly, businesses were forced to reduce their expenses and investments, leading to widespread job losses, which predictably reduced demand for their products, because many of their former customers were now unemployed or underemployed. As the portfolios of even prestigious banks and investment firms were revealed to be largely fictional, based on nearly worthless (“toxic”) assets, many such institutions applied for government bailouts, sought mergers with healthier firms, or declared bankruptcy. Other major businesses whose products were generally sold with consumer loans suffered significant losses. The car companies General Motors and Chrysler, for example, declared bankruptcy in 2009 and were forced to accept partial government ownership through bailout programs. During all of this, consumer confidence in the economy was understandably reduced, leading most Americans to curtail their spending in anticipation of harder times ahead, a trend that dealt another blow to business health. All these factors combined to produce and prolong a deep recession in the United States. From the beginning of the recession in December 2007 to its official end in June 2009, real gross domestic product (GDP)—i.e., GDP as adjusted for inflation or deflation—declined by 4.3 percent, and unemployment increased from 5 percent to 9.5 percent, peaking at 10 percent in October 2009. Skip Ad As millions of people lost their homes, jobs, and savings, the poverty rate in the United States increased, from 12.5 percent in 2007 to more than 15 percent in 2010. In the opinion of some experts, a greater increase in poverty was averted only by federal legislation, the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), which provided funds to create and preserve jobs and to extend or expand unemployment insurance and other safety net programs, including food stamps. Notwithstanding those measures, during 2007–10 poverty among both children and young adults (those aged 18–24) reached about 22 percent, representing increases of 4 percent and 4.7 percent, respectively. Much wealth was lost as U.S. stock prices—represented by the S&P 500 index—fell by 57 percent between 2007 and 2009 (by 2013 the S&P had recovered that loss, and it soon greatly exceeded its 2007 peak). Altogether, between late 2007 and early 2009, American households lost an estimated $16 trillion in net worth; one quarter of households lost at least 75 percent of their net worth, and more than half lost at least 25 percent. Households headed by younger adults, particularly by persons born in the 1980s, lost the most wealth, measured as a percentage of what had been accumulated by earlier generations in similar age groups. They also took the longest time to recover, and some of them still had not recovered even 10 years after the end of the recession. In 2010 the wealth of the median household headed by a person born in the 1980s was nearly 25 percent below what earlier generations of the same age group had accumulated; the shortfall increased to 41 percent in 2013 and remained at more than 34 percent as late as 2016. Those setbacks led some economists to speak of a “lost generation” of young persons who, because of the Great Recession, would remain poorer than earlier generations for the rest of their lives. Losses of wealth and speed of recovery also varied considerably by socioeconomic class prior to the downturn, with the wealthiest groups suffering the least (in percentage terms) and recovering the soonest. For such reasons, it is generally agreed that the Great Recession worsened inequality of wealth in the United States, which had already been significant. According to one study, during the first two years after the official end of the recession, from 2009 to 2011, the aggregate net worth of the richest 7 percent of households increased by 28 percent while that of the lower 93 percent declined by 4 percent. The richest 7 percent thus increased their share of the nation’s total wealth from 56 percent to 63 percent. Another study found that between 2010 and 2013 the aggregate net worth of the richest 1 percent of Americans increased by 7.8 percent, representing an increase of 1.4 percent in their share of the nation’s total wealth (from 33.9 percent to 35.3 percent). As the financial crisis spread from the United States to other countries, particularly in western Europe (where several major banks had invested heavily in American MBSs), so too did the recession. Most industrialized countries experienced economic slowdowns of varying severity (notable exceptions were China, India, and Indonesia), and many responded with stimulus packages similar to the ARRA. In some countries the recession had serious political repercussions. In Iceland, which was particularly hard-hit by the financial crisis and suffered a severe recession, the government collapsed, and the country’s three largest banks were nationalized. In Latvia, which, along with the other Baltic countries, was also affected by the financial crisis, the country’s GDP shrank by more than 25 percent in 2008–09, and unemployment reached 22 percent during the same period. Meanwhile, Spain, Greece, Ireland, Italy, and Portugal suffered sovereign debt crises that required intervention by the European Union, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and resulted in the imposition of painful austerity measures. In all the countries affected by the Great Recession, recovery was slow and uneven, and the broader social consequences of the downturn—including, in the United States, lower fertility rates, historically high levels of student debt, and diminished job prospects among young adults—were expected to linger for many years. Brian Duignan Learn More in these related Britannica articles: United States: Tackling the Great Recession, the Party of No, and the emergence of the Tea Party movement…referred to as the “Great Recession” (which officially dated from December 2007 to June 2009 in the United States), included the most dismal two-quarter period for the U.S. economy in more than 60 years: GDP contracted by 8.9 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008 and by 6.7 percent… BY The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica | View Edit Historydepression, in economics, a major downturn in the business cycle characterized by sharp and sustained declines in economic activity; high rates of unemployment, poverty, and homelessness; increased rates of personal and business bankruptcy; massive declines in stock markets; and great reductions in international trade and capital movements. A depression may also be defined as a particularly severe and long-lasting form of recession, where the latter is generally understood, relative to a national economy, as a period of at least two consecutive quarters of decline in real (inflation-adjusted) GDP, or gross domestic product. According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, which maintains records of the cyclical peaks and troughs in U.S. economic activity dating to 1854, a recession is “a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales,” while a depression is “a particularly severe period of economic weakness” that is commonly understood to last from the onset of economic decline to the return of normal economic activity. Although there is no specific definition of depression that all economists accept (and thus no universal agreement about how many depressions the United States has experienced since 1854), economic historians generally agree that the Great Depression that began in 1929 was the worst economic downturn in U.S. history and indeed the worst ever experienced by the Western industrialized world. In the United States, for example, industrial production fell nearly 47 percent, GDP declined by 30 percent, and unemployment reached more than 20 percent in the period between 1929 and 1933. Great Depression: breadline Breadline in New York City’s Bryant Park during the Great Depression. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc. READ MORE ON THIS TOPICeconomic stabilizer: Model of a Keynesian depressionAnother possible cause of a general depression was suggested by Keynes. It may be approached in a highly simplified way… Various factors are thought to have given rise to the Great Depression, whose primary cause was a dramatic decline in spending, or aggregate demand. They included the U.S. stock market crash of 1929, which had a devastating effect on consumer confidence throughout the country; banking panics, which caused many banks to fail and thereby greatly reduced consumer spending and business investment; the contractionary monetary policy of the Federal Reserve (the central bank of the United States), which also stifled spending and investment and led to deflation; the international gold standard, which served to spread the U.S. downturn to other countries; and protectionist policies in several countries, including the United States, whose cumulative effect was to reduce international trade. Beginning in the 1930s, countries around the world implemented policies designed to prevent another downturn on the scale of the Great Depression and to moderate the worst effects of ordinary recessions. The changes included increased government regulation of the financial and banking industries, the use of expansionary monetary and fiscal policies to stimulate economic growth, and direct government assistance to the poor and unemployed (see alsosocial welfare program). Britannica This article was most recently revised and updated by Brian Duignan, Senior Editor. Learn More in these related Britannica articles: economic stabilizer: Model of a Keynesian depressionAnother possible cause of a general depression was suggested by Keynes. It may be approached in a highly simplified way by lumping all occupations together into one labor market and all goods and services together into a single commodity market. The aggregative…liberalism: Problems of market economies…that came to be called depressions. Finally, those who owned or managed the means of production had acquired enormous economic power that they used to influence and control government, to manipulate an inchoate electorate, to limit competition, and to obstruct substantive social reform. In short, some of the same forces…
Bibliography of the late, great aftermath of the 2008 financial Wall Street Crisis In 2008 a financial crisis enveloped America and spread to the world. We apparently had not learned “our lesson” from previous financial crises. This one involved fancy Wall Street shorts and options and insurance, almost as if “someone” at the “top” – (“someone[s]”) – wanted to play with the markets and make a lot of money – also by controlling – not only the people in America but people all over the world; indeed, like a deadly virus out of a Bruce Willis 1995 Twelve Monkeys movie where James COLE sees 99% of the population whiped out or THE 2011 Rise of thePlanet Of The Apes movie where the 113 serum has a viral effect on humans, whipping out the human race, the 2008 financial crisis also spread around the world. The following is a cavalcade of events in the news outlining the cause, progression and fruition of that “versus”. Bradley Keoun and Phil Kuntz – Aug 22, 2011 – 7:19 AM EST Chief executive officers from eight of the largest U.S. banks receiving government aid testify at a House Financial Services Committee hearing in Washington, D.C on Feb. 11, 2009. Aug. 22 (Bloomberg) — The Federal Reserve’s unprecedented effort to keep the economy from plunging into depression included lending banks and other companies as much as $1.2 trillion of public money. The largest borrower, Morgan Stanley, got as much as $107.3 billion, while Citigroup Inc. took $99.5 billion and Bank of America Corp. $91.4 billion, according to a Bloomberg News compilation of data obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, months of litigation and an act of Congress. Erik Schatzker and Sara Eisen report on Bloomberg Television’s “Inside Track.” (Source: Bloomberg) Aug. 22 (Bloomberg) — Robert Eisenbeis, chief monetary economist at Cumberland Advisors Inc., talks about $1.2 trillion of public money the U.S. Federal Reserve secretly loaned to Wall Street banks and other companies. Eisenbeis, speaking with Mark Crumpton on Bloomberg Television’s “Bottom Line,” also discusses the outlook for Fed monetary policy and the U.S. economy. (Source: Bloomberg) Aug. 21 (Bloomberg) — Robert E. Litan, a former Justice Department official who in the 1990s served on a commission probing the causes of the savings and loan crisis, now vice president at the Kansas City, Missouri-based Kauffman Foundation, Richard Herring, a finance professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Roger Lister, a former Fed economist who’s now head of financial-institutions coverage at credit-rating firm DBRS Inc., and Kenneth Rogoff, a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund and now an economics professor at Harvard University, talk about the U.S. government’s $1.2 trillion bailout of the banking system and the outlook for regulatory overhaul of the industry. (Source: Bloomberg)Play Video Aug. 22 (Bloomberg) — Neil Barofsky, former special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program and a Bloomberg Television contributing editor, talks about the Federal Reserve’s emergency loans during the financial crisis. Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s effort to keep the economy from plunging into depression included lending banks and other companies as much as $1.2 trillion of public money, according to a Bloomberg News compilation of data obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, months of litigation and an act of Congress. Barofsky speaks with Erik Schatzker on Bloomberg Television’s “Inside Track.” (Source: Bloomberg) Play Video Aug. 22 (Bloomberg) — Charles Peabody, an analyst at Portales Partners LLC, and Bloomberg reporter Bradley Keoun discuss the Federal Reserve’s emergency lending programs and the capital position of U.S. banks. They speak with Erik Schatzker and Michael McKee on Bloomberg Television’s “Inside Track.” (Source: Bloomberg) Wall Street Aristocracy Got $1.2 Trillion From Fed
Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp. were the reigning champions of finance in 2006 as home prices peaked, leading the 10 biggest U.S. banks and brokerage firms to their best year ever with $104 billion of profits. Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp. were the reigning champions of finance in 2006 as home prices peaked, leading the 10 biggest U.S. banks and brokerage firms to their best year ever Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs; Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase and Co.; Robert P.Kelly, CEO of the Bank of New York; Ken Lewis, CEO of the Bank of America; Ronald E. Logue, CEO of State Street; John Mack, CEO of Morgan Stanley; Vikram Pandit, CEO of Citigroup; and John Stumpf, CEO of Wells Fargo, testify during the House Financial Services oversight hearing of the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP). Two weeks after Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.’s bankruptcy triggered a global credit crisis, Morgan Stanley countered concerns that it might be next to go by announcing it had ‘strong capital and liquidity positions.’ Two weeks after Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.’s bankruptcy triggered a global credit crisis, Morgan Stanley countered concerns that it might be next to go by announcing it had ‘strong capital and liquidity positions.’ A Wall Street sign stands outside the New York Stock Exchange in New York, U.S. The loans dwarfed the $160 billion in public bailouts the top 10 got from the U.S. Treasury, yet until now the full amounts have remained secret. A Wall Street sign stands outside the New York Stock Exchange in New York, U.S. The loans dwarfed the $160 billion in public bailouts the top 10 got from the U.S. Treasury, yet until now the full amounts have remained secret. Citigroup Inc., along with Morgan Stanley and Citigroup Inc., were the biggest borrowers under seven U.S. Federal Reserve emergency-lending programs. Citigroup Inc., along with Morgan Stanley and Citigroup Inc., were the biggest borrowers under seven U.S. Federal Reserve emergency-lending programs. The Federal Reserve provided as much as $1.2 trillion in public money to banks and other companies from August 2007 through April 2010 to head off a depression. The Federal Reserve provided as much as $1.2 trillion in public money to banks and other companies from August 2007 through April 2010 to head off a depression. Source: Bloomberg Morgan Stanley, along with Citigroup Inc., and Bank of America Corp., were the biggest borrowers under seven Fed emergency-lending programs. The three banks’ combined $298.2 billion in hidden Fed loans was triple what they received in publicly disclosed bailouts from the U.S. Treasury. Morgan Stanley, along with Citigroup Inc., and Bank of America Corp., were the biggest borrowers under seven Fed emergency-lending programs. The three banks’ combined $298.2 billion in hidden Fed loans was triple what they received in publicly disclosed bailouts from the U.S. Treasury. Bank of America Corp., along with Morgan Stanley and Citigroup Inc. was one of the biggest borrowers under the U.S. Federal Reserve’s emergency-lending programs. The three banks’ combined $298.2 billion in hidden Fed loans was triple what they received in publicly disclosed bailouts from the U.S. Treasury. Bank of America Corp., along with Morgan Stanley and Citigroup Inc. was one of the biggest borrowers under the U.S. Federal Reserve’s emergency-lending programs. The three banks’ combined $298.2 billion in hidden Fed loans was triple what they received in publicly disclosed bailouts from the U.S. Treasury. The Royal Bank of Scotland took $84.5 billion in loans from the U.S. Federal Reserve’s emergency-lending programs. The Royal Bank of Scotland took $84.5 billion in loans from the U.S. Federal Reserve’s emergency-lending programs. UBS AG, Switzerland’s biggest bank, got $77.2 billion in loans from the U.S. Federal Reserve’s emergency-lending programs. UBS AG, Switzerland’s biggest bank, got $77.2 billion in loans from the U.S. Federal Reserve’s emergency-lending programs. Goldman Sachs Group Inc., the fifth-biggest U.S. bank by assets. Goldman Sachs Group Inc., the fifth-biggest U.S. bank by assets. U.S. Federal Reserve borrowings by Societe Generale SA, France’s second-biggest bank, peaked at $17.4 billion in May 2008, four months after the Paris-based lender announced a record 4.9 billion-euro ($7.2 billion) loss on unauthorized stock-index futures bets by former trader Jerome Kerviel. months after the Paris-based lender announced a record 4.9 billion-euro ($7.2 billion) loss on unauthorized stock-index futures bets by former U.S. Federal Reserve borrowings by Societe Generale SA, France’s second-biggest bank, peaked at $17.4 billion in May 2008, four trader Jerome Kerviel. Finance ‘Aristocracy’ Took $1.2 Trillion in Loans
U.S. Federal Reserve borrowings by Societe Generale SA, France’s second-biggest bank, peaked at $17.4 billion in May 2008, four months after the Paris-based lender announced a record 4.9 billion-euro ($7.2 billion) loss on unauthorized stock-index futures bets by former trader Jerome Kerviel. U.S. Federal Reserve borrowings by Societe Generale SA, France’s second-biggest bank, peaked at $17.4 billion in May 2008, four months after the Paris-based lender announced a record 4.9 billion-euro ($7.2 billion) loss on unauthorized stock-index futures bets by former trader Jerome Kerviel. Citigroup Inc. (C) and Bank of America Corp. (BAC) were the reigning champions of finance in 2006 as home prices peaked, leading the 10 biggest U.S. banks and brokerage firms to their best year ever with $104 billion of profits. By 2008, the housing market’s collapse forced those companies to take more than six times as much, $669 billion, in emergency loans from the U.S. Federal Reserve. The loans dwarfed the $160 billion in public bailouts the top 10 got from the U.S. Treasury, yet until now the full amounts have remained secret. Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s unprecedented effort to keep the economy from plunging into depression included lending banks and other companies as much as $1.2 trillion of public money, about the same amount U.S. homeowners currently owe on 6.5 million delinquent and foreclosed mortgages. The largest borrower, Morgan Stanley (MS), got as much as $107.3 billion, while Citigroup took $99.5 billion and Bank of America $91.4 billion, according to a Bloomberg News compilation of data obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, months of litigation and an act of Congress. “These are all whopping numbers,” said Robert Litan, a former Justice Department official who in the 1990s served on a commission probing the causes of the savings and loan crisis. “You’re talking about the aristocracy of American finance going down the tubes without the federal money down the tubes without the federal money.”
Foreign Borrowers
It wasn’t just American finance.
Almost half of the Fed’s top 30 borrowers, measured by peak balances, were European firms. They included Edinburgh-based Royal Bank of Scotland Plc, which took $84.5 billion, the most of any non-U.S. lender, and Zurich-based UBS AG (UBSN), which got $77.2 billion. Germany’s Hypo Real Estate Holding AG borrowed $28.7 billion, an average of $21 million for each of its 1,366 employees.
The largest borrowers also included Dexia SA (DEXB), Belgium’s biggest bank by assets, and Societe Generale SA, based in Paris, whose bond-insurance prices have surged in the past month as investors speculated that the spreading sovereign debt crisis in Europe might increase their chances of default.
The $1.2 trillion peak on Dec. 5, 2008 — the combined outstanding balance under the seven programs tallied by Bloomberg — was almost three times the size of the U.S. federal budget deficit that year and more than the total earnings of all federally insured banks in the U.S. for the decade through 2010, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Peak Balance
The balance was more than 25 times the Fed’s pre-crisis lending peak of $46 billion on Sept. 12, 2001, the day after terrorists attacked the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon. Denominated in $1 bills, the $1.2 trillion would fill 539 Olympic-size swimming pools.
The Fed has said it had “no credit losses” on any of the emergency programs, and a report by Federal Reserve Bank of New York staffers in February said the central bank netted $13 billion in interest and fee income from the programs from August 2007 through December 2009.
“We designed our broad-based emergency programs to both effectively stem the crisis and minimize the financial risks to the U.S. taxpayer,” said James Clouse, deputy director of the Fed’s division of monetary affairs in Washington. “Nearly all of our emergency-lending programs have been closed. We have incurred no losses and expect no losses.”
While the 18-month U.S. recession that ended in June 2009 after a 5.1 percent contraction in gross domestic product was nowhere near the four-year, 27 percent decline between August 1929 and March 1933, banks and the economy remain stressed.
Odds of Recession
The odds of another recession have climbed during the past six months, according to five of nine economists on the Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research, an academic panel that dates recessions.
Bank of America’s bond-insurance prices last week surged to a rate of $342,040 a year for coverage on $10 million of debt, above where Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. (LEHMQ)’s bond insurance was priced at the start of the week before the firm collapsed. Citigroup’s shares are trading below the split-adjusted price of $28 that they hit on the day the bank’s Fed loans peaked in January 2009.
The U.S. unemployment rate was at 9.1 percent in July, compared with 4.7 percent in November 2007, before the recession began.
Homeowners are more than 30 days past due on their mortgage payments on 4.38 million properties in the U.S., and 2.16 million more properties are in foreclosure, representing a combined $1.27 trillion of unpaid principal, estimates Jacksonville, Florida-based Lender Processing Services Inc.
Liquidity Requirements
“Why in hell does the Federal Reserve seem to be able to find the way to help these entities that are gigantic?” U.S. Representative Walter B. Jones, a Republican from North Carolina, said at a June 1 congressional hearing in Washington on Fed lending disclosure.
“They get help when the average businessperson down in eastern North Carolina, and probably across America, they can’t even go to a bank they’ve been banking with for 15 or 20 years and get a loan.”
The sheer size of the Fed loans bolsters the case for minimum liquidity requirements that global regulators last year agreed to impose on banks for the first time, said Litan, now a vice president at the Kansas City, Missouri-based Kauffman Foundation, which supports entrepreneurship research. August 24, 2011 – By Keith Fitz-Gerald, Chief Investment Strategist, Money Morning Lloyd Blankfein, chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS), has hired high-profile criminal defense lawyer Reid Weingarten. This is a game changer even if we don’t yet know where the fire is. Blankfein has led the firm for six years and spent the past two dealing with allegations of conflicts of interest and fraud. A Senate report released in April said Goldman dumped subprime loan exposure onto unsuspecting clients during the mortgage meltdown and then in 2010 gave Congress misleading testimonials about the firm’s actions. So far, Blankfein has not been accused of any crime or crimes. That means, and I cannot stress this strongly enough, that he is innocent in the court of law – even if he is held slightly above pond scum in the court of public opinion for his and Goldman’s role in causing the financial crisis. Under the circumstances, I cannot help but wonder: Is the U.S. government’s investigation into Goldman Sachs (and other financial houses) gaining momentum and has the government notified Blankfein that he is a person of interest in one or more of those cases? Is there a whistleblower inside Goldman, or are there key players who have “rolled over” in an attempt to protect themselves? Is Blankfein retaining Weingarten personally on his nickel? If so, at whose direction? (I also can’t help but wonder if Goldman’s interests and those of its senior executives have separated as a result of the increased legal scrutiny…) Could Blankfein have some sense of what’s in the wind and simply be making a preemptive grab to obtain the best counsel before others who also will need criminal counsel do the same thing? Or is there something as simple as a conflict of interest that has yet to emerge publicly? At this point there are more questions than answers…but I have a feeling this won’t remain the case for long. Allegations against Goldman of trading against its clients and favoring certain clients over others will not fade quietly into the night this time around, with the global financial crisis having wiped a whopping $28 trillion from global markets in 2008. The news of Blankfein’s hire pushed down Goldman shares 4.7% late Monday to close at $106.51. August 24, 2011 – By Keith Fitz-Gerald, Chief Investment Strategist, Money Morning I hate to sound alarmist, but it looks as though the European banking system – and consequently the global banking system – is edging its way towards another epic collapse. That means in just a few short months, stocks could be back at their 2009 lows while gold prices travel north of $2,500 an ounce. This is the worst-case scenario that’s been bandied about ever since Europe’s debt problems first came to light. How do we know that this is what’s happening? Because somebody is having trouble obtaining the money they need — and they just borrowed it from the lender of last resort. The European Central Bank (ECB) last week lent $500 million dollars to an undisclosed Eurozone bank through a credit mechanism that had been dormant for the past 12 months, with the exception of one $70 million draw in February. This comes as no surprise – the warning signs have always been there. In fact, I warned Money Morning readers just a few weeks ago that the Eurozone could have its own American International Group Inc. (NYSE: AIG) – or worse, its own Lehman Bros. Holdings Inc. (PINK: LEHMQ) – lurking somewhere in the shadows. Still, while this may not surprise you, it certainly surprised the heck out of the rose-colored glasses crowd that can’t seem to understand the European sovereign debt crisis is finally about to wash up on our shores. That’s why stocks in the United States and around the world have taken such a brutal beating recently. Officially the story is about the renewed worries over Europe’s debt crisis and U.S. data that suggests we’re once again sliding into a recession. But what’s really happening is that global traders are moving quickly to liquidate holdings and raise cash while they can. That’s why so-called risk assets like stocks, corporate bonds, industrial metals, oil and higher-yielding junk instruments are tanking, as gold, the dollar and the yen are bucking up. The U.S. Federal Reserve already is engaging in damage control. President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York William Dudley has said the risks of a double-dip recession are “quite low,” despite anemic growth. And it’s been rumored that U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke will telegraph new monetary stimulus measures Friday during his speech in Jackson Hole, WY. But really, who are they kidding? This crisis has nothing to do with liquidity (which is how the central bankers are trying to fight it) and everything to do with solvency (which is how they should be fighting it). Not only are the risks of a global recession mounting by the minute, but I believe the concentration of risks is approaching critical mass. A Return to 2008. First take a look at the Euribor-OIS swap (the spread between the Euro Interbank Offered Rate and the Overnight Indexed Swap). This swap, widely regarded as a gauge of fear in the European banking system, is at levels we haven’t seen since April 2009, and is climbing rapidly towards levels we experienced during 2008 at the height of the financial crisis. These rates, along with the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR), represent a sort of feedback mechanism similar to the body’s circulatory system. If the system goes into “shock” there will be a negative, self-sustaining reaction. At the same time, shorter-term euro basis swaps have fallen to the lowest levels we’ve seen since Lehman Bros. blew up. The premium that European banks are paying to borrow in dollars through the swaps market is at its most extreme level since the credit crisis of 2008. The cost of converting euro-based payments into dollars as measured by the three-month cross-currency basis swap fell as much as 93 basis points below the Euro Interbank Offered Rate (Euribor), indicating a higher premium to buy dollars. Historically, anything in the neighborhood of -150 basis points suggests imminent bank failure. Meanwhile, funds parked in the ECB’s “deposit facility” are rising, which means they aren’t being lent to other banks. Funds at the ECB deposit facility hit their highest level – $209.3 billion (145.2 billion euros) – earlier this month. And ECB data shows commercial banks parked $154.4 billion (107.2 billion euros) in the central bank’s deposit facility last Friday, up from $130.5 billion (90.5 billion euros) on Thursday. This suggests banks are more concerned with having liquidity available to them via “official” sources rather than the open markets.
There are two reasons they would feel that way: Because they can’t get it from other sources. And because they don’t trust the other banks who would otherwise serve as their counter party. Remember, banks only make 0.75% on their deposits at the ECB, which is a smaller return than what they’d receive by lending to other banks. This suggests banks value the return of their money more than the return on their money. This happened before, most recently in Japan in the 1990s. I remember living in Japan at that time, and things got so bad that the spreads on overnight deposits actually went negative for short periods. That is, Japanese banks actually paid the Bank of Japan (BOJ) to hold their money because they were scared to hold it themselves. Finally, non-U.S. bank reserves on deposit at the Federal Reserve declined from $900 billion on July 13 to $758 billion as of Aug. 3. I’ve done some calling around and heard from two confidential sources that the level may have fallen as low as $500 billion this week, which would be a near-50% drop in only weeks. According to the Fed, foreign banking institutions hold approximately 25% of all commercial banking assets in the United States. That makes me think EU banks are calling money home not because they want to but because they need to. Shah Gilani, Capital Waves Strategist, Money Morning
Fears of a banking crisis and rolling contagion are making global stock and bond markets extraordinarily volatile – and with good reason. Another financial meltdown, on par with what we saw in 2008, is looming large on the horizon. One of two potential triggers could ignite a new banking crisis, a rapid contagion, and a second financial meltdown: One or more of the troubled European countries could default outright. Or a major money center bank could be turned away from the interbank borrowing market by its peers. The panic resulting from either catalyst could start at any time. And it would spread like wildfire. (August 26, 2011). (Porter Stansberry. August 19, 2011) When credit is expanded far enough in excess of savings, you get a collapse. It happens every time. It shouldn’t surprise anyone. Sooner or later, creditors look around and begin to ask themselves a critical question: Can these debts really be financed? Will I ever get my savings back? If credit has been expanded radically beyond savings (as it has in the U.S.), the answer is invariably no. That’s what S&P was warning about two weeks ago. And that means credit will be harder and harder to get in the U.S.
Currently, the total-debt-to-GDP ratio in the U.S. is almost 400%. (Total debt is the combined federal, state, municipal, corporate, and individual debt in the U.S.) Crushing debt loads have already destroyed the real estate market and led to an economic decline. For now, the government has stepped up to replace the private borrowing and spending. As a result, we’re now spending close to half our GDP merely on interest and government taxes. This simple fact should give everyone a reason to worry about the future of our country. Spending half your production each year on the government and interest payments doesn’t leave much to live on or invest for the future.
In Europe, the problem is a bit different… and slightly more technical. Most of the debt in Europe is held by the big banks, not the sovereigns. Look at just two French banks, for example. Credit Agricole and BNP Paribas have combined deposits of a little more than 1 trillion euro. But they hold assets of 2.5 trillion euro. Those assets equal France’s entire GDP. And those are only two of France’s banks. Right now, the tangible capital ratios of these banks have fallen to levels that suggest they are probably bankrupt – like UniCredit in Italy and Deutsche Bank in Germany. BNP’s tangible equity ratio is 2.85%. Credit Agricole’s tangible equity ratio is 1.41%. (UniCredit’s is 4.42%, and Deutchse Bank’s is 1.92%). These banks have long been instruments of state policy in Europe. They’ve funded all kinds of government projects and favored industries. Making loans is far more popular with politicians than demanding repayment for loans. As a result, these banks are left with nothing in the kitty to repay their depositors. If there’s a run on these banks (and there will be), how will they come up with money that’s owed? No one’s saying. (But I’ll tell you in a moment…)
The numbers are similar across most of Europe’s biggest banks. And the money that’s owed is staggering. The reason the market fears these debts so much is that there’s no clear mechanism to increasing the money supply enough to paper them over, as there is in the U.S. As strange as it may seem, investors prefer the U.S. Treasury market precisely because they know there’s nothing to stop the Fed from buying as many Treasury bonds as the market wants to sell. On the other hand, in Europe, there’s no guarantee whatsoever that the ECB will continue to buy the sovereign bonds – and there are even rules that explicitly forbid the ECB from financing bank bailouts.
What’s the end game? How will this huge mess be sorted out? The essential problem is there’s too much credit and too little money. So a lot more money is going to be created. Two great depositories of the world’s bad debt are Europe’s banks and the U.S. Treasury. Europe’s banks will need trillions of euro (yes, trillions) to regain safe capital ratios. And the U.S. Treasury will need trillions of dollars to refinance its upcoming repayment schedule. Both will be accomplished by the actions of the U.S. Federal Reserve. Step one will be the extension of swap lines to the European Central Bank (ECB) by the Federal Reserve, which will allow the Fed to buy between $2.5 trillion-$5 trillion worth of “riskless” ECB notes. These notes will allow the ECB to bail out Europe’s banks, which will in turn begin to buy U.S. Treasuries to repair their capital ratios.
The big unknown in this scenario is whether or not the Germans will approve this massive inflation. I can’t know whether they will go along or not. But several of their biggest banks need a bailout, which leads me to believe they will eventually get on board. Whatever the final details, the goal is clear – a massive increase in the size of the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet and a correspondingly huge increase in the world’s money supply. And that’s what you’re seeing when you look at the prices of gold and silver. How will we get from here to there exactly? I can’t know. It may be done piecemeal, one quantitative-easing program and bank bailout at a time. Or it might happen with some kind of grand new compromise – a kind of Bretton Woods II solution. But just remember where we must end up… Europe’s banks have to be recapitalized. And the U.S. Treasury has to be refinanced. The only way to accomplish this that has any chance of being approved by the democracies in question is via the printing press. That’s why I continue to warn about inflation. That’s why I continue to advocate buying gold and silver. That’s why I’m bearish on stocks (especially bank stocks). And that’s why I think it’s prudent for you to take steps to safeguard your property and your family – especially if you live in a big city. The population won’t be ignorant of what’s happening. The message will be clear: Governments and bankers have the right to steal from the whole world via inflation. That will probably inspire the crowds to do the same. Martin Hutchinson, Global Investing Strategist, Money Morning : By now, you’ve probably taken note of the growing bubble in Treasury bonds. The yield on the 10-year Treasury bond fell below 2% for the first time in 50 years in the wake of the U.S. credit rating downgrade. That’s irrational, and more importantly, dangerous. A Treasury bond bubble is a unique creature. In fact, it’s never been seen before, so determining its fate requires some careful thought. But what’s absolutely certain is that U.S. Treasuries are not a safe haven investment – far from it. Treasury bonds carry five very dangerous risks – including negative yields, higher inflation, panic selling, an outright collapse, and default. So let’s take a closer look at those risks before determining the best way to profit. First, real yields on Treasuries, after accounting for inflation, are now negative. Not only are nominal Treasury yields below the current inflation rate, but 10-year Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS) have traded on a yield of less than zero. That is very unusual and economically distorting. Long-term bond yields in the zero-inflation 19th century never fell below 2.2%, which is to be expected. The guy who provides the money should get paid for doing so. However, any reversion to historical patterns would cause a major bond bear market. Ten-year Treasury yields would rise to the 5% to 6% range – even if inflation gets no faster – giving investors a 27% mark-to-market loss. Of course, inflation will accelerate. The consumer price index (CPI) inflation is up 3.6% from last year. And it’s likely to rise much further as a result of the Federal Reserve’s loose monetary policies. If inflation were to rise to 10%, which is perfectly plausible, bond yields would have to rise to 12% to 13%, giving investors a 59% mark-to-market loss as well as eroding the value of their principal. Yet there’s an even greater threat than inflation, and that’s the U.S. budget deficit. The United States is currently running an annual $600 billion balance of payments deficit. That deficit is being financed through the sale of Treasuries to foreign buyers. Should foreign buyers cease buying, the dollar would have to fall to equalize the payments balance, perhaps by 20%. As a dollar investor, you might not mind this (though it would increase inflation). But foreign investors will hate it. The likely result would be the panicked selling of Treasuries, which would cause yields to rise sharply and prices to fall. Finally, there’s the risk of an outright default. Short-term, that’s an infinitesimal risk – but a risk nonetheless.After all, Treasuries used to be thought of as “risk free.” Now, following the S&P downgrade, they are considered “low risk.” If the public repeatedly elects politicians who can’t or won’t take effective action to cut spending, particularly in the entitlements area, then debt eventually will spiral out of control and become impossible to repay. You’re probably free from this risk in five-year Treasuries, but not in 30-year Treasuries. Theoretically, governments can’t go bust in their own currency, since they can always print money. But that’s nonsense. There comes a point at which you have to wheel the stuff around in barrows to buy groceries – as was the case in Germany in 1923. At that point, governments have to default – there’s no alternative. With such a broad collection of risks, Treasuries should be avoided like the plague. One or more of these five wealth-destroying events will almost certainly come to pass. (August 29, 2011) Welcome to the fine-tuned machine that is Deception, INC. Hello. My name is Robert Williams. (1 877.242.1730. 1 410.223.2650. +1 410.230.1266.; +1 410.223.2650. WallStreetDaily.com – CustomerService@WallStreetDailyInfo.com. I’m the Publisher of a progressive Investment Research Group whose mandate it is to gather intelligence and conduct thorough and unbiased investigations.) With that in mind, I’d like to show you how the G-20 Pittsburgh Summit just pushed an extraordinary event into motion.
Although the event will prove highly lucrative for some investors, before I go any further, I must warn you…This particular event exposes the truth behind a 7,500-person, ultra-discreet enterprise that I call Deception, INC. and how it controls the affairs of virtually the entire human race. It exposes how world governments and banks are now intimate business partners .It reveals how trillions of dollars of our money – as well as the money of future generations – is being funneled into the accounts of global banking titans .And, may I dare say, Deception, INC.’s actions even reveal a crack in our proudest institution of all – capitalism. When you hear what’s happening, you’re likely to feel as outraged as me. (Losers of a rigged game often become very angry.)Worse yet, it’s all happening at a time when trillions in debt threatens the health of the world economy and our personal wellbeing. In a moment, I’m going tell you about the chokepoint in this incredible story – the $615 trillion spinning around Deception, INC.’s new private wealth exchange. And how the recent G-20 Pittsburgh resolution……and Congress’ subsequent legislation – Public Law 111-203 – gives us an irresistible opportunity to ‘skim’ that market for potentially life-changing gains .In its very first week of trading, $12.8 billion in transactions passed through Deception, INC.’s private exchange. Over the next few minutes, I’ll show you how to profitably position yourself alongside this historic event .I’ll even show you how to protect yourself from the six ingenious ways Deception, INC. cons us out of trillions of dollars. But first, here’s an unprecedented look behind Deception, INC.’s shadowy curtain… Deception, INC. – Founded in C. 1979 As Americans, we have a pretty tough mindset. As long as we feel like policymakers have our best interests in mind, we’ll accept a finicky economy with high unemployment and low wages. We’ll even accept losses to our standard of living for long stretches of time. Such has been the case for years. And, to date, there hasn’t been any significant social upheaval. Heck, we can even accept that income inequality exists, as long as we feel like we’re still getting a fair share of the pie. BUT… When you add a perception that the economic game is rigged… That those with great wealth and power will always block our way, no matter how hard we try to get ahead… THEN we get angry. Very angry. Today, one in every eight Americans is enrolled in the food stamps program. Yet, a year after the financial crisis, one subsidiary of Deception, INC. paid its employees an average of nearly $600,000 per person, capping off its best year ever. Starting salaries for Deception, INC.’s big-time congressional or White House contacts has ballooned to about $500,000. In 2006, Deception, INC.’s top 25 trading managers earned nearly $600 million, on average, with the richest raking in $1.7 billion. Since Deception, INC.’s founding, of all the new financial wealth created by the American economy in the ’80s, ’90s and early 2000s… 42% of it has gone to the top 1% of the population… 94% has gone to the top 20%… And the bottom 80% has to split the rest – a measly 6% of our nation’s income. Now, to be fair, I don’t begrudge anyone from earning a good living. Well-founded ambition is what helped build this country. But after you see the facts, I think you’ll agree with me that Deception, INC.’s influence on the system has totally rigged it in favor of a precious few… And that those few enjoy too much power and influence over the size of our wallets. In the weeks ahead, I plan to leverage my position as a Publisher to get word to policymakers that we’re fed up. But for now, this grassroots effort begins here, with you. As I mentioned earlier, there are a few profitable countermeasures that every American should be taking, which I’ll cover in detail. Of those countermeasures, one is the extraordinary result of the Pittsburgh G-20 Summit… …where world leaders paved the way for Deception, INC. to launch a massive $615 trillion wealth exchange. The formal legislation took effect in July 2011. Understand, though, our extraordinary opportunity here wouldn’t be possible without the cozy relationship that banks and government are currently enjoying. Indeed, banks and government are dancing a very close waltz. Sure, if you look at economic history, governments and banks have always had to co-exist. Their actions have always directly influenced the financial wellbeing of the people. And the power between the two has always teetered back and forth, with each enjoying the upper hand for periods of time. However, today these kindred souls – banks and government – seem more unified than ever. The tug-and-pull relationship of years past seems replaced by an outright moneymaking enterprise – one that’s wreaking havoc with our nation’s precious wealth ladder. Now, many people – even the ones closest to me – think I ought to keep my mouth shut on this. They’re advising me to bury this research and get on with the business of publishing innovative investment ideas. I’ll concede that Deception, INC. is powerful. But, with all due respect to my inner circle, I’m staying the course and taking this information public. Knowing what I now know……I can’t sit idly by and watch the biggest con game in human history……one that’s taking money from my pocket… my family’s pocket… my friends’ pockets… and my friend’s friends’ pockets……and funneling it into Deception, INC.’s cash-filled coffers. Besides, an incredible investment opportunity is parked before us right now, directly as a result of the situation, which means my research firm is satisfying its mission. Sure, it may mean giving up a bit of my privacy. But Deception, INC.’s actions over the last 30 years – especially the last 10 – have sent income inequality spinning out of control in the United States… It’s presently at an all-time high… It’s getting worse at an alarmingly hurried pace… And quietly becoming an embarrassing national plague. The top 0.01% – that’s one-hundredth of 1% – now earn 6% of all U.S. wages. These folks are Deception, INC.’s biggest ‘Benefactors.’ And this is increasingly their world. Your Money Gets its ‘Last Rites’ So what exactly is Deception? And who are these Benefactors I just alluded to? According to Thomas Dye’s, Who’s Running America?, in the United States… …less than 7,500 individuals control “almost three-quarters of the nation’s industrial assets, almost two-thirds of all banking assets and more than three-quarters of all insurance assets.” Working together under one banner, these 7,500 individuals – the Benefactors – along with the publicly elected (or appointed) lawmakers who enable their actions, form what I call ‘Deception, INC.’ The end product is the most dominant ‘for profit’ enterprise the world has ever known. By virtue of owning a monopoly on money, which I’ll detail in a moment, Deception, INC. has silently turned us into pigeons. Its invisible hand influences everything… …the stock market… …bond market… …real estate market… …commodities market… …emerging markets… …venture capital money… …IPOs… …politics… …lending practices… I assure you, it’s endless. While the rest of us battle being marginalized – competing against cheaper labor in other parts of the world… …Deception, INC.’s Benefactors live in 40,000 square-foot mansions, throw million-dollar birthday parties and enjoy every conceivable sociological advantage……like having access to the very best moneymaking information. According to Forbes magazine, in the days following Wall Street’s cataclysmic meltdown……Deception, INC.’s 400 richest Benefactors still enjoyed a cumulative wealth of $1.27 trillion – more than the estimated cost of achieving universal healthcare for the entire country for the next decade. By contrast, middle-class America is greatly suffering. You see, for most of us, our homes represent our ONE truly major investment. So while Deception, INC.’s top brass build opulent mansions and fly private jets, the most recent data on home prices (June 2011) was a nightmare for the rest of us. The data showed yet another big month-over-month decline in the value of homes across the United States. Home prices have lost about a third of their value since the 2006 peak, with Las Vegas being the hardest hit. Prices there are down 57% from the peak. Worse yet, with three years of inventory still sitting on the market, there’s no relief in sight.
As I write this, about five million borrowers are at least two months behind on their mortgages. And more will miss payments as Americans struggle with job losses and loans worth more than their home’s value. Many Americans don’t know this, but… After Wall Street politely accepted the taxpayers’ gift of life – the $700 billion bailout… …Deception, INC. lobbied against a proposal to allow those very same taxpayers the option of declaring bankruptcy rather than losing their homes to foreclosure. To date, Congress has NOT extended a rope for American homeowners to hang onto. Worse still, Wall Street took the 0% emergency loan – extended to it by the Federal Reserve and reinvested it in Treasury bills and other government securities to earn another quick fortune. So, in effect, Wall Street borrowed from the government, lent those funds back to the government, and earned the spread. Deception, INC. gets a healthy cut of the proceeds, of course. In an interview with “60 Minutes,” famed author, Michael Lewis, called this practice – one still happening today – an “elegant form of theft.” He’s right. But the mutual cooperation – dare I say complicity – between government and banking is what’s intriguing here. As I’ll show you, I’m only scratching the surface of a system rigged to favor the superrich. The hyper concentration of wealth at the top has been 30 years in the making. But since the year 2000, cash is flying out of our pockets even faster. If you go back through our nation’s history, the current situation has no precedent prior to the late 1970s – when Deception, INC. began growing its roots. And that’s why I’m rushing you this message. How, in a representative democracy, can public officials favor such a small slice of Americans for so long? And how can we get in on their gravy train? The truth, when you hear it, may shock you. Robin Hood in Reverse? For the record, the financial crisis is only the latest example of a system rigged to favor the superrich. The Katrina hurricane disaster, and the subsequent travesties regarding government aid and insurance payouts, predates the financial crisis by a full three years. What’s particularly noteworthy, however, is that the middle class – even the upper middle class and ‘well off’ – are feeling the pinch these days, just as much as the poor. Regrettably, it’s like Robin Hood in reverse… he U.S. Department of Agriculture is forecasting that enrollment in the food stamp program will exceed 43 million Americans in 2011 – smashing the all-time record. Over one recent three-day period, approximately 10,000 people showed up to apply for just 90 jobs making washing machines in Kentucky for $27,000 a year. In 1950, the ratio of the average executive’s paycheck to the average worker’s paycheck was about 30-to-1.Since the year 2000, that ratio has exploded to between 300- to 500-to-1. Once great blue-collar manufacturing cities, like Detroit, have turned into rusted-out poverty zones. Meanwhile, Deception, INC. Benefactors earn millions off of the cheap labor in third-world nations. As I already said, the rate at which income is leaving our pockets and speeding into the pockets of the Benefactors is greatly intensifying. This past decade was absolutely unique because it represented the very first time in history that the economy expanded for six consecutive years (2001-2007), YET… During that very same period, household incomes declined and poverty levels rose! Such behavior in wages is completely unnatural. However, when you tighten the lens, things make a lot more sense… …between 2002 and 2007, the top 1% of American earners – Deception, INC.’s top brass – saw their incomes RISE by 10%. Yet policymakers are doing nothing to stem the tide. In fact, if anything, they’re the enablers of this dark enterprise. In the days ahead, my research firm will do its part to raise public awareness regarding this massive redistribution of wealth, including broadcasting an open letter to Congress. I’ll show you how you could take your own action, as well – should you choose to – in a moment. But, for now, you simply need to ask yourself the following question… “How much more am I willing to take?” Because knowing where Deception, INC.’s dollars are flowing means having opportunities. And my team’s research just yielded your first one. I’ll explain exactly what this investment is so you can decide if it’s suitable for you. I’ll even show you how you could begin taking advantage of it, starting immediately… For the record, Deception, INC. has already virtually rigged it for massive profits… so this is something you’ll likely want to learn more about right now. How to Spot a Benefactor in Less Than 60 Seconds The top 0.01% of Americans, who I bluntly call the Benefactors, now individually earns more than $35 million a year. They earn $1 out of every $17 – the group’s highest amount since data collection began in 1913. They’re NOT celebrities, athletes, entertainers, or artists. Rather, the vast majority are CEOs or other high-level executives, with a growing number of them coming from finance and banking. (Surprised?) They’re getting fabulously richer while the rest of us hold steady or get worse. They increase their wealth in good times and in bad times. When the market tanked two years ago, Wal-Mart workers lost about 18% of their 401(k)s’ value. Yet Wal-Mart’s CEO saw gains of $2.3 million in his $47 million retirement plan. Such compensation inequality is the ‘new normal.’ In the last 30 years – during an era of unprecedented economic expansion – the Benefactors reaped massive gains. Yet the economy virtually stopped working for middle- and working-class Americans, as their wealth compounded at a rate of only 1.5%, annually. Get this… From 1979 to 2006, the average American household income increased from $47,900 to $71,900 – a modest 50% increase in 30 years. Over the same period, the Benefactor’s income increased from just over $4 million per year to nearly $24.3 million – a 507% increase! As one former Benefactor said in his book, The Other Side of Wall Street… “It was as if a magical money tree blossomed overhead and all I had to do was reach higher if I wanted – or needed – more.” Before I get to the solutions, including how to start reaping the fruits of THEIR proverbial money tree, let me back up a bit… …and show you in the simplest terms possible what’s going on, why I’m so concerned and what I believe will happen in the next six months… Battling the Ever Present ‘Money Monopoly’ The income gap between the Benefactors and the rest of country hasn’t been this big since the 1920s. Their power resides in the ability to control money. Besides controlling the actual creation of money, policymakers along with the Benefactors – Deception, INC. – have firm control over where the money flows, as well. It’s a virtual ‘money monopoly,’ as nearly every conceivable financial channel is under Deception, INC.’s influence. And we’re all paying the price. The Benefactors’ actions sparked the collapse of the housing market, which caused the recession. And now 14.1 million Americans are out of work. Then, by influencing policy, the Benefactors persuaded the Federal Reserve to crank up the printing presses to pay for the bailout, which led to food-price inflation. And now nearly 44 million Americans – a record – rely on food stamps. In the name of ‘The War on Terror,’ ‘The War on Drugs,’ ‘Homeland Security’… or whatever else… …the government has appropriated itself virtually unlimited spending power, which allows it to funnel wealth wherever it sees fit. All the while, the banking establishment has commandeered everyone’s credit. With YOUR finances under their control, the banks can earn tons of new money by simply allocating more credit… charging higher fees… …even rewarding former politicians for their service in promoting the banks’ interests (more on that in a moment). If economic history has taught us anything, going all the way back to the first banknote issued in Europe in 1661, it’s this… When the easy money of a deep-pocketed government comes into contact with the moneymaking ambitions of a cash-thirsty banking sector, a deep fault line develops. In our present case, the fault line formed as an unintended, dark enterprise that I call Deception, INC. It’s One Colossal Ponzi Scheme. The hidden cost to you and me is that the Benefactors don’t spend their money at a rate fast enough to keep the economy humming along. For example, in 2007, Kenneth Lewis earned around $100 million as the CEO of Bank of America. To spend it all, he’d have to buy $273,972.60 worth of goods and services every day, including weekends. If you dedicated 12 hours of every day to spending money, you’d still have to spend $22,831 every hour… or $380.52 every minute. Don’t expect it to ever happen. Consequently, every penny the Benefactors don’t spend simply turns into greater wealth for them. And we’re boxed out. According to Forbes, the wealthiest 400 Americans’ average net worth was $3.9 billion in 2008 – more than six times larger than it was in 1985. The bottom 80% of American earners have a net worth of around only $82,000, with many folks stuck with a negative net worth. As you may have figured out by now, CREDIT is the central tool of Deception, INC Cynical as it may seem, Deception, INC.’s response to rising income inequality – whether carefully planned or not – is to loan you tons of money. So while the Benefactors increase their net worth in real dollars terms – day in and day out… The rest of us enjoy only the mirage of having more. Interest rates are held artificially low so the banks can extend us easy credit. Then, on the banks’ dime, we buy homes, cars, boats, swimming pools – anything we want. And we feel content, like we’re genuinely sharing in this country’s wealth pie. Only we’re not. Deception, INC. didn’t invent this ploy… Extending easy credit has been used throughout history to address the deeper anxieties of the middle class. With that in mind, the current chapter on aggressive lending began writing itself in 1980 – around the very same time that the Benefactors net worth started ballooning. By 2001, Americans owed as much as their entire after-tax income. But the situation was getting far worse, far quicker… Over the next six years, by 2007, the typical American household owed 138% of its after-tax income. In other words, we were collectively underwater as a nation. The debt came racing in from everywhere – credit cards, auto loans, student loans… most of us used our homes as virtual ATM machines. Between 2002 and 2007, American households extracted $2.3 trillion from their homes – just as the Benefactors hoped we would. Our personal debts – roughly $16 trillion – now account for 29% of total U.S. debt, which is around $55 trillion… and counting. You can see how effective this debt strategy is. And the Benefactors don’t just use it on individuals… not a chance! The power of debt is intoxicating enough to use at the country level, too. I’m sure you think that sounds crazy, but as I’ll show you, it’s already happening. You’re Not Supposed to Know This, BUT… Here’s a dirty little secret – one which public policy is now tailored around. Capitalism is not self-sufficient. To sustain itself, capitalism requires constant expansion and exploitation of new markets. Yet, at the same time, there are hard limits on regional (even planetary) resources. Knowing this, it’s easy to appreciate why the Benefactors created ‘emerging markets.’ Emerging markets have become one of the most coveted strategies the Benefactors use to expand their ever-increasing net worth. Such virgin resource-rich markets, like say, Malaysia, represent perfect venues for spawning more wealth. The Benefactors employ the very same debt strategy to emerging nations as they do with consumers. That means encumbering them with debt in return for funding development projects. When these emerging nations are unable to repay, a Deception, INC.-friendly agency – like the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank – imposes ‘structural readjustment’ programs. As any economist can tell you, these programs typically favor western banks… take away control of natural resources… and depress incomes of the local population…In some emerging economies, the progress made in health and education over the past 50 years is actually being reversed in order to pay back debts. Inside the World’s Greatest Con Game The most pressing concern for us is knowing where Deception, INC.’s money is heading next, so we can align ourselves alongside the historic launch of their wealth exchange. But I also promised to get you up to speed on the six ingenious tactics Deception, INC. uses to fleece America. As I’ve already said, the speed at which our money is being redistributed to the Benefactors – especially since the year 2000 – has never been witnessed before. In fact, between 2001 and 2006, over 53% of national income was going to the top 1%, meaning more than 50 cents of every dollar pocketed by Americans during that timeframe accrued to the richest 1 in 100 households. Even their neighborhoods are more resilient. U.S. home prices have fallen 33% since the housing bubble burst in 2006 – more than they did during the Great Depression. Yet prices in Washington, D.C. – Deception, INC.’s headquarters, of course – are up 4% over the last year, representing the only major metropolitan area to enjoy an uptick in prices. For the record, according to data from the Census Bureau, suburban Washington touts seven of the top 20 highest-earning counties in the country. New York and New Jersey – the Benefactors’ headquarters – have five counties in the top 20. Prior to 2008, most of us had faith in the system – a system “too big to fail.” However, as the illusion of financial stability started to fade – so, too, did our confidence. How could we have been so blind? Well, without further ado, here are the six ways the most powerful moneymaking enterprise on Earth is able to LEGALLY con us out of our money. Con Game #1: Easy Credit Piling you up with debt is unequivocally the sun in which the Benefactors’ world rotates around. I’ve already given you all the facts. But here’s a tip for lawmakers… Until the middle class is expanding its wealth, too – in real dollars – the economy has absolutely no chance of ever regaining its past glory. Enough said. Con Game #2: Pro Big-Bank Legislation The subject matter here could fill an entire book. But 1999’s repeal of the Glass Steagall Act, which was passed in 1933 to control a banks’ ability to speculate, looms incredibly large. Likewise, policymakers’ 2004 decision to relax the 1975 Net Capital Rule was also instrumental in amassing great wealth at the top. The rule acted as a wonderful safeguard for all of us by limiting the amount of debt Wall Street firms were allowed to carry – with the upper limit being about 12 times their total assets. However, when Capitol Hill gave the ‘okay’ to relax the rule, the Benefactors embarked on an unprecedented period of profiteering. When Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns collapsed, they were leveraged by over 30-to-1! The biggest beneficiary of the watered-down standards was Goldman Sachs. In 2006, its profits jumped by 70% over the prior year, to $9.5 billion – the biggest ever for a Wall Street firm. It doled out an extraordinary $16.5 billion in compensation that year, which works out to an average of nearly $622,000 for each employee. Con Game #3: Favorable Tax Treatment President George W. Bush rigged the estate tax by substantially increasing the amount of tax-free money someone can pass on to his heirs – from $1 million in 2001 to $3.5 million in 2009. The Obama administration has not restored the exemption, choosing instead to keep it at $3.5 million. Such policy only benefits the richest 2% of Americans. Even more suspicious, some of the country’s wealthiest hedge fund managers and private-equity fund managers are taxed at a rate of only 15% – LESS than what most of the middle class pays. They’re able to do it by exploiting a little-known tax loophole. After repeated attempts by Congress to close the loophole, both Democrats and Republicans have always chosen to preserve it. I believe the loophole has been preserved to ensure that the Benefactors’ generous campaign donations keep pouring in. My point here is that the Benefactors aren’t richer ONLY because their paychecks are growing… They’re also richer because the government taxes them much less heavily than it once did. Con Game #4: The Stock Market Most of the assets held by the Benefactors are in stocks, bonds and other financial instruments. As such, in 2009, when the market bounced back after the Great Recession, these ‘elite’ enjoyed staggering increases to their net worth. By contrast, the cornerstone asset of middle-class America is its homes, the value of which is still plummeting four years after the economy’s peak. In 2007, the average CEO of the 350 largest publicly traded companies earned more than $12 million a year. A sizeable chunk of that income came via stock options, whose details are usually kept hidden from shareholders. Sometimes a CEO can create MASSIVE stock market gains simply by cutting jobs or announcing plans to slash wages. They even ‘backdate’ their stock options, which means getting compensated retroactively – when the options were worth the most. In the early 1990s, when the Financial Standards Accounting Board, which oversees accounting practices, tried to rein in ‘backdating,’ it was thwarted by a bipartisan coalition in the Senate. Con Game #5: Buying Political Influence Why didn’t politicians do more in the face of the financial crisis, hiding behind rhetoric like, “Too big to fail?” It may have to do with Deception, INC.’s ability to buy political influence. In 2009, the financial industry spent more than $300 million in its efforts to lobby Congress. Lobbying may be the ultimate proof of a rigged game because it’s here where we’re able to trace a direct connection between the Benefactors and lawmakers. Lobbyists are paid to persuade legislators to vote for legislation in favor of big corporations and banks. In the 1970s, only a small percentage – about 3% – of retiring members of Congress went on to become lobbyists. But by 2009, more than 30% did, as the profession grew incredibly lucrative. The Benefactors are very generous when it comes to buying influence – former chairs of congressional committees and subcommittees are paid upwards of $2 million a year to influence legislation in their former committees. Between 1998 and 2004 – when the Benefactors’ power was greatly intensifying – more than 2,200 former federal officials registered as lobbyists, according to the Center for Public Integrity. And according to the Center for Responsive Politics, spending on lobbyists escalated from $1.44 billion in 1998 to $3.47 billion in 2009. Still don’t believe Deception, INC. exists yet? Then try and explain why banks, realtors and insurers have 940 former federal employees – 70 of which are former members of Congress – on their payrolls as lobbyists. Now can you appreciate just how much the deck is stacked against you? Con Game #6: Proprietary Technology Without question, technological shifts have played a MAJOR role in this relentless redistribution of wealth. For starters, the internet serves as the perfect venue for Deception, INC.-sponsored firms to reach greater audiences, and, in turn, earn a larger economic return. But for actual proof of a rigged game, look no further than the arrival of supercomputers, which have shockingly increased capital flows on Wall Street. And rewritten the rules of trading in the process. Prior to 1998, million-share trading days were the norm on Wall Street. But today, Wall Street trades a few BILLION shares every day – magnifying the possibilities for gains. These supercomputers run fantastically sophisticated algorithms, too. And they work! For example, during the first quarter of 2010, four of the biggest banks in the United States – Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup – had a ‘perfect quarter,’ with zero days of trading losses. Wouldn’t it be nice to share such an advantage? Now, here’s where we zero in on our opportunity… You see, technological advantages have also led to the development of innovative new financial products – ones that usually have no appeal to everyday investors, like us. But for Deception, INC., these exotic creations are godsends – capable of spawning mind-boggling profits. I’m talking about derivatives. For the next seven to 10 years, the derivatives market represents absolution for the Benefactors – a way to exponentially expand their profit base without ever manufacturing, drilling, refining, exporting, importing, developing, building, or engineering a thing. And regulators have already paved the way for this to happen… You see, in September 2009, the leaders of the world’s largest economies met in Pittsburgh in what turned out to be perhaps the most significant G-20 Summit in history. In response to the financial crisis, the new, larger group – which proclaimed itself the guardian of the world economy – resolved to… “Work together to ensure that our fiscal, monetary, trade and structural policies are collectively consistent with more sustainable and balanced trajectories of growth.” One of the G-20’s highest priorities was to rein in the massive $615 trillion derivatives market. Prior to the financial crisis, the Big Banks traded derivatives between themselves, with absolutely no oversight. Regulators were virtually blind to the TRILLIONS upon TRILLIONS of dollars running through the financial system. Meanwhile, the Benefactors made a fortune in this cryptic market. Deception, INC.’s richest fiefdom, for sure – the size of the derivatives market is equivalent to 41 times the United States’ GDP. Recall, mortgage-backed securities – a tiny sliver of the larger derivatives market – are what precipitated the financial crisis. And the public outcry against these newfangled securities has been intense. For a while there, it even looked like regulators might pull the plug on the derivatives market altogether. But after some passionate lobbying, the Benefactors ultimately won out. (Was there ever any doubt?) In Pittsburgh, G-20 leaders agreed that… All standardized derivatives contracts should be traded on exchanges or electronic trading platforms by the end of 2012, at the latest.” And when the Dodd-Frank Act – Public Law 111-203 – was signed into law by President Obama on July 21, 2010, the financial system was, in effect, rigged for Deception, INC. to control another decade of profits. Nearly the exact same legislation was passed in Europe, as well. The gears toward achieving this mandate are already in motion, handing us a monumental opportunity. SEC Chairman Mary L. Schapiro recently said… “The derivatives marketplace has grown dramatically over the past three decades to become enormous and truly international. Since the early 1980s, when the first swap agreements were negotiated, the global notional value of this marketplace has grown to just over $600 trillion. However, [until now] derivatives were largely excluded from the financial regulatory framework by the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000.”
Again, understanding that capitalism must constantly be fed new markets to devour… the G-20 resolution put yet another market on a silver platter for the Benefactors. This market all but guarantees Deception, INC. of its next decade of profits. Although passed a year ago, The Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act just took effect – in July 2011. In layman’s terms, under the legislation, by 2012 derivatives contracts will be forced to pass through an official exchange. In doing so, a third party – an official clearinghouse – will assume the risk should one party default. In other words, Dodd-Frank makes certain that the irresponsible actions of AIG, which ignited the financial crisis, can never happen again. Recall, AIG underwrote the trillions of dollars in mortgage-backed securities during the housing boom. Yet when their value crashed, the venerable insurance giant was unable to pay up. Under Dodd Frank, such an outcome becomes virtually impossible. As you’d expect, the banking industry’s biggest names dominate derivatives activity. JP Morgan, Bank of America, Citibank, Goldman Sachs and HSBC Bank USA account for 96% of the total industry. And they’re eyeing the derivatives market as a salvation of sorts in these lean times, as it generates some of the easiest profits in finance. For now, I’ve recommended that my readers face the sobering reality that policymakers, for whatever reason, took measures to preserve the Benefactors’ foremost cash cow. Until you do the same, your anger is likely to cloud the opportunity now sitting before you. Also, every solution I mention from this point forward is perfectly legal and safe to implement, too. Course of Action #1: Follow Deception, INC.’s Money My analysts have identified an ingenious way to profit from Deception, INC.’s massive derivatives market without ever going within earshot of an actual derivative. So please take careful notice that within the past year, a milestone event occurred… A brand-new exchange was launched, exclusively trading the largest segment of the derivatives market. Only months old, early estimates put the potential value of the exchange in the neighborhood of $10 trillion. But why haven’t you heard about it? Why were there no cameras? No press? And no celebrities ringing the opening bell? Because the Benefactors don’t want you to know it exists. As I’ve been telling you, this market is the biggest moneymaking cog in Deception, INC.’s wheel. It’s how the Benefactors plan to expand their profit base over the next seven years, at least. And the less you know about it, the less likely you are to influence public opinion against it. For now, forget about the fact that $12.8 billion in transactions passed through the exchange in its first week of trading and, instead, concentrate on the number ONE… As in, ONE tiny company runs the entire exchange, handling every single order over its brand-new electronic trading platform. Forty-one banks are presently live on the platform, with heavyweights like Barclays Capital, Deutsche Bank and JP Morgan providing streaming prices. The amount of capital firing across this cryptic market is staggering. And among the Goliaths there sits ONE small, virtually unheard of company facilitating Deception, INC.’s next decade of profits. Imagine earning a cut on every trade. It’s hard to draw a historic comparison for such a unique event… But the Chicago Mercantile Exchange – facilitators of the largest futures and options exchange in the world – went public in 2002. And the stock went from $39 to over $700. Intercontinental Exchange – another proprietor of futures and over-the-counter exchanges – went public in late 2005 with a stock price of $26. To date, it’s been as high as $185. But making such comparisons to this hyper-unique opportunity isn’t really fair. You see… s a whole, the $615 trillion derivatives market dwarfs the futures, options and over-the-counter markets individually. he under-the-radar company executing the derivatives trades over its new electronic platform is tiny – only 1/30th the size of industry giants like Bank of America. And… billions in unrealized trading revenue is still NOT priced into the stock. When combined, these three factors make for a potentially massive rise in the stock price. Realize that this didn’t happen overnight… The electronic platform was nine years in the making. And this little company’s been an up-and-comer in international banking since the late 1990s. I expect the coming months to mark a historic turning point for the company. Shareholders could see their net worth explode. For investors with risk capital, this speculation has a real chance to make serious gains. You May Never See Anything Like it Again in Your Lifetime. By now, I suspect you appreciate the rare nature of this occasion. I can’t predict the future, but this may indeed be the only time it happens in our lifetime. That’s why I’d like to rush you an urgent report on this opportunity right away, called…How to Win a Rigged Game: Wall Street’s Underground Exchange Goes Live. In the report, you’ll get all the details regarding how this innovative small-cap company flew under the radar on its way to dominating a brand new, multi-trillion-dollar electronic market. And how its shares could be set for one the biggest price moves of any stock – on any exchange – over the next seven to 10 months. The report also reveals why BlackRock – the newly crowned King of Wall Street – loaded its house account with 32 million shares of this company’s stock. But perhaps most important… The report outlines how perfectly positioned the company is within the enormously lucrative derivatives market. At the end of the day, how many chances do you truly get to make money at such an early stage of the game? You know, when the profit potential is at its peak? I don’t want to tip my hand too much more, or I risk undermining the exhaustive research my team did to find this opportunity. So please refer to the report…How to Win a Rigged Game: Wall Street’s Underground Exchange Goes Live. I assure you that it includes all the critical information you need to take advantage of this milestone event, including the company’s ticker symbol. Give the research some consideration… I believe it holds every detail required to benefit from the unfolding events. The best part is, you can review this research today by simply taking a risk-free trial subscription to my flagship monthly newsletter, The White Cap Report. When you accept this invitation, I’ll immediately give you access to the report. It took nearly a year to compile this research on Deception, INC. Specifically, finding out who the Benefactors are… what impact they’re having on our wealth… and what they’re planning to do next. Now that we’ve identified the Benefactors, we’re tracking their money flows. With a virtual GPS on their cash, we’ll report where it’s heading every single month in The White Cap Report. The truth is, we’re already zeroing in on another opportunity with the potential to be even bigger than what’s happening with the Dodd-Frank legislation. Course of Action #2: Trade Like a Benefactor
As much as my group is known for its progressive research, it’s also an advocate of innovative trading strategies – ones capable of generating entirely new streams of personal income. You see, my staff includes best-selling author and former New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) market maker, Lee Lowell, who serves as the group’s Income Expert. I recently conducted an annual review of Lee’s track record and its results were extraordinary – a documented 96% win rate! Last year, Lee recommended 27 trades, and 26 of them generated an average cash payment of roughly $500. Over a year’s time, Lee’s picks led to cash payouts of: $450 from Verizon $362 from Sunoco $300 from DuPont $500 from Electronic Arts $300 from Home Depot $300 from Dow Chemical $400 from General Electric $300 from JC Penney $395 from International Paper $350 from Best Buy And that’s just a few of the big name, high-probability trades Lee has shown readers how to collect cash from. For clarity’s sake, like the Benefactors, Lee only recommends using a strategy that can be ‘rigged’ in your favor… With that in mind, you can imagine why I look forward to his internal performance audit every year – the results are all the proof Lee needs that his innovative strategies work. In fact, I was astonished to see that in 2009 and 2010, Lee’s readers had the opportunity to collect anywhere between $11,806 and $47,225 depending on how much they chose to invest. How could anyone turn down a cash infusion like that? When I talk about things like this, I’m always reminded of an email I received from one of Lee’s loyal readers named Barry Morris. Barry said that he and his son, just average folks from South Carolina… not professional traders or Benefactors… collected an astounding $145,000 in 2009 using Lee’s strategies. That’s $12,083 a month! I know a ton of recent college graduates who’d be overjoyed to earn that much in a year. You can find Lee Lowell’s columns in The White Cap Report by accepting my risk-free trial offer to the newsletter. If you choose to sign up, I’ll also give you immediate access to Lee’s two brand-new strategy reports… You’ve probably heard of my group’s Chief Investment Strategist, Louis Basenese. He’s the market’s foremost innovation and technology expert. And sleuthing-out innovation has been his life’s pursuit since helping handle over $1 billion in assets while on Wall Street. Louis’ readers have recently had the opportunity to close out gains on up-and-coming innovators, like… 162% on APKT – a facilitator of lightning-fast internet solutions. 100% on ASYS – a manufacturer of wafers used in the solar industry. 107% on IDCC – a wireless technology firm with over 8,000 patents. 139% on TDSC – an ingenious 3-D printing company. 152% on IO – a seismic imaging company in the oil and gas industry. Right now, Louis is urging readers to prepare, as the next wave of innovative technology swarms the market in the coming weeks. Wednesday, August 31, 2011 In Today’s Issue: Stock Market: The Case for Higher Prices… Good News: The Commodity Price Cycle and S&P 500 Both on Track… European Recession: Will There Be One? European Recession: Will There Be One? The Leong Side of the Market, by George Leong, B. Comm. If you think we have it bad here, just take a glance at Europe, where investing in stocks has become a chore full of patient and sleepless nights. In Germany, the most significant country in the eurozone, the benchmark DAX is down over 25% since late July. Just in one month! Things do not look promising. Stock markets across Europe are tanking and, as I have said, Europe is not a place to park your capital based on my global economic analysis. There was more evidence of an economic downfall in Europe after the European Union’s economic sentiment index fell for the sixth straight time. Germany showed the biggest decline. Without a recovery in Germany, the eurozone is in trouble, but we know that. The reality is that growth around the world is stalling and the fear is that it could worsen and drive another recession or deepen existing recessions in many regions in Europe. And, with the existing debt and deficit issues, it will be hard for the governments to focus on driving growth. The aftermath could be several more years of economic stalling in Europe. This is a big problem, as Europe has over 500 million people and is a major economic zone. September 1, 2011.
Why the European Union May Have Only a Week to Live: By Shah Gilani, Capital Waves Strategist, Money Morning. The clock may be ticking on the future of the European Union (EU). After being shaken to its core by the sovereign debt crisis, the entire Eurozone now runs the risk of blowing up within a week. Germany’s highest court, the German Federal Constitutional Court, on Sept. 7 rules on the legality of German participation in the euro rescue fund that was established to bail out Greece. If the court rules that Berlin’s commitment to the European Financial Stability Facility(EFSF) goes against EU law, or worse, against the German constitution, the entire Eurozone could collapse. Think of the Eurozone as a minefield full of bombs that have long lay dormant, but are all still very active. Now, Germany’s court ruling – itself a single bomb timed to go off next Wednesday – could ignite a massive chain reaction. Germany: The Eurozone’s Bomb Squad: Peripheral Eurozone countries like Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Spain, and Italy (the PIIGS) are in serious trouble and European banks face monumental liquidity and balance sheet issues. So far, only Germany’s singular fiscal conservativism and economic strength have kept the EU from self-destructing. But now the Eurozone’s only legitimate bomb squad may be hanging up its lead-suits, pliers, and contagion containers. What’s at issue for the Constitutional Court is whether Berlin broke the EU’s Maastricht Treaty, which unequivocally stipulates that member states cannot assume each other’s debts. And, more germane to German citizens and the center-right coalition government, will be the Court’s ruling on whether German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to fund the bailout facility circumvented constitutional requirements to put such fiscal matters before the German parliament. And while the court isn’t ruling directly on the EU’s currency – or Merkel’s support of it – the decisions rendered will have consequences for the euro’s future and by extension, the EU as a whole.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011 5:33 PM. Last April, Goldman Sachs settled with the SEC for $500 million over the synthetic collateralized debt obligation (CDO), Abacus. Even then, we predicted the mortgage lawsuits would get worse. We’ve written about the topic several times in these pages, so I will summarize the ordeal today…The SEC alleged Goldman sold investors a CDO without disclosing that hedge fund Paulson & Co. helped design the CDO and was shorting it. Buyers of the Abacus CDO (ACA Financial and German bank IKB) lost nearly $1 billion as mortgages plummeted. A synthetic CDO, by definition, must have someone on the long and short side. It is simply a bet on the direction of a pool of underlying mortgages. The buyers (huge financial institutions) should have known an investor was taking the other side of the bet. The Goldman lawsuit was just the beginning, we argued. Once the investigations moved on to CDOs containing real mortgages, we’d see real damage…wow, it seems clear to me suing Goldman about this issue – a case involving a synthetic CDO that the regulator will probably lose – is simply raising a red herring. Left unexamined is the much larger issue: the extraordinary amount of fraud in mortgage underwriting between 2004 and 2007. – April 21, 2010 S&A Digest. The real fireworks will come in the investigations over CDOs containing bona fide mortgages. These vehicles were completely riddled with fraud and insider dealing. Then, almost half of them were sold to Fannie and Freddie, now owned by Uncle Sam. When you defraud the sovereign, watch out. We think the fines are going to get a lot bigger… and we’d be surprised if Morgan Stanley survives. Interestingly, we also think the amount of fraud in the mortgage security industry means it’s unlikely the insurance on these bonds will remain in force. And that means the $30 billion or so of implied losses mortgage insurer MBIA faces may never be paid out. That’s a big number for a stock with a current market value of only $1.35 billion and assets of $25 billion. – July 16, 2010 S&A Digest In June, Bank of America announced it would pay $8.5 billion to settle claims from investors who lost money on mortgage-backed securities they bought before the crash. A group of investors (including giants like Black Rock, PIMCO, and MetLife) alleged mortgages they purchased from Countrywide (which Bank of America bought in 2008 for $4 billion) were filled with loans that didn’t meet the stated quality standards. The investors also alleged Countrywide didn’t keep accurate records of the loans. Yesterday was the last day to file objections to the Bank of America settlement. And there’s a long list of objectors. Goldman Sachs said the settlement lacks enough information to prove all “similarly situated” investors were treated equally. The Federal Housing Finance Agency, which regulates Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are also objecting to the settlement… as are dozens of other mortgage investors. Why the objections? We don’t know for certain… But we’d guess the objectors also took huge write downs on mortgages they purchased from Countrywide. And they want a higher recovery. This week, U.S. Bancorp, a trustee for a $1.75 billion Countrywide mortgage pool, separately sued Bank of America to make it buy back the mortgages. AIG, the insurer, is also suing Bank of America for $10 billion in a separate case involving mortgage-backed securities. Bank of America has huge potential liabilities with these outstanding lawsuits. And the bank doesn’t make any money… It lost $3.2 billion over the past three years. It’s had negative net income for the past two years. That’s why it’s scrambling to raise capital. The bank took $5 billion from Warren Buffett. It sold half its stake in China Construction Bank for around $8 billion. Today, news arose that Bank of America will sell its correspondent mortgage business (through which it purchases loans from smaller lenders, sells them, then continues servicing them). Bank of America decided to exit the business about six weeks ago. The business employs more than 1,000 people. And it was responsible for 47% of Bank of America’s mortgage originations in the first quarter of 2011. It is a huge retreat,” said Guy Cecala, publisher of the trade journal Inside Mortgage Finance. “Exiting correspondent altogether will reduce their volume significantly.”Europe in Limbo as Asian Fear Rises: The Leong Side of the Market, by George Leong, B. Comm. http://www.profitconfidential.com/gurus/ September, 2011The situation in Europe continues to focus on the debt and growth, along with the funding. And, until it calms down in Europe, markets will likely remain shaky on this side of the Atlantic. There is talk that Greece may need to leave the European Union due to its failure to satisfy financial targets set in place as a condition for receiving emergency capital from its European neighbors. I thought this could be a possibility given that I did not believe that the stronger nations of Germany and France would want to continue to fund the poor countries. The reality is that growth in both Germany and France has suffered with the focus squarely on saving the PIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Greece, and Spain). In my global economic analysis, this trend cannot continue much longer or Europe will falter and fall into a deeper or new recession. The problem is that ousting Greece would not be viewed as a positive signal to the rest of the world, as it could signal a domino effect that could lead to other countries also leaving, which is not what you want to see. The European Central Bank (ECB) maintained its benchmark lending rates at 1.50% at the Thursday meeting. But the situation is cloudy in the eurozone, after the ECB cut its gross domestic product (GDP) growth forecast. Of course, this is not a surprise given the recent downgrades in Europe. Morgan Stanley cut its global GDP forecasts for 2011 and 2012 and added that the U.S. and the eurozone were “dangerously close to a recession.” The Money Masters: Behind the Global Debt Crisis – by Adrian Salbuchi. New Dawn Magazine No. 128 (September-October 2011). In fact, if we look at matters in their proper perspective, we will see that most national economies are pretty much intact, in spite of having been badly bruised by the financial collapse. It is Finance that is in the midst of a massive global collapse, as this Model of “Ponzi” Finance has grown into a sort of malignant “cancerous tumour” that has now “metastasised,” threatening to kill the whole economy and social body politic, in just about every country in the world, and certainly in the industrialised countries. The above comparison of today’s financial system with a malignant tumour is more than a mere metaphor. If we look at the figures, we will immediately be able to see signs of this financial “metastasis.” For example, The New York Times in their 22 September 2008 edition explains that the main trigger of the financial collapse that had exploded just one week earlier on 15 September was, as we all know, mismanagement and lack of supervision over the “Derivatives” market. The Times then went on to explain that twenty years earlier, in 1988, there was no derivatives market; by 2002 however, Derivatives had grown into a global 102 trillion Dollar market (that’s 50% more than the Gross Domestic Product of all the countries in the world, the US, EU, Japan and BRICS nations included), and by September 2008, Derivatives had ballooned into a global 531 trillion Dollar market. That’s eight times the GDP of the entire planet! “Financial Metastasis” at its very worst. Since then, some have estimated this Derivatives global market figure to be in the region of One-Quadrillion Dollars… Naturally, when that collapse began, the caretaker governments in the US, European Union and elsewhere, immediately sprang into action and implemented “Operation Bail-out” of all the mega-banks, insurance companies, stock exchanges and speculation markets, and their respective operators, controllers and “friends.” Thus, trillions upon trillions of Dollars, Euros and Pounds were given to Goldman Sachs, Citicorp, Morgan Stanley, AIG, HSBC and other “too big to fail” financial institutions… which is newspeak for “too powerful to fail”, because they hold politicians, political parties and governments in their steel grip. All of this was paid with taxpayer dollars or, even worse, with uncontrolled and irresponsible issuance of Public Money bank notes and treasury bonds, especially by the Federal Reserve Bank which has, in practice, technically hyper-inflated the US Dollar: “Quantitative Easing” they call it, which is Newspeak for hyperinflation. So far, however, like the proverbial Naked Emperor, nobody dares to state this openly. At least not until some “uncontrolled” event triggers or unmasks what should by now be obvious to all: Emperor Dollar is totally and completely naked.7 When that happens, we will then see bloody social and civil wars throughout the world and not just in Greece and Argentina. By then, however, and as always happens, the powerful bankster clique and their well-paid financial and media operators, will be watching the whole hellish spectacle perched in the safety and comfort of their plush boardrooms atop the skyscrapers of New York, London, Frankfurt, Buenos Aires and Sao Paulo… By Jack Barnes, Global Macro Trends Specialist, Money Morning , October 10, 2011: Frankfurt-based Deutsche Bank AG (NYSE: DB) is about to be critically wounded by the European banking crisis. So it’s time to sell Deutsche Bank AG (**), before the region’s financial system falls apart. Europe’s Coming Capital Crunch Many European banks don’t have enough money to survive a Greek default. They hold huge amounts of their home sovereign’s debt, as well as debt of their troubled Eurozone neighbors. Any write-down of those holdings will slam their balance sheets. These banks were already overleveraged when the financial crisis started in 2007, and they have relied on outside sources like the United States to maintain core capital ratios. In the 2008 crash, the European banks turned to the U.S. Federal Reserve for trillions of dollars of liquidity injections. They also used sources like U.S. money market funds for short-term loans – commercial paper that matures in less than 270 days – to cover capital loaned out at longer maturities. In May 2011, U.S. money market funds had an average 40% of holdings in European commercial bank paper. But then U.S. banks, afraid of the unfolding European sovereign debt drama, let these short-term loans mature. This brought the capital back home and took an estimated $350 billion in liquidity out of the European banking system. October 12, 2011. By Keith Fitz-Gerald, Chief Investment Strategist, Money Morning. Do you want to know the real reason banks aren’t lending and the PIIGS have control of the barnyard in Europe? It’s because risk in the $600 trillion derivatives market isn’t evening out. To the contrary, it’s growing increasingly concentrated among a select few banks, especially here in the United States. In 2009, five banks held 80% of derivatives in America. Now, just four banks hold a staggering 95.9% of U.S. derivatives, according to a recent report from the Office of the Currency Comptroller. The four banks in question: JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM), Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C), Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC) and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS). Derivatives played a crucial role in bringing down the global economy, so you would think that the world’s top policymakers would have reined these things in by now – but they haven’t. Instead of attacking the problem, regulators have let it spiral out of control, and the result is a $600 trillion time bomb called the derivatives market. Think I’m exaggerating? The notional value of the world’s derivatives actually is estimated at more than $600 trillion. Notional value, of course, is the total value of a leveraged position’s assets. This distinction is necessary because when you’re talking about leveraged assets like options and derivatives, a little bit of money can control a disproportionately large position that may be as much as 5, 10, 30, or, in extreme cases, 100 times greater than investments that could be funded only in cash instruments. The world’s gross domestic product (GDP) is only about $65 trillion, or roughly 10.83% of the worldwide value of the global derivatives market, according to The Economist. So there is literally not enough money on the planet to backstop the banks trading these things if they run into trouble. Short-term borrowing costs would skyrocket and liquidity would evaporate. That would cause a ricochet across the Atlantic as the institutions themselves then panic and try to recover their own capital by withdrawing liquidity by any means possible. And that’s why banks are hoarding cash instead of lending it. The major banks know there is no way they can collateralize the potential daisy chain failure that Greece represents. So they’re doing everything they can to stockpile cash and keep their trading under wraps and away from public scrutiny. What really scares me, though, is that the banks think this is an acceptable risk because the odds of a default are allegedly smaller than one in 10,000. But haven’t we heard that before? Although American banks have limited their exposure to Greece, they have loaned hundreds of billions of dollars to European banks and European governments that may not be capable of paying them back. According to the Bank of International Settlements, U.S. banks have loaned only $60.5 billion to banks in Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy – the countries most at risk of default. But they’ve lent $275.8 billion to French and German banks. And undoubtedly bet trillions on the same debt. There are three key takeaways here: There is not enough capital on hand to cover the possible losses associated with the default of a single counterparty – JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM), BNP Paribas SA (PINK: BNPQY) or the National Bank of Greece (NYSE ADR: NBG) for example – let alone multiple failures. That means banks with large derivatives exposure have to risk even more money to generate the incremental returns needed to cover the bets they’ve already made. And the fact that Wall Street believes it has the risks under control practically guarantees that it doesn’t. October 14, 2011. By Shah Gilani, Capital Waves Strategist, Money Morning. I’ve already expressed my desire to embrace the Occupy Wall Street movement. I said last week that I would join in whole-heartedly if I knew exactly what the protesters were trying to achieve. But I don’t know – and I’m not convinced they do, either. Still, that doesn’t mean we should dismiss them entirely. After all, there are millions of Americans who sense there’s something terribly wrong with our capitalist system, but they can’t pinpoint exactly what it is either. But I can. Bad actors have done bad things to good institutions and our capitalist system. Today, I’m going to let you in on who three of those bad actors are. You see, part of the problem is that when we think of the “bad guys” on Wall Street, or in Washington for that matter, we don’t often think of specific people. We talk about “them” as faceless men we might imagine sitting in luxurious high-rises chewing on cigars and laughing as they rake in millions, or even billions of dollars on the backs of hardworking Americans. I intend to fix that. I want to shed light on the faces of the people who are gaming the system and lay out before you the tools they’re using to get away with it. So, I’m going to start today with three of the biggest perpetrators of the mess we’re in. The Three Bears. There are hundreds of bad actors on Wall Street, but three in particular tell the inside story of how appallingly corrupt our country has become. They are: Robert Rubin, who spent 26 years at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS), before becoming Treasury Secretary in the Clinton administration. Lawrence Summers, who came out of the World Bank and was Deputy Secretary of the Treasury under his pal Rubin before becoming Treasury Secretary himself in 1999. And Phil Gramm, once a practicing economist who served as a Republican Senator for Texas from 1985 to 2002. These are the men who – with help of then-Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan – interfered with the Commodities and Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), an important regulatory body, to squash any regulation of derivatives. And now the notoriously murky derivatives market, which was hugely responsible for the 2008 financial crisis, has grown into a $600 trillion trouble spot for the economy. This group of very influential and powerful men made sure there was no oversight of derivatives products and markets. None. While that was an incredible gift to Wall Street’s biggest banks and hedge funds, the Three Bears (I call them that because their actions drove us into the systemic economic bear market from which we’re still struggling to emerge) weren’t nearly done. The Beginning of the End. in April 6, 1998 Citicorp and Travelers Group announced that they would merge into a single company. But there was a problem. At the time, such a merger would have violated the Glass Steagall Act. If you’re not familiar with it, the Glass Steagall Act is – or rather was – a piece of Depression-era legislation that established the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) and mandated the separation of commercial banks, investment banks, and insurance companies. It incorporated other practical and prudent regulations enacted to safeguard investors and the public , as well. But , lessons learned from the Depression were eventually forgotten – or maybe more precisely, steamrolled by a sweeping deregulatory movement that took root in 1980. On the day of the announced combination, Traveler’s chairman, Sandy Weill, addressed impediments to the merger in the New York Times, noting that current law would allow the new Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C) time to divest itself of assets in order to comply with Glass-Steagall. However, ominously he added: “We are hopeful that over time the legislation will change.” Just one year later, it did. The same powerful group of influence-peddling government insiders overturned Glass-Steagall in November 1999, so the illegal merger didn’t have to be reversed. The law that obliterated the prudent separation of FDIC-backed commercial banks and swing-for-the-fences investment banks became known as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. This act is what paved the way for giant, financial super firms that are so intertwined in the financial markets they’re now all considered “too-big-to-fail.” In Eerie Epilogue. So what happened to our three players? Were they penalized or held accountable for the undermining of our economy and the implosion of markets? No. They were rewarded. Robert Rubin went to work for the new Citigroup as a senior advisor of the firm. Rubin made $126 million in cash and stock during his eight years of service, while the bank leveraged itself up by using depositor money. It had to be bailed out in 2008. Lawrence Summers reportedly took some $20 million from D.E. Shaw & Co., a giant hedge fund that dabbles in derivatives, for a two-year stint doing something nobody at the firm could confirm. And Phil Gramm, the venerable Texas senator, upon retiring from that powerful position, immediately became vice chairman of the investment bank division of UBS AG (NYSE: UBS). Yes, UBS – the same Swiss bank that in 2008 had to be backstopped by the Swiss National Bank when its overleveraged and derivatives-laden balance sheet imploded. The same bank that later paid $780 million to settle criminal charges over its conspiracy to defraud the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and federal government of legitimately owed taxes. These are the kinds of things that are taking place every day thanks to Wall Street’s influence over our executive and legislative branches of government. And you better believe that average Americans and the Occupy Wall Street protestors can sense that, and they know they should be angry. They just can’t put their finger on why. I can because I’m a Wall Street guy who spent 30 years working within the system. I studied economics and started my career as a trader on the floor of the Chicago Board of Options Exchange (CBOE). I ran the futures and options division of a giant international money-center bank. I’ve done everything from trading bonds and mortgage-backed securities to running my own hedge funds. And I have hundreds of stories full of corruption and greed – just like this one. Not everyone on Wall Street is a bad actor. Most of the professionals working in the capital markets across America are good and honest people. But, there are kingpins and kingmakers whose greed is so disgusting they will sink America for their own fistful of dollars. It’s time we had better insights into what’s really going on and time to indict some of these bad actors. Editor’s Note: Money Morning Capital Waves Strategist and retired hedge-fund manager Shah Gilani became a national icon in 2008, as he dissected the shady workings of Wall Street, uncovering how the greed of a few brought down the economy of our entire country.He’s since launched a new publication calledWall Street Insights & Indictments. His goal simply is to show you what’s really going on in the markets, so you can “know the story” and make some money. October 13, 2011.
THE CLINK. Hedge-Fund Boss Gets 11 Years.Former hedge-fund tycoon Raj Rajaratnam has been sentenced to 11 years in prison and fined $10 million for insider trading, the longest-ever such sentence. Rajaratnam, the founder of Galleon Group, got tips from a network of insiders in Goldman Sachs, Google, Intel, and other companies. Prosecutors say he made $72 million from insider trading, while Rajaratnam’s lawyers say it was only $7.4 million. The Economist says good riddance to the “know-it-all” billionaire—and praises a new boon for regulators looking to crack down on trading abuses. By Bob Van Voris, Patricia Hurtado and David Glovin – Oct 12, 2011 11:00 PM CT, Thu Oct 13 04:00:00 GMT 2011: Galleon Group LLC’s Raj Rajaratnam
Peter Foley/Bloomberg. Raj Rajaratnam, co-founder of Galleon Group LLC. Raj Rajaratnam, co-founder of Galleon Group LLC. Photographer: Peter Foley/Bloomberg Oct. 13 (Bloomberg) — Douglas Burns, a formal federal prosecutor, talks about Galleon Group LLC co-founder Raj Rajaratnam’s sentencing today for masterminding the biggest hedge-fund insider trading scheme in U.S. history. Burns speaks with Erik Schatzker and Stephanie Ruhle on Bloomberg Television’s “InsideTrack.” (Source: Bloomberg) Oct. 13 (Bloomberg) — Galleon Group LLC’s Raj Rajaratnam will be sentenced today for masterminding the biggest hedge-fund insider trading scheme in U.S. history, facing a federal judge who has broad discretion in setting his punishment. Sarah Eisen reports on Bloomberg Television’s “InsideTrack.” (Source: Bloomberg). Galleon Group LLC’s Raj Rajaratnam will be sentenced today for masterminding the biggest hedge-fundinsider trading scheme in U.S. history, facing a federal judge who has broad discretion in setting his punishment. U.S. District Judge Richard Holwell in Manhattan presided over the jury trial in which Rajaratnam was convicted of 14 counts of securities fraud and conspiracy. He will consult federal sentencing guidelines and his own “gut feeling,” one legal expert said. Read it at Bloomberg. These Three Men Represent Everything That’s Wrong with Wall Street byShah Gilani I’ve already expressed my desire to embrace the Occupy Wall Street movement. I said last week that I would join in whole-heartedly if I knew exactly what the protesters were trying to achieve. But I don’t know – and I’m not convinced they do, either. Still, that doesn’t mean we should dismiss them entirely. After all, there are millions of Americans who sense there’s something terribly wrong with our capitalist system, but they can’t pinpoint exactly what it is either. But I can. Bad actors have done bad things to good institutions and our capitalist system. Today, I’m going to let you in on who three of those bad actors are. You see, part of the problem is that when we think of the “bad guys” on Wall Street, or in Washington for that matter, we don’t often think of specific people. We talk about “them” as faceless men we might imagine sitting in luxurious high-rises chewing on cigars and laughing as they rake in millions, or even billions of dollars on the backs of hardworking Americans. I intend to fix that. I want to shed light on the faces of the people who are gaming the system and lay out before you the tools they’re using to get away with it. So, I’m going to start today with three of the biggest perpetrators of the mess we’re in. The Three Bears.There are hundreds of bad actors on Wall Street, but three in particular tell the inside story of how appallingly corrupt our country has become. They are: Robert Rubin, who spent 26 years at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS), before becoming Treasury Secretary in the Clinton administration. Lawrence Summers, who came out of the World Bank and was Deputy Secretary of the Treasury under his pal Rubin before becoming Treasury Secretary himself in 1999. And Phil Gramm, once a practicing economist who served as a Republican Senator for Texas from 1985 to 2002. These are the men who – with help of then-Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan – interfered with the Commodities and Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), an important regulatory body, to squash any regulation of derivatives.And now the notoriously murky derivatives market, which was hugely responsible for the 2008 financial crisis, has grown into a $600 trillion trouble spot for the economy.This group of very influential and powerful men made sure there was no oversight of derivatives products and markets. None. While that was an incredible gift to Wall Street’s biggest banks and hedge funds, the Three Bears (I call them that because their actions drove us into the systemic economic bear market from which we’re still struggling to emerge) weren’t nearly done. The Beginning of the End On April 6, 1998 Citicorp and Travelers Group announced that they would merge into a single company. But there was a problem. At the time, such a merger would have violated the Glass Steagall Act. If you’re not familiar with it, the Glass Steagall Act is – or rather was – a piece of Depression-era legislation that established the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) and mandated the separation of commercial banks, investment banks, and insurance companies. It incorporated other practical and prudent regulations enacted to safeguard investors and the public , as well. But, lessons learned from the Depression were eventually forgotten – or maybe more precisely, steamrolled by a sweeping deregulatory movement that took root in 1980. On the day of the announced combination, Traveler’s chairman, Sandy Weill, addressed impediments to the merger in the New York Times, noting that current law would allow the new Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C) time to divest itself of assets in order to comply with Glass-Steagall. However, ominously he added: “We are hopeful that over time the legislation will change.”Just one year later, it did.The same powerful group of influence-peddling government insiders overturned Glass-Steagall in November 1999, so the illegal merger didn’t have to be reversed. The law that obliterated the prudent separation of FDIC-backed commercial banks and swing-for-the-fences investment banks became known as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. This act is what paved the way for giant, financial super firms that are so intertwined in the financial markets they’re now all considered “too-big-to-fail.” An Eerie Epilogue So what happened to our three players? Were they penalized or held accountable for the undermining of our economy and the implosion of markets? No. They were rewarded. Robert Rubin went to work for the new Citigroup as a senior advisor of the firm. Rubin made $126 million in cash and stock during his eight years of service, while the bank leveraged itself up by using depositor money. It had to be bailed out in 2008. Lawrence Summers reportedly took some $20 million from D.E. Shaw & Co., a giant hedge fund that dabbles in derivatives, for a two-year stint doing something nobody at the firm could confirm. And Phil Gramm, the venerable Texas senator, upon retiring from that powerful position, immediately became vice chairman of the investment bank division of UBS AG (NYSE: UBS). Yes, UBS – the same Swiss bank that in 2008 had to be backstopped by the Swiss National Bank when its overleveraged and derivatives-laden balance sheet imploded. The same bank that later paid $780 million to settle criminal charges over its conspiracy to defraud the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and federal government of legitimately owed taxes. These are the kinds of things that are taking place every day thanks to Wall Street’s influence over our executive and legislative branches of government. And you better believe that average Americans and the Occupy Wall Street protestors can sense that, and they know they should be angry. They just can’t put their finger on why. I can because I’m a Wall Street guy who spent 30 years working within the system. I studied economics and started my career as a trader on the floor of the Chicago Board of Options Exchange (CBOE). I ran the futures and options division of a giant international money-center bank. I’ve done everything from trading bonds and mortgage-backed securities to running my own hedge funds. And I have hundreds of stories full of corruption and greed – just like this one. Not everyone on Wall Street is a bad actor. Most of the professionals working in the capital markets across America are good and honest people. But, there are kingpins and kingmakers whose greed is so disgusting they will sink America for their own fistful of dollars. It’s time we had better insights into what’s really going on and time to indict some of these bad actors. By Shah Gilani.Oct 14, 2011. EU Finance Summit Awash in Crises. Oct 26, 2011 12:46 PM EDT. Europe’s leaders finally admit that something must be done with the continent’s banks. Europe’s dirty secret is that its banks have long been even more of a mess than America’s—they were among the biggest investors in America’s toxic subprime assets, and then went big time into the now-toxic bonds of over-indebted states; hence the 62 percent plunge in the Euro Stoxx Financials Index since March, compared with minus-21 percent for the Dow Jones financials. France, which probably has the shakiest banks of any major European economy, to this day has refused to force them to recapitalize and shrink. The plan, as leaked to the Financial Times today, involves a $140 billion bank bailout (though the IMF and others estimate recapitalization needs to be much higher). But it’s a weak plan, full of vague “shoulds” and “oughts” that will likely leave too many loopholes for the banks and their investors to evade forced recapitalization and the absolutely necessary debt-to-equity swaps. The way the bailouts are set up now, they could allow France and others to pass the cost of bank bailouts to Europe’s taxpayers, potentially making the debt crisis worse. Third, in order to prevent contagion to other over-indebted countries, such as Italy and Spain, outlines are emerging for a plan to issue “bond insurance.” Here’s how it works: a bailout fund, possibly leveraged to as high as 2 trillion euros, would cover the first 20 percent or so of any losses by investors on bonds issued by individual European countries. That plan, first put forward by German financial-sector lobbyists, could end up expensive for taxpayers. Bond insurance makes sense, but the cheaper—and more effective—alternative would be not to cover any first loss on any bond, but provide only a kind of catastrophic risk insurance for the worst defaults. That would put a floor on potential losses—and raise bond prices—at a far lower risk to Europe’s taxpayers, says Achim Dübel, a German bond-market expert who developed the plan. Fourth, European leaders are trying to show they’re a little more serious about cutting deficits and lowering their debts. Germany and France are leaning on Italy, whose $2.5 trillion national debt is the world’s third highest after America’s and Japan’s, and whose government bonds are stable only because the ECB is massively buying them. After Greece, Italy is another poster child for what’s wrong with the European Union. The moment the ECB started intervening in the markets to support Italian bonds, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi backed off on a set of planned reforms that would have started to get Italy’s debt under control. It’s an open secret that Berlin would prefer Berlusconi out and a new government in power to push through a backlog of economic reforms that would allow Italy to regain the confidence of investors. Perhaps taking the hint, Berlusconi today started talking about early elections. Italy illustrates perfectly the deeper crisis, which the current plans don’t solve. Many of Europe’s semi-socialist governments simply do not know how to roll back spending, and have been even less eager to pass the kinds of market-opening economic reforms that would raise growth and make it easier to pay back debt. France, which together with its wobbly banks is the elephant in the room of the euro crisis, has never passed a serious reform to its pensions, civil service, or employment laws in the last 60 years. Greece, despite the crisis, has barely even begun to privatize or start collecting back taxes. The problem is that once any comprehensive bailout deal is signed, power will shift back to the debtors, as Europe has no mechanism to force a Sarkozy or Berlusconi to reform. The paradox, therefore, is that without the pressure of the current crisis, the much deeper crisis will continue to fester. (Stefan Theil is Newsweek’s Berlin bureau chief and covers European politics, business, and economics. He has reported from more than 20 countries and written for Foreign Policy, the Financial Times, The New Republic, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and Die Welt.) For inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at editorial@thedailybeast.com. Without warning, Lloyd’s – the world’s oldest insurance market – announced that it has withdrawn its money from European banks. The reason? According to Lloyd’s, the banks are in danger of failing as Europe’s debt crisis continues to intensify. The company’s Finance Director, Luke Savage, put it simply: “If you’re worried the government itself might be at risk, then you’re certainly worried the banks could be taken down with them.” Which European governments is Lloyd’s talking about? They’re not saying. But it IS interesting to note that Lloyd’s didn’t just withdraw its money from Greek banks; it withdrew its money from banks all over Europe! One thing you can be sure of, though: When the world’s oldest insurance company…A firm that for 323 years has made its living by accurately calculating the odds of future disasters…When that company suddenly takes its money and runs, it’s a MASSIVE red flag for investors – a clear sign that the beginning of the end is near! Lloyd’s has every reason to worry. In addition to the government debt crisis that’s threatening to destroy European banks, a huge credit crisis is spreading across the continent, as well. Spanish and Italian banks are rejecting massive numbers of loans and charging customers more as the sovereign debt crisis continues to drive their own borrowing cost higher. Any way you look at it, this shrinking of European credit markets is the worst kind of downward spiral: The government debt crisis is making it harder and more expensive for banks to borrow money; the banks are passing those higher costs along to borrowers. Corporations have to pay more to borrow; their cost of doing business is rising. Consumers can’t or won’t borrow at higher rates, so corporate earnings plunge. As corporate earnings evaporate, the taxes they pay also plummet. Falling tax revenue cause the government’s deficits to explode higher, driving the banks’ cost of borrowing even higher. And so, the death spiral continues… My urgent online video will show you what to do right now… If you think Europe’s woes aren’t going to spill over onto our shores – THINK AGAIN! In fact, we believe that the United States is about to get slammed. In some key aspects the U.S. is now in WORSE shape than Brazil, Russia, Greece or Spain have ever been. Consider the high-risk gambles that super-investor Warren Buffett calls “financial weapons of mass destruction.” I’m talking about special kinds of investments called “derivatives.” They were a major cause of the real estate and debt crisis that nearly wiped out all of our largest banks in 2008 — along with the entire U.S. economy. Russia’s banks never exposed themselves to large amounts of these financial time bombs. Neither did Brazil’s banks. And you’d think that, after the 2008 meltdown, U.S. banks would have learned their lesson. But you’d be wrong. According to the Comptroller of the Currency, a division of the U.S. Treasury Department — U.S. banks held $176 trillion in derivatives at the height of the debt crisis in 2008. Today, U.S. banks hold $244 trillion in derivatives — nearly 40% more. That fact alone places the U.S. in greater danger than many other countries, past or present. U.S. debt and obligations are now OVER $120 TRILLION! America is also in great danger for another big reason. Washington is now sitting on the largest pile of debt in the history of civilization: About $14.5 trillion and counting. They are the men and women who directly advised presidents of both major parties, including President Obama, and all of them have since departed from their office. They recently wrote that that the next debt crisis could, and I quote “Dwarf 2008!” That’s an absolutely shocking assertion: In 2008, Wall Street came within a hair of a massive, devastating meltdown. Virtually ALL of our largest banks were pushed to the brink of failure. The entire country was only a few hours away from a fatal collapse. Now, these ten former White House advisors are warning that this next debt crisis could dwarf the last one. Why? What could cause that? They say it’s precisely the monumental event I just told you about: The fact that one day foreigners may simply stop lending more of their money to the United States. And these ten former presidential advisers are not the only ones ringing the alarm bells. Senator Mark Warner says, “We’re approaching financial Armageddon.” Senator Joe Manchin calls this crisis “A fiscal Titanic.” Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is warning that this crisis is “the biggest threat to our national security.” Economist Robert Samuelson warns that this crisis has the power to trigger “An economic and political death spiral.” Democrat Erskine Bowles, who headed up the president’s deficit commission, warns that this crisis is “like a cancer; it’s truly going to destroy the country from within.” Senator Mike Crapo says it is “a threat to not just our way of life, but to our national survival.” It has the power to “ … guarantee that this nation becomes a second-rate power with less opportunity and less freedom.” And David Walker — the former U.S. Comptroller General and director of the Government Accountability Office says: “The bottom line is: We’re not Greece. But we could end up with the same problems!” And mind you, these men are not extremists. They have nothing to gain by trying to scare you. They are merely following the facts to their logical conclusion. That’s what I’ve done in this report. The warnings I’ve given you are based on nothing more — and nothing less — than economic reality and historical fact. My research team and I have simply crunched the numbers and let the chips fall where they may — just like we did when we issued “D” ratings on nearly every big bank and savings and loans that subsequently failed. Just like we did when we gave a “C” rating to the United States. We have no political axe to grind. We are not beholden to Republicans, Democrats, or any other political party. Nor do we owe allegiance to Wall Street or any of the thousands of banks, companies and countries that we rate. In fact, most of them would probably prefer that we just kept our mouths shut. One giant company even threatened my life by saying “Weiss had better shut up or get a body guard.” But to quote Harry Truman, “I never give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it’s hell.” Our loyalty is with the people — consumers, savers, investors and everyday citizens. Martin D. Weiss, Ph.d. Publisher, Safe Money Investor Service; 15430 Endeavour Drive Jupiter, FL 33478, 800-236-0407, 561-625-6685 (Fax). November 4, 2011. By Shah Gilani, Capital Waves Strategist, Money Morning Did you hear the story about MF Global? No, not the headlines about its bankruptcy – the real story. If you haven’t heard it yet, it goes something like this. MF Global became a primary dealer only eight months ago. “Primary dealer” is an elite status. It means the firm is one of only 22 government bond dealers that trades directly with the Federal Reserve’s New York trading desk. Only, the Federal Reserve doesn’t regulate or oversee MF Global, the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) does – or rather is supposed to. But, even more incongruously, the CFTC isn’t the first overseer of MF Global . It ceded that responsibility to the CME Group Inc. (Nasdaq: CME), which owns and operates the largest futures exchanges in the United States. The designated self-regulatory organization for more than 50 futures brokers, CME was supposed to be the cop on the beat. However, t he not-so-funny thing about the relationship between MF Global and the CME Group is that MF Global recently boasted on its Website that it “was the top broker by volume at CME’s metals and energy exchanges in New York and in the top three at its Chicago exchanges.” So, is it any wonder that the CME just last week audited MF Global’s segregated customer funds and found them to be in compliance?These are the same supposedly segregated funds which the CME is now saying may have been tampered with. According to the CME: “It now appears that [MF Global] made subsequent transfers of customer segregated funds in a manner that may have been designed to avoid detection insofar as MF Global did not disclose or report such transfers to the CFTC or CME until early morning on Monday October 31, 2011.” How much money are we talking about? About $633 million – or 11.6% out of a segregated fund requirement of about $5.4 billion. Do you see what I’m driving at? So the real story is, the Federal Reserve, which doesn’t regulate MF Global but regulates all banks in the United States, lets a futures commission merchant with investment bank wannabe desires become an insider in its dealings. Meanwhile, a private for-profit enterprise that runs the self-regulatory apparatus that oversees its own customers steps in for a federal agency that’s supposed to be in charge of commodities, futures and derivatives markets. And that’s only the tip of the iceberg. Let me jump on the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) next, because you aren’t going to believe this, either. Subterfuge at the SEC It’s come to light recently that the SEC has been blatantly violating federal law for decades. Since at least 1992 through 2010, the SEC has destroyed more than 9,000 documents that by law were supposed to be saved and turned over to the National Archives and Records Administration and kept for 25 years. The documents were records of enforcement cases where, after preliminary inquires, it was decided not to pursue full-blown investigations. When the SEC has information – an anonymous tip or insights from a whistleblower, for instance – that could lead to an investigation, the subjects are pursued as “matters under inquiry,” or MUIs. A couple of examples of MUIs that went nowhere include: The several tips the agency received that Bernie Madoff was running a Ponzi scheme; the anonymous tip on Ernst and Young letterhead that said Lehman Bros. Holdings Inc. (PINK: LEHMQ) was cooking its books; or the MUIs on insider trading, fraud, and market manipulation at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS), Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC), American International Group Inc. (NYSE: AIG), and SAC Capital Advisors, to name a few others. But since none of these MUIs morphed into full-blown investigations, the SEC decided to destroy all records pertaining to these inquiries rather than hand them over to the National Archives, as federal law requires. When confronted with the unauthorized disposal of federal records, thanks to a couple of steadfast and honest lawyers in the enforcement branch of the SEC, the agency said it was “not aware of any specific instances of the destruction of records.” What’s shocking and sickening is that even while addressing the Archives’ inquiry into the missing documents, the SEC somehow forgot to disclose to the keeper of federal records its policy to “destroy all such documents” when no further action is warranted. Too bad for the SEC an internal investigation by SEC Inspector General H. David Kotz brought to light the agency’s directive to destroy certain MUIs, along with the discovery of MUIs on old hard drives that somebody accidentally forgot to erase and destroy. Why wouldn’t the SEC keep records of enforcement activities? Why would they destroy critical data and information that could be used in the future to pursue cases that re-surfaced and could lead to bone-crushing conspiracy or racketeering charges, if not even the simple garden variety securities law violations? With any luck, we just might find out. The SEC could and should face criminal charges for breaking federal law. There’s a powerful push by a quiet group of angry journalists to get to the bottom of this, and I’m one of them. So, expect to hear more about this as we press on for the truth. In the meantime, it’s high time we take a good look at regulators and not just regulations to see where the cracks are in the prudential governance of markets, financial institutions, and most importantly, individuals who are responsible for decisions that break the law or grossly impact markets and our economy. After all, it’s not just regulations we need to worry about – it’s the regulators too. [Editor’s Note: Money Morning Capital Waves Strategist and retired hedge-fund manager Shah Gilani became a national icon in 2008, as he dissected the shady workings of Wall Street, uncovering how the greed of a few brought down the economy of our entire country. He’s since launched a new publication calledWall Street Insights & Indictments. His goal simply is to show you what’s really going on in the markets, so you can “know the story” and make some money. And the best part is, it’s absolutely free. Just sign up by clicking here. You’ll also receive Gilani’s latest report: “5 Ways to Trade the Coming EU Collapse – And Make a Killing”.] By NASSIM NICHOLAS TALEB: Published: November 7, 2011 I HAVE a solution for the problem of bankers who take risks that threaten the general public: Eliminate bonuses. More than three years since the global financial crisis started, financial institutions are still blowing themselves up. The latest, MF Global, filed for bankruptcy protection last week after its chief executive, Jon S. Corzine, made risky investments in European bonds. So far, lenders and shareholders have been paying the price, not taxpayers. But it is only a matter of time before private risk-taking leads to another giant bailout like the ones the United States was forced to provide in 2008. The promise of “no more bailouts,” enshrined in last year’s Wall Street reform law, is just that — a promise. The financiers (and their lawyers) will always stay one step ahead of the regulators. No one really knows what will happen the next time a giant bank goes bust because of its misunderstanding of risk. Instead, it’s time for a fundamental reform: Any person who works for a company that, regardless of its current financial health, would require a taxpayer-financed bailout if it failed should not get a bonus, ever. In fact, all pay at systemically important financial institutions — big banks, but also some insurance companies and even huge hedge funds — should be strictly regulated. Critics like the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators decry the bonus system for its lack of fairness and its contribution to widening inequality. But the greater problem is that it provides an incentive to take risks. The asymmetric nature of the bonus (an incentive for success without a corresponding disincentive for failure) causes hidden risks to accumulate in the financial system and become a catalyst for disaster. This violates the fundamental rules of capitalism; Adam Smith himself was wary of the effect of limiting liability, a bedrock principle of the modern corporation Bonuses are particularly dangerous because they invite bankers to game the system by hiding the risks of rare and hard-to-predict but consequential blow-ups, which I have called “black swan” events. The meltdown in the United States subprime mortgage market, which set off the global financial crisis, is only the latest example of such disasters. Consider that we trust military and homeland security personnel with our lives, yet we don’t give them lavish bonuses. They get promotions and the honor of a job well done if they succeed, and the severe disincentive of shame if they fail. For bankers, it is the opposite: a bonus if they make short-term profits and a bailout if they go bust. The question of talent is a red herring: Having worked with both groups, I can tell you that military and security people are not only more careful about safety, but also have far greater technical skill, than bankers. The ancients were fully aware of this upside-without-downside asymmetry, and they built simple rules in response. Nearly 4,000 years ago, Hammurabi’s code specified this: “If a builder builds a house for a man and does not make its construction firm, and the house which he has built collapses and causes the death of the owner of the house, that builder shall be put to death.”No such pain faces bailed-out, bonus-taking bankers. The period from 2000 to 2008 saw a very large accumulation of hidden exposures in the financial system. And yet the year 2010 brought the largest bank compensation in history. It has become clear that merely “clawing back” past bonuses after the fact is not enough. Supervision, regulation and other forms of monitoring are necessary, but insufficient — consider that the Federal Reserve insisted, as late as 2007, that the rapidly escalating subprime mortgage crisis was likely to be “contained.” What would banking look like if bonuses were eliminated? It would not be too different from what it was like when I was a bank intern in the 1980s, before the wave of deregulation that culminated in the 1999 repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, the Depression-era law that had separated investment and commercial banking. Before then, bankers and lenders were boring “lifers.” Banking was bland and predictable; the chairman’s income was less than that of today’s junior trader. Investment banks, which paid bonuses and weren’t allowed to lend, were partnerships with skin in the game, not gamblers playing with other people’s money. Hedge funds, which are loosely regulated, could take on some of the risks that banks would shed under my proposal. While we tend to hear about the successful ones, the great majority fail and their failures rarely make the front page. The principal-agent problem they have isn’t a problem for taxpayers: Typically their investors manage the governance of hedge funds by ensuring that the manager is hurt more than any of his investors in the event of a blowup. I believe that “less is more” — simple heuristics are necessary for complex problems. So instead of thousands of pages of regulation, we should enforce a basic principle: Bonuses and bailouts should never mix. Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a professor of risk engineering at New York University Polytechnic Institute, is the author of “The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable.” He is a hedge fund investor and a former Wall Street trader. October 14, 2011 By Shah Gilani, Capital Waves Strategist, Money Morning. I’ve already expressed my desire to embrace the Occupy Wall Street movement. I said last week that I would join in whole-heartedly if I knew exactly what the protesters were trying to achieve. But I don’t know – and I’m not convinced they do, either. Still, that doesn’t mean we should dismiss them entirely. After all, there are millions of Americans who sense there’s something terribly wrong with our capitalist system, but they can’t pinpoint exactly what it is either. But I can. Bad actors have done bad things to good institutions and our capitalist system. Today, I’m going to let you in on who three of those bad actors are. You see, part of the problem is that when we think of the “bad guys” on Wall Street, or in Washington for that matter, we don’t often think of specific people. We talk about “them” as faceless men we might imagine sitting in luxurious high-rises chewing on cigars and laughing as they rake in millions, or even billions of dollars on the backs of hardworking Americans. I intend to fix that. I want to shed light on the faces of the people who are gaming the system and lay out before you the tools they’re using to get away with it. So, I’m going to start today with three of the biggest perpetrators of the mess we’re in. The Three Bears There are hundreds of bad actors on Wall Street, but three in particular tell the inside story of how appallingly corrupt our country has become. They are: Robert Rubin, who spent 26 years at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS), before becoming Treasury Secretary in the Clinton administration. Lawrence Summers, who came out of the World Bank and was Deputy Secretary of the Treasury under his pal Rubin before becoming Treasury Secretary himself in 1999. And Phil Gramm, once a practicing economist who served as a Republican Senator for Texas from 1985 to 2002. These are the men who – with help of then-Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan – interfered with the Commodities and Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), an important regulatory body, to squash any regulation of derivatives.
This group of very influential and powerful men made sure there was no oversight of derivatives products and markets. None.
While that was an incredible gift to Wall Street’s biggest banks and hedge funds, the Three Bears (I call them that because their actions drove us into the systemic economic bear market from which we’re still struggling to emerge) weren’t nearly done. The Beginning of the End On April 6, 1998 Citicorp and Travelers Group announced that they would merge into a single company.
But there was a problem.
At the time, such a merger would have violated the Glass Steagall Act. If you’re not familiar with it, the Glass Steagall Act is – or rather was – a piece of Depression-era legislation that established the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) and mandated the separation of commercial banks, investment banks, and insurance companies. It incorporated other practical and prudent regulations enacted to safeguard investors and the public , as well.
But , lessons learned from the Depression were eventually forgotten – or maybe more precisely, steamrolled by a sweeping deregulatory movement that took root in 1980.
On the day of the announced combination, Traveler’s chairman, Sandy Weill, addressed impediments to the merger in the New York Times, noting that current law would allow the new Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C) time to divest itself of assets in order to comply with Glass-Steagall.
However, ominously he added: “We are hopeful that over time the legislation will change.”
Just one year later, it did.
The same powerful group of influence-peddling government insiders overturned Glass-Steagall in November 1999, so the illegal merger didn’t have to be reversed. The law that obliterated the prudent separation of FDIC-backed commercial banks and swing-for-the-fences investment banks became known as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act.
This act is what paved the way for giant, financial super firms that are so intertwined in the financial markets they’re now all considered “too-big-to-fail.” An Eerie Epilogue So what happened to our three players? Were they penalized or held accountable for the undermining of our economy and the implosion of markets? No. They were rewarded.
Robert Rubin went to work for the new Citigroup as a senior advisor of the firm. Rubin made $126 million in cash and stock during his eight years of service, while the bank leveraged itself up by using depositor money. It had to be bailed out in 2008.
Lawrence Summers reportedly took some $20 million from D.E. Shaw & Co., a giant hedge fund that dabbles in derivatives, for a two-year stint doing something nobody at the firm could confirm.
And Phil Gramm, the venerable Texas senator, upon retiring from that powerful position, immediately became vice chairman of the investment bank division of UBS AG (NYSE: UBS).
Yes, UBS – the same Swiss bank that in 2008 had to be backstopped by the Swiss National Bank when its overleveraged and derivatives-laden balance sheet imploded. The same bank that later paid $780 million to settle criminal charges over its conspiracy to defraud the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and federal government of legitimately owed taxes.
These are the kinds of things that are taking place every day thanks to Wall Street’s influence over our executive and legislative branches of government. And you better believe that average Americans and the Occupy Wall Street protestors can sense that, and they know they should be angry. They just can’t put their finger on why.
I can because I’m a Wall Street guy who spent 30 years working within the system. I studied economics and started my career as a trader on the floor of the Chicago Board of Options Exchange (CBOE). I ran the futures and options division of a giant international money-center bank.
I’ve done everything from trading bonds and mortgage-backed securities to running my own hedge funds. And I have hundreds of stories full of corruption and greed – just like this one.
Not everyone on Wall Street is a bad actor. Most of the professionals working in the capital markets across America are good and honest people. But, there are kingpins and kingmakers whose greed is so disgusting they will sink America for their own fistful of dollars.
It’s time we had better insights into what’s really going on and time to indict some of these bad actors. [Editor’s Note: Money Morning Capital Waves Strategist and retired hedge-fund manager Shah Gilani became a national icon in 2008, as he dissected the shady workings of Wall Street, uncovering how the greed of a few brought down the economy of our entire country. He’s since launched a new publication calledWall Street Insights & Indictments. His goal simply is to show you what’s really going on in the markets, so you can “know the story” and make some money. And the best part is, it’s absolutely free. Just sign up by clicking here. You’ll also receive Gilani’s latest report: “5 Ways to Trade the Coming EU Collapse – And Make a Killing”.]
A Bilderberg Leader Mario Monti Takes Over Italy in ‘Coup’ by Alex Newman Global Research, November 17, 2011; THE New American -2011-11-16
Italy’s new Prime Minister Mario Monti (with wife at left), who rose to power in what critics called a “coup d’etat,” is a prominent member of the world elite in the truest sense of the term. In fact, he is a leader in at least two of the most influential cabals in existence today: the secretive Bilderberg Group and David Rockefeller’s Trilateral Commission. Nicknamed “Super Mario,” Monti is also an “international advisor” to the infamous Goldman Sachs, one of the most powerful financial firms in the world. Critics refer to the giant bank as the “Vampire Squid” after a journalist famously used the term in a hit piece. But its tentacles truly do reach into the highest levels of governments worldwide.
Italy’s Political Crisis
Following the Italian government’s descent into the economic abyss that saw bond yields soar to record highs as the euro-zone began to come apart at the seams, ex-Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi decided to step down. And late last week, President Giorgio Napolitano asked Monti to form a new government. On November 16, the new Prime Minister — who will also serve as Italy’s “Economy Minister” — announced that he was appointing an array of bankers, technocrats, and lawyers to lead the emerging government. After unveiling proposed reforms later this week Monti and his unelected team will face Parliament in a confidence vote.
Some of the nation’s political parties have already said they support the new leadership. But others, including loyal members of Berlusconi’s party, complained of a “coup d’etat” engineered by bankers and the European Union.
“The truth is that there was a big operation, an ‘Italian Job,’ to get Berlusconi out of the way by forcing him to resign,” complained former Interior Minister Roberto Maroni, comparing Berlusconi’s ouster to the movie of that same name made in1969 and remade in 2003. While the ex-Prime Minister was not technically forced to resign, he said it was an act of “responsibility.”
Monti: Insider Extraordinaire
Listed as a member of the “steering committee” on the official Bilderberg website, critics say Monti has “establishment” written all over him. The shadowy group he helps lead includes a roster of the world’s real power brokers — media magnates, royalty, military leaders, big bankers, heads of state and government, key CEOs, and more.
The elite members gather once a year in total secrecy, sparking innumerable theories and widespread concern. In 2011 the group met in Switzerland and attracted more scrutiny than in the past.
But despite the attendance of influential reporters, editors, and media power houses, very little of substance was publicly revealed. It is known, however, that Bilderberg played a crucial role in erecting the increasingly powerful supranational regime in Brussels.
Monti is also the European Group chairman of the infamous Trilateral Commission, according to theorganization‘s website. The secretive group, which also lists among its members some of the most influential members of the world elite, was supposedly founded to bring about closer “cooperation” between North America, Europe, and Japan.
The Commission was founded in 1973 by the infamous banker and power-broker David Rockefeller. “Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure — one world, if you will,” Rockefeller wrote in his 2002 autobiography. “If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.”
Monti is also a prominent leader of more than few smaller “think tanks” promoting more “integration,” big government, and globalism. He has been a long-time and consistent supporter of an “economic government” for the EU, as well as more Brussels meddling in social policies.
His career has included academia, politics, banking, and more. And he has held several prominent positions within the European Union apparatus including the job of European Commissioner for Internal Market, Financial Services, Financial Integration, and Taxation.
The Rescue Plan
“I would like to confirm my absolute serenity and conviction in the capacity of our country to overcome this difficult phase,” Monti proclaimed recently. And he will have plenty of help.
The European Central Bank has started to do everything possible to rescue the profligate Italian government – albeit quietly. According to Bloomberg, the ECB began buying up huge quantities and sizesof the regime’s bonds this week.
“There are no real buyers,” European interest-rate strategy chief Mohit Kumar with Deutsche Bank told the news service. Analysts suspected that the ECB move was designed to bolster confidence in the new Italian government and its leader.
Monti’s first task will be to satisfy EU rulers by imposing massive new taxes on the Italian people. Tough “austerity” measures will follow soon after that. He said more growth — a tough task with new and higher taxes — will be his priority.
“I hope that, governing well, we can make a contribution to the calming and the cohesion of the political forces,” Monti explained after meeting with union bosses.
The Italian government is currently drowning in trillions of euros worth of debt — well over 100 percent of GDP. And the market seems largely unwilling to loan it more money without EU prodding, guarantees, and huge yields.
EU and euro-zone advocates are doing everything possible to avoid a calamity that could bring down their precious supranational government and its regional currency. But Italy, as the third-largest euro-zone economy, is simply too big to bail out, according to experts — even with the emerging “dictatorship” mechanism designed to save bankrupt governments and banks using taxpayer money.
Monti could have until 2013 — the next scheduled election — to implement his “reforms,” assuming he gets his way. Critics, however, are calling for new elections to be held as soon as possible.
Critics, Greece & the Future
While Italy will now be governed by the very definition of an “insider,” Greece faces a similar situation. Its new Prime Minister, Lucas Papademos, was the vice president of the ECB and even worked for the Federal Reserve. He has also been a member of the Trilateral Commission for over a decade.
But critics are outraged. “The rise of bankers and unelected technocrats to power in Greece and Italy shows how the unfolding crisis of the euro-zone is undercutting democracy,” complained Costas Panayotakis, a professor of sociology at the New York City College of Technology at CUNY.
Italian activists had harsh words for Monti, too. “The proposed new coalition government headed by Mario Monti can be a fatal trap for Italy’s future,” explained Campaign for World Bank Reform leader Antonio Tricarico. “If most of political forces from the right and the left would support it, the European Commission and the European Central Bank – whose agenda Monti represents – will rule Italy without any opposition for the years to come, beyond any minimum standard of democratic accountability.”
Analysts said installing pro-EU and single-currency rulers in Greece and Italy was aimed at quieting the growing calls for the euro-zone to be dismantled. But it remains unclear whether they will succeed as the economic crisis continues to spiral out of control across Europe. Alex Newman is a frequent contributor to Global Research.Global Research Articles by Alex Newman. November 23, 2011. By Dr. Kent Moors, Global Energy Strategist, Money Morning: I am in Frankfurt, Germany right now attending three days of meetings, and I must say they’re shaping up to be quite interesting. The focus is on structuring a new financial and organizational approach to developing Polish shale gas. A successful outcome would have an impact on both continental energy sources and the ongoing European debt crisis. And the stakes have become even higher in the past several weeks. In focus this week are the rising energy needs across Europe and what securing considerably greater sources of domestic natural gas will mean to the debt crisis. Meanwhile, we have to consider the potential for some North American companies to generate significant profits by meeting these growing energy demands. As I noted during my last advisory trip to Poland, Warsaw has decided to fast- track its shale gas development. With reserves now estimated to be much higher than initially thought, the country has the opportunity to become self-sufficient and to start exporting gas to other European countries and elsewhere as early as a decade from now. That would have a serious impact on the energy balance in Europe as a whole. With the prospects of additional domestically produced energy, the balance of payments will be improved, and with it the debt picture. Now reinvigorating the Polish picture is not going to do this on its own. Here is where it gets very interesting. What takes place in Poland will expand elsewhere into Western Europe. There are shale gas reserves in Germany, Hungary, Austria, France, the Baltic countries, Sweden, and even the U.K. Political opposition has suspended activities in France, and the Greens in Germany have given notice that they intend to target shale gas operations after their successes in phasing out the country’s nuclear power stations. Poland, however, has no significant opposition to drilling. At least, not at the moment. But as I advised the government in September, that situation is likely to change as the number of wells increases. In order to combat any opposition, the country is going to need to access to drilling technologies developed in the Western Hemisphere, technologies that address the primary concerns about hyrdofracking and horizontal drilling. The North American Advantage. The eight- to 10-year head start North America has had on the rest of the world means there have been significant technological and operational developments in the U.S. and Canada to meet a number of the environmental and logistical problems related to hy drofracking and horizontal drilling. It’s these two advances that have ushered in this whole new world of energy in the United States. Now eight to 10 years may not sound like a huge advantage…Three Measures of Success: Three primary issues are on the table this week. First, companies need to be established in both Poland and more broadly in Europe to coordinate the required field exploration, preparation, drilling, water usage, drilling, processing, environmental protection, supply and support dynamics, gas storage, pipeline networks, terminals, compressor stations, and a range of other matters from training personnel to protecting the transparency necessary in a democratic environment. Second, companies need to have access to funding in ways that will prevent Poland (and other European countries as well) from being dependent upon outside finance. This must be a European Union (EU)-based financing scheme to parallel European-controlled field development and drilling programs. Third, the Polish-then-broader-Europe requirements include immediate access to North America’s “generationally leading” technology. It is at this point that an attitude I have held with companies for years will become operational. The development of shale gas reserves elsewhere in the world will comprise one of the most profitable applications of technology, know-how and experience ever seen. Structural Requirements Ahead. Let me be very clear on this score. U.S. and Canadian companies are set to make significant returns from the Polish experiment – both in Poland itself, and as the applications there move across borders into neighboring states. But this will have to remain a Polish (or German or Austrian or Hungarian) initiative translated into in an EU-wide opportunity. The trick is to structure this as a win-win creation of joint ventures, limited liability companies, holding strategies, and other approaches. Outside companies coming into pan-European major plays like this cannot succeed merely by setting up European-based subsidiaries. This must be a European company in which an American or Canadian company has a vested, but not controlling, interest. The advantage to the European market is access to technology and expertise. The advantage to the outside company is a very lucrative potential revenue flow and an expansion of such work moving forward. November 30, 2011: By David Zeiler, Associate Editor, Money Morning ; With credit drying up across Europe we may finally see the Eurozone experience its “Lehman moment” – a replay investment banking collapse that triggered the 2008 financial crisis. Indeed, European banks are having a harder time getting money – part of the fallout from the Eurozone debt crisis – and the resulting credit crunch could freeze business activity, cause bank runs and plunge Europe into a deep recession that would badly damage the global economy. “The Continent is headed towards deflation if there’s not enough money circulating throughout their financing and banking systems,” said Money Morning Capital Waves Strategist Shah Gilani. “This all becomes self-fulfilling at some point. It’s a very dangerous situation, not just for Europe, but for the whole world.” A global financial crisis would derail the struggling U.S. recovery and pinch the profits of many multinational corporations. Fresh data this week from the European Central Bank (ECB) showed the M3 Eurozone money supply actually shrank in October by 0.6%, its steepest drop since January 2009 – the height of the Lehman Brothers crisis. A shrinking money supply is one of the early warning signals that credit availability is drying up, making it difficult or impossible for banks, businesses, and consumers to obtain loans. “This is very worrying,” Tim Congdon from International Monetary Researchtold The Telegraph. “What it shows is that the implosion of the banking system on the periphery is now outweighing any growth left in the core. We are seeing the destruction of money and it is a clear warning of serious trouble over the next six months.” Signs of capital draining from European banks abound. The bank bond market is already frozen. European banks in the third quarter were only able to sell bonds worth 15% of what they sold in the same period in the previous two years, according to Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C). In the past six months, U.S. money market funds have withdrawn 42% of their money from European banks. And loans to French banks have fallen 69% since the end of May, according to Fitch Ratings. Even retail customers have started to pull their money out. “We are starting to witness signs that corporates are withdrawing deposits from banks in Spain, Italy, France and Belgium,” an analyst at Citigroup wrote in a recent report. “This is a worrying development.” How It Happened. The current credit crunch has its roots in the Eurozone debt crisis; the big European banks such as BNP Paribas SA, Commerzbank (PINK: CRZBY) and Societe Generale SA (PINK: SCGLY) hold much of the debt from Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain (PIIGS) that has forced a series of bailouts and fiscal emergencies. But the billions of euros worth of PIIGS government bonds were considered part of the banks’ assets; it could be used as collateral to serve the banks’ various activities. When the Eurozone debt crisis struck, faith in the value of the PIIGS bonds plummeted, which made it almost impossible to use as collateral. “The discounting of sovereign debt meant that there was less money in the European banking system,” writes John Carney, senior editor of CNBC. “If a one million euro bond previously held as a money-equivalent is now worth just 600,000 euros, the holder has lost 400,000 euros. Multiply that across the banking system, and you have millions of euros of money-equivalents simply vanishing.” Carney said the situation is similar to the impact of the decline in value in the United States of mortgage-backed securities back in 2008. The Bernanke Remedy. However, during the 2008 financial crisis, the U.S. Federal Reserve stepped in to prop up the banks as well as the mortgage market by infusing them with cash. Although the Fed’s European equivalent, the ECB, has continued to buy up PIIGS government bonds in a partially successful attempt to restrain rising bond yields, it has resisted taking action on the scale of the Fed. “This is what happened in the United States in 1930-33,” said Money Morning Global Investing Strategist Martin Hutchinson. “It also happened to a very limited extent in 2008-09. In a real crisis, the interbank lending market seizes up, which collapses even broad money supply. It is the one situation in which the [U.S. Fed Chairman Ben] Bernanke remedy – print the stuff like a madman – works.” But even then, Hutchinson said, the ECB should avoid PIIGS bonds in favor of bonds from more financially stable nations such as Germany, France, Finland and the Netherlands. In fact, the European banks have begged the ECB to do more, particularly more aggressive buying of government bonds. As it is, the big banks are dependent on the ECB; just two weeks ago they took out out $333 billion worth of one-week loans – the largest amount since April 2009. But more drastic action from the ECB appears unlikely, with opposition coming from within the central bank as well as from a German government fearful of triggering inflation. The best that is expected near-term is a December interest rate cut, which won’t do nearly enough. Money Morning‘s Gilani is pessimistic the ECB even has the power to fix the deeper issues, or whether stronger ECB intervention could do anything to prevent the Eurozone’s looming “Lehman moment.” “The ECB doesn’t have the authority to print enough money to ameliorate the situation,” Gilani said. “Buying bonds is a Band-Aid. The real structural problems facing Europe are going to require wholesale lifestyle changes that won’t get done in a year or two. ECB meddling will only serve to extend the problem while they pretend things will sort themselves out.” November 30, 2011. By Shah Gilani, Capital Waves Strategist, Money Morning: The average American has no idea how protected the big banks in this country really are. For the most part we don’t even blink when we are lied to publicly by their CEOs. Maybe that’s because the biggest bank in the world, the U.S. Federal Reserve, which happens to be a creation of and 100% beholden to the banks that it is a master shill for, also lies to us and covers up Wall Street’s misdeeds. How else can you explain the Federal Reserve’s practice of secretly feeding billions of dollars to big banks, and then looking the other way while those same banks lie to the public about their strength so they can raise desperately needed equity and borrow in the debt markets? Why else would the Fed prop up Bear Stearns long enough for JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM) to buy it, and then prop up JPMorgan? Why else would the Fed prop up Merrill Lynch for the benefit of Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC), and then prop up Bank of America as Merrill dragged it down. And why else would the Fed prop up Wachovia just so it could be taken over by Wells Fargo & Co. (NYSE: WFC) – yet another bank that would come to need even more help? Power and Ponzi Schemes: The pat answer from the Fed is that propping up failed banks long enough to be taken over by “healthy” institutions is better for the system than letting them fail. On the surface that’s true, but it’s what’s under the surface that’s destroying America’s free market foundation. Here’s what’s come as a result of the Fed’s actions: The “Super-Six” – JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C), Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS) and Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) – which held $6.8 trillion, or about half the industry’s assets in 2006, had increased their holdings by 39% to $9.5 trillion as of September 2011. So what’s really going on is that the country’s biggest banks, which weren’t healthy when their CEOs lied to us (as they still do), have gotten even bigger. With size comes power – the power to pay lobbyists, the power to pay for legislators, and the power to change regulations. These banks don’t always get what they want exactly when they want it, but they do eventually get what they need to make money hand over fist. The whole thing reminds me of a Ponzi scheme. The Federal Reserve might as well be Bernie Madoff and the banks “feeder funds” in this nationalized scheme to perpetuate the channeling of depositor money into banks and investor money into bank stocks and debt securities. For the chain to be broken the Federal Reserve is going to have to be overhauled – seriously overhauled – and big banks are going to have to be broken up, once and for all. The Truth Comes Out. .How deep is the scheme to keep banks growing and their power expanding? The numbers speak for themselves.
The Fed did everything it could to hide its books from public view, but Bloomberg LP sued the central bank, and in so doing, forced the Fed to comply with the Freedom of Information Act.
Thank you, Bloomberg, this nation owes you a debt of gratitude.
Why would banks or corporations take money they didn’t need? Because it was essentially free – well not exactly free, since they had to pay about 1% interest in some cases and one-tenth of one percent in other cases.
Still, you can make good money borrowing practically for free and investing that money in anything interest bearing. That includes the toxic assets on many borrowers’ books that they didn’t have to sell because they got financing to keep them on their books. Oh, and that’s still happening, a lot.
You see, part of the big lie was that it would take $700 billion of Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) money to aid our stricken banks. Of course, that was front money, or money that the public could see. What the public couldn’t see was how bad things really were, because it couldn’t see how much taxpayer money the Fed was shelling out.
Nor could Treasury officials see it, nor could legislators writing new bank regulatory rules to ensure this wouldn’t happen again.
But it will happen again. It’s just a matter of time. Fixing the Fed for Good There is only one solution to our banking problems, which are the root of our economic problems.
The Fed needs to have only one mandate, which is price stability. It should be an open, audited, and transparent apparatus serving the public – not banks.
And, as far as banks go, the more the merrier. Break up all the too-big-to-fail institutions. No bank should be able to hold more than 5% of the whole industry’s assets, and if that gives any one bank too much power, cut the number later on.
It’s time we woke up to the lies we’re being told by the Fed and the banks. It’s time to break the chains that enslave us as a free-market nation. December 2, 2011 Money Morning staff reports The Eurozone debt crisis has replaced the U.S. financial crisis as the disaster du jour. But make no mistake: U.S. taxpayers will be paying the tab for the U.S. crisis for years.
That’s evidently not true of the banking sector, however, whose massive financial-crisis windfall is just now coming to light.
In its January issue, Bloomberg Markets magazine reveals that – at the March 9, 2009 nadir of the financial crisis – the U.S. Federal Reserve had committed $7.77 trillion to rescuing the American financial system. That total was more than half the value of all that was produced in the U.S. economy for that entire year.
While this was going on however, it was a deep, dark secret. The Fed never let on, for instance, that American banks were in such deep trouble that they required a combined $1.2 trillion on Dec. 8, 2008 – “their neediest day,” Bloomberg said.
But here’s the best part: Many of the biggest banks have ended up doing great as a result of the central bank’s largesse.
Here’s why: Because these “emergency” Fed loans gave banks access to ultra-low (well-below-market) interest rates between August 2007 and April 2010, banks worldwide were able to earn an estimated $13 billion.
Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, told Bloomberg that banks seemed to have it both ways.
Banks “were either in bad shape or taking advantage of the Fed giving them a good deal,” he said. “The former contradicts their public statements. The latter – getting loans at below-market rates during a financial crisis – is quite a gift.”
Shah Gilani, a financial-crisis expert and Money Morning columnist who edits the free Wall Street Insights & Indictmentsnewsletter, put it more simply: “The average American has no idea how protected the big banks in this country really are. Maybe that’s because the biggest bank in the world is the U.S. Federal Reserve. And it happens to be a creation of – and 100% beholden to – the banks that it is a master shill for. It also lies to us and covers up Wall Street’s misdeeds.”
What follows is a “power ranking” of the 20 banks that saw their outstanding loans peak at more than $25 billion – and some insight on how this Fed lending enabled Wall Street to profit, even as Main Street suffered. 1. Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) Borrowing at the Peak (Date): $107 billion, Sept. 29, 2008. With worldwide financial markets in a meltdown mode, Morgan’s apex of loans from U.S. Federal Reserve offerings came just two weeks after Lehman Brothers, its erstwhile competitor, had filed for the biggest corporate bankruptcy in U.S. history (more on that in a moment).
2. Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C) Borrowing at the Peak (Date): $99.5 billion, Jan. 20, 2009. Talk about being money hungry. The first installment of money from the better-known Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) wasn’t nearly enough to stop Citi’s bleeding – which is why, in January 2009, Citi required a second infusion of bailout money. No surprise here … that’s also when Citi’s Fed-facilities borrowing reached its apex.
3. Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC) Borrowing at the Peak (Date): $91.4 billion, Feb. 26, 2009. Like Citi, Bank of America was a TARP double-dipper. It also snapped up two companies – Merrill Lynch and Countrywide Financial Corp. – that, too, were borrowing billions from the U.S. central bank.
4. Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC (NYSE ADR: RBS) Borrowing at the Peak (Date): $84.5 billion, Oct. 10, 2008. At No. 4, the highest-ranking foreign bank on this list, RBS also got a hefty bit of support from its native United Kingdom government.
5. State Street Bank (NYSE: STT) Borrowing at the Peak (Date): $77.8 billion, Oct. 1, 2008. The old business adage tells us to cut out the middleman. But not State Street. In fact, Bloomberg News reports that State Street initially served as a middleman, tapping into the central bank’s liquidity facilities to help money-market funds meet soaring redemption demands (collecting a fee for its trouble, of course) – but finally turned to the Fed for help, too.
6. UBS AG (NYSE: UBS) Borrowing at the Peak (Date): $77.2 billion, Nov. 28, 2008. A double-dipper of sorts, too, European banking heavyweight UBS achieved this distinction by getting help from the Fed and also receiving a substantive aid package from the Swiss government.
7. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS) Borrowing at the Peak (Date): $69 billion, Dec. 31, 2008. Goldman Sachs execs may not have been celebrating on New Year’s Eve, when its Fed loans hit their apex. That was also the close of the month that saw Goldman report its first quarterly loss since its 1999 IPO.
8. JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM) Borrowing at the Peak (Date): $68.6 billion, Oct. 1, 2008. Like BofA, JPMorgan used the crisis as a cover for a shopping spree. And like BofA, JPMorgan snapped up two other substantive central bank borrowers – Bear Stearns (which it had rescued a bit before this) and Washington Mutual (acquired after a Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) seizure in September 2008).
9. Deutsche Bank AG (NYSE: DB) Borrowing at the Peak (Date): $66 billion, Nov. 6, 2008. It may have been Germany’s biggest bank, but it was one of the U.S. central bank’s biggest debtors: During the 439 days it held Fed liquidity money, Deutsche Bank maintained one of the largest average daily balances at $12.5 billion, according to Bloomberg News.
10. Barclays PLC (NYSE ADR: BCS) Borrowing at the Peak (Date): $64.9 billion, Dec. 4, 2008. Borrowing by the London-based Barclays topped out only a couple of months after a failed first attempt to buy out Lehman Brothers. No matter. That led to a killer deal that enabled Barclays to snap up some of the failed U.S. brokerage firm’s sweetest assets.
11. Merrill Lynch Borrowing at the Peak (Date): $62.1 billion, Sept. 26, 2008. By the time Merrill Lynch maxed out its central-bank borrowing, the “bullish-on-America” broker had given the nod to a buyout deal from Bank of America. Just a couple months later, the double-whammy of a gargantuan fourth-quarter loss coupled with the revelation of 11th-hour bonus payments to top execs ended the regime of then-CEO John Thain.
12. Credit Suisse Group (NYSE ADR: CS) Borrowing at the Peak (Date): $60.8 billion, Aug. 27, 2008. Another example of U.S. taxpayer money at work as this Swiss bank got a big boost from central-bank bucks. As Forbes magazine most delicately stated: “Swiss bank … was helped out by U.S. dollars. Credit Suisse had a sizable average daily balance of $13.3 billion – for the 386 days it was in hock to the Fed.”
13. Dexia SA Borrowing at the Peak (Date): $58.5 billion, Dec. 31, 2008. Another foreign bank that required U.S. rescue, this French-Belgium-Luxembourg bank didn’t seem to learn its lesson: Dexia is once again under pressure – this time over its exposure to the European financial crisis.
14. Wachovia Corp. Borrowing at the Peak (Date): $50 billion, Oct. 9, 2008. By the time Wachovia’s central-bank borrowing hit its apex, it was the rope in a takeover tug of war that pitted Citi against Wells Fargo. Wells ultimately prevailed, and snapped up Wachovia.
15. Lehman Brothers Holdings (PINK: LEHMQ) Borrowing at the Peak (Date): $46 billion, Sept. 15, 2008. Lehman’s borrowing peaked on the same day that it filed for the biggest corporate bankruptcy in U.S. history. The company, with more than $690 billion in assets, “became a victim, in effect the only true icon to fall in a tsunami that has befallen the credit markets,” Manhattan Bankruptcy Judge James Peck said after a seven-hour bankruptcy hearing that was held exactly one week later.
16. Wells Fargo & Co. (NYSE: WFC) Borrowing at the Peak (Date): $45 billion Feb. 26, 2009. Not surprisingly, Wells Fargo’s borrowing apex was reached a couple of months after the already referenced buyout of Wachovia. Because it had to absorb the trashed assets of a stumbling Wachovia, Wells Fargo had to take a big hit to its earnings for the final quarter of that year.
17. Bear Stearns Borrowing at the Peak (Date): $30 billion, March 28, 2008. The Fed couldn’t do enough for a Bear Stearns: Not only did the central bank lend money from its still-new liquidity program, it also helped broker the sale to JPMorgan at a bargain price. All the Fed had to do was assume $29 billion in lousy mortgage-backed assets in a facility dubbed “Maiden Lane” (because of the street that runs beside the New York Federal Reserve in Manhattan).
18. BNP Paribas SA Borrowing at the Peak (Date): $29.3 billion, April 18, 2008. Yet another foreign bank – this one France’s largest – BNP Paribas was in hock to the U.S. central bank for two years – a relationship that started in December 2007. And like Dexia, another foreign bank that required central bank rescue, BNP also failed to learn its lesson: Data from Barclay’s Capital says BNP has the largest exposure to Greek debt of any French bank.
19. Hypo Real Estate Bank International AG Borrowing at the Peak (Date): $28.7 billion, Nov. 4, 2008. Bloomberg News reports show that this German commercial lender was yet another “double-dipper:” It tapped into U.S. Fed loans through the New York-based unit of a banking subsidiary. Hypo also reaped billions in guarantees and emergency credit from its home government.
20. Fortis Bank Borrowing at the Peak (Date): $26.3 billion, Feb. 26, 2009. Until it was broken into pieces, nationalized and pieces of it sold to … of all institutions … BNP Paribas, the banking arm of Fortis also snagged billions from the governments of Belgium and Luxembourg. [Editor’s Note: If you’re fed up with the rampant corruption, double-dealing, and protection of Wall Street by Washington (at the expense of the taxpayers on America’s Main Street, then you need to read Shah Gilani’s Wall Street Insights & Indictments newsletter. As a retired hedge-fund manager, Gilani is a former Wall Street insider who knows where all the bodies are buried. December 5, 2011. By Keith Fitz-Gerald, Chief Investment Strategist, Money Morning One of the biggest problems with Wall Street’s malfeasance is how the ruling elite view legal settlements – as little more than an acceptable cost of doing business.
Well, no more.
Thanks to Judge Jed Rakoff we may see some real regulatory action leading to good old-fashioned investigations, perp walks, and even jail for the guilty.
I’m not talking just about the Bernie Madoffs or the Raj Rajaratnams either. I’m talking about potentially CEOs and even entire corporate boards.
Judge Rakoff recently rendered a 15-page decision rejecting the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) $285 million settlement with Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C) over toxic mortgages, calling it “neither reasonable, nor fair, nor adequate, nor in the public interest.”
This is important because settlements like these have been a farce for years – little more than the financial equivalent of a parking ticket and having about as much impact.
In fact, in a world where banking secrecy is paramount and investment firms like Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS), JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM), Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC) and others rule the roost, they’re little more than obfuscations of the truth.
The investigations into these banks are toothless or highly secretive at best. Rarely does the public see anything even remotely resembling full disclosure.
Instead we’re supposed to be placated by headlines insinuating that the SEC, the National Futures Association (NFA) and more than 20 other regulatory agencies are looking out for our best interests.
Who are they kidding? A Drop in the Bucket Remember the $550 million fine Goldman was forced to pay for its role in toxic credit default swaps (CDOs)? At the time it was the largest ever levied.
SEC officials couldn’t stumble over themselves fast enough nor get enough sound bites. I recall lots of PR shots with earnest-looking people evidently proud of themselves for having made Goldman pony up at the time.
And the mainstream press loved it. But there was one tiny problem.
The firm booked $13.3 billion that year. Paying off the SEC in a settlement that neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing was an acceptable cost of doing business that amounted to a mere 4% of revenue.
The proposed Citi settlement was much the same. It would have required Citi to give up $160 million of alleged ill-gotten profits, $30 million of interest, and a $95 million kicker for negligence.
Bear in mind, Citi reported full-year net income of $10.6 billion on revenue of $60.5 billion in 2010 which means that, like the Goldman fine, the settlement is a drop in the bucket at a mere 1.50% of net income. I think Judge Rakoff’s ruling has been a long time coming. And I love the fact that he specifically called out the Citi settlement as too lenient – especially when it also potentially allows Citi to skate on reimbursing investors for the $700 million the firm lost as part of its toxic mortgage trading.
You may not realize this, but private investors cannot bring securities claims based on negligence. In my mind, they should be able to, but for now this is the way the law stands.
The way I see it, Rakoff’s decision finally gets at the core of what caused the financial crisis: toothless regulators beholden to the very powerful elite they were supposed to keep in check.
I am all too glad to see him show the public the first glimpse of backbone we’ve seen yet.
Washington, are you watching and listening? Sitting on the Bench, Swinging for the Fences Judge Rakoff noted in his ruling that there is an “overriding public interest in knowing the truth.” Yes, there is. And as Judge Rakoff put it, the SEC’s core duty is to “see that the truth emerges.” In the event that it doesn’t as part of the settlement process, “courts must not, in the name of deference of convenience, grant judicial enforcement, to the agency’s contrivances.”
I did some checking and I learned that this is not the first time Rakoff has stuck it to the SEC.
Apparently, he’s the one who made headlines when he initially rejected the BofA settlement related to that bank’s shotgun takeover of Merrill Lynch & Co., a fact I’d forgotten.
At the time, Rakoff rejected the SEC’s $33 million BofA settlement on the grounds that it punished shareholders. The SEC then came back with a much more realistic $150 million agreement.
Some think Rakoff has gone too far. They worry that judges have no business interfering in agreements ostensibly reached by private parties.
But I disagree. I believe the SEC is the public.
And the public has the right to know about any case where the transparency of the financial markets (or lack thereof) has so impacted the markets as to destroy the wealth of millions of hard working people and bring the global markets to the edge of oblivion.
Frankly, I’d love to shake Judge Rakoff’s hand.
I hope what he’s done encourages judges to finally stand up for the body of law they supposedly represent and the public that it’s intended to protect. December 16, 2011. By Keith Fitz-Gerald, Chief Investment Strategist, Money Morning On Wednesday, Fitch Ratings Inc. downYgraded its credit ratings on five of Europe’s biggest banks, and while that decision made headlines, it’s not the most important story to come out of Europe this week.
The real story, which the mainstream media is neglecting, is that there are signs of an underground run on Europe’s banks.
Almost nobody’s talking about it, but there are indications money is already moving out of the European Union (EU) faster than rats abandoning a sinking ship.
Not through the front door, mind you. There are no lines, no distraught customers and no teller windows being boarded up – not yet, anyway.
For now the run is through the back door, and there are four things that make me think so: Italy’s planned ban on cash transactions over 1,000 euros, or about $1,300. French, Spanish, and Italian banks have run out of collateral and are now pledging real assets. Swiss officials are preparing for the end of the euro with capital control measures. Europe’s CEOs are actively preparing for the end of the euro despite governmental reassurances. Signs of a Run Let’s start with Italy and Prime Minister Mario Monti‘s plans to restrict cash transactions over 1,000 euros (down from the current limit of 2,500 euros, or about $3,200).
Ostensibly the move is about reducing tax evasion by prohibiting the movement of large sums of cash outside the official transactional system, but I think it speaks to something far more sinister – namely that the Italian government knows things are going to get far worse than they’re publicly admitting.
Consider: Cash is a stored value mechanism. There’s not a lot of it because at any given point in time, most of it is on deposit with banks in any country. That’s as true in Italy as it is here in the United States when real interest rates are positive during “healthy” times.
But when real interest rates turn negative, people are likely to withdraw cash and stuff it quite literally under mattresses or in coffee tins. (Real interest rates are the official lending interest rates as adjusted for inflation.)
In such an environment, holding cash in a bank becomes nothing more than an imputed tax and a disincentive for deposits. It’s also a significant thorn in the side of central bankers who want to control their country’s money supply, because cash can operate outside the system and, specifically, logjam reform efforts.
The reason is really pretty simple. If you have negative real interest rates, and cash transactions are largely restricted or removed altogether, then the only way to effectively use cash is to withdraw it and spend it… immediately.
In other words, by limiting cash transactions to 1,000 euros or less, Italy is putting into place a punitive financial control fully intended to keep money moving in a system lest it become worthless or worse – hoarded and worthless.
Now let’s move on to banks. Banking Breakdown Many investors have never thought about it before, but there are really only three sources of funding for a bank: Money that’s effectively “lent” to the bank by customers placing their assets on deposit; Short-term money market funds; And long-term bonds or securitized products based on long-term paper sold to bond investors. Together, the three funding sources are like the legs on a stool – lose any one of them and the stool will topple over because it is no longer balanced. Cut the legs down and the stool collapses – that’s what is happening now. Individuals, pension funds and institutions alike are withdrawing funds from Italian, Spanish and French banks. Money has long since left Greece, Ireland, and Portugal.
Thing is, though, it’s not just European money that’s fleeing. Various reports from The Economist, Bloomberg, CNBC and others suggest that American financials may have pulled more than 40% of their funds from all European banks and nearly two-thirds of their total deposits away from French banks. This is drying up short-term lending capacity and driving up interbank lending costs.
At the same time, money managers the world over are selling their European bonds. This is driving prices lower and yields higher to the point where the cost of debt is now prohibitive (bond prices and yields move in opposite directions). As a result, new bank bond issuance may be down as much as 85% over the past two years, which further hobbles cash hungry European banks.
Finally, facing a near total loss of short-term financing alternatives and having run out of short-term liquidity needed to operate, a number of EU banks are reportedly having to pledge real assets as collateral for badly needed loans.
Normally, banks would use loans, leases or receivables to accomplish the same thing. The fact that they’re now having to throw in real estate, their own property, and other assets into the mix signals extreme levels of financial stress that are far worse than what’s been disclosed publicly. Bracing for the Inevitable Swiss Finance Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf noted to the Swiss Parliament that she’s got a working group examining capital controls and negative interest rates as a means of preventing an economy-crushing Swiss franc appreciation when the euro fails. That’s not if the euro fails, but when the Euro fails.
This is an especially dire sign because capital control measures like those the Swiss officials are considering are inevitably the end of any failed monetary system.
European CEOs and their companies are taking matters into their own hands by actively preparing for the destruction of the euro.
Some, like German machinery maker GEA Group AG (PINK: GEAGY) are limiting the maximum funds on deposit with any single bank. Others, like Grupo Gowex, are moving cash and deposits to Germany away from Spanish banks (and Grupo Gowex is a Spanish company based in Madrid, so this is especially telling). BMW plans to cut production by 30% while also tapping into central bank reserves. According to Chief Financial Officer Friedrich Eichiner, the company is already reducing its leasing portfolio to cope with the potential decrease in car values that would impact its borrowing capacity.
As for what all this means for our money, that’s pretty clear – think SAFETY FIRST. The return of your capital is far more important than the return on your capital at the moment.
Here’s what I suggest. Buy dollars – I know they’re a bad long-term bet, but short-term, they’re the best looking horse in the global glue factory as long as the euro is under pressure. Stick with what you have in place now and manage risk with trailing stops. Confine new stock purchases to high-growth, low-debt emerging markets rather than low-growth, high-debt developed markets. Short gold and oil in the short-term. Both are priced in dollars, which means both will fall as the dollar rises in conjunction with panic in the EU. Purchase inverse funds that track the broader markets. If the euro fails, it will tank the broader markets. Then, once it becomes clear that the world will live on, the markets will disconnect from Europe and begin to rise again in earnest. Run the other way if people tell you that banks are a great investment. They are speculative at best given the number of skeletons still in the closet. Euro Crisis: Britain’s Financial Arsonist Returns to the Scene of the Crime. By Finian Cunningham. URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28204. Global Research, December 14, 2011. The incendiary finance capitalism unleashed by Britain 25 years ago is at the heart of Europe’s raging debt woes. You either have to admire British Prime Minister David Cameron’s brass neck, or wince at his arrogant stupidity. The smart money is probably on the latter option. For here you had the British leader heading to the European Union summit convened last week to “salvage” the EU from its the terminal debt crisis – a crisis that is threatening the survival of the Euro single currency, the political future of the European Union and may even be sounding the death knell for the faltering capitalist world economy. Yet, given the stakes involved, all Cameron wanted to do was exploit the crisis in order to claw further concessions for the City of London’s stock exchange. Such self-serving opportunism was rebuffed by his German and French counterparts, whereupon Cameron stomped his feet and declared that Britain would exercise its veto over EU plans for tighter fiscal controls on member states. The British veto may now hamper the EU’s ability to assuage the financial markets, which are daily extracting pounds of flesh with exorbitant rates of borrowing on government bonds. Not that the leaders of the other 26 EU states are acting as noble knights in shining armour, vying to protect their populaces from further economic suffering. The revised EU treaty they have in mind will only deepen that suffering by expanding austerity and cutbacks for the majority of people across Europe. The fiscal and economic policies of member states will henceforth be dictated by the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund. That is, national sovereignty supposedly serving the people, according to their votes, is to be replaced by the rule of unelected bankers and technocrats. In a very real way, the debt crisis of Europe is serving to usher in a dictatorship of finance capitalism. As Paul Craig Roberts noted recently on Global Research with regard to the EU – “the banks have taken over” [1]. Ironically, it is German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her French collaborator, Prime Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, who are foremost in marching mainland Europe into the arms of this dictatorship. However, Cameron’s one-man crusade at the EU summit was no act of Churchillian defiance to defend the rights of the people in the face of financial fascism. Britain under this present Conservative leader has been bludgeoned with one of the most draconian austerity budgets inflicted anywhere across Europe, wielded without mercy against workers and aimed deliberately at placating first and foremost the finance markets. Indeed, Cameron’s government is one of the main advocates of deeper social spending cuts for the rest of Europe. So the notion that the British leader was in some way making a fight-them-on-the-beaches kind-of stand towards other European leaders/quislings of finance capital is risible. And what is even more risible is that the sole objective of Cameron and his foreign secretary William Hague was to secure concessions for the City of London. Many people in Europe have good reason to believe that it is the City of London and its brand of finance capitalism that has created and provoked the debt crisis in the first place. It was Cameron’s much-admired predecessor Margaret Thatcher who oversaw the systematic deregulation of the London Stock Exchange, starting in 1986 with what became known as the “Big Bang” – the wholesale removal of controls on financial transactions. From then on, the British economy went from one based on manufacture and production to one hallmarked by financial speculation. London became the money capital of the world, outflanking New York. The financialisation of other economies would follow the British slash-and-burn economic path, as the new culture of predatory financiers and investors used speculative profiteering to gut manufacturing bases. The deregulation of financial markets was a showpiece policy of subsequent British governments, whether Conservative or Labour. It spawned a plethora of “financial innovations” such as hostile takeovers, downsizing, short selling and derivative trading, whereby money and debt were recycled and multiplied fictitiously – with inevitable catastrophic consequences. This of course is the ineluctable, historic dynamic of late capitalism. The system tends to mount up massive poverty and thereby becomes incapable of producing goods and services because the conventional profit system becomes exhausted. That is why late capitalism has more and more turned into a form of debt-ridden financial arson in order to recklessly eke out the last reserves of profit. In previous centuries, it was England that innovated industrial capitalism. At the end of the 20th Century it was the British (and their Anglo-American culprits) who have the dubious honour of unleashing finance capitalism on the rest of the world. The new brand of capitalism can be traced directly to the collapse of banks and institutions, such as Barings, Lehman Brothers and Long-Term Capital Management, and to the collapse of pension funds and property assets dragging millions of people into debt. And now this particular British innovation of incendiary capitalism can be traced to the collapse of entire countries. The spectacle of bankrupt David Cameron swaggering over to Europe to ask equally bankrupt European governments for more deregulatory concessions for the City of London is about as stupefying as an arsonist returning to the scene of the crime – and asking for more gasoline. Finian Cunningham is Global Research’s Middle East and East Africa correspondent. cunninghamfin@yahoo.com. November 25, 2011. By Kerri Shannon, Associate Editor, Money Morning. While most Americans will have to pinch pennies to come up with extra cash this holiday season, our leaders in Congress won’t have much to worry about. Despite failing to deliver on a number of promises and assignments, like developing a debt-reduction plan, members of the House of Representatives and the Senate will still receive their annual salary of $174,000. Plus, many will make millions more through investment gains. If you are surprised to discover that 58% of our congressional leaders have the investment savvy to turn a six-figure salary into millions, don’t feel bad.
You see, there’s more to that story: Our friends in Washington aren’t competing on a level playing field .
According to a Nov. 13 CBS News “60 Minutes” report, our elected leaders in Congress may be using information gained from their “insider” positions to make highly profitable trades in the stock market.
If you or I used “inside” information to profit in the U.S stock market, we could expect a visit from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the U.S. Justice Department. And those “visits” would only represent the start of our troubles.
The same would be true for a corporate executive, a member of the executive branch , or even a federal judge. In every case, the use of inside information would be considered a punishable criminal act.
But, it’s a completely different story for Congress, where those same laws simply don’t apply. For those elected leaders in Congress, this form of insider trading may well be unethical. But it’s also completely legal.
Congressional leaders, even though privy to non-public information, are not considered corporate insiders, and so can trade on such insights and escape penalty. Congressional staffers and lobbyists also are exempt.
Just look at U.S. Rep. Spencer Bachus, R-AL, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. According to a Nov. 13 “60 Minutes” report, Rep. Bachus attended closed-door briefings in September 2008 with then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke. Congressional leaders in those meetings were warned that a “global financial meltdown” was about to occur.
The very next day, Bachus bought stock options that allowed him to profit if and when the economy tanked. A financial disclosure showed that he turned a profit trading General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE) during the financial crisis.
Or look at Rep. John Boehner, R-OH, one of the members of Congress who bought health insurance stocks during the 2009 healthcare debate. Rep. Boehner fought against a government-funded insurance plan that would compete with publicly traded companies in the private sector. And those private-sector insurers saw their share prices escalate after the provision died in Congress – and after Rep. Boehner had already purchased the related stocks.
Former Rep. Dennis Hastert, R-IL, made $2 million from selling land he owned after receiving a federal earmark to build a parkway near his property. Former Sen. Judd Gregg, R-NH, helped get $70 million in funds to go toward redeveloping a U.S. Air Force base in which he and his brother had a commercial interest. And Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, bought shares of the 2008 Visa Inc. (NYSE: V) initial public offering (IPO) – while legislation affecting credit card companies was debated in the House. That’s just a taste of the legal insider trading going on by our elected representatives. “This is yet another prime example of how Congress passes laws that apply to us as citizens, but exempts themselves,” Money Morning reader Scott S. wrote to us. “No wonder why many of them spend hundreds of thousands to get elected to a position that pays less than $200,000; the benefits far outweigh the salary… all at the expense of the people they were elected to represent.” A $6.3 Billion Bet Gone Bad. By Louis Basenese, Chief Investment Strategist. In yesterday’s column, I took the time to explain Wall Street’s newest accounting trick – re-hypothecation.
Today, I want to share how it led to the loss of $1.2 billion in customer funds and the ultimate demise of MF Global (Other OTC: MFGLQ.PK). And more importantly, what we should take away from this unfortunate situation…
Greed is Good?
MF Global’s problems didn’t start with re-hypothecation. They started with something much simpler – greed.
The firm wanted to make a bet that eurozone bonds would remain default free. I’ll concede that’s a smart bet, given the formation of the European Financial Stability Facility.
Essentially, MF Global was banking on a European version of “too big too fail” – betting that the indebted eurozone countries were too important to the global economy to let them default.
But a smart bet doesn’t translate into a risk-free bet. And leverage only magnifies risk, which is something MF Global learned the hard way.
You see, MF Global didn’t invest a modest amount in bonds of some of Europe’s most indebted nations (Italy, Spain, Belgium, Portugal and Ireland). It invested $6.3 billion. That’s equal to more than five times the firm’s book value!
Now, you might be asking yourself, how in the world was MF Global able to make such an outsized bet? With off-balance sheet transactions, of course.
(Remember, that’s how Wall Street typically tries concealing its transgressions. Case in point: Enron and special purpose entities.)
In this case, MF Global was specifically using “repurchase and reverse repurchase transactions to maturity” to keep its actions off the balance sheet.
I won’t bog you down with the details of repo-to-maturity trade. Here’s the gist…
MF Global buys a ton of European bonds with high yields maturing in 2012. It then turns around and uses those bonds as collateral to borrow money at very low interest rates.
The way this trade works out is simple…
Until the bonds mature, MF Global earns the spread – the difference between the high interest it receives on the bonds and the low interest rates it pays on the borrowed funds. When the bonds mature, MF Global uses the principal received to pay off its loans. Simple as that.
But it sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it?
Well, it seemed a bit surprising to MF Global’s CEO, Jon Corzine, too. In the firm’s most recent earnings conference call, he said, “The spread between interest earned and the financing cost of the underlying repurchase agreement has often been attractive even as the structure of the transaction themselves essentially eliminates market and financing risk.”
In other words, such risk free trades shouldn’t exist. And ultimately, they don’t.
Can You Say, “Margin Call?”
The big risk inherent in MF Global’s repo-to-maturity trades was liquidity.
At any point, MF Global’s lenders could require more collateral. And that’s exactly what they did, as the debt crisis in Europe became more uncertain.
The only problem? MF Global didn’t have any cash of its own lying around to meet the margin calls. So it pledged its customers’ funds – via re-hypothecation – as additional collateral.
The straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back came from the New York Fed.
Earlier in the year, the New York Fed designated MF Global a primary dealer, allowing it to trade directly with the bank in the buying and selling of United States government debt.
With worries mounting about MF Global’s solvency, the Fed issued a margin call of its own on Friday, October 28. And the jig was up.
MF Global filed for bankruptcy protection on Monday, October 31. Ever since then, we’ve been unearthing the details surrounding the company’s ultimate demise.
Bottom line: Leverage cuts both ways. Wall Street’s elite always seem to forget about this fundamental principle time and again. Perhaps it’s because they’re always investing with other people’s money instead of their own?
Nevertheless, let MF Global’s bankruptcy be yet another reminder that there are no risk-free trades. And that’s why we should relentlessly favor position-sizing over making outsized bets. December 22, 2011. Occupy Wall Street, Consider This My Gift to You… by Shah Gilani. Dear Reade. Out of far left field, I see something coming that I never expected. It’s more like the coming together of pieces of a puzzle that have eluded us for too long. By the way, Occupy Wall Street, if you’re listening, and I hope you are, and you’re still floundering (which I know you are) without a cause that anybody can really wrap their heads around, drop your drums, chants, and wanderings, and make the coming together of this puzzle what you’re protesting. And make what could result what you are demanding. Because, really, this could be the mother lode. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is accusing six former executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac of playing down the risk to investors of their firms’ aggressive fast-forward into subprime mortgages… which caused them to implode spectacularly. Two separate civil suits, filed last Friday, allege that the executives “knowingly misled investors” who owned shares in the companies and were thus deprived of critical information against which meaningful investment decisions are generally made. The two wards, currently under U.S. conservatorship (life support attended by a wet-nurse), were themselves spared being sued, on account of their signing civil non-prosecution agreements and promising to cooperate and not dispute allegations (and also not have to admit nor deny wrongdoing). Yet the SEC is seeking financial penalties, disgorgement, and an order barring guilty parties from serving as officers or directors of any public companies in the future against the implicated executives. The SEC faces an uphill battle based on one word – “subprime.” The problem is, subprime has never been legally defined. You know what it means, I know what it means, everybody knows what it means, without knowing its exact definition. But if there’s no definition of subprime, defense lawyers will counter that it’s not possible to sue based on a standard that has never been defined. How about we compare mortgages to cars and subprime to clunkers. If you’re on my used car lot and I offer you two cars at the same price and don’t tell you one is a clunker, is that fair? You wouldn’t need me to define “clunker.” If I said one was a clunker, you would simply choose the other car; after all, it’s the same price. There is a difference, there’s a big difference. Over on the Fannie and Freddie lots between 2006 and 2007, they were loading up on clunkers and not telling anyone what they were stocking. In fact, they were saying things like, “basically (we) have no subprime exposure” in the single-family realm. They lied. One of the reasons they were loading up on subprime was because Wall Street banks were eating their lunch by buying up subprime loans, packaging them, and selling them to investors hand over fist, and Fannie and Freddie wanted in on that very lucrative business. It’s not that they hadn’t dabbled in subprime before; they had. But as they saw stresses in the marketplace on the better mortgages in their portfolios, they still loaded up on far weaker credits; also known in the business as SUBPRIME. So what’s next? There are going to be a lot of emails and other testimony coming out about who knew what when, and who lied to who to make how much. It’s going to be fun to watch this thing unfold. But the whole point of this piece of the puzzle coming to light is that, to make their bonuses bigger and their options worth more, these executives leveraged their essentially “private” companies knowing that their losses would be “socialized” (paid for by taxpayers) if their bets fell apart. Their lies are no different than the lies told to investors by the big banks during the credit crisis (and most of the time, for that matter). Yes, if the SEC wins their cases, there’s hope that the lying executives of our biggest banks (and, if there is a God, the liars at the Federal Reserve, too) will be brought to justice for misleading not only their investors, and the American public that bailed them out, but also Congress (not that they would ever lie), who crafted legislation to save us from another financial catastrophe without knowing how the banks and the Fed lied to us all. Thanks to Bloomberg LP and Fox News Networks LLC – who sued the Fed to get them to cough up data under the Freedom of Information Act – we know just how much they all lied. We now know the bankers were telling lies to our faces while being propped up by the backdoor boys at the Fed. Heck, most Fed regional bank presidents didn’t know, the Treasury Secretary didn’t know. Nobody but the bankers and the Fed knew that they were lying to us. Again, courtesy of Bloomberg, here’s what they were saying, when they were saying it, and how much money they got from the Fed to keep their doors open on the exact dates that their borrowings peaked: On September 21, 2008, Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack said, “Morgan Stanley is in the strongest possible position.” By September 29, 2008, they had borrowed $107 billion from the Fed and took another $10 billion in TARP money. On January 16, 2009, Citicorp CEO Vikram Pandit said, “We have an irreplaceable franchise.” By January 20, 2009, they had borrowed $99.5 billion from the Fed and took $45 billion in TARP money. On January 22, 2009, Bank of America CEO Kenneth D. Lewis said, “The diversity and strength of our company is allowing us to continue to invest in our business to drive future profit growth.” By February 26, 2009, they had borrowed $91.4 billion from the Fed and took $45 billion in TARP money. On December 16, 2008, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein said, “Our deep and global client franchise, experienced and talented people and strong balance sheet position our firm well.” By December 31, 2008, they had borrowed $69 billion from the Fed and took $10 billion in TARP money. On February 23, 2009, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said, “We believe we have a fortress balance sheet.” By February 26, 2009, they had borrowed $48 billion from the Fed and took $25 billion in TARP money. On March 6, 2009, Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf said, “We couldn’t feel better about the future.” Meanwhile, as of February 26, 2009, they had borrowed $45 billion from the Fed and took $25 billion in TARP money. They are all liars. They should all be prosecuted for misleading their investors, the public, and Congress. It was these very banks that were feeding crap to Fannie and Freddie and at the same time competing with them to grow the whole pie for all their bonuses and stock options. It was a giant scheme – don’t you get it? And because they are such good liars they, the banks, and the Fed will tell us and Congress that we can’t handle the truth and they lied to us to protect us from the reality of how bad things really were. Really? We need to be protected from the truth so we can continually be lied to so they can all make more money? Sure, that’s why total assets held by the country’s above-named biggest banks have risen 39% since 2006. That’s why average banker pay in 2010 was the same as it was in 2007. That’s why banks spent 33% more money lobbying Congress from 2006 through 2010. That’s why Dodd-Frank isn’t completed and never will be. That’s why America has become a sinkhole. And speaking of sinkholes… No, I’m not going to point to that former MF Global leader Jon Corzine, who used to brag that he co-authored Sarbanes-Oxley when he was a U.S. Senator (such an august body!), which hopefully he will be hung by, along with the entire gallery of rogues above who deserve the gallows… no, not him. Time out… In case you Occupy Wall Streeters missed the other pieces of the puzzle, there was the list of lies the bankers foisted on us while being aided and abetted by the lying Fed and how they should all come under the axe of Sarbanes-Oxley, after all, it is still the law of the land. Those are the pieces of the puzzle that need to come together. But, alas, I digress once again; back to Freddie and Fannie. No doubt you knew that Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 1999, a House member since 1979, author of the Contract With America, and the distinguished first House member in history (he will like this, he is an historian, did you know?) to be disciplined (and fined $300,000) for ethics violations. (He actually faced 84 charges during his, did I say “distinguished,” term, and quit before he could be kicked out of that, did I already say “august,” body). When he “quit” he said, “I’m willing to lead, but I’m not willing to preside over cannibals.” Good for him! Because once freed, the august historian was called upon to eat at the august table of Freddie Mac. Of course, he didn’t approach them. He says, “I was approached to offer strategic advice.” Nice work for $1.6 million if you can get it, being an “historian” I mean. And offering The Freddie …”advice on precisely what they didn’t do.” He actually said that. Oh, what they didn’t do, now I get it. The Newton bomb must have been talking about Freddie not raising the fees it charged back in 1995. You probably don’t remember, but back then some actually, really august members of the House wanted Freddie and Fannie to raise their fees to make them more competitive with private mortgage outfits. There was serious concern back then that the Government Sponsored Enterprises were too enterprising and, with their de facto government backing, could raise money cheaper than private outfits and outcompete them in their rather large business space. But Newt-to-the-rescue – the same Newt who said, “I’ve never done a favor for Fannie or Freddie” saw to it that the proposed fees would never see the light of day. Ah, all in a day’s work over at our august Capitol. Is he a liar? I would never accuse anyone of being a liar, you know me… so let me put it nicely… He is a liar. Where was I? A $6.3 Billion Bet Gone Bad. By Louis Basenese, Chief Investment Strategist. In yesterday’s column, I took the time to explain Wall Street’s newest accounting trick – re-hypothecation. Today, I want to share how it led to the loss of $1.2 billion in customer funds and the ultimate demise of MF Global (Other OTC: MFGLQ.PK). And more importantly, what we should take away from this unfortunate situation…Greed is Good? MF Global’s problems didn’t start with re-hypothecation. They started with something much simpler – greed. The firm wanted to make a bet that eurozone bonds would remain default free. I’ll concede that’s a smart bet, given the formation of the European Financial Stability Facility. Essentially, MF Global was banking on a European version of “too big too fail” – betting that the indebted eurozone countries were too important to the global economy to let them default. But a smart bet doesn’t translate into a risk-free bet. And leverage only magnifies risk, which is something MF Global learned the hard way. You see, MF Global didn’t invest a modest amount in bonds of some of Europe’s most indebted nations (Italy, Spain, Belgium, Portugal and Ireland). It invested $6.3 billion. That’s equal to more than five times the firm’s book value! Now, you might be asking yourself, how in the world was MF Global able to make such an outsized bet? With off-balance sheet transactions, of course. (Remember, that’s how Wall Street typically tries concealing its transgressions. Case in point: Enron and special purpose entities.) In this case, MF Global was specifically using “repurchase and reverse repurchase transactions to maturity” to keep its actions off the balance sheet. I won’t bog you down with the details of repo-to-maturity trade. Here’s the gist… MF Global buys a ton of European bonds with high yields maturing in 2012. It then turns around and uses those bonds as collateral to borrow money at very low interest rates. The way this trade works out is simple… Until the bonds mature, MF Global earns the spread – the difference between the high interest it receives on the bonds and the low interest rates it pays on the borrowed funds. When the bonds mature, MF Global uses the principal received to pay off its loans. Simple as that. But it sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it? Well, it seemed a bit surprising to MF Global’s CEO, Jon Corzine, too. In the firm’s most recent earnings conference call, he said, “The spread between interest earned and the financing cost of the underlying repurchase agreement has often been attractive even as the structure of the transaction themselves essentially eliminates market and financing risk.” In other words, such risk free trades shouldn’t exist. And ultimately, they don’t. Can You Say, “Margin Call?” The big risk inherent in MF Global’s repo-to-maturity trades was liquidity. At any point, MF Global’s lenders could require more collateral. And that’s exactly what they did, as the debt crisis in Europe became more uncertain. The only problem? MF Global didn’t have any cash of its own lying around to meet the margin calls. So it pledged its customers’ funds – via re-hypothecation – as additional collateral. The straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back came from the New York Fed. Earlier in the year, the New York Fed designated MF Global a primary dealer, allowing it to trade directly with the bank in the buying and selling of United States government debt. With worries mounting about MF Global’s solvency, the Fed issued a margin call of its own on Friday, October 28. And the jig was up. MF Global filed for bankruptcy protection on Monday, October 31. Ever since then, we’ve been unearthing the details surrounding the company’s ultimate demise. Bottom line: Leverage cuts both ways. Wall Street’s elite always seem to forget about this fundamental principle time and again. Perhaps it’s because they’re always investing with other people’s money instead of their own? Nevertheless, let MF Global’s bankruptcy be yet another reminder that there are no risk-free trades. And that’s why we should relentlessly favor position-sizing over making outsized bets. 1. Monday, January 9, 2012.12:00 a.m… The Wall Street JournalNew York TIMES: Wall Street Prepares to Take Sharp Pay Cut. By LIZ RAPPAPORT And COLIN BARR. A dismal year means Wall Street is about to take a big hit to its wallet. As banks prepare to report fourth-quarter results and make final bonus decisions for 2011, total compensation is likely to be the lowest since 2008, when the financial crisis destroyed some firms and left many survivors on government life support. While still lofty compared to the rest of the U.S., pay for some Wall Street workers will be the lowest in years, at a time when critics have been lashing out at what they deem excessive finance-industry compensation. At Goldman Sachs Group Inc., many of the roughly 400 partners can expect to see their 2011 pay cut at least in half from 2010, according to people familiar with the situation. Pay for some employees in the New York company’s fixed-income trading business will shrink by 60%, with some workers getting no bonus, these people said. Morgan Stanley is expected to shrink bonuses for some investment bankers and traders by 30% to 40% from 2010, said people familiar with the matter. Pay worries have been mounting up and down Wall Street for months amid lower trading revenue, languid deal-making, new regulations and anxiety about the global economy. Other pressures include weak financial-company stock prices and sour public sentiment that culminated in the Occupy Wall Street encampment in New York. J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., one of the biggest banks, is set to report earnings Friday, followed next week by Goldman and other major banking firms. For most of 2011, Wall Street executives offered few specifics about how the lackluster year would affect compensation, especially the large portion that will be paid out as bonuses in the coming weeks. Each quarter the banks set aside a percentage of revenue for benefit costs. Through the first three quarters of 2011, total compensation and benefit costs at 34 publicly traded financial firms tracked by The Wall Street Journal were on pace for a record-high $172 billion. The calculation is based on the companies’ reported results and projections by analysts. But industry observers expect that when all is said and done for the year, many firms will adjust their benefit costs sharply downward, partly to appease shareholders frustrated by soft profits. If the companies apply the same ratio for 2011 as 2010, overall compensation and benefits for last year would be $159 billion for the 34 companies tracked by the Journal, the smallest total since 2008. At Goldman, average compensation per employee would fall 10.7% to $385,000 for 2011 from $431,000 in 2010 if the New York company keeps its payout rate steady in the fourth quarter. In 2007, Goldman employees received an average of $661,000 each, and people throughout the firm are bracing for disappointment. Analysts who follow Goldman expect the securities firm’s revenue to fall 23% for 2011 compared with 2010, according to a survey by FactSet Research Systems Inc. For the typical Goldman partner, pay for 2011, including base salary and bonus, is likely to range from $3 million to $6.5 million, according to people familiar with the matter. In better years, payouts have been at least twice as high, these people said. On Friday, Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Brad Hintz said he expects Goldman to earn just 77 cents a share for the fourth quarter, down from his previous estimate of $3.15 a share. “We do not expect a robust recovery in 2012,” Mr. Hintz wrote. More ominously, executives at some financial firms foresee longer-term changes as a result of economic and regulatory shifts that will limit profitability. “Companies definitely have to realize the party as they know it is over,” said Rose Marie Orens, a senior partner at Compensation Advisory Partners, a New York firm that works with compensation committees at public-company boards. In many cases, pay cuts on Wall Street will come mostly at the top because that is where the largest bonuses are paid. Before the crisis, financial firms competed aggressively to attract and keep up-and-coming talent to groom for the future. As a result of the looming cuts, though, some midlevel employees at investment banks might make more than their managing-director or executive bosses this year, said people familiar with the matter. Wall Street has always reined in pay when times are tough, but competition for star traders and investment bankers discouraged firms from making big overall changes. In the wake of the financial crisis, some firms shrank bonuses and increased base salaries to bend to political pressure. Regulators argued that heavy reliance on bonuses encouraged excessive risk-taking. A broader reckoning is under way now amid widespread cost-cutting. In the second half of 2011, two dozen major global banks and securities firms made plans for a total of 103,000 job cuts. For many Wall Street executives and staff, the new pay structures and cuts in company perks already have hampered their lifestyles. Instead of large cash payouts each year, bankers now are getting more and more of their own companies’ shares. Some cash-strapped employees have sold second homes or gotten loans from their companies to pay bills, said people familiar with the matter. For now, companies are still using larger chunks of their revenue for employee pay. The Journal’s analysis projects that 36% of revenue will go toward compensation and benefits in 2011, up from 33% in 2010. The analysis assumes that the banks, securities firms, asset managers, exchange operators and other companies for the fourth quarter will hold steady the percentage of revenue used for compensation as in the first three quarters. They don’t always do this, however: In each of the past two years, Goldman has reduced its pay ratio in the fourth quarter, holding down compensation and boosting profits. One bright spot this year could be bonuses given out in stock. The stock-price slide that battered most financial firms in 2011, wiping out $295 billion in market capitalization from the 34 companies in the Journal’s analysis, means that stock-based bonuses about to be doled out will be cheap compared with previous years. That could mean a big windfall down the road for employees if financial firms’ stocks climb. —Aaron Lucchetti contributed to this article.
Write to Liz Rappaport at liz.rappaport@wsj.com Fannie Mae CEO to resign By James O’Toole@CNNMoneyJanuary 10, 2012: 6:13 PM ET Fannie Mae CEO Michael Williams. NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Fannie Mae CEO Michael Williams plans to resign, the government-controlled mortgage giant said Tuesday.
Williams, who took over as president and CEO of the troubled company in 2009, will continue as CEO until Fannie Mae’s board names a successor.
The firm did not provide a specific reason for Williams’ departure; in a statement, Williams said only that he had decided that “the time is right to turn over the reins to a new leader.”
Williams will leave behind a firm still struggling to get its finances in order.
In November, Fannie Mae (FNMA, Fortune 500) reported a net third-quarter loss of $5.1 billion. The loss forced the firm to ask for another $7.8 billion in funding from the Treasury Department, a request that took its bailout total to $112.6 billion.
Federal regulators put Fannie Mae and fellow government-sponsored enterprise Freddie Mac (FMCC, Fortune 500) into conservatorship during the financial meltdown in September 2008. The sister companies now depend on government help to cover losses on the mortgages they own or guarantee.
In October, Freddie Mac CEO Ed Haldeman also announced plans to step down at some point this year.
Williams and Haldeman have faced scrutiny in recent months for their hefty paychecks, granted even as their firms rely on taxpayer support. The targets for their 2011 pay, which will include deferred compensation, are set at about $6 million a piece.
In December, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged six former executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, including former Fannie CEO Daniel Mudd and former Freddie chief Richard Syron with securities fraud. The SEC alleges that the executives misrepresented the firms’ holdings of high-risk mortgage loans ahead of the financial crisis. Can anyone save Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? By Paul R. La Monica@lamonicabuzz January 11, 2012: 1:45 PM ET. Former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson put mortgage agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into conservatorship in 2008. But little progress has been made since to help them. NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — It has been more than three years since then Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson fired his famous metaphorical bazooka and the federal government seized control of mortgage agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Sadly, Fannie and Freddie are still a cause for worry and a source of national embarrassment. Late Tuesday, Fannie Mae said that CEO Mike Williams was stepping down sometime this year. That follows the news late last year that Freddie Mac CEO Ed Haldeman was also planning to leave. Former Fannie CEO Daniel Mudd and former Freddie CEO Richard Syron have each been charged with fraud by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Both agencies, which play key roles in helping to secure financing for homeowners, have continued to rack up sizeable financial losses over the past few years. It is estimated that their bailout will eventually cost taxpayers as much as $124 billion through 2014. Yet, not much has been done to try and change the two companies for the better. There was shockingly little in the way of actual reform for Fannie (FNMA, Fortune 500) and Freddie (FMCC, Fortune 500) in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act that became law in 2010. Several members of Congress, including former Senator Chris Dodd and House Rep. Barney Frank, have been accused of conflicts of interest regarding Fannie and Freddie. Lawmakers have repeatedly denied that this played a role in the lack of any major new regulations for Fannie and Freddie. But the biggest problem is that the full government control of Fannie and Freddie makes the agencies convenient legislative tools for members on both sides of the aisle. Turning foreclosures into rentals For example, Congress finally agreed on a temporary extension of the payroll tax cut late last year. But to help finance that, Fannie and Freddie were forced by their overseer, the Federal Housing Finance Authority (FHFA), to raise fees they charge lenders to guarantee new loans. “The problem is that Fannie and Freddie are the cookie jar for Congress. What is going to need to happen is that Fannie and Freddie need to be moved out of conservatorship or this won’t end,” said Anthony Sanders, senior scholar with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. “Every time you look at the news and see Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae in a headline, you wince about what Congress and FHFA are going to ask them to do next,” Sanders added. Others argue that politicians need to rethink housing policy overall. 0:00 / 03:12 How Fannie Mae spruces up foreclosures It may be heretical for an elected official to suggest that renting is the new American dream. But as long as home ownership is still held up as the pantheon of financial success and a goal for all Americans, expect more of the same from Fannie and Freddie. “Originally, Fannie and Freddie were born out of a sensible goal to create more liquidity in the housing market. But they got co-opted for political reasons,” said Joseph Mason, professor in the department of finance at LSU’s E. J. Ourso College of Business in Baton Rouge. “Nobody in Washington has backed off the populist proposition that everyone should own a home. Until that changes, nothing will change at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,” he added. So what’s the solution for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? They need to be weaned off the government dole. Instead of having FHFA (foofa!) be their master, the free market should take that job. Fannie and Freddie must go. Here’s how. Yes, I realize that’s asking the same people who helped contribute to the 2008 financial calamity to become more involved again. But that’s still a better alternative than the status quo. “You would hope that over time there is greater private sector participation in the mortgage financing business. It’s not going to happen now given the state of the market, but continuing to use Fannie and Freddie to stimulate housing is not feasible,” said Brian Levitt, economist with OppenheimerFunds in New York. “We have to realize the way things worked before will not work in the future,” Levitt added. Exactly. What incentive is there for a bright, capable CEO to come work for Fannie or Freddie as long as the government is the ultimate boss? To be fair, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have cleaned up their balance sheets a bit in the past few years. They have not made the same mistakes in regard to financing bad credit risks as they did during the housing boom. But as long as older loans are a problem, who would want to lead Fannie or Freddie? It’s a thankless job. Both Williams and Haldeman were criticized for their salaries. Who needs that grief? “Fannie and Freddie probably will have a revolving door with CEOs for awhile until something is done on a permanent basis to fix them,” Sanders said. “Legacy loans are killing Fannie and Freddie. It’s an untenable position for executives right now.” But it’s not so untenable for politicians and bureaucrats. That’s the problem. The Political Scene. The Obama Memos. The making of a post-post-partisan Presidency. By Ryan Lizza. January 30, 2012 On a frigid January evening in 2009, a week before his Inauguration, Barack Obama had dinner at the home of George Will, the Washington Post columnist, who had assembled a number of right-leaning journalists to meet the President-elect. Accepting such an invitation was a gesture on Obama’s part that signaled his desire to project an image of himself as a post-ideological politician, a Chicago Democrat eager to forge alliances with conservative Republicans on Capitol Hill. That week, Obama was still working on an Inaugural Address that would call for “an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics.” Obama sprang coatless from his limousine and headed up the steps of Will’s yellow clapboard house. He was greeted by Will, Michael Barone, David Brooks, Charles Krauthammer, William Kristol, Lawrence Kudlow, Rich Lowry, and Peggy Noonan. They were Reaganites all, yet some had paid tribute to Obama during the campaign. Lowry, who is the editor of the National Review, called Obama “the only presidential candidate from either party about whom there is a palpable excitement.” Krauthammer, an intellectual and ornery voice on Fox News and in the pages of the Washington Post, had written that Obama would be “a president with the political intelligence of a Bill Clinton harnessed to the steely self-discipline of a Vladimir Putin,” who would “bestride the political stage as largely as did Reagan.” And Kristol, the editor of the Weekly Standard and a former aide to Dan Quayle, wrote, “I look forward to Obama’s inauguration with a surprising degree of hope and good cheer.” Over dinner, Obama searched for points of common ground. He noted that he and Kudlow agreed on a business-investment tax cut. “He loves to deal with both sides of the issue,” Kudlow later wrote. “He revels in the back and forth. And he wants to keep the dialogue going with conservatives.” Obama’s view, shared with many people at the time, was that professional pundits were wrong about American politics. It was a myth, he said, that the two political parties were impossibly divided on the big issues confronting America. The gap was surmountable. Compared with some other Western countries, where Communists and far-right parties sit in the same parliament, the gulf between Democrats and Republicans was narrow. Obama’s homily about conciliation reflected an essential component of his temperament and his view of politics. In his mid-twenties, he won the presidency of the Harvard Law Review because he was the only candidate who was trusted by both the conservative and the liberal blocs on the editorial staff. As a state senator in Springfield, when Obama represented Hyde Park-Kenwood, one of the most liberal districts in Illinois, he kept his distance from the most left-wing senators from Chicago and socialized over games of poker and golf with moderate downstate Democrats and Republicans. In 1998, after helping to pass a campaign-finance bill in the Illinois Senate, he boasted in his community paper, the Hyde Park Herald, that “the process was truly bipartisan from the start.” A few years later, Obama ran for the U.S. Senate and criticized “the pundits and the prognosticators” who like to divide the country into red states and blue states. He made a speech against the invasion of Iraq but alarmed some in the distinctly left-wing audience by pointing out that he was not a pacifist, and that he opposed only “dumb wars.” At the 2004 Democratic Convention, in Boston, Obama delivered a retooled version of the stump speech about ideological comity—“There is not a liberal America and a conservative America; there is the United States of America!”—and became a national political star. In 2006, Obama published a mild polemic, “The Audacity of Hope,” which became a blueprint for his 2008 Presidential campaign. He described politics as a system seized by two extremes. “Depending on your tastes, our condition is the natural result of radical conservatism or perverse liberalism,” he wrote. “Tom DeLay or Nancy Pelosi, big oil or greedy trial lawyers, religious zealots or gay activists, Fox News or the New York Times.” He repeated the theme later, while describing the fights between Bill Clinton and the Newt Gingrich-led House, in the nineteen-nineties: “In the back-and-forth between Clinton and Gingrich, and in the elections of 2000 and 2004, I sometimes felt as if I were watching the psychodrama of the Baby Boom generation—a tale rooted in old grudges and revenge plots hatched on a handful of college campuses long ago—played out on the national stage.” Washington, as he saw it, was self-defeatingly partisan. He believed that “any attempt by Democrats to pursue a more sharply partisan and ideological strategy misapprehends the moment we’re in.” If there was a single unifying argument that defined Obamaism from his earliest days in politics to his Presidential campaign, it was the idea of post-partisanship. He was proposing himself as a transformative figure, the man who would spring the lock. In an essay published in The Atlantic, Andrew Sullivan, a self-proclaimed conservative, reflected on Obama’s heady appeal: “Unlike any of the other candidates, he could take America—finally—past the debilitating, self-perpetuating family quarrel of the Baby Boom generation that has long engulfed all of us.” Obama was not exaggerating the toxic battle that has poisoned the culture of Washington. In the past four decades, the two political parties have become more internally homogeneous and ideologically distant. In “The Audacity of Hope,” Obama wrote longingly about American politics in the mid-twentieth century, when both parties had liberal and conservative wings that allowed centrist coalitions to form. Today, almost all liberals are Democrats and almost all conservatives are Republicans. In Washington, the center has virtually vanished. According to the political scientists Keith T. Poole and Howard Rosenthal, who have devised a widely used system to measure the ideology of members of Congress, when Obama took office there was no ideological overlap between the two parties. In the House, the most conservative Democrat, Bobby Bright, of Alabama, was farther to the left than the most liberal Republican, Joseph Cao, of Louisiana. The same was true in the Senate, where the most conservative Democrat, Ben Nelson, of Nebraska, was farther to the left than the most liberal Republican, Olympia Snowe, of Maine. According to Poole and Rosenthal’s data, both the House and the Senate are more polarized today than at any time since the eighteen-nineties. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/01/30/120130fa_fact_lizza#ixzz1kOxrNpDR America’s Financial Doomsday An historic, world-changing event is about to crush the U.S. economy and stock market. It will destroy the income, savings, investments and retirements of millions of Americans. It will plunge vast numbers of families into the nightmare of poverty … hunger … and homelessness. Only a minority of investors will survive intact. And some will actually build their wealth in the process.
In this video, I’m going to reveal some very disturbing facts about America’s economic decline and how it’s now threatening your financial security. These facts are so shocking, that I’ve decided to present them to you in a special format that is absolutely clear and fully documented, starting right now … I’m Martin Weiss, founder of Weiss Research. You may know my company because every day, more than 500,000 people get our financial publications. And hundreds of thousands more have used our Weiss Ratings on banks, insurance companies and stocks to help make prudent financial decisions. You may also know us because we’ve been on TV and in the newspapers a lot lately: We were the first rating agency in the word to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing BUT the truth about the financial mess the United States government has gotten itself into. But my story is definitely NOT unique … More recently, this kind of crisis has also struck a very powerful European nation. After its leaders made the same mistake ours are making now, the country’s bonds collapsed in value, interest rates exploded to over 200%. In just six months, its stock market plunged 75%. The common people suffered tremendously: A staggering 60% of the workforce was paid only partially and received their paychecks months after they were due. As the economy collapsed, millions of average citizens fell victim to crime and corruption. The police demanded bribes for traffic violations — both real and imagined. Organized crime syndicates divvied up the country into their own private fiefdoms, profiting from protection rackets, prostitution, smuggling, narcotics-peddling and even murder for hire. The government itself admitted that the criminals owned or controlled about half of the country’s private businesses. A friend of mine said: “Many banks, including some of the largest in the country, shut down. They closed their doors forever. Our savings were wiped out. “All people could do about it was to go to their banks and hammer on locked doors. “Other people demonstrated on the streets. They carried their devalued money in miniature coffins and marched past our central bank.” All this happened in the 1990s — in Russia, formerly one of the most powerful nations on the face of the Earth. Of course, the U.S. is not Russia; we have far stronger democratic institutions. And our economy is far larger than Brazil’s, but when a nation’s larders make the same mistakes Brazil and Russia made, the consequences are invariably going to be similar. The people of Brazil and Russia paid dearly for their leaders’ blunders. Barring a miracle, the American people are also about to pay a very big price. Europe is suffering through this same kind of crisis RIGHT NOW! For a sneak preview of the doomsday event about to strike the United States, just look at the catastrophe taking place in Western Europe right now. In Greece, a friend of mine reports: “Everywhere in Greece, home values are plunging. Unemployment is soaring. One in four Greeks, including over 450,000 children, live in poverty. Crime is exploding. “Athens is beginning to look like a ghost town. Everywhere you look, shop windows are boarded up. Of those that are still open, most are running going-out-of-business sales.” Greece is not alone! But Greece is not alone! In Spain, similar stories are being told in Madrid, Barcelona and 50 other cities across the country. Tens of thousands of workers have taken to the streets to protest a problem they thought they’d NEVER see again in their lifetime: Not just 10% official unemployment like we’ve recently seen in the U.S. — but 21% official unemployment! A friend of mine in Madrid says: “You wouldn’t believe what I’m seeing here on the streets of Madrid. Beggars outnumber tourists and protesters outnumber beggars. “In front of Parliament, riot police stand watch to protect lawmakers from angry mobs. All over the country, in Viscaya, Cataluña, Andalucía, we see the same thing.” In Ireland, the government faced immediate default and was forced to impose harsh austerity measures that plunged the country into depression. In London and cities all across England, similar kinds of austerity measures recently triggered the worst riots of modern times. Entire neighborhoods went up in flames. Even large commercial buildings were set on fire, and left in ruins. Worse, this financial and social crisis is threatening to spread to countries like Italy, France and even Germany. Now, you may be thinking, “But we’re different! Nothing like that could ever happen here.” I assure you: The people of Brazil, Russia, Greece, Ireland and Spain never dreamed it could happen there, either! The truth is our own leaders have made the same financial blunders that their leaders made. As my Greek friend says: “You can’t save a nation that’s drowning in debt by throwing more debt at it any more than you could save a drowning man by throwing more water on him.” Look, in every one of these countries, the pattern is clear: First, the government spends everything it has. Next, the government borrows all it can from its people. Then, it borrows still more from foreign countries and banks. Finally … The debts become so onerous and horrendous that they trigger the doomsday event:The U.S. is now in WORSE shape than Brazil, Russia, Greece or Spain have ever been Consider the high-risk gambles that super-investor Warren Buffett calls “financial weapons of mass destruction.” I’m talking about special kinds of investments called “derivatives.” They were a major cause of the real estate and debt crisis that nearly wiped out all of our largest banks in 2008 — along with the entire U.S. economy. Russia’s banks never exposed themselves to large amounts of these financial time bombs. Neither did Brazil’s banks. And you’d think that, after the 2008 meltdown, U.S. banks would have learned their lesson. But you’d be wrong. According to the Comptroller of the Currency, a division of the U.S. Treasury Department — U.S. banks held $176 trillion in derivatives at the height of the debt crisis in 2008. Today, U.S. banks hold $244 trillion in derivatives — nearly 40% more. That fact alone places the U.S. in greater danger than many other countries, past or present. U.S. debt and obligations are now OVER $120 TRILLION! America is also in great danger for another big reason. Washington is now sitting on the largest pile of debt in the history of civilization: About $14.5 trillion and counting. Hard to visualize what that much money looks like? Maybe this will help … If you asked your bank to give you a stack of $100 bills worth one million dollars, it would look like this — a neat little pile of money … One billion dollars looks a LOT more impressive. But here’s what one trillion hundred-dollar bills would look like. And this is our current national debt: $14.5 trillion. It’s a positively staggering amount of money. And it doesn’t even begin to include the debts Washington inherited from Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae or all the money Washington owes to seniors for Social security and Medicare, or to veterans and government pensioners. Add that in, and Washington’s total obligations are over $120 trillion. But it’s not just the sheer size of our nation’s debt that’s so frightening. It’s the fact that it’s mushrooming so rapidly — at a speed that’s far greater than anything we’ve ever seen: Washington is now growing the debt by AT LEAST $1 trillion each and every year. Now, at this point, you’re probably thinking: “But surely — our leaders will ultimately do the right thing and STOP bankrupting us — right?” But the reality is that Washington has consistently made the opposite choice. The die was cast in 2008, when the housing bubble burst and giant banks were going bust. At the time, the U.S. government could have simply allowed those who had made the big gambles to suffer the natural consequences of their actions. Instead, Washington bailed out the banks, absorbed those bad debts, and spent trillions of dollars to fight the recession. Washington lies, the economy dies. At the time, some people thought that was a god idea. But look what happened. In just 12 months between 2007 and 2008, Washington TRIPLED the federal deficit from $161 billion to $459 billion. Of course, our leaders swore on a stack of Bibles that this was a one-time-only event, needed to fight the recession. They lied. Washington tripled the deficit AGAIN … to $1.4 trillion in 2009. Then, again, they solemnly promised that this, too, was temporary — for emergency purposes only. But that was a lie, too. The 2010 deficit was $1.3 trillion. Plus, the deficit for 2011 is the biggest of all: More than $1.5 trillion. And in a double-dip recession, the deficit could surge to $2 trillion dollars. All these dramatic changes and all these lies are what inevitably lead to the doomsday event that is now on the near horizon for America. Still skeptical? Then consider this shocking change … We’ve sold our American birthright for a mess of porridge. In the past, Washington always borrowed nearly all the money it needed from its own citizens. But in recent years, it has borrowed most of the money from foreigners, especially China, and now it owes foreigners over $4 trillion dollars. That’s over four times MORE than it owed foreigners when the U.S. plunged into recession in the early 2000s. But it still hasn’t been enough. The White House and Congress wanted to spend even more money than Americans and foreign investors would loan us — combined. The Fed declared WAR on the value of your money! So the Federal Reserve printed hundreds of billions of paper dollars and loaned most of that money to the Treasury, too. How many hundreds of billions of dollars? Let me put it into perspective for you.
Remember 1999, when everyone was worried that the Y2K bug would crush our economy? Well, to avert a collapse, the Fed printed $73 billion to keep the banks from collapsing. That’s the first blip on this chart. Now let’s go to 9/11, when the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington paralyzed the economy, the Fed printed another $40 billion. That’s the second blip on the chart. Every time, the Fed cranked up the printing presses, financial experts went ballistic. They said the amounts were so huge; they might diminish the dollar’s value. And sure enough, the value of the dollar did plunge. But that was only a drop in the ocean compared to what the Fed has been doing lately. Since the big debt disaster of 2008 — when the giant Lehman Brothers failed. The Fed has printed more than $1.6 TRILLION dollars. That’s twenty-two times MORE money than the Fed created during Y2K. And it’s FORTY-ONE times more than it printed after 9/11! That’s why the buying power of your money is cratering. That’s why your cost of living is soaring. That’s why butter has jumped 22%, gasoline has soared 35%, and coffee has skyrocketed a mind-boggling 42% — all in a single year! And that’s also why America is headed for the financial doomsday I will soon describe to you. But first … SHOCKER: You’re only HALF as rich as you think you are!
Look at silver! Since the Federal Reserve began its latest money-printing binge at the height of the debt crisis, the price of silver more than quadrupled. And look at gold; it has more than doubled in price! But all this is only the beginning. In Brazil, Russia, Greece and Ireland what happened next was that revenues and tax collections began to fall. It became impossible for those governments to repay its debts. And here again, the United States is following a similar pattern: Despite the massive amounts of money Washington has thrown at it, the U.S. economy is sinking — and government revenues are falling — AGAIN! The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics that long-term unemployment in the United States is now at catastrophic levels.
More than 14 million Americans are now out of a job — and every week, hundreds of thousands more get their pink slips. And once someone loses a job, it takes an average of more than 25 weeks — nearly half a year — to find a new one. That’s not just “a little bit” worse than during prior recessions. It’s more than 2.5 times worse than during the big recession in the mid-1970s. And it’s also far worse than during the financial crisis of 2008-2009. Plus, the housing crisis that triggered this great recession in the first place is now growing more severe. Consider the conclusions of Case-Shiller, the real estate industry’s most trusted source of home price information:
They report that the median price of a home is down more than 31% and is still plunging. That’s right. The price of existing homes in America has fallen BELOW the lowest level it reached in depths of the Great Recession of 2008-2009! In short, despite the trillions Washington has blown on stimulus and bailouts, we are now staring down the barrel of a huge double-dip recession. That’s especially scary this time around. Because this time, the government isn’t putting money into the economy with more stimulus. The government has no choice but to take money OUT of the economy with budget cuts! And as the economy falls, instead of collecting more from taxes, it collects LESS. The money Washington so desperately needs to pay the interest on its debt simply vanishes. Look, throughout history, we’ve learned that when a nation becomes this deeply indebted and in this much economic trouble, the next step is always the same: In every case, the next step is the monumental event, the far greater calamity that I promised to tell you about. COMING NEXT: The moment when all hell breaks loose … So what is the ultimate catastrophe that doomed the people of Russia and Brazil to decades of poverty! So what is the ultimate catastrophe that doomed the people of Russia and Brazil to decades of poverty and dependence? What is the next bombshell that’s beginning to explode in Europe, destroying the people’s wealth and threatening to rob them of their personal freedoms? What is the historic, life-changing, world-changing event that is also about to vaporize massive amounts of wealth and potentially threaten our liberties right here in the United States of America? It’s the singular moment in time when the last investor willing to loan money to the government calls it quits. It’s when the government can no longer borrow and simply runs out of money. That’s the moment when all hell breaks loose. No, I’m not talking about what would happen if Congress simply failed to raise the debt limit like it almost did in August of 2011. That was a just a sneak preview of the true big event still dead ahead. I’m talking about, a sudden rejection of U.S. debt by the world’s investors — a creditors’ revolt that suddenly leaves Washington with no choice but to live within its means. Think about that: What would happen right now if our federal government was no longer able to find more willing lenders, no longer able to borrow money? Before you answer though, remember this: Washington has to borrow nearly half of every dollar it spends today. It has to borrow nearly half of every dollar it spends on national defense, and homeland security. It has to borrow nearly half of every dollar it pays in Social Security, Medicare benefits, and unemployment benefits, plus half of what it gives to U.S. veterans, government pensioners, the poor and the disabled. And it has to borrow half of every dollar it spends to repay money it borrowed five years ago … ten years ago … even 30 years ago. What will happen when global investors deny our application for yet another loan? When the Chinese and other foreign lenders say “No more!” to losing their shirts as Washington guts the value of the dollars they earn? When they simply say: “Sorry — but America’s line of credit is CANCELLED. Washington’s loan application is DENIED!” This is not far off. The warning signs are already here … Warning sign #1: According to Beijing officials, China, the world’s largest buyer and holder of U.S. government securities, has suffered a loss of $271.1 billion between 2003 and 2010 as a result of the dollar’s steady depreciation. Warning sign #2: In June of 2011, China’s National Development and Reform Commission announced it could lose another $578.6 billion if it continues to hold these huge loans to the U.S. Will they continue to suffer these losses passively? The answer is … Warning sign #3: Two high officials — Zhou Xiaochuan, the head of China’s central bank and Xia Bin, a member of the monetary policy committee of the central bank — are ready to bolt. Both recently made it clear that they could easily get away with a huge reduction in the amount of U.S. treasuries they own. I repeat: This is already beginning to happen! Other nations are also shifting their reserves from U.S. Treasuries to gold and silver, plus oil, coal, and other tangible assets. Mexico, Russia and Thailand have recently bought well over 100 tons of gold instead of U.S. treasuries. Even Tanzania is planning to shun the dollar and shift its reserves into gold! Gains of 245% … 369% … and more are possible! Put simply, that fateful day — when Washington is no longer able to borrow the money it desperately needs is speeding toward us like a runaway freight train. This is why Congressman Ron Paul recently issued this somber warning: “At the present time the Chinese have backed off from what they’re loaning us, interest rates are starting to go up, inflation factors are coming up. “Believe me, that next step is a currency crisis because there will be a rejection of the dollar. The rejection of the dollar is a big, big event.” Congressman Paul is correct. The worst-case scenario … When Washington can no longer borrow money, it will have no choice but to immediately slash spending. And since nearly half of every dollar it spends is borrowed, our leaders will have no choice but to radically reduce, delay or even cancel payments to seniors, veterans, the poor, the disabled and pensioners. Millions who count on government checks will suddenly find themselves on the ropes, struggling to survive. Therefore, with government programs slashed or cancelled … With consumers paralyzed in fear … With the U.S. economy in intensive care … With tax revenues plunging, and … With global investors refusing to lend more money to Uncle Sam … Here is the worst-case scenario — the scenario I fear the most … Hunger and homelessness explode to pandemic levels from coast to coast. The victims take to the streets. Rallies turn into demonstrations … then, into protests … and finally, into riots. With law enforcement severely crippled by the spending cuts, crime skyrockets. With fire departments running at austerity levels, cities burn. With emergency services and hospitals out of money, people die. As we saw in Brazil and Russia, Washington has no choice but to restore order by taking away your personal freedoms. And never forget this final, devastating fact: No bank … no government … no group of nations … is rich enough to save America. Members of Congress: “Armageddon” “A Fiscal Titanic” “A Death Spiral” Still finding all this hard to believe? Then consider these ten former heads of the Council of Economic Advisors.
They are the men and women who directly advised presidents of both major parties, including President Obama, and all of them have since departed from their office. They recently wrote that that the next debt crisis could, and I quote “Dwarf 2008!” That’s an absolutely shocking assertion: In 2008, Wall Street came within a hair of a massive, devastating meltdown. Virtually ALL of our largest banks were pushed to the brink of failure. The entire country was only a few hours away from a fatal collapse. Now, these ten former White House advisors are warning that this next debt crisis could dwarf the last one. Why? What could cause that? They say it’s precisely the doomsday event I just told you about: The fact that one day foreigners may simply stop lending more of their money to the United States. And these ten former presidential advisers are not the only ones ringing the alarm bells. Senator Mark Warner says, “We’re approaching financial Armageddon.” Senator Joe Manchin calls this crisis “A fiscal Titanic.” Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is warning that this crisis is “the biggest threat to our national security.” Senator Mike Crapo says it is “a threat to not just our way of life, but to our national survival.” It has the power to “ … guarantee that this nation becomes a second-rate power with less opportunity and less freedom.” And David Walker — the former U.S. Comptroller General and director of the Government Accountability Office says: “The bottom line is: We’re not Greece. But we could end up with the same problems!” And mind you, these men are not extremists. They have nothing to gain by trying to scare you. They are merely following the facts to their logical conclusion. That’s what I’ve done in this report. The warnings I’ve given you are based on nothing more — and nothing less — than economic reality and historical fact. My research team and I have simply crunched the numbers and let the chips fall where they may — just like we did when we issued “D” ratings on nearly every big bank and savings and loans that subsequently failed. Just like we did when we gave a “C” rating to the United States. We have no political axe to grind. We are not beholden to Republicans, Democrats, or any other political party. Nor do we owe allegiance to Wall Street or any of the thousands of banks, companies and countries that we rate. In fact, most of them would probably prefer that we just kept our mouths shut. One giant company even threatened my life by saying “Weiss had better shut up or get a body guard.” But to quote Harry Truman, “I never give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it’s hell.” Good luck and God bless! Martin D. Weiss, Ph.d. Publisher, Safe Money Investor Service. Safe Money Report 15430 Endeavour Drive Jupiter, FL 33478 800-236-0407 561-625-6685 (Fax) Flashback: Romney Pleased With Geithner, Backed TARP Tuesday, 31 Jan 2012 11:27 AM By Jim Meyers More ways to share…
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Technocrati 2. 3. 0 4. 5. Mitt Romney said three years ago that he was “pleased” with the appointment of Timothy Geithner as Treasury secretary — even after it came to light that Geithner had not paid the taxes he owed.
A newly discovered video of Romney’s appearance on “Fox and Friends” also shows the former Massachusetts governor and current GOP presidential candidate saying he thought the TARP was the “right thing to do” — and calling the $1 trillion stimulus package “necessary.”
President-elect Barack Obama announced on Nov. 24, 2008, the nomination of Geithner, the president of the Federal Reserve of New York, for the Treasury secretary post. Soon thereafter, it disclosed that Geithner had failed to pay $35,000 in self-employment taxes for the years 2001 to 2004, which he termed an honest mistake.
During Romney’s interview with the Fox News Channel, he was asked whether he still thought Geithner was the “right guy” for the job.
“When I heard about his announcement I must admit I was pleased,” Romney responded.
“He’s a person of accomplishment and skill. I think he’s a very bright individual and obviously we’re learning as much as we can about his tax dealings in the past and his level of integrity.
“I think it’s appropriate to really delve into this matter. If they find it was an honest mistake, then I think he should be confirmed. If they find it was deliberate tax evasion, that’s a very different matter. Then a person would not be qualified.
“I certainly hope it turns out just to be an honest mistake.”
Earlier, Romney had expressed support for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), signed by President George W. Bush in October 2008, which allowed the Treasury Department to buy or insure troubled assets, including bank holdings.
Asked whether he still supported it, Romney said: “TARP was the right thing to do. TARP was designed to keep our financial system from collapsing.
“You have to have a financial system for an economy to run and TARP was designed to keep our financial system from crumbling.”
It was pointed out that TARP had bailed out banks so they could lend money, but instead had largely kept the money or used it to buy other banks.
Romney commented: “The end result was to make sure that we don’t lose our banking system. The first responsibility of a bank is not to make loans. The first responsibility of a bank is to be able to repay the depositors their deposit.
“Banks are being cautions because they’re concerned about whether loans they have already made are going to be repaid, and that’s something we can hardly be highly critical of.”
He also commented on the Obama-supported stimulus package, which eventually would cost more than $1 trillion: “If we’re going to have a stimulus plan, which I think is necessary, it should have as its centerpiece a tax reduction, which creates incentives to grow and add jobs.” Read more on Newsmax.com: Flashback: Romney Pleased With Geithner, Supported TARP February 2, 2012 Bankers Committed Fraud to Get Bigger Bonuses by Shah Gilani Dear Reader, In case you didn’t catch the article titled “Guilty Pleas Hit the ‘Mark'” in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, I’m here to make sure you don’t miss it. This is too good. Three former employees of Credit Suisse Group AG (NYSE:CS) were charged with conspiracy to falsify books and records and wire fraud. They were accused of mismarking prices on bonds in their trading books by soliciting trumped-up prices for their withering securities from friends in the business. By posting higher “marks” for their bonds in late 2007, they earned big year-end bonuses. What a shock! What’s not a shock is that, after a bang-up 2007, Credit Suisse had to take a $2.85 billion write-down in the first quarter of 2008. No one knows how much of that loss was attributable to the three co-conspirators, who were fired over their “wrongdoing.” Two of the three accused pleaded guilty. Also not shocking is the reason David Higgs – one who pleaded guilty – gave for his actions. He said he did it “to remain in good favor” with bosses, who determined his bonus, and who profited handsomely themselves from his profitable trading and inventory marks. As for Salmaan Siddiqui, the other trader who pleaded guilty? His attorney Ira Sorkin, the former SEC enforcement chief, said of his client, “What he did was the result of his boss and his boss’ boss directing him to do it.” You know what else is shocking? Everyone was dong this at all the brokerages, investment banks and commercial banks that had trading desks… and only three people have been charged. What’s even more shocking (though not to me) is that the “system” has been engineered over years to allow banks to hold riskier and riskier securities, with more and more leverage, and, in the most egregious affront to sense and safety, be allowed to mark their inventories (including exotic instruments that no one really knew how to price) based on internal “models” and extrapolated scenarios. Whatever that means. Everyone up the chain, from the trader making bets to his boss, his boss’ boss, all the way up to the chairman, eats off the same plate. And you know what they say about where you eat… Marking your trading book within the bounds of what you can get away with isn’t exactly condoned, but neither is it frowned upon – especially at year-end, when bonuses are being calculated. After all, you’ll always have next year to trade out of losses or turn them into winners. It’s about getting paid and how much. But don’t just blame the traders and their bosses. Blame the politicians and the regulators who tore up sound Depression-era banking laws and coddled big banks by “desupervising” them when deregulation didn’t deliver the whole train to the station. Find out where the mortgage-backed securities boom really started, who greased some of the steepest slopes, and why and how everything leads back to bonuses. How Deregulation Ended Honesty in the Banking Sector Here’s what happened, in broad strokes (borrowed from articles I’ve written for MoneyMorning.com). In 1988, the Basel Accord established international risk-based capital requirements for deposit-taking commercial banks. In a byproduct of the calculations of what constituted mortgage-related risk (traditional mortgage loans have long maturities and are illiquid), lenders were expected to set aside substantial reserves; however, “marketable securities” that could theoretically be sold easily would not require much in the way of reserves. To free up reserves for more productive pursuits, banks made a wholesale shift from originating and holding mortgages to packaging them and holding mortgage assets in a securitized form. That lessened asset-quality considerations and ushered in the new era of asset-liquidity considerations. Meanwhile, over at the U.S. Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the appointment of free-market disciple Wendy Gramm (wife of then-U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Tex.)) as chairman would result in her successful 1989 and 1993 exemption of swaps and derivatives from all regulation. These actions would turn out to be consequential in the reign of terror that was to come… In 1993, with her agenda accomplished, Wendy Gramm resigned from her CFTC post to take a seat on the Enron Corp. board as a member of its audit committee. We all know what happened there. (Wait a minute; I did say she was on the audit committee, right?) Of course, Enron’s fraud and implosion became the poster child for deregulation run amok. It ultimately helped spawn Sarbanes-Oxley legislation, which has its own issues, but nonetheless has prevented all kinds of fraud and inappropriate behavior on account of the fact that top executives have to attest to the veracity of, and sign off on, all financial documents and other “stuff.” Now, don’t lose any sleep over the fact that of all the CEOs and CFOs and other muckety-muck multi-multi-millionaire executives that ran and still run the too-big-to-fail banks and the banks and investment banks that did fail or were merged (because they failed but were valuable to banks who wanted to make themselves bigger so they would never be allowed to fail) ever were charged with any crime under Sarbanes-Oxley. Why shouldn’t you worry? Because, silly, there’s a concerted effort to do away with the law. After all, don’t you know, it hampers business from creating jobs, which we desperately need? Hold on. Sorry. I just returned from the bathroom, where I was getting sick. Anyway, the constant flow of money to lobbyists and into legislators’ campaign coffers was paying off for banking interests. The Fed, under Chairman Greenspan, along . With Robert Rubin and Larry Summers, was methodically deconstructing the foundation of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act. The final breaching of the wall occurred in 1998, when Citibank was bought by Travelers. The deal married Citibank, a commercial bank, with Travelers’ Solomon, Smith Barney investment bank, and the Travelers insurance business. There was only one problem: The deal was clearly illegal in light of Glass-Steagall and the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956. However, a legal loophole in the 1956 BHC Act gave the new Citicorp a five-year window to change the landscape, or the deal would have to be unwound. Phil Gramm – the fire breathing free-marketer, Texas senator, and then-chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs (and loving husband of Wendy) – rode to the rescue, propelled by a sea of more than $300 million in lobbying and campaign contributions. In 1999, in the ultimate proof that money is power, U.S. President Bill Clinton signed into law the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act, at once doing away with Glass-Steagall and the 1956 BHC Act, and crowning Citigroup Inc. (NYSE:C) as the new “King of the Hill.” From his position of power, Sen. Gramm consistently leveraged his Ph.D. in economics and free-market ideology to espouse the virtues of subprime lending, where he famously once stated: “I look at subprime lending and I see the American Dream in action.” If helping struggling borrowers pursue their homeownership dreams was such a noble cause, it might have been incumbent upon the senator to not block legislation advocating the curtailment of predatory lending practices. Oh well. Let’s not quibble with a Senator. From 1989 through 2002, federal records show that Sen. Gramm was the top recipient of contributions from commercial banks and among the top five recipients of campaign contributions from Wall Street. (See my article “How Subprime Borrowing Fueled the Credit Crisis.”) Since moving on from the Senate in 2002 to mega-universal Swiss banking giant UBS AG (NYSE:UBS), where he serves as an investment banker and lobbyist, Gramm makes no apologies. “The markets have worked better than you might have thought,” he has been quoted as saying. “There is this idea afloat that if you had more regulation you would have fewer mistakes. I don’t see any evidence in our history or anybody else’s to substantiate that.” On April 28, 2004, in a fitting (and perhaps flagrant) final act of eviscerating prudent regulation, the SEC ruled that investment banks could essentially determine their own net capital. The insanity of that allowance is only surpassed by the fact that the SEC allowed the change because it was simultaneously demanding greater scrutiny of the books and records of what were the holding companies of investment banks and all their affiliates. The tragedy is that the SEC never used its new powers to examine the banks. The idea was that Consolidated Supervised Entities (CSEs) could use internal “models” to determine risk and compliance with net capital requirements. In reality, what the investment banks did was essentially re-cast hybrid capital instruments, subordinated debt, deferred tax returns, and securities with no ready market into “healthy” capital assets, against which they reduced reserve requirements for net capital calculations and increased their leverage to as much as 30:1. (Here’s “How Wall Street Manufactures Financial Services Products,” an insider’s look at how greed on Wall Street results in unscrupulous investment instruments.) When the meltdown came, the leverage and concentration of bad assets quickly resulted in the shotgun marriage of insolvent Bear Stearns Cos. to JP Morgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM), the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holding, the sale of Merrill Lynch to Bank of America Corp. (NYSE:BAC), and the rushed acceptance of applications by Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) and Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) to convert to bank holding companies so they could feed at the taxpayer bailout trough and feast on the Fed’s new smörgåsbord of liquidity handouts. There are no more CSEs (the SEC announced an end to that program in September). The old investment bank model is dead. The motivation for bankers to undermine and inhibit prudent regulation is inherent in banker compensation incentives. The Journal of Financial Research sums up the problem on compensation by concluding: “Firm characteristics that influence managerial compensation include leverage (as a measure of observable risk) market-to-book ratio of assets, size and shareholder return. Evidence suggests that Bank Holding Companies may be exploiting the deposit insurance mechanism because leverage is a significant factor in their results for incentive-based components of compensation. Our results strongly support the view that fundamental shifts in business activities of Bank Holding Companies have influenced their compensation strategies.” And we wonder if bankers are good people or merely compensation and bonus whores… You do the math. As far as telling you what’s wrong with America – a lot of you wrote in to say you DO want to know – this is part of it. But we can see this part clearly. What we can’t see is how we really got here, where here is, and where we’re going next. You’ll get that on Sunday. Not because I want to ruin your Super Bowl Sunday. But because I hope you pass it along to the friends you’ll gather with later in the day, and before the beer flows and the game starts, maybe you’ll ask yourself and ask your friends… is this really happening? Shah. February 3, 2012 By Shah Gilani, Capital Waves Strategist, Money Morning What may be good news for delinquent credit card holders may also be really bad news for banks.
It turns out the “robo-signing” of foreclosure affidavits is just the tip of the iceberg.
In what one judge called “robo-testimony,” falsely attested-to statements by bank document custodians have been submitted in courts around the country by banks trying to win judgments against delinquent credit card debtors.
Apparently, tens of millions of credit cards issued by banks have not been accompanied by good recordkeeping, either.
Chasing down delinquent borrowers in court requires original credit agreements and accurate payment histories to verify outstanding balances and claims.
As it turns out, banks aren’t providing them – either to the courts or to third-party debt collection companies that buy uncollected debts for pennies on the dollar.
As a result of these shoddy practices, judgments already granted to banks could be overturned and they could be sued by state attorney generals or pursued by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The same banks could even be potentially charged by the Justice Department under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Statutes for selling dubiously documented accounts to debt collection companies.
While some debtors will take comfort in what they read here, investors in banks may want to question how legal issues and regulatory investigations will impact their stocks. Questionable bank documentation submitted to courts may be the reason JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM) abruptly abandoned over 1,000 debt collection lawsuits in April 2011.
However, debtors whose pending cases were dismissed aren’t out of the woods yet. All of Chases’ suits were dismissed “without prejudice,” meaning Chase can re-file the cases in the future. A Debt Collector’s Dirty Trick The only relief long-delinquent borrowers have is the statute of limitations imposed by most states on debt collection.
Statutes of limitation, which are typically between two and 15 years, are by themselves no guarantee that debt collection agencies, which buy accounts from banks, won’t try to still collect.
Some debt collection companies entice delinquent borrowers who are beyond their statute of limitation requirements to make payments by offering to reduce the whole amount owed.
Their aim is to get the borrower to make even a single payment. It’s an old trick.
By paying anything on a debt that is past the statute of limitations, the debt is brought back to life again and the statute of limitations clock starts all over from the date of the new payment.
It’s why debtors are browbeaten and enticed to make payments through mailings, harassing calls, and “transfer of balance” offers for new credit cards, which requires old debts to be rolled into the new credit agreement.
The industry term for restarting the clock on old debts is called “re-aging.”
The Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection calls it illegal and abusive.
Last month the FTC and the Justice Department settled with one of the country’s biggest debt collection companies in a case with repercussions for the entire debt collection industry.
Asset Acceptance Capital Corp., which the FTC had charged with violations of federal law – including that it “failed to tell debtors they couldn’t be sued” when they tricked them into making payments to “re-age” old debts – was fined $2.5 million without admitting or denying wrongdoing.
I contacted Erik Kardatzke of the Coral Gables, FL, law firm Debt Defense, P.L., a prominent debtor-rights defense attorney who was quoted in a June 2011 Wall Street Journal article about Chase’s dismissed suits, to ask about new pending lawsuits.
“I don’t see any pending suits by JPMorgan Chase or any of the attorneys or law firms that usually work for them,” he said. “I mean, not a single one. This is highly unusual.”
Kardatzke is a former debt collection attorney who became disillusioned with the practices of credit card companies and debt collectors preying on consumers.
“I would see victims of predatory lending who would charge $300 on a credit card, and be sued for $3,000 four years later based upon late charges, over the limit fees and 30% interest. I noticed that there was rarely an attorney defending consumers and decided to fill that need,” he told me.
The FTC, upon fining Asset Acceptance, announced additional enforcement actions are pending.
They are now joined by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which has the authority to go after banks for abusive collection tactics. Another Headache for Bank Stocks All this attention on banks’ credit card collection efforts isn’t going to help their revenues and earnings.
Not only could credit card borrowers stop paying if they don’t believe banks have proper documentation to go after them, but debt collection companies could sue banks for knowingly providing them inadequate or falsified debtor information when they bought uncollected accounts.
The big banks haven’t been able to settle charges over their robo-signing of foreclosure documents, which by some estimates could amount to over $25 billion in fines and consumer remuneration in some form or another.
Now, with charges of illegal robo-testimony being used to win court judgments in credit card collection cases, the banks now face another huge legal battle with potentially enormous bottom line consequences.
Robo-signing is just the beginning for the banks. [Editor’s Note: If you’re fed up with the rampant corruption, double-dealing, and protection of Wall Street by Washington (at the expense of the taxpayers on America’s Main Street), then you need to read Shah Gilani’s Wall Street Insights & Indictments newsletter. As a retired hedge-fund manager, Gilani is a former Wall Street insider Monday, February 06, 2012 What If We’re Beyond Mere Policy Tweaks? The nation’s ills cannot be fixed by thousands of pages of regulation or more policy tweaks. Only a profound cultural transformation can address our problems. The mainstream view uniting the entire political spectrum is that all our financial problems can be fixed by what amounts to top-down, centralized policy tweaks and regulation: for example, tweaking policies to “tax the rich,” limit the size of “too big to fail” financial institutions, regulate credit default swaps, lower the cost of healthcare (a.k.a. sickcare), limit the abuses of student loans to pay for online diploma mills, and on and on and on. But what if the rot is already beyond the reach of more top-down policy tweaks?Consider the recent healthcare legislation: thousands of pages of obtuse regulations that require a veritable army of regulators staffing a sprawling fiefdom with the net result of uncertain savings based on a board somewhere in the labyrinth establishing “best practices” that will magically cut costs in a system that expands by 9% a year, each and every year, a system so bloated with fraud, embezzlement and waste that the total sum squandered is incalculable, but estimated at around 40%, minimum. Does anyone really think that the lack of another centralized Federal fiefdom and thousands of pages of additional regulation is what ails sickcare? Of course not. In effect, we as a society have completely lost the ability to honestly admit a problem exists and that the solution is not to paper it all over with more regulation and insatible, ever-rising debt-based funding, paid for by our children, grandchildren, and their children. Consider the National Security State, busily constructing rectangular mountains of office space to house its vast, unchecked, oversight-free Empire. Does anyone actually know what tens of thousands of highly-paid people are doing in all these sprawling fiefdoms of National Security? And I don’t mean the Pentagon or the NSA–the buildings sprouting all over the tonier bits of D.C. and its suburbia are the metastasizing results of the “green light” given to anything remotely connected to GWOT–the global war on terror, the war that by definition can never be declared won or even ended, the war that always requires more funding lest one “event” slip through the cracks. If nobody in the elected chain of command actually knows where all this “black budget” money is going, what are the odds it’s being spent wisely and prudently?“No meaningful oversight” inevitably leads to abuse of budget and power. If we haven’t learned that, then we are well on the way to financial and political self-destruction. Consider the Glass-Steagall Act, at 37 pages in length, and the 2,319-page monstrosity of corrupted Federal power, the “Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act:” (Source) Back in December, Nick Schulz helped put the size of the 2,074-page healthcare bill into some historical context by comparing its length to some previous bills that rank among the most consequential in U.S. history, like the 82-page Social Security Act of 1935 and the 74-page Civil Rights Act of 1964. Now that Congress has passed the “Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act,” it might be a good time to compare the 2,319-page financial reform bill (245 pages longer than the healthcare bill) to the previous bills listed below (and see graph) that are considered among the most consequential legislative acts for banking and finance. 1. Federal Reserve Act (1913) – 31 pages. 2. Glass-Steagall Act (1933) – 37 pages. Though few have delved into the ramifications of this monstrous power-grab, it seems that the Executive Branch has grabbed potentially unprecedented powers with little if any oversight by Congress–all in the supremely Orwellian pursuit of “consumer protection.” If a 37-page bill took care of the problem in 1933, why can’t the same 37-page bill be re-instated? Why, indeed. The reason is that the bill impedes the flow of public funds to favored cartels and opportunities for financial looting by these cartels, and so a monster is created that nobody understands and which limits or simply overwhelms oversight by elected officials outside the Imperial Presidency. The entire financial and political infrastructure is corrupt. Perhaps it is time to note that the most thoroughly, venally, pervasively corrupt nations on Earth all have abundant regulations against corruption. Regulations don’t stop or limit corruption, fraud and embezzlement by magic. Sickcare is beyond being “fixed” by thousands of pages of policy tweaks, limitations and regulations. The financial system is beyond being “fixed” by thousands of pages of arcane regulations that only serve to obfuscate the looting and predation while enshrining another vast Federal fiefdom that harvests the national income while accomplishing nothing of substance. Regulation only functions if the culture and the society have a value system and a will to enforce it. The American people have lost those values and the will. Complicity reigns supreme. Instead we support going through the motions of adding layers of bureaucratic bloat, and listening to Soaring Rhetoric (TM) from bloviated politicos who promise us “prosperity,” “recovery” and all the rest without any sacrifice or engagement. Going through the motions never solved anything. 2,000-page regulatory thickets are one thing, and one thing only: purposeful obfuscation via complexity. ( America Is Just Going Through the Motions (November 19, 2010): A profound realization hit me last night: America is just going through the motions now–of reform, of healthcare, of everything. America’s leadership–both its elected and appointed officials, and its “shadow” Financial Power Elite leadership (the corporatocracy of crony Capitalist cartels and rentier/speculative parasites) are just going through the motions of financial reform. And the American public is resigned to just going through the motions of accepting the travesty of a mockery of a sham that is called “reform,” too, even as they understand in their bones that nothing has been fixed and the next financial crisis has already been cooked into their future. One of our few reliable voice of reason in the world of finance, Simon Johnson, has already laid bare how the the next financial crisis and inevitable bailout of the banking parasites will unfold. His article in The New Republic Way Too Big To Fail reveals how the “too big to fail” banks have shredded the wet paper bag of “reform” Congress went through the motions of conjuring up: they are quickly expanding globally, beyond the reach of any mere nation-state’s grasp. Let’s be honest, shall we? There never was any fire for real reform of the financial sector. It was all rote, a foul, stupid play-act, a passionless pantomime of “caring” and fake-“progressiveness” displayed for propaganda purposes. Real reform occurs when the political class of toadies, sycophants, leeches and cowards is forced by a near-universal public outrage to pass simple, powerful legislation and the budgetary resources to enforce that legislation. For example, the landmark environmental laws of the 1970s. Rivers in America used to catch fire before this Federal legislation; now they don’t. There was a true passion and desire in the nation to clean up the industrial pollution that was destroying the nation’s commons. There was no real fire for financial reform in the politico class. All they had to do was wait out the public’s outrage over TARP and then get down to the business of collecting contributions from financial players and their armies of toady-lobbyists. So Washington went through the motions of “reform” and the regulatory agencies went through the motions of “enforcing” existing regulations. But nobody was indicted, no RICO suits filed on behalf of the defrauded, no billion-dollar penalties slapped on those who carted off tens of billions in embezzled, ill-gotten gains, and no perps forced into bankruptcy. In other words, nothing got done except another layer of useless, overpaid bureaucracy was added to the bloated, overstuffed Federal payroll. The exact same dynamic is visible in the “healthcare” (a.k.a. sickcare) “reform.” 2,000 pages of mind-numbing slicing and dicing of the vast flood of national treasure that flows to the sickcare cartels, and nary a single word on the actual health of the American public, which continues to deteriorate on multiple fronts. The “reform” is to add multiple layers of bureaucracy and additional costs on a bloated, out-of-control system in which 50% of the money is already wasted on fraud, needless procedures/meds and paper shuffling. It was all about going through the motions of reforming a system everyone knows is beyond dysfunctional. The painful truth is that we are far beyond the point where policy/legalist regulatory tweaks will actually fix what’s wrong with America. The rot isn’t just financial or political; those are real enough, but they are mere reflections of a profound social, cultural, yes, spiritual rot. This is the great illusion: that our financial and political crises can be resolved with top-down, centralized financial reforms of one ideological flavor or another. It is abundantly clear that our crises extend far beyond a lack of regulation or policy tweaks. We cling to this illusion because it is easy and comforting; the problems can all be solved without any work or sacrifice on our part. Our complicity in the corruption is never mentioned: our votes for kleptocractic politico toadies who promise us that our share of Federal swag will not be sacrificed, our interest payments to the banking cartel/oligarchy, our acceptance of bogus statistics, bogus “reforms” and ceaseless propaganda as legitimate, and lastly, our silence in the face of destructive deficits, lest our share of the swag be cut. This is how once-great Empires end: toothless regulations are passed by bought-and-paid-for legislatures for the purposes of perception management, and a populace addled by constant entertainments and staged combats in the Coliseum listlessly pursues their “right” to bread and circuses of distraction. If this recession strikes you as different from previous downturns, you might be interested in my new book An Unconventional Guide to Investing in Troubled Times (print edition) orKindle ebook format. You can read the ebook on any computer, smart phone, iPad, etc. Click here for links to Kindle apps and Chapter One. Jesse’s Café Américain “You have lived longer than I have and perhaps may have formed a different judgment on better grounds; but my observations do not enable me to say I think integrity the characteristic of wealth. In general I believe the decisions of the people, in a body, will be more honest and more disinterested than those of wealthy men.” Thomas Jefferson, August 26, 1776, Letter to Edmund Pendleton Posted byJesseat12:50 AM 06 February 2012 MF Global Collapsed in the Face of a $310 Million Margin Call Made by ‘Undisclosed Party’
The margin call was predicted here about day two as I recall. The question in my mind is the extent that JP Morgan and any of their other bankers and credit line holders played in this.
It will be interesting to see how this case progresses from the Giddens-Freeh bankruptcy team and into the hands of the regulators and Justice Department.
So far (for the past three years) the Obama Administration has been adverse to looking too far into these sorts of cases before throwing a waiver or settlement without admission of any guilt on the table. Bloomberg MF Global’s $310 Million Margin Call Exceeded Its Market Value By Matthew Leising February 06, 2012, 8:33 PM EST Feb. 7 (Bloomberg) — MF Global Holdings Ltd., the futures broker that filed the eighth-largest bankruptcy in October, faced a $310 million margin call on its final day that exceeded its market value. Calls for payments tied to bets MF Global made on European sovereign debt increased Oct. 24 and continued through Oct. 31, the day the futures broker formerly run by Jon Corzine filed for bankruptcy protection, according to a report yesterday from James Giddens, a trustee overseeing the brokerage’s liquidation. MF Global had a market value of $198 million on Oct. 28 as it held $6.3 billion in European sovereign-debt trades.
After tracing 840 transactions of $327 billion in the company’s final days, Giddens is still analyzing where some of the $1.2 billion in missing customer money “ended up,” he said in the report. Corzine’s firm failed after credit-rating downgrades, a record quarterly loss and revelations about its $6.3 billion European debt tradeunnerved investors. The missing money has sparked Congressional hearings and former customers have said it undermined confidence in the futures industry.
“For three months, our investigative team has worked to understand what happened during the final days of MF Global when cash and related securities movements were not always accurately and promptly recorded due to the chaotic situation and the complexity of the transactions,” Giddens said in a statement.
The trustee didn’t disclose the identity of the counterparties making the margin calls. The trades were cleared through LCH.Clearnet Ltd., according to an MF Global contingency plan drafted before its failure. In the plan, which was designed to address the effects of a credit-rating downgrade on the company’s solvency and liquidity, MF Global questioned whether it should move the debt trades out of LCH.Clearnet.
“How will LCH respond, how much in excess margin will be required, time period, can/will they force us out?” the brokerage questioned in a section of the plan titled “immediate decision making required.” The undated plan indicated the company could move some of the cleared positions to the over- the-counter market, where it could get more favorable terms.
Congress, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department are investigating events surrounding the collapse of MF Global, including the disappearance of the customer funds… I think it is time now to take a maximally defensive position, which for me at least means hedged gold bullion positions and cash. The bullion hedge is to guard against a liquidation event as opposed to an equity correction.
If volumes stay light the wiseguys can keep lifting this up, burning the shorts. So do not get ahead of this, but keep your powder dry if you trade, and if not, start packing up in advance of a move to higher ground. It sure is taking them a long time to spit this one out, isn’t it? We stole your money, we own the system, and there is nothing you can do about it, you pipsqueaks, so just STFU and take what we choose to give you.
Given the timing and the likely parties involved, these transfers, even when they do not involve the theft of customer funds, with the withholding of third party cash transfers by the intermediaries, done among insiders in the last week of a bankruptcy, have the appearance of a fraudulent conveyance.
Given that quite a bit of this money was undoubtedly held by MF Global’s bankers, who were almost certainly aware of and may have helped to precipitate the bankruptcy, we might even have a criminal conspiracy to defraud the customers and other creditors in addition to the civil actions appropriate in a fair and unbiased bankruptcy proceeding.
There is also some evidence that certain customers were privately warned by the bankers, or perhaps even parties in the company itself, a few weeks in advance, and were able to withdraw their funds from the company before it failed. Some right wing money men come to mind, among others.
This suggestion by the trustee that the MF Global personnel took the customer money unknowingly, ie. by mistake, would be hilarious if it was not being used to describe so malicious and unspeakable lapse in stewardship by the privileged, wealthy people in stealing the livelihoods from farmers and cattle ranchers among others.
What surprises me almost more than anything is that these jokers are willing to risk bringing down the financial system for a measly billion dollars, which is a fraction of what they take in personal bonuses in a good year. Is this some sort of perverse adherence to the Ferengi rules of acquistion? “Once you have their money, never give it back.”
If this stands, then nothing, no assets, held by the Anglo-American financial system are safe. When the next crisis comes, they will take what they want, starting with foreign holdings, working their way up the power and influence pyramid from there. And you can talk to the back of their hand if you don’t like it. Reuters MF Global shortfall worsened as bankruptcy neared Mon Feb 6, 2012 2:18pm EST Feb 6 (Reuters) – The trustee liquidating MF Global Holdings Ltd’s broker-dealer unit said the shortfall in commodity customer accounts began five days before the company’s bankruptcy and grew in the days leading up to the Chapter 11 filing.
James Giddens, the trustee for MF Global Inc, said in a statement that his investigation has revealed that MF Global personnel might not have known of the shortfall at the time. (Anyone in the business must be rolling on the floor laughing at this one. Oops, sorry, we inadvertently took the customer money by mistake, a simple $1.2 billion error, and its too late to give it back to the right persons. But we’re dreadfully sorry for our innocent mistake. – Jesse)
He said he has traced a majority of cash transactions, totaling more than $105 billion, made in the last week prior to MF Global’s bankruptcy on Oct. 31, 2011. Giddens said he is working with third parties to seek more complete information about transfers to “select” parties prior to that bankruptcy.
Giddens also said it is unknown when he will be able to make more distributions to former customers.
The difference amongst the three measures revolves around the treatment of workers who desire a real full time job, but have to either settle for a part time position and other forms of under-employment that may technically qualify as a ‘job’ but not as a ‘living,’ or who have simply been removed from the government’s official attention span. “The seasonally-adjusted SGS Alternate Unemployment Rate reflects current unemployment reporting methodology adjusted for SGS-estimated long-term discouraged workers, who were defined out of official existence in 1994. That estimate is added to the BLS estimate of U-6 unemployment, which includes short-term discouraged workers.
The U-3 unemployment rate is the monthly headline number. The U-6 unemployment rate is the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) broadest unemployment measure, including short-term discouraged and other marginally-attached workers as well as those forced to work part-time because they cannot find full-time employment.” Read the rest of John Williams’ Shadowstats here.
My own estimation is that the recovery is flat-lining here and is vulnerable to a double dip which, if it does occur, will be blamed on some exterior factor such as slack European demand, problems in the emerging markets, or China. But it is still too soon to tell from the numbers.
In terms of historical perspective, the great reformer Obama is much more like Herbert Hoover or Nelson Rockefeller than a Franklin Roosevelt. He resembles a moderate Republican despite all the hysterical rhetoric from the far right.
The economy has not been reformed, and most of the problems that caused the collapse in the first place are still operating. As the corporate lobbyists were able to weaken financial reform in Dodd-Frank, so they continue to monopolize the conversation and policy discussions with their money.
I do not see genuine change happening until and unless the human misery increases enough to trigger a reaction, mass protests, or some other serious challenge to the status quo and the apathy of the fortunate. And I have quite a bit of confidence that the one percent will continue to obsessively power forward as the economy dries up until they achieve a pyrrhic victory. Winning.
This applies not only to the US but several other western countries, particularly the UK. It is also true for China which despite the gloss of their miracle economy in the western corporate media remains largely a narrow oligarchy sitting on top of a virtual slave labor camp, with a few showcase exceptions. And the western oligarchs love it. As Bill Gates said, ‘This is my kind of capitalism.’ Posted byJesseat11:22 AM 05 February 2012 SEC Allows Some of America’s Biggest Wall St. Banks To Continually Flout the Law The NY Times has discovered that the Banks that were rescued by the public have turned into serial fraud offenders. JP Morgan is near the top of their ranks, with Goldman Sachs and Bank of America not far behind. Only Citigroup seems to have fallen out of favor. This is not news to any of the regular patrons of the Cafe, but it is good to see the mainstream media taking notice. Perhaps they might have a look at the Silver manipulation investigation that the CFTC has been sitting on for over three years. Not to mention the outrageous theft of customer money by MF Global and the Banks.
Obama talks a good game, and presents a moral face through the media, but an examination of his actions and his record shows that his administration serves the monied interests to the detriment of the public interest. In many cases they are merely following the same practices begun in the Clinton Administration and carried on by Bush. It is a bad situation indeed when the ‘reformer’ elected by the people has failed to reform.
He may not be as brazen and open as his Republican opponents in promoting the interests of the Wall Street, perhaps, and certainly is not as favorable to Big Oil, but the corruption of justice for all in American politics seems to have become pervasive over the last fifteen years. NY TimesS.E.C. Is Avoiding Tough Sanctions for Large Banks By Edward Wyatt February 3, 2012 WASHINGTON — Even as the Securities and Exchange Commission has stepped up its investigations of Wall Street in the last decade, the agency has repeatedly allowed the biggest firms to avoid punishments specifically meant to apply to fraud cases.
By granting exemptions to laws and regulations that act as a deterrent to securities fraud, the S.E.C. has let financial giants like JPMorganChase, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America continue to have advantages reserved for the most dependable companies, making it easier for them to raise money from investors, for example, and to avoid liability from lawsuits if their financial forecasts turn out to be wrong.
An analysis by The New York Times of S.E.C. investigations over the last decade found nearly 350 instances where the agency has given big Wall Street institutions and other financial companies a pass on those or other sanctions. Those instances also include waivers permitting firms to underwrite certain stock and bond sales and manage mutual fund portfolios.
JPMorganChase, for example, has settled six fraud cases in the last 13 years, including one with a $228 million settlement last summer, but it has obtained at least 22 waivers, in part by arguing that it has “a strong record of compliance with securities laws.” Bank of America and Merrill Lynch, which merged in 2009, have settled 15 fraud cases and received at least 39 waivers.
Only about a dozen companies — Dell, General Electric and United Rentals among them — have felt the full force of the law after issuing misleading information about their businesses. Citigroup was the only major Wall Street bank among them. In 11 years, it settled six fraud cases and received 25 waivers before it lost most of its privileges in 2010…
Read the rest here. S.E.C. Is Avoiding Tough Sanctions for Large Banks Meredith B. Cross, the S.E.C.’s corporation finance director, says the purpose behind offering waivers to Wall Street firms that had settled fraud or lesser charges is to protect investors. By EDWARD WYATT Published: February 3, 2012 WASHINGTON — Even as the Securities and Exchange Commission has stepped up its investigations of Wall Street in the last decade, the agency has repeatedly allowed the biggest firms to avoid punishments specifically meant to apply to David Ruder, a former S.E.C. chairman. By granting exemptions to laws and regulations that act as a deterrent to securities fraud, the S.E.C. has let financial giants like JPMorganChase, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America continue to have advantages reserved for the most dependable companies, making it easier for them to raise money from investors, for example, and to avoid liability from lawsuits if their financial forecasts turn out to be wrong. An analysis by The New York Times of S.E.C. investigations over the last decade found nearly 350 instances where the agency has given big Wall Street institutions and other financial companies a pass on those or other sanctions. Those instances also include waivers permitting firms to underwrite certain stock and bond sales and manage mutual fund portfolios. JPMorganChase, for example, has settled six fraud cases in the last 13 years, including one with a $228 million settlement last summer, but it has obtained at least 22 waivers, in part by arguing that it has “a strong record of compliance with securities laws.” Bank of America and Merrill Lynch, which merged in 2009, have settled 15 fraud cases and received at least 39 waivers. Only about a dozen companies — Dell, General Electric and United Rentals among them — have felt the full force of the law after issuing misleading information about their businesses. Citigroup was the only major Wall Street bank among them. In 11 years, it settled six fraud cases and received 25 waivers before it lost most of its privileges in 2010. By granting those waivers, the S.E.C. allowed Wall Street firms to have powerful advantages, securities experts and former regulators say. The institutions remained protected under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, which makes it easier to avoid class-action shareholder lawsuits. And the companies continue to use rules that let them instantly raise money publicly, without waiting weeks for government approvals. Without the waivers, the companies could not move as quickly as rivals that had not settled fraud charges to sell stocks or bonds when market conditions were most favorable. Other waivers allowed Wall Street firms that had settled fraud or lesser charges to continue managing mutual funds and to help small, private companies raise money from investors — two types of business from which they otherwise would be excluded. “The ramifications of losing those exemptions are enormous to these firms,” David S. Ruder, a former S.E.C. chairman, said in an interview. Without the waivers, agreeing to settle charges of securities fraud “might have vast repercussions affecting the ability of a firm to continue to stay in business,” he said. S.E.C. officials say that they grant the waivers to keep stock and bond markets open to companies with legitimate capital-raising needs. Ensuring such access is as important to its mission as protecting investors, regulators said. The agency usually revokes the privileges when a case involves false or misleading statements about a company’s own business. It does not do so when the commission has charged a Wall Street firm with lying about, say, a specific mortgage security that it created and is selling to investors, a charge Goldman Sachs settled in 2010. Different parts of the company — corporate officers versus a sales force, for example — are responsible for different types of statements, officials say. “The purpose of taking away this simplified path to capital is to protect investors, not to punish a company,” said Meredith B. Cross, the S.E.C.’s corporation finance director, referring to the fast-track offering privilege. “You’re not seeing the times that waivers aren’t being granted, because the companies don’t ask when they know the answer will be no.” Others, however, argue that the pattern is another example of the government being too soft on Wall Street as it has become a much larger part of the economy in recent decades. President Obama, in his State of the Union address, asked Congress last week for tougher laws that make “the penalties for fraud count.” Federal judges in New York and Wisconsin recently criticized the S.E.C. for its habit of settling cases by allowing companies to promise not to violate the law in the future. The commission has frequently turned the other cheek when the companies again settle similar fraud cases. S.E.C. officials have defended that practice by saying they do not have the resources to take cases to court rather than settle. They recently asked Congress to toughen laws and to raise financial penalties for fraud violations. But the repeated granting of waivers suggests that the agency does in fact have tools it often does not use, critics say. Close to half of the waivers went to repeat offenders — Wall Street firms that had settled previous fraud charges by agreeing never again to violate the very laws that the S.E.C. was now saying that they had broken. Page 2 of 2) Senator Charles E. Grassley, an Iowa Republican who serves on committees that oversee the S.E.C., said he was baffled that the agency had recently asked Congress for more enforcement powers when it had ceded much of the power it already had. “It’s really hard to see why the S.E.C. isn’t using all of its weapons to deter fraud,” he said. “It makes already weak punishment even weaker by waiving the regulations that impose significant consequences on the companies that settle fraud charges. No wonder recidivism is such a problem.” The Times analysis found 11 instances where companies that had settled fraud cases had actually lost the special privilege for fast-track stock or bond offerings, versus 49 times that the S.E.C. granted waivers from the punishment to Wall Street firms since 2005. The analysis counted 91 waivers since 2000 granting immunity from lawsuits, and 204 waivers related to raising money for small companies and managing mutual funds. The S.E.C. does not maintain a central database of how many companies lose special status or are denied waivers. Its records of granted waivers are scattered across several databases on its Web site. JPMorganChase is among the big Wall Street firms that have been granted multiple waivers with nearly every settlement of S.E.C. fraud charges. Last July, it agreed to pay $228 million to settle civil and criminal charges that it cheated cities and towns by rigging bids with other Wall Street firms to invest the money raised by several municipalities for capital projects. JPMorgan received three waivers related to that case for privileges that it otherwise would have lost. But the S.E.C. said the company’s fraudulent actions didn’t involve misleading investors about JPMorgan’s business. “That distinction doesn’t do it for me,” said Richard W. Painter, a corporate law professor at the University of Minnesota and the co-author of a casebook on securities litigation and enforcement. “If a company has trouble telling the truth to investors in one batch of securities it is underwriting, I would not have confidence that it would tell the truth to investors about its own securities.” Despite six securities fraud settlements in 13 years, JPMorgan rarely if ever lost any special privileges. It has been awarded at least 22 waivers since 2003, with most of its S.E.C. settlements generating two or more. In seeking the reprieves, lawyers for JPMorgan stated in letters to the S.E.C. that it should grant a waiver because the company has “a strong record of compliance with the securities laws.” The company declined to comment for this article. Citigroup is one of the rare Wall Street giants that has lost significant privileges recently. In October 2010, the bank paid $75 million to settle charges that it misled investors in 2007 about the size of its holdings of assets backed by subprime mortgages. The company told investors that it had about $13 billion of those risky investments on its balance sheet, when it really had more than $50 billion, according to the S.E.C. Because those accusations involved Citigroup’s statements about its own financial well-being, the company lost for three years the ability to insulate itself from lawsuits over mistaken predictions about its business. It also lost, for the same three years, the exemption for “well-known seasoned issuers,” which allowed it to quickly raise capital in the securities markets. As a result, Citigroup has had to file thousands of pages of new documents with the S.E.C. and wait weeks for the agency’s approvals to make itself eligible to sell stocks, bonds and other securities to the public. Citigroup declined to comment on whether the sanctions have had any effect on its business. Wrangling over waivers is an important part of the negotiations when companies accused of fraud discuss a settlement with the S.E.C., and sometimes it can involve a form of corporate plea bargaining to a lesser charge. In 2009, the S.E.C. was negotiating with Bank of America over charges that it had failed to disclose to shareholders that billions of dollars in bonuses were being paid to Merrill Lynch executives just as Bank of America was bailing out the firm. Because the S.E.C. charges involved fraudulent statements by both Bank of America and Merrill Lynch about their financial status, the merged company was in danger of losing its special privileges for both offerings and forecasts. According to a report by the then-S.E.C. inspector general, H. David Kotz, the waiver issue “was of such importance to B. of A. that the settlement became contingent on B. of A.’s receipt of the waiver.” Bank of America apparently won the argument but would not comment on it. It settled the case by agreeing to a $150 million payment. The S.E.C., however, decided not to charge the bank with fraud, which could have endangered the bank’s special status. Instead, the S.E.C. charged Bank of America with violating disclosure rules for shareholder materials and proxies, and Bank of America kept its privileges. S.E.C. officials said they would not discuss how they arrived at specific settlements and declined to comment on the Citigroup, JP Morgan or Bank of America settlements. Thomas Lee Hazen, a securities law professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said that it is understandable that the S.E.C. might relax some potential sanctions on Wall Street firms — where it appears that lessons have been learned, or when a fine is thought to be sufficient punishment. “The ripple effect of having a sanction that could shut them down or could seriously impede a company’s operations would seriously affect a lot of innocent customers,” he said. “It’s a very fine balance. That’s not to say that the S.E.C. is striking the balance properly. That is in the eye of the beholder.” GOP Seeks ‘Pelosi Provision’ in Insider Trading Bill Wednesday, 08 Feb 2012 02:38 PM By Dan Weil More ways to share…
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Technocrati 6.4 House Republican leaders hope to add a provision to the congressional insider trading bill that would forbid members of Congress from gaining special entrance into initial public offerings (IPOs) of stock. The plank is known as the “Pelosi provision,” a House GOP aide told The Hill.
Pelosi participated in Visa’s 2008 IPO under shady circumstances. While she denied any wrongdoing, a “60 Minutes” report last year cited her and several other members of Congress, suggesting Pelosi and her husband benefited from the Visa IPO at the same time Congress was considering fresh rules for credit card companies.
The “Pelosi Provision” may spark opposition from Democrats. The current legislation has broad support from both sides of the aisle. Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill declined to comment on the planned provision. “We look forward to reviewing the text of the bill Leader [Eric] Cantor is writing in secret,” he told The Hill.
The Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act, originally offered in the House, has now reached 283 co-sponsors, including 99 Republicans. The Senate overwhelmingly passed its version last week.
Democrats accused Cantor of slowing work on the bill last year, but he has put it at the top of the agenda for 2012.
Read more on Newsmax.com: GOP Seeks ‘Pelosi Provision’ in Insider Trading Bill. Version of this article appeared in print on February 3, 2012, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: S.E.C. Is Avoiding Tough Sanctions For Large Banks. Sam Zell: Government Hinders Housing Recovery, Creates Mortgage ‘Moral Hazard’ Thursday, 09 Feb 2012 07:30 AM By Forrest Jones More ways to share…
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Technocrati 7. 8. 9. 10.0 Government intervention in the housing sector is doing more harm than good and is actually hurting recovery instead of helping it, says real estate mogul Sam Zell.
President Barack Obama has proposed expanding government efforts to allow millions of struggling homeowners refinance their mortgages.
The problem with government intervention is that it doesn’t allow the market to correct itself and fully recover, Zell says.
“Rather than let the elements of the business world take care of the problems, we basically stopped the process of creating market clearing,” Zell tells CNBC. “ Had we allowed the market to clear without trying to stop reality…we would have a healthy housing market today.”
One problem facing the housing sector today is that it’s too easy for distressed homeowners to walk away and leave the bank holding the property, Zell says.
“We are the only country in the world where you can borrow money on a house and walk away from it. Everywhere else, all the people in Europe, all the people who borrow money in Brazil, they’re all personally liable for 100 percent of the debt. So by virtue of not being personally liable, we’ve created a giant moral hazard,” Zell says.
That has to change.
“Would I change the policy? Absolutely … I think you have a giant moral hazard that must be eliminated. If you borrow money to buy a house, how you cannot be responsible?”
Experts say Republicans in Congress will kill President Obama’s home refinance proposal anyway due to its increased participation of government in the housing sector.
“The president pretty clearly signaled that [the program] would need some kind of congressional action,” says Brian Gardner, senior vice president of Washington research at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, according to U.S. News & World Report.
President Obama’s 2013 budget sets much of the agenda for the stormy election season ahead. These points will help you make sense of the chaos. Congress Sets the Budget: The fact is Congress, not the president, ultimately controls the federal purse strings. While much hoopla will accompany President Obama’s 2013 budget, presidential budget proposals often serve more as a political billboard than a framework for how money is collected and spent by the government.
So President Obama’s budget will provide talking points for his 2012 re-election campaign and targets for the Republicans who seek to defeat him.
“Every budget proposal is partly a serious policy document and partly a political statement,”Stan Collender, a former staffer for both the House and Senate Budget Committees, told msnbc.com.
No Budget, No Problem: Not only can Congress reject the president’s budget, it doesn’t even have to vote on it. Congress has little incentive to vote on the budget this year. In addition to Republican opposition, many Democrats in swing districts won’t want to go on record voting for any kind of tax increase.
Last year the Senate rejected President Obama’s 2012 budget by a 97-0 vote.
In fact, Congress has not approved a budget for over 1,000 days, getting by with stopgap spending bills in the interim.
A Taxing Issue: As expected, President Obama’s 2013 budget includes tax increases for the wealthy. That will keep tax issues in the spotlight this year, since Republicans have vowed to oppose tax increases of any kind.
The president included the so-called “Buffett Rule,” which creates a 30% minimum tax for anyone making $1 million or more. It would replace the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT).
More controversial is the proposal to tax dividends as ordinary income for those making $250,000 and up. Now the top dividends rate is 15%. President Obama would also raise the top rate on taxes on capital gains from 15% to 20%.
Those proposals will help President Obama position himself as a defender of the middle class against the rich, while giving the GOP ammunition to accuse him of “class warfare.” Another Year Older and Deeper in Debt: Although President Obama will say his budget includes $4 trillion in deficit reductions over the next decade, Republicans will tell you that the 2013 budget deficit is $1.33 trillion.
That’s the fourth straight year the president’s budget deficit has exceeded $1 trillion. Expect to hear a lot about it, as the Republicans will waste no opportunity to remind Americans of President Obama’s promise in 2009 to cut the deficit in half.
It also could reignite the debate over the national debt, which is now over $15 trillion and equal to the country’s annual gross domestic product.
Fuzzy Math: You’d think the government would at least be able to keep accurate figures on how much money it spends, but no. It literally depends on whom you ask.
For example, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) put 2010 spending by the Department of Health and Human Services at $854 billion. The Census Bureau says the figure is $944 billion. Differences in accounting methods account for the whopping $90 billion discrepancy.
And that doesn’t get into all the accounting voodoo in the budget itself, which often relies on unrealistic assumptions.
“To Washington, these are rounding errors,” Pete Sepp, executive director of the Alexandria, Virginia-based National Taxpayers Union, told Bloomberg News. “To the rest of America, this is real money that could help real people with real problems.”
newsletter@globalresearch.ca via globalresearch.ccsend.com
Obama’s Eligibility…Not One Shred of Authentic Verifiable Evidence By Craig Andresen on March 4, 2012 at 1:22 pm In the wake of Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s press conference regarding his Cold Case Posse’s investigation into Obama’s documents, we are left with some questions. These questions are NOT new questions but they bear asking again and now, since an official law enforcement agency has finally investigated and issued a report, perhaps these questions gain in validity. Yes, many others have raised these questions and rightfully so. The questions began nearly 4 years ago but, for the sake of sticking to the documents in question, we will confine our points to questions raised within the last year. On April 25th 2011, Obama “released” his “official certificate of live birth” in a press conference from the white house briefing room. Nearly immediately, those who knew of such things as computers, graphics, layering and such, called into question the process employed in creating this birth certificate. Not for a minute should their efforts be discounted in questioning the validity of it. Indeed, they set the stage for this official law enforcement investigation and without doubt, they deserve credit for their work. The difference is, while they did indeed know their stuff, they were not affiliated with an official law enforcement investigation and therefore, were ripe for ridicule, ripe for what we now KNOW was UNWARRANTED ridicule. Now, to the questions regarding the long form birth certificate which MUST be asked, AGAIN, because of the OFFICIAL LAW ENFORCEMENT INVESTIGATION, conducted by the office of Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Maricopa County Arizona. 1) If a REAL and AUTHENTIC certificate of live birth exists, showing Barack Obama to have been born in Hawaii on August 4th, 1961, why then produce a forgery? Answer 1) He wasn’t born in Hawaii on August 4th, 1961. Answer 2) He was born in a foreign country. Answer 3) Barack Obama Sr. is not his real father. All of these are possibilities in and of themselves or perhaps a combination of them are true. Whatever the truth might be, one truth is clear; there would be no reason whatsoever to manufacture a forged certificate of live birth if an authentic document exists. 2) Since the document in question IS a forgery, WHO forged it? Answer) Sheriff Arpaio clearly stated neither he nor his Cold Case Posse is accusing Obama himself of creating the forgery but he also made clear, they HAVE identified a “Person of Interest” in the creation of the forgery. 3) Did Obama know that he was presenting a forged certificate of live birth on April 25th, 2011? Answer 1) Yes he did. Answer 2) No, he was duped. To believe he was duped, one would have to believe that Obama believed everything which was on that forged certificate was true. He would have to believe he was indeed born in Hawaii, on August 4th, 1961, that Obama Sr. was his father etc when in fact either some of it or all of it was a lie told to him, we can only suspect, by his mother and his family and throughout the years, no one related to him or no one who was a close family friend who knew the truth ever imparted that truth or alluded to it, to Obama. If Obama DID know the document was forged, he perpetrated a fraud upon the American public from the white house briefing room on April 25th, 2011. 4) When was the forged document created? Answer 1) In 1961 Answer 2) In 2008 Answer 3) In 2011 As the technology employed to create this forgery didn’t exist in 1961, it could not have been forged at that time. Had the forgery been created in 2008 or there about, when Obama decided to run for president, why not release it at THAT time rather than wait more than 2 more years? It seems most likely that the forgery was created shortly before its release in April of 2011 in direct response to Trump’s vow to investigate the matter. Now, let’s look at the other document in question regarding the Arpaio investigation…The Obama Selective Service Registration card. Sheriff Arpaio’s Cold Case Posse was able to confirm, just as they did with the long form birth certificate, that the Selective Service Registration card, with 100% certainty, is a forgery. Here are the questions: 1) Why forge a Selective Service Registration card? Answer 1) The authentic card could not be found. Answer 2) Obama never registered for Selective Service. As other cards can easily be found including cards from those who registered for Selective Service in the same United States Post Office as the forged card indicates Obama registered, it would appear to be HIGHLY improbable that Obama’s card has gone missing. It seems much MORE likely that Obama never registered, as was required by law, for Selective Service. 2) When was the forged Obama Selective Service Card created? Answer 1) In 1980 Answer 2) In 2008 Answer 3) in 2011 Here again, if an authentic Selective Service Registration card was ever filled out by Obama in 1980, it would exist today and no forgery would be needed. It is doubtful that the forgery was created in 2011. Most likely, the forgery was created in 2008 as Obama was approaching the nomination. The Cold Case Posse showed how it was most likely created with the focus being the pica date stamp. Since a 1980 (note the 4-digit year number) did not remain in existence in 2008, a 2008 pica date insert was cut in half and the 08 (note the 2 digit year number) was inverted (turned upside down) to record as 80 (again, note the 2 digit year number) which is not at all in accordance with a real pica date stamp used by the United States Post Office. 3) Who forged the Obama Selective Service Registration card? If, as it seems most likely to be, that the Obama Selective Service card forgery was created in 2008, it would appear most likely that it was created by someone within the DNC. This, if it is indeed the case, would be because in the vetting process, at some point, when it became apparent that Obama would be the nominee, certain documents which should exist relating to him, simply didn’t exist and to cover for these missing documents, i.e., the Selective Service Registration, forgeries were then created. 4) Did Obama know his Selective Service Registration card was forged? Answer 1) No, he was duped Answer 2) Yes he did. Only Obama himself would know for sure whether he ever registered for Selective Service. If he did, an authentic Selective Service Card would be in existence today. If he did not, he would know it and the forged Selective Service Registration card in his name, would be known by him, to be a forgery and as that card has been displayed for years, as his, he would have known for years that a forged Selective Service Registration card was being purported as authentic in his name. Finally, the microfilm issue highlighted in the Sheriff Arpaio press conference. One of the questions investigated by the Cold Case Posse revolved around possible entry into the U.S. by Obama’s mother. Anyone entering the United States, citizen, or foreigner, is required to fill out an official card through INS. It is thought that, sometime within the first week of August 1961, Stanley Ann Dunham may have entered the United States from overseas bringing with her, a baby. Suspiciously missing from the INS records thus far investigated was that very week. Microfilm reel #184 shows only a couple of cards before that reel goes blank. Reel #185 picks up with August 8th, 1961. Missing completely are August 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th, 1961. 1) When did that week’s record go missing? 2) Who removed that week’s record? 3) Why is it missing? At this point, we have no idea when that single week’s portion of the INS microfilm record went missing. As to who was responsible, we can only guess it rises to a higher level than the DNC. While it would be relatively simple for the DNC to create forged documents to stand in for nonexistent documents, the INS is a federal bureau and missing records are far different from records which never existed. It seems necessary for someone within the INS to have removed any portion of the INS records. This would mean that someone else would have had to facilitated in the call for that portion of the record to have been removed. Did money change hands in this process? Did someone high up in the government instruct someone at INS to remove that portion of the record? Those are questions which now need to be asked and answered. As to WHY that week’s microfilm record is missing, we can only guess that it showed something which would not be conducive to Obama and his election to the office of president. That portion of the INS record could have shown Stanley Ann Dunham and baby arriving in the United States. While this portion of the microfilm record pertains to entries through or across the pacific, the records pertaining to Atlantic entries has not yet been provided but, considering Stanley Ann Dunham then lived in Hawaii, the Pacific entries would be most important. This of course would indicate that the Barack Obama who was elected to the office of President in 2008, may well have been born on foreign soil and regardless of his father’s citizenship status, is FAR, FAR away from being constitutionally eligible to serve as either the President or Vice President of the United States. Connecting the Dots It must be pointed out that connecting these dots is my doing and was not part of the Sheriff Arpaio press conference nor has it been eluded to by the Cold Case Posse. The dots can indeed be connected given the results made known from the Cold Case Posse because of the Arpaio investigation and to do so, we must go back to the top of this article. The long form birth certificate displayed by Obama on April 25th, 2011, has been shown, via this investigation, to be a forgery. If Obama was born outside the country, which may well be indicated by the missing week’s record of microfilm provided by INS, Obama would be a foreigner. As a foreigner, he would not have filed a Selective Service Registration necessitating the need for a forged Selective Service Registration card to be created and if a foreigner, an authentic certificate of live birth simply would not exist in Hawaii which would then have to be provided, in April of 2011, as a forged document. The idea that Obama is a foreigner is also bolstered by another piece of information garnered by the Cold Case Posse. It was clearly stated that the Posse is in possession of a legal affidavit stating that when introduced to Bill Ayers, Obama was introduced as a FOREIGN STUDENT looking for financial aid about his education. From this, only 2 conclusions can be made. 1) Obama WAS indeed a foreign student which would mean he was NOT a United States citizen.2) Obama was masquerading as a foreign student in which case he was perpetrating a fraud. Given the forged birth certificate, the forged Selective Service Registration, and the weeks’ worth of missing INS microfilm records, and his introduction to Ayers as a foreign student, it becomes more probable in connecting the dots, that Obama was indeed foreign born. Anyone, regardless of party affiliation, who is aware of this information and either dismisses it as bull, ignores it or does not, for any reason, believe a full congressional investigation is warranted is actively assisting in the perpetration of fraud and is, in fact, actively engaged in the dismantling of our Constitution. This includes sitting Members of Congress, the media, the RNC, the DNC and citizens at large. Combine what we have been presented via an official law enforcement agency’s investigation with other evidence acquired via investigations such as the apparent fraud regarding Obama’s Social Security number and the only credible conclusion can be that we have no idea who the man occupying our oval office really is. Any state or private entities pursuing the removal of Obama’s name from 2012 ballots must use this evidence, acquired through the Arpaio Cold Case Posse in their legal challenges. The Inescapable Conclusion Forget the valid arguments regarding Obama being ineligible due to the “Natural Born Citizen” clause contained in the Constitution resulting from his father’s lack of citizenship status. At this point, now more than 3 years into his term… Not one single shred of authentic evidence has been presented to prove Barack Obama is even a United States CITIZEN. We have a forged birth certificate, a forged Selective Service Registration, what by all accounts is a fraudulent Social Security number, missing INS records, sworn legal affidavits indicating he was a foreign student…But not one single verified, authentic document proving Obama to be even a United States citizen. Not one. For those who believe this to be purely partisan, think again. If all that is requires for a liberal to serve as President is a handful of forged and fraudulent documents than so too would a conservative be able to point to forgeries and fraud as “proof” of citizenship. If a foreign citizen, of any political party is allowed to serve either as a Member of congress or as President or Vice President, our republic is finished. If, upon such 100% certainty of forgery as exists with Obama’s birth certificate and Selective Service Registration, as shown by a law enforcement entity and verified by forensic document experts is allowed to be considered nothing but a distraction or not worthy of a full and immediate intensive congressional investigation, as it regards our Constitution, national security and the Presidency, duplicity on the part of the Members of congress in allowing the possibility of a foreign national to serve as President today or in the future will be precedent setting. For additional information please see: http://www.thenationalpatriot.com/obamas-eligibility-not-one-shred-of-authentic-verifiable-evidence/#more-4447 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_for_Worldwide_Interbank_Financial_Telecommunication Browse Search QuizzesGamesOn This Day SubscribeLogin Great Recession ARTICLE · Introduction & Quick Facts FAST FACTS ADDITIONAL INFO HomePolitics, Law & GovernmentEconomics & Economic Systems Great Recession economics [2007–2009] Alternate titles: global recession Print Cite Share More BY Brian Duignan | View Edit History
mortgagesubprime mortgagefinancial crisis of 2007–08austeritysubprime lending See all facts and data → Great Recession, economic recession that was precipitated in the United States by the financial crisis of 2007–08 and quickly spread to other countries. Beginning in late 2007 and lasting until mid-2009, it was the longest and deepest economic downturn in many countries, including the United States, since the Great Depression (1929–c. 1939). The financial crisis, a severe contraction of liquidity in global financial markets, began in 2007 as a result of the bursting of the U.S. housing bubble. From 2001 successive decreases in the prime rate (the interest rate that banks charge their “prime,” or low-risk, customers) had enabled banks to issue mortgage loans at lower interest rates to millions of customers who normally would not have qualified for them (seesubprime mortgage; subprime lending), and the ensuing purchases greatly increased demand for new housing, pushing home prices ever higher. When interest rates finally began to climb in 2005, demand for housing, even among well-qualified borrowers, declined, causing home prices to fall. Partly because of the higher interest rates, most subprime borrowers, the great majority of whom held adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs), could no longer afford their loan payments. Nor could they save themselves, as they formerly could, by borrowing against the increased value of their homes or by selling their homes at a profit. (Indeed, many borrowers, both prime and subprime, found themselves “underwater,” meaning that they owed more on their mortgage loans than their homes were worth.) As the number of foreclosures increased, banks ceased lending to subprime customers, which further reduced demand and prices. As the subprime mortgage market collapsed, many banks found themselves in serious trouble, because a significant portion of their assets had taken the form of subprime loans or bonds created from subprime loans together with less-risky forms of consumer debt (seemortgage-backed security; MBS). In part because the underlying subprime loans in any given MBS were difficult to track, even for the institution that owned them, banks began to doubt each other’s solvency, leading to an interbank credit freeze, which impaired the ability of any bank to extend credit even to financially healthy customers, including businesses. Accordingly, businesses were forced to reduce their expenses and investments, leading to widespread job losses, which predictably reduced demand for their products, because many of their former customers were now unemployed or underemployed. As the portfolios of even prestigious banks and investment firms were revealed to be largely fictional, based on nearly worthless (“toxic”) assets, many such institutions applied for government bailouts, sought mergers with healthier firms, or declared bankruptcy. Other major businesses whose products were generally sold with consumer loans suffered significant losses. The car companies General Motors and Chrysler, for example, declared bankruptcy in 2009 and were forced to accept partial government ownership through bailout programs. During all of this, consumer confidence in the economy was understandably reduced, leading most Americans to curtail their spending in anticipation of harder times ahead, a trend that dealt another blow to business health. All these factors combined to produce and prolong a deep recession in the United States. From the beginning of the recession in December 2007 to its official end in June 2009, real gross domestic product (GDP)—i.e., GDP as adjusted for inflation or deflation—declined by 4.3 percent, and unemployment increased from 5 percent to 9.5 percent, peaking at 10 percent in October 2009. Skip Ad As millions of people lost their homes, jobs, and savings, the poverty rate in the United States increased, from 12.5 percent in 2007 to more than 15 percent in 2010. In the opinion of some experts, a greater increase in poverty was averted only by federal legislation, the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), which provided funds to create and preserve jobs and to extend or expand unemployment insurance and other safety net programs, including food stamps. Notwithstanding those measures, during 2007–10 poverty among both children and young adults (those aged 18–24) reached about 22 percent, representing increases of 4 percent and 4.7 percent, respectively. Much wealth was lost as U.S. stock prices—represented by the S&P 500 index—fell by 57 percent between 2007 and 2009 (by 2013 the S&P had recovered that loss, and it soon greatly exceeded its 2007 peak). Altogether, between late 2007 and early 2009, American households lost an estimated $16 trillion in net worth; one quarter of households lost at least 75 percent of their net worth, and more than half lost at least 25 percent. Households headed by younger adults, particularly by persons born in the 1980s, lost the most wealth, measured as a percentage of what had been accumulated by earlier generations in similar age groups. They also took the longest time to recover, and some of them still had not recovered even 10 years after the end of the recession. In 2010 the wealth of the median household headed by a person born in the 1980s was nearly 25 percent below what earlier generations of the same age group had accumulated; the shortfall increased to 41 percent in 2013 and remained at more than 34 percent as late as 2016. Those setbacks led some economists to speak of a “lost generation” of young persons who, because of the Great Recession, would remain poorer than earlier generations for the rest of their lives. Losses of wealth and speed of recovery also varied considerably by socioeconomic class prior to the downturn, with the wealthiest groups suffering the least (in percentage terms) and recovering the soonest. For such reasons, it is generally agreed that the Great Recession worsened inequality of wealth in the United States, which had already been significant. According to one study, during the first two years after the official end of the recession, from 2009 to 2011, the aggregate net worth of the richest 7 percent of households increased by 28 percent while that of the lower 93 percent declined by 4 percent. The richest 7 percent thus increased their share of the nation’s total wealth from 56 percent to 63 percent. Another study found that between 2010 and 2013 the aggregate net worth of the richest 1 percent of Americans increased by 7.8 percent, representing an increase of 1.4 percent in their share of the nation’s total wealth (from 33.9 percent to 35.3 percent). As the financial crisis spread from the United States to other countries, particularly in western Europe (where several major banks had invested heavily in American MBSs), so too did the recession. Most industrialized countries experienced economic slowdowns of varying severity (notable exceptions were China, India, and Indonesia), and many responded with stimulus packages similar to the ARRA. In some countries the recession had serious political repercussions. In Iceland, which was particularly hard-hit by the financial crisis and suffered a severe recession, the government collapsed, and the country’s three largest banks were nationalized. In Latvia, which, along with the other Baltic countries, was also affected by the financial crisis, the country’s GDP shrank by more than 25 percent in 2008–09, and unemployment reached 22 percent during the same period. Meanwhile, Spain, Greece, Ireland, Italy, and Portugal suffered sovereign debt crises that required intervention by the European Union, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and resulted in the imposition of painful austerity measures. In all the countries affected by the Great Recession, recovery was slow and uneven, and the broader social consequences of the downturn—including, in the United States, lower fertility rates, historically high levels of student debt, and diminished job prospects among young adults—were expected to linger for many years. Brian Duignan Learn More in these related Britannica articles: · United States: Tackling the Great Recession, the Party of No, and the emergence of the Tea Party movement …referred to as the “Great Recession” (which officially dated from December 2007 to June 2009 in the United States), included the most dismal two-quarter period for the U.S. economy in more than 60 years: GDP contracted by 8.9 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008 and by 6.7 percent…
depression, in economics, a major downturn in the business cycle characterized by sharp and sustained declines in economic activity; high rates of unemployment, poverty, and homelessness; increased rates of personal and business bankruptcy; massive declines in stock markets; and great reductions in international trade and capital movements. A depression may also be defined as a particularly severe and long-lasting form of recession, where the latter is generally understood, relative to a national economy, as a period of at least two consecutive quarters of decline in real (inflation-adjusted) GDP, or gross domestic product. According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, which maintains records of the cyclical peaks and troughs in U.S. economic activity dating to 1854, a recession is “a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales,” while a depression is “a particularly severe period of economic weakness” that is commonly understood to last from the onset of economic decline to the return of normal economic activity. Although there is no specific definition of depression that all economists accept (and thus no universal agreement about how many depressions the United States has experienced since 1854), economic historians generally agree that the Great Depression that began in 1929 was the worst economic downturn in U.S. history and indeed the worst ever experienced by the Western industrialized world. In the United States, for example, industrial production fell nearly 47 percent, GDP declined by 30 percent, and unemployment reached more than 20 percent in the period between 1929 and 1933. Great Depression: breadline Breadline in New York City’s Bryant Park during the Great Depression. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc.
Martin Salisbury was a stalwart man, in his early thirties by the standards of the society in which he lived, rather tall, rugged, and dark-complexed with a bronze look about his physique. His face, the look of pure, untouched youth as if the purity of the honey of wild bees along with the scent of naivete’ as a graduate of the Parthenogenetic College of Imperial Dulmania. He was a ‘Dulmen’—a rather muscular specimen of the one world government. In his deep-red cape, knee high bronze sheen guards, the Dulman accentuated his uniform even more with his bold stance. The metallic sheen of his metal fibered clothing outlined well the emblem of the Dulmen government___ a sword crossing a nude female body in a reclining position, leg raised, knee bent; around this curious X was a striking 3-dimensional artwork of flames and famous individuals of the Dulmen history—a history that was so extravagant and inclement as the fury implanted upon the emblem itself, a history largely hidden and inconsistent to any student that might be fully Dulmen.
From Ambrose Hill he could see Maylar City below—a metropolis of gleaming synthetic steel-like tubes, a crystal-clear diamond dome of a glass-like appearance containing tube-shaped structures 2000 feet or more into the air, cris-cross lines creating a patchwork of squares here and there and ant-size dots steadily moving along their lengths: the speedway and their “Zot” Cars, miniature mobile-homes-laboratories built into cozy traveling vehicles; the ‘Zot’ Cars ran on pure atomic energy.
Here and there was a glitter, a gleam would shoot upward from the complex of metal and diamond inside their Bubbles (smooth curved Domes as if growing out of the ground and containing the uniform and expensive homes of the residents). Inside the Domes could be seen tall, stately mansions of Gothic-type architecture with many steps leading to Parthenon temples and Gothic forums, serenely constructed columns and spirals stood independently as if photographed from an ancient Roman city; flawless silver-like parabolic shaped constructions as long, low-radiused bulges of metal coming up from the ground; towering cubical superstructures of almost pure transparency; the ascending circular-levels of the ‘Arena’ distanced above each other. One could also see the crowds of people as floating specks using their transport aides— personal aerial transports mechanisms attached to their waists.
In other parts of the city could be seen two needle-type electrode-anode superstructures jutting crooked and jerking bolts of electricity between the two. These Domes were miles in radius almost nudging Ambrose Hill, and they held the city in a state of controlled air-conditioning and seasonal regulation and adjustment.
Martin took a deep breath of the crisp fresh air. He smiled smugly, then grabbed his cape and briskly swung around and marched into an archway-opening in the side of the cliff.
“Ground level please!” he snapped at the attendant. Attendants were necessary for their auto-air elevators, if only for policing purposes. The Department of Welfare had a high standard of vigil.
It had been a few hours since Martin had been released from his “perimeter of learning” at the University in Zerok, a sister city of the capitol Mylar. From the apex of Ambrose Hill, he could survey his homeland terrain like an inheritor of a vast fortune examining delicate fruit to be plucked at his whim. The enclosure of the elevator subdued his passion somewhat, but his spirits rose to their previous height of the excitement when he was confronted with the huge cinemascope Viewing Screenbefore him; an ingenious way of permitting the passengers to watch their ascent and descent as if they were virtually “falling” or ‘‘ascending’’ along the side of the hill (elevator was not the only mode of travel in Dulmania, but it was shared with several other modes that could have accidents and harm).
The cold, mechanical stare of the attendant was commonplace here in Dulmania—for years, human mice had been stimulated to do tricks and feats in their quest for a bit of cheese: now mankind had become the mice and his blind hopes and vain aspirations had become the cheese.
“Thank you.” Martin looked quickly from side to side as he stepped out of the elevator chamber onto the smooth pavement street which led straight to the city several miles away. A Zot Car of the Department of Welfare swung abruptly in front, its sliding panel moved rapidly (sometimes the Dissolve Mode would be used and an opening would magically appear), revealing the opening to the vehicle as several descending steps permitted Martin easier passage. The panel slid shut. The Zot Car practically made a 90-degree turn and shot down the stretch of highway towards the domed city several miles away.
Before the mighty hulk of the city, all terrestrial creation seemed to bow in ignoble servility!
**********
Chapter Two
The Brain
“Martin! Martin Salisbury,” the voice was almost tearfully happy. An elderly, plump, ruddy-faced man came around his desk, a shining semi sphere suspended a foot or so above the floor, revealing an indented writing panel on one side.
Martin thought it somewhat comical how one looked as if he were sitting in midair aside one of these desks for one was suspended by scientifically controlled jets of air and laser light from vents in the floor as they cushioned one’s body in the air at various heights. This was one’s ‘chair.’
The ruddy-faced man grasped the young lad’s hand: “Martin,” he said again, this time with the concern of a loving father, “It’s good to see you. Please sit next to me.” He led the fellow by the hand a few feet to his desk and pressed a button. Martin smiling broadly was magically elevated into the air. The gentleman pushed another button and Martin floated within pleasant conversation distance.
“Uncle Redress— my friend —” Martin had wet drops of moisture forming in his eyes. He tried to hold back the emotion of tears. Their hands met — they spoke no more for a moment for fear of bursting into raw emotion. After a moment of calm, Uncle Redress spoke.
“Well Martin, tell me, have you really graduated from the Institution of Truth or are you still playing hooky with lush damsels of the Aroian Palaces?”
The remark immediately brought a recurring reminiscence consisting of mosaic gardens, dogwood trees and exotic scrubs, cool, refreshing fountains of sparkling water, giggling adolescence, all geared to counter what fears and frustrations an aristocrat may have in his bustling paradise.
Martin noticed the obvious humor and laughed, “No, Uncle, your Martin has finally graduated—graduated!” Martin slapped his hands almost fanatically on his legs with a sharp snap. “Uncle, you’ll not know the exhilaration I feel – like – like…”
“Like a superman?” It was a musing remark from his uncle.
“Yes! Like a Superman. I am a Superman!” He looked thoughtfully at his Uncle and leaned forward to him, “We are Supermen!”
“Right my son, right.” His Uncle reached into the storage boxes of his desk-sphere and pulled out a capsule of Z-BR8, a drug of mind-bending proportions comparable in utility to the cigarettes smoke several hundred years ago. First there had been the hallucinogens, then Peso Drin, Cobanarcin, till an altogether different specialty arose when the “drug complex” completely broke down and a policing of all used and registered drugs were quarantined by the Momads of the Kausar Regime which added a special toxin to be sold and exchanged in public consumption.
‘‘Care for one?”
“Yes, thank you,” Martin responded.
A quick snap of the capsules between the thumb and fingers and the Z-BR8 ingredient was suddenly absorbed into the bodies’ metabolism. It took only a fraction of a second.
“Tell me my loved one, just what do they instruct in those grand halls of teaching today? You know, it’s been over 130 years since I was strolling the great auditoriums and laboratories,” the uncle’s eyes searched the air longingly as he spoke. “Ah, thaw’s heaven itself! Tell me, please, is Professor Airheart still there?”
Martin was not sure he heard the question correctly for a generation of rewritten history had occurred since his uncle’s attendance at Zerok.
“Uncle!” Martin chuckled, “That was over hundred and forty years ago,” he sobered for a moment, “Professor Airheart was executed…” Martin quickly caught himself; what a foolhardy mistake—things had changed so much since then, one hundred and forty years, especially in Dulmen schemata, could be considered a long time, many generations!
“Executed!” his uncle thundered. “You are mistaken, my son!” Puzzlement shown all over his face, “Professor Airheart…?” Anger began to show on the uncle’s face: “He was one of the greatest political scientists…,” he stopped for he was overcome with his own emotion.
“Ah uncle let us not argue! It’s my first visit!”
Martin was being gracious indeed. He could have his uncle jailed for such arrogance. For a long time, it had been a teaching of the Dulmen government that the elders did not speak out against the younger. The youngsters were so much more previous. All the scientific Mind Control, the Hilam-Hick-8489-Abstraction-Mind-Philosophy was come of age. No oldster tasted of such ‘Truth.’ A knowledge explosion had been started without any scheme of where it would lead them, or who would be smashed beneath its crawl as it progressed. Wisdom and truth, at least that approximation that was deemed coaxial with Dulmen philosophies at that period, came at an earlier age in the Dulmen world – and earlier and earlier.
“I’m sorry! Sorry,” Uncle Redress lowered his head.
“Indeed,” Martin replied softly.
Martin reached over to the desk and took another capsule, doing the same as before releasing the toxin into his body. He looked rather coolly at this uncle.
“You asked about schooling. Many things have changed. Plane A of the early structure of learning has become compressed within a period of several weeks. As you remember, it took a year or more, “ said Martin. “They’ve done away with private isolation chambers. We are now all continued in gravity-free lines forming a ‘hub’ in the air and there are over six hundreds of these levels several miles into the air. This is called a Silo—miles of floating bodies, everyone lined to the ‘Brain,’ the Big Sire, as the students call it. It resembles nothing of the old system. Plan B: it reaches further. You remember the underground Hyper-Thought-Ocean where some four million minds floated in the electromagnetic fluid for at least three days? Now, over 60,000,000 – if need be – can be passed through in a steady flow.”
A receiver rang, a small red light on the desk-sphere was the only evidence.
‘‘Hello?” Uncle Redress spoke into the open air.
“Master Arian, Division G-2, wishes to speak to you and Sire Salisbury – both – at once,” came a clear voice seemingly from midair. “He will be coming along shortly, please,” instructed the midair voice.
Martin’s uncle smiled a bit sheepishly when looking back to the young man, and then almost with a sign of inferiority went on to explain, “Master Arian is also a graduate, short one year than yourself, Martin…”
“Yes, I’ve seen him over the years. I will be happy to confront a fellow student face to face,” confessed Martin.
“As a graduate with honors, Martin, he will soon take my place.” There was only slight shock to the words of the elderly officiate, for the new structure of government was happening so fast that nothing could surprise them anymore.
“He will direct your office soon?” asked Martin unnecessarily. His uncle nodded resolutely.
Within seconds Arian walked into the room. While all three persons present were dressed in the attire of the ancient Roman warriors of Greece, Martin had been the only one wearing the full array of leather-like vinyl-atomic-synthesized-breast covering, and plumed gold helmet. Arian and Sire Redress wore more comfortable clothing consisting of sandals, light metal-fibered clothing with the official Dulmen emblem. The clothing design was generally that of ancient Greece – though Martin, or any of the others, would have not invariably traced clothes to that time; neither did they know that such a country had once existed!
Martin was now holding his helmet in his lap. Martin didn’t stand; Arian bowed reverently to Martin. The young man nodded back. This much protocol was automatic and honorable as breathing to a Dulmen aristocrat.
Arian Yul was a fair complexed, slender, and broad-shouldered fellow. When he was a child of three, he had been the pride and joy of his alleged mother. While his mother had hopes of young Arian becoming an interplanetary pilot in the Dulmen military, Arian had different hopes and expectations. He envied the young bourgeois of the University Forums; these were the reckless and dramatic – ofttimes, violent – protégé’s of the various educational branches of special education. Some would become highly skilled politicians (after one or two scandals), some great doctors (after a murder or two), and perhaps even a few would aspire to engineers and chemical scientists only (following some form of mass destruction on their part; they would call it evidence of their skill).
But Arian didn’t fail on that point and had claimed several atrocities to his record before graduation from the Dulmen reorientation process—a process that was impregnated into every human creature on the face of the Earth. The process reached its acme in aristocracy and the demigods where Dulmania only could they give it the official enjoinment and “stamp of approval.”
“Have you informed Martin of the situation yet, Arian?” the uncle addressed the co-worker-aristocrat. He hovered directly in front of the desk where Uncle Redress extended the drawer exposing the stock of Z-BR8 drugs. Martin took another. Arian simply ignored them.
“Not as yet,” Arian began to realize the true purpose of the visit and needed to get back on track with the true sentiments, his face became serious. He subdued the ‘jets’ beneath him lowering him to the floor, pacing slowly as he spoke.
“Martin, I have a rather weird, complexed story to tell. I don’t really…” his uncle’s eyebrows rose and lowered “…know how to start…Ah…” he glanced at Arian “…perhaps because we don’t really know what we’re up against!”
“That’s what we hope to find out!” Arian added.
Martin noticed the slight confusion and used it as ample opportunity to inject a fresh idea. ‘‘yes, maybe we would go to a local diner for a lunch. Perhaps the atmosphere would be more conducive?”
It was obvious that the bulky framed Department Head had no intention of going into deep discourse now. Perhaps he had more hopes of soliciting the affection of his nephew more appropriately (the latest manufactured replica of Dulmania in human form on public display).
“To the Arena basement?” asked Uncle Mark Redress with a touch of pleasantry.
“Fine. That sounds nice,” Martin nodded. “but let us walk. At the Academy we were taught to walk, not for the fact that our physiques thirsted of it, bit out of the tradition of good health. And we are to walk as the gods we truly are – praise Vera, the heavenly seductress,” he smiled gingerly, “besides, a stroll in this great city would interest me!”
“Swell,” his uncle acknowledged, “we have some great points of interest for such a fine graduate.” There was a touch of humor.
“Come!” Arian graciously bid them to leave with a polite Julius Caesar-Shakspearian gesture of the hand.
Through the passageway thy walked, and just as quickly the wall reproduced itself into a solid mass, the same as before.
**********
Chapter Three
Conspiracy
In full array, the three men briskly walked down the streets of the city, proudly and vainly, as the official gods they claimed. On their waists they carried small boxes that hummed slightly; these are the sensors – a micro spy agency in a box. Through these little boxes, information was fed to and from a central computer and Informational Brain in the Department of Welfare. Any detection of human forms and alien agencies following the three man with possible criminal intent would start the detection and then process the information. It could even smell the aroma of a person within miles, detect their nervous status and, eventually, criminal behavior or intent—then the following arrest! There was no predetermined range.
The mechanism worked in principle of using various sensitive substances and chemical reactions of micro pick-up plates which used electronic modulation of the atomic reactions as recorded and amplified crystal-clean.
(A very simplified example would be the way a sulfur dioxide chemical reaction to wet litmus paper breaking the beam of light to a device recording the intensity of the beam. Substances of various kinds could be used in various chemical reactions involving an accurate measurement of hundreds of odors. Dulmen science had refined it a hundredfold to ‘atoms’ being collected in the air for miles and then identified according to their molecular ‘beds’ — if they had highly classified material to discuss, an alarm would sound the minute any trouble was detected, they weren’t taking any chances.)
Martin was seeing a stunning avenue of white, silver, and green; largely fashioned after the architecture of the ancient Romans – one would think that Martin was on Rome’s Mars Hill but with weird abstractions of the ultramodern interwoven. The beast-like statues on each side of the wide expanse of steps leading to the hill that were skirting the entrance of the Department of Warfare were not lions or bears, but even more grotesque beasts: mutations created in the Dulmen laboratories for battle. The “Bors,” they were called, super strong, raging, furious masses of terror; hide thick, strong as steel (yet flesh); jaws as strong as that of a 20-ton steel trap; multiple arms and tentacles with the tensile strength of diamond that would sweep and slash flagitiously. The Boors, created as a scientists’ vain joke, had become centuries ago an indispensable weapon and had been used by the thousands in battle and herded into conflict to subdue and destroy cities and villages ahead of the on-coming armies.
The pillars of the complex were made of diamonds from the depths of Jupiter and Mars. The steps were carbon synthetics from Dulmen laboratories as if polished gems fit for a god.
Ahead walked the graceful bodies of the maidens of the city strolled; genetically bred, named after Dulmen goddesses of lust, perfect specimens of female invention—they were totally Dulmen in nature. Martin watched them as they majestically climbed the stairs into the shadows of the pillars and columns in their thin, transparent robes revealing their nudeness; some carried jars of perfume; some carried exotic drink—they all were meant to adorn the streets of Mylar City.
“I think you’ll enjoy our Arena Pub,” Uncle Redress informed. “Some of the more noted dignitaries will probably be there.” He was loosening up quite rapidly as denoted by a hidden smile upon his face. The three strolled robustly, capes flipping with vigorous rolls of the cloth in the city breeze. Here, there, the erotic maidens appeared; some childishly laughing as they stood near a well or a fountain or raced around green foliage or trees. Everything appeared programmed.
It was dusk and golden hues appeared in the sky outside of the domed city which allowed a majestic view of the setting sun. A flash appeared as Dulmen spacecraft passed silently over the domed city in perfect unison and coordination—small balls of light which suddenly veered in a 90-degree turn, then disappearing at great speed.
The city had begun to light up; fountains were rainbow colors; there were no streetlights—things lit up; a pillar there, a statue here; a tower; an archway; a stainless steel-like structure, a rotundum of many stories high and many hundreds of feet wide, lit up the city at night highlighting gigantic Dulmen emblems. People could be seen going up and down the structure, carried by the midair suspension mechanisms seen as thousands of dots moving uniformly.
If the three aristocrats could have known of previous eras in history, they would have known of an unknown Roman poet of the third century A.D lustfully wrote his verse on the Eve of St. Venus:
So, the petalled crimsons have unveiled their blush,
And a flame of roses breaks from the warm clusters,
The goddess herself has bidden the roses loosen,
The raiment from their maiden buds,
To be naked virgin birds in the fresh daybreak.
But since those millions of passing moments had been so fettered from their senses, they would probably espouse a similar poem of one their contemporary poets, Zol:
Computer quadrant A – strobe, strobe, strobe,
Take all that is within this heart of mine,
And feel the passion rise,
Computer quadrant E – connect, link, charge,
For before the night’s reprieve,
Our lusts will all run dry.
Poems were all usually synchronized with the deranged minds of the Dulmens’ Brain, an insanity that had become conformity and a berserk reasoning that had become the norm.
The men were in active conversation, Arian gesturing quickly with his hands as if in symphonic proportions, a thrust of his hands here and there. Uncle Redress was more consistent, his hands a steady shaking of his fists. Martin was a little more than interested in what was being said glancing down and forwards over and over in pensive thought ad serious concern.
(For they were but smothered, mindless creatures, totally under the watchful eye of that largely unseen but forever present Thing that was lurking behind all earthly creation whose astral eyes that treated mundane existence as if cogs in the overall sardonic game. To see them from the vantage point of our Hidden Jupiter, they are but synthetic manikins on a large chess board of human activity painted with realistic, sweet smiles and ostentatious glares, but nevertheless as empty as the clay and dirt from which mankind was once constructed. Even their language was styled and put-on.)
The story Martin was hearing unfolded before him was indeed intriguing—-for anyone who was aware of the Dulmen hierarchy and its exotic methods of espionage—-for anyone to escape the detection of The Brain stationed deep within the bowels of the Earth (far below even The Department ofTruth, its sister Department of Welfare, the Thought Police and The Welfare Patrol) was indeed fantastic. Dulmen people were not only watched, but their lives were programmed and computed!
But this is what the indications were: somewhere, somehow, persons unknown has been detected with no electronic linkage whatsoeverwith the Central Brain. How startling, for everything had been checked over and over; there were no flaws in the components of the computer; the hanumen monsters which crawled the limbs of the Big Sire reported resoundingly that all was well. The alarm systems were functioning perfectly. Everything was completely within the prescribed framework built upon Handleson-Berg system of failsafe.
One of the hundreds of new innovations in the Ultra Computer was that of Mean Time to Failure had been reduced to a nominal minimum by self-regulation of all electronic and mechanical parts of The Brain itself. The whole body of the computer was, in effect, a pulsating, scintillating organism mimicking flesh and blood organisms. The link-up leads were fashioned much after the nucleotides in the DNA arrangement of the human body; the electronic logic circuitry after the genetic chain that might be found in deoxyribonucleic acid; there were many more comparisons that were numerous and fantastic.
A ride through the computer shafts of the Big Sire was a psychedelic adventure to anyone of a knightlier bent. A full, three-hour excursion could be made in gravity-controlled projectiles in the shafts traveling through flashing circuitry and shimmering, crawling walls of flesh-like metals and synthetic ‘cells.’ From the middle of a shaft to the end of its radius was one mile: A multitude of Computer Projectiles traveled each shaft of the thousands of shafts throughout the computer.
No one knew the exact extent or range of The Brain but the Brain itself—-this audacity was tolerated only in the fairyland of Dulmenia!
**********
Chapter Four
Nowhere to Hide
“Just when was the first indication of a conspiracy?” asked Martin, sipping the nectar from the thimble cup.
About them was a rather dreamy scene of flowing curtains and polished metal mobiles and statues of abstract war-gods and lustful goddesses. Couples and citizens were reclining or seated around transparent tables — all suspended in midair on invisible suspending jets; some were at different levels; some separated by walls of flowing curtains. A large service bar was to one side, where barely clothed maidens floated to various parts of the room delivering the refreshments. Behind the service bar was an enormous telescopic view of the inside arena: some of the most degenerate debauchery was going on now in the Circus Maximus.
‘‘Well, you see, Martin – ah, we can call it a conspiracy – but we don’t know of it as such yet. All we can say is that these unknown entities – well, they’ve just escaped control, that’s all.” For a man of almost 200 years of age, Mark Redress spoke with the vibrant manner of a young Mus-chute, that band of Dulmen soldiers who stormed the hidden cities of the Vars deep within the mountains of planet Mars.
The Vars were the last of the remaining population of what was once the lower Eastern hemisphere of earth some 1000 years ago who had escaped to Mars for safety. And while Uncle Redress was somewhat heavy now, there wasn’t an ounce of flesh he couldn’t harden into muscle by tightening of his tendons in his youthful moments.
“Amazing! But why haven’t they been captured – at least one of them?”
Martin expressed a small amount of pique by flexing his fist and elbow on the table.
Arian was sitting cross-legged and in deep seriousness, then he shrugged. “Could it be incompetence?” he asked.
“Oh wait, my noble friend,” Uncle Redress swiftly informed, “let’s not speculate unnecessarily — you are speaking of the death penalty.”
Death in the kingdom was without hope of immorality. Only the Dulmen hierarchy had the power of continual existence (or not) of one’s personality being recorded on Atom Discs and played into a newborn infant when life was again restored. There was a slight psychological problem at first, but that was only temporary and Dulmen ingenuity again solved the problem. This immorality was the only kind offered to those who had lived devoted lives to the Dulmen government and bestowed upon a person in the name of one or two of the god or goddesses of Dulmen creation.
“It wouldn’t be the first time, dear Arian; though I must admit it was during the Xerion era that the last traitors were captured.” Martin paused and gave a slight sneer-like sniff while gazing through the transparent table. “The fools! My father spoke of how proud and vain they were while they feverishly worked at building that contrivance that purported to blast Mylar City off the face of the Earth.”
Martin’s vocal cord moved nervously at the utterance of the word father, for Misslou the Great was but a dark void in his memory—- the smile, the looks, the gestures of his father were vivid recollections, but they were cold, empty, almost like spurious food or the feel of a wet tongue against cold metal. The memories resembled as one viewing a theatrical presentation over the Thought Screen in his father’s lifetime, and it all seemed just as distant. Martin went on:
“They didn’t realize that they had been watched for over six months – clear on up to the surprise capture.” Martin summoned for another drink; the baldheaded man behind the bar nodded.
“But you see, Martin, this is so much different. No one’s attempted anything of the sort. We’ve found no evidence of infiltration. Sectors A through Q have been completely voided of Specs.” Uncle Redress went on, wrinkling his forehead in consternation as if to impress the problem upon the young nobleman.
“ I see. That leaves us without any available data?” asked Martin.
“Just some eyewitness data.”
“And what did it disclose?”
“A variety of individuals. Some elderly; some in youth; at least five altogether.”
“And they were seen only in the sprawling Flats and its Pit Areas, the Outer Cities, Bubble Cities?” queried Martin.
The Pit and the Outer Cities were those villages and hamlets outside the Bubble Cities; while these environments were policed regularly and scanned always, there still was a semblance of freedom, often just for the whim of the Dulmen aristocracy. Mylar police would gather Outer City citizens off the street to erase all control, speak rude and derogatory phrases, and deliberately throw them into a rage, only to kill them on the spot, or arrest them to be used as bait for the events in the Arena where the three men presently had the opportunity to be seated.
The Pit was a multilevel, underground city, sometimes stationed near Outer Cities as an extension. As one descended through the levels, one also descended the cultural way of lives within the subterranean shafts. Within the bowels of the Earth were some human animals in ghettos that still utilized the homes of the once rich some several hundred years previous, though savage hands and minds plied them to shambles and ruins, some more than others, though by Dulmen standards of its aristocracy, the homes were slums. These cavities became abodes of discarded creatures, while always under strict surveillance, were permitted to exist. One could enter these territories, these lost limits, when fooled that control might seemingly appear lax, but where laxity never really existed at all.
The ‘Flats’ were miles of nuclear bombed craters and peculiarly rearranged landscape having the appearance of the craters on the Moon.
“Apparently then,” Martin continued as he adjusts his sandal a notch, “it is these areas that must be closely watched.” Martin glanced into the serious faces of the two officiates. “There are several things we can do. We must program preliminary tapes into the Central Computer to scan those lower regions more fully. Then check again the Big Sireto see if any accommodative action was taken,’’ Martin smiled, “ we don’t want to infuriate the intelligence of the Brain, we’ll humbly suggest such, and, depending on this, we may send out patrols of police to those points of suspicion. From what I access, it doesn’t pose much of a problem.”
The others were obviously more vexed with Martin’s conclusion. “It’s outrageous Martin! I have no sympathy for any citizen who would dare to conspire – in anyway – against Dulmen authority,” Arian expounded.
“And you yourself know how difficult it is to break the Ring of Detection.”
“To do so, one would have to be one of the Hanuman Incubi that crawl in the flesh of the Majesty Brain hidden the god cities. No one has ever seen them, to my knowledge,” Uncle Redress was trying to emphatic, “indeed, their specific locations in the computer inner sanctum is unknown” Mark Redress was silent for a moment; was the young nobleman getting the proper perspective? “I don’t see how the possibility of Reality Escape could be.”
At the words “reality escape,” a low clicking could be felt in the back of young Martin’s brain. He subtly reared his head back, as if drawn from a magnetic to that sound. Perhaps it was a burst of electrical energy that was activated within the nerine matter of his brain (a common occurrence that was indicative of the detection of the Mighty Sire) to the ruling computer and its eternal vision. Martin gained his composure without indicating the slight intrusion; one would compare it to it to a hypnotic subject coming out of a session-trance without any awareness of the intervening time lost.
‘‘Yes, yes, your right uncle,” Martin added, “it is intriguing, I must admit. I make no pretention as to that fact. It is of great interest. I can only imagine how much it concerns you as the Caesar Officiate of the Department of Dulman Security. I imagine you’ve been pulling your hair out.” At Martin’s words, Uncle Redress lifted his eyes towards his forehead and rubbed his hand on a balding spot there in evident humor. “But I want to also impress upon you,” Martin continued, “the opportunity this gives us for loftier ambitions. I think it will brighten up your perspective, no end. You now think it is nothing but a threat. But it could possibly be an opportunity for gaining honors with the gods, such as not been seen since the Xerion Conspiracy. Did not either of you think of that?”
Martin glanced curiously at the two staring somewhat mystified back at him. Arian nodded in accordance. So, he was a graduate only greater than he by one year, thought Arian Yul, but he was not going to become the new Cesar Officiate of the Department of Dulmen Security. Even if the thinking of the younger graduate was fresh and active, Arian hoped that he need not worry as to the security of his forthcoming position. He could have said those words just as easily, he assured himself. But then, one year was only one year, and who was to say the Big Sire didn’t have something special in mind with this Son of Misslou?
A loud roar arose from the large crowds of spectators around the arena. Everyone in the lounge must have looked up at the Panorama Screens which had been giving them a full-length, cinematic, virtual reality view of the circus. Portions of the spectators were in frenzy, leaning over their fellow viewers and waving their fists and shouting profanities. Others were pouring aphrodisiac drink and perfumes into the air. Some were engaged in rather sensuous and activities in the spectators areas as well. In the Circus Proper below several hybrid beasts were devouring Dulmen maidens deliberately brought to the Circus in prospect of such erotic acts; they symbolized the fertility of maidenhood.
At one end of the circus, policemen were beating couples into doing sexual copulation; each being replaced by new couples while the exiting couples were taken to their destruction—-males to sadistic battles to their death, females to their death by beast. It was the height of perversity, and it was what everyone had waited to participate in during the Week of Preparation.
(Somewhere in the Dulman hierarchy, the ratio of human passion was recorded against the tolerance of Mind Control, supposedly for scientific purposes: it reeked of the essence of one European dictator centuries before, called Hitler, and for similar scientific experience.)
Martin was also gripped with the scene. It had been some years since his last visit to the arena. As a young boy of nearly fourteen – Dulmen time scale – he could remember the rote loyalty drills; these were bits of phonic, holographic testing and training that young noblemen were exposed to during their waking hours; the sole purpose being to psychologically train them to the Dulmen Imperialism as if a Father Image. Whatever self-esteem was involved for a young nobleman or women — indeed, any child, nobility or not — from a parent — it would be virtually traced back organically as a love for the child’s government, right or wrong, as a nostalgic and invincible ‘Father.’
Background music would be a steady beat of a monotonous thud of base sounds whenever the word loyalty would be shouted out followed by more successions of monotone sounds until sequence was repeated. Soon the word ‘loyalty” would flash on the Cinematic-Virtual-Reality-Holographic-Thought-Screen along with an audible production of the word. This would be repeated over and over. The words “loyalty Dulmania,” with the same pattern and sight variation happened (a quick flash of various current places and people of importance would appear for split seconds in screaming out to the audience seated in utter darkness): A plethora of gods, goddesses, battle scenes, Grand Caesars of Dulmania, various points of historical and contemporary prestigious scenery. One would suddenly find oneself flooded with an array of fantastic, scientifically timed portrayals of sight and sound.
At points, various pictorial and live action events happening within the arena where injected into perceiving minds; first, still- photographs, then live action, always decorated with corresponding slogans such as “love Imperial Dulmania,” “feel its Eagle Grip,’’ “ Eternal Dulmania, it is our life,” and other bombastic slogans.
(It would have been only with slight surprise that Martin would have previously left his small cubical chamber at his University to march rank and file, along with fellow students, to the Arena to their pretentious Forum area allotted for the University City, to find themselves wrapped up in the frenzied, exhilarating optative miasma as an evil aroma of lust and violence directed towards the love of a Fatherly Dulmania. The brutal Forum debates were only a childish form and preparation for the coition with the Arena. Martin had visited more frequently since those earlier visits.)
Martin sipped pensively on his capsule of drink, eying the Screen rather coldly but enraptured. The huge bulk of the muscular policemen’s back blocked the midportion of the view; every muscle churning, rippling, stretching with the mechanical lashing of the whip as it ripped up the flesh with bits of the metal knives protruding at the end of the whip.
The Screen was suddenly streaked with red drops of blood which rolled down as the Pickup Lens was within the range of the slaughter. Blood was starting to spurt everywhere, yet no one turned their heads away in disgust. No one winced. No one protested. There was nothing of protest or uneasiness that would have been representative of more sacred societies. Amid the screaming, shrieking mobs, one could hear the shouts of “Kill! Kill! Kill!”
“Wonderful!” groaned Arian. Arian lifted himself upon his knees placing one hand on the invisible cushion of thrust and leaned forward as if to fall into the three-dimensional panorama. Uncle Redress stood upright with his hands at his waists, breathing rather heavily, his fingers turning white from the taunt pressure on his belt; his complexion was more than ruddy, it was dark red; and it looked as if he had gone the limit of the mind-bending drug. Martin also stood upright, hand supporting chin, the other arm supporting elbow.
The ruffle of velvet and silk came from the shadows as a petite but charming face of one Countess Flora moved into the soft light, the stone white complexion of her pristine, cold but lovely skin was seemingly filled with an icy and penetrating radiance. As if drawn by the magnetic pull of her eyes, Martin rose to his feet, staring deeply into those eyes.
Countess Flora had obviously been informed of the new graduate and his title as the son of the late Misslou the Great. Already rumors had started to spread prior to his homecoming telling of his flighty, mysterious ambitions. Martin recognized the famous Countess immediately, the gracious Mistress of Mylar, for her prestige had spread far and wide among the aristocracy. For Martin it was a bit more personal as he gazed with awe, for the Countess had been the mistress of Misslou, the General Deluxe, and it was with a bit of nostalgic interest that she had her way to the Arena that day.
The Countess moved to one side of a dangling mobile of faces and shapes, smiling innocently at the young man, her blonde hair blown gently by the breeze. A juvenile handmaiden floated quickly to the nobleman and offered a perfumed handkerchief, which Martin took, and she receded back to the side of her mistress. Martin rubbed the material between his fingers and casually glanced to her for reassurance. Martin looked around to see many people staring in wonderment, as well as the bothered expressions on the faces of his present companions.
Someone switched the décor lighting, and the room was bathed in a seductive blue hue spotted by sparkles of light reflecting from revolving mobiles. Anxious swoons went out from the café’ crowd as they were drawn by more of the barbarous activity going on in front of them on the virtual realistic Thought Screen.
Martin sniffed casually on the perfumed handkerchief. He stepped away from his table and stood on his ‘palm’ of controlling jets.
“You know, gentlemen,” Martin spoke clearly and intentionally brisk with no sign of artificial phoniness, “a solider would certainly be worthy of such ecstasy if one paid homage in a special way to Great Goddesses Lucia, Vera, Donna, Sherell, and offer a gift of the highest order!”
Martin slowly took larger stepped forward, his face erasing each minute wrinkle one by one as growing rapture encased his face till it converged into a youthful sheen of fanaticism. “Not since the Xerion Era has such a challenge been. I’ll offer no stately mansion; no invention; I’ll offer no orgy; no new asteroid for a well-loved goddess.”
He was drawing as much attention to himself now as was the chaotic activity in the Arena to the attending viewers; In fact, his gestures and actions seemed to blend in perfectly with what had been going on before them. A neurotic feeling arose within him, a confused melody of emotions, partially dedicated to “ love of Fatherly Dulmania,’’ and partially to his own Superman lusts! Only in a world were satyrs, imps, trolls, ghouls, where all the Orient and Greecen monsters had truly come to be —-could such thoughts—-have taken shape.
The young nobleman steadily moved forward out of the shadowed area into the glow of the Viewing Screen, his face lit with a soft fluorescence as his steadily pounded his fist in the palm of his other hand.
“I’ll offer a gift worthy of a new Dulmen graduate! One that will show the true stature of this Prince of Duggar, Son of Misslou! Greatness as has never been seen will be demonstrated as a lesson to all!” Martin’s eyes wide with frenzied thought; his breathing labored and intense; Martin threw both arms above his head in a dramatic V as his cape swung to make a dark silhouette of the beastie god, solider policeman. “I’ll give them the conspirators! Soon! Here, for the Circus!”
In momentary relief from tension, Martin casually turned to the Countess who had lurched back into the shadows and was looking ominously at the graduate. He bowed quixotically to her with his helmet in one hand.
In the background continued the shouting and clapping of the Circus groan beating to the continued slaughter:
In the dark surveillance room, the Spec Boards eerily glowed in the dark. The faces of the operators could be seen seated in front of the detection screens, oval graphs of sectors A through Q; these concerned the Pit Area and the Outer Cities and their Entrance Perimeters.
Martin hadn’t wasted any time: he had quickly posted police squads in various parts of the cities. Should anything be detected, it would be forwarded to the Brain when the Spec Boards located that particular white dot that meant a genetic-molecule arrangements not within the electromagnetic effect of the Brain—-police would converge on that spot within a matter of minutes.
Uncle Redress leaned close to one of the screens as the operator waited to point at an uncertain blimp. Uncle Redress smiled fatherly. Squeezing on the man’s shoulder as they both smiled: some aberration had appeared on the screens, probably due to an animal or bird that may not have pertinently computed.
Uncle Redress had spent many hours in such Operation Rooms during a battle some decades ago when they circled Mars and pinpointed the scattered number of Vars after they had smashed their major hideouts. The Martian surface had been broken up into specific sectors outlined by intrinsically accurate grids: down to the micro degrees (for the sake of the operators, not the computers, which needed no such illustration). It was only with the invention of the new Genetic Modulation Analyzer-Computer (G.M.A.C) that the blackout effect of the Vars could truly be combated.
Uncle Redress had gotten quite a thrill and become quite an expert at locating the white specs of light popping up on the grids, moving converging and spreading. He also directed the feeding of the computer with the grid information as well as the aiming of the Atomic Guns that propelled a stream of electromagnetically atoms from a circling satellite to those individual lights as an uncontrolled atomic reaction in the bodies of the victims and their total annihilation.
The defeat of the Vars was stupendous news after their escaping detection of some 700 years. Much hoped for ingenuity had been put into their Vars encounter. “To Find the Vars – To Destroy the Vars” had been a Dulmen slogan during those battle-lean years. Uncle Redress had found himself in such a unique position at the frontlines – it was only natural that his name was brandished about from every citizen and propagandist news film and Thought Record. His face loomed from many billboards and placards for some time as a national hero – as a well-trained graduate which earned him high places of esteem in the Dulmen government at that time.
The present episode had that atmosphere of suspense, that anxiety and excitement which could only appeal to a Dulmen soldier and his swelled pride. For a moment it seemed as if it was anticipation of locating Vars all over again. The Vars: who had journeyed to another planet to escape the consummate evils that had come upon them.
**********
A Cascade of light appeared on side of the room wherein Arian entered and the opening vanished. “How are things, Mark?” Arian took a position next to Uncle Redress and began a casual examination of the Screens.
“Nothing, nothing as yet,” Mark Redress dryly responded. The snap of a Z-BR8 capsule was heard. “I don’t imagine it will be too much longer.”
“Well, I’m to meet Salisbury,” informed Arian, “he’s following the police squad through City A-1 now. I believe he feels that it will be in those areas that any response will be made.” One could almost become hypnotized by the soft glow of the screens with the tranquilizing aura they projected—-of course, that was impossible as the Brain would block it instantaneously. “By the way,” Arian continued, “police squadrons and Spec-Observations are being erected in the 200-odd cities in this territory. Should we find anything there—-well, it would only amplify the problem was much bigger than we imagined. To think!”
“I thought we’d do that, Arian, we really did,’’ Mark assured the group as he leaned on a panel of one screen into its in its glow.
“Well, I best go.” Arian broke his gaze away from the glow. “Keep in touch,” seeing the humor of the situation, chuckled, “No doubt.”
In the thinking of the two Dulmen Statesmen-Soldiers it would be a matter of minutes before another historical epoch in Dulmen history would be swiftly traversed.
**********
City A-l was nestled in the rolling fills just outside of Mylar City. In fact, some of the suburban homes were only a thousand feet or so from the transparent dome of the Dulmen god-City. From where Martin stood it was many miles from the other side of City A-1.
From their elevated point the group could look down and observe the god-City of blinking lights, glimmering Zot Cars on streets, the rumble and haunting chatter of the neighborhoods below where lights and lit homes looked like many twinkling stars dotting the hills of the terrain. Further on the horizon, like some huge and gigantic, majestic moon beyond a horizon plain stood the magnanimous dome of Mylar; the tall, metallic and synthetic structures from within jutted up, slightly resembling the pock-marked features of Earth’s Moon at a distance; a rather awe-inspiring sight to those who were strangers.
Off in the distance a small globe of light was creeping towards them just above the glow of Mylar; it grew every second until the figures of the two men were seen in a transparent bubble of light—-it was Arian and the Globe Transport Operator that detected Martin and his group by Sensor and was guided directly towards them. The device quickly circled overhead and came within a foot of the street. A man-size section of the bubble dissolved and Arian stepped out, turned, and watched the transport quickly elevate, disappearing, jetting away to Mylar as a faint dot of light.
**********
“Any minute now, my friend!” Arian spoke with the usual vanity of a Nobleman as he approached Martin with a Nazi-type salute that had become everything that Dulmania stood for. Martin did the same, but more casually.
“Yes, what did Uncle Redress have to say?” Martin smiled slightly. Martin could imagine the old fellow puffed-up with visions of military conquest. As a child on Leave from school, Mark Redress would tell Martin the most amazing accounts of Dulmen conquest and glory; often placing Martin on his knee and gesturing with vivid and darting hand motions as he portrayed some of his experiences.
There was “The Stone City.” Was it real? Was it a dream? Martin’s uncle did not know. It could just as easily be a heavenly reality, a bit of Dulmen Dream Candy, supplanted in his mind to treat him to reward him for a job well-done; or maybe it was real.
(Whatever the reason for this strange discovery, the Caesar of Security once trampled through the battle-torn cities of the Vars hoping to find some abandoned citizens who were left behind in their interplanetary escape. After several hours of relentless and anxious searching through the homes and streets that reeked of the Penetration Ray, Mark listlessly wandered off into the surrounding fields.
It had been near dusk, and several miles later, that Mark came over the rim of a grassless hill to gaze upon an amazing sight: there, for miles in a deep valley was perfect radius of stone monuments and pillars as if closely placed tree trunks. Mark could not see the center of this magnificent ‘wheel,’ nor could fathom the purpose for what purpose these constructions these had been built.
Mark noticed that the tips of the of the grooved pillars were broken off at irregular levels; it was almost as if a forest of stone trees had once existed here and due to some fantastic holocaust, only tightly packed, possibly underwater, pillars remained. Why? Who? What? Perhaps the Brain knew. “Do not worry about it too much,” Mark explained, “it was only one of the oddities of our society.”)
Martin smiled at the telling of his uncle’s past. Here would be another adventure the Caesar Uncle to brag about. Arian smiled too, “He’s busy now. Terribly busy. Say, what have we here, does she dance for you, the new Graduate?” Arian asked at the erotic movements of a maiden who now paraded for the three other men lustfully.
“No, Arian, she dances because she knows she is in the presence of a god! And she hopes to steal a bit of our gracious attention.” The men leaned on the pillar in a moment of sensuous relaxation. Each of their uniforms contained special compartments for these erotic times—-special elastic pouches that covered their genitals, allowing a comfortable erection of their organs. A small group of whispering neighbors had also begun to form on the Porta Walk along the rim of the street; they too had wondered why the ‘gods’ had chosen to visit their neighborhood. One of the persons who watched so attentively was the girl’s mother.
“Say, little one, do you think your arrogant little heart would beat so carefree if a god should succumb to your gift of gesture?” Arian spoke daringly, both hands on his hips. The girl, somewhat slyly, but brazenly nevertheless, danced over to the men.
“You may provoke a god’s wrath,” Martin continued, stroking her hair as she danced away.
Still, this was no time for teasing—-the time lapsed far above that which Martin had imagined for the capture of conspirators; his grandiose vision of jailing at least one conspirator soon was in doubt. He slapped his right fist around the handle of his sword in a sharp snap: “Blast it, oh Mighty Zerichonus! Why has nothing happened!”
“Take it easy, brother!’ Arian cajoled, “a gift by early morning would be great; but a gift presented to the gods by another day would not diminish the importance of your conquest.”
“You’re right.” Martin was encouraged by Arian’s remark. “But still….”
“Come Martin,” Arian enticed Martin’s mind to other thoughts, “let us take this young lady at her word,” Arian was led into other thoughts, “let us take this young lady at her word,” he gestured with an open palm into the lit patio. “So, you want to flatter the gods?” Arian smiled at the nymph.
Something akin to a Sex Flush came on their faces. Then came Martin’s single command: “Take her!”
The others immediately disrobed , and a subdued gasp came from the crowd eager to join in the game of lust from a god. The mother stumbled forward a bit as if by mistake to protest, but only whimpered, and placing her hand over her mouth, turning back into the crowd to hide. Martin glanced over his shoulder at the Mother as he disrobed.
‘‘Take care, Mother! Your child will be made blessed tonight!”
**********
The countryside before the man was a beautiful subarctic landscape—-the Caucasus Mountains formed a majestic ridge before him with rich, green ferns and evergreens cascaded like a delicious balm on a buffet covering the whole panorama. The snowcapped mountains portrayed an undeniably dazzling emblem of sensuality and beauty.
This was the land known once long ago as Russia, specifically the Mount Usha territory.
“Coming little one. Elia is coming!”
Somewhere in that thicket, Elia thought to himself, up that mountain base about one-hundred-feet, was a lost lamb. It had been a last-minute decision that caused Elia to take the fold out this day. But now he had, and one was lost, he would attempt to find it.
Fighting his way upward through the thistles and lashing branches, slipping now and then upon wet and sometimes snow-covered ground, Elia progressed painfully. There was no sight of a beaten path. The tail of the animal protruded from Elia’s trench coat but had become somewhat of a stumbling block in the undergrowth of stems and branches.
It had been five years now that he had lived with that device grafted onto his body. And if it hadn’t been for the huge, thick lion’s mane around his head with his own furry body hair and full mustache, Elia would look as normal as any conventional human.
But many years ago, before he forsook Dulmen citizenry, he begged to become one of the Wild Ones—-those who sought the thrills of a lifetime by looking and feeling like an animal of their own choosing. Dulmania was filled with such mutates and genetic creations.
“Yes, I hear you little lamb!” Elia announced.
Oh, how foolish he had been, about as foolish as that lost sheep, now in some precarious situation in some gully, or perhaps in a thorn infested thicket—-one thorn had inflicted a cut on Elia’s cheek. Why did not the creature stay put, instead of sneaking off spurred by some kind of adventurous curiosity? Why did he not stay alongside of his brothers and sisters?
“Brother!” What a strange word to be using out of the clear blue. Elia had come to a dead stand still; the slope had become unbearably steep where Elia would have to scale a ledge of thick granite of about ten-feet high or maneuver around it. “Yes, I have a brother,” Elia thought to himself, “a flesh and blood brother, somewhere and someplace in this carnival world.” It struck him twice as odd that the last time Elia had seen him, his brother was but a small child, barely entered the instruction levels of education facilities, and he was about to be given and initiated under a new name.
“What was that name?” Elia asked himself. “Ah, I cannot think now! What was it?”
Breathing like these were his last sudden breaths of air, Elia pulled himself up on a rocky ledge that had become heavily infested with clinging vines. The lamb had obviously come away from the path and become snarled in the vines.
It was a small black lamb; not a pinch of white; it bayed forlornly as Elia stood smiling gently at the creature. Then Elia stooped to rescue the lamb.
What was my brother’s name? “What an indifferent relationship that one could not even remember your own brother’s name!” Well, there’ll
be no more ‘lost moments,’ if Elia could help it, “like this sheep,” he told himself, “ they’ll all be brought Home, if he had a choice.”
Stooping, Elia wrapped the lamb inside his toga beneath his coat near the thick hair of his body. Through a clearing in the towering trees his eye caught a patch of flawless, mild blue sky—-this struck Elia as odd because it looked so new and different. It was almost as if something were ‘out there,’ invisible yet real and dynamic, just waiting to burst through that serene atmosphere. Elia could also feel the tension, so solid, almost as if he could reach out and touch it but preventing his hand from doing that very thing. He turned his head from side to side, got up to leave with the lamb, taking the pathway he had previously missed finding.
Suddenly, Elia was struck by a revelation: “Arian! That was my brother’s name! Arian Yul, they named him!” He thought again, “too bad there wasn’t more there between us. Ah, but that is Dulmania. That is Dulmania. Arian, I wonder what he is doing now?”
**********
Chapter Six
Moderato, Scherzo
The majesty of Dulmen Control was an art. Everyone proceeded under the phantom of Free Will. In the Dulmen Bubble cities the Brain did control and did interfere. The masses there were thoroughly indoctrinated. A world of Robots in the absolute sense was the last thing the pontificates of Dulmania wanted. What they wanted was the total possession of one’s being, not his total relinquishing of all creativity.
Oh, they tried it that way, but it was a defeat to their own purposes. For Dulmania had another foe—-the real foe—-and it kept demonstrating its reality in the human psyche. They had hoped to accomplish their goal by completely and totally channeling the creativity of the masses, not destroying it. To do this was quite an art. At times, complete control, Robotism, was necessary but the Brain was very wise in such matters: over the eons the Brain discovered that several personality traits were vital to the wellbeing to the Dulmen purpose—-an insane uncompromising desire for personal gratification, of lust and spirit, had led more than once to a person or person’s invention of a horrible weapon of conquest and destruction, and perhaps mayhem and havoc lie in the attainment of that invention or weapon; the Brain always weighed the alternatives, and proceeded accordingly.
Perhaps it wouldn’t have been but a mere starvation of several hundred people; the murder of one or more officials; the explosion of a SD-3 spacecraft or other mysterious sabotage (this happened when the great Dulmen Senator of Zeker City had overthrown a faulty system in the political structure; some wondered if it was an honest overthrow, or, what exactly was accomplished or the motivation behind it. Dulmen propagandists bannered the Thor affair as heroic).
There was the case of Terrace Merrion—the medical scientist of the academy of Vera . Merrion programmed a sophisticated plan for the renovation of a quarter of the outlying Cities. Merrion had for several years studied the growing number of genetic degeneracies in the Middle Class of the Outer Cities that was also becoming evident in sprinkled cases in the Lower and Slum residents. While not a direct threat to the most curious Statesman, the Brain had, however, perceived this more discerningly.
Merrion noted that the outer layer cells in the cerebellum and the spinal cord nerve column had a slight irregularity in the nucleon and other organelle. This was not true for those individuals whose physical constitution had been replaced by synthetic and mechanical parts, but since these parts were arbitrarily bestowed by the whimsical guardians in the god-Cities; however, but no such creations could elude the Brain.
The same irregularities had been associated many years before when large groups of the Outer City slum people rose in unrest, boarding overnight in revolt. The cause was completely unknown; nothing in the environmental-control tracings indicated an aberration. A few other more brazen slum dwellers began to rear up as spokespeople for the dwellers: they were all quickly collected and rushed to the Sector 5 encampments of the Dulmen Educational Enforcement—-here the anarchists were placed in the Hyper Thought Ocean. The ‘ocean’ was a huge abyss as part of the ‘transport tube’ (among other uses) functioning to permit travel to the multiple subterranean cities within in the bowels of the Earth. It was often referred to as The Pit.
Within hours, Big Sire has transformed their mental functions into a harmonious version of Dulmen Robotism; the citizenry settled into their routine lives; the irregularity in the nucleon soon disappeared—-so did 20 citizens in a mass arrest one evening—-without a trace. When questions arose, propagandist heralded that the Brain had it all under control.
When Merrion again studied this potential threat, hoping to find a noble place in the eyes of the Dulmen hierarchy, he ecstatically set out to heroically crush the hidden threat with all the might of a lightning strike. In programming the data to the Brain, Merrion asked that these conspirators be immediately sent to the Hyper Ocean for readjustment —- and then immediate shipping of the gang to the asteroid Phyllis for isolation —- an undetermined isolation.
The Brain reacted with enormous ferocity and contrarian action: the potentially threatening citizens were herded together within hours – sent to the Arena — while all news and communications media announced the surprise Circus. A gargantuan slaughter and heatless debauchery took place in a fast and furious arrangement which no one questioned (if any questioning was done it resulted in imprisonment in one of the labor camps). The Brain’s decision as final!
So, when a mother twanged at the sight of seeing the rape-seduction of her impish 19-year-old daughter by such stately and eloquent gods,
The mother’s emotions were viewed with suspicion; surely the mother realized that the suddenness, the bruteness, the utter disregard was mandatory for such a deed? These gods were involved in a big mission —- a whimper from a sibilant peasant was totally perverted to that line of reasoning. When the mother would eventually return from the Office of Welfare, the mother would mysteriously feel different somehow.
But there is more to happen this this night of nights —- the sky was a rather clear early autumn eve, and a somewhat crisp smell filled every activity, the sights, ambiance, the unusually warm season, and most citizens considered this all part of the unusual erratic weather they were having. A bit of frenzied, creeping excitement was in the air; and like the somewhat perfumed gust that melted across the face of the city with an ingenious feeling of frightfulness and a tantalizing, almost murderous, tension that filled the darkness and finessed the mellow streams of soft light from businesses and homes; the twinkling stars were heralding more stentorian Dulmen activity.
Andante Alterato
The square in the middle of City A-1 had an enormous statue of two beautiful goddesses. They were wrestling each other in a fight to the death in a magnificently efficacious battle that only the Brian could manufacture by its Control. The two lesbian ladies were fighting atop a withering snakelike creature that had synthesized human features to its arms and legs, and a weak human resemblance to its reptilian face.
Its arms were lifted in pain from supporting the weight of the ladies, and the appearance of its uplifted tail and the darting split tongue denoted its struggle to escape.
The exact meaning of the edifice was lost in meaning to the Outer City people, lost in antiquity for they did not know it proclaimed the death of three Dulmen god-goddesses. The Dulmen hierarchy created and destroyed their gods-goddesses, and the death of the three were memorialized in connection of with the surrender of the last remnant of a foreign government: it must have been quite an episode.
The status was bathed by light from the perimeter-base positioned behind exotic shrubbery in a purplish-white, green, and blue tinge that would throw one into ecstatic rapture should one gaze too long.
Around the lighted square was immediate darkness with the golden hues of squares and rectangles of light from the mystic silhouette of the homes bordering the square; columns flanked the perimeter of the square of the square, some casting long projecting shadows over the area. Men, women, children strolled across the square—-the children playfully chasing each other in laughter.
Suddenly, overheard several squadrons of Dulmen aircraft swept silently through the skies, rather low but swiftly: first one V – formation of oval blue-white globes, then another and another, each brilliantly lighting the square in white splendor as if smelted silver metal from some casting pot were poured over the intrigant scene causing by-stander-citizens to make exclamations of reverend awe.
The discussion that Martin and some cohorts were having denoted their restless anxiety concerning the delayed arrest of the unknown conspirators. As usual, their conversations surrounded their belief in the utter control of Dulmania and even how eloquent the conspirators were in their evasion.
‘‘You know, Jerald, should you drink anymore of that mixture, you’ll not be working with me tonight,’’ Martin threw the words at one of the intoxicated Mus-chutes who polished the golden jeweled handle of Martin’s sword, a young squire of a particular unit that accompanied him. The squire worked skillfully with a special buffing pad. Jerald stopped his boastful jesting to the others as he turned to a serious vein, allowing the bottle of liquor to lower to his side. He swaggered over to Martin.
“Ah, my lord, I drink not of my own accord. Tis, all the fine gentlemen with us tonight that are imbibing,” Jerald rationalized. “Why we all have noted the air is full of magic expectancy—-it is a night as tonight that moments are made of.” His drunken and relaxed body bobbed about as a puppet on strings.
“Clown! You celebrate much too early!” Martin pointed one finger at the man, this time in dire seriousness. Jerald’s flush face showed no alarm, he blinked innocently. “You all are about to fall on your honorable faces!”
‘‘Please Martin, it is not the time to chastise us, it has been sometime since such a memorable occasion has come about. Take it easy on your men tonight,” Arian moved to Martin’s side.
Martin rebounded: “ If it weren’t for the fact that within minutes, we’ll be busy in capturing conspirators, I’d have no need for any of you. I’d just as soon have you in jail for disrespect.” Martin swung his arm in a radius indicting the bunch of men before him. A unified murmur arose from all of them aligning with Arian’s merciful plea.
“Our hearts are heavy too, sire,” Jerald followed closely, moving next to the standing god, affectionately placing his hand on the man’s shoulder. The others suddenly commenced with laughter. Jerald looked, but twinged in surprise; he saw nothing humorous.
“Stop it !” ordered Martin. Jerald turned to expound further to Martin, “There is something here that is not quite correct….’’ Jerald was uncertain as to what exactly to say, wrinkling his forehead, gripping his sword handle, “this is different!”
“Different! Why different?” the Son of Misslou asked.
Jerald turned his head from side to side and if searching for words, “Why…why…whatever we are looking for—-hiding!”
“Hiding? Is it not true, sire, that within the last centuries, no purported conspirator has escaped detection? We have even watched before they made their final steps, is that not correct?”
‘Correct! It will be no different this time.” Martin glanced over to see that several policemen and soldiers had gathered to listen.
“ But it is different now,” Jerald confessed.
Martin could have easily become angered. This night had manifested itself to be an infuriating mess. In fact, in his own natural surroundings at the University he had only to visit the Aroian Palaces where lovely damsels could intoxicate him with all the erotic science at their learned trade. On a good night, Martin could cram into four hours what normally would have taken twenty-four. In his private chamber Martin could attach to the Main Stimulator and sleep the night in an ecstatic world of Ultra Make Believe; tonight, it was prevented by the serious business at hand.
“It is not different!” Martin slapped back, grabbing his sword from the stunned squire, slamming it into his sheath. “it is not different!” Martin raced a few steps towards the other men, waiting for a reply from Jerald.
“If you say so, sire,” Jerald gestured with an outstretched hand. He quickly put it to his waist. “But three hours have passed; to one as uneducated as I, that seems to be some kind of record!”
Martin tightened his lips over and over as he gripped his sword—-Jerald didn’t realize how close to death he had come.
Several of the City residents had gathered to examine the commotion. It was the first time some citizens observed these gods in their golden array.
Martin eyed a lady creeping within the crowd between the policemen.
“It is no different, Jerald, my friend, then one of these!” Martin grabbed the ladies’ hair with one big swoop of his hand, violently yanking her into the middle of the human circle. She gasped in pain as she crashed to a stop on her knees. An anxious murmur went up from the growing crowd. “ You see, Jerald, we have complete control over her and her mind. They are what we want them to be! Nothing more; nothing less.” He rammed her head to the ground with his foot and let it rest there.
“Because of Control,” Jerald mused almost sarcastically. That sarcasm would have long ago been intolerable if it were not for some common but whimsical decency of one god to another.
“Yes, Control!” shouted Martin.
“But tell me Prince of Dulmania, have they no guts in the middle of their skulls of their own?”
“None. They are slaves of the Brain.”
“Then you have nothing to fear of them,” assured Jerald.
“Nothing! What are you driving at, mad man?”
“Just this, Son of Misslou, there is something in that gray matter of these animals that has eluded genetic, synthetic, mathematic invention! Something different!”
Jerald threw both bottles of liquor at the ladies’ head, smashing instead in front of her, showering her in fragments of glass.
“Different indeed! If you have any facts, demonstrate them!” Martin’s face had turned red in anger. He gripped his sword handle with a whiten, clenched fist. His breathing was slow and deliberate.
Jerald had the limelight. He knew it. A cocky smile was hidden beneath his phony smoothness, and his eyes sparkled with sarcastic laughter. Jerald realized that he had not graduated with as many Honors as Martin; whatever the reason, this time he was out to teach a cruel lesson.
“May the gods of Dulmania forgive me, but what if…what if…Control were dropped from detecting these poor creatures? What if all electronic, vibratory linkups were ‘cut,’ and they could see for themselves for what they and we really are?” Jerald stepped a few steps forward with his arm outstretched beseechingly.
Martin didn’t like what he heard, at all. “What do you mean? What are we really saying here?”
“Naked! Naked in the sight of any!” Jerald rebounded. “Stark reality! All true history! All fact!”
Martin snapped back, ‘‘The Brain is fact! The Brain is reality! The brain is all there is! It is the total of existence. Outside of it will only be chaos!” Martin stepped harder and tightened his foot on the woman’s neck. She gagged. Martin looked down with a look of spite.
A large crowd of citizens had gathered flanking as a fence of golden policemen-Mus-chutes. An agonized murmur ebbed over the crowd.
“Then why do they rebel so hatefully against us when we Sport with them?” Jerald was referring to the many nights that gods from the Bubble Cities would roam the prosaic streets of the Outer-Towns and in jest or spite remove all seeming Control and allow them to see Reality as never seen before. Usually, it was done to a select crowd, and as the Dulmen gods threw vicious epithets are them, the crowd would grow into a rage and try to kill the harassers. Martin never had a participant to such events while at the University, but he had heard of such.
‘‘Are you saying such useless attempts against authority are beyond the knowledge of the Brain? It would know what and why these things would happen!” Martin angrily assured.
“Yes, but that same rebellion—That same defiance is there in our ‘new’ Conspirators,” Jerald looked coldly into the eyes of Martin, “yet we haven’t dropped Control!” Martin’s eyes bonded to Jerald’s as Martin finished, “they have!”
“Blast you, Jerald!” Martin’s voice rang out as Martin lifted his sword high into the air over his head, strangling the jeweled handle, swinging it about as if looking for a suitable target.
‘‘Drop Control, Martin! Drop Control and see!’’ Jerald chided devilishly, “drop it, Son of Misslou! Drop it! Now!” Salvia dripped from Jerald’s lips denoting his drunken frenzy.
Martin threw back his arms in a dramatic arc, jetting out his chest, and looking to the sky with watered eyes of agony; he resounded:
“Ye gods and goddesses of Dulmania: I beseech thee, grant the grace I ask! To prove the sovereignty of the Sire, give us power for Sport!”
Martin steadied himself in his footing, holding his sword high over his head in a tight grip as if he were expecting the sword to be struck by lightning. Instead, a loud rumble of thunder rang out; the Brain had consented! With that Martin brought the sword down upon the women’s neck! An insane yell went up from the citizens gathered in the square: all Control had been removed! The crowd lunged forward at the guards who barely had time to turn somewhat to see the wild-eyed, savage snarling, clawing crowd attacking at the some of the soldier-policemen.
The remaining policemen took a pace backwards in unison, swords pulled from their sheaths in a graceful and synchronized motion: the first layer of the mob was stopped; the bodies fell; in a second the full force of the citizen herd momentum followed, incited by the slaughter of their neighbors; for the first time, they viewed in an all-together different frame of mind.
Pointing their swords directly at the citizen crowd, the police began jetting-out green-white rays of death that disintegrated masses of citizens all around the square. Indiscriminate slaughter revealed deep, red crimson slabs of the square amid the shrieks and screams of ladies dying and raped, and the animal grunts and snorts from enraged men; the terrifying crying of children rent the crisp night air; a peddler’s wagon had broken loose from its ponies, rolling into the crowd, its crops strewn over the bodies of dying and mangled bodies.
“Mama! Mama! Mom! Mama!”
**********
Chapter Seven
Concerto Mysterium
The large golden orb of the morning Sun filtered through the branches of trees and between the corners of houses in the outer limits of suburbia A-1. Zephyr Road was just off the lake where one could look downhill to see a blanket of morning mist arising into the cool fresh air denoting thin wisps of moisture rising. The dew filled nostrils. Down the road and towards the east below the valley lay Mylar City; the bubble was much smaller in view now than Martin and his cohorts viewed earlier.
Directly behind it, Ambrose Hill was sleeping beneath ruffled sheets ofMilky white clouds. Then, a flash; a spark; a small glow, would emit every few seconds. White humps dotted the green and brown, red hills of the Autumn landscape; these were the many homes of the Outer City. Zephyr Road jutted to the forefront of the scene. Birds sedately chirped rhythmically as a Zot Car smoothly climbed the road next to the lake and headed west through the city limits.
The only clamor this rather demure Thursday morning was that of an old peddler who was strolling the streets of the county road picking up bits and pieces of stray junk the children had thrown upon the street Porta-Walks hoping to sell them somehow later. Occasionally, he would walk over to a Disposal Chute at the intersection corner of the road and press the lid button to see if any miscellaneous paraphernalia had not been disintegrated yet.
As he traveled on, the homes became more spaced, and the spaces became more wooded. The clean-looking shrubberies and evergreens were being replaced by many large oaks and elms. Heavy undergrowth and thicket appeared generously.
Suddenly, the quick swish of a sliding door panel was heard and out of the semicircle domed shaped home on a slopped lawn came a happy sweet shriek of laughter and excitement, as two nude figures came bounding down the lawn, landing on the Porta-Walk; they preferred to run down the walk rather than use it, playing leapfrog over each other for several hundred feet.
The peddler took only a casual notice and then went about his business; the undraped appearance of the two teenage children were nothing new; neither were a pair of adolescent persons acting so brusque at an early hour. They ran one and on and came to a pathway leading off the road, the two trying to prevent each other from getting onto the pathway, tripping, and pushing each other amid childish squills and comments.
Finally, the one broke ahead, turned, kicked dirt up at the other and ran on. They soon disappeared in echoing laughter and romp. The path led up a hill for several hundred feet, then down into a gorge holding a little stream. The two ran down the hill and soaked themselves in the icy water (they had produced a sweat, even at that early hour).
“Stop it, you simpleminded thing,” the girl said in unconvincing exasperation, “stop it, Teddy.” The boy continued to throw water on her until she just sat there looking an insincere look of anger.
“Okay, Marian,” the boy took time out from laughter to help the girl up, “let’s see what is on the other side of that ridge,” he pointed to a row of trees outlining a field just above them on an eroded bank.
“You’ll have to help. It’s all loose dirt.” She placed herself in a position to be helped by his arm up the slopped terrain.
They continued through the field which was heavy with orchard grass; Ted tried to hide, and a game of Hide and Seek ensued. They must have had sex at least three times before exiting on the other side of the field.
Ted has the girl’s arm pinned behind her back and was smiling impishly as he put force into the judo hold. ‘‘That’s enough!” she winched. In that minute he let loose, she observed the look of impish delight he gave to her predicament. She slapped him. His immediate response would have been to throw her to the ground, it was prevented by her remark, “You get a real kick out of administering pain, devil of Darrigan, don’t you?”
He walked on in silence, and within a few seconds they both looked like two very bored souls. Marian was still rubbing her arm. The morning had turned out to be such a bore—-nothing new, just the same old things. But the two were just children of the lowly, uneducated class of the Outer Cities; already at their early age, the best they could hope for would be to die in the graces of a Dulmen god or be made a foster child of the Bubble City goddesses.
They came to a wider dirt road, one used by peasant slavery to haul produce, it hadn’t been used for some time. Clumps of crab grass and weeds readily covered it. They walked on.
“What bothers you?” Marian asked, “you act strangely, normally you would have passed up on the chance to slap back.” She threw pieces of gravel gently against him. He didn’t answer.
Broken branches hung out into the road. Occasionally a large insect would dart spasmodically over the road. A lizard darted off the road into the weeds. Sunlight threw a dark silhouettes on the road from large elms and oaks as lofty umbrellas. One could only wonder how the woods had not closed-in and swallow the road.
Marian muttered now and then about her cousin Xekter from Common, a city several thousand miles away. She was quite thrilled about her cousin for he lived in a city that was quite different. Xekter lived in an underwater city. Oh, how Marina loved to hear the thrilling tales of his boyish adventures: Imagine riding bareback on live fish!
Marian had never been outside of City A-1 by herself. So, this visitor from Common City was always a treat. The jealousy she was trying to provoke on Ted seemed more promising now.
Ted would glance blankly at Marian occasionally. Marian soon realized she was getting nowhere; she stopped suddenly; thrust her hands to her sides; and stomped her feet: “ May your heart be rent out by its roots – you — you…”
“Come off it, Marian! Please let’s just walk. For a change, let’s just be silent,’” he gently placed his hand on her chin and squeezed softly; this struck Marian as odd. They continued to walk.
After a mile or more they came to a smaller pathway that denoted an entrance to someone’s property ahead in the woods. On a small spruce tree next to the road was an old metal sign that had been affixed intothe tree, furrows of bark infringing the edges showing it had been sometime since it was posted: in large black letters, it read “POSITIVELY NO TRSPASSING—VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED—-Order of the Department of Welfare.”
They sat for a moment on the large stones situated to one side of the area as they gazed obstinately at the sign.
“Hey! We’ve never been in there!” Marian exclaimed tossing bits of dust in the direction of the path. Ted gave her a half sneer.
“Violators will be prosecuted!” Ted motioned with his palms upward as if lifting an imaginary boulder; he slumped back into his thinking posture.
“So, we’ve done it before, let’s do it again! They just put those signs up to scare people—-unless it is really offending the Brain—-they say nothing! You know that!” Marian was tugging on Ted’s arm, asking him to follow her down the path. He went limp and made the weight of his body a difficult object to lift.
“But what if it is wrong—-regardless!” Ted’s childlike innocence struck Marian as somewhat precociously odd. She helped Ted to his feet and the let go of him to give him a stare of curiosity. He long sleek, shinning black hair partially hung over her shoulder; for a child of seventeen she had developed voluminously according to Dulmania standards. To be less would mean she could not visit the Bubble Cities on the Eve of the Sun when Dulmen priests manifest a wonderous display of gods and goddesses as they stalked the Citizens’ Championship into the realm of the Lesser Human Gods: special invention of the Brain.
She flipped her hair over her shoulder and stroked a few bits of straw and weed from it. She cocked her head to indicate her curiosity. Ted felt her suspicion and anxiety bubbling up.
The two gained momentum until they stumbled into the folded legs of the towering statue. They stopped in fearful apprehension. They took a short glance of this beast, barely seeing the nose projecting over the statue’s folded arms.
“Shoosh! Be quiet!” Marian giggled as she pushed playfully on Ted’s shoulder. Ted returned the gesture.
“Looks like an opening there!” Ted pointed to a jagged opening in the base of the stature dividing the beast’s legs suspiciously. It looked as if the golden statue had been built over an opening to a subterranean cavern indicated by the jagged edges of stone protruding along the metallic opening.
The two had broad grains as they tiptoed into the opening. They were greeted by a soft luminous rock, a product from Dulmen space mining. There were steps leading to an alter patio on which was overlayed with lovely clothing and various materials. Containers spaced throughout with strings of beads and jewels heaped high into the air that decoratively lapped over their edges. In the middle of the patio was a table of stone. A rather awesome feeling was created by the stalagmites and stalactites doting the ceiling and base of the interior.
“A temple, Marian! A temple! Here they worship some secret god.” Ted exclaimed as he ran to the center of the patio and slapped his hand on the stone slab, his voice vibrated and echoed in the hallow chamber of the room. Ted took on a pensive stance as he looked bewilderingly at his feet, he wrinkled his forehead in deep thought.
“What if there was only one god? One god?”
“One god?” Marian shouted credulously; she raised her upper lip slightly in a sneer.
Ted glanced back at her, her feet together, her hands folded at the base of her stomach. Marian was so naïve; yet so full of knowledge in ways that Ted at first was only beginning to see as also terrifying: She was friendly; yet a friendship that would end with the first selfish whim. Faithful; yet always changing to new and dubious faiths. “From where have you gotten that idea?” Marian exclaimed.
“What if I said, ‘the Brain—-the Brain’ was not the final god?’” Ted’s hands began flaring about indicating his predicament of thought. Marian was trying to see through the quandary he created.
“But you didn’t, did you?” Marian remarked in friendly suspicion.
Ted hesitated. Could he? Could he speak as he felt? Surely Marian would understand. “No, I didn’t!” Ted exclaimed. He held a serious expression as he walked down the steps, earnestly looking for words. Looking directly into Marian’s eyes, he paused for a second, the spoke:
“ A man….a very wise man…so gentle and kind but unusual, had talked to me some time ago,’’ Ted held his hands out as if holding an invisible box, shaking it every now and then, glancing to Marian, begging for her understanding, “and as he talked, and I began to see somethings differently. He told of a tribe of people from many, many eons past, a people devoted to one way of life…to one god…a real god…I mean,” he was showing signs of exasperation at his inability to convey his thoughts, “A single god…a father god…these people worshipped no man, no manmade image. It is hard to explain, Marian, but they led a simple life.’’ He chuckled and looked back into Marian’s face, now standing with an astute expression, “ they marry, but only once, and to only one women whose life is dedicated to the same goals.” Marian opened her mouth in a slightly humorous gasp. “The children are subordinate, taught by command…and…and,” ideas were now raging through his mind until he became almost overtaken by the scope of the picture parading through his imagination. Then he slapped his chest in a sharp crack and walked aimlessly into the sunlight. Marian followed sheepishly as if to hear more revelations.
They spoke little as they steadily strolled towards the road at the top of the hill. Ted remembered the many childhood episodes he had when he lived with his parents. Ted was encouraged to rebel. Often, he would be viewed in his Block Room, a reinforced Cell with various pieces of fake furniture onto which he could vent all his anger and hate. Dulmania was preoccupied with such demonstrations as a bonus for either an aggressive solider, a Circus Torturer, or a stonehearted politician. This was all recorded-on circuits and all accompanying body-reaction was thoroughly studied. But unfortunately, Ted Andrew Zeo was not found of the aristocratic background and prospects, a fate of so many Outer City children. It was customary for children of Dulmenia to be born to the mortal gods, or not, and to practice hostility and rebellion; if they wouldn’t, how could they be expected to stand by their government in times of alien threat? (And, oh, those alien threats, all elusive, all unseen! Dulmenia had wiped-out all traces of or incorporated in any foreign government in the solar system; but there still seemed to always be an alien threat from somewhere, someplace).
Often when Ted’s parents and neighbors had engaged in orgiastic worship on the Special Day and in the pageantry and color of the Dance, some would rise into a rage and destroy objects inanimate or animate about them, things with life or not, Ted would gleefully yell, scream, or shout, destroying “playthings” laid about him; and with great strength, surprising for a child of three years.
It was exceptionally warm on this autumn day, warm enough to cause perspiration, and Marian proceeded to flick-off the weeds and grass sticking to her voluminous body as they strolled away from the road and down a slope towards a school building. Ted wanted to introduce some frolic to alleviate building tensions.
“Come on, let’s race down the hill!” Ted grabbed Marian’s arm shaking her out of her nonchalant sun-basking. She giggled and laughed and her muscular but feminine body dashed alongside Ted down the gradual slope to concrete pavement around the building. The asphalt-like pavement was hot but no hot enough to seer through their mud stained. Their voices and laughter echoed against the towering wall before them. Ted picked up a clump of tarred gravel and threw it at an imaginary “hoop.”
“Just like the primitive people did once, Marian, it was a game, but back then they used an inflated sphere.” Ted slapped his hands together, “Come! Let’s attempt to go inside!” He firmly took Marian’s hand and led through double doors outfitted with push-bars across them. He peered through the clear windows. A clink-clank rang out when Ted pushed the bar and to his surprise the door swung open. It echoed loudly in the sunlit interior hallway. They suddenly reared their heads back in disgust: “What a smell!” Marian choked, “This place must have dead vermin in the corners!” Yet, the walls and corners revealed a curious absence of spider webs, and there was no thick blanket of grey dust that would have indicated a lack of activity for some time.
Ahead, directly in front of them, wide steps led to a main hallway from which various other door and entrances could be seen. To their left, a concrete-like incline dropped off to what appeared to be a basement level. They had no idea as to why they walked into the area, but they advanced slowly into what apparently was a basement recreation area that contained a deep depression, apparently a swimming pool; two opposing doors on the other wall led to another segment of the gym.
The unusual stench was unrelenting. Both youngsters had their eyes completely smarted with tears. Flowing down Marian’s cheeks were tears as she gave soft coughs that echoed loudly in the lonesome surroundings. From the sunlight streaming through the basement windows, they both eyed a bluish-red ribbon along the rim of the pool. Hand in hand, they advanced to investigate.
The two became gripped in a frozen state of shock! They stood motionless and all color left their faces which shared each two dilated eyes; Marian slowly stared into the pool and then swung around to face away. Throwing her hand over her mouth to try and stop any vomit that would surely have happened. Ted churned his head from side to side in hopes of rejecting a steady stare. In the large pool where the mangled, blood-stained bodies of men, women, children of all ages and sizes were indiscriminately deposited here from a massacre: It was the result of the Sport of the gods from a night or two earlier.
The body of one Jerald Cosnic, a daring Mus-chute, could barely be seen in the mayhem.
The two stumbled feebly back up the incline by which they came. Marian had become a failure to her Dulmen breeding, whimpering like a child of three, and it was plain that something alien had invaded her psyche like a lightning bolt. For some reason, somehow, the Dulmen Circus didn’t compare, exactly why remained unclear, but something that Marian had previously said….something…!
“Ted Zeo!” The voice was booming and startling! Marian’s breath was frightened out of her. Ted squeezed her arm in the wake of terror.
Before them, one leg advanced, fist on his sword, whiten in anger, stood a muscular Dulmen soldier. Sunlight struck the gold of his helmet companying the purple plume. Further behind the soldier stood three other soldiers gripping their atomic-weaponized swords: a sardonic, dank expression on each. Outside, positioned about, were transport crafts.
“Come with us,” the soldier boomed again, “you’re under arrest!”
**********
Chapter Eight
Alterato Sonata
It was quiet. It was peaceful.
The rough branches of the maple tree rocked in the breeze that caressed the forest. The leaves would twist and turn, this way and then that way, as if to push themselves out of their branch sockets. The outer leaves would strive to clutch at the ancient Sherman Oak across from it, almost as if the two would clasp branches together in a handshake suited for nature.
Above their autumn green-orange-brown color was a pure light blue of the afternoon sky. The slightly chilled air gave the scenery a medicinal feeling. Extremely high in the sky was seen the thin vaporous white cirrus clouds. There were also large patches of mild light blue until the sky partnered with fluffy cotton-like cumulus clouds.
It was the freshness of nature, almost unbelievable in its beauty and delicacy.
What was once a heavy deciduous forest of broadleaf branches and sturdy oaks, tree seedlings, shrubs, wildflowers, and a forest floor of last year’s leaves (as well as many thousands of years past) had become the straggled, matted and weeded ‘lot’ that sat just beyond the industrial area on the verge of a major city. Its eerie but tranquil beauty of years past was lost, exemplified by a seriously rusted piece of metal obscured beneath the leaves, or a girder heavily coated with moss and autumn-stricken ivy; these were just a few of the tell-tale artifacts telling of the activities that once ensued over the millennia.
A crystal-clear stream meandered down through the woods carving a well-defined gully as it went. It was feed by an underground spring just over the hill to the north, and it lazily rolled on down to the granite and flint rock cliff and became part of an industrial waste pond a mile farther down the sloping terrain. How this natural beauty of pure, uncontaminated fluid existed in relationship to the turbulent history that occurred during the thousands of years at that very spot would be a difficult conundrum. But there it was: a small silvery, shinning ribbon of icy fresh water in a dying world!
Yet, it was quiet. It was peaceful.
A small pinkish form was making brisk jabbing motions at the bottom of the slope by which the stream ran. Two tiny hands were actively taking he mud and packing it tightly together to make a dam on the edge of the water; two small feet would dolt back and forth through the lip of the water, quickly grabbing small shinning crystals from the bottom of the stream and artistically place them on his handiwork.
“You are playing pretty, honey?” came the voice of the mother from the above tree line up above the stream. The mother was tenderly smiling down to the boy from her reclined position; she had put aside her paint and crayons from her work on the canvas she had placed before her to watch her two-year-old child. The mild blue eyes of the fair young child rose to look at her lovingly and a joyous smile rose to acknowledge her.
Then his glances were increasingly drawn to the majestic, lone Shermond oak tree that towering over his mother. It was his tree, he thought, his favorite tree. He has just claimed it. It would forever be part of him and his memory, along with the rosy complexion of his mother so lovingly looking at him; and all fresh smells of the damp living woods about him. A great joy swelled within him. He suddenly threw his mud pack onto his youthful creation.
“Ya, Mommy! Pretty! See house!” One or two more mud packs on his already cluttered creation and he would be finished.
He turned around in circles two times with a musical sound from his stubby little neck, only to be confronted by a rolling tumble weed which hit him smackdab in the face; the surprise of it caused him to fall on his backside, clutching the weed as if it was a ball. He began to laugh just as joyously as before. He saw the whole event as wonderfully humorous. The mother was also laughing affectionately at the episode.
“Okay now—-build a big castle.” his mother conjectured to the little toddler. I build ‘god castle,’ he announced back referring to the capitol Bubble Cities. I go there, Momma.”
“Yes honey. Now play pretty.”
The mother went busily back to her artwork, but the baby really wasn’t interested in creating anymore. The child had already gathered a small but unique collection of bits and pieces consisting of old Dulmania refuge and ancient debris, carrying the tumble weed to his spot and adding it to his collection. A small coil, maybe a gear that had been at one time from a lazar pistol that were in the army of the Quothian Empire. It was badly rusted and the twists of the coil could barely be discerned. Also found were a few bits of metal stripping and more recent pieces of film from the industrial laboratory only about two thousand feet away. The child cherished it with more vigor: It was to him the prettiest of the bunch.
Already he was conducting a new excavation on a new discovery. Several feet away, just to one side of a dwarf evergreen, he had found a rounded pebble and metal stone, overturned it, having been guided there by the sight of the dwarf evergreen. Such a tiny plant. He would make it his by uprooting it and bringing it to his mother, but when the task proved too complicated, the child went back to working the protruding object. He rested his small features by the rounded object and began to dig around what now actually was a crescent of metal in the dirt. Occasionally, the mother and child would exchange glances at each other.
It was quiet. It was peaceful.
To the south just barely over the slope of the hill at the top the curved top of the industrial complex was visible. The opaque material of the building would light up with a flare in minute intervals. When each burst of light occurred another atomic-synthetical ‘slab’ was created for the industries used in spacecraft and aircraft and other mechanical uses. The vast amount s of atomic radiation and waste was quickly dispelled through the affinity chute whence the contaminates were drawn into a fluid retainer and discharged into the waste pond at the base of the lot. Logically, the catalyst substance in the water was to hold and subdue the radioactivity…its success was very elusive.
The babe seemed to sense the awesome and terrifying prospect of the site, even though details were only vague recollections from misunderstood conversations.
He swung his little head away from the direction of the industrial complex; he wanted to concentrate on what on what was left of the beauty around him. And he found beauty everywhere as seen in the weeds, shrubs, that swarmed the dry and complexed ground; a milliped was briskly traveling the branch of a tiny beech tree seedling and he sat there and innocently stared at the insect until it reached the slightly brown and orangish-green leaves of the plant. He looked down at his project and began to circumnavigate the stick around his bit of archaeology.
Time had raced past this spot changing the forest mantle and at fantastic speed. At one time a giant Tyrannosaurus stalked these grounds. Beneath a thick layer of leaves, several yards into the dense brush, enshrined in hardened and fossilized rock many feet below, were the footprints of that mighty beast; indeed, twenty feet further away and fifty feet below the ground was the skeleton of a giant Triceratops. But no one will discover it at this time, far too secure in its tomb—-nor does anyone care.
And time had raced ahead bringing another collage and cinematic swarth of history: flint arrowheads, broken bits of clay pottery yet to be discovered by those with more able minds. For amongst the varied color pebbles that lined the stream the ancient settlement of an Indian tribe existed—-pulverized and camouflaged by times’ passage, but it was there.
If one knew where to look, he would investigate the hallow of the large maple on the edge of the brush, beneath a heavy muck of leaves and sediment, to find the remains of a rubber strip that once was part of an automobile tire. At one time a heavy rope held that tire to a thick lower branch on that maple; children would gleefully play and swung on it.
An active hangout for the neighborhood hoodlums during the mid-twentieth century, a campfire would be built near the deceased scarlet oak tree, only sixty feet from where the babe now played, the teenagers would sit and tell vulgar jokes and use gutter talk and drink heavily of the beer they had stolen from the back room of a tavern on the skirts of that woods. A foot further in the dry cracked soil was the end of a busted switchblade knife brought to that condition during the many boyish but dangerous scuffles around the campfires.
An even more current artifact was the riblike girders of steel that once was the supporting foundations of a field buggy factory where manufacture of a small compact mobile unit that once raced between the slender bodies of the R-Squad positions. It was destroyed one night during an apparent sabotage attempt: the white color of the aircraft pad was unrecognizable.
Though largely contaminated by the passage of time, the weakened forest still gave a gallant shout-out of its vitality. The breeze could still stir through the hues of colors and still play frolic with them. The old Shermond oak would smoothly bow its head in acknowledgement — and then bow, stand erect momentarily once again, only to bow routinely as if a conductor in a grand symphony of nature.
The smell of decaying leaves swelled-up in the child’s nostrils. It was a smell so rich and good, yet as symbolic of the dying world in which he sat and played, he had been raised in one of those families that had been relatively ignored by the multiple tentacles of the Dulmen spy world. He had an original mother, though the scandals in the life of such peons were so accepted, no shock had yet been etched in the mind of such a little one. His lovely mother was dying slowly of a venereal disease, that only the aristocracy, the rich and pompous, were allowed the luxury of a cure—that Dulmania mental sickness of mind of the power-hungry rulers had not yet become possible to medicate or cure. Indeed, during the Sedox Era, such diseases had been totally wiped out through prenatal immunization. With the advent of various Dulmen instruction only those politically favored received the ‘remedy.’
The babe had no need or capacity to be concerned with the problem, he was gazing wonderingly towards the sky. He watched the cumulus clouds pass over. He almost felt as if he could reach out and touch their serene, rolling surfaces. A gust of wind swept past him carrying the autumn aroma. He contently went back to his digging.
A red squirrel scampered up the trunk of an old spruce tree and made its way quickly through the branches. With a shove from the wind, the spruce hugged a dogwood nearby and intermingled its crimson-green leaves and red berries: the squirrel traversed through all this. The babe was still attracted to the mighty lone Shermond Oak hovering over the bank of the stream, to the child it stood out as the grand conductor of the autumn symphony of musical players of other oaks, scents of thistle and evergreen, maples, hickories, and chestnuts.
The wind died down, the branches and twigs and stims of the wild living that had been swaying around them came to rest. Birds with long, slender wings slid over trees and then ascended high into a patch of cloudless sky. The breeze started the second stanza of this nature song, leaves surging from one side to another, lulling momentarily, and then starting over again.
It was quiet. It was peaceful.
It was a special treat that nature preserved for the lonely and for the unfortunate; those who lasted through years of unending turmoil, revolution, and mayhem; of the same frightening faces and traumatic interludes: these also shared with nature the unfortunate struggle for life in their diverted innocence, this much was nature willing to give.
The lazy trickle of the stream water threw a blanket of comfort over the whole natural embroidery. The contentment of this favorite autumn day was reflected in the dirty little hands of the child who busily stroked his stick around that ancient object slowly emerging from the ground; his small stature only making that task much more difficult.
The breeze combed his thin blonde hair, and the child mumbled letters he was mimicking from the object—“A—D.” These were left over, but still largely used in various citizenry breeds ‘‘from the age of the Great Eagle,” the golden years of the Sedox Era, a preDulmen empire that had large hopes of a One World Society. The Sedox wanted the language to be short, concise, and very communicable: the Telephar alphabet. Each letter denoted a full syllabus of expression. What came to be neanderthal-like grunts, hisses, and whimpers, was said to be the most sophisticated language in the world. “E” – energy; power; force, and so on. “A” – atom, miniature; ash: all-encompassing, and so forth. Later, with the dissolution of that society, the Dulmen rediscovered the novelties in old, Anglo-Saxon twentieth century expression and created a whole mystique using proper titles and rank.
The rather snappy and melodic chanting of the child came to a peak as the babe finished his excavations. Nearby, the quiet crunching of a forest predator could be heard munching on several acorns; a hard low thud somewhere deep in the woods as a fox had scampered knocking a stone into the gully, followed by a refrain of a gust of air sweeping through the orchard grass; the yellow backsides of still green leaves fighting to parade their existence in the green and brown forest.
Somewhat breathless, the child began to tug at the object with both hands, his bare body had begun to show signs of chilling that even the early morning Sun wasn’t able to alleviate. The boy was too preoccupied to worry about his personal comfort. With a final yank, he pulled the badly corroded object out of the ground. In his tight little fist, he examined it closely, and utilizing two dirt caked stubby legs, he toddled over to his to his pile of findings, throwing the object down onto the top of his collection. The object sled down the heap into some autumn-struck Kenilworth Ivy. It was a round object, obviously having had a silver tinge at one time, and an image of a face could be seen against the corroded edges. It was an ancient coin, a coin from an empire that bore the words IN GOD WE TRUST on one side: a plaything that the child had no way of comprehending its true worth.
The mother now motioned for the little one to come to her. She stood up and held the outdoor scene she had created for the child to see: an exact replica of the wooded area about them with the white, fuzzy figure of the boy in the middle of the artwork. He smiled contently at his mother and began quickly to struggle up the small pathway leading to the top of the ridge where his mother waited patiently with an outstretched hand. When he reached her, somewhat out of breath, he firmly grasped her hand. As they turned to leave, the child held back to place his hand along the bark of the Shermond Oak. He looked straight up into the towering limbs above him with the fluffy white cumulus clouds passing directly farther above. It was his tree; his favorite tree; it would be his forever he told himself.
It was quiet. It was peaceful.
He turned to walk along with his mother. His small body busily pumping his short infant legs to keep up with her as they strolled home through the tall stalks of grass.
**********
Chapter Nine
The Palace of Dreams
Across the snow-white pavement of the square strode three strutting figures with their uniform capes gingerly whipping behind them. A steady slap echoed against the whiteness of stone and marble as their sandals thrusted against the surface. The sun seemed to have darkened in the shade of the trees circling the large square. They appeared to be heading towards a large monument in the center. It was a towering pinnacle of stone with a small rectangular opening and around its parameter were windows spaced systematically of no great quantity; the monument came to a tapered point: It housed many privileged mortals which slept in the dreams of the gods—-and perhaps, just perhaps, reasoned Martin, a conspirator!
They passed several stone columns and large monolith slabs placed arbitrarily throughout the square that contained slogans and epitomes dedicated to privileged individuals as engravings heavily and gracefully on their front sides. For the fact, however, that greenery and shrubbery were suspiciously missing along with some architecture, it would have passed for a cemetery of the 21st Century.
The three soldiers marched briskly through the morning air, and with each step coming closer, broader in nearness, the top of the building seemed to rise higher and higher until suddenly they passed into the thick darkness of the interior. Martin notice that the stones lining the rim of the entrance were enormous and a stunning tribute to Dulmania.
They passed down an extremely large corridor that took several minutes to traverse. In the shadows of an immediate Entrance Room, they were met by blinking red, green, white lights on the face of the Computer Wall that scintillated the interior with the synchronistic pulsations of color. A smooth but varying musical hum weaved out from the guts of the Computer that nursed a collaboration of the many incubated individuals that were housed to live an eternity of many times, either for a service rendered or a debt paid.
“Welcome, gentlemen. Welcome to the Palace of Dreams. You have been announced. We greet you Son of Misslou, we hope you find the evidence you are looking for.” It was the voice of the Computer: its store of information was fantastically clairvoyant.
Martin smiled musingly, “Good morning.’’ Matin glanced around at his two companions who were also smiling. “May we visit your corridors?”
“Be my guest!’ The Computer spoke with a mellow but nostalgic frequency.
“Thank you.” Martin stepped a foot or so to enter a corresponding and ascending corridor.
”Please forgive the housekeeping,” it replied, “we don’t have visitors often.”
Martin glanced back momentarily, “Thank you. Thank you very much.” One didn’t have to know the age of a Computer to demonstrate politeness, it was just something about its manner that deemed it so.
The three started their journey up corridors of the temple. Suspended on the invisible Jets, they progressed up the passage of Cells. To one side an infrequent beam of sunlight flashed across the corridor from the “peep hole” rectangular windows; on the other side were synthetic viewing windows into the Cells allowing one to investigate the Sleep Chambers.
Martin would occasionally investigate a Sleep Chamber, and holding up his hand, the conveyer would slow, and the movement the movement of the suspending jets would stop momentarily as Martin would peer intrigued into the Chamber. Usually, the person inside would be laying in a silver suit, silent, and still on a metallic slab. On the wall above the person’s head, a roving Eye would pivot in its socket and scan every inch of the Chamber. Below, a Computer Unit showed signs of its existence by its scintillating lights.
The Dream Palace, or Temple as it was called, was the Dulmen way to reward those of a certain Elite with their noticeable and outstanding reward from this life (and the next). He or she may have been an Outer-City peasant – or a noblemen — of the Bubble Cities, a soldier who had done some heroism in outer space, or had fought in a success Dulmen battle, now being rewarded with ecstasy and sensuous delights of the senses of millions of years crushed into and capsulated into the matter of a few minutes. These individuals need not live out their normal life span. Normally, a person would die and the sum total of his existence, his personality, would be computerized and his identity would become a part of the Great Brain to live on eternally as a recorded memory bit of holographic information in the Nirvana of the dark depths of the awesome, master Brain: a scientifically verifiable eternity.
Halfway up the Memorial, the Computer spoke:
“Pardon me gentlemen, I have an irregularity located on Level 85. My information suggests nothing of alarm, but I suggest you check it out anyway.”
Martin arched his neck back and looked curiously into the air, “Thank you, it may be what we are looking for.”
Martin’s pulse stepped up slightly. His expression took on a more serious consternation clinching his teeth lightly together causing a drawn expression on his cheeks. It had been a full day – with much tension – under the weight of his promise to catch the elusive entities. His patience was gone and he was wearing a peculiar wrath at this point. Body upon body, face upon face, had appeared through the Chamber Windows as they swiftly ascended the corridor. Some had a pasty white appearance, others a soft pink. All were, however, straight lipped, unsmiling in their perfumed dreams.
The Suspension Platform slowed bit by bit until it stopped suddenly across from the hatch door to a particular chamber. The hum of the conveyer jets died down and then disappeared with a low hiss. The three men stepped over to the hatch-door, Martin peered in but suddenly reeled back, regaining his composure, and stepping again to peer through the diamond-hard viewing portal.
Inside, was a young lady sitting upright, yet unable to beak the straps around her wrists. By the expression on her face, she was in stark terror and physical pain, rolling her head side to side and twisting her mouth in agony. He long hair was pasted to her lips by her saliva. She gave a blank look, almost as if she saw them, yet didn’t, perhaps looking beyond them. Because of the soundproof enclosure nothing could be heard, but she obviously was in the struggle of a great tragedy.
“What’s wrong with her, sire?” a soldier asked stepping closer to look. Martin just shook his head.
‘‘She appears to be in agony! Is something wrong with the machinery or electronics here?” asked another.
“A malfunction! It can’t be corrected at this time. She’ll have to be taken out by our technician custodians,” announced the Computer.
“Has it anything to do with our quest ?” asked Martin rather loudly, still having difficulty viewing the horrid scene before him.
“None. She has not received the proper information feed,” was the Computer’s nonchalant response. “It is nothing more.”
“Why?”
”I don’t know. This has never happened recently. Most Dulmen are quite receptive.”
“Yet she is not !” stated Martin sarcastically.
“No.”
“You say no conspiracy,” Martin was analyzing differently, “ I’ve seen this seed of rebellion lately and it indicates only one thing: a connection with the conspirators!”
“Maybe so,” replied the Computer, “ but we’ll never know for sure.”
“She is completely out of our reality!” challenged Martin as the Computer ended the conversation in sedate, human phonetics. Martin asked no more questions. He peered into the chamber once again: the girl was no longer young and beautiful but had magically turned into an elderly hag of many years, wrinkled and decrepit and barely able to hold herself upright. Martin saw something else: before their eyes, suddenly, her hair had turned gray and silver, bit by bit, it turned to white!
Martin glanced down at the Identification Label on the hatch of the cubicle, it read: Mary Longarm, 5890-892-4600, Sector 5, Level 85.
“Let’s get out of this horrid scene, leave.” Martin ordered almost begging. The military unit turned to descend to the ground level.
Martin was fearful. Something! Something different had been seen in that face of bedlam: it had signified something beyond Dulmania Control and he just didn’t know how to picture it. The face of the Outer City citizens, when soldiers had jested and played with the experimental release from Control, the experimenters could then see the reality outside of Dulmania; Martin grabbed his cape and sword handle in a tight and fearing grip.
**********
Elia had the small lamb safely nestled in a bed of straw hear his slung hammock that extended along one side of the tent, while the other half housed a comfortable array of food, preserve, blankets, cushioned folding chairs, electric cooking stove (a rarity for a person as himself, and a well-cared for possession), plus a table and several stacks of clothing and blankets.
A hanging lantern descended a few feet from the apex of the tent and a cozy glow filled the weatherproof shelter.
It was early morning yet while the rising sun was only a few minutes away: stars could be seen clearly in the night sky above the pitch-dark forest. Not a speck of light could be seen through the hills and mountain sides. Not a campfire. Not a torch blaze. Not even the distant halo-glow of a Dulman city. No, Elia’s tent stood alone in the valley with a singular warmth all its own. The fire he had built to warm the sheep had finally died to a mass of glowing embers. The braying of goats and sheep denoted a restlessness for the coming morning.
It also was a freedom that Elia wouldn’t have dared exercise except for the fact that several unusually large earthquakes have suddenly isolated a nearby area with the Caucasus Mountains as the diameter. With the complete collapse and utter destruction of Mount Elbrus, the 18,500-foot mass of rock and earth dissolving into rubble as if acted upon by several mysterious forces, Dulmen citizens left with a rapid hast explicit of uncontrolled fear. The Officiates didn’t prevent the exodus, but rather aided it with great haste. The unknown was always a highly controlling factor.
Elia’s ‘people’ quickly converged in droves from their few isolated ‘spots’ in the continent. His ‘family’ had lived silently in the rugged valleys of upper Siberia. It was there he would return within a few hours to carry-out the assigned task. But now he wanted to mediate and contemplate first.
Combing his silky ‘mane’ back as best he could after taking a razor to his beard (shaving his face with the ancient razor; he had accompanied a disgust for lengthy hair of his more frivolous days), and washing his face, Elia went about the task of shutting down camp.
He will pack his gear on the three mules that accompanied his short journey from the ‘village.’ The small lamb that he discovered, he will carry; aside from minor cuts and scratches, it had become symbol of the unfortunate, the lost, and those who were possibly blindly chivalrous.
Soon this curious procession will be seen coming across golden fields and down a slopping pasture into the small street of the nearby desolate village.
“We have been given immunity” Elia would think of the ever-watchful eye of the awful Zeus, the Great Brain, “but why? And for how long?”
Quietly swishing his strong lion’s tail like a content cat, Elia glanced at the gentle lamb. He stroked the lamb twice. The desolate and uninterrupted serenity of nature’s quit was too good to be true, and the star-studded heavens seemed to hold back that potential, haunting fear that might break through any moment and cause even the embers of the campfire to extinguish.
But the moment also made Elia feel good. It gave him that extra bit of courage he would need when he will shortly visit the various citizens in Dulmania. It had been five years, but that was not long enough a period to wipe away the familiar faces and some of the happiness and even the sad and sordid past-times he had with those neighbors. How would they receive him?
What would he say?
Would he even finish the journey?
Or would it already be too late?
**********
Chapter Ten
Basso Continuo
Uncle Redress had watched the faint glow of a speck of light on the scanner. Over a period of minutes, it increased in brightness. He checked the location as to the territory of the find. It had passed into an area that was Do Not Trespass-Restricted Area of the Dulmen government.
His face held a soft, low smile; but if one looked closely, he could note a sign of sardonic wickedness there also. He couldn’t help himself altogether because some baser instincts within his subconscious adhered to his Dulmen training – a mild ‘jerk’ of his head indicated as much—and he enjoyed it! Everyone had been allotted their potent of Z-BR8 capsules.
“Good! Good,” he muttered to himself as he jumped from one scanner to another, peering over the shoulders of the operators. “Fine! Fine.”
The room lit up with brilliance momentarily and then sled back into total darkness as someone entered through the dissolvable portal to the room.
“Police have been dispatched, Sire,” the person informed.
“Did you also inform Martin?” Uncle redress questioned.
“Immediately, sire. He has just been reached at the Palace of Dreams.”
“Palace of Dreams?”
“Yes, sire.”
Uncle Redress looked somewhat puzzled. What could Matin have found so interesting there? Surely, he didn’t think a conspirator would be able to hide in that scrutinized mansion.
“Oh well,” Redress mildly exclaimed and turned to look back at the florescent panels, “I suppose they’ll take the captors to the Hall of Criminal Detention,’’ then quickly declared, “yes, and let me know as soon as they arrive.”
“Yes, sire.’’
‘‘Tell Martin, I leave within a few minutes.”
“yes, sire.”
“That’s all.”
The room lit up again, and immediately regained it black solace. Uncle Redress folded his hands at his crotch and balanced himself on his toes, rocking, showing some childish smugness. This could be a big event for him! Oh yes, a big episode for a true god of Dulmania, one could become ecstatic within such wellbeing.
“I believe they are captured now, sire,” one of the operators informed, “the Pointer has faded.”
“Check back with me, informing me by Communications; if so, I’ll leave immediately.’’ Redress smiled confidently. The operator spoke swiftly into the Communications. Uncle Redress had begun to sway like a high-strung adolescent, partially singing a tune. He rubbed his hands his hands together in excited impatience.
“They are headed back, sire,” the operator announced.
“Then I go!” He informed his personnel of their further duties.
The room lit up again, and immediately regained its black solace as he disappeared into a fray of light.
**********
The nude boy and girl stood before the semi-oval seat of the Questioner that swayed in midair before them. The Judgment Hall had a curious touch of Aztec and Mayan architecture blended rhythmically with that of ancient Rome (all of which was lost history to average citizens and some of those present). Martin sat there soberly tapping on his new black boots with his short leather whip—-an obvious distinguished aspect of the Questioner and Examiner.
Behind the two captives were several officials of the immediate Investigation Squad, which included Redress and Arian. They all stood in patient complacency, looking sternly at the two, for this was the break they had been waiting for.
The chamber was dimly lit in red that surrounded as a phosphorus glow in the chamber. There was also burning torches protruding from strange architecture in the crannies uniformly located on down the walls leading into the darkness at the far end of the room and contrasted expertly with the white glow of Martin’s throne.
Martin stepped from his throne and walked casually over to the boy; he glanced at him with great hate that impinged upon the limits of his psyche.
“Do you know why you are under arrest?” Martin snapped sharply. He had taken his allotment of Z-BR8 to curve his rage. He continued to pace in front of the boy.
“Yes, we trespassed on restrict and private Dulmen property.”
“Is that right?” Martin stopped to ponder the boy’s erroneous assumption, or lie, then continued to walk. “And nothing else?” His questions were brisk.
“I don’t know.” The boy was shaken with wrenching fear. His body had turned to a cold icy feel from the panic growing within him. His face was stained from tears. Their wrists were swollen where cords bound the two, but not necessarily out of necessity, but mockery.
“I doubt that!” Martin stopped to tap him spitefully with his whip. He continued in his restless pacing.
“It is much more than strange that the two found the unfortunate ‘burial’ site at the old relic?” interjected Arian, referring to the ancient school building that had existed in somewhat pristine condition. Apparently, its condition was due to use before by Dulman governmental agencies.
“Yes. Yes, it was, Arian,” agreed Martin. “And also find it interesting that it was in such a short matter of time, as well.” Martin paused his pacing and gazed coldly into the boys eyes, “ Was it because you had followed the solders from the Jest to the old relic—secretly hiding?”
The boy knew what the godman was driving at, and he rocked his head from side to side in utter disbelief, “No, no sire. It was nothing like that. It was just a morning stroll.”
“Just a stroll!”
“Yes.”
“Just a morning stroll, nothing more?”
The boy timidly and hopefully glanced up at Matin, “Yes.”
Matin’s expression turned to dire hate, “You lie!”
This was not happening, the boy thought, it was not true, surely, surely someone could defend them, yes, someone—-the Brain—-yes, the Brain knows! “Ask the Great Lord!” the boy blurted out.
“Indeed!” Martin shouted out, raising his whip as if to slap the boy, the boy jerking back his head to absorb the potential blow. Martin lowered his whip to his side in more composure. “Indeed. You see, we have—-and you were detected!”
“Detected?”
“Yes!”
“As to what? We’ve done nothing. Said no…” He stopped, for he suddenly realized how strange and misleading it would have been to complete that remark. Mark saw his predicament.
“Yes, your correct child, you said and saw much—-it showed on our scanners! Trapped! Caught!” Martin stood looking dominantly at the two as he slapped his whip repeatedly in his palm. A slight smile of arrogant pleasure was on his lips. The girl began to cry aloud.
A moment of silence emerged, then Martin asked, “What have you to say for yourself?”
Ted’s thoughts were now rapidly envisioning that kind old man they had encountered, the visions of which had to have been detected by the Scanner-Sensors. He could picture his rosy complexion, his flowing white robes, his cane in hand, and that air of a personality associated with something outside of Dulmania, something totally disconnected with the mile after mile of stone and metal, synthetic construction, of Circus, of Jest, of the atrocities such as that Marian and he had stumbled upon previously; and he spoke of a Father—-a Father which sparked a warm glow within Ted’s heart that he never realized existed. Ted certainly never experienced it with his own father.
“It was nothing evil, Lord,” Ted pleaded, “we were just discussing an elderly man I had met. He was kind. A kind person. He spoke no harm.”
“No harm? We think differently. We Sensed differently. There is something there that is aberrative—-it doesn’t equate, it doesn’t compute!”
Marian was sobbing almost hysterically. She fell forward at the feet of Martin and began kissing them, pleading irrationally for mercy while visions of the fate to befall such traitorous action began to enthrall her thinking. Oh, how now she remembered the reports of slaughter in the Circus.
In Dulmania, one wasn’t just content to help the hierarchy capture potential conspirators, but if, within one’s self and own being, a person could detect any trace of rebellion, any smidgen of resentment or fear, that person would be disposed to turn his or herself over to the officials of the Bubble Cities!
From that point, a person would the go through Purgingand finally EcstaticDeath with the promise of eternal life in the Information Banks of the Big Sire.
Long lines of the confessors would line into flanks and march solemnly into the center of the Circus. There they would sing praises to the gods and goddesses of Dulmania of whom they wished to resign in eternity. Drugged into a state of sublime ecstasy with Z-BR8 and other hallucinogens, they patiently awaited their forthcoming slaughter into their eternity. It was hoped that this mirage prompted others watching to jump into the Arena as also confessors and receive the same ending.
At this point, Marian didn’t seek such a reality; she wanted to live her life out. She insisted, he had done nothing wrong.
“Can you tell us where you will meet this man?” Martin began questioning again.
“I don’t know, sire. That is, not exactly.”
“Go on.”
“It was during late summer at the waterfall of the Lily Pads, the one decorating the Goddess Vera. I occasionally walk there because it is not too far from my home; Vera has been a patron goddess.” Martin sneered at what he felt was a dubious remark by the boy. “One day as I sat praying, I felt a presence behind me—-opening my eye to see a reflection cast in the water before me….” Ted was beginning to relax somewhat now, thinking he was doing something to please the gods, “….I was startled. In pure snow-white robes, the person was almost as if he had materialized. But I had turned only to see an old man balanced on a wooden cane. He looked calm and sincere. There was something about his deposition that projected great wisdom.”
“What did he say?” Martin looked casually down at the girl; she had stopped crying to listen. Martin nudged her to her feet indicating she should stand to listen; this she did revealing a dirty tear-stained face.
“The first words to come out of his mouth were, ‘If you must pray, why not pray to a real God!’” Martin stared ahead with resentfulness. “Then he proceeded to say that I was a ‘Son of Evil’ and would die in evil unless I came face to face with the ‘Father of All.’”
“A traitor! Truly a traitor!” Uncle Redress shouted. He stepped forward near Martin to speak. Martin bid him silent. “Go on,” Martin requested.
‘He said many things; some I cannot remember! He spoke of ‘another reality,’ one outside of Dulmania. He said we were ‘slaves of unreality.’”
“Blasphemy!” Martin shouted. Ted’s eyes widen in expectation. Something quite unexpected was happening here that neither he nor Marian had come to grips with earlier.
“He also said we were ‘servants of death,’ and that our freedom was only a ‘slave reality: real slavery.’’’
“Why wasn’t this old man detected by the Big Sire?” The Son of Misslou turned to accost his uncle, “Why didn’t the scanners pick him up at this point?”
“Perhaps if has something to do with this ‘other reality’ he spoke of,” Arian said. He came out of the dimly lit red of the back area into the white light of the foreground.
“You have ‘freedom.’ By the hand of the gods, you have complete, total freedom. Has anything been kept from you?” Martin queried. “In the Brain is complete ‘Truth.’ In the cities of the gods are complete reality. We create reality. We are reality!”
The allegation this old man made to young Ted made Martin quite confused, “We don’t deny you freedom, short of traitorous action to Dulmania….”
Martin jerked his head back, and then made several short jerks, stopping to gaze into the air over their heads of those before him: The huge letters M-A-R-T-I-N had materialized overhead: The Brain was about to speak, the Brain would sometimes make its presence known at surprising times and in often unexpected ways. Much like a tele-type of ancient times, a message produced in midair and passed before them across the room. “THERE IS A BIT OF INFORMATION THIS YOUNG MAN MUST RECALL.” A short and silent pause must have been on the lips of the Unseen Genius, “IF HE WOULD RECALL, SEVERAL YEARS AGO, AS A BOY OF FIFTEEN, YOU MADE AN ERNEST REQUEST OF ME.” Ted was now showing signs of trauma, now bending on one knee, “YOU HAD A BROTHER YOU HATED, HE WAS TO BE A SOCALLED ‘SON OF GOD.’ YOU WISHED HIM DEAD AND SWORE TO REVEAL THE SEEDS OF TREACHERY IN HIM. YOU ALSO SWORE TO THE SEEDS OF ANY FURTHER TREACHERY IN HIM—AND EVEN GREATER ALLEGIANCE TO ME.” Another pause before more frightening words, “YOUR BROTHER WAS DESTROYED SHORTLY AFTER, WAS HE NOT?”
Silence was a heavy camion in the room. Its drudgery lasted almost a minute. Martin was the first to muster a breath—-then words.
“Freedom! Total and complete freedom! Not slavery!” Martin’s words had been given an extra firmness considering the Brain’s equally overbearing expression. Ted Zeo no longer could speak. He was numb in the quagmire of confusion.
“Where are you going to meet this man again?” demanded Martin. There was only silence. Ted gazed blankly at the floor.
“Where are you going to meet this old man again?” shouted Martin grasping the boy by the hair and jerking his head back in a swift motion. The boy gagged. A look of fear and hate, both, covered the boy’s face. The boy clenched a fist. “Where?” Martin raised his whip; his eyes dilated with hate. Martin’s smooth childlike complexion had become contorted into a ruddy pink beneath the contortions of face muscles; fury was denoted by short snorts of air out of his nostrils; he was a magnificent example of Dulmen machinery functioning at its fitful best.
“Tell him! For the sake of the Dulmen gods—-tell him!” Marian became hysterical and moved towards the boy to add emphasis. “Tell him, you imp of a demon! Tell him! Tell him!” She began to beat the boy with her fists: harder and harder!
“Please Marian,” whimpered the boy, somewhat distancing from the control of the demi-god and was swaying with each blow from the girl. “Don’t Marian,” he pleaded, “please,” his nose began to bleed, “ please don’t,” he sobbed.
The guards grabbed the girl and pulled and pulled her back from her contortions of fear and rage. Her actions apparently verged on insanity (if that had any equivalency in Dulmania).
Martin relaxed momentarily and began to speak more casually. “I suppose this old man led you to believe that Dulmania was somehow not in your best interest.’’ Martin recalled how the main themes at the University centered on how all treachery and rebellion and how the overshadowing evidence of Dulmen benevolence transfigured that. “I suppose he told you how life inhabits not in the veins of Dulmania, but a Higher Power!”
Those words sparked some acknowledgement in Ted Zeo. He glanced up into the eyes of the demigod.
“Yes, that is correct.”‘ There was a twinge of spite in Ted’ remark.
“And that ‘killing’ at the hand of another mortal was wrong?”
“You are saying this, sire.”
“And that the gods of Dulmania are not really gods, but just flesh and blood such as he?”
Oh, how those ‘histories’ were now invading Martin’s memory. Like phantoms of the past come out again, but only to haunt a forbidden secret. And there was something being seen here now that he had not seen before that moment.
“And it was wrong to ‘hurt’ or ‘kill,’” Ted continued in his own words. Martin noted the arrogance of the boy. Martin’s contorted lips and his grip on his whip again highlighted his hate.
“Then tell me traitor, how long will you be able to watch ‘this’ before you divulge the information we seek?”
Martin dismissed the guards, bluntly faced the girl, and began to beat the girl mercilessly.
**********
Chapter Eleven
Saltarello – Moderato
The waterfall cascaded over the rim of the cliff serenely, melodiously; the flowing water sprayed about exuberantly on the rocks into the pool below. It narrowed into a stream fenced by lichen, foliage, moss, and other botanic vegetation. Stone benches had been placed now and then along its bank. Arching over the stream was a huge marble sculpture of the goddess Vera; she looked as if she were about to descend to the top of the stream and glide down the waterway: arms were at her sides and tilted gracefully. Her chin slightly bent towards the heavens and her cat-like eyes stared upwards with a look of longing. She was treading on hundreds of smaller stone images of human arms and legs.
In the spring of the year, the park site surrounding the waterfall was astoundingly beautiful. Lily pads covered the small pond pools on each side of the stream outlined by long lines of exotic flowers and plumage. The stream contained at some points blossoms from apple and cherry trees. Roses would pop through the climbing vines partnering closely with oaks and weeping willows. A few swans visited to dart back and forth and glide over the crystal-clear water. The fragrance of luscious wild fruit ad botanic redolence strode in the breezes. It was almost magical. Rhythmic chatter would issue from couples who sat and made conversation and prayer to Vera. Sometimes the dialogue became outrageous and the water would carry traces of scarlet and red. Often, in pure indifference.
Ted Zeo sat motionless, expressionless. His arms limp at his sides. He protruded one leg out from him in a relaxed manner. He obviously was drugged or under a form of Control. He wore a one-piece outfit like moccasin material or animal hide, simple with an outdoor appeal. His head was lunged slightly forward in his zombie gaze, and at the nape of his neck was a swollen red streak, a tell-tale sign of the whipping he received at the Crimson Corridor of Justice that night before.
As the birds chirped gently and cheerfully in the morning light, almost unnoticed came a ruffle from the brown-green ticket behind him. Then it stopped. It was followed by crunching, sliding gravel. The boy was being watched by invisible glances. Ted somehow perceived the projections for he knew the source. The gravel sound continued until a shadow fell across Ted’s lap. Ted cared not to move.
“My father could not be here, Ted Zeo, alleged son of Maccabee Zeo, child of destruction—but instead, I offered to come.” The voice was that of a much younger person. It had challenge to its tone, a crisp determination, yet with compassion and benevolence.
“Is that so?” replied Ted, coolly, calmly. He rotated his neck slightly, barely seeing the person behind him. “I’ve come to wait for him just as he said might be possible.” Ted turned back to his original position.
The other young lad moved directly in front of Ted to face him. “Why? Why did you come again?” Ted said nothing, just continued his trance-like stare. The new-comer gave his name: “My name is Matthew. That name is highly esteemed among my people. It had been given to those who hope to lead my people. I only hope that I hall earn that name.”
Ted raised his eyes only momentarily to gaze at the boy. He was somewhat near Ted’s age, but his look of youth was tempered. The boy obviously has seen work, hard work, revealed by the creases and wrinkles in his hands. His blonde hair was being tested by the wind and he appeared to be an outdoorsman. His dark blue eyes were clear and analytical. The thick cloak and robe-like mantle-toga were snow-white wool that almost glistened in the sunlight.
“You can offer me nothing any longer.” Ted remarked despondently, his eyes fixed upon the fair-haired boy.
“I offer the greatest gift of all.” The youth stepped closer and in an unsuspected touch placed his hand upon the shoulder of the hopeless Ted. “I can reveal to you the eternal love of an eternal Father.’’
Ted frowned again and lowered his head. “Father! What is a father? I am owned by a guardian who presents me twice a year to the Department of Welfare for personal initiation into various Dulmen rites,” he paused in thoughts that came sluggishly, “my mothers are many…no, my one legal guardian is a lady…”
“The true history of your family and ancestry is a confused and erroneous one — as is the fact with all of Dulmania. The truth of which you will not be able to bare at this time.”
“To bare…” murmured Ted, becoming incoherent in his thinking, “I must have you stay long enough.” Ted swayed slightly and appeared to gasp for air while speaking. He stumbled to his feet while Matthew graciously helped him. “You must stay just a few minutes longer—just a few,” Ted pleaded.
‘‘Of course, my…my brother.” Matthew smiled and squeezed Ted’s shoulder affectionately.
A moment of silence was broken by a low but audible high-pitched sound above their heads. The mellow-blue sky first appeared empty but then as if on an invisible angel’s harp strummed beyond vision, high in the placid sky, it became louder and louder into a noticeable hum.
The stranger quickly glanced over upward to see a silver speck zigzagging about a mile over their heads. It was soon joined by another and then another, and all three descended vertically downward —- Dulmen transport globes that separated about two-hundred-feet above, spreading into a circle on the ground, one on the far bank of the steam and two on either side of the boys.
At lightning speed, Dulmen guards seized the bewildered youths. Matthew jostled and pivoted on his toes much like ancient football players did when active in their sport, but it was in vain for his struggle was futile. They harshly and expertly bound his wrists together behind his back and shoved him into a craft.
Matthew slowly turned to glance at Ted from the transparent sphere. With two guards next to him, Matthew appeared to be calm, giving Ted a glance of pity and determinism. Ted was also bewildered by the arrest. Slowly, they also led Ted into the other Bubble Craft. A wave of a guard’s hand the crafts ascended slowly for the first ten feet and then picked up speed and rapidly veered briskly into the sky.
The arrest appeared to have completed more expertly and profoundly than their earlier expectations. They rewarded themselves with more Z-BR8 capsules.
In the on-going silence of the morning, a sparrow glided straight down the middle of the stream, banked, and fluttered to the bench on which Ted Zeo had been seated. The bird chirped frequently while pecking with his beck on the stone. Spying a small shiny object on the ground, the bird hopped down to it, eyed it suspiciously, and begun pecking it as well: It was a small medallion that had been lost in the shuffle of the arrest; sparkling clean and the silver circlet glittered with each turn.
To a discerning eye, one could see the miniature image of a dove descending upon a fish.
**********
Chapter Twelve
The Arena – Circus Maximus
The youth stood before two heavy metallic sliding doors, huge monstrosities with steady blinking lights around their edges. Outside the thick structures one could hear the low, thudding throb of beating drums; the steady ‘‘Boom! Boom! Boom!” A slow hypnotic moan. Guards stood beside the doors, awaiting to attend the matter of opening them and escorting the herd of homosapiens into the Circus Proper.
Firm fingertips were upon the individual as two guards jerked his wrists together and began to encase the cords around them. It hurt. It was painfully tight. They checked him over to see if his robes were straightened properly for this fashion, especially the blood stains from previous whipping. It was to be most illustrative.
“Stand ready to meet the gods!” the one guard sneered. He slapped the boy on the shoulder lunging him off-step and almost into the girl in front. “Father, have pity!” she sobbed huddling against the boy and supporting him to a standing position. Matthew halfheartedly smiled back to the tearful girl, who was, then, immediately forced to turn back around. In her face, though stained with from tears, and eyes that were perpetually moist, he found solace, and better still, remembrance of something soft, warm, and loving that he had felt only a day ago; and apparently, had little chance of immediately returning to.
The guards, presently stunned by their allotment of Z-BR8, continued checking the captives on down the line. Matthew’s mind was one big blur of colleting memories and events. His capture had been quickly followed by many others in his community. With amazing accuracy, scanners placed throughout Dulmania cities and rural regions begun picking out the, now, familiar white specs. Within hours the maneuvers of the guards concentrated upon descending about Conspirators in an accurate science after the first global arrests of the Hidden People that had been picked-up and transported to Mylar City for questioning.
Then, just as swiftly, those scanners stopped: no more traces were found! But Martin Seisbury was happy with his accomplishment. Apparently, twenty-five conspirators had been caught a few hours after Matthew’s arrest. The Judgment Halls, which Martin now actively presided over, became crowded with large amounts of officials in the dimly lit crimson light of the auditorium. One by one, the suspects would file before the brilliance of the Judgment Seat highlighted by the huge three-dimensional Dulmen emblem in the back wall. Each suspect was dressed in the clothes of plain and simple garb of the nomad. Each hung their heads in silence. Each refused to speak or confess anything, but would speak-out with such expressions as:
“Father have pity on us!”
Or occasional:
“Preserve us to the end.”
It would infuriate Martin immensely, and the watching crowd (which often manifest itself as a violent mob) attempting to grab the prisoners and attempt murder but stopped by the mysterious and stunning flashes of large block letters overhead from the Brain: “ LET THEM BE!” And so, the mob would restrain their actions, drop their grips, fall back, and allow the nerve-shattered victims to remain to stand in silence—- silence or song —-for some would be so brazen as to sing sweet melodies—hymns praising a One God—-a Creator of All.
It would be at this point that Martin would beat them maliciously or have them beaten, yet they remained silent upon his questioning, or they sang until knocked into unconsciousness. This show of authority would come to an end when this giant-sized Dulmen ego was satisfied, and the victim finally sent to the Hyper-ocean where their brain patterns and memories were raped naked and minutely analyzed In the deep recesses of the Mighty Sire. Every crook and cranny of their ‘super egos’ were psychologically dissected—-and even then, there was something that didn’t compute!
Just when the patience of Dulmen gods were being irksomely tested, the needed information was discovered! The major source of this simple tribe was located—-somewhat unwittingly—-during Dulmen psychological and mental rape. The source was seemingly the cliffs and hills out on the far end of the Forbidden Zone near the edge of the Flats! The Flats were mirror-like Moon-like prairies created by the searing and hellish heat of the last atomic-nuclear war on the planet: a rough area of approximately 2000-miles square, pock-marked with deep dark craters—-centers of the various explosions that often evaporated-away rock, boulder, mound, bill or mountain!
It was only near the farthest edge of the vast area that a gradual hill or rock irregularity would appear, until knolls and then large, majestic towering and even spiraling cliffs, unnatural archways, windows, and icicle-like columns. It was within the corners, sinks and tight fissures of these cliffs that caverns had formed within the bowels of rock by means of the gyrations and convulsions in the earth from the nuclear holocaust; existing within these convenient caverns and stone hallows, the tribes of Conspirators had hidden for many, many eons—-secret, ever-elusive, ever watchful, yet never fully protected or invulnerable. The only protection they had was the rugged terrain and —– some Higher Source.
The area had been immediately quarantined due to the extreme radiation in the thousands of roentgens and desolation; the, then, present government posted stern prohibitions and limits. Any youth venturing into the areas would be almost instantly turned into a senile, deathbed patient displaying wet and grotesque burns and sores. The effects of the war could not be contained just to the Flats—-the governments did instigate a timely and ingenious propaganda as to explain away the global deaths which suspiciously appeared to be radiation poisoning. The profligacy of human governments had not changed that much in intervening years.
As Dulmania came into existence, various catalysts and Reducing Agents were dropped into the areas from orbiting spacecraft hoping to abate the radiation levels. A certain amount of success was obtained, but the area was still avoided as dangerous and plague-like. Children grew-up associating the area with the Dulmen god of War—-Maxz—-and the war-torn area was known as the Land of the War gods.
The fantasy taught to children was astounding, and the extreme to which the government went was significant of the huge statue which stood like a towering monster over a highway leading into the War Zone: a fanged, pupil-less, hairless monstrosity of a Dulmen solider with arms crisscrossed over his chest, disintegrator sword in his fist, and a metal-tipped whip in the other. The statue rose some eight-hundred feet into the atmosphere and the top would often be obscured by clouds.
A large stone dedication at its feet announced: MARXZ – ALL THAT IS HUMAN.
**********
Chanting could now be heard through the large Arena doors. The audience of the Arena must have grown full and spectators impatient. There was no deed for citizens to be troubled by the weather growing cooler and their losing their sun-warmed afternoons with barely warming radiant heat from fall seasons —- to the contrary, the weather inside the Dulmen Bubble City was disgustingly mild and fair! Their blood was already stimulated by drugs and Z-BR8 intoxicants. Trumpets were starting to join the beats of the of the drums in a brisk and military style.
Directly in front of the metal doors, eloquently dressed, fully intoxicated ladies and gentlemen in elaborate garb danced in a childish fashion; their laughter was enough to cause horripilation and hysteria. The dancing crowd began to disrobe each other teasingly; Matthew could only shake his head in disgust, tears began to roll down his cheeks. Many of his people turned their heads in shame or disgust at such haughty display which gave little respect for the feeling of the new captives which were about to sacrifice their lives for some eternity in the memory of the gods. Many had come forth to confess sympathies secretly harbored within themselves and realizing this only upon hearing the announced arrest of the Conspirators: and now they wanted to make final restitution with the hidden rulers of Dulmania.
Matthew’s eye caught a familiar face of a boy dancing in frenzied rapture, the same boy who he had confronted on the day of his capture—-his very being was about to be consigned to the electronic circuits of the Ultra-Computer. Ted Zeo! Ted Zeo had finally made a ‘mark’ for himself in Dulmania eternity and legendary. Matthew shook his head: so near, yet so far! The fate of that young boy could have been different if….
Cries of horror and fear rose from behind Matthew and the snapping of a whip forced his attention to focus sharply on the new activity: large transparent enclosures had been rolled into place on each side of the line. Within them, hideous, snarling and grotesque beasts—-The Boors—-lashed their tentacles about like octopuses, revealing between lashes large teeth in a gapping cavity of a mouth whose roars could be heard even outside the enclosures.
Matthew’s people were in tears and cringing in freight. Thoughts of Lorna, Matthew’s sister, as well as his father, Paul, were painfully as well as intimately haunting him. But above all this was his vision of his sweet wife, Roseanne; he had felt her gentle fingers upon his hand numerous times in previous hours, looking up in expectancy of seeing her petite and smiling face, only to realize that this was a fantasy of his mind fostered by the fear of the forthcoming terror!
The men tried to comfort the women as best they could, handicapped by their imprisoned limbs. Matthew struggled back into the crowd to do likewise but was cut short of breath by a husky hand around his throat and forced back again; regaining his breath, he stuttered, and then shouted over the heads of those before him into the crowds of people:
“Sing! Sing! Loud, my brothers and sisters! Sing!”
Matthew tried to raise a clenched fist into the air in a show of brave expression, only to feel the pain of the cord around his wrists. Tears streamed down his cheeks instead.
“Sing to our Father! He has not left us!”
A large hand muffled his mouth, allowing only mumbles as he vigorously struggled, biting the hand of the soldier who grabbed his chin in pain. The boy jutted himself straight and continued:
“This has happened for a purpose! A new and terrible Age has opened! The time has come! It is here! So, sing!”
The citizens, soldiers and aristocracy of Dulmania perhaps were struck by the irony of the situation: The Brain, in its immense and total Power to Control, had allowed all players to exhibit a veneer of free actions rather than resort to rote zombieism, perhaps as a way of showing Dulmen eventual victory and Rule.
Matthew’s voice unexpectantly at last hit a noted of joy and he began to smile. Then, just as suddenly he was knocked to the ground and left lying. Immediately, voices rose in song, a stentorian melody, loud, vibrant; to the Dulmen, it was alien, incoherent , but to the persons of many centuries before, it would have been familiar.
“‘A mighty fortress is our God…,’ the song went, ‘a trusting shield and weapon,’ faces of the crowd and attendants became struck with surprise, ‘He helps us free from every need, that hath us now overtaken…’”
And on and on it went! The snapping of the indignant whip over their heads had little effect, neither the vile and nasty remarks of the soldiers, nor the slapping of the faces of the women.
“ ‘The old evil foe now means deadly foe: deep guile and great might, are his dread arms in fight…’”
The erotic dancers stopped suddenly in amazement and they began to study the strange chorus. Matthew regained consciousness and smiling was helped to his feet by someone unknown. Despite pain, he began to sing as well.
‘“…on earth is not his equal…’”
The guards, despite their confused expressions and murmurs of exasperation, were given a signal to commence. The Circus audience was impatient for their big event. A wave of the hand, a crisp, sharp monosyllable from the Centurion Officiates of the Arena Games, and the huge doors began to roll aside to reveal the enormous Pit Area of the Arena.
‘“ Tho’ devils all the world should fill, all eager to devour us, we trouble not, we fear no ill, they shall not overpower us…’”
Whips lashed out overhead as the procession and signing continued. Yes, it continued! It continued into the loud roar of mankind at its animal worse.
‘“ This world’s prince may still scowl fierce as he will…’”
The jeering, the cursing, the throwing of urine and aphrodisiac-hallucinogenics increased, but the captives went on signing for as long as they could through exhaustion. The main terror was nearby.
“‘…he can harm us none, he’s judged, the deed is done…’”
They quickly prepared themselves for their final acts of loyalty as they strove to grasp each other’s hands to signal confidence and love to their religious tribal brothers and sisters.
‘“…one little word can fell him…’’’
Until the captives reached the point of unbearable exacerbation and passed into oblivion!
**********
Chapter Thirteen
The Ascending God
Though huge portraits of Martin Salisbury decorated the pillars of the Arena, the whole of Mylar City Proper and continuing suburbs, Martin was feeling no warmth, contentment, or composure. And while the news dispatches had gone out in eloquent processions, and the Dulmen propagandists did more than their share to advertise this latest Dulmen victory, Martin felt something deep-down in the pit of his stomach that wasn’t the essence of victory. He had been fashioned into an overnight hero yet he felt defeated (feelings that were probably reviewed by the Brain), he had won the favor of gods and goddesses, yet he felt like an undeserving child.
In the early minutes before the Circus, Martin approached the Circus Proper through the Officials Chute-Corridor. The conveyor jets transported him and his personal guards to the praetorium of the mid- length of the Arena where the official Box was for honored guests and dignitaries. He nodded only halfheartedly at those who stood to greet him. Uncle Redress (smiling lustfully with pride), Arian, several Dulmen dignitaries and officials spoke:
“Congratulations,” slowly spoke Arian with a board grin. They shook hands, the rest nodded. Martin quickly swiveled and sat upon the suspending set that faced out into the Arena. Martin shaded his yes and solemnly glared at the Pit area.
The spectators appeared to be in a robust and wanton mood, and the seating-area was full; everyone rocked and bounced on the plastic-like Veri-Cushion (a flexible but invulnerable sheet or canopy that was in fact a spectacular Belt that could, at will, form into a ‘seat’ and backrest upon the presence of a body; it appeared as a popping motion about the Arena as various rows of spectators appeared).
Occasionally various citizens would light-up in an aura of blue-white light evidentially because of a Ray Device held by another individual. These were the Stimulation Devices that would suddenly throw the victims into a momentary frenzy of erotic and ecstatic delight. One could see a female arch up on her toes and heave her bosom into the air, musically weaving her arms through the glow while bathed in an eerie blue-white light hovering on top of the green halo a few inches from the skin of her body. Suddenly, the light would vanish and she would drop back to her original position, usually to comic with the provocatory.
The drums had stopped abruptly. Then the loud, clear blasts of the trumpets. The huge entrance doors sled open. Martin’s attention was enlivened — he sat up erect on his throne. Then it turned to dismay as he as he began to view again all the familiar faces that stood before him in the preceding hours. His eyebrows rose in serious consternation as he noticed the captives signing in jubilation. Then, again, he thought to himself, this was not so surprising given the irony of this band of ‘loners.’
Veronica, the dark-haired, hazel-eyed damsel who had stood before him for an hour, was again in his view. Unable to harass her into speaking, a guard slapped her. She only cried.
“Why does my God-given brother persecute me?” she sobbed.
“Brother?” the guard snapped back, “I would not wish to ‘touch’ the likes of you!”
Martin observed the incident, “A bit too harsh,” he thought to himself. The women stumbled forward. Martin noticed that here was a woman that was far too eloquent, of a majestic heritage, much more than those mechanical nymphs that decorated the Mylar City gardens. Here was a women whose face was ruddy from wind and not from the artificial color injections into the glands of erotic damsels. She had the strong, firm muscles from the many hours of tilling the ground, harvesting the crops, and rearing the children; not the mathematically and systematically developed thighs, hip, and breasts of the Mylar maidens; their physiques were calculated to produce desire of the human Dulmania gods. Her hair had the half-sheen of wind and dust after he a long day’s journey across the prairies, not the forever-sleek strands of the Aroian Palaces.
**********
“Why — why does my brother persecute us?” she sobbed with large owl-like eyes.
Martin swallowed his saliva before speaking: “You are addressing a god!’’ He paused briefly, “I am not your brother.”
“You are a prisoner that you judge us so vainly.” The intense stare of her eyes continued their sober fixation. Her statement whirled around in Martin’s head that was the very essence of Dulmania (from his lustful nights in the Aroian Palaces to the mentally electric ‘throb’ of the Dulmen Universities). He could not comprehend.
He jerked his head back in several small flicks.
“You are far too wise a woman to be a traitor. If I could offer you your ‘freedom’—HERE—NOW—in exchange for your allegiance would you give it?” As if written there, Martin held his hand out flat and straight.
The women just wryly twisted her lips in a sly grin: “Why should I give up all that I have—all that I WANT—for a parcel of bead that is already rotten with disease?”
“You speak riddles!” Martin stomped from side to side. “You make no sense!” He looked at her in cold examination. “I could have your mind transferred in a twinkling of an eye!’ He shook his finger at her. “Your whole body molded into an exquisite damsel of Dulmania, every thought plucked, dissected, by the Brain, whether you liked it or not!” Martin looked at her expecting unusual reaction—-instead, she slowly tilted back her head and cogently, almost in pain and agony, spoke:
“There are somethings, my earthly brother, where you have no ownership—neither can it be bought—or sold—neither can you rob it. For ‘it’ lies in the protection of the Power of one much higher…” She stepped forward a few paces to deliver her remark. “…for our Father is not mocked, as you are doing unto your brother so shall it be done unto you! Sooner or later, it shall be done unto you!”
“Riddles! Confounded riddles!” Martin rose two clenched fists in anger, an angered god! But to Veronica he appeared as a lost child.
“Take her away! Let the Brain have her!”
**********
Martin halfheartedly slammed his fist into the other hand as to not disturb those seated around him. His thoughts traced over the others in the procession. These few who were so enigmatic to his robotic mind. “Why?” The thought kept sneaking snake-like, rat-like into his mind. The question had no business being there, there should have been no question at all.
“Why?”
And “why” kept lingering there as he recalled another familiar face below in the Arena. That face was contorted in joyous song. It was the blue-eyed, blond-haired, lovely adolescent, Sandra. She had kept her silence and only tears betrayed her hate. But she tried to remain silent, though misunderstanding followed her aside the atrocious evens she had seen.
Sandra let her anger be known when she attempted to slap Martin’s face—-Martin at first felt a reciprocal rage, but it mellowed into admiration—and then haughty laughter. The Hall took its cue and began laughing as well. The cold, almost damp stone slabs that checkered the walls of the Judgement Hall echoed vibrantly throughout, rebounding the sound back and forth along the Malayan-type faces sculptured in the stones in the periphery of the reddish nocturne corridor.
This furthered Sandra’ s resentment, and she promptly spit in the man’s face.
“Take the brat!” He calmly further reflected examining his glossy whip. “Rape her if she refuses to talk. Then turn her over to the Brain,” he flipped the whip from one hand to the other, “that is all!”
Sandra was briskly escorted away. She expressed a look of ghastly horror as she disappeared into the mass of vultures lurking in the red haze of the Hall. Still, she shouted: “Dulmania will die! Our God is not profaned! Dulmania will die! Father, help us!”
**********
There was Andrew: a husky and muscular specimen of the mysterious tribe. Clothed in the customary toga and heavy sheath with the emblem of dove and fish on the front, he now stood before the Grand Questioner. He also stood mute. In short order, Andrew had been flogged. It was obvious he had been flogged because of his muscular iron-like physique. Instead of the smooth, flawless skin seen in Dulmania, there were the scars and wrinkles of hard labor on his hands and neck. He was a man of 34-years-of-age but he appeared much older. He evidently was not a product of the Bubble Cities or even the Outer Communities.
Andrew had been in the last train of captives, and Martin had become quite proficient in the handling of the last few. Martin stood in almost bored tears as he watched Andrew grimace in pain. In great pain, Andrew recited some of the chants and prayers of his tribe; no one could understand them, but they were buffers to ward off the pain.
“Blast your god!” Martin cried out. Nothing could harm the man any more than he was hurting in the lashes of the flagellations. “It is trickery to delude us in the rebellion against the official gods of Dulmania!”
Andrew said nothing. He peered up at Matin quickly and continued to chant his sayings.
“Damned be your Father!” The last lash struck – the man was released to fall to the cold floor. He looked as dead. Martin went to stand by him and turn him over with the toe of his boot, but was startled to see Andrew attempting to raise, a slow eternal moment in which he rose a full arm’s length. His sweat and blood glistened as his dark eyes reached out to the Dulmen towering before him and he groped for words He murmured in a deep breath of exasperation: “He who is a friend of the world is an enemy of the Father…,” he paused, “…he who is against the Father…,” pause again, “…is an advocate of the world.”
Andrew’s head fell to the floor as a heavy rock, and then he lay unconscious.
**********
The terror for the captives had passed. The slaughter was finished. Cheers were still ringing from the spectators around the Arena, many were climbing the inner wall to travel to the Pit area, all in frenzied excitement. Some were exhibiting cannibalism to the mutilated bodies strewn about. Small globe-transports zig-zagged about the growing mass of Arena spectators in the Pit area, like darting hummingbirds, they zipped about charging close to spectators as if to disrupt their activity, and then quickly moving to another spot. Trumpets were again sounding and the drums throbbed against this wall of anarchy with a jubilant resonance, the whole Arena was in a mass orgy. It wa a manifestation of Dulmen gods!
They were calling out Martin’s name!
“Stand forth Son of Misslou! Arise our Ascending god!””
Over and over went the chant, first low and feeble, then in unison, gaining in volume joined by the clapping of hands, into a thundering roar.
“Stand forth Son of Misslou!”
Around the inner wall of the Pit were wide viewing windows stretched around the four corners of the partition and in the midlenth sections. Around the windows a line of spectators could also be seen shouting and clapping; others held their children over their heads as if to give them a better view. Some had their noses pressed tightly against the windows.
“Arise our Ascending god!’
Banner-bearers held large flags of state and federal motto which waved back and forth gracefully and in unison.
“Stand forth Son of Misslou!”
Hands were being clasped onto Martin’s shoulders in friendly congratulations, and the dignitaries that were seated near him were raising their arms in salutations.
“Arise our Ascending god!”
Martin began to awake from the indifferent stupor he was in. His thoughts had been in a momentary battle and he was first aware of the complete scene about him. Unable to erase haunting faces that appeared before him during the last hours, Martin rubbed his eyes hoping the visions would go away, but they remained. He reluctantly viewed the shouting mob. He silently beckoned Dulmen gods to remove his disturbing thoughts. His vision ascended to the canopy of electrical static that branched out into the atmosphere of the Bubble City from the Purifying Tower that was visible just over the rim of the Arena bleacher-area, the jagged arcs of electricity would jerk out from the tower’s pinnacle, spreading white and blue spray and mist over the city.
Slowly, Martin banished his frame of mind and then stood silently and somewhat disinterested stood before the crowd. The roar of the spectators turned into deafening applause and shouting. Garments and various clothes were thrown into the air, stimulator-devices were activated in rapid succession.
Unavoidably, Martin’s eyes fell upon the Pit Area as the actions of a trained falcon as to what he had done. He waved his arms towards the crowd…once…twice…and then dropped them to his side in what appeared to be a forlorn droop, turning to those behind him in his mysterious melancholy. Slowly, he investigated the rancor of hysteria around him. The creases in his neck somehow now felt like heavy lead had been poured there. The dignitaries about him produced a sight that caused growing disgust to Martin: their occasional ‘jerking’ of their heads indicating the ‘Control’ of the Big Sire, the Brain. And then in ironic repugnance, Martin felt his own ‘jerk’ of his skull.
“An Ascending god,” he thought momentarily to himself, “indeed!” That was a rank signifying the evolution of a personality from the realm of the demi-god ‘humans’ that now ruled the Bubble Cities to an actual ‘real god of the heavens’ that came to walk amongst the people once a year at the Big Festival. It should have racked him with pleasure, but mixed feeling s and confusion were his only realism.
“Prepare to send our Special Police Squadron out…” Martin addressed Arian who smiled at Martin in dizzy admiration, “I will meet you at the Space Terminal shortly within the hour.”
Martin walked away quickly without further explanation! He was unaware of the looks of amazement and questioning that suddenly appeared as he advanced into the Officials Corridor.
These captives were not the only specimens to ponder — there were other mysterious organisms and threats to investigate as well.
**********
Flashing images from the past, like delicate burst of color and shape, laughing faces and glaring eyes, confronted martin’s consciousness: psychedelic renderings from his ID: completely and totally Dulmania.
First there came the drawn face of one Professor Aultorixus, his rubber-tipped cue waving back and forth rhythmically at the casually grouped before him. His high cheek bones accentuated his pale complexion, and his quick movements of his thick lips resembled the mincing of a jungle monkey. An instructor of history, he had no peer, and no one could equal his devotion or mental dexterity.
“There were six consecutive governments,” he was reciting, “each with an inherent seed of weakness that made their downfall inevitable.” The smell of fresh fruit and floral perfumes were conductive to his low and melodious voice. “They all had essential structures which prohibited the ultimate discoveries of Power and Might.” Through the ivory columns that rounded the rather cool Study Hall, one could see warm sunlight caressing the evergreen shrubberies directly outside. Beyond that, in the Athletic Fields, students were engaging in sports of combat—while cheering females urged them on.
Aultorixus stopped to look his class over; he spoke again. “‘Let me illustrate a point.” He strolled over to Martin who was lazily reclining on expensive tapestry and linen sheets. He eyed Martin curiously. “In Dulmania we have evolved to a point beyond what Krendelson labeled the Psychic Apex, is that correct?”
“Yes sir!” was the snappy reply.
Aultorixus slapped Martin’s face, quickly and with might, while he gently shook the man’s other hand in a sign of deep friendship. Martin was only momentarily stunned. He had seen these acts portrayed on the visual units in his Learning Cubical, it should have come as a total surprise. The others were looking on with unemotional interest.
Professor Aultorixus did the routine again. Martin reluctantly tried to keep himself from emotion under the sting and radiant warmth of the slap in hopes that his cheek would stop quivering.
“So, your see that personal relationships are varied and depend solely on how much we can psychosomatically endure as well as project.”
The Instructor casually strolled to the front of the podium and began more of his insouciant conversation. The psychosomatic syndrome in other ages would have gone by other definitions and descriptions; two thousand years earlier, provided they were agile enough to recognize the syndrome for what it truly was, it would have been called ‘hypocrisy’ and ‘double-mindedness.’ It was essentially what led the Cyrenaic or Hedonistic school of thought by Hegasias to turn into a religion but with a new twist, yet already as ancient as the First Parents, to evolve and grow in ever more subtle ways of life until it became worldwide and incomprehensibly ‘evil.’
One could see the relevancy of this when confronted with the history of Countess Flora. She had become the perpetual ‘virgin’ (any comments to the contrary would have would have brought damnation in the Dulmen Laboratory Incinerators). She was a protégé of the goddess Vinos, a revolved form of the goddess Venus, and as such she was granted the perpetual grace of Holy Virginity; all eyes were fixed to that fact with demanded loyalty. It was an insane form of truth, for Countess Flora was far from a virgin. Indeed, the concubinage was starkly evident and her reputation certainly no secret and no disgrace by Dulmen standards, but inherent and necessity for a society where wickedness was so rampant that ‘virtue’ had to be invented, even if by insane measures!
These recollections of Martin’s faded suddenly.
“Better get in, sire,” came the request from a guard-attendant, “ you’ll be crushed to death by that oncoming mob.”
Seisbury ogled the murmurings of a group of people on the porta-walk that had noticed the ‘Ascending god,’ their new Caesar, and then their footsteps turned into swift running.
“Quickly, get in sire!” Martin became suddenly alert and stepped into the control seat of the Zot Car, a gentle purr and the car shot away.
**********
Martin was again wrapped in reminiscence. He was envisioning a lovely maiden of the Aerion Palaces, involved in one of her seductive renditions, her long silken hair tumbled down upon his face enveloping him in a usual strong scent of aphrodisiac perfume. She began to laugh hysterically, a second group of women near them directed their attention and laughter to a visiting officer.
Suddenly, an earsplitting cry of pain and terror rang out, highlighted by insane grunts and squeals.
Martin grasped for balance as he tried to force himself upright as he threw the surprised maiden to the floor. Martin lunged forward to investigate, holding his Penetrating Pistol in front of him, the chaotic noise suddenly stopped, all eyes turned to Martin slowly approaching the encircled activity. Spectators backed away casually, almost purposefully as if planned, each with a mystifying grin on their faces that gave Martin a chill! When they had flanked back, the scene revealed a horrible murder; it was the mutilated body of the Head Officer of one of the nearby military divisions. It was just one of Martin’s deepest lessons in Dulmen morality.
Martin’s head began to ‘jerk’ incessantly, causing a slight ‘ache’ between his eyes and a warmth at the nape of his neck: The Grand Ruler, The Big Sire, the Brain was discharging Martin’s disposition of shock and Martin’s possible questioning the morality of the incident.
Martin’s thoughts continued to the days that followed that incident, he had the opportunity to learn ‘firsthand’ the justice of the Dulmen Empire, the rulers of that land in their most direct and perverted form.
Sandra, a particular maiden which had occupied Martin with her attentions during this murderous act, was set free, she was found innocent of any charges, and was said to be neither a witness to a crime or an accomplice. This struck all as odd, though none knew officially of such complaints.
Martin had testified that her behavior, before and during the act was indicative that she knew what was about to happen and that her hysteria indicated that much—a laughter which intensified before the act.
The prosecution immediately jumped upon this point. The prosecutor also questioned Martin that the girl’s physical position above him was suspect of the possibility that she was attempting to ‘pin’ Martin down while the homicide was being done. Martin collaborated that suspicion. There were no jurors — the Brain had made juries extinct — the Sedox Era saw the last real “Court of Jury,” for already seeds of inscrutable vanity had transformed courts into a whimsical ‘Kangaroo Court,’ resulting into Dulmen juvenilia bowing to the complete control of the mighty network of their Electronic Ruler. And when the Brain spoke, it was final! This much, Martin had been trained to believe. So, when the girl was found completely innocent of the charges, the only suspicion one could hold was against the prosecution for their incompetence.
Jess, Marine, Val, the three other female witnesses that been sought to testify—were condemned to death! The Officer to whom the witnesses had been assigned to for that evening, Thor de Charge (the grandnephew of one of the highest generals on the Martian surface), was soon to be placed on that planet in hopes of helping his Uncle solve a colonization problem. It was thought that the evening’s ribaldry would lend to that possibility. These girls’ legal distraction was considered an act of ‘treason.’
How odd, thought Martin, that he should look upon such tactics as of no suspicion! And why? Why was he even ‘allowed’ his suspicions? His head began to ‘jerk’ under the weight of free-thinking and the detection of the Brain. Susan, the sole maiden found guilty of the full charges of murder, was put to death, though there was no evidence to perpetuate that action. The other two women—-strikingly and beyond comprehension—were found innocent!
Inquiries were not permitted! Prosecution ordered a mistrial. The High Judge of the Department of Justice controlled the situation saying that no new trial was necessary. But the legal oddities continued. For the first time in years, a group of dissenters were found guilty of treason. They were no longer heard from. But a rumor already began to circulate as to the reason for the Court’s irony of justice: the two girls had more important duties the following night: two visiting, robust and gruesome officials from the city of Star of the far west!
Why? That thought came back again and again to Martin, why should he deem the situation so odd; did not the Great Computer actually ‘Know?’ Surely, Martin, of all people, should have known how Dulmen accomplishment hinged on the surreal and erratic timing of Dulmen jurisprudence.
There was, however, something here that made Martin’s stomach quiver, what if (and this very thought had escaped him for some time) Martin Seisbury had been attacked instead of the Head Officer? Martin’s thoughts were very confused. In the soft green glow of the Zot Car cabin, he could feel the perspiration on his face. Nervous tension brought nausea to his stomach, and that hadn’t happened in eons. His fingers stroked his sweat and he tasted It and the bitter salty taste.
“Are you in a hurry, sire?” the attendant asked.
Martin answered slowly and trancelike, “no, no.”
“Then I won’t bother to speed our travel,” confirmed the attendant. The Zot Car had the ability to ascend into the air vertically and then dart off, or, if it were wished, it would ‘dematerialize’ and ‘materialize’ and travel to one of several Electromagnetic Ports throughout the city (an engineering feat that the government scientists had quite a problem stabilizing and perfecting over the centuries).
Dulmen science, like Dulmen politics, didn’t always move in a straight line.
**********
“Isn’t it great, Martin,” exclaimed the shinning face of one of his fellow students; it had been sometime since that pumpkin-face had invaded his memory, and here it was again, cascading across the motion-film and kaleidoscope of his mind’s eyes.
“Yes, Zon, it’s wonderful.” Martin remarked; the exact occasion had escaped him.
“I want to pull my hair out!”
“Go on.”
“I want to run!”
“Run. Run.”
“I want to dance across….”
“Sure, Zon!”
“I want to pull my guts out!”
“What?”
“I want to kill!”
Kill! It was a word that already had placed more than three punches to Martin’s stomach. Ironic for such a word in the daily life of the Dulmen totalitarian empire. It only added a notch in his stomach tension. Fellow student Zon’s plump face slowly faded. There was in preparation another psychic melodramatic event: this event had not been spied nor captured by the Great Erebus Brain that lucked everywhere, even beneath Mylar city —- indeed, beyond capture by anyone in the general citizenry!
Through transparent slots in the side of the Zot Car cabin, Martin could peer into the surroundings. They had just come along side of sterile white business halls, a huge pavilion supported by thick and designed marble columns. People and officiates strolled up and down the wide and long expanse of steps; most in discussion about some latest philosophy that had been aired in the courtyards of the Hall. Swankly dressed and pressed uniforms and cleansed capes, knee high boots that shined, paraded the lengthy expanse of the steps.
They didn’t always have that slow clip, thought Martin. His mind raced back to the time that the rank and file would line up in squadrons and march in union on the Arena plastic-like seating transparencies. Four, five, six or more levels, one above the other, back, and forth the soldiers would march like millions of ant swarming; several levels above and looking down it would appear as if a mosaic of red and brown and grey.
The soldiers would seem to march for hours. Stereophonically-methodically tuned for precise emotional reaction, such that by the end of a three-hour period the soldiers were entranced, and the herded off to the Aerion Palaces for a release to their frenzied state in a stampede that required utmost coordination, a Dulmen ‘creation,’ a dynamic ‘organism’ within an ‘organism.’
Martin’s Zot Car had turned onto an Express Highway that led almost directly to the Space Air Station; built so that the thick reinforced highway arched over an inner-city river, and then spiraled around a towering monument building—a similar innovation in other sister cities—the highway would level off and the arch down lower and lower till it became again ground level—spreading out for several miles till it neared the Space and Air Station .
As the Zot Car picked up speed along the highway, a steady blue light ‘beeped’ off and on synchronistical on the control panel. The green glow of the panel itself was throbbing from light to bright in rapid succession corresponding to the gathering speed. Sensor-Controls were placed irregularly alongside of the highway, they stood upright on a slender support and looked like a huge ‘eye’ gyrating in various positions. Along the highway were various ‘gardens’ and fields of commercial and laboratory crops and plants owned by the Department of Welfare. Every mile or so there were smooth slopping curves of an hourglass shaped structure which had ‘viewing windows’ at the top (the only sign that it might be occupied): these were the biological laboratories were bold experiments were performed.
**********
Martin Meets the Brain
(Martin’s first encounter with the Brain, the Big Sire, was no gentle introduction; experiments indeed, thought Martin. What wild and wonderous history; just how far back in history did it extend? Again, his mind sank into the churning recesses of his aggregate of consciousness-subconsciousness. Martin was about 15 years at the time and had been told about these great moments. Lesson after lesson prepared him for these ventures, and he expected them to be frightful, but his teachers stressed his encounter with the Brain as a mystical parent, kind and loving .
(He suddenly found himself elevated to about 600-foot level of gravity-free. His head was shaved bald. Cold bits of metal, miniature electrodes, were gently placed to various parts of his scalp. The connections led to a central ‘spinal cord’ of the hub down which ran all the other electrical nerve-lines from the many other students located in the spirals.
(Suddenly, the gossip and murmurings of several thousand people shrunk to a whimper, and then, an almost invisible purr. A blackness descended over him as light was shut off by blinders over his eyes. A solitary ‘clunk’—short and metallic as if a lever or throttle were thrown. A fragile but frightening silence before a low glow of ‘creeping irradiance’ flowed into his brain: it began at the nape of his neck, the back of his head, and slowly crept across his gray matter to meet another ‘feeler’ creeping backward from his forehead. Where they met was a tingling as if a kindling of a small fire within his cerebrum until his whole skull was an imaginary ‘glow’ pulsating in synchronization to the electrical input.
(Martin had been blindfolded, he only saw pitch darkness and the usual imaginary green and red spots of closed eyelids, but strikingly an array of sparks emerged out of a white speck; then ‘stars,’ wind, lightening, and thunder! Faces, thousands of them, unknown and familiar, all thrown together in a matrix of color and sensuality. Voices, millions of murmuring and gibbering monotones and some high-pitched shrieking voices. Laugher, insane, hysterical, and then jovial, and pleasant. A large booming sound as if an explosion: a whole city consumed in flames and an exhibition of molten metal.
(The scene shifted to the underwater; a few escaping bubbles turned into a vast armada of rising bubbles, upward, upward; and far below were the marvelous Underwater Cities—semi-spherical metropolises that were several miles across and could travel the water at several knots of speed. [These were later destroyed in the global tsunamis and earthquakes – tossed about like seaweed.]
(This exhibition was destroyed by collapsing pillars and crumbling monuments. Millions of people in the early century Dulmania were racing madly across fields and desert terrain trying to desperately escape the repeated blinding flashes and searing heat of atomic bomb explosions that quaked the earth with a humongous force that dissolved a person’s flesh instantaneously.
(The drama quickly turned into a somewhat alien, more serene, panorama: Martin and several others were moving down a street viewing the odd architecture of the homes, buildings along the way. This was certainly outside the present era of Dulmania. Every conceivable architectural composition since the beginning of time. The homes were decorated in quaint yet bizarre arrays. Three-story homes with all sorts and shapes of windows, frosted, colored, multiple porches and patios of all designs, strings of lights around corners and down streets, beautifully decorated lawns with exotic and beautiful shrubs, plants, evergreen trees and strange towering prehistoric-like botanical monsters. Martin felt small and puny in this neighborhood.
(Thrown into a lightning-fast vortex, Martin felt as if he were punched in the stomach, a vertigo with gusts of air all around him, his arms and legs extended outward in weightlessness as he fell into blackness. A light suddenly appeared and he noted that he had passed into a cavern shaft, he was running down a cavern tunnel created by human hands, torches lined the sides, and his footsteps seemed to echo as his feet rapidly dug into the dirt. His heavy breathing was almost a prayer that he would find the end and burst into fresh air and sunlight, and when that happened, Martin found himself several thousand feet in the air over the side of a mountain from where he could observe the peaceful countryside spotted by white, red, and brown homes nestled next to the silver ribbon of a river—–then he plunged! A great sickness came over him, a belaboring nausea, a whirlpool of flashing green, white red and many colors, and murmurings, an occasional distortion of a blurred face, and finally a loud ringing that became intensified until……)
This emersion into the Brain would not be Martin’s last excursion, only his first, until the time the Brain was convinced that Martin was well-attuned into its grasp by its juggling chromosomes and DNA, synapses, and nerve paths, and at its satisfaction.
**********
“Stop! Stop! Stop!” Martin screamed. His back ached and Martin felt the wetness of vomit upon his chin and chest and found his right leg in the awkward position of having been pinned over his head against the Viewing Slot of the Zot Car as he tried to prevent himself from falling below the front of his cabin seat. The attendant was trying to force Martin upright and trying to place a tranquilizing substance to him.
“Out!” Martin weakly ordered. The attendant failed to respond. “Out!” demanded Martin in anger. The curved hatch swung open and permitted Martin exit and a fall to the ground.
“Oh, the gods forgive me,’’ Martin whispered, “oh, the gods forgive me!”
He was sobbing now, and utterly ashamed of his condition. He was thinking how obnoxious he was. “Oh, forgive me!” With the strength of one arm, he nervously forced himself to stand erect. He glanced around to see where they came to rest, then began to rub himself as if to calm his nervous agitation.
The highway was deserted. Ahead, several miles, he could see the Space and Air Station which stood near the rim of a Bubble Dome. In the opposite was Mylar City canopied by waves of pink, green phosphorescence that rolled over the city from the electrical discharges of the Purifying System of its gleaming towers.
A cool breeze was cutting across the hydroponic fields they had parked along. It appeared that the Weather Control System sent a purifying air turbulences throughout the enclosed city as well as the surrounding areas. It felt good. It cooled Martin’s perspiring body. Martin slowly paced the gravel along the highway praying his stomach butterflies would calm down.
“Shall I call for medical assistance?” asked the Zot Car driver from the hatchway. It would take, upon request, seconds for the black Medic Craft to arrive.
“No.” Martin sedately replied continuing to pace and glance at the ground. Martin queried himself: How could this be? Why was the Brain’s method of Psyche Mind Control not operating at this moment? He knew how subsequent Control Operations went—-it was like passing into sleep and upon waking he would be something new and completely Dulmen. It would be like going to sleep at night and waking instantly without memory of the night’s dreams. Why should he now be bothered by this something inside—-something!
Martin paced in the opposite direction. He glanced about the highway to see where the Highway Sensors were spaced. He noted one appeared to be some distance from them, but Martin feared that al-controlling presence of the High God, The Big Sire, the Brain was ever-present. The best he could do would be to ask for pardon. What if Mylar City citizens had seen him at such a weak state? His fate would have been consigned to the dank and limitless memory banks of the Brain and its dubious ‘afterlife’ in the Dulmen eternity; and it would be rightly deserved.
Or would it? Would it?
Martin covered his face at the fright of having such thoughts. It was making him dizzy to wrangle with himself over such fuzzy thinking.
“Please sire, come back in,” pleaded the Zot Car driver, “you’ll want no one to see us standing here so questioningly.”
Martin would have struck-out with a reprimand at such presumptuous talk, but he was in no mood, he was exhausted.
“Alright. Alright.’’ He threw the small fist of gravel that he held to the round and stepped through the hatchway of the Zot Car. “I’ll want to change this uniform as well. It smells.”
**********
As they turned to leave, the child held back to place his hand along the bark of the Shermond Oak. He looked straight up into the towering limbs above him with the fluffy white cumulus clouds passing directly farther above. It was his tree; his favorite tree; it would be his forever he told himself.
It was quiet. It was peaceful.
He turned to walk along with his mother. His small body busily pumping his short infant legs to keep up with her as they strolled home through the tall stalks of grass. (Chapter Eight, Alterno Sonata)
The sun had begun to set. Due to the promptings and urgings of the small husky toddler, the mother had escorted him to his novel playground just beyond the lengthy field of orchards and tall flowing grasses where, this night, the Sherman Oak could be seen protruding up from the irregular curve of the tree line.
He wanted to dive once again into the collection of odds and ends he had found. Perhaps some had blown away, his mother questioned, though the wind had died down to a small zephyr.
As they crossed the field their long shadows extended before them as the warm disappearing sun caressed their backs. They quickly kicked their way through yellowish clover; above them and to the horizon was a large soft white image peering down on them, the moon. The sky had become completely void of clouds and only a yellowish-white fog could be seen at the level of the treetops in the distance, a man-made smog circling in all directions. The air had a deceptive appearance of being clear atmosphere that one was accustomed to years ago — back then, one could almost feel exhilaration with every inhale.
They reached the mighty oak. The mother stood patiently as the babe scampered down the path to find his collection of odds and ends from the previous daytime venture. The rays of the setting sun lit up the trees, roasting them in the shinning of the golden orb. The branches allowed a trickle of red, yellow, and brown leaves in a contrast on the forest floor.
When the babe found his stack of souvenirs, he momentarily glanced at his mother standing atop the ridge. He glanced about the area with slightly drawn eyebrows. It was a pretty sight to see, the shadows falling upon each other through the woods as warm patches of sunlight still caressed some limbs. The stubs of grass quivered in the steady soft breeze beneath them.
For the child, life had just begun. It was good. It was real and mysterious. The babe could still smell the fresh juices of the spring before. As if a freshly moved lawn was still somewhere in the air somehow joined a haunting combination of thistle-evergreen and clumps of tall, towering ferns and evergreens in a slight rocking motion. Birds darted above high in the mild blue sky.
The child let out a sigh of anticipation, “ I play mommy?”
The mother sat beneath the oak tree and nodded her head in acquiescence. The babe contently went about his filling his bag with his souvenirs. He would occasionally pick a plant or a bit of goldenrod or Maple leaf viburnum about him.
It was still quiet. The peace was supreme. Life was good. The child’s thoughts were friendly: It was a forest all his own! If ultimately only a unbeknownst masquerade.
**********
Chapter Fourteen
The Search
Suddenly, Elia was struck by a revelation: “Arian! That was my brother’s name! Arian Yul, they named him!” He thought again, “too bad there wasn’t more there between us. Ah, but that is Dulmania. That is Dulmania. Arian, I wonder what he is doing now?” Chapter Five, Prelude to Destruction.
**********
It was nearly 45-minutes into the hour that Martin assured Arian to have the patrol squad ready. They had driven very slowly; Martin needed the additional time to alleviate his nervous condition. He downed the thin shells of several Z-BR8 capsules as he stepped onto the sparkling clean pavement of the take-off patio.
Stretched out for hundreds of feet in sheik symmetrical flanks were several squadrons of military space craft, slender windswept oblongs with translucent curving forefronts enclosing the crafts’ cabins. Four thin spidery telescopic legs supported each crafts’ weight.
The launching patio seemed to extend for miles in all direction. Along the rim were various humps of metal signifying the spacecraft hangers. To one side was a huge structure which appeared to be made of glass-like material with metal strips into large rectangles as the only signs of support. That was a spacecraft factory that ran uninterrupted for several miles along the highway at the east quadrant of the launching patio.
Through the various sections of the diffuse semi-transparent walls, one could see a bursting red flare along with a low hum and churning; at other points, a blue-white light, or, green, in shadows of the high-speed machinery.
The factory was only slightly obscured from sight by projectiles and missiles that radiated to the far edge of the humongous patio. They were all different sizes and diversifications. Most of them were of circular or globular types—a proven design for high-speed travel.
Arian waited patiently outside one of the crafts. His peripheral version caught sight of Martin and he stopped his conversation with the spacecraft crew and he went to meet the Son of Misslou.
“Greetings, Arian. Do the crew people need further elaboration on the purpose of the mission?” Martin raced to the grist of the mission. Arian noted the growing importance of the new ‘god,’ but was never presumptuous enough to bring it up in conversation.
“Yes, sire. We have brought every policeman up to date. The Mus-chutes have already been informed last night. We are to enter the ‘Flats’ in twelve squadrons each parallel to one another by six miles.”
Martin spoke with ease though he was impatient. “We’ll scan all regions as we go. Communications will be kept fluid through operations. At the least detection, each squadron will break-away to investigate, but all squadrons can be ordered to any trouble spot.”
Arian nodded in agreement. Martin dismissed the Zot Car driver. Martin’s darting glance at the driver conveyed his wish for strict confidence about Martin’s previous paranoia along the highway.
The two leading crewmen were dressed for cooler weather: new, glossy knee-high boots, sturdy thick leather visage and coat, all with the Dulmen emblem in front. Their suits squeaked from the newness. Their sword-weapons slapped slightly on their sides as they walked. A brisk salute went from the crowd to Master Seisbury. The crews scrambled to their crafts, inside walkways, and operation consoles. Martin and Arian vanished into the lead craft.
**********
‘‘Martin! Martin! Martin!’ jovially laughed Uncle Redress coming down the center aisle of the control cabin. He grabbed Martin’s hand in warm affection and then bowed his head towards Martin’s feet and kissed his hand. “Martin, my nephew, what a day of bliss. I believe I could cry. Martin!” The man obviously was unprepared for words; those about stood in confused attention boarding on uninterest.
“Yes, Mark, we are all happy with this occasion,” Arian did not want to disclose any information about “‘the Ascending God’s” growing discontent, “I am quite sure he is most anxious to see this affair to the finish!”
Arian flipped his hand through the air signaling the start of operations.
The crafts rose from the launching patio one by one, row by row, as globular ‘bubbles’ wobbling from watery depths racing to the surface; the crafts all struggled to the Air Trap Chute on the slope of the cities ‘bubble edge.’ (The electromagnetic force field kept the pristine inside atmosphere from meeting the outside molecules.)
Upon slipping through the Chute, each craft waiting patiently outside the city forming the respective squadron units until their small armadas were formed and pointed towards the horizon. The mighty U-shaped armadas slowly began in sped which quickly exhilarated into the setting sun, a large orange orb slowly nestling up to the rim of the horizon.
**********
The crafts’ wrap-around canopies of transparent synthetic diamond often switched to a polarized blue shade. Weightless and graceful globules, the crafts glided over the statue of a Mus-chute solider guarding the main entrance to the legendary ‘Flats.’
They passed over their first crater and its sleek, shinning sides that were formed by terrifying heat and enormous pressure. Deep shadows were thrust against their backsides from boulders and rocks. Soon the craters were many as if a newly created Lunar surface.
Martin viewed the odd and eerie sight. He was aware of the ancient legend telling of how men first placed their feet on Lunar soil and were told a mythical story of the goddess Luna caressing the earth and enticing men to her feminine charms. And then followed centuries of amazing discoveries and industry.
“Thinking of the goddess Luna?” queried Uncle Redress with his usual compassionate smile.
“You knew?” Martin replied. It was Luna here on Earth but only perfectly designed. A Dulmen production. Uncle Redress interjected: “She lured mankind from his birthplace to her boudoir like a lustful love adventure, but she beckoned them to their total destruction.”
It began to dawn on Martin that here, again, were bits and pieces of knowledge that his government-peers didn’t feel necessary to divulge to him.
“How was that uncle? I mean, her magnificent mineral resources, yes. The advantages of an eternal guardian Military Outpost, yes. A new domain for Dulmania, yes. But to our ruin? How?”
“Shortly before that, Martin, shortly before. It was the imperfect government that preceded Dulmen rule. Through their incompetence and impatience to compromise with other worldly competitors, a warring faction arose on the Luna orb. Global conflict broke-out on Earth, my nephew, it was amazingly easy to bombard their opposing party with nuclear weapons from the Moon. Within seconds the Earthly arm of that opposing faction threw at the Lunar civilization all the nuclear might they had. We are now passing over what once was the mightiest and the most glamorous civilization that ever existed —- except our glorious Dulmania —- which incorporated everything of wonder from that defeated civilization.”
Uncle Redress further explained that through the efforts of politician and military spy, Chardin Maxz, that the revolution was a smashing success and the beginning of Dulmania. Martin only stared in pensive thought.
“Ah, there is more, much more. The story of Chardin Maxz is an epic in itself,” Mark Redress continued.
But Martin wasn’t satisfied with such ‘history.’ For the first time in his new career, Martin felt as if a puppet in some secret plot in this marionette play. But should he be brazened enough to even question?
Leaning towards the Viewing Canopy, Martin still had questions. “When did they first land on the Moon—I mean, there must have been a time when they first transported human beings from earth to that satellite? What civilization was it? When did it take place?”
Mark continued adding more facts: “There were a few side effects to such disasters. As you can well imagine, the high radiation. This poisoning was a number one epidemic that science placed an all-out attack. Another was the ‘wobble’ of the planet; it was a serious threat. For a while, large portions of Dulmania were transported to the Moon for safety—-until the electromagnetic fulcrum could be invented.”
Martin jerked his head to stare at his uncle, almost in hatred. The Uncle seemed to be ignoring Martin’s remarks. Mark Redress seemed to stare beyond him, he wasn’t listening at all.
“When did they first land on the Moon?” demanded Martin. Mark may not have known, Dulmen brainwashing was often a fact.
“Of course, Maxz was challenged during the battle as well…”
“When did they, Uncle!” Anger was stirring in Martin that he couldn’t appraise himself, for there was a lot Martin couldn’t recently understand.
“The challenged government of that glorious civilization did dispatch four nuclear projectiles towards the vicinity of the Lunar dissidents and today we can see them seared into the Lunar surface—craters of the new government: Might, Supreme, Justice, New Order. Simple names appropriate to the occasion.”
Martin was about to strike his Uncle. The motionless and empty look upon Mark Redress’s face, he was not going to defend himself. Martin brought his fist to his chest, the incessant movements of his Uncle’s lips only increased Martin’s anger. He slowly brought his fist to head level and started to grimace……
“Scanners activated! Scanners activated!” It was the voice of one of the Console Operators. It broke Martin’s spell of anger. Martin stared at the console to his left.
“Close in!” Arian shouted. “Tell the rest of the squadrons to hold position.” Arian eyed the Scanner closely. “Descend to two hundred feet.”
The craft veered to a lower and newer location.
“Look!” shouted a soldier who was viewing through the Canopy. He pointed to a glassy surface below him. Soon Martin and several other personnel stood by the Observation Canopy. Below them were panic-stricken forms, humanoid in shape. Clothed in animal, rawhide clothing, they ran apelike showing dark strains of thick black hair on arms and legs.
“Drop down1 Let’s get a closer look!”
The humanoids scamped about looking for shelter; some behind a blast swept boulder where they huddled in fear; others stumbled as they ran throwing terrain objects such as stones, waving clubs in anger and freight.
“Look at their faces! They’re not human!”
“Mutations!” exclaimed Martin. “We’ve suspected as much!’
A few remnants of the pre-Dulmen civilization must have survived to beat-out an existence in the destitute environment. “just how many, for what end, we had no idea,” Arian interjected.
The small band of freaks eventually disappeared into hiding. ‘‘They’ll make good specimens,” Arian spoke, “ we can take care of that later, for we know those are not the ‘conspirators’ we are looking for now!”
**********
“But the moment also made Elia feel good. It gave him that extra bit of courage he would need when he will shortly visit the various citizens in Dulmania. It had been five years, but that was not long enough a period to wipe away the familiar faces and some of the happy but even the sad and sordid past-times he had with those neighbors. How would they receive him?
What would he say?
Would he even finish the journey?
Or would it already be too late? ’’ Chapter Nine, Palace of Dreams.
***
Elia had no trouble Navigating the small Rugby Craft. Though it was centuries out of style, its simplicity led to no difficulties for even an isolated group of people to repair. Besides, when Elia glided into the snow drift landing spot several miles out near one of his old home cities, he knew he probably wouldn’t have any further use for it. But then, one could not be sure.
He left the craft below the white snow drift with the compartment lights running. The soft blue and white of lights shone through the veil of snow; It would make a good beacon upon his upon his search for the craft when he attempted to return a few hours later. He walked away from the craft into the whistling wind, leaving deeply entrenched foot marks—they would disappear within minutes in the downpour.
When Elia arrived in the city, he found large Portal Screens atop the maze-like cubical apartments that made-up most of this northern ‘outer city.’ The screens displayed a serenely smiling, nearly bald, gentleman parading a wide collar and a plump face that covered the screen. People were huddled in packed crowds earnestly listening while other were racing away and dashing madly about. All were heavily clothed as protection against the elements.
Elia kept to the shadows along the sleek cubical mosaics. Now and then he thought he had recognized an old friend or a familiar neighbor.
“Luzian?” he inquired of one mutate who was gazing at him from his lizard-like face. The cold, strange stare from two dark, beady eyes denoted unfamiliarity and they both went separately without further conversation.
Elia continued to slink down through shadows, occasionally bumped by hurrying citizens. The few people that he did recognize zipped into the nocturne of this of the almost perpetual ‘night’ of the artic. Elia was glad that not all the cities he planned to visit would not be so endlessly dark.
Suddenly, he caught sight of a lady he had not expected to encounter. She was no mutation, but a rather conventional but beautiful lady with rich auburn hair tucked beneath a Worker’s Cap. He had recognized her appealing form while she stood in the light of the Portal Screen. Elia took solid and deliberate steps to stand close to her; his frosted breath caught her attention.
“Elia,” she said emotionless with only a spark of surprise.
“Kathern, my wife!” a bit of heartsick longing rose within him. Elia recalled her as not being totally dominated by Dulmen propaganda.
“How are the children?”
“Fine. They’re somewhere in the city.” She kept her gaze to the screen with its reflection traveling across her youthful face.
“And you?” Elia asked, followed by a short silence.
“Fine. Are you listening to the orator’s announcements? Conspirators have been found in the recent earthquake areas. The Big Sire has had them under surveillance for days now!”
Elia might have known. Nothing less than an act of the Almighty might have protected the Exodus People. The ingenuity of the Big Sire had seemed to have overcome even that.
“Why did you come back?” his wife asked.
Elia swallowed, a hard knot in this throat, he wanted to say so much, it hurt. “I love you!” he said.
“We haven’t been to bed for years, my husband.” She kept her gaze on the screen.
“No, no, Kathern, I love ‘you.’” She gave him only a blank glance, then turned back to the newscast.
It was hopeless at this moment, he thought. Tomorrow Elia planned to travel to his other Siberian communities. Perhaps after hearing him in speaking to these others, Kathern would come back to him.
The Portal Screen was announcing certain persons that cogently struck Elia: “…officiate gods Arian Yul, Mark Reddress, Mylar City resident……” The words boomed in his ears from the orator’s narration. Elia stopped to listen; what an informative surprise; so, his brother was very much alive and active.
Perhaps they would meet on these matters so intrinsically important.
**********
Saltarello
The young girl sat upon the level crag of a boulder. She looked over the silver-tinted wasteland. She was snugly enveloped by a woolen robe that was thick and heavy protecting her from the night cold. A bulky shawl shielded her head and neck and only allowing her rosy-windswept cheeks, full lips, and watered eyes shingled by visible dark long lashes; she watched the huddled sheep on the pathway and clearing at the foot of the boulder. A circle of stone and rock formed a small wall as shelter for the animals, protecting them the cutting wind that raced across the Flats. She listened to the baying of the sheep, stroking one now and then with her long wooden staff.
She would glance at the full moon peering over the wasteland giving it a silver glow and shadows. Although many miles away, two huge craters could be seen. Towering rock spirals wrestled thin by the elements and the extreme forces of atomic explosion. The night sky was a heavy mosaic of clear, sharp specks of light as scintillating, quivering stars. The cold nip of the icy air gave the scene a sanitary aspect.
The clinking of a bell on an old ram caught her attention. A burning torch in a crevice was the only light she had, but its glow covered several hundred feet. Softly she hummed a gentile, sweet melody.
Her husband had been gone for several days now though he meant to be back by the dawn of the preceding day from his short and unromantic task. Most of his latest missions for the Commune were strict business. Now, he failed returning at the time he had promised and she worried that he had run into some dire difficulties.
It was inevitable, she reasoned. It had to be done. The Elder, John Alexandrius, Matthew’s father, was presently incapable of continuing the missions in that area. His health at his age was not at its acme, Matthew would carry-out that program with dexterity But Matthew convinced the Elder that is was time for a ‘young blood’ to take responsibility and he assured his father that he was well-prepared to take on the hazards of the program. Because he was of married status, the father protested, though Matthew was without children, and it only took slight dispute to convince the aging man of the unavoidability of the situation. Already, younger men had been going on projects to various global territories; for its success for the Community Missions, Matthew said it was best that he took some of the responsibility without delay.
The young girl rose to her feet to stand, balancing herself on the long staff. She took one finger and whipped the chain of tears that ran down her cheeks, they would make her cheeks red and chapped in the cold of the night. Besides, if Matthew did appear suddenly, he would question her about the tears. It took several days for some of the Ministers to return from trips—-though Matthew had gone farther in distance this time and, perhaps, had several feats to accomplish. She leaned her head upon her hands clasped to the staff and cried in earnest:
“Oh, please come home, Matthew. Oh please!”
She gave a sigh of remorse and exasperation, letting her arm swing to her side, turning to step upon stones leading to a higher vantage point on top of another granite slab. The staff clinked on the hard surfaces; she raised the staff for a head rest.
“Such a lovely, lonely place for some to look upon,” she spoke to herself, “yet, should it be filled with the glory of love it would be boundless in beauty.”
She gripped her hands together around the staff in the posture of prayer and gazed up the multitude of glowing orbs across the sky, and spoke:
“It is written: ‘therefore, rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them. Woe to the inhabitants of the earth and of the sea! For the devil has come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.’”
She closed her eyes in earnest expression and again her eyes began to water. “Oh, please Father, if it be thy will, if within thy purpose, return my husband to me.”
A hard knot appeared in her chest but she again spoke: “It is written: ‘ But take heed to yourselves: for they shall deliver you up to councils. And in the synagogues, you shall be beaten. And ye shall be brought before rulers and kings for my sake, for testimony against them.’’’
Her mind was beginning to ramble over past events; cherished moments from years gone by. She began to taste the bitter tingle of human tears. She visualized a warm and cozy summer’s day and pleasant green vegetation and long stalks of corn. From Matthew and herself laughter rang out as they ran freely through the plantation. With dirty stains upon their hands from pulling weeds, they momentarily stopped to frolic.
‘‘We best get back to work, Matthew,” she had giggled as she dodged the boy as they bounced around a cherry tree chasing each other. The boy stopped to catch his breath and then he sank into a green carpet of grass.
“Come, set down. Rest a moment. We have all afternoon for us to work. Here, take a cherry!” He plucked one from a low branch. She nodded in thanks and gracefully sat next to him.
“It was only a few year ago that this planation was nothing but rock, dry brittle soil, but look at it now! A small paradise right here, only a half miles of so from the rim of the Flatlands,” exclaimed Matthew.
She smiled with a bit of reverence as she caressed tops of grass. “Yes, and by the hard work of the Commune.” She glanced over at the bobbling heads of crops. “Like so many things we’ve done, it was by hard work and the devoted love of our people.” Her eyes rose to meet Matthew’s. “If only it could grow the world over, we are so few.”
“It has grown, Christine. There are a few communities as our own. Not many, I’ll grant you, but there are a few,” Matthew assured her.
“Have you seen the others?” she inquired.
“No, but I’ll have that opportunity soon. I’ve heard so much about them, I just as well should have been there myself.’’ Mathew took on a worried look. “You know, communications at any distance is a problem. A big problem. But for the first time in years, we can make reliable contact within a reasonable time.”
“Is that who Tamor is?” she asked about a familiar name.
“Yes,”’ assured Matthew, “Tamor is an elder of the Commune which resides on the eastern quadrant of the Flats. He is a very courageous man. And a terribly busy one, I might add, for such depends on him.”
Christine shook her head in wonderment, “All this growth. I never realized it. Seems that when I been just a child,” they both had to smile because they both had not yet reached adulthood, “when I was smaller, I didn’t remember seeing this large plantation. We didn’t have any such thing, but perhaps a weather-beaten garden. Now, we grow our own produce in such magnificent numbers. Cattle and sheep, look at our herds!” She pointed to the brown and white animals strolling on a hillside.
“Em, yes. It is a warming thought if you should stop to really look at it.” Matthew had more on his mind. He smiled to himself and then slide into a more comfortable position to make a longer comment. “I’ve seen all kinds of growth within the past years. I admire the work of the Commune, what the beauteous labors that have produced. Some of the magnificent craftsmanship that our carpenters and clothiers have produced are marvelous. But the beauty of a ‘human’ is one that no man can match.”
Christine looked at Matthew in innocence, not knowing why the grin on his face.
“Take the growth of one girl that I know. Just a small, tiny little thing some years ago. Rather thin, but healthy. Very industrious. But all in all, I had little interest in her. She was a friend, true, but I had a lot of friends.’’
Matthew’s grin grew a little larger but controlling it.
“What little girl is this?” asked Christine in serious expression.
“Well, now, wait a minute. I’ll get to that shortly…time had passed on. I watched this little friend grow into a young maiden helping to make our Commune existence even more worthwhile. Struggling at the side of her mother and father to organize our way of life against the elements. Studious? Oh, what a student; and how often I was embarrassed by her as a rival. Dedicated. Charitable. Yes, I suppose she was all of this and more. But she was also ‘lovely,’ she had grown into a rose from the earth blossoming into fullness. No finer creation might be found on earth to herald the handiwork of our Heavenly Father.”
“Well, who is she?” asked Christine determined to discover her.
Matthew looked at her as if he wanted his eyes to speak. “You, my dear, you are the lovely one. And it is deepest wish, providing things are right, that you know my love for you. And, perhaps, one day, if it be your wish as well, we will marry. It is my highest compliment .”
Matthew leaned over her and lightly kissed her on her forehead, then he assisted her to her feet. Christine did not know exactly what to say. She was magnetized by his sweet words. She answered with admiring eyes.
“We will talk again, Matthew, I promise,” she assured him.
He understood. “Come Christine. We best get back to work. I believe your father is calling now.”
The memory vanished, and Christine found herself again gazing over the desolate wasteland.
Matthew wouldn’t have carelessly given up all this love, all this devotion here in the Commune to throw it away for some careless endeavor in the cities of the barbarians on the other side of the Flats, she thought to herself. If it took this much sacrificing, it must deserve the effort…and the risk. What was it that Matthew said right before he left? “It is written: ‘Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, nay, but rather division.’ It is also written: ‘Who when is that faithful and wise Stewart…blessed is that servant. Whom the Lord when he cometh shall find so doing.’’’
Later, in quiet study, Christine found the words so true, and the implications were so presently adequate.
In the frosty night breeze, the voice of the elderly John Alexandrius could be heard calling the girl’s name. He repeated the call. His voice was coming from over the rocky ridge to which the barren path descended. Christine realized the late hour, and she would have to stop her herding and gather the animals back towards their pens.
“Christine,” came the robust tone of the Elder, “gather your animals together and put them away for the night.”
“Coming father!” she replied, cupping her hand to one side of her mouth, “I hear you. We’re coming,” as the baying of the animals began their march back to the farm.
And it would be a good thing too; perhaps the warmth of her father-in-law’s understanding, his guiding and vibrant wisdom would be a welcome thing on such a cold night. She could visualize now his two dark eyes, singled by bushy eyebrows, peering at her out of a rosy-cheeked face haloed by his snow-white hair and beard. Often, his serious face would burst into a heartwarming smile.
A few minutes later, “Coming father! Let me shut the gates to the pens!” She felt the pain of remorse gathering within her, and the uncontrollable thickness of the anxiety in her throat forming tears. She thrust the long wooden staff over the boulder and into the wooden gate forcing it open. She again used the staff to check the amount of animal feed. Satisfied, she moved along the boulder until her silhouette disappeared into the ravine. All that was left was the last flickers of a dying torch and the low murmuring of huddled sheep.
But if the night quietude could speak, it would have uttered screams of panic and fear: for if one looked closely out over the plain in the direction that Christine had faced, out into the thousands of silver and white specks of heavenly lights, one would see a horizontal line of orbs growing in brightness, becoming more defined with each second. It was the StarCraft squadrons carrying the ineffable Dulmen with crafts that extended to the horizon!
Within minutes, the orbs of the crafts eerily covered the rocky ridge. First, one squadron glided gracefully in small groups of five over the farthest part of the ridge of jutting granite. Then five more floated over the ridge. Five more. The armada of crafts had broken into various groups of five, each dispatched into a particular sector; their Scanners fully activated. They came in a steady stream rapidly peeling off a main squadron group and proceeded into investigatory places.
The low-burning farmer’s torch, the sole illuminance for those baying gerus ovis, had already given one last flicker, and the crooked shadows of the animals quickly ceased. Christine summoned her loyal and trustworthy herd-dog to her side, and then dispensed the dog to rounding-up the animals for the pens.
The night waited for the next suspense-filled interlude!
**********
Chapter Fifteen
Feline
The smell of cheap wine fumed up into the nostrils of any near passerby that could find his way through the cluttered walkway. Humped amounts of paper, wood, old paraphernalia from lamps to worn-out shoes, to dinnertime garbage, lay strewn up and down the alley and street. A floating lamp was the only light in that dark recess, and its low wattage have only given a person a headache.
The meow of an old tomcat accompanied a discovering of some human object beneath a pile of discarded papers and a large poster that had been hastily torn down to be replaced by a newer one at the cold metallic side of the building that formed part of an alley: the newer sign was a portrait of the expressionless, wrinkle-free, youthful face of Martin Seisbury. Oddly, the propagandist had invented a queer twist to these productions: they gave Martin shoulder length hair as a rather effeminate appeal, and a message introducing him as “The Ascending god.”
Arms and legs thrashed about to throw the awkward bulk from on top of him. Sluggishly, a gruff-faced man joggled himself upright and peered through heavy half shut eyes that were red with bloodshot and were watered in irritation, shingled by heavy and puffed eyebags beneath. A dark and wiry beard radiused his face looking as if someone smeared charcoal over his face, denoting a shave a lady hobo had given him days before. He lifted his redden hand, sick from sores, to straighten the beat-up old hat upon his head; the crown of the once stylish derby was bashed and creased all over. He deeply growled and coughed as if sick.
“Eeeem. Blasted place is about as comfortable as laying on a bed of nails,” he mumbled as he tried to lift himself up but only falling back into the trash, “Where is it? It was here before. Where is it?” He angrily demanded throwing the thick pulp aside and kicking a spilled trash can out of his way. “I smell it! It’s here!”
He forced himself to his feet and staggered across the alley to fall against a wall of granite that supported him from collapsing. He remained silent for five minutes. When he regained some coordination, he slowly pushed himself into the light of the main street.
“Forget it,” he slurred, “there’s another one—-there’s—–there’s…,” he nudged a bulky object in the pocket of his seamless one-piece jumper that was torn to smithereens from wear and tear, “What? What’s this?”
He dramatically grabbed the bottle of wine from his pocket, sniffed it, and proudly held it up as if a magnifying glass to a floating street globe. “Wine! Ah, wine!” He began to laugh hysterically.
He cupped the bottom of the bottle in his hands and reverently swung around in an arc to again raise it to the pulsating advertising light over a nearby tavern. A velvet-red glow shone on his face revealing a very sickly set of jowls and wrinkles from chronic illness. His tearful eyes gazed upon the red substance splashing about in the bottle. Above him was a three-dimensional nude female model gyrating within the advertisement-plasma beckoning passerby’s to come in for merriment and unrestrained pleasure.
With one brisk movement of his hands, he threw the neck of the bottle into his mouth, whimpering like a spoiled child, he gulped the stringent fluid down. It seemed to add metal to his body, and upon wiping his mouth upon his sleeve, he was ready to venture forth again—-at least, for the distance of a few feet.
The street upon which those nightclubs, taverns, and apartment buildings were situated ran for several hundred feet and then abruptly at an edge in front of him turned into a monstrous chasm that had been created by multiple earthquakes rendering the underground city into pieces. The cliff of that fault-crack had eroded into a steep slope with a few remaining trees, forest brush, that led down to more of the heavily destroyed city below.
High overhead was an orange ‘flicker’ as if a red-hot coal that was still slightly burning: It was the huge electrode of the Sol Globe situated at the middle-ceiling of the arching underground shaft. A buzzing sound crackled from it ever so often and thundered through the poorly lit cavern. The shaft was so poorly lit that the citizens of Feline were living in a perpetual night; it was the last city in the multilevel complex of subterranean shafts. The Department of Welfare having long ago neglected the public electrical facilities such that Feline, as a city, remained in a stupor.
The number of artificial lights could be counted in a matter of seconds
In the black darkness of the city staring outward like a stretched lattice of glowing eyes; more were the jaunting flickers of manmade torches and bonfires that glowed in yards and patios of vaguely visible homes accompanied to fluttering shadows of nearby people and things.
Here in this Alice in Wonderland world one could find the conventional Dulmen homes of synthetic domes and zigzags and squares, but even more so, were the homes that projected a lost page in time. Stately mansions with tall columns, elegant vines, evergreens, and then next to it an almost flat suburban-type home with an arching garage and wide yards: all equally ruined and devastated. And so, it went throughout the city. The gross deterioration masked the bizarre ruin of the homes. Even less occasionally would some light be seen from the interior of the homes.
The perimeter ledge of land on which Tom Longram took his drunken stance was strangely well lit, perhaps because it was a Dulmen estate that remained intact to the electrical apparatus coming from the main shaft. The earthquakes had well torn the subterranean metropolis but eventually the citizens of Feline returned to establish a ghetto-type of existence. Property, life, and limb had fallen prey to anyone’s whim, and what could be summoned by municipal police was far too lame to curtail any crime. Besides, it was much too convenient for crooks and even ordinary citizens and the police to take a hand in pilfering and the pandemic occasions of rape and mayhem. This all fit well with the general Dulmania lawlessness.
Much earlier, registered citizens left the devastated site in large droves carrying what property and possessions they could to settle in areas available in the neck of the shafts and in the cities above on the surface. Strangely, Dulmen permission was perfunctorily given but that usually depended on a citizen’s relationship or generic background to officials or citizens on the surface, which could be punitive and harsh, often involving enslavement or other dirty dealings.
Those that remained in Feline did so because of the uncertain reality on the surface which was viewed as another alien world. Few had ventured from Feline since their birth. Dulmania was satisfied to have them corralled in their present circumstance.
Many questioned the metaphysical aspects of the catastrophe. Maybe it was a warning from the gods! Perhaps they had lost favor altogether with the gods and goddesses for Feline had long ago been portrayed as an outcast city relinquished into Dulmen subterranean life. Although unknown to Feline citizens at this time, Feline one of the first cities that had witnessed the appearance of the mysterious and unique ‘conspirators’ from the shadowy ‘Communes’ hidden in the wildernesses around the globe. And it was in Feline that the Big Sire could be heard to occasionally rumble and groan, the same Big Sire that was part of the global computer-complex that ruled Mylar City and all the other regions.
Tom Longram shuddered to think of his reality as he stood immobile and pensively gazed at the dark vault of the sunken city. He leaned on a column from a ruined bannister, the only remains of an outdoor beer garden. That hazy glow might appear any minute in the far wall of the shaft, he thought to himself, and slowly grow into a golden swirling vortex almost as if something were trying to burn through the solid rock wall with a penetrating ray. That mass of radiance would turn into a drifting cloud of orange, green and red amid vapors of black smoke. Citizens would stop their activities to watch in horror at the grotesque mass of energy and see an odd human image forming: two blue dots advancing from within the vapors and growing into large catlike eyes that would shift about in its stare—-and then end in one spot. The apparition would let out a scowl, a horrifying heart wrenching yowl comparable to a cat or even a lion. Even after many such visitations, citizens never quite grew docile enough to see the Great Mind roaming about—-it was such cat-like locutions that priorates gave the city its name. The irradiance would diminish into a small globe of light and then slink back disappearing into the subterranean wall.
“Ah, Mary,” Tom sighed, “why did you have to go?” Tom bowed his head in grief and began to stumble towards a line of honky-tonks.
His wife had departed some time ago along with the vast crowds of citizens; Tom never did quite understand why although she seemed to be engaged in some secret project for the Department of Defense, Tom never felt obliged or was brave enough to question about the nature of the activity. He shunned the interim of the whole thing while his wife became more and more indifferent to him and the family. However, she was of the generic rank of the 21st level, and he only a servant class of Dunbar. She often spoke that she was destined for service in the higher ranks of Dulmania and she bragged how she had somehow obtained just that! Tom did not know what to make of her declaration; one thought he envisioned was the tales he heard about the Palace of Dreams on the surface, but it all remained confusing.
Whatever her secret project was, he understood that it was ‘big,’ and she had been under constant surveillance and control since the day of her inauguration into her new duties. At first, it appeared to Tom some type of tragicomedy, but the scene soon changed when Mary excited with the other citizens.
“Tom,” she said, “I must leave!” Tom had raised his eyebrows. He began reciting her words: “I’ve been asked to leave. Something ‘big’ is going to happen—-something ‘more.’”
The memory evaporated and Tom once again stood in the glow of three floating street globes. “Something ‘big,’’’ he said sarcastically, shaking his head and waving his bottle, ‘‘something ‘more.’” His sarcasm was filled with sadness. He began to stumble into the street, staggered back to the curb and fell on his buttocks with a thump. He slumped the bottle of liquor to his feet and then lowered his head into his arms and elbows.
“Why couldn’t that white robbed fella leave us alone? He started it, whoever he was!” His voice increased in volume, ‘‘Why didn’t he stay away? I knew he was trouble from the first time I saw him!” Tom took another swig from the bottle and allowed the puissant-smelling liquid dribble through the grisly stubs of his beard.
Two females had stepped away from the entrance to the smoke-filled honkytonk and were talking low but emphatically as if in a quarrel. They appeared to be youngsters in the latest gross tightfitting apparel. The two waved their righthand index fingers at each other and then parted paths.
Tom continued his thoughts. He thought at first that his wife had a genuine concern for him; how their saddened situation came about was hard to say. All he could related to be the afternoon she had returned from a trip to the Department of Welfare for ‘tax adjustment’ that this mysterious ‘sphinx’ of a problem appeared. They had been late in their tax payments. Usually, a monthly audit was asked, so she packed a small duffel bag and headed for the Subway Transport (a subterranean train and transport in the major shaft where ‘shock free’ projectiles would propel citizens to further transportation on the surface). It was a customary practice (depending on a citizen’s generic assets, as well as some physical ones) which might be pleasing to a ‘god,’ that payments might in the form of sexual prostitution.
This didn’t bother Tom, nor the children, nor, apparently, his wife Mary. The only fear they shared was that the ‘gods’ might tire of such compensation and demand their entire estate and then force them into physical slavery. This led into other difficulties. Some might even find themselves confronted by torture in the Arena or in the basement of some Dulmen officiate. This was the only real concern Tom could muster over the whole affair, and the implication was that Tom should not become too prying or concerned at the sentient issues.
He remembered the afternoon that Mary came running into their compartment cubical-living quarter, breathlessly muttering words about having been ‘wrong’ about something or another (Tom had been busily repairing a Viewing Screen. Dulmania no longer assisted in their repairs, though they always made it mandatory to have at least one functioning).
She sat down immediately and gleefully began telling him of a strange man who almost appeared out of nowhere and captivated her with a plethora of talk that was confusing yet startling. He seemed to know instinctively the personal plight they were in: their delinquency in tax and rent, the sexual prostitution as payment, the pilfering of food to avert starvation of the little children, he even knew a fact that made Mary’s skin crawl: that numerous faults and cracks were multiplying throughout the Earth’s crust and mantle and fissures of great pressure were appearing in larger and larger Dulmania ‘shafts’ (part of the Pit system) and bubbles throughout deep pockets within terra firma!
“He said: ‘Repent or there will be no way for you to escape! Neither will your goddess Vera, your Marxz, your Horus – nor any of your diabolical phantoms will save you! The Evil One had grown and reached the ultimate step – but the last – that he will take!’ I believe that is what he said. Quite sure. What does it mean?”
She leaned forward on the foam hassock and received her husband’s vaguely hidden bewilderment. He set the electrode that he was working with aside and kneeled before her, noting the quiet, impassive expressions of their children (these were ‘Rob’ children, the only children that Tom and his wife were allowed, artificially inseminated, by serial sequence and generic match in the laboratories of Dulmania, created by synthetic substances and energy: they were the only children that Tom Longram and wife will ever have!
“I don’t know, Mary,” Tom had said, “either he was a prankster or – or – or one of those poor individuals they will be sending to the surface laboratories to be exterminated. It is obvious he is ‘mad,’ completely discordant with Dulmen reality.”
“That’s what I thought. That’s what I thought. But he was sane enough to tell me about my personal secrets. And there has been many earthquakes, Tom. We’ve heard the reports, remember?” She pointed her finger at her husband in seriousness.
Tom’s robust face had appeared to her a masterpiece chiseled out of marble: piercing dark eyes, handsome features, but still being ruled by the whimsical dictums of the city prelates, though the wife often took the situation under her wavering control:
“Tremors have occurred – and I heard many more rumors!” she asserted.
“I’d stop that, Mary. I wouldn’t bother with that fellow anymore.”
Mary wasn’t really listening. Her mind was already visualizing some of the other things the man had said. She sat looking past her husband. Tom rose to go back to his errand. He glanced forlornly at this wife. They said no more on the topic for over a week. But he knew she continued to see this mysterious man; he even spied the two out in the garden of the patio Plaza of the apartment. The man appeared to be polite, clean and in a spotless white robe, features that were unusual in Feline. Mary had said that this mystery man had expressed the wish to speak to the whole family together. Mary prevented this for unknown reasons.
These memories and visions faded and Tom Longram found himself back in the present. Tom’s ears began to ring, louder and louder, and he quickly clasped his hands over them and closed his eyes.
“Oh no,” he thought, “not again!” He bit his lip in fear as this was a regular experience. The ringing would stop and then bleak silence. Yes, Tom was going deaf and there was nothing he could do about it. It was inevitable because his Class could not avail to profitable services, not until all past debts were ‘cleared,’ and even then, it would be necessary for him to perform some outlandish sacrifice.
Again, two females were in debate. His head swirled beyond that which his inebriated state would prompt. The glaring hologram advertisement of the tavern cast an unstable scenery. When he rose again there was only the tomblike deafness. He swayed as he looked at the two lesbian females in a physical brawl over a physical advancement that led to a slap. There was a swirl of a hand, a bright burst of light, and the one female slumped to the pavement—-dead—-lifeless—-while the other ‘strolled’ into the darkness at the far end of the street!
(The scientists of the Sedox era did a commendable job of hologramlike advertising where such utilizations of such technology in Mind Control were astounding in symphonies of light, shadow, and darkness. It was almost as if ‘time’ itself had vomited up a gasping plea for mercy: Stop! For heaven’s sake, stop! )
And then Tom witnessed a third sombrous interpolation that entered his scenery as a man and his lady friend, a group of homophiles, a few other people, all demonstrated the same indifference: a man came by and upon encountering the body, stepped over it, almost as if it weren’t even there; his face had hidden beneath the rim of his hat, of which he tipped the rim closer to his forehead so shadows would cover it even further. Soon he disappeared. A steady flow of people came down the avenue demonstrated the same indifference in a trail of mosaic orchestration and esoteric dance, but with no audible tone: a song of silence.
Tom could feel the heavy breathing from within himself; he placed his hand on his chest to see if his heart were still beating: the silence was so deep and so continuing he could not be sure of anything.
The street tilted more as he grabbed onto a railing that led to a basement cabaret which prevented himself from falling down the steps. He stopped short but swung himself onto a wall of the building next door. The pulsating glow of the advertising plasma illuminated a plethora of painted and scribbled symbols from hoodlum gangs that trailed along the street. Amid the expressions of vulgarity, bad humor, dissent, seven words struck him the most, even though it had been difficult selecting them out of the hodgepodge of scribbled éclat:
IT IS HE END OF THE WORLD.
And so, it is, thought Tom. His hand slipped on the railing and Tom Longram realized for the first time in many months that his wife and children had been, oddly, the only other living things that he had really cared about; why he didn’t realize it sooner, he really didn’t know, he only knew it was too late.
“IT IS THE END OF THE WORLD!” his voice rang out in a surprising vibrance despite his weak condition. The railing slipped away from his grip. Total darkness and complete silence descended upon him.
It was death!
**********
The mother sat beneath the oak tree and nodded her head in acquiescence. The babe contently went about his filling his bag with his souvenirs. He would occasionally pick a plant or a bit of goldenrod or Maple leaf viburnum about him.
It was still quiet. The peace was supreme. Life was good. The child’s thoughts were friendly: It was a forest all his own! Chapter Thirteen.
***
The child’s plastic bag was filed with all the odds and ends that once were paraphernalia of the forest. The babe slowly made his way towards the path carrying his most prized possession: the ancient coin. The nip of the cold night air made his task even more awkward. The bright glow of the moon appeared to make ample light to work but the mother stood by sternly watching because she had just admonished the child that it was getting late.
The star-studded sky was a glorious sight to the child who had held out his hand as if to grab some of the points of light that were myriad in their appearance. The fluorescent moon looming above as if the child could grasp it as tied to its mother Earth by a thin umbilical cord of life. The face of the moon hadn’t changed noticeably over the eons allowing a child to question, still, about the proverbial ‘man in the moon.’
The twisting branches of the forest stood out as shadows against the dark blue star-filled sky, and the babe imagined all sorts of mysterious and prying faces composed by the forest.
He hurried quickly, sometimes stumbling in his task of carrying his bag of souvenirs. Here and there, creatures of the forest could be noticed in the tall yellow grass and pale reeds, only adding to his determination to reach his mother’s side. Dirt-stained, sweaty, with a slight cut on his fatty leg from swish of a thornbush, he eventually grasped his mother’s hand, his smiling out-of-breath-body finally rested his head upon her dress. She gently caressed his hair as she gestured that they should quickly leave, the chilly night air was more than she cared for. Together they grasped the bag and headed across the moonlit field. Suddenly, the boy tugged on the bag and asked the mother to stop walking. He turned to look back at the mighty Sherman Oak that guarded the entrance to the woods.
The silver orb of the moon seemed to protect his favorite place with warm care. It was quiet. It was very peaceful. The babe raised his arm and sadly waved at his new favorite place of play.
The two quickly scampered off to a warm home.
**********
Chapter Sixteen
The Conspirators
The Searching Party had been patient. They had crisscrossed the mountainous ridges over and over, covering the picturesque granite archways, pyramid boulders, towering plateaus of red rock, the maze of stone debris and explosion-torched earth. When they had no results, they spread the search farther beyond the sloping hills to where more comfortable terrain appeared of sleeping trunks and roasted limbs of trees and brush.
To not waste any further time circling the same incommodious area, the order was given to spread the five Group Squadrons farther down the range, and several to ‘trace-back’ across the Flats, and a few headed back to the point of their entrance. Martin and his craft remained in the immediate vicinity.
Their sprite-like globular craft glided over a crater rim, dipping down in between the spirals of rock and granite, down an eroded fissure of a canyon-size split in the side of a mountain, then up again and back towards the rolling hills.
“My Lord look at those zigzag lines of brown,’’ beckoned one of the technicians towards his Viewing Screen hiding him beneath a bright hue.
Martin turned from the Sensor Grid to visually observe the meticulously organized rows of brown below the craft. “Appears to be a plantation, I’d say from their arrangement,” and Martin motioned for a few others to look as well. “Why didn’t we notice it before?”
“I don’t know, sire,’’ came the excited voice of Mark Redress, “but all of your scanners have been activated as well.” And, indeed, all the scanners were suddenly operating. Small white lights could be visually seen, and then several more pinpoints of light appeared throughout the terrain.
“What’s that large luminous mass?” asked Martin about a definite glowing blob on the scanners.
“It denotes the largest amount of human or subsisting activity, Lord. We’ve circled closely in that area but a moment ago, and there was nothing! Nothing at all!” reported the technician. Martin looked at him in surprise.
“Alright! Circle that area—-then descend!” Martin stood erect from his stooped position over the consoles. His chest swelled with anxious anticipation. “To your battle stations! All stations alert!”
Their spacecraft was a small arsenal of atomic destruction, a virtual single-craft-Army that would be able to ward off any aggression till the other crafts arrived; notwithstanding, they could totally obliterate the opposition.
The craft turned back and dipped down to within feet of the crumbled, valanced face of a cliff. The scanners noted a small life forms, peering out of the cabin canopy, the crew noted the stampeding bodies of sheep. Martin threw his head back in roaring and uninhibited laughter:
“Found them! Found the rascals! Found them!”
He spun around, unsheathed his sword, and began to lightly tape the tops of those seated at the consoles. The technicians stared at Martin in confusion and fear. He swirled the sword over this head and then rammed the weapon back into its sheath. Here was the opportunity to relieve that oppressive pressure that had built within his physique and banish that bleak, untamed fury in his mind, establishing his sovereignty as a Dulmen god!
Martin glared at his technicians with a sardonic smile, snapping his fingers over his head.
“Set her down!’ A rise in the pitch of the craft’s generators, then it turned into a low vibratory hum. The craft nestled into a center of a boulder-nest and reduced its fluorescence to a bare minimum. Within minutes, the red capes and the brown-black vestures of the soldier patrol emerged from a hatch and down a ramp. Drawing their weaponized swords, they immediately dispersed in military fashion to boulders and rocks for hiding. The only visible sign of their entrenchment was their vaporized breaths in the cold-night air.
They were facing a well-chiseled entrance to a cavern beyond the guarding boulders. From within a dim glow emitted.
After a few minutes of silence, Martin and three-high-ranking soldiers ordered the patrol to slink into the cavern mouth. Martin raised his hand in a signal for his patrol to momentarily stand motionless. The cool expression on his face, the slow movement of his eyes from side to side, with an engrossed look of deep interest, the stark expectation that possessed him was evident. It was almost as if his mouth were salivating with the hunger of excitement.
They passed several sister tunnels running in various directions, but Sensors on their vestures told them that the main activity lay ahead. Arian and Mark Redress looked like some gorilla-warriors slipping into a forbidden enemy war zone. Arian ran his hand over his belt and a pea-sized light popped out of a belt-slot and continued to rise into the air. It grew in its luminosity until it was bright enough to cast a daylight hue that accompanied them at their side. The deeper they went in the shaft their Sensors became a steady pulsating green.
Low musical rhythm could be heard of voices in chorus, and with each step the words became clearer and discernable. A rather jubilant song. The diction was not entirely Dulman though similar; some of the men whispered that they only recognized a partial familiarity. There were words talking about a king which was in glory; they were questioning his name; he was promised for ages; his name was Emmanuel!
“THE KING OF GLORY COMES, THE NATION REJOICES! OPEN THE GATES BEFORE HIM, LIFT UP YOUR VOICES!” Such a haunting melody full of happiness and promise. ‘‘IN ALL OF GALILEE, IN CITY OR VILLAGE, HE GOES AMONG HIS PEOPLE CURING THEIR ILLNESS!” Again, a solemn refrain, ‘‘THE KING OF GLORY COMES, THE NATION REJOICES! OPEN THE GATES BEFORE HIM, LIFT UP YOU VOICES!”
Several soldier lowered their hands to the handles of their Penetrating Swords and fists whitened as they gripped the jeweled handles. They began to take a battle stance and with each step the chorus of voices grew louder. Tambourines could be heard mixed into the chorus.
“SING THEN OF DAVID’S SON, OUR SAVIOR AND BROTHER: IN ALL OF GALLIEE WAS NEVER ANOTHER! THE KING OF GLORY COMES, THE NATION REJOICES! OPEN THE GATS BEFORE HIM, LIT UP YOUR VOICES!”
They were beginning to pass chiseled sculptures of men on the sides of the tunnel and beneath each image, unknown names, in a forgotten language. Martin glanced back on his patrol to see if they were in a battle stance.
“HE GAVE HIS LIFE FOR US, THE PLEDGE OF SALAVTION…”
Suddenly, they turned a corner to be confronted by a large sleek velvet curtain, clean without the dust of the cavern, their guiding light produced a sheen across the flowing ripples of the luxurious material.
Martin order them to stop, and the line culminated into a position of soldiers who waiting anxiously to hear what Martin had to say. Martin felt that whoever was on the other side of that pendulous veil had to have heard them, but then, because of the volume of the conspirators’ chorus, he could not be sure.
“HE TOOK UPON HIMSELF THE SINS OF THE NATION…”
Somewhat breathless, Martin wished he could have prepared himself better against what laid ahead. He imagined that, now, steadily spreading from one Dulmen metropolis to another, propagandist would have heralded the news of the new “Ascending god,” about the epoch that was about to emerge upon the world; how the last remnant of traitorous conspirators ‘in all creation’ had been discovered and were promptly and invidiously being dealt with. The citizens of Dulmania would never have to fear of such a threat every again!
(The ‘programmed’ hysteria would not be a normal thing but a creation of the Brain. Madam Marza would dance nude in remembrance of the deaths of her husbands. The children of her neighborhood would prick her with pins and sharp objects as she danced hysterically about. The Rob children would march in long divisions down the street of outer cities; they would lift their feet up high and slap them to the ground in a march like that of infantrymen of a mad dictator eons ago, the Third Reich. The Rob children would converge on the properties and bodies, by their own request, and demolish them to smithereens. Other Dulmania citizens would offer on the day of the Jest remembrances of their family and friends to Dulmen gods and goddesses and the new Ascending god. Under the disguise of worship, their new god played with their minds and lives, while citizens told themselves it was all glorious!
(The hysteria, the debauchery, would spread throughout the globe: every home, every city, every place where people gathered, esoteric practices that usually were not practiced but at special times during the year, would be indulged in. Mothers and fathers would stand immobile before their sons and daughters and endeavor to sing profanities to the gods as their children slapped them in their faces, punched them in their stomachs and kicked them on the ground, again and again.
(Or the opposite would happen. Drunk with drugs and liquor, laughing fiendishly in the new festival, parents would sneak into the rooms or living areas where children resided and begin to throw stones and furniture at them, all the while jeering at them and asking the children to fall upon their knees and pray in thanksgiving to the gods, trying to explain in breathless anxiety the meaning of the festival. If a two-month-old baby were killed, well, the gods were at least appeased; if a son or daughter maimed, they would praise and brag about it as a blessing from the eternal gods and goddesses.
(Erotic orgies; sadistic murders; wanton criminality; in trees; in the torn openings of graves, amongst the corpses; bestiality among domestic and feral animals—often by moonlight and projected hologrammatic images; huge cinematic portraits of Dulmen officiates smiling down on vast areas along with bursting shafts of light in all shades of brilliance, rolling, tumbling, spreading beneath its umbrella over a world that had gone ‘mad.’)
Martin Salisbury’s thoughts revolved back to the task at hand: he rationalized that all the praise and commendations were for a job well-done. Then his thoughts were snapped completely back to the current situation by more chorus:
“THE KING OF GLORY COMES, THE NATION REJOICES!”
He motioned two soldiers to advance to the curtain. The others stepped back a few paces, and in unison they all drew their weaponized swords, pressing a tab on their jeweled handles by the weight of their palms causing the wide edges of their swords to glow with intense heat and light. “alright,” Martin remarked, stepping back a few paces himself.
“OPEN THE GATES BEFORE HIM! LIFT UP YOUR VOICES!”
With two swings of two weapons, from the top of the curtain diagonally to its lower edge, the laser-action of the swords ripped a neat “^” and the heavy material fell with a loud clump. With raised swords, all the patrol stepped into an immaculately clean chamber that had rows of torches extending down the sides of the cavity. A large fire was in the center of the area that housed a metallic-grid-fireplace with animal designs. A circular grid in the ceiling allowed the smoke to dissipate. Wooden benches, stone stools, table slabs, pieces of wardrobe and clothing were in the immediate area; and at the far end a flight of stone stairs leading to a leveled podium encircled by a wall of books (not the kind that Dulmania was accustomed to, but antique, ancient, and with binding including many pages).
Shrieks and gasps suddenly rang out! Women left their benches of decorating and embroidery to grasp the hands of their children and race towards another curtained archway on a far wall. Their panic caused some torches to be propelled onto the floor. Women and children, then, barely vanished through the second curtain leading to the other chamber. A handful of men swirled away from their tasks at the library shelves and in a defensive gesture attempted to hurry the women and children along.
The voices of the chorus that had introduced the soldiers into the cavern suddenly stopped and loud murmurs, whisperings, and crying began. Martin watched in suspenseful interest at the split-second response of the alien people. Martin snapped his fingers, and a few soldiers shot blobs of stunning energy disabling some of the scampering men to the ground. The second curtain was thrust to one side and out stepped a rather stern-looking male with white hair, long flowing robe and gown, staff in hand, and a medallion around his neck. Others peered through the archway in fear and shock.
The elderly man said nothing but stepped quickly thrusting his staff into the dirt floor with a ‘crunch’ with each jab. A barely subdued look of anger was upon his hoary features. When he came within feet of the brazen Martin Salisbury he stopped and looked at Martin with cold penetrating eyes. A strange uneasy silence came upon the scene, a silence that Martin had never encountered before. Martin felt that he had at long last come close—-very close—to the aching mystery that swelled up in the recesses of his mind.
“Whom do you seek?” Somewhere from beneath a cloud of white and slightly grey hair came the deep resonance of the man who obviously was high in authority. Martin really didn’t need the two muscular and stern Mus-chutes that stood at his side, Martin thought to himself, he had enough courage to handle an old man.
“You are addressing ‘the’ new god, old man!” Martin was mustering up a tirade of sardonic and crudeness to spew upon the patriarch but the old man’s face was too much of a unique reality to make that possible. “I am the Son of Misslou!”
No one moved. Then suddenly Arian and Mark redress became curious and confident enough to enter the line of confrontation.
“I know what you are!” The old man jobbed his staff angrily in the soil. “We’ve been expecting one such as yourself for some time now.” The old man spoke perfect Dulmen dialect for he had previously ventured into Dulmen territories many times. His rugged pink complexion and the calluses on his hands did show that he had not been averse to herding sheep in the cold autumn night, nor plucking crops in the blistering heat of a summer afternoon.
“We, old man, are your ultimate salvation or your destruction! We are about to save you or destroy you! Whatever I see fit!’’ Martin stiffened for the old man’s response. “What do you say to that, ancient one?”
The old man gave only a slight smile, realizing that much was at stake.
“You have not that power – you batch of mindless protoplasm – you empty vessel of vain temptress thoughts — you…”
Martin cut his diatribe short, “ Stop it!” Martin brought his hand up to swing it against the man’s face. John Alexanrius did not flinch, though a few female gasps could be heard from the other chamber. Some of his people scampered to his side in defense.
Martin forced a weak smile. “So, you speak riddles as well? Some of you people speak nothing but riddles! The empire will fall,” recalling that threat of the Circus victims, ‘‘your god is not mocked?” Martin spit upon the ground in contempt. “Bah! Do you realize for how long we have existed? Do you, old man? That is only one fact that says that my kingdom will go on forever.”
John Alexandrius saw an opportunity to factually educate Martin. “For some time now the substrata and core of this planet has been in dishevel; when our Lord sees fit within days – years – this planet will crumble into itself. The bowels of Mother Earth growls. You have seen evidence of that yourself.”
Martin pretended astonishment, “We’ve had no catastrophes!”
“None of which your Master Computer would allow to be known. What of Feline?”
“Feline?” Martin grasped the old man’s thoughts. “What of Feline? That city was ravished by the anger of our Great Mind.’’
“Not that master alone! Our all-mighty God destroyed her!”
“You old fool! I’ll strike you dead now if you speak as such again!” Martin thrust a finger at John’s face.
John Alexandrius glanced wearily to the ground, “You’ll not solve anything that way. What happened only foreshadows what yet is to come. It is written: ‘Nothing under the Sun is new, neither is any man able to say: behold this is new. For it hath already gone before in the ages that went before us.’’’ Alexandrius glanced sadly at the younger graduate-god, “‘The perverse are hard to be corrected: and the number of fools is infinite,’ so it is written.”
“We’ll see how your scorn stands fast when your homes, houses, and supplies are ravished! When your women and children are raped! When your able-bodied men are strapped to a stake and tortured for long, endless hours with ‘penetrating’ rays,” thundered Martin. “This cavern will crumble into utter oblivion! You must confess and relent your so-called ultimate reality peacefully.”
“And become mindless robots wandering the unholy streets of damned cities? To become puppet-people unknowingly acting out a fake life and death drama on a stage set with waves of cues and signs that flow relentlessly during a great sea storm,’’ said John. “We’ve heard it all too often in the history of your civilization: ‘Sit here, unholy child! Rise now, unholy child! Eat and sleep now, unholy child! Die, kill, worship me now, you ghastly unholy child! But please do not understand that your personal ‘freedom’ is truly only a wild slavery!” The patriarch’s mustache rose and lowered with his succinct expressions.
“Slavery?” said Martin sarcastically. “What freedom have you? Living like hidden rats, like wild prairie animals in a desolate wasteland, huddled like frightened beasts timid of any luxurious greatness.” He quickly glared at the faces peering from the adjacent archway. “Your women wear simple adornments of savages and your men attack us with nothing but burning torches! Your vocabulary is nothing but gibberish. You have substituted ‘evil’ for ‘live’ and ‘dog’ for ‘god.’ I’ve had enough of your ‘riddles’!”
“Then understand this, you Son of the Dragon, your civilization will die – will be utterly destroyed shortly – the One and only True God will demonstrate His universal greatness! Your livelihoods and bounty will be ravished! Your women and children will seek unrequited safety in the wastelands! The whole face of your civilization will be smeared over like molten tar! And our people will have no hand in your demise other than our God will be the one to wrought this. It is written: ‘“And the cities that are inhabited shall be laid to waste, and the land shall be desolate; and ye shall know that I am the Lord!’”’
Martin was wondering how the promised destruction of their god was any different than the Dulmen destruction this tribe was forecasting, but he kept the thoughts to himself.
“Yes, this little band of people,” continued John Alexandrius, “for all your pomp: all your garrisons, military, weaponry will be utterly helpless. His Greatness will be magnified by your rebellion. It has been long in waiting; it will be great in its Coming!’
Martin churned his fist over his sword handle, waving his head from side to side in exasperation. Martin queried to himself: Why did not the mighty Brain speak out now; indeed, it had been suspiciously silent in finding words or actions. Martin did take notice, as well, that the Brain’s ‘jerking’ of his head had ceased for some time now. Frustrated, he threw his golden helmet from his head to the ground. “Blast you old man! I’ll kill you I swear!” Martin strode down the dirt and rock chamber to the far end of the cavern and pointed up at the shelves of book. “What book? What book ‘whence it is written’?”
John Alexandrius could only look at Martin with growing sad pity; it was still a mystery why this ‘Ascending god’ appeared to them at this time, in this way.
In the quietude of the books on the rock shelves stood numerous titles long forgotten and largely unknown. The Dialogues of Plato, Jowell, I Led Three Lives, Herbert Philbrick, Critique of Pure Reason, Kant—-and many more, some greatly aged, some barely materialized—-but all miraculously preserved somehow by mysterious measures. The list of published valium ran on and on. Some showed signs of great age with a musty smell and a yellow appearance of antiquity; they couldn’t have survived this long if they had not been kept in a Preservation Vacuum Chamber.
“I’ll tell you of what is written in the laws of Dulmania, my white-haired Patriarch, I’ll tell you that!” boomed Martin. “It is stated that ‘…whosoever alienates the principal teachings and lessons of the gods and goddesses of Dulmania and willfully conspires to break the union to the government by secret or private meetings or worship to endanger the security of all Dulmania, shall be persecuted swiftly and as mentioned by other articles in the law…’” Martin smiled at the elderly man. “And that could begin right now!”
John Alexandrius moved his lips rather dryly as if mustering more strength: “It is written: ‘Mark them which divisions an offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them…’” Martin’s eyes narrowed into a glare, for Martin considered this semantical battle was almost wrung dry, ‘‘…It is also written:‘For when they speak great swelling words of vanity, they allure through the lusts of the flesh, through such wantonness…while they promise them liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption.’”
Martin had lost all patience, lunging at the library, taking his sword in hand, pressing it turned-on, and wildly slashing it through the books, disintegrating many into vaporous dust, ‘‘It is written! It is written! Where is it written? Let’s see this book!”
“You out-Herod!” shouted Alexandrius raising his staff as if to give a defense. He stood in the white film of disintegration dust falling about them.
“Please, Father, no!” shouted one of the female Commune people. Two men dressed in knee-high kilts of sackcloth and rope belts quickly grabbed the old man, preventing any further disaster. Arian and Mark Redress drew their disintegrating pistols as a warning of their defense. The gathering Communities could only stare in anxious anticipation. Some helped others to their feet.
Martin no longer wanted to badger these people. His fascination now centered on this mysterious book and many of the esoteric sayings. Everything that this tribe of people stood for had been a rude shock to his sense of reality. He felt weary and somewhat tired. He released his tight grip on his sword handle, hearing it clump to the bottom of his sheath. He spoke to the old man who now was in prayer or deep thought.
“Would you show me this book ‘whence it is written?’’’ pleadingly asked Martin. John Alexandrius sensed the man’s change of attitude and lifted his head in small increments to stare at Martin in surprise.
“Yes, but you must send you’re the rest of your fleet back along with their crews, or I promise you, you will not see that book! You have no choice!”
Martin thought the ultimatum over, he bit on his lower lip in frustration.
“Alright, But I must see this book!!”
“No, Martin, don’t be a fool,” shouted Uncle Redress, “your whole future is at stake, don’t you see? You are able to receive the gift of immorality!”
Martin just looked at his uncle blandly. His uncle could see that Martin had not been moved by his uncle’s comments. Mark Redress made a few emphatic steps towards Martin, “Martin, Dulmania is at stake! You’re ushering a New Age, man, don’t go blind over a worthless bit of prehistoric parchment!”
“What possible interest could you have in a compilation of paper?’’ quizzed Arian swiftly, “ surely your Thought Inference Records would be much more useful just by its eloquence?” Arian patiently waited on Martin’s reply.
Martin pensively examined his crew and the cavern people. After a moment of silence, Martin pressed a button on his belt—a slight crackle went out.
“Patrol Ship No. 1!” Martin called out. “This is Martin Salisbury! This is an order: All Patrol Crafts are to return immediately to Home Base! Understood? Immediately!”
“Anything wrong, sire?”
“No. Have all patrol crafts return at once! This my personal command! That is all.”
Uncle Redress shook his head in disbelief. Arian gave a sigh of despair and folded his arms across his chest in a sign of disappointment. Arian stood mute in the glow of the leaping flames of the center gridwork, recalling soothing childhood memories of his revolving room he spent time in as a youngster, his tension release mechanism; but he also noticed that ‘he’ did not have the formidable body ‘jerks’ utilized by the Central Computer for some time now.
Martin appeared to be pleased with his decision. A curious calmness came over his person. Casually Martin walked over to where his tossed helmet in the dirt, staring at it momentarily as if to decide about his next action. Then he placed it under his arm.
“Uncle, I wish you to back to the Patrol Craft with the rest of the men,’’ Martin sensed a potential rebuff, “No, I want you to go! That is an order! Remain in the ship until further notice.”
His uncle tilted his head to one side in disgust and forged his way into the crowd of soldiers, policemen and crew outside of the first ‘arch opening.’ The order Martin gave could vaguely be heard repeated by his uncle to Martin’s men. And then they turned about and vanished taking the artificial floating canopy of light with them.
‘‘Arian, my friend, remain with me. I want someone other than myself to attest to these facts,” then struck by a sudden thought, Martin turned to the Commune patriarch for assurance, ‘‘Is that alright, Lord of the Commune? I would not want it any other way.”
John Alexandrius slowly nodded, “Believe me, it is not up to you to decide, but it will be permitted. But you must promise that no word of your finding this Commune will be sent back to your headquarters. You must promise!”
In Martin’s new and unusual demeanor, Martin nodded in agreement, ‘‘This whole affair is within purview of the Big Sire, you realize that!” It struck Martin that the Mighty Mind, the Brain, had been silent throughout this whole episode.
“Our God has protected us,’’ said John, “the Arch Murderer has been our enemy from the beginning. However, why was it not that you detected us earlier?” There was a twinkle of humor and irony coming from beneath the heavy eyebrows and the forest of a mustache and beard. Martin, on the other hand, only looked expressionless, perhaps realizing the implications of which the Commune patriarch spoke.
Martin nodded for the Commune leader to carry out his promise. Martin and Arian stepped closely behind John Alexandrius as Commune members stepped aside allowing the small procession to continue amidst the low, excited murmurs of the tribe. They traveled further down the tunnel being filled by tribespeople and they could see that ahead was a well-lit room. (Martin had become fascinated by these tribespeople: Human by every outward appearance, yet alien in their mannerism and attitudes; having both pity and fear; standing in direct conflict with Dulmania). The exit of the cavern was an oblong cavity with torches in many cracks and cavities. Stalagmites and stalactites seemed to be objects till suddenly the room was ablaze with hundreds of slender candles as a pyramid shape. Center of that soft brilliance was a dark form that could have been a human body suspended in the middle of some contrivance.
After a few seconds Martin could see more clearly: This appeared to be an image of a man, suspended with both hands high over his head, clasped together by nails or spikes through his wrists into a beam, and with what appeared to be blood running down his arm and seen on various parts of his body. His feet were nailed in the same way on a wedge and oozed more blood. A towel-like toga barely covered his pelvic area. His rib cage protruded, for his obviously was famished. The image’s head was slumped to one side; his hair was lengthy and matted, held in place by what appeared to be a crown of some plant. Blood leaked from various wounds about his body. He appeared to be totally exhausted and either dead or near-death.
Martin was not totally unfamiliar with crucifixion for he had seen it often in the Arena, but this statuesquescenery had a different quality behind it. It was, however, out-of-sorts with his conception of the Commune people.
“What is this all about?” asked Martin pitifully surprised by the sight. “’Why does this man hang like this? For what crime is he being punished? What has he done?” Martin was beginning to ramble, “Why did you do this to him?” Arian just held his gaze on this bizarre spectacle.
John Alexandrius turned to look at the Dulmen; John had the look of a prophesier. He was looking for words to describe the event to the obdurate Dulmen aristocrat.
“It is not real, my son. What you are seeing before you is a statue. A very real statue, yes, an unsurpassed work of art, I must grant to your astute senses, but only a manmade creation.’’ The words reverberated somewhat in the hallow underground cavity. “We worship no idol; it is forbidden to worship mere images; true art appreciation is another situation. What it represents is very real and greater sense. He lives today – He lives now! What happened to him is a story on a long continuum that has bespoken to the ages.”
“He looks dead! Was he rescued or pardoned?” Martin glanced back and forth from John Alexandrius’s face to the beautifully bewildering sight before him.
“No, no, young man,” said Alexandrius, “I suppose he never could really die. You see, his Father saved him for His predestined purpose, aside from his righteousness character and total faith. He was totally unlike any human that ever lived. He committed no crime; took no lives; murdered no one; He spoke no guile; He…”
“Then why was he killed? Who killed him anyway?”
“The official government!”
“Then he must have committed a crime. Probably he was a traitor! That is not that unusual, you know. I’ve had some study on this subject. I assure you: government has become such a science that no crime could go undetected.’’ Martin spoke with a certain pride in his voice.
“Oh, but you see, the greatest crimes were committed by the self-righteous hypocrisy of His friends and the community. One of His specially chosen followers, a disciple, betrayed Him for a handful of money. Another lied and denied ever knowing Him when He needed his support the most. Some fled away when He was arrested. A Judge could not decide to follow his own conscience…’’
“Conscience?” Martin broke in for the word was so unusual and bewildering. Martin felt that he was starting to learn a whole new vocabulary.
John Alexandrius continued: ‘“Conscience.’ He decided to leave his fate up to a mob of the community which released a hardened criminal to go free in his place as an act of appeasing the people,” Martin was visualizing some of the court proceedings that he had witnessed, “and then he had the gull to admit that he could see no evil in the man and he washed his hands as a symbol of avoidance of the affair.” John Alexandrius looked profoundly at the statue. “You cannot see them from here, but the back of the Man is slashed red with blood and raw flesh from the whip-thongs of the soldiers who beat Him! They hit Him! They spat upon Him! They jeered and called him names!’’ John looked seriously into Martin’s eyes. “The official church of that community turned against Him!”
“You mean that the ‘gods forsook him?’”
“You know what it is like to have one of your alleged gods forsake you?” asked Alexandrius. “Then you must know what it was like for His Father to have seemingly forsake Him. He called out a plea to that effect just before His death.’’
“Yes, I suppose I’ll never know that—I’ve never seen my father.” Martin was being startlingly candid.
“There is much you won’t be able to bare right now, but very few in Dulmania have real fathers.”
“My father was Misslou the Great, an officiate of the Imperial Army!”
“Could you bare the truth of your origin?” asked John Alexandrius. Martin nodded, no longer sure of what to expect.
“As far as we can tell, your real father was a political scientist in the halls of Dulmania learning. He was executed when he advocated a system of ‘family living’ which rubbed the grain of the hierarchy-aristocracy and common people alike: that of a more stable system of having one husband for one wife. He swore that a venomous poison had spread throughout the so-called civilized world and that mankind was devouring itself by catering to its own ‘lusts.’ A stable monogamous family was the solution.”
“That’s not so!” protested Martin. “How can you charge such a thing? You make me out a common citizen!”
“His name was Cornelius Airheart and…” The elderly man was interrupted by the shrill voice of the Dulmen graduate.
“No! No! No! Professor Airheart was a traitor!” protested Martin.
“He was your true father, the only father you ever had. Quite against convention he fell in love with a maiden who was an official liaison to the Aerion Palaces. He wanted to offer her more than was allotted to her in your despicable society. He offered her a monogamous marriage!”
“No! This can’t be! A traitor, yes! But not my father!”
“A child was born in hopes it would hasten that possibility. Instead, the philosophy of one Johnathan Airheart was condemned as age-old heresy. After his execution, a pseudo-legend was propagated: One General Misslou de Gallius, a great war hero, had died and had gained immorality as a god. He had a son by their mystical union with Madelyn Shaw-Salisbury who is well on her way to gaining a place with the god himself – through the lustful caterings to the officiates who visit the Palace.” (In Dulmania it was common for the child to take on the names or last name of the mother if the union was of alleged mystical origin.)
“What distortion of the truth!” bellowed Martin.
“It is the truth,’’ casually remarked the old man, “and your father came close to teaching what that crucified man on that deathbed also espoused for he saw monogamous marriage as a means of stability and much more!”
Martin’s eyes suddenly became a bulbous reservoir of tears. Martin’s hands were shaking as he pointed a finger in abeyance at the statue, “Who…who…is he? What …wh…what was his name?”
The history told in the last few minutes was taking a toll on Arian in its discourse on Madelyn Shaw-Salisbury. Arian recalled the many sensuous visits to the beds of the Palace where Mistress Nymphia – the late love of Professor Airheart – held a lot of his passing hours. It also began to dawn on him how much older he was than Martin Salisbury. The truth had jolted him to his core as he began to see the puzzle-pieces join so momentously and inconceivably!
“He is the Christos, prophesied through the ages, Christ, Immanuel!” proudly proclaimed the Commune superior. The candle pyramid highlighted the old man’s grand sculptured face. Together the two humans ponderingly gazed upon the statue.
“It is written: ‘And behold , thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shall call his name Jesus. He shall be great and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto Him the throne of His Father, David: and He shall reign over the House of Jacob forever; and of his Kingdom there shall be no end.’”
John Alexandrius pointed to a ’pyx’ at the base of the statue: A small transparent item with a generative apparatus to one side giving a slight purr. John motioned that Martin should approach the apparatus along with him. Together they stepped near the mechanism to look upon a large yellowed-brown book, much like those he had obliterated on the shelves outside of this Holy place. It was in fact a ‘vacuum chamber’ with a circulation system leading to the ‘pump.’ By turning dials on the front of the pyx, mechanical wires, threads, and tentacles would tenderly turn and lift the pages of the book. Martin was led to believe there were several such scared books stored in a special vacuum system deep in the cavern.
“What you see before you is the pyx of the Scriptures. It is a sole surviving copy of several sacred and original texts. Their existence and reality has long been denied and mention of them was even hidden, even before Dulmania arose it menacing continence.”
‘‘What is ‘scripture’?” asked Martin as he fought the gnawing pain in his stomach.
“The sole records of the history of the Heavenly Father telling of the times and death of His Son, the inauguration of his Commune and the Prophecy of its future,” John Alexandrius spoke naturally about the Books as if their existence was common knowledge to Martin as it was to Alexandrius’s beloved followers.
Perhaps such behavior would have seemed impetuous several thousand years before when the title ‘Christos’ was a household word, but to the Dulmen aristocrat — indeed an Ascending god — his great ‘conspiracy’ was being dissolved and demolished before his very eyes! Martin began to cry, then sobbed visibly, choking and whimpering, no longer a replica of a god.
“Who…is…this…heavenly father?”
‘‘Perhaps, my son, he is the only Father you have right now!” The stone-stare of the elderly man narrowed onto the Dulman, “And he is the only Father that truly loves you.”
“Then why did he leave his son to die such a torturous death?”
“Earlier, much earlier, mankind out of their own vain lust, rebelled against their Originator, unable to remain within the righteous and perfect guidelines of that Guiding Manifestation, mankind would have been resigned to eons of brute, carnal — sometimes perverted existence — if it were not for the perfect sacrifice of His very own Son Who performed that which any natural man could not !”
John Alexandrius looked upon Martin compassionately as tears rolled down his cheeks. Martin’s lips quivered in fear. Alexandrius continued: “His Son was resurrected from the dead right after His burial — gloriously and triumphantly!”
“Lived, not died?”
“He lives now near His Heavenly Father – and within the hearts and minds of his followers.’’
“What would I do to be included in these miracles?” asked Martin, still exhibiting some smidgen of doubt.
Alexandrius jabbed the staff in his tight grip into the dirt: “You must begin by turning your back on every evil, nefarious thing that your society that your world and your government exists on! Turn yourself over to a new way of life! You must turn your back to the evil lusts of your mind! Right now, people of this planet are killing, maiming, murdering each other, and even in the name of righteousness, and many are literally tearing each other limb from limb, in military combat, but also in the consumption of flesh in mindless orgies!”
A single figure emerged from the shadows of the back of the cavern; Christine said: “You must right the wrong you have done! First you must change!”
Martin was still gazing into the friendly glow of the transparent pyx, despite his blurred vision and tears, Martin tried to make out the strange language and writing. So, this is one of the books “whence it is written,” thought Martin. Arian stood with bowed head in deep thought. Christine went to her father and comforted him by her own warm hand.
“What’s wrong, my dear?” Alexandrius asked, fearful of the girl coming so close to the confrontation. Martin studied her with just as much curiosity.
“Father,” she finally spoke in broken and faltering Dulmen dialect, ‘‘father, does he know anything about my husband?” She covered her face to halt sobbing. The mutilated bodies that Martin recalled in the Arena in just the past day was thrust into Martin’s recollection. Martin shook his head in disgust. ‘‘Can you describe him?” Martin asked. Martin glanced downward in apprehension.
“Fair. Blonde. Dark blue eyes,” the girl momentarily stopped to swallow and stood still for a few seconds. “…a young adolescent boy, handsome…’’
“He is dead,” Martin coldly remarked. Christine visualized some executioner’s axe falling on the victim’s neck. Martin stood there and watched the girl tumble against the old man’s chest as he cuddled her and she wept in remorse and anguish. John’s face also turned from a rosy complexion to a very light pale pink: he glared at the Dulman in utter hate. The crowd of Commune members were also visibly upset. Echoes of dismay, protest and many female sobs could be heard down through the cavern.
Some member grabbed a torch from the wall and proclaimed a threat to avenge the death of the young missionary lad. Commune members protested against any further violence, and the member was restrained. Coincidentally, the smell of bayberry and thistle intermingled with frankincense incense carried through the sacred spot oddly signaling an interlude to gain control. After an undetermined period of silence, John Alexandrius finally spoke:
“It is written; ‘Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you and shall say all manner of evil against you…’”
“Please do not quote the book,’’ begged Martin. Martin began to feel a growing element of confusion, yet anger.
‘“Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you, and persecute you’”
“Don’t! Quote! The! Book!’’ demanded Martin waving a clenched fist at the elderly leader.
‘“And ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be saved.’’’
“Accursed be your foul book! Accursed!’ Martin threw his golden helmet back amidst the padded cushions at the base of the statue where the choir sat and sang. The helmet runed over and over and rolled up to the feet of Arian. ‘‘Accursed be your savior!”
Martin looked up at the statue and with his out-stretched fingers as to hide the image. Patriarch Alexandrius softly kissed his daughter-in-law on the cheek, huddled her close to his side, and began to lead her in the direction away from the statue. “Come dear, come.” said the elderly man in their strange language. Immediately the chorus of voices that Martin heard earlier upon his patrol’s arrival began once again to sing with vibrant courage as the choir marched for more distant and safe places.
John Alexandrius looked at the solemn and worried face of Arian and offered his hand and gesturing that Arian should follow. Arian hesitated for a look at Martin but gave a deep sigh and then quickly joined the throng of carolers and Commune spectators. Martin stood alone in the solitude of the Holy Place.
“I’ve jested and joked and blasphemed at that which was sacred to you, oh crucified man—for why and what now, it is no longer clear to me,” Martin continued his oration, and he was becoming increasingly aware that he was void of the classical ‘jerk’ of the Big Sire, the Brian.
“What you speak of as ‘holy,’ such as this special cavern, were meagre playthings for most Dulmen soldiers.” Martin stopped to slam his fist into the other hand. “Blast you! I cannot think! Your desolate crucified man hanging there chides me! His slumped head berates my mind! Your haunting old book of ‘scriptures’ scolds my Dulmania prestige!” Martin clasped his hands to his temples and shouted: “I cannot think! I cannot think!”
Martin heaved several gasps to ward off sobs. He remained silent for a few minutes. From somewhere in the bowels of the caverns could be heard the haunting trickling of cool underground spring water that echoed through the ancient subterranean world.
Martin lunged forward and with spread fingers he tied to cover the illuminance from within the transparent pyx. In his scrambled thoughts, now mysteriously void of the control of the Brain, questions came rapidly into the matrix of his mind. Why should I give up the power and glory of Dulmania to live in caverns in animal skins? Respect for life, they speak of killing as a crime. They speak of freedom, yet they live as impounded sheep. They ‘box’ this together under one god and one marriage? They say that freedom is not free.
Martin visualized the history of the riotous and frenzied crowds in the Arena. The screaming face of one Mary Longram in the Temple of Dreams. The cold electrodes of the ‘Hub’ programming being placed upon his skull. Thought eradication. And himself as a small boy running to the side of someone that he just could not now identify.
Martin glared hatefully at the statue of the crucified man. He raised the sword above his head to bring it with great force and full fury upon the purring pyx and its scriptures. Suddenly and in shock, he found himself weightless and the scene about him turned into a vortex of blurring black and white tossing his body against the sharp edges of rock. When he gained some sort of equilibrium of his senses, he was again stunned to find his sword embedded at the other end of the cavern – into solid stone!
But much more frightening: he could swear that the head of the crucified man, if only for a moment, turned erect to match the stare of the Dulmen demigod!
**********
Chapter Seventeen
Crescendo
“The Portal Screen was announcing certain persons that cogently struck Elia: “…officiate gods Arian Yul, Mark Reddress, Mylar City resident……” The words boomed in his ears from the orator’s narration. Elia stopped to listen; what an informative surprise; so, his brother was very much alive and active.
“Perhaps they would meet on these matters so intrinsically important.”
Chapter Fourteen, The Search
***
Elia had grabbed at the shambles of a wall and fence, fighting away from the grips of the maddened citizens clawing at his flesh.
“They’ve got my tail,” grimaced Elia in in pain, “release my tail!”
Oh, how they hated what Elia said: It brought fear to some and hurt the arrogant pride of others. The crowds hooting and hollering made Elia even more determined to free himself. Kathern! His thoughts suddenly were filled with her remembrance. Did she grasp his last message, and would she try to find her way to the Rugby Craft and wait for him? Or was she now quickly making her way to the golden doors of the Siberian Caesar to denounce her own husband as a traitor? Which? And was there any real escape from the serpentine eyes of the Big Sire?
He gave a shove with this foot forcing his assailants to slide down the steeply collapsed rubble as he jumped to the top of the pile. Elia stood still for a moment, frozen, immobile, his tail swishing nervously back and forth, stooped as if to spring into a high leap, his viewing of the citizens fanatically scampering to their feet, and then up the incline in pursuit once gain.
Elia, however, disappeared in lightening fashion over the earthquake strewn rubble and down into the cold night and city below him to continue his prophetic mission.
**********
The Winter months had been severe in that part of Dulmania; long and strenuous blizzards and snow falls that went on for months leaving a blinding white blanket over all visible terrain and superstructures.
But springtime had now come and it was an elaborately beautiful one. Perhaps it was trying to compensate for the pricks and pains of the preceding year. Here and there, vines of plants and freshly sprouting grass was attempting to grow on the lips and upper walls of deep crannies and gullies that were produced by the sudden and frightening earthquakes and tremors that had gripped the globe in darkening fashion.
It was a terrible sight in many places. Several Bubble Cities, Methorphoria for example, had been split asunder by the rippling of the Earth’s crust, aghast, looking like the shell of a cracked egg that was discarded on the ground. Many subterranean cities were destroyed; level upon level sinking downward upon each other with the shrieks of millions of men, women, and children! It happened instantaneously, dramatically, malevolently overnight. Huge clouds of dust and debris ascending even above the crust. Then came the secondary collapses with their thundering echoes over the Earth that continued to cause shudders in many that remained alive.
Wild Bors and various laboratory mutations had been inadvertently released from their captivities and now roamed the countryside devouring and destroying the garbage heap of mankind; terror stalked the planet. Famine now became the present problem, and even the utilization of synthetic inventions became a gross problem for the first time in eons. Most of Dulmen extraordinary projects were suffocated in their tracks by the chaos! Their ‘science’ became useless!
Like a mother bear, weak and out of breath from fighting foes against her cubs, Mother Earth stretched her aching and torn muscles and gave a whimpering sigh before she reclined back into her rubble for a suspicious nap. But for how long? And when the worst of winters came — and evenings held an icy star-studded sky over half-orbs of a few remaining destroyed but barely operable Bubble Cities — the only witnesses were the weak and famished citizens of Outer City homes and scarcely alive families. Most saw the planet as granulated!
But for how long would such suspicious quiet last?
And what would be the inventive explanation of official Dulmenia and its Brain conjure up—if, indeed, it could be said that these still existed at all? There was a myth that had started in the wisp of gossip to the effect that a god, Zerionus, would help the remnants of mankind search their conscience for a solution, for fear that the mysterious God would release Its Wrath once again.
**********
On the outskirts of what once was Mylar City strolled a bearded man. His sleek shinning hair denoted much care; an emblem of a dove descending upon a fish was clearly represented on his robe. In the cusp of his hand was a booklet, rather small, but new and bound in leather. In keeping with the warmer weather, his feet were sandaled. As he walked along, he viewed the multicolored fields and hills that also included the tragically disheveled devastation where, now, miraculous sprouts of wild petunias, marigolds, zinnias, tulips, and lilies represented spring-time’s natural landscape had begun to forge again.
When the man reached a dislodged boulder that on side allowed a ‘table’ or platform, he cleared his throat and waited as the crowd began to gather. The sweet fragrance of spring rose into his nostrils. It seemed to give him courage. He placed his book upon a rotten tree limb whose branches made a unique podium at stomach level. He smiled now and then at the gossiping people as they gathered.
Now and then, someone asked him as to the purpose of the event, he would bend low to speak to them and explain that he had an important message he will give. Some would rush away to tell more family and friends. Wonderment as to the mystery man’s purpose began to draw more people. Was it a message from the gods? Was ‘he’ a god? Soon a voice rose from the crowd in protest:
“Come on, let’s hear what you have to say,” demanded a grizzly-faced man raising a fist into the air in protest. A sizeable portion of the crowd chimed in with agreement; a composite of what remained of Dulmania— the torn and tattered clothing, the broken and mended human limbs of those who miraculous survived the underground and worldwide havoc, the barely fed citizens of the Outer Cities, some trying to show emblems of their survivability with best stolen jewelry and linen. Intertwined, were some suspicious maggoty and strained-faced officials and members of aristocracy.
Finally: “Citizens of Dulmania! How many of you would turn aside from me, the one who tell you why your world has been so suddenly catastrophic? How many? Yet, I also will tell you that many ‘will be’ that foolish!” They all focused their attention on the man who occasionally swayed side to side; in the distance could be seen more people coming to investigate. “You would be that foolish because you have been blinded, your vision has been spurned from your faces; no, not your literal sight, though has been more than tapered with in the on-going destruction, but I am referring not to your faces, but your mind’s eye. Your heart cannot speak because of your lack of knowledge,” he lifted his opened book into the air, “here is that knowledge! Here is that Truth!”
The multitude began to murmur homogeneously.
“You have heard, no doubt by your propagandists,” continued the mystery-man, “that the goddess Vera, or the goddess Sherall, the god Marxz, or the god Zeronius cursed you,” he stopped to point a finger directly at the crowd, “you have cursed you!” A recondite smile arose and then vanish from his face.
“It is written: ‘For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness blasphemies!’I say that your Vera, your Sherall, Marxz and Zeronius are but inventions of your own diabolical minds, ushered through by the biggest imp – Satan – otherwise known as a diablerie of electromagnetic forces and collection of memory banks, pulsating circuits neutronic mumbo-jumbo! You have captivated ‘thoughts’ into ‘stones!’ You have harnessed power and energy into small atomic nooks! A person’s whole ‘personality’ can be written virtually upon the face of a few atoms and they can be forced to live a phlegm-like immorality; should a circuit be broken, an ‘energy-pack’ disturbed, a radio wave not transmitted from anode to anode of that monstrous computer, your makeshift heaven ceases to exist!”
The man wiped the sweat from his brow, and he could see that the crowd was becoming intently curious. Groups of adolescent children and their parents, some nude and painted in various psychedelic and opalescent colors as decorate ‘body painting,’ forced their way to the front to hear the mysterious speaker. Their body-paints were overlaid with the dirt of the recent tragedies and hung on the skeletons of famished bodies.
‘‘‘Versed in nothing but morbid questioning and controversies, out of which is coming envy, strife, calamities, wicked suspicions, altercations of men of a decadent mind and derived of the truth, inferring that devoutness is capital,’” he was again quoting his book, but he now continued in his own words, “…the god of this world is the only real ruler, the Trickster, and his demons are one vast organization! I say that he is the one that you unbeknownst worship! For he has substituted ‘life’ for ‘evil’—Hellenism disguised as philanthropy; death for life; hate for love; licentiousness and lawlessness for true brotherhood; his inventions are varied and inconceivably reminiscent but fluidly ‘evil!’’’
The somewhat youthful face placed emphasis on the word ‘evil.’ Evil had been turned in a reverse-pattern that meant anything that Dulmenia said was against that empire and out of their control. That logic had enabled whole races to be exterminated. It was allowed prelates and officials a greater insanity of ‘hero worship,’ an obnoxious horror that was shared in their blood. The man spoke of ‘thundering steeds’ rolling cross the skies that will bring even more worldwide destruction. The mysterious prophet said that there was a better way and that was entreating them to war against their innate lusts of the body, and to pray to a true Heavenly Father who would aid them in their fight.
One man pushed his way to the forefront, raising his hand as a signal to speak:
“Prophet, what do you suggest to one who owns you completely, even as not yourself? I am part Dulmania, truly a part…” he ripped open his coat in a fury, and the yanked a panel in his chest revealing the neatly packed glowing electronic coils that went into making his artificial inners—small scintillating lights blinking off and on in systematic, synchronistic rhythm aided by a soft purr of a miniature atomic generator. ‘‘…sixty organs are built like this, for it was either have this done to me or to be created again as an early immorality with the gods, a tape and film existence in the electronic records of the ‘Big Sire!’’’
The prophet only shook his head; it was true; only all too true—what had been so commonplace to him at one time was now a pretentious shock. He quoted his book again:
‘“Know ye not that your bodies are the temples of the Great Spirit? We are confounded because we have heard reproach; shame hath covered our faces; for strangers are come into the sanctuaries of the Lord’s house.’’’
“All in time,” spoke the prophet to the robotic man, “your Heavenly Father will restore you All in All.”
A beggarly and disheveled man forced his way to the front of the crowd and swiftly pointed a cruel finger at the prophet: “I recognize you! Aren’t you—yes, you are—the son of Misslou! I recognize you now!” The man turned to address the crowd with quick gestures of his hands. “Don’t you recognize him? He, whose face was so callously forced into our memories only a few months ago. The ‘Ascending god!’” The citizen took a cold and hard look at Martin. “The one who was to have fought and defeated the Conspirators in a ground battle! This is he!”
A low growl and convoluted murmurs went up from the crowd of Dulmen citizens. A slight anger built up within him, enough to sting his nostrils: It need not matter what his past had been; he was facing a much better future.
“Yes! Yes! You are correct! But I have chosen the name of another,’’ Martin’s face was flush for this was the first time he was visibly shaken, “Urijah! Urijah the prophet ‘who prophesied against the land according to all the words of Jeremiah!’’’
Henceforth, the name ‘Martin Salisbury’ was nonexistent just as the putrescence-like unreality of his past. But who did any of the citizens think they were fooling, blind sheep to the slaughter?
“ ‘And they bend their tongues like their bow for lies, but they are not valiant for the truth upon the Earth: for they proceed from evil to evil, and they know not me, saith the Lord!’’’
Martin- Urijah, grabbed small hemp bag tied to his rope-belt and jerked it off his waist. Glaring at the crowd, he spilled its contents into his moist palm and clenched it tightly. A dark batch of vapor-like whirlwind dredged up into the air the gray clay of the plains. This whirlwind, however, had a strange sound denoting that it was animate and artificial. Without warning, and to the far right of the crowd three swirls appeared forcing three separate clearings; the whirlwinds glowed with weak blue-white ionizations as a solid shadow formed within as three jostling Mus-chutes—official police of the Royal Imperial Court—emerged out of a materialization device; they could have come from the direct command of Martin’s uncle (many Mus-chutes resided deep within the lobby chambers of the vast computer and the atomic power plants of the Big Sire beneath Mylar).
Martin was observing all this activity taking place about him as bystanders pointed to the Bubble City about a mile away. Distant observers began to fidget as they observed a florid glow which many underground citizens of Feline would have readily recognized. The creeping Mus-chutes should have convinced Martin that his soliloquy was about to be cut short.
(Martin had done much study of ‘lost history’ in his discovery of the many manuscripts of the Commune; slowly Martin-Urijah became more and more sane. A certain anger came and went as he studied, but the warm hand of the Commune children into his hand dissolved any constant fear. Small children found in Martin an ideal companion to frolic and play ‘hide and seek’ in the early spring months. He had, also, learned of the worldwide network of prophets—– names such as Tamar, Sansabar, Theodore, Elia, Jefferson, Townsend, others—-and there always was his beloved, Christine.)
Having no fear of the visiting Mus-chutes, Martin continued in his rapidly produced lecture: Prophets hid in the Tibetan mountains of the Himalayas, worldly governments started to ‘invent’ miraculous tales to cause fear within the remaining populace of the Earth, the visitor and ‘Father’ from outer space, The Sun, Wandering Spirit, the announcement that Dulmania actually was the outcome of twelve successive authoritarian governments in the previous eons (all of which faltered and shared the same degeneracies). The sciences of Mind Control and Propagandism progressed and became perfected in the Dulmania’s Big Sire. This was the problem that Martin-Urijah faced: Compacting as much history to the ignorant populace in as short of time as was humanly possible before his capture and possible death!
The rear wall of the crowd developed into a terrified frenzy as most were aware of the Feline-City-type manifestation encroaching upon them. Many were running towards the surrounding mounds and hills, only to be captured by the bestial manifestation about a mile from the spot the prophet was situated. A soft rumble could be felt beneath their feet. The lion-like face of the blob of energy let out a high-pitch growl as it advanced and grew; Martin remained steadfast in his sermon:
‘“The fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the heaven, and the beasts of the field, all creeping things that creep upon the earth, and all the men that are upon the face of the earth, shall shake at my presence, and the mountains shall be thrown down, and the steep places shall fall, and every wall shall fall to the ground!’’’
The onslaught began that very day around the globe! In Tamar’s vicinity large starving hordes had massacred an army of people in a blitzkrieg for survival. Their efforts were quickly wiped out by earth renting cracks and topsy-turvy fissures in the crust of the earth. Several cities vanished within seconds. The huge, towering statue of the War God Maryx had cracked instantaneously into thousands of fine lines, and then with a low painful rumble, shifted and fell into itself as a smoldering and cascading avalanche of stone, metal and pieces of rubble.
‘“I will fill his mountains with his slain men; in thy hills, and in valleys, and in all they rivers, shall they fall that are slain with the sword. I will make thee perpetual desolations, and thy cities shall not return, and ye shall know that I am the Lord!’”
In John ‘Red’ Townstead’s Veron de Sheol, the prosperous and luxurious underwater city that traveled as a beautiful gem from aquarium port to aquarium port, its beauty and serenity was torn asunder by hurricanes and monstruous mystery waves of inclement wrath.
‘Red’ Townstead was stubborn in his prognostication of impending boom, as he left within an hour of the destruction of Veron de Sheol to the surface in an aqua ferry; only to learn of five other underwater complexes that were swashed in a maze of girders, plastics, debris that became swirling masses rocking to and fro in the turbulent waters!
‘“ I will overturn, overturn, overturn it: and it shall be no more, until He came whose right it is and I will give it to him!’”
**********
Elia vividly recalled the first few hours of the blizzard. He had been hiding in the local park, a beautifully decorated recreation area near the Imperial Bubble City nearby and he could see the first few flakes pass over the soft blue-white glow of the floating aerial globes throughout the park.
Soon, a velvety blanket of white lay over the landscape, delicately balanced on the tops of pine branches and the boughs of oaks. The statue of a once-famous Dulmen General, arched backwards upon the rearing stallion, had withstood the year round brutal cold. Quickly, the snow crystallized into frightening proportions of a whiteout. Not only was food a complete deficit in the economic-political confusion caused by the intrepid amount of meteorological flightiness, but lawlessness and anarchy stole across the blizzard-stricken domain forcing some into the few underground hideaways in those areas. Within minutes, these became their sealed ‘tombs’ that irreversibly cut their dubious and tenuous lifegiving umbilical cords.
In the silence that sometimes accompanies tumultuous blizzards with its blinding white snow-blanketed terrain, Elia wept—-hard and deeply till Elia’s chest ached and his limbs were in pain. The End was near and part of his life was tied with some of the rebellious breather buried beneath that cruel white crust.
(What was once South America in eons past, had come to be called Dano in the Dulmen international tongue—-meaning dynamic; atomic; negative; operation. Within its equatorial climate all that one normally could anticipate were hordes of nasty mosquitos and the savage vegetation, but the citizens of Katri were the meagre few that had still the semblance of abiding in what remained of a ‘god City,’ Bubble Complex. Then came the awful and blistering hot that seemed to rain down from above—and belch up from below—sprouting pits of volcanic openings in surprising places, spewing golden-red lava, and bellowing white steam.
(Within one hour, the jungle was a vast carpet of suffocating flame, huge, towering columns of smoke that choked the breath of life of all remaining creatures. It was only a matter of minutes before the unbearable magma pounded against the Bubble City until the metropolis succumbed to the twofold pressure of earth tremors and streams of lava.
(‘‘‘Therefore, thus saith the Lord God, behold, mine anger and my fury shall be poured upon this place, upon man, and upon beasts, and upon the trees of the field, and upon the fruit of the ground; and it shall burn, and shall not be quenched!’” )
Thus, Rob Jefferson gazed in pretentious discernment upon his home vicinity from his Water Scout projectile as it sped down the Amazon River. Jefferson’s apocalypse was one of earnest and dangerous appeal, but he found an indifferent and savagely protective audience causing a thin escape with his life from the irascible officials.
And so, it was for the encrusted Christos Prophets around the globe—-all increasingly becoming aware of their time for ‘departure.’
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The scowling of Old Nick who was a “murderer from the beginning,” pruriently flaunting himself behind the back of Urijah, with Nick’s lion-like growl and a grinding, agonizing ‘purr’ that would cause any audience to fall to their knees and hold their hands over their eyes to shield themselves from the brilliant light of the swirling vortex of the gaseous and vaporous Monster. The catlike eyes of “the Prince of this World.” Assenting were the Hanumen Monsters aroused from their cubicles – their tombs of the undying dead – their hairy atrocious bodies dancing on spindle legs as if a bug intoxicated with an insecticide. This showed their realization that their time on Earth was over.
A hot wind mustered up by Old Nick’s anger crawled about Urijah’s back. The squall caused his hair to bristle and pull at his roots as the wind gradually grew into hurricane proportions. Urijah took capsules from his belt-pouch and held evaporating Z-BR8 out for anyone to see:
“Behold your god! And behold its designer!” Urijah pointed backward to the Satanic adversary. “We have awakened him from his hiding place and his brother incubus of electronic memory banks, transformers and atomic generators! He growls in pain for he knows his time is short!” Urijah suddenly realized that the Big Sire, a Dragon, may no longer exist considering all the total and utter destruction happening about the globe.
The ground was shaking mysteriously in the grip of seismic waves. Huge locusts appeared in swarms: escaped mutations from several destroyed laboratories that ranged about the globe. The pitiful remnant of mankind had no defense against these monsters.
‘“And there came out of the smoke, locusts upon the earth; and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power.’”
Urijah allowed the few remaining Z-BR8 capsules to slip away in the wind. ‘‘And this is your refuge! You fight with this evil to appease your god!” The wind pulled at Urijah’s limbs. Some hair stuck to the corners of his mouth. “Disobedience has led to undeterminable lawlessness so you have hidden yourself in a wilderness of a makeshift fantasy world!”
Urijah, still a stalwart man with a rugged bronze appearance, but having lost the look untouched youth, the scent of naivete was no more. He was a follower of Christos! A follower of that magnanimous Kingdom. A Christos! In his mind’s eye, Urijah could see the smiling faces of those from the Commune, patiently waiting for him somewhere beyond all hills, beyond this time!
Despite the shrieks and cries of terror going on about him in the world being torn apart by invisible hands that rent everything asunder, Urijah prepared to make a liminal exit. ‘‘Asteroid Watch” programs disappeared days beforehand when civilization and its watchdog agendas disappeared about the globe totally unaware as humongous celestial rocks collided into the Earth’s crust producing absolute finality in a red mass that blocked out the Sun. That blinding flash ushered in of a new age!
“Oh earth, earth, earth, hear the word of the Lord!”
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Chapter Eighteen
EPILOGUE
The babe’s ‘special place’ was no more, at least not in a terrestrial sense. All the trees, scrubs, and hidden artifacts that the child discovered and had become so fond of, no longer existed. The skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus that had been undiscovered by human eyes, would never be discovered and seen. Beautiful roses, golden rod, white poppies, bloodroot would never be seen again. The Moon was a dark red and carried ‘splinters’ of Earth from the demolition of that planet and further decimation by atomic explosions thrown at the satellite by mankind’s last-minute madness they exhibited in their death-Theos and their calamitic ending. With the annihilation of the Brain, interplanetary Dulmania outposts and bases also dissolved rudimentary connections and vanished from sight.
Uncanny and majestic large white oblongs, like, but not identical to the Dulmen spacecrafts, abruptly began to create a ‘gap,’ some supernatural hole in the stratosphere. Huge objects quietly flowed out of that ‘vortex’ and filled the hemisphere in procession and ranks until that whole sky was filled with the purring mysterious bodies, horizon to horizon.
It was the beginning of a new and glorious Epoch and a creation of a neoteric world!
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If we only knew what the next thousand years would bring; the next hundred years; the next day; the next hour.
If only the prognosticators of ‘hell fire’ and damnation would be quiet and allow us ‘fun loving’ people assume our toy of science and allow us to “get on with” our playing.
Perhaps all those other anguishing thoughts picking at the back of our minds would also cease: What of those quant and gothic-looking churches that are slowly deteriorating? Now that God is dead, how is He going to fix those broken glass windows? How soon will the utopia that our scientists predict finally arrive? When will the panacea arrive? Who will answer?
It is a rather fruitless quest, for the Christos told us not to say, “lo here’’ and “lo there,” for He was already among them.
Likewise, to ask when our fictional Dulmania will emerge, and will it have a resemblance of this futuristic science-fiction story, is also naïve. Just a passing glance at news dispatches and current historical events tells us that Dulmania has been in existence. It is now! We are the Dulmen!
In Communist Russia, ‘White Coats’ are the array of the KGB officers who inject aminazin and sulfazin into the bodies of the ‘political unreliable’ and dissidents who are out of step with Russian politics. Some spend their remaining hours isolated in an asylum for ‘defaming the Soviet state and political system.’
Several years ago, in New York City, the late Reverend Billy Graham declared to a 20,000 audience that ‘‘unless our nation turns to God, we will not be spared by God.”
A government study on Crime in America reported that the “U.S was a violent nation…violence persists in the U.S while diminishing in most other countries…Americans have always been a violent people…’’
The once sparkling jewel of midtown Manhattan, Times Square, has deteriorated to a district of sleazy movie houses, pornographic bookshops, prowling prostitutes, and has received the title of “Slim Square.’’
The Louisiana Judiciary Commission recommended that Judge Edward A. Haggerty, Jr., the presiding judge at the Clay L. Shaw assassination conspiracy trial, be removed from office for the willful misconduct…Haggarty was arrested in a raid on a stag party, charged with resisting arrest, solicitation for prostitution and conspiring to commit obscenity. John Haggarty resided at the trail whence Clay Shaw was found innocent of conspiring to kill the late President John Kennedy.
It would be superfluous to distil recent crime and murdering statistics and details which would outstrip the fictional scenes in THE DULMEN for their brutality, sadism, and horror. If the citizens of the world feel helpless and hoodwinked by terrestrial events, we can only hope and pray that the nihilism engulfing us will soon have a ray of hope to shine brightly through.
Cheri Seymour’s prologue to TheLastCircle overviewed how versions of PROMISsoftware were a “two-way” backdoor integration for tracking money laundering and intelligence data of countries: Danny Casolaro’s investigation into this led to his death. The overall operation was compared to an Octopus with many tentacles, “…highest levels of government allegedly in collusion with Organized Crime….it all boiled down to money laundering….use of PROMIS…” in a much larger program where the National Security Agency and Canada spied on both American and Canadian citizens through Echelon Intel/spy satellite and crime cartels such as the Music Corporation of America. “Danny Casolaro’s Octopus….has reached Jules Verne proportions and grows daily….”
(The last Circle, Cheri Seymour, Trine Day LLC, P.O. Box 577, Waterville, Or. 97489, www.trineday.com, publisher @trineday.net, 1-800-556-2012, 2010, 599 pages, $24.95.)
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DRUGS AND MORE
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Seymour started with mysterious deaths and drug dealings in Mariposa County, California and recounted comments by Vivian L. Wagner of DIG (Decency in Government) and her letter to President Reagan about the missteps DIG encountered in the court system. Her frank opinion was rewarded by a prospective meeting, but her husband, attorney Chuck Wagner decided to “close shop,” deserts his practice and disappears. Seymour never found out why.
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Cheri Seymour
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Former FBI and CIA agent, Ted Gunderson laid out the territory of underground operations paying for arms with drugs, cocaine or heroin: The Company handled the drug end of it in the U.S as self-supporting outside of Congress. Michael Riconosciuto implicated Wackenhut Security Corporation. The mystery led to “government sanctioned drug operations” (pp. 39-40). “….illegal overseas arms shipments, espionage, CIA drug trafficking, biological warfare development, computer software development…theft, money laundering and corruption at the highest levels of government.”
Danny Casolaro referred to it as “TheOctopus”: Inslaw software, Iran/Contra, the BCCI scandal, the MCA Entertainment Corporation, Cabazon arms on the reservation and desert land near Indio, California.
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Ed Scarpo Spotlights a Troubled MCA Probe that Involved Reagan
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DARK SIDE OF SECURITY
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A joint business venture between Wackenhut International and the Cabazon Indians allowed high-tech arms exported to third-world countries from their Federally-exempt reservation. Wackenhut compiled “dossiers” on 2.5 to 4 million Americans in 1966 – one in 46 Americans then living.
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Wackenhut Security
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Casolaro claimed to have inside information about Inslaw-PROMIS, October Surprise Scandal, BCCI, Iran/Contra Affair, and other front companies. Adnaw Khashoggi had connections with Dodi Fayed who dated the late Diana, Princess of Wales, and died in a car crash on August 31, 1997: Adnan and Dodi were both involved in “frontcompanies.”
The “web” of The Octopus led to drug trafficking in the Golden Triangle and the Nugan Hand Bank, as well as the CIA-owned Air America. Michael Riconosciuto, who played intimate parts in all aspects of the Octopus Mysteries from the PROMISsoftware to the Wackenhut/Cabazon cabal, lived near Tacoma, Washington in 1991 and had connections with the famed 1947 Maury Island UFO Incident and Fred Crisman, intelligence operative. Seymour mentions none of this, however.
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Michael Riconosciuto
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TACOMA, UFO, KENNEDY
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Fred Crisman was a Korean War veteran and OSS (precursor to the CIA) operative that was party to the June 21, 1947, Maury Island, Washington UFO incident. Crisman obtained and camouflaged UFO residue that led to the deaths of Army Air Corps Officers Brown and Davidson. Because of Crisman’s intrepid history (going back as far as a fire-fight in a Burma cavern with mysterious Hobbit creatures) within the intelligence community in several situations, Crisman was called before New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison’s John Kennedy investigation as a person of interest.
Clay Shaw, a suspect in the Garrison trial, was stationed in Washington State in 1947, as was detective and FBI agent Guy Banister, who was later connected to New Orleans/Kennedy tie-ins. Shaw called Crisman shortly after Shaw’s arrest by Garrison. All had prior Intelligence connections.
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Jim Garrison on the left, Clay Shaw on the Right.
Principle Players Going Back to Mid-century
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Later, Michael Riconosciuto was described as a “young electronics ‘whiz’ from Tacoma”: and Riconosciuto knew Fred Crisman.
The Wackenhut-Cabazon Joint Venture served the interests of the U.S intelligence community for many years. Michael Riconosciuto became intimately involved in the workings of “The Octopus,” from Inslaw, the Cabazon-Joint Venture, Wackenhut, PROMISsoftware, The Company, government-sanctioned CIA, Food Machinery Corporation (FMC), FIDCO (First International Development Corporation), and world-wide front groups ringing Syria, Beirut, Cyprus and other countries.
“I handled communication protocol. All the communications and financial transactions,” said Riconosciuto. “If I could get my records in line I could show all the money flows, everything.” (p. 77) He spoke of Swift Chips – Clearing House Interbank Payment System, Workers Bank in Columbia, dead-drops, Fin Cen, Octon Potnar, the Fresno Company, J & G Aviation, Gilbert Rodriguez and the Cali-Columbian-Drug-Cartel.
Gilbert Rodriquez and his cohort Jose Londono may have had CIA connections, operating through Miami banks such as the Northside Bank of Miami. Danny Casolaro’s investigations also focused on drug connections. Casolaro mentioned the Kuhn Sa Golden Triangle drug trade (August 8, 1991). He received death-threats on August 9. His body was found on August 10. He had mentioned a Cali-Cartel money-laundering connection with attorney Mike Abbell. Riconosciuto mentioned the Cali-cocaine-Cartel and Columbian kingpin called Gilberto (Rodriguez).
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DIRE THINGS
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Riconosciuto suspected that Casolaro had come across dire things such as germ warfare technology, as found in Danny’s notes, as well as comments about slow-acting brain viruses, Mad Cow Disease, Robert Booth Nichols, Glen Shockley of FIDCO and Meridan International Logistics; the Japanese Yakuza. Casolaro said: “…its origins spawned thirty years ago in the shadow of the Cold War.” Casolaro’s list of names grew: Richard Helms, Howard Hunt, and Robert Chasen. Riconosciuto said: “…I know PROMIS, I know FOIMS (Field Office Information Management System – SE) inside out. I helped develop that internal tracking audit trail…”
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John Lear (Hereditary to the Lear Jet Corporation and also ‘Mysterian’ Investigations) with (on the right) Robert Booth Nichols (Fellow ‘Mysterian,’ Intelligence Asset and Mobster).
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Clint W. Murchison had connections with strong right-wing influences; connections with FIDCO, and Robert Maheu of Howard Hughes fame. Seymour went through a list of CIA-connected operatives at FIDCO places were DEA and CIA agents could deal in arms, use as transit points, and bootleg computer software. “…Euramae, as run by El-Jorr, was more like a low-life social club than a secret intelligence centre…” (p. 102). FIDCO was said to be a National Security Council “front corporation.”
“Front organizations” often dealt in “technical wizardry” – or prototype military or combat equipment; Hoffman electronics (p. 103). Robert Booth Nichols was also known as “Mr. Big” – and his ROM importing business was a cover for big-time heroin trafficking from the Golden Triangle. Booth was also a suspected hit man for the Tongs. He had offices around the globe. He was on the Board of Directors of FIDCO.
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The Golden Triangle Drug Trade
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PAN AM FLIGHT 103
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The Liberation of Palestine-General Command and the Syrian kingpin Al-kassar had DEA and CIA drug trafficking ties bypassed airline inspection, and placed a bomb on board the ill-fated 747 in a “controlled delivery.” Al-kassar also worked with Oliver North and Richard Secord in their weapons-contraband.
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Mobster Al-Kassar
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The Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) was a prospective client of PROMIS in its worldwide money laundering. Said operative Lester K. Coleman: “…I became aware of the fact that DEA was using its propriety company, Euramae Trading Company, LTD., to sell to agencies of various countries in the middle east, including Cyprus, Pakistan, Syria, Kuwait, and Turkey.” The United Nations Fund for Drug Abuse Control in Vienna, Austria, was a typical front company.
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MORE DEATHS
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The deaths of Ian Stuart Spiro and his wife and children in 1992 followed his connection with Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages and the pirating of software. His name appeared in Lt. Col. Oliver North’s notebooks. Spiro’s business partner, Robert Corson, was also found dead in a motel room. This was followed by the death of Alan Michael May who had connections with the Cabazon/ Wackenhut Joint Venture. Seymour disclosed that Al Hobert, an Israeli intelligence officer, recruited Riconosciuto into the CIA and “The Company.”
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Grave Site of the Ian Stuart Spiro Family
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“I designed communications equipment,” said Riconosciuto. “I did a lot of software development.”
Charlie Weinberg invented the Vortex Chemical Company for Al Hobert; this activity attracted the attention of Dr. John Phillip Nichols at Wackenhut/Cabazon. Holbert turned out to be a double Soviet/Israeli agent and Treasury agent.
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WEBS
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Riconosciuto’s partner, Paul Morasca, was found dead by Riconosciuto: hog–tied and arms lashed. Morasca was suspected of drug laundering. Then Mary Quick was fatallyshot: Quick was carrying multi-million dollar computer cards that belonged to Tyme Shares On-line Financial Clearing House. “I developed the modem, error trapping routine,” said Riconosciuto.
The “web” entailed SDS; Sigmat; P-E-R-T; EDS’s. In December 1981, Michael met with George Wackenhut. Wrote John Connolly in SPYMagazine, September 1992: “So, the wealthy president of a large security company with CIA ties and one of his board members meet with drug dealer turned electronics expert and a spook turned arms supplier…”
Robert Booth Nichols was linked to biological technology in Japanese institutes and Meridian International Logistics. MCA Entertainment Division was also sued for organized crime, but this was stopped at a high-level (p. 134): the MCA labyrinth. Riconosciuto and Nichols were both interested “…in developing new high-tech sub-machine guns and powerful explosive devices…electromagnetic pulse…,” as well a $500- million stock fraud in international organized crime. Nichols said: “I am involved in the research and development of weapons systems, ranging from the basic blow-back automatic weapons to various advanced destructive devices.”
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Strangely, Nichols was also an investor “in a method for induction and activation of cytotoxic T-lymphocytes”: Biological warfare; back to an “Old Boy” network from the 1950s. Nichols was advancing, as well, a Research and Development facility on the Cabazon Indian Reservation: arm-sales to NATO, U.S Army, and Germany.
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MORE WEBS
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Wackenhut branched into property In Canada. Nichols worked in arms and electronic trading. President of Intersect Corporation; John Vanderwerker, Glenn Shockley, a board director of FIDCO and MIL, both were on CIA payroll; links to Union Bank of Suisse of Zurich, Switzerland. Forty-two Cobra helicopters were purchased by NATO, and then they were suddenly diverted to “North Korea,” then Iraq (p. 144). Oliver North supplied Iran, the CIA supplied Iraq, and Wackenhut supplied the Contras: all supervised by the U.S government: the Reagan administration’s efforts to aid the Nicaraguan Contras. The House Judiciary Committee on Inslaw gave proof “that Wackenhut sold arms to the Contras.”
(An aside, according to CIA operative General Manual Noriega, he was paid 11-million-dollars from a CIA slush fund and maintained that “planes carrying arms to Nicaraguan rebels returned to the United States loaded with illegal drugs.” [pp. 147-148])
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MORE TANGLED WEBS
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Cytotoxins were mentioned in Bio-Rad Industrial Park/ Wackenhut/Cabazon biological warfare letters: “Hitler’s wet dream.” Riconosciuto added: “Horrible things. You know, it makes what the Nazis did to the Jews look mild….horrible germ warfare project….” (p. 152). Some of the toxic chemicals made it to Saddam Hussein through international trafficking of armaments (ITAR).
Peter Videnicks, a Justice Department CIA cut-out was the administrator of the contract between Inslaw and the DOJ. A $10-million-dollar deal to install PROMISin its 20 largest U.S Attorneys offices fell through in 1983. Dr. Earl Brian was one of Ronald Reagan’s “fast track” inner sanctums and he served a large Intelligence Community; he was involved with PROMIS. He was called “the Genius Doctor” in the field of biological technology; biotech Capital Corporation and American Cytogenetic. Infergene was in violation of toxic waste. “….chlamydia, herpes, and HSV-2….bacteria of unknown etiology” (p. 157). Radioactive Butanol; Beef mucosa; DNA technology; Yersinia Pestis: the Black Plague. “…if an accident had occurred, all of Berkeley would have been wiped out.” A proposal by Wackenhut to Dr. Harry Fair was “a secret government installation” and the Army Weapons Division; Gulf War Syndrome (GWS); mass sociogenic illness.
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TANGLED, TANGLED WEBS
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To quote Robert Chasen of Wackenhut: “Wackenhut was running amuck.” Nichols and Peter Zokosky attempted to “sell the biological warfare technology (developed in cow uteri)” through Wackenhut; Ebola Zaire Virus. “A tiny change in its genetic code,” said Richard Preston in TheHot Zone, “and it might (have) zoomed through the human race.”
Nichols confessed to Seymour that he and John Vanderwerker were CIA facilitators and the shipment of the 42 Cobra helicopters was a “classified” operation. “Without drugs,” said Nichols, “banks and whole countries would collapse financially.” (p. 173) Wackenhut was involved in chemicals destined for King Fahd of Saudi Arabia; lethal toxins; Cytotoxic T-lymphocytes. Peter Zokosky described a process by which the Venture “had incubated the virus in cow uteri and udders in bio-labs twenty floors beneath the ground.” (p. 176)
(UFOlogists and paranormal investigators recognize stories of the cattle and animal mutilations where utters and other bodily parts are mysteriously and surgically removed.)
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Wackenhut Security Experimented with Animals
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The MCA Home Entertainment Division is described as “facilitating the largest leveraging scam ever conceived in this country.”
Nichols alleged that Riconosciuto had killed Paul Morasca.
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DOCTORED ZAPRUDER FILM
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Among other things discussed with Nichols was a film uncovered by him of an alleged “un-cut” version of the Kennedy/Zapruder film demonstrating the CIA’s ability to “cover up anything it wants.” Seymour speculated that the showing was a ploy by Nichols to later claim deniability.
Nichols claimed to have worked in MK-Ultra-Manchurian-Candidate programs; Phoenix Project; The Chosen Ones; German SS occultism. “I felt sure the corporate and government connections,” said Seymour, “were little more than ‘fronts’ for large-scale drug trafficking.”
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DEATH THREAT
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Because of name-dropping of a secret Nichols meeting, Seymour’s life was threatened. It would be another death – seven altogether – if it happened (p. 191). Real life “Dungeons and Dragons….biological warfare, high-tech weaponry, and large-scale heroin and cocaine operations worldwide…down the big, black hole.” Seymour said that the “war” between the FBI and the DOJ was a “key” to the Octopus story. PROMIS could be modified to track money laundering activity as well as Intel gathering, hack databases, control hundreds of accounts, and move money through the international banking system (p. 198); CHIPS and SWIFT. In 1992, that was $2 billion dollars a day: laundering with ties to the Gambino crime family and the Yakuza.
Nichols, in criminal style, had hung a man in front of a prop plane which sucked the victim towards the propellers. That victim was Sam Markowitz, a professional hitman.
Cheri Seymour’s investigation into the tentacles of the Octopus continues in Part II.
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The Octopus from Hell
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By:
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Steve Erdmann
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Part II
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(The last Circle, Cheri Seymour, Trine Day LLC, P.O. Box 577, Waterville, Or. 97489, www.trineday.com, publisher @trineday.net, 1-800-556-2012, 2010, 599 pages, $24.95.)
We continue with Cheri Seymour’s tenacious sleuthing of the many deaths and circumstances surrounding the late researcher Danny Casolaro and “TheOctopus.”
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Danny Casolaro
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Chemical magnate Al Holbert was a former Israeli intelligence officer who gave special education classes to law enforcement agencies in the U.S. His address was Fort Mead, home of the Intelligence Security Command and Delta Force. Holbert exported cryptic substances out of his mail-order chemical outfit. Danny Casolaro ‘carted about’ a transcript of Octopus connections and Riconosciuto interviews at the DOJ: a month before his death.
Nichols said of the FBI, CIA: “…they’ve become so corrupt and polluted they don’t know what they’re doing half the time….” (p. 209).
Nichols testified that he worked for the CIA since the 1960s when he was recruited by a “Ken.” He was told to take a job with a Hawaiian security firm.
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CALI CARTEL
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Eventual prosecution of persons of interest occurred in 1995: money laundering, drug conspiracy and racketeering, obstruction of justice. It was a 161-page indictment.
Suspicious bacteriological experiments by all major combatants, including Axis Powers during World War II were noted. Japan was a principal suspect. A laboratory at Fort Detrick emerged to study bacteriological warfare (BW). It was a germ-warfare Manhattan Project-type operation: typhus, diphtheria, bubonic plague. Major General Ishii, Unit 731, experimented on human beings. Pin Fan. Experiments became international: cholera, anthrax, TD, typhoid, rickettsia, dysentery, cyanides, and botulinum.
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TOXINS AND THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
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America secured BW technology for their refusal to open war crimes investigations. The secret industry flourished. FIDCO secured those secrets. Kafkaesque.
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MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE
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Seymour linked to the CIA 1940s experiments in Mind Control; World War II. Scientific experiments were also incorporated. CIA programs ranged from exotic herbs to screening candidates for outlandish, chemical and biological warfare (CBW). CIA screening methods were adapted and used by AT&T (p. 222). “…the line between offense and defense – if it ever existed – soon became so blurred as to be meaningless.” Operation Artichoke; Technical Services Staff (TSS); Clandestine Services, Directorate of Operations; MK-Ultra; MK-Naomi; Staph Enterotoxin; Venezuelan Equine; Encephalon-Myelitis Virus; aerosol sprays. Operative George White wrote: “…I toiledwholeheartedlyinthevineyards becauseitwasfun, fun, fun. Whereelsecould ared-blooded American boy lie,kill,cheat,steal,rape,andpillagewiththesanctionof the All-Highest.”
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PSYOPS
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Sid Gottlieb took control of MK-Ultra. Wackenhut board member Stansfield Turner lied to President Carter about the goals of MK-Ultra. The Scientific Engineering Institute carried the ball as a proprietary company. One operative said: “If you could find the natural radio frequency of a person’s sphincter, you could make him run out of the room real fast…creating a subservient society was not out of sight.” HIV is described as a “chimera” created in 1977 at Fort Detrick, Maryland; genetic engineering; psychological operations (PSYOP) and Mind War. “…Mind War operative, consequently, must not be detectable by ordinary means…” (p. 235).
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Training for Biological Warfare
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Major Michael A. Aquino advocated “psychotronic,” and proudly advertised his interest in Satanism (p. 236). He also advocated interest in Hitler and Nazism, The Vehm, the Thule Gesellschaft, and the Ahnenerbe.
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Michael A. Aquino
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DOMESTIC USES
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A 1993 Los Alamos conference was aimed at uses of psychotronic systems as weapons of law enforcement for domestic civilians; directed-energy-weapon-technologies. General E.C. Meyer, former Chief of Staff of the U.S Army, had also set up a Department of Defense Conference in which Michael Riconosciuto was a principal speaker on this topic. “…you can genetically engineer these biological agents….a specific penetration group can be immunized, and everybody else dies,” said Riconosciuto.
The fraud-ridden Nugan Hand Bank collapsed in June 1980 after its co-founder, Frank Nugan, was shot to death. Nine-top-ranking U.S military and intelligence officers had worked forthe bank. The Bank assets were looted by CIAproprietaries.
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Mobster Frank Nugan
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TANGLED TANGLES
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Bill and Nancy Hamilton’s Inslaw/PROMISprogram was fraudulently coveted by the CIA, NSA, FBI, DEA, and DOJ. The DOJ copied versions of PROMISinto 45 U.S Attorneys Offices.
Ronald LeGrand, the chief investigator, said: “Inslaw is a lot dirtier for the Department of Justice, in its breadth and depth than Watergate.” The Criminal Division was the nerve center. To date, the government hides “additional uses” of PROMIS; probably laundering money from drug profits (p. 255).
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The Illuminati
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Michael Riconosciuto modified the PROMISsoftware during 1983-1984. One investigator, attorney Paul Wilcher, also met his death on June 23, 1993, adding more lethal statistics in the Shadow Government.
Seymour outlined the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) investigation and their interest in PROMISand Seymour’s investigation. The Strategic Software Company was one facilitator. The RCMP investigation found that “the drug angle” was a “key piece to the puzzle” (p. 299).
Added to the deaths in the syndrome were the execution-style triple homicides of former Cabazon Tribal Council Vice-chairman Fred Alvarez, Ralph Boger, and Patricia Castro on June 29, 1981.
A December 2, 1982, FBI report indicated that Robert Booth Nichols also conducted money laundering for Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines.
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RCMP CONFIRMATION
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The RCMP obtained an 11-page chronology revealing Wackenhut Corporations “joint venture” at the Cabazon Indian reservation. The RCMP determined that Robert Booth Nichols made severalcalls to governmentagencies, “and one of them went into the White House” (p. 313).
The RCMP investigated as to the U.S government placing “a backdoor deal” in Canada’s PROMISsoftware system. Detective Sue Todd said: “Who controls the flow of money controls countries. PROMIS was tailored by Riconosciuto for banking and money laundering.” ECHELON and PROMIS: a treaty between the U.S and Canada to share the data from that spy apparatus. “Memorandums” discovered Indo-China project shipments of heroin involving the combined Gambino-Gotti-Castellano families (p. 321) and related murders. Officer Sean McDade said: “…more than one Presidential Administration will be exposed…” “The most secret computer systems in the western world…secret copies of PROMIS indeed were bootlegged, modified and sold illegally.”
DEMAND FOR DRUGS
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Peter Zokosky, a former officer of Naval Intelligence, said drugs were the new ‘gold’: “Drugs are a business at the highest levels of corporations because there are a huge market and demand for drugs.” “…persuasive business…everyone is involved…” (p. 341). Zokosky also told about “biological warfare ‘viruses’ (that were) being developed in cow uteri by Stormont Laboratories.” “Anti-toxin kits” sold to the Army and the Food Machinery Corporation of America (FMC).
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Germ Warfare
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FBI agent Tomas Gates revealed evidence that a connection existed between the corrupt MCA, Attorney General Edwin Meese, and the White House (p. 348) and the Reagan administration. MCA had been Ronald Reagan’s agent in Hollywood and it held a multi-million dollar monopoly. Top officials in the White House Strike Force against Organized Crime were told to eliminate MCA from their probe.
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TANGLED TENTACLES
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The U.S Department of Justice controlled the “Old Boy cronies,” “stampeding through the government,” “cowboying” the intelligence community, drug cartels and organized crime, “blazing new trails” into every facet of criminal enterprise (p. 355). Suspect Eugene Giaquinto threatened to call Edwin Meese and have the inquiry stopped..
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There was a move on to stop the investigation that the government had misappropriated PROMIS for sensitive national security projects. The FBI wiretaps were shut down in the Fall of 1988. A hard-hitting, aggressive prosecutor, Marvin Rudnick, proved the DOJ was involved in a cover-up. Rooting out the Mob was a problem. Robert Booth Nichols was referred to as “being higher than the CIA” (p. 368). He said: “this is a cover-up that goes all the way to the top…mob infiltration and CIA influence at MCA.” As part of an intelligence operation involving PROMIS, Nichols was an undercover operative working for the NSA and DOJ. He was also “involved with the Gambino crime family and the Yakuza,” MIL, Innovative Medical Research and Technologies: and “the Illuminati” (p. 376).
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GOVERNMENT MAN
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Nichols was identified as the “governmentman” in his dealings with the Mob and John Gotti. Nichols was moving money into Swiss Bank accounts, as well as demanding a trialbyjury in the Bayou, New York case, but he died on February 14, 2009. A public trial “would have exposed a scandal far exceeding the Bernie Madoff fiasco.” (pp. 385 – 389)
Some researchers speculated that Nichols may have disappeared into a Witness ProtectionProgramwith a new identity.
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A $250-BILLION PONZI SCHEME
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Tentacles of “TheOctopus” reached into the School of the Americas (SOA), a combat training school for Latin American Soldiers in Fort Banning, Georgia, called the “school for assassins.”
Bill Hamilton said: “…the unforgivable use of unauthorized NSA bank surveillance version of PROMIS to launder profits from drug trafficking so some of them could be used to finance covert intelligence projects.”
It was described as an unfathomable 250-billion-dollar-worldwide Ponzi scheme.
Cheri Seymour summarized: “…nothing can be done to dismantle the Octopus; there is no one in office in this great nation that has the power to prosecute the Octopus criminals because the tentacles have become an integral and accepted culture within our society, and indeed our economy.”
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One Hell of an Octopus
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KENN THOMAS INVESTIGATION
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“After Casolaro’s death, Michael Riconosciuto made claims that Casolaro had learned nothing more than what one of two intelligence factions wanted him to know in order to embarrass the other faction,” said paranormal investigator Kenn Thomas. “One faction was called Aquarius and had a leadership sub-group called MJ-12, the name, of course, of the supposed secret group founded by Harry Truman in the wake of the Roswell flying saucer crash. Riconosciuto even told one writer that he had witnessed the autopsy of an alien body. This was long before the famous [Ray Santilli] alien autopsy film began to circulate. Some have suggested that the tales of extraterrestrials that surround areas like Area 51 and Pine Gap serve as disinformation to deflect attention away from serious issues such as gun-running and black project weapons development. Casolaro’s own view, and the extent of his knowledge and interest in this tributary from the Octopus research, and whatever he learned that might have brought the truth closer to the surface of the murky waters in which he swam, may have died with him.”
Octopus: Sam Israel, the Secret Market, and Wallstreet’s Wildest Con, Guy Lawson, Shark World Publications, LLC., Crown Publishers, 1745 Broadway, New York, N.Y 10019, 212-940-7868, http://www.penguinrandom.com, customerservice@prk.com, 2012, 352 pages, $26.00.)
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For those who read TheOctopus From Hell in the July 20 to 29, 2013 issues of the UFO Digest – ufodigest.com/article/octopus-hell-0704-0707 – they will be familiar with the quizzical meanderings of CIA operative Robert Booth Nichols.
In this tome, the reader is given another ‘slice’ of Nichols’s life, through the unveiling by Guy Lawson into the various aspects of this Government Operative that has never been explored before. The book has to do with Hedge Fund adventurer Sam Israel’s rise from a Wall Street ‘clerk’ to a multimillionaire-Hedge-Fund ‘owner’: Bayou Funds Management.
Using every ‘trick’ that Israel had learned as a fledgling stockbroker, Bayou grew into multiple clients; one hitch existed: Theywerelosingmoney.
“The events of 9/11 permanently transformed Bayou. Trading out of the hole was no longer a realistic option___unless a miracle occurred___Bayou needed to attract money,” said Lawson, “a lot of money very, very quickly.”
Powered by his own trading programming software, however, called ForwardPropagation, an 86 percent accuracy rate (Israel’s scale) was not enough to cover losses. Israel was prospecting for newer ways to create quick cash. Then, he heard of the infamous PROMISsoftware: “The program had been so successful that American intelligence agency apparatus had secretly stolen the software to put to use covertly.”
Sam Israel thought that if he could obtain the PROMISprogram, it would leverage him into a world-wide money-tracking system.
Enter Robert Booth Nichols.
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Robert Booth Nichols
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“I want PROMIS. I know you’re in the computer program,” said Israel, “I know about you, and I want PROMIS.”
Instead, Nichols diverted Israel into equally mysterious, equally fantastic, secret trading program – a secret bond market – that only high-yield-elite clients could participate in.
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Sam Israel’s Trading Room
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“There is a secret government operating within the world’s government. They run the secret trading program – the high yield market,” said Nichols, “only a few chosen people participate in the program. The returns are staggering.”
A great part of the book is filled with gyrations of intrigue concerning Robert Nichols Booth and Sam Israel trying to place a multi-million dollar trade that could telescope into over 6-billion-dollar windfall. True to Nichols’s shadowycharacter, a lot of strange participants are introduced as ‘fellow investors’ in the Shadow Market, never knowing if they are really objective investors trying to participate into a secret windfall investment—or, were they part of a confidencegame, carried on by Nichols and other questionable figures?
“All the cloak-and-dagger stuff was driving me out of my mind,” said Israel, “I was constantly looking over my shoulder wondering who was following me. I could feel the presence of people watching me.”
The activity spanned international jaunts to interviews and tests with various ‘investment trysts.’ Nichols was totally convincing in living up to the espionage ‘spook‘ portrayed in Cheri Seymour’s TheLastCircle; enter FBI special agents Catauro and his partner Kevin Walsh, and Cameron ‘Kip’ Holmes of the Arizona Attorney General’s office: they cast suspicion on Nichols-Israel ‘efforts’ to reach the holy grail of the Shadow Market. Israel could no longer give buoyancy to his hedge fund which he successfully camouflaged its losses: he announced the closing of Bayou Funds Management.
“In nearly a decade, the chairman of Bayou, the charade of Bayou Funds had transformed from accountingtrickery to true–crime chiller to tragedy to parody,” said Lawson. “Nichols’s testimony must qualify as some of the strangest evidence ever offered in a federal proceeding. Nichols told his life story, from his days at a Hollywood professional school to his night cruising the five-star-bars of Honolulu for the CIA. He stated under oath that he’d been an asset to the U.S government for decades.”
According to Lawson, Nichols, Israel, and legions of conned investors had been victims of a swindler named BarryMcNeil. The victims never paid tax on their investment, they couldn’t go to the police.
On January 30, 2008, Israel was sentenced to 20 years in prison for white-collar crime.
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The Arrest of Sam Israel
The X-Funds.
Fortunately (or, unfortunately, as the case be), the mystery behind any of the said bonds and funds that Nichols played around with, probably alluded to muchmore than Barry McNeil and all these mysterious financial trysts (several may have been and appear to be ‘patsies‘ and ‘fronts‘ for a much deeper operation, including Nigel Finch, Emily Hardwick, and others). Investigator Joseph P. Farrell disclosed in a series of his books, ranging a history going back before World War I, that a HiddenWorld financial empire had existed running through components of history as the survivaloftheNazi Reich, the 2008WallStreetcrash, even the 9/11Conspiracy, and actually continuing to the present day.
Quotes From a WordPresscom507 article on this topic:
“Joseph P. Farrell has written many interesting tomes on the occult, esotericism, and mysterious happenings, and equally fascinating is his trilogy on the emergence, continuance, and conquest by Nazism as revealed in:
Adventures Unlimited Press, One Adventure Place, Kempton, Illinois 60946, $19.95.
“Farrell speaks of discovered multi-billion dollar slushfunds of counterfeit currency described as goldbonds but encoded to mean drug–trading in trading coups used to finance revolutionary technologies such as TheBell and flying saucer experiments.
“The tradingcoups ran under many names. Operation Golden Lily, Japan’s M-Fund, Foundation X, Operation Bernhard, the 57 Bond, Federal Reserve Bonds, Operation Morgenthau’s, Federal Reserve Bonds, and the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), among others.
“Described as a BreakawayCivilization mixing in with special secret technology, this cabal utilized intelligence agents such as Edward Lansdale, whose CIA and intelligence training preceded his, once again, going back to the Philippines to oversee the recovery of the GoldenLilyloot.”
Bryan Burrough said in his review of Lawson’s book:
“Desperate to claw out of his $117 million hole, Mr. Israel meets his mystery man, Robert Booth Nichols, in 2004. Mr. Nichols, who died five years later, was actually a kind of celebrity, a star of conspiracy theory world who was portrayed on the Internet as a longtime C.I.A. operative linked to a shadow world government, the holder of secrets to everything from the Kennedy assassination to a World War II-era hoard of Japanese gold. Some called this vast ‘conspiracy’ the Octopus.”
John Lear (Hereditary to the Lear Jet Corporation and also ‘Mysterian’ Investigations) with (on the right) Robert Booth Nichols (Fellow ‘Mysterian,’ Intelligence Asset and Mobster).
From the Article “ATraderWhoSwerved, andCrashed” – New York Times, June 30, 2012 – Bryan Burrough:
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“Desperate to claw out of his $117 million hole, Mr. Israel meets his mystery man, Robert Booth Nichols, in 2004. Mr. Nichols, who died five years later, was actually a kind of celebrity, a star of conspiracy theory world who was portrayed on the Internet as a longtime C.I.A. operative linked to a shadow world government, the holder of secrets to everything from the Kennedy assassination to a World War II-era hoard of Japanese gold. Some called this vast ‘conspiracy,’ the Octopus.”
“Tosh Plumlee claims that Barry Seal began working for the Central Intelligence Agency in the mid 1950s: ‘Barry Seal was involved with military intelligence in the early days… Military intelligence was the real game, with the CIA just acting as logistical people. Barry was a peripheral player back then, but he was a CIA ‘contract’ pilot all the way back to 1956 or 1957.
“In 1958 Seal began ferrying weapons to Fidel Castro fighting against the the Fulgencio Batista regime in Cuba. At the time a section of the CIA was supporting the overthrow of Batista. However, the policy changed soon after Castro gained power and Seal is said to have taken part in air attacks on the new government.”
I’ve had several articles published in a magazine calledIS (by a group called Para study that functions out of West Chester, Pennsylvania—two entitled Phi Letho; one is a look at Scientology, and the other is a ‘demon,’ as a writer. I have had many letters in the Washington area press, in ‘IS,’ the aberree,’ in Search, FATE (as the Rt. Rev. George A. Hyde ), the Society of Domestic Clerics , as the Director of the Confraternity of the Liturgical Life.
I will lay my cards on the table to avoid unnecessary controversy and communication roadblocks.
The Richard S. Shaver Controversy
Alphaeus Hart drew me into the Mystery in the Aberree. I had two experiences, one when on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and one of the type callee called expansion of consciousness – and the Shaver Mystery entered into the first one. I have definite views about it as I have experienced having voices and visions relayed to me while at the same time having departed people venerated in the Episcopal Church while also saints explain in terms of the psychology of the Unconscious mind and views and views contained in the writings of ancient church Fathers dealing with Demonic obsession.
PSYCHIC PHENOMENA
ESP functions because of the subconscious mind being a superconscious mind that people are hooked-up with to each other in groups. Max Freedom Long in the book THE SECRET SCIENCE BEHIND MIRACLES described an experience in which people coming into communication with others feel a sensation like an electric shock in the Solar Plexus. They were d escribing the permanent connections in the subconscious in the membership of the Episcopal Church. We examine psychic of the type associated with Edger Cayce and Mrs. Zoe Nickerson where the resource is the is joining of a common mind and Arthur Ford – and examined in three fields:
A: We have material that can be fed into the Unconscious mind through reading books and (B) deductions by processes noted in A and C (residual phenomena from the acceptance of telepathy or the surviving consciousness of the spirit world as a form of telepathy.
I have a mind which thinks entirely in verbal formularies and deductive and inductive reasoning, and which does not visualize. It is particularly integrated in terms of the Episcopal Church in matters in group relations and in drawing groups A and B. I do not believe I can be hypnotized.
In 1946 as Doctor James Bishop Pike was ordained into the priesthood , I also was attempting that as well, as an Episcopal Church celebrate, and possibly to get married . I had read about Duke University experiments and Arthur Ford’s voice coming out of a hall which he rented and held services when I noted comments about the Duke University experiments, I heard Arthur Ford’s voice coming from a hall which he rented on occasions and thought of how such esoteric beliefs might be reconciled with Christian beliefs. I had blessed James Otis Huntington, Founder of an Anglo Catholic religious order, I had read an article in AMAZING STORIES in which Vincent Gaddis spoke of being able to project himself in the Astral Plane in the form of a circle, while asleep, like what Gaddis was talking about. It was then that Gaddis informed me that she and her husband had become Episcopalians. As a teenager, I had met the First Executive Secretary of the AMERICAN CHURCH UNION, an organization of High Church Episcopalians, Bishop Henry I. Loutitit of South Florida, along with another person who also was also active in another High Anglican religious order, Father Martin of the Franciscans.
I had a set of experiences in 1963 as a Priest in the Independent Catholic movement . I decided to return to the lay communion of the Episcopal Church at a time that First executive Secretary of the American Church Union died. I had become involved with a Mr. Robert A.W. Lowndes, who connected me unfavorably who supports the views of Doctor Pike and has written an article about the assassination of President Kennedy. I stand along with Those who have who have taken a position of support and have taken interest in support of the American Church, psychism, Mind Control, Dr. Pike, Arthur Ford , the Episcopal Church, and others like them.
I am neither a Spiritualist nor a Therophyte, and I am not hostile to either Spiritualism or Theosophists. There is a real problem with communication regarding Mediums in a state of trance along with entities presenting themselves as ‘departed’ should be a matter of expert judgment. The Bible clearly prohibits attempts to communicate with the dead, especially when not dead and apparently controlled by another.
There are such things happening in the historic Christian Church which are not condemned by the Bible and appear as occasional phenomena taking place in the history of the historic Christian Church. We have such things as materialization and direct voice communication. Organized Christians avoid such things because they are easy to counterfeit and rely on people speaking in trances; psychic phenomena has two aspects —- it can appeal to highly orthodox and educated backgrounds as scientific evidence that often challenged and disbelieved. Private interests in materializations can e scientific, and not necessarily religious interests.
Interest in Spiritism can be either religious or scientific. It can also be controlled by an irrational fear of death. My personal belief includes the Eucharist: into psychic and offbeat form of research That the dead are living but without personal contact. My personal belief has expanded into a form of two religions: Christianity and the scientific truth.
I am not hostile to the movement of spiritual frontiers. I intend to join it. I am concerned that people seek to divide groups by forcing people to study Mr. Ford. Controls. Mechanistic abilities. However, through ‘controls.’ There are people who wish to divide the Episcopal Church into other groups rejecting each other, they will run into danger of obsession. Sincere people had also wanted to explore spiritual frontiers.
Episcopalians who oppose Doctor Pike should seek to find familiar ground for Study groups and to make contributing feelings rather than oppose such movements.
RELIGION AND CHRISTIANITY
I have written a long letter in the Aberree suggesting the founder of Christianity never existed but rather is an allegorical figure. I stated through Mary Elsnaus’s misgivings, that Jesus is a very real character, born of a virgin Mary, nailed on a cross, and risen rom a real tomb. I share my feelings with Saint Thomas Aquino’s proving the existence of God but doing this only using extensive dealing s with the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Nag Hammadi doctrines, and elements in the early church fathers and a connection with a metaphysical approach to the Christian Liturgy.
I am an off-brand Anglo-Catholic or High Church Episcopalian. As a member of the Anglo-Catholic and High Church Episcopalians, the Orthodox Greek Catholic Church, called Orthodoxy for short, I wish to agree with the Orthodox Church.
The Orthodox Church agrees with Paul the Apostle who said tht he did not go where others had preached. Dr. William Palmer has led a movement for baptized Episcopalians to remain in the Church while performing the faith of Orthodoxy because the Orthodox Greek Church was once part of the Roman Catholic Church, and as such was once part of the Orthodox Church.
THE CONSPIRATORS
I was ignorant at the time of the Chief Justice Earl Warren reports. These mentioned that Jack Martin had tried to get them to believe that David Ferrie was implicated in a plot but that Jack Martin was not taken seriously because of his being accused of being a ‘‘drunk.”
I have put Jack Martin up at times in my apartment at times, and although he ‘drinks like a fish,’ I can state definitely that he is not a drunk. He never goes ‘under,’ and holds his liquor. I personally do not drink except for an occasional ‘beer’ and I go ‘light’ even with that.
From what I have read in the paper, I am definitely sure that David Ferrie was definitely involved in such a plot. I have been handicapped by being ignorant of David Ferrie’s possible involvement until recently and at the same time honestly and sincerely believed that an entirely innocent man, Michael Itkin, was involved. I went so far as to write Senator George Smithers and try and get him to investigate Itkin. It is too involved to explain at this point, but it is quite possible that David Ferrie was responsible for creating the documents that lead me to believe that Itkin was involved.
As far as the Jim Garrison investigation ae concerned, I need to make my position clear; I RESPECT Jim Garrison and support his philosophy. However, I am seeking to instigate a movement holding that the Church ought to keep out of politics, and I do not want to appear one holding that the Church should go into political support of Garrison’s side. It is a ticklish situation. Evidence has ben suppressed by the CIA; however, The National Council of Churches has also been involved. I am opposed to the N.C.C . But in order to get anywhere, I have to present my opposition on a high level disassociating myself from much of the opposition and it would obviously compromise and compare Garrison to Church people who got the idea that I was saying that the churches are against him. I want to leave the Garrison matter to other people as much as possible; myself only as a laity-seeker. People like David Ferrie I wish kept out of the Society.
I am going to write an article threating this matter treating this matter in connection with the Richard S. Shaver Mystery; anything dealing with the Assassination Plot will bill be documented from my file of clippings. My own expertise has to do with the Nag Hammadi documents, Dead Sea scrolls, and so on.
Kennedy Assassination Investigator Jim Garrison
I am going to write Martin and will then write to you giving his address (has never occurred because of intervening events…SE). He is a nice a nice guy, but he is hard to get along with since he is a Mister Know It All and he “thinks Big when I think Small.”
Jack Martin wants to run anything he is involved in. The same as far as myself, So, when we get together things blow up. In contacting Jack Martin, you are going to run into one or two responses from him: he will either try to sell you one something he can handle himself ( but is really too big for either of you or myself). He may even threaten you. But in regard to the Garrison Investigation, he can be a good friend.
THR RICHARD S. SHAVER MYSTERY
In the early Shaver Mystery stories which I read, there is a pronounced erotic element. I have not acquired many of Ray Palmer’s THE HIDDEN WORLD books but am aware of the Richard S. Shaver Mystery.
In the early shaver Mystery that is frequent mention of the symbol ‘tic’ as meaning ‘credit.’ We have the principle words in the Mystery of “dero” and “tero.’’ – and adding two identical consonants to each other we have ‘‘ero”—and adding the other haver word to it — we get “erotic.”
(Fairbanks never did get into an in-depth analysis of the Shaver Mystery, as promised, as family and other matters apparently intervened.)
The Reverend Thomas A. Fairbanks
Director of the Confraternity of the Liturgical Life
Judyth Vary Baker knew David Ferrie as a man of many faces: legal advisor for New Orleans Mafia Don, Carlos Marcello, aircraft pilot for several Mafia families, CIA asset, defrocked priest, anti-Castro adventurer, seducer of men and teenage boys, participant in an anti-Castro bioweapon plot, and a key to the JFK assassination.
“The Coup d’ Etat in 1963 took control of an inconvenient two-party system to run its self-protecting corporate agenda, with the CIA, FBI, banking interests and the military-industrial complex cooperating,” says Baker. “And when the Supreme Court recently ruled that corporations could, in essence, buy any and all political candidates through ‘donation,’ with no limit on what could be spent to influence votes, the American government became a prostitute whose services were purchased by the highest bidders.”
(DAVID FERRIE: Mafia Pilot, participant in anti-Castro Bioweapon Plot, Friend of Lee Harvey Oswald and the Key to the JFK Assassination, Judyth Vary Baker, TrineDay LLC, P.O. Box 577, Walterville, Oregon 97489, 1-800-556-2012, publisher@TrineDay.net, www.trineday.com, 2014, 521 pages, $24.95.)
David Ferrie’s connections to the Military-Industrial-Complex began in early 1962 when he became involved in the New Orleans Civil Air Patrol. There, Ferrie began instructing cadets, often in summer encampments at the air force bases.
Ferrie became a CAP commander in 1953. Lee Harvey Oswald enrolled as a CAP cadet on July 27, 1955 (serial No. 084965).
Oswald attended meetings at Moisant CAP Squadron, Lakefront and Abita Spring, Louisiana.
Eddie Voebel, a friend of Oswald, said that Oswald “had been a cadet in Ferrie’s CAP squadron in 1955 and that he recalled Oswald attended a party at Ferrie’s then-home at 209 Vinet Street.”
Researcher Lee Farley mentioned that David Ferrie was instrumental in “grooming” Oswald and his consequential enlistment in the United States Marines. Ferrie told the local Marine Corps that Oswald would be good in the CIA because “he could keep his mouth shut.” (p. 73.)
THE HEATH CONNECTION
In 1953, David Ferrie developed an interest in philosophy and took a course at Tulane. Doctor Bob Heath had 120 psychiatric patients that used subcortical electrode stimulation at his clinic. Heath conducted experiments at East Louisiana State Hospital at Jackson, along with associates from Tulane University. One of the fascinating persons who would drop by to visit was David Ferrie. In 1954, Ferrie began studying for a doctorate in psychology from the University of Phoenix (a university of “low esteem,” says Baker).
Ferrie spoke of the bringing “patients” to Heath’s office and, also, flying “sensitive” psychiatric data between Tulane’s psychology department and other hospitals and departments. CIA agents approached Heath to conduct human and animal tests of bulbocapnine. The 1957 Inspector General Report said that “the knowledge that the agency is engaging in unethical and illicit activities would have serious repercussions in political and diplomatic circles.” The U.S Army funded a Tulane Electrical Brain stimulation program conducted by Dr. Robert Heath, and (according to Australian psychiatrist, Dr. Harry Bailey) used blacks because “they were everywhere and cheap experimental animals.”
In June-July, 1967, Ferrie wrote a thesis for his PhD in psychology about hypnotherapy and received his PhD in psychology.
FERRIE AND VOODOOISM
Baker says that Ferrie definitely was involved in a matrix of activities including his Civil Air Patrol activities, his job as a pilot at Eastern Airlines, pilot for Mobster Carlos Marcello’s lawyers (and flying to Guatemala for Marcello), and, according to Victor Marchetti, “had in fact been employed by the CIA.” (Marchetti was Deputy Assistant to the CIA Director Richard Helms, p. 82.)
Ferrie was additionally connected into the CIA’s MKULTRA (mind control) program through Doctor Bob Heath, but, additionally Dr. Alton Ochsner (one-time friend of Office of Strategic Services [OSS] Chief “Wild Bill” Donovan), and Dr. Mary Sherman (researcher into cancer). Ferrie met Dr. Oschsner through Dr. Sherman, both cleared for work on a “Sensitive Position.” (p. 97.) Baker later learns that it is referred to as “The Project”: A cancer experiment, spear-headed by Oschsner, to develop a cancer serum as a bioweapon to be used against Fidel Castro.
In order to convince Baker of the reality of the Project, as government sponsored, she is introduced to a gruff detective and FBI/CIA asset, Guy Banister, who speaks at length of his clandestine contacts:
“Ferrie’s project was legitimate. Even the CIA was backing it, along with the city’s crime boss, Carlos Marcello,” says Baker. “Banister was quite serious.”
Banister’s Agency was involved, not only with Mary Sherman’s bioweapon project, but also the CIA, crime boss Carlos Marcello (because of the Intelligence alliances), and a spy ring against Castro and Communist activities (Banister was a former FBI agent [briefly, at his height in the Chicago FBI]). Banister continued to gather evidence against the corrupt New Orleans Police Department.
“When Dr. Sherman shows me a powerful new cancer developed over the past year, I am stunned by its vigor,” says Baker about 1963. “I agree to do what I can to stabilize the cancer and help transform it from a mouse cancer to one that will attack human tissues, only later will I realize that the cancer could be stolen and used to silence political enemies ‘forever.’”
(Judyth Baker’s early career into cancer research and her connection with Dr. Alton Ochsner was amply illustrated in her book Me & Lee: How I Came to Know, Love and Lose Lee Harvey Oswald, TrineDay Publishers, 2010.)
New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison summarized an understanding about the “anti-Castro” Radical right situation, stated in Garrison’s November 22, 1963 Playboy Magazine interview: members of the paramilitary right, anti-Castro exiles, were extremely worried about Jack Kennedy’s policy of détente succeeding.
The CIA was involved in much of this intrigue in a “mixed bag” of Minutemen, Cuban exiles, other anti-Castro “adventurers” training for a “foray” into Cuba. Along with an assassination attempt on Fidel Castro—there was also the bioweapon Project of Mary Sherman. “David Ferrie, who operated on the ‘command’ level of the ultra-rightists, was deeply involved in this effort,” says Baker. (p. 224.)
BUGGING DEVICES
One of the earlier choices by Banister for someone to be Ferrie’s laboratory assistant was Michael Riconosciuto, “a young genius in electronics, biochemistry, chemistry and computers…” (For further information about Riconosciuto’s place in the espionage web, see The Octopus from Hell, Parts I and II, http://ufodigest.com/article/octopus-hell-0704).
Riconosciuto may have aided Banister in various “bugging” operations, such as placing devices in Clay Shaw’s house in the summer of 1963; Riconosciuto was adept at installing “bugging devices” and electronic surveillance equipment.
Baker lists witnesses that saw Banister and Ferrie, such as Vernon Gerdes, Dr. Michael Kurtz, George Higgenbotham, Rick Bauer, William Gaudet, and Sergio Arcacha Smith (pp. 240-242). “And, of course, Lee Harvey Oswald,” adds Baker.
Baker was concerned for the rapid expansion of the Ochsner-Sherman project. About August 1, 1963, Baker says: “…deep-freezing this new backup material suggests that we aren’t developing this biological weapon just for Castro. We are about to make this cancer truly immortal…the city is a hot bed of Cold War operations of all kinds. The Project has required massive funding. Only one entity could afford everything happening here in New Orleans.” (pp. 245-246.)
TRAINING FILM
One of the bits of evidence of Oswald’s participation into the CIA’s various escapades was the “training film” of anti-Castro infantry near Bedico Creek near Lake Pontchartrain, Louisiana in early September 1963. The film was seen by several people such as Robert K. “Bob” Tanenbaum of the House Select Committee on Assassination (HSCA), researchers Larry Hancock and Dick Russell, and Banister associate Delphine Roberts. Baker tells Erdmann, she also saw the film. The film showed, according to Tanenbaum, Antonio Veciana of Alpha 66, Guy Banister, David Atlee Phillips, Lee Oswald and David Ferrie (pp. 253, 264).
Baker spreads a trail of incidents and witnesses showing that Oswald, Ferrie, the CIA, FBI, and the Mob were intricately connected; we can only highlight a few points, but the reader is welcome to search out the further connections in the book.
An FBI informant, Joe Hauser, in his assisting FBI wiretaps of Mobster Marcello’s phone (161 reels of tape), told Author John H. Davis that agent Hauser “personally knew Oswald.” (p. 265.) Another witness was FBI agent Warren DeBrueys (pp. 266-267). Orest Pena also said he saw Oswald with local chief Warren DeBrueys in August, 1963 (p. 269).
ZOMBIE COLONIES
Baker speaks about prisoners from the Angola prison who were often used for “secret research” in a special Tulane University Research Unit at the East Louisiana State Hospital in Jackson. “These experiments were supported by a grant from the Commonwealth Fund,” says Baker, “later identified as a CIA front.” (Comparative Effects of the Administration of Taraxein, d-LSD, Mescaline, and Psilocybin to Human Volunteers [Heath, Silva].) If the patients survived, they are sent directly to the “zombie colonies” at Jackson State Hospital where “they wait to die and are buried in the Jackson graveyard so that security can be maintained and the truth about what was done to them completely covered.” William Livesay, a prisoner at Angola, told Baker about his experiences with these experiments (p. 275).
According to Baker, Lee Oswald was selected to make a trip to Mexico City to transport the biologically engineered materials that would eventually kill Castro of “natural causes,” which would actually be “lung cancer.” Prior to this venture, Oswald and Baker would continue to do blood tests at Jackson State Hospital.
INTERMEZZO
(The dark in the cellar)
INCIDENTS SURROUNDING JFK’S MURDER
The following are multiple tidbits that tend (in the opinion of Judyth Baker and others) to support Baker’s Ferrie/Oswald scenario:
___Texas Theater Manager Butch Burroughs said that he sold Lee Oswald popcorn in the Texas Theater at the time officer Tippet was shot.
___David Ferrie carried with him a file, which Author Joan Mellon said Ferrie referred to as “the Bomb,” along with a diagram in a “file,1963” portraying an automobile in an aerial view of Dealey Plaza…” (HSCA report of January 11, 1978). (p. 321.)
___An “Abort Team” was mentioned by Lee Oswald and William “Tosh” Plumlee (CIA contract pilot), and mentioned to author Jim Marrs.
___The infamous November 21, 1963 “party” at the oil baron Clint Murchison mansion in Dallas, Texas consisting of Richard Nixon, J. Edgar Hoover, H.L. Hunt, John Curington, George Brown of Brown + Root, former Texas Republican Congressman Bruce Alger, and John J. McCloy (McCloy would be placed on the Warren Commission within the week): Researchers Edgar Tatro and Harrison E. Livingstone confirmed Madeline Brown’s story (LBJ”s mistress), and wrote on September 3, 2014: “The party happened.” (pp. 330, 331, 334.)
___The famous “Altgens photo” showed that when the first shot was heard, secret service agents did not look up at the 6th floor of the Book Depository but, rather, they looked ahead, or at the Dal-Tex building. “It is important that the photograph shows no agent looking up,” Baker says to Erdmann.
___James T. Tague was standing near the triple underpass and hit on the cheek by a piece of street curb struck by one of the assassin’s bullets, possibly from the Dal-Tex building, not the Book Depository.
___The photos of Lee Oswald showing raised handcuffed wrists were his gesture to show newsmen that, to answer their questions, he was indeed handcuffed: It was not a “Communist salute.”
___Attorney Dean Andrews confessed that Oswald was just “a patsy,” adding: “I like to live. If they can get the President, they can crush me like a bug” (December 29, 1963). (p. 373.)
ADDITIONAL MYSTERY STRAINS
___Near the end of March, 1964, Betty Rubio, while working at the Lakefront Airport, saw Ferrie get out of a plane__talk to Rubio__and then go back to the plane and meet Clay Shaw. They talked for a while and then separated.
___Guy Banister is found naked and dead on June 6, 1964 from an alleged “heart attack.” His wife, Delphine Roberts, said that it was murder, but “it was made to look like a natural death.” “Anna Lewis said in a 2000 videotape: “He had a bullet in him, but they said it was a heart attack.”
___On or near July 11, 1965, David Ferrie was associated in flying individuals to Freemason Island. Matt Milligan of Trans-Gulf Seaplane Service identified photos of Andrew Blackmon and Clay Shaw.
JACK RUBY, MKULTRA VICTIM
According to Earl Ruby in HSCA testimony, and writer Greg Parker, Jack Ruby’s “cancer” was possibly “artificially induced.” Dr. Louis Jolyon “Jolly” West: Baker outlines that Dr. Louis Jolyon West had been cleared at Top Secret for his work on MKULTRA. “CIA documents show that grants were given to Dr. West for studies,” says Baker, “entitled, ‘Psychophysiological Studies of Hypnosis and Suggestibility’ and ‘Studies of Dissociative States.’’’ West had examined Jack Ruby in his jail cell (p. 387).
(Also see, Colin Ross MD: “One such example that Ross writes about is Dr. Louis Jolyon West. While Dr. West’s curriculum vitae doesn’t mention that he received Top Secret clearance from the CIA as the contractor on MKULTRA Subproject 43, CIA documents show that grants were given to Dr. West for studies entitled, Psychophysiological Studies of Hypnosis and Suggestibility and Studies of Dissociative States.”
David Ferrie had worked as a pilot for Al Crouch’s Saturn Aviation and flight school in November, 1966. Ferrie was fired on February 7, 1967, and would have been the pilot for a cross-country flight, but Crouch asked another pilot, “Bob,” instead.
Bob’s wife, J.G, spoke coincidentally to Baker sometime in 2013 about the crash of the 7th of 1967 in Slidell. According to J.G, Ferrie was fired “because Crouch was scared to death.” Crouch needed a pilot right away and J.G’s husband was selected. The crash was blamed on pilot error for not properly fueling the plane, but “Bob” had a receipt that proved he had refueled.
“From his unique perspective, Bob, trapped as he was in the plane,” says Baker, “could see that the fuel tank had been punctured.” (pp. 393-394.)
David Ferrie, at times, says Baker, suffered mentally for his guilt over his bisexuality (and the fact that it prevented him from becoming a priest); sometimes Ferrie would torture and whip himself (pp. 255-260). The image that came to mind to this writer, was the semblance to the fictional Opus Dei character (the albino) Silas or Simon, in Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, who would whip himself mercilessly.
Ferrie began his last days by hiding out in the Airport’s pilots’ lounge and rest-overnight area, from about February 8 to 16, 1967.
Student Bruce Nolan said of Ferrie: “One day in early 1967, I arrived for a lesson and found Ferries limped over a desk, crippled by a blazing headache. He could not fly. He could barely open one eye. I shoveled him into my car. He asked to be taken to his home on Louisiana Avenue Parkway. I got him to the porch and watched him scuffle inside.” (Nolan never saw him again).
The news media, at that time, was busy covering Jim Garrison’s investigation along with an occasional story written about Ferrie. In an interview with Garrison investigators on February 18, 1967, Ferrie voiced great skepticism of the single-bullet theory.
The famed group photo of Lee Oswald with his CAP squadron in 1967 was “no longer on display on the living room wall, along with other CAP group photos.” Other evidence of Lee Oswald knowing David Ferrie had disappeared.
Ferrie’s interview given to Garrison investigators while he stayed at the Fontainebleau Motor Hotel eventually vanished. Ferrie vanished from the hotel on February 19, 1967.
Ferrie called Raymond Broshears, former roommate, to report his fear of being killed: “No matter what happens to me, I won’t commit suicide.” (February 20, 1967.)
“A secret report generated by the FBI on May 22, 1968,” says Baker, “confirms that Garrison planned to arrest Ochsner, a Reily coffee executive, and others associated with the New Orleans Project.” (p. 415.)
DOCTOR MINYARD’S REPORT
The body of Ferrie was found deceased about 11:50 a.m. on February 22, 1967 by Jimmy Johnson. The coroner’s staff arrived at 12:30 p.m. Three suspicious “suicide notes” were eventually found. Frank Minyard theorized it was a murder because of contusions to the mouth. “Dr. Minyard says David Ferrie was murdered.” (p. 435.)
On February 23, 1967, Eladio Ceferino del Valle, ex-Cuban congressman, associate of David Ferrie (Baker says there is some evidence of association), and an anti-Castro activist was found dead in his automobile in Miami: beaten, tortured, and shot in the chest. Eladio Valle and Ferrie flew “anti-Castro sorties” in the past, as well as had involvement with Mobster Santos Trafficante.
“Numerous deaths, however, are still classified as ‘natural’ along with a plethora of suicides, murders and ‘accidental deaths’ that can no longer be ignored,” says Baker.
MISSING LOG BOOKS
JG, while working for Al Crouch, began to get harassing phone calls about Ferrie’s pilot log books. JG later disclosed that said log books were confiscated by the felonious “spy” investigator for Jim Garrison, William Gurvich, a turncoat. “He was going behind Garrison’s back,” said JG.
“That dirty word ‘conspiracy,’ which actually accounts for most evil-doing on the planet,” says Baker, “are avoided most by those who perpetuate it.”
Similar sentiments were voiced by Robert Tannenbaum, HSCA Deputy Counsel, said after Tannenbaum originally discounted Garrison’s suspicions and investigation: “And then I read all this material that came out of (CIA Director Richard) Helms’s office, that in fact what Garrison had said was true. They (CIA agents) were harassing his witnesses, they were intimidating his witnesses.” (Bob Tannenbaum, Probe, July-August 1996 [Vol. 3, No. 5].) (pp. 431, 435.)
The reader will have to make further analysis of Baker’s book (which has elaborate appendences concerning testimonies, autopsies, and further never-before-disclosed information on David Ferrie’s life).
BRIEF BACKGROUND: THE CRITICS
Baker has accumulated a number of critics that relentlessly follow her and try to poke holes in her story about her New Orleans experiences with, what she says, are members of the conspiratorial underworld in the Kennedy murder. The critics feel they have a strong complaint as it is based on the many seeming contradictions in the story and testimony of Baker. But as Baker pointed out to Erdmann, this happened often when debunkers are dedicated to finding such missteps and colloquial comments in daily conversation (imagine someone following behind you and perpetually examining your every word or move).
It would not be difficult to blacken one’s name if the critics’ research was not based on the totality of facts and information. Some critics have even opened websites and blogs dressed in nothing but what appears to be jealous vindictiveness, and according to Baker, the wish to get some type of revenge. Baker covers some of the attacks (Note, in the following, some identifying details are Xed over to afford protection to all mentioned parties):
“(Speaking of Xxxxxxx’s comments on Baker’s contradictions) … so-called ‘contradictions’ come from lifting comments from various parts of my manuscript and making it seemed that I reversed things, as well as form emails. The man altered. Xxxxxxx corresponded with me and pretended to be my friend. Then he demanded that I hand over my book to (another debunking group), or he would publish what you are citing. He even claimed I said Lee was not circumcised, as if I would talk about such a thing to him, when all we talked about was how to help his sharpei dogs’ skin condition, before I began sharing emails with him. These emails he cites are using statements taken out of context or deliberately altered! I would make a statement and by adding one word or a question mark, he changed the meanings. Note that Xxxxxxx has NEVER published anything significant after he began attacking me and Jim Garrison, unless you think his ‘Pxxxxxxxx Sxxxxxxxx’ site that he told me was paid for by Xxxxxxx (he denies this now), or his JXX online (another Xxxxxxx site) are to be considered worthy of citing…His JFK 100 list against Stone’s JFK is so unfair, getting on Olive Stone’s case because Stone made the movie that opened up the ARRB and all those files got released. Xxxxxxx treated the movie, which took some liberties for dramatic effect, as a DOCUMENTARY. From that false position he made up his 100 objections to the movie. He also claimed Dave Ferrie never confessed to Lou Ivon and Moo Moo Sciambra. This is not true…
“(If Erdmann would write questions to Baker) … I would be happy to reply. But since you are relying on my enemies to bring up questions for you, and want me to write what would be extensive essays in response, for I would have to prove much more than they, and then they would just bring up new objections, as they are not there to learn, but only to destroy. I am just shaking my head. What problems do you have with the book? What questions would you ask? Xxxxxxx’s ‘contradictions’ were previously answered in my own essays online. Of course he won’t tell you where the essays can be found (hint: at judythbaker, blogspot, com, etc.). What kind of reputation does Xxxxxxx have? Has he ever spoken at a conference? No. Has he written a book (only for his article on Clinton and Jackson)? No. Has he anyone who respects him except the Xxxxxxx contingent?” (July 28, 2015, 10:13 pm.)
Baker brings up a few “why ifs” that are interesting (but far beyond the scope of this article to include them here in their entirety). “Second, you should go to my Facebook page and see what I am going through right now. Ask yourself why they are trying to break my password and get into judythbaker.com, after judythbaker.org was taken over and is being used to ruin me.” (July 28, 2015, 9:42 a.m.)
Baker emphasizes that those who have questions about her claims should contact her personally for answers, either through her publishers or contact points on the Internet or Facebook.
What isn’t covered is “why” are some of the rabid and voracious attacks on the veracity of Baker’s claims. “Howard” (howpl) gave some insight in his April 8, 2004 comments:
“I have known Judyth Baker for 5 years. (I also ‘know’ [Wim] Dankbaar from a Usenet newsgroup, though we have never met.) I am writing this note in the hopes that this is a group of educators (as opposed to Prof. Xxxxxxx, the immoderate ‘moderator’ of that newsgroup) whose ‘article’ on Ms. Baker, is a pile of trash. Pardon the immoderate language, but this nominal academic has been particularly destructive. Anyone who has spent the number of hours it takes to see Judyth’s evidence and hear her story knows that she is the genuine article. Xxxxxxx never even met her, though her door was wide open and her telephone number widely circulated.
“I co-wrote a book with Judyth, and also spent 14 months going back and forth with 60M on their intention, stated quite emphatically on the last go-round, to do a segment favorable to her. As Don Hewitt later said on C-SPAN, ‘the door was slammed in our face.’ Now what do you think he meant by that. The forces arrayed against Don Hewitt – the godfather of investigative journalism (on TV at least) were that powerful. Both he and Wallace believe her story, but as the diligent Nigel Turner segment proved, you really do have to hear the WHOLE story and see the evidence in context. It was nice, and I am thankful for the courage he showed, but viewers should not have had to rely on the talking head alone.
“Unfortunately, so-called ‘researchers’ in the JFK community, who spent little time interrogating her and viewing her evidence, have — to protect their own books — fought hard and fought dirty to sabotage both the book and the 60M show. They tried hard to stop Turner, too. This may surprise you, but the only thing that surprised me was the intensity of it. Who knew there were conspiracy theorists willing to go this far. Case in point: At the annual Lancer conference, held in Dallas, panelists have been informed that they may not discuss Ms. Baker’s story. For this and other atrocities, the head of Lancer has disgraced the research community. I am sure that Dankbaar has joined this forum in the hopes of finding a true academic sanctuary where open discussion is treasured, not banned.
“As for me, I am not sure that I can respond in a detailed manner to questions that come up here. It has been a wild, tiring, and discouraging five-year ride. But I do want it on record somewhere that I believe Judyth Baker knew the real Lee Harvey Oswald. I believe it without a single doubt. As she told me at the outset, the truth is complicated, but it is logical. But nobody has time for complicated in today’s world. It takes too much work.”
John Simkin perhaps gave the most concise summary of the events (March 13, 2004, 8:59 am, April 26, 2004, 7:53 am): “Researchers are divided on Baker’s story: a number of researchers have seen most or all her original evidence files and defend her (such as Jim Marrs, Martin Shackelford, Wim Dankbaar, Howard Platzman) while other researchers attack her story… Baker points out that almost all the researchers who have attacked her story have never met her or viewed her original evidence files. Far too many people involved in this case are quick to make abusive comments about the people they disagree with. I don’t see why we cannot disagree politely with each other. The main objective is to reach the truth. I believe the best way we can achieve this is by having an open, rational debate.”
One might add to that: that there are bits and pieces of circumstantial evidence that incessantly materializes to bolster her claims, such as Dr. Ochsner knowing Lee Oswald:
“Many people may think there are no documented ties of Ochsner to Oswald, but there are: Here is one:
(Impression by Dr. Alton Ochsner, world famed surgeon and President of both the Alton Ochsner Medical Foundation and the Information Council of the Americas [INCA], who perhaps was the only listener who knew of Oswald’s defection before the debate.)
“It’s a record from the kitchen of INCA, the right wing CIA sponsored organization founded by Ochsner, reiterating the guilt of Lee Harvey Oswald as the lone assassin, with personal comments of Alton Ochsner himself (see middle photo on the back cover).” (Wim Dankbaar, March 29, 2004, 10:00 am.)
PART II: The World of the Unseen-
Out of the Cryptex
Reading about and describing some of the multiple attacks and confrontations that Judyth Vary Baker has encountered resembles some of the scarier tactics that intelligence operations have created from their literal and figurative dungeons of torture.
THE PROBLEM THAT GOES BEYOND
One can speculate that from most outward appearances, the researchers that lean towards conspiracy in the murder of John F. Kennedy, and those elements associated in highlighting a conspiracy, are often confronted by critics that speak from prior dispositions that run together in dark circles, wolf packs, and often in vile malevolence. Such vice (seen so repetitiously) could be associated with various mental states such as xenophobia (fear of the unknown), mythophobia (fear of myths), rhabdophobia (fear of criticism), or heresyphobia (fear of challenges), and can also be aligned with a greater inner sanctum motivator: megalomania and authoritarian personality disorder; particularly in the arena of intelligence and governmental control.
Journalist Cameron Reilly introduced one of the government’s sub rosa intelligence projects this way:
“Mockingbird isn’t some conspiracy theory – like MKULTRA and the 638 attempts at assassinating Fidel Castro, it’s a genuine part of CIA history. Mockingbird has been written about in detail since the late 70’s, but it’s one of those pieces of U.S. history that isn’t talked about much in the mainstream media. Why? I assume because they would prefer people don’t know about it as it would make them ask too many questions, such as “how do we know the CIA isn’t controlling the media today as well?
“It’s also one of those events in history that should help us all realize that we’ve been manipulated and lied to by the government and the media in the past so it’s entirely rationale to believe they might be manipulating and lying to us still today.”
Reilly went on to describe Operation Mockingbird as a sophisticated ruse by the CIA and the U.S corporate media to spread intentional lies to the American people and international readers.
(http://cameronre – Steven Jacobson and Steve Kangas spoke in a piece entitled Media and Mind Control in America:
“Journalism is a perfect cover for CIA agents. People talk freely to journalists, and few think suspiciously of a journalist aggressively searching for information. Journalists also have power, influence and clout. Not surprisingly, the CIA began a mission in the late 1940s to recruit American journalists on a wide scale…The agency wanted these journalists not only to relay any sensitive information they discovered (and write about and replay information when requested…SE).”
Early progenitors of the project, said Jacobson-Kangas, were Frank Wisner, Allan Dulles, Richard Helms and Philip Graham (Graham was the husband of Katherine Graham, today’s publisher of the Washington Post). The sub rosa project included 25 media organizations and 400 journalists (or more), according to 1975 findings of the Church Committee, and read like a Who’s Who of journalism:
Philip and Katharine Graham (Publishers, Washington Post) William Paley (President, CBS) Henry Luce (Publisher, Time and Life magazine) Arthur Hays Sulzberger (Publisher, N.Y. Times) Jerry O’Leary (Washington Star) Hal Hendrix (Pulitzer Prize winner, Miami News) Barry Bingham Sr., (Louisville Courier-Journal) James Copley (Copley News Services) Joseph Harrison (Editor, Christian Science Monitor) C.D. Jackson (Fortune) Walter Pincus (Reporter, Washington Post) ABC NBC Associated Press United Press International Reuters Hearst Newspapers Scripps-Howard Newsweek magazine Mutual Broadcasting System Miami Herald Old Saturday Evening Post New York Herald-Tribune, the New York Herald-Tribune, the Saturday Evening Post, Scripps-Howard Newspapers, Hearst Newspapers, the Associated Press, United Press International, the Mutual Broadcasting System, Reuters and the Miami Herald and many others.
(It is believed that Steve Kangas was working on a book about CIA covert activities when on 8th February, 1999, he was found dead in the bathroom of the offices of Richard Mellon Scaife, the owner of the Pittsburgh Tribune [Scaife was a person that Kangas believed was a CIA operative]. He had been shot in the head. Popular status quo was told that he had committed suicide; other people believe he was murdered. In an article in Salon Magazine [19th March, 1999], Andrew Leonard asked: “Why did the police report say the gun wound was to the left of his head, while the autopsy reported a wound on the roof of his mouth? Why had the hard drive on his computer been erased shortly after his death? Why had Scaife assigned his No. 1 private detective, Rex Armistead, to look into Kangas’ past?”)
INTERMEZZO
(The Darkest Part of the Cellar)
EXPANSIVE MEDIA MACHINE
Greg Burnham, who quoted extensively from Operation Mockingbird: How Democracy was manipulated through the mainstream Media (Staffan H. Westerberg and Pete Engwall), disclosed additional facets of the intelligence scam.
“In the early 1950’s, CIA launched a propaganda program put together utilizing the expansive media machine within the United States…probably the most important vehicle ever for the power that is behind the CIA to control and manipulate the public…perhaps the most devastating Intel project ever inflicted on the American people and democracy in the United States. Today most people have never heard of it, and the majority of JFK researchers rarely bring the truth of Mockingbird into their research equation.
“ # Reporters on the CIA payroll forcing witnesses to change their story.
# Special assets within the media who affect others to act and report incorrect conclusions, opinions and perceptions.
# CIA directing assets within the media.
# Editors who can review texts and change facts to suit.
# Reporters and other assets in the field become watchdogs for developing news.
# Editors that step in to defend and shift focus.
# Assets that control debates and create diversions.
# News organizations and chief editors who avoid critique and project the official line.
# Media organizations that project false images and scenarios.
# Media Management that work with policies and establish in-house views – which leads to a hidden culture.
# Agency infiltrating social media.
# Photo editors that manipulate images.
# Falsification of historical events and interactions and influence with private researchers.
Website http://100777.com/brainwashing compiled a comprehensive list of recognized intelligence controls, listed here for the readers’ viewing pleasure, in their entirety:
MUTLIPLE SECRET OPERATIONS in society, document created 25/09/2014 – 10:59, updated 29/09/2014 – 10:43 by cybe: originally from: https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/se111/61_years_after_the_failed_bay_of_pigs_invasion/) (These are offered with the admonition, by cybe, that those who discover conspiracies are not crazy, but those who deny same are ignorant. The reader is welcomed to research the topics in depth [we cannot do that here]. You will find even more such projects not herein mentioned: Artichoke, Peter Pan, and Husky…):
“Operation Northwoods? A series of proposals which called for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), or other operatives, to commit acts of terrorism in US cities and elsewhere”
“The Informant named “Curveball” who lied about WMDs in Iraq? An Iraqi citizen who defected from Iraq in 1999, claiming that he had worked as a chemical engineer at a plant that manufactured mobile biological weapon laboratories as part of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction program. His allegations were subsequently shown to be false”
“Testimony of Nayirah? The Nayirah testimony was a fake testimony given before the non-governmental Congressional Human Rights Caucus on October 10, 1990 by a woman who provided only her first name, Nayirah.”
“Operation Black Eagle – Operation Black Eagle became a network of 5000 people who made possible the export of arms in the direction of Central America, and the import of drugs from the same direction. “
“Operation Mockingbird – a secret campaign by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to influence media. “
“The Special Collection Service – A highly classified joint U.S. Central Intelligence Agency-National Security Agency program charged with inserting eavesdropping equipment in difficult-to-reach places, such as foreign embassies, communications centers, and foreign government installations.”
“Project MKULTRA – A U.S. government human research operation experimenting in the behavioral engineering of humans…..MKUltra used numerous methodologies to manipulate people’s mental states and alter brain functions, including the surreptitious administration of drugs (especially LSD) and other chemicals, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, isolation, verbal and sexual abuse, as well as various forms of torture.”
“Operation Paperclip – was the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) program in which over 1,500 German scientists, technicians, and engineers from Nazi Germany and other foreign countries were brought to the United States for employment in the aftermath of World War II. “
“Downing Street Memo – Sometimes described by critics of the Iraq War as the ‘smoking gun memo,’ is the note of a secret 23 July 2002 meeting of senior British Labor government, defense and intelligence figures discussing the build-up to the war, which included direct reference to classified United States policy of the time.”
A TELECOMMUNICATION INTERCEPTION FACILITY
“Room 641A is a telecommunication interception facility operated by AT&T for the U.S. National Security Agency that commenced operations in 2003 and was exposed in 2006.”
“Gulf of Tonkin Incident – also known as the USS Maddox Incident, is the name given to two separate confrontations involving North Vietnam and the United States in the waters of the Gulf of Tonkin.”
“COINTELPRO – (an acronym for COunter INTELligence PROgram) was a series of covert, and at times illegal, projects conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveying, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting domestic political organizations.”
“Project MKDELTA – MKDELTA, and its associated program MKULTRA, were mind control and interrogation operations run by the Central Intelligence Agency. Both MKULTRA and MKDELTA involved the surreptitious use of LSD and other biochemical in clandestine operations…”
“Rex 84 Plan A classified ‘scenario and drill’ developed by the United States federal government to suspend the United States Constitution, declare martial law, place military commanders in charge of state and local governments, and detain large numbers of American citizens who are deemed to be ‘national security threats’, in the event that the President declares a ‘State of National Emergency.’”
“Project Artichoke A CIA project that researched interrogation methods and arose from a Project BLUEBIRD. The project studied hypnosis, forced morphine addiction (and subsequent forced withdrawal), and the use of other chemicals, among other methods, to produce amnesia and other vulnerable states in subjects.”
“Project MKOFTEN A covert Department of Defense program developed in conjunction with the CIA. A partner program to MKSEARCH, the goal of MKOFTEN was to ‘test the behavioral and toxicological effects of certain drugs on animals and humans’”.
“Operation Dormouse The idea was that by exposing the MKULTRA program by essentially offering it to the press, any investigative attempts into the Project Artichoke would be diverted.”
“Operation Ajax The overthrow of the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran Mohammad Mosaddegh on 19 August 1953, orchestrated by the United Kingdom (under the name ‘Operation Boot’) and the United States (under the name TPAJAX Project”
THE BUSINESS PLOT
“The Plot to kill FDR…by BANKERS The Business Plot was an alleged political conspiracy in 1933. Retired Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler claimed that wealthy businessmen were plotting to create a fascist veterans’ organization and use it in a coup d’état to overthrow President of the United States Franklin D. Roosevelt, with Butler as leader of that organization.”
“CIA Front Companies An airline listed as Foreign Corporation in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It is alleged to be a front company for the Central Intelligence Agency.”
“Stuxnet A computer worm that was discovered in June 2010, and was designed to attack industrial Programmable Logic Controllers or PLCs.”
“Project Merrimac A domestic espionage operation coordinated under the Office of Security of the CIA. It involved information gathering procedures via infiltration and surveillance on Washington-based anti-war groups that might pose potential threats to the CIA.”
“Project Resistence A domestic espionage operation coordinated under the Domestic Operations Division (DOD) of the CIA. Its purpose was to collect background information on groups around the U.S. that might pose threats to CIA facilities and personnel.”
“The Rendon Group that exports PR and Propaganda is a public relations and propaganda firm headed by John Rendon which specializes in providing communications services both nationally and internationally. The Rendon Group website states, “For nearly three decades, The Rendon Group has been providing innovative global strategic communications solutions from our headquarters in Washington, DC. TRG utilizes state-of-the-art technology as well as traditional public relations tools, assisting leading commercial, government and military organizations.”
“In-Q-Tel…the CIA’s front company Venture Capital arm…that is heavily invested in Google a not-for-profit venture capital firm that invests in high-tech companies for the sole purpose of keeping the Central Intelligence Agency, and other intelligence agencies, equipped with the latest in information technology in support of United States intelligence capability.”
“Operation Chaos was the code name for a domestic espionage project conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency.”
“Project SHAMROCK Considered to be the sister project for Project MINARET, was an espionage exercise, started in August 1945[1] that involved the accumulation of all telegraphic data entering into or exiting from the United States. The Armed Forces Security Agency (AFSA)[2] and its successor NSA were given direct access to daily microfilm copies of all incoming, outgoing, and transiting telegrams via the Western Union and its associates RCA and ITT.”
SECRET COURT
“The FISA Court (secret) A U.S. federal court established and authorized under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) to oversee requests for surveillance warrants against suspected foreign intelligence agents inside the United States by federal law enforcement agencies.”
“Russell Welch who tried to expose drug ops at Mena, AK…also poisoned with Anthrax Welch sounded the alarm for decades about an alleged CIA smuggling operation of cocaine into the United States via Mena in Arkansas, and claimed that Barry Seal was trafficking more than cocaine, and that there were more places like Mena in Oklahoma….Welch claimed he was exposed to military grade anthrax, a poison only available at that time through the U.S. government…”
“Gerry Droller was a CIA officer involved in the covert 1954 Guatemalan coup d’état and the recruitment of Cuban exiles in the preparation of the Bay of Pigs Invasion in April 1961.”
“The School of the Americas is a United States Department of Defense Institute located at Fort Benning near Columbus, Georgia, that provides military training to government personnel of Latin American countries.”
“Journalist/Report Gary Webb was an American investigative reporter best known for his 1996 Dark Alliance series of articles written for the San Jose Mercury News and later published as a book. In the three-part series, Webb investigated Nicaraguans linked to the CIA-backed Contras who had smuggled cocaine into the U.S. Their smuggled cocaine was distributed as crack cocaine in Los Angeles, with the profits funneled back to the Contras. Webb also alleged that this influx of Nicaraguan-supplied cocaine sparked, and significantly fueled, the widespread crack cocaine epidemic that swept through many U.S. cities during the 1980s.”
“Operation Charly was allegedly the code-name given to a program undertaken by the military establishment in Argentina with the objective of providing military and counterinsurgency assistance to Central America to combat left-wing subversion.”
“Operation 40 was a Central Intelligence Agency-sponsored undercover operation in the early 1960s, which was active in the United States and the Caribbean (including Cuba), Central America, and Mexico. The group was formed to seize political control of Cuba after the Bay of Pigs Invasion.”
“Operation Midnight Climax The project consisted of a web of CIA-run safehouses in San Francisco, Marin, and New York. It was established in order to study the effects of LSD on unconsenting individuals. Prostitutes on the CIA payroll were instructed to lure clients back to the safehouses, where they were surreptitiously plied with a wide range of substances, including LSD, and monitored behind one-way glass. Several significant operational techniques were developed in this theater, including extensive research into sexual blackmail, surveillance technology, and the possible use of mind-altering drugs in field operations.”
“Operation Washtub was a CIA-organized covert operation to plant a phony Soviet arms cache in Nicaragua to demonstrate Guatemalan ties to Moscow. It was part of the effort to overthrow the President of Guatemala, Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán in 1954.”
SPY CATS
“Acoustic Kitty A CIA project launched by the Directorate of Science & Technology in the 1960s attempting to use cats in spy missions, intended to spy on the Kremlin and Soviet embassies.”
“Amalgam Virgo was the codename of an Italian Air Force C-47 Dakota aircraft, registration MM61832, used by the Italian Secret Service and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in covert operations. Officially, those operations were limited to electronic surveillance over the Adriatic Sea and interference with the Yugoslavian radar network.”
“Project FUBELT is the code name for the secret Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operations that were to prevent Salvador Allende rise to power before his confirmation, and promote a military coup in Chile.”
“Stargate Project was the code name for a project established by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency to investigate claims of psychic phenomena with potential military and domestic application, such as remote viewing, which is the purported ability to psychically ‘see’ events, sites, or information from a great distance.”
“Tepper Aviation is based at the Bob Sikes Airport in Crestview, Florida. The company has a long association with the CIA. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, it was widely reported to be flying weapons into Angola to arm the UNITA rebels. More recently, it has been linked with the practice of extraordinary rendition.”
“The Church Committee was the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities.”
“Family Jewels is the informal name used to refer to a set of reports that detail activities conducted by the United States Central Intelligence Agency. Considered illegal or inappropriate, these actions were conducted over the span of decades, from the 1950s to the mid-1970s.”
“The Pentagon Papers a United States Department of Defense history of the United States’ political-military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967…..The papers revealed that the U.S. had secretly enlarged the scale of the Vietnam War with the bombings of nearby Cambodia and Laos, coastal raids on North Vietnam, and Marine Corps attacks, none of which were reported in the mainstream media.”
“Operation Gladio a NATO stay-behind anti-communist organization.”
DENUEMENT
(No Free Press)
SERVE THE MEDIA OWNERS
Writer Mary Louise explained that CIA assignments ranged from intelligence-gathering to serving as go-betweens at hundreds of businesses and universities, often using Ivy League graduates (such as Yale figures George Herbert Walker Bush and the Skull and Crossbones Society).
“Many Americans still insist or persist in believing that we have a free press, while getting most of their news from state-controlled television, under the misconception that reporters are meant to serve the public,” said Louise. “Reporters are paid employees and serve the media owners, who usually cower when challenged by advertisers or major government figures.” (Mary Louise, Mockingbird: CIA Media Manipulation [2003].)
ROBERT PARRY AND EDWARD SNOWDEN
Louise highlighted newsman Robert Parry who wrote about news-breaking affairs in the Iran-Contra episode for the Associated Press: Parry found that his stories were often ignored by the press and congress; he further witnessed the actual retraction of a true story when working for Newsweek for political reasons.
In “Fooling America: A Talk by Robert Parry” Parry said, “The people who succeeded and did well were those who didn’t stand up, who didn’t write the big stories, who looked the other way when history was happening in front of them, and went along either consciously or just by cowardice with the deception of the American people.”
Recent history included the famous whistleblower Edward Snowden who exposed the National Security Agency breech and use of private communication of the citizenry, and according to researcher Kristan Harris, “are attempting to manipulate and control online behavior even going to the extreme of setting people up using what the GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters [UK]) calls ‘Honey Traps.’ They then go on to force you into behavior you may not have been in and use the information to discredit American patriots who oppose the current establishment.”
Glenn Greenwald, a journalist who leaked the information, had stated:
“Over the last several weeks, I worked with NBC News to publish a series of articles about ‘dirty trick’ tactics used by GCHQ’s previously secret unit, JTRIG (Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group).
The files showed how shill agents infiltrated the internet to manipulate stage and attempt to corrupt reputations, said Harris, and Harris strongly questioned the use of espionage against its own citizens. “Are these extreme tactics of deception by our government honorable?” Harris asked. “These documents show how the GCHQ trains and engage in ‘false flag operations’ to purposely deceive and set individuals up (online).”
Perhaps the American public will need to hunker-down, in some respects, to an on-coming flood of evil, as herewith forewarned in the feelings and words of the late Jim Garrison (Russell, On the Trail of the JFK Assassins, page 100 [Baker, p. 432]):
‘“We’re investigating a conspiracy which appeared to have occurred in New Orleans…if they (the government, SE) want to help me, I’ll welcome their help. But I’m not reporting to anybody.’ Those were strong words…before long,” says Baker, “the most powerful machinery of the government had been uncorked against Garrison…the full story of how Garrison was ham-strung would fill a volume.”
I have been studying both the administration and assassination of the 35th President, John F. Kennedy, for a great deal of my adult life. The tragedy inflicted by the assassination of JFK–as President of the United States, as an individual, as a husband, and as a devoted father of two–is far outweighed by the impact this seminal event inflicted upon the Executive Branch of the Federal Government itself.
Dr Robert Heath was Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and Neurology at Tulane University in New Orleans from 1949 to 1980. He performed many controversial experiments involving electrical stimulation of the brain (ESB). In one procedure, Dr Heath wired up the pleasure centres of a gay man. During a three-hour session, the subject, code-named B-19, electrically self-stimulated his reward circuitry some 1,500 times.
“During these sessions, B-19 stimulated himself to a point that he was experiencing an almost overwhelming euphoria and elation, and had to be disconnected, despite his vigorous protests.” [Moan, C.E., & Heath, R.G. Septal stimulation for the initiation of heterosexual activity in a homosexual male. Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, 3, 23-30, 1972.]
Staffan H Westerberg: Is a 53 year old journalist from Stockholm, Sweden, who used to live in the States in the 80s – lived in LA and have a lot of relatives in the Chicago area since the 1930s. He has been an investigative journalist since the mid-90s and did mostly crime investigations/reportage. Pete Engwall is another kind of creature. He is actually an inventor, from a long line of inventors. He is related to Jonas Engwall, one of John Erikssons apprentices, (J Engwall actually invented the propeller). Pete is also related to Wilhelm von Scheele, who discovered 7 basic elements, among them Oxygen.
Steven Robert Esh (he later changed him name to Steve Kangas) was born on 11th May, 1961. His parents were conservative Christians and he attended private religious academies in South Carolina.
After graduating from high school in 1979, Kangas joined the US Army. He was later transferred to military intelligence and spent a year in Monterey (Defense Language Institute) learning Russian. He also spent time at Goodfellow Air Force Base in Texas before being sent to do secret work in Central America.
In 1984 Kangas moved to Germany where he was involved in electronic eavesdropping on Soviet military units in Eastern Europe, analyzing the transcripts and reporting back to NATO. It was at this time he began to question his conservative political beliefs.
It is believed that Kangas was working on a book about CIA covert activities when on 8th February, 1999, he was found dead in the bathroom of the offices of Richard Mellon Scaife, the owner of the Pittsburgh Tribune (and a person Kangas believed to be a CIA front). He had been shot in the head. Officially he had committed suicide but some people believe he was murdered.
By MIKAEL THALEN | INFOWARS.COM | SEPTEMBER 26, 2014
“New documents released by the CIA show how the agency worked with some of the country’s largest newspapers to destroy San Jose Mercury News’ Gary Webb, a journalist who famously exposed the CIA’s connection to the cocaine trade in the “Dark Alliance” investigation.
Tactics used to destroy Webb, who was found dead in his apartment in 2004 with two .38-caliber bullets in the head, included a massive smear campaign by journalists working with newspapers such as the L.A. Times. A report by The Intercept’s Ryan Devereaux reveals the paper used as many as 17 journalists to discredit Webb and his exposé…..”
The junior DRDE scientist who was allegedly attacked by two senior scientists.
GWALIOR: Two scientists of the Defence Research and Development Establishment, or the DRDE, in Gwalior have been accused of trying to use one of their juniors as a human sacrifice. According to the report, one of the two senior scientists called his junior to his house and then tried to attack him with a sharp weapon, but the man managed to escape.
DRDE director has ordered an official probe into the matter.
David Ferrie’s Civil Air Patrol experience was what made him important to Jim Garrison’s investigation of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. Lee Harvey Oswald joined Ferrie’s squadron at Moisant Airport in 1955. (Eastern Airlines archive)
On July 21, 1964, Dr. Mary Stults Sherman was brutally murdered in her apartment building on 3101 St. Charles Avenue, in New Orleans. She was a prominent orthopedic surgeon and expert in cancer research. The assassination remains unsolved, although there are some investigators who think they came close to a solution. And the assassination of John F. Kennedy has, according to them, everything to do with this tragedy.
I host an alternative talk radio show and news zine called The Rundown Live out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The show is syndicated on Denver 90.7 FM Truth Frequency Radio. Our information is powered by citizen journalists and has been covered by MSNBC, RAWstory, Drudge Report, Infowars and many more. Our information has reached as many as 1.4 million people in a week. Just less than 30% of our visitors return and that percentage grow every day. We are 100% listener supported and are unaffiliated with any political party.
We are going on our 3rd year of programming and looking to monetize/syndicate the program. Our show is best described as Morning talk radio show at night like “Wayne’s World” with a twist of “Coast to Coast” madness.
AND ALSO, AN INDEPTH TREK INTO THE WORLD OF SKEPTOID CULTISM
THIS IS AN UPDATED VERSION OF A LETTER SENT TO DAVE SCHROTH DATED SEPTEMBER 26, 2008; used on a few other sites and quoted in other articles from 2008 through 2018.
Many (wide and radical?) revisions and changes will come about over the next months and years. Some identities will be disguised to protect people. This does not mean it is an untrue account, just a disguised account much like the retired intelligence officer and spy, “Mr. X,” was a composite person of many sources in the intelligence community in Oliver Stone’s movie JFK, or many characters areintroduced as semi-fictional to carry multiple layers of truth. Alice I Have Been by MelanieBenjamin is somewhat like that (Delacorte Press, 2009);”A finely wrought portrait of Alice [in Wonderland] that seamlessly blends fact with fiction,” said Publishers Weekly of Alice. There is only one other character like that in this manuscript, but he is also portrayed as his real name in several instances and not his fictitious name/literary device. In only one other character is thename changedas buffer on his and his family’s identity to mute totalembarrassment as to his real-life amazing claims he makes about himself and his family. Somehow, a lot of respect was held for this man and family, despite incongruous actualities and real-life events; also to protect against law suits. Sadly, our Fanatic-Skeptical-Religious-Cultist will protest under some phony composite of ‘perfectionism,’ ‘anti-modernism,’ ‘historical retrogression,’ or allusion to his private quest to distort reality according to constant subjective perversion about what he feels is ‘scandal.’ Parts of this manuscript may be copied and pasted as separate manuscripts. It may change to widely different formats: things will be knocked around, cut, swapped, and jostled, in Henry Miller, John Steinbeck, Stephen King and Raymond Chandler fashion.
Stephen Charles Erdmann.
PART I
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us…….” A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens, 1859, Chapman and Hall, London, England…
(This silique was begun as a reply to David Schroth’s protesting a visit to Red Robin restaurant as well as a visit to my orphanage on a particular day and the behavior of some of the accompanying Church members; Schroth wrote a letter detailing societal behaviors aimed at him and how they failed, from what it appears would be, a military ‘muster.’ It begins here with a rather simple visit with friends, but I go into deep detail and analysis of Schroth [followed by an even deeper, on-going and lengthy analysis of connected issues including his views on UFOs, science, religion, movie, perfectionism, and many others] because he is veryatypical in characteristics and not readily envisioned, demanding an extended and deeper assessment.)
Got your “analysis” dated September 20, 2008. I doubtI can put all my thoughts on paper in one single stroke, so I will probably “ramble” over several days and years.
My first impression was: who declared “war” on David Schroth; especially on September 13? Did someone challenge you by calling you “not cool”? I don’t believe one person there cared an iota about you “personally” – – – or even gave any weighty consideration to your philosophical background. I believe they were just what they appeared to be: average aging citizens out to socialize in a comfortable fashion. Do you feel they were putting on a special demonstration just for your personal edict?
Did anyone get up in the restaurant and begin to Rock N’ Roll? Especially, not that group! Now, John Moeller and I (and probably some of the others) have grown up in the Rock N’ Roll era, and, moreover, participatedinit (Teen Towns, church dances, house parties. I remember John, myself, Craig, Kenny, Nancy, Margie, Jackie and other eighth graders dancing and trying to Rock N’ Roll at a house party, preferring to slow-dance to Sixteen Candles). If that means nothing to your antithetical-separatist philosophy (what you termed at one time as your misanthropy), or perhaps rouses rancor, it probably means nothing to us and our childhood memories. I wouldn’t give up one moment of memory of those sweet, heavenly kisses and hugs from Sharon xxxxxx and Mxxxxx for even “tons” of Dave Schroth’s hard, cold world of Luddite-social contumacious antipodes.
(And you did also participate: a cassette tape on which you placed an interview with me back in the 1970s had – on the reverse side – your recording of Some Day we’ll be together with Diana Ross and the Supremes. That was a song circa 1967-1969: The “rock era.” Just couldn’t keep “spotless” in your doctrine? Have you thought of why “oldsters’’ would be inspired to dance to memories of their “younger” years, even though the ages have ravished their bodies with disease and cell deterioration? What is “nostalgia”? What is “longing”? What are “memories”? And what is “love”? But what is “hate”? Dave, I hope you are going to write a book on how you are an exemplary illustration of “perfected living.” Not that it probably would look silly to see older people dance in many cases {or see a wino singing on a street curb}. But that you seemingly can’t empathize, at times, in many cases with your fellow human-beings – – – you’ve been sheltered in some elitist “finishing-school” – – – much like a “rich kid” aristocrat out of some Charles Dickens novel. But even they have “points of view.”
Adolf Hitler did. He wrote his MEIN KAMPF {written back in those “good ole’ days,” that you magnify, of 1925-1927} while in jail. And then he expanded out into more personal theories and philosophies like concentration camps. We could expand on topics like urination, breakfast, and sneezing, bus-riding, exercise – – – learn the completely proper way to do these things. And I presume you’d be ready to take on the critics {funny, they are always out there} who will undoubtedly take on your cynicism and misanthropy which underlies your persona. I agree there is a lot to hate (you have no need to convince me of human cruelty – I’ve experienced it too often and have also been a progenitor of it myself [and to my shame, at times]: but everybody and everything all the time?).
(Dr. Clay Routledge of the North Dakota State University said of nostalgia: “Nostalgia is a way for us to tap into the past experiences that we have that are quite meaningful – to remind us that our lives are worthwhile, that we are people of value, that we have good relationships, that we are happy and that life has some sense of purpose or meaning.” Dr. Tim Wildschut of the University of South Hampton said that nostalgia is a “fundamentally humane emotion”. Linda Kennedy, author of Crumbs from theTable of Joy, said “we all romanticize about certain periods in our lives.” Even Benjamin Kyle, who suffered from retro- grade or dis-associative amnesia, had said this: “Where we came from always carries more emotional weight than where we are at now.”)
CONFESSIONS FOR THE SOUL
In looking back to that day, it would be unfair to you and, even, I, to deny things could have been conducted more properly. Life is like that. I just don’t know if I had the expertise socially. I just don’t have that much aristocratic training; I just rely on the good faith and trust of people to over-look my shortcomings. In so many ways, despite basic differences, you are still a “hero” of sorts to me. That may be hard to understand – perhaps I can explain it someday to you.
I don’t believe that crowd expected anything exceptional or phenomenal (I’ve talked to some of them and asked if they felt anything ‘bad’ happened and no one that I’ve talked to felt that way. Of course, they could be lying. I do feel the debate between John Moeller and myself, though not in genuine animosity, was foolish and somewhat in poor taste. John has been a big debater from ‘way back when’ and like Herb [“Herb? Who is Herb?” you asked me one day on an outing] tells me, “When John and his buddy from work get together to discuss politics: oh boy!” It probably was not that well-planned and executed – but I’m not a professional Wedding Planner either [or Funeral Director] – I tend to be spontaneous, somewhat incongruous and exorbitantly informal. Sometimes I can be an extrovert). It really wasn’t a suit and tie affair. But I should, somehow,someway have taken your feelings into account in the matter; I’m just not sure how that could have been done so intricately and in a short notice. In hindsight, I regret it affected you so personally. I am asking for your forgiveness.
Anna Nadir had a good perspective; “Past are meant to be in the past. If you dwell with it too much, you’ll never be able to move on. If I had kept tight to all the small lil misunderstandings I had with all my friends, I’ll never be good friends with anyone right now. You forgive and forget, but at the same time, learn from it and escape from repeating the same mistake again….Running away from viewing the bad/ugly side of our self is not that healthy either….None of us are perfect, so if you can know you have weaknesses, work on improving it, not ‘run away’ from it, that is ‘never’ a solution….” http://www.siraplimau.blogspot.com.
I recall that in my ‘single’ years, later when struggling to adapt to and survive in being “alone” after 12 years of marriage, I did my share of socializing at “dance clubs”; and I did my share of visiting “pubs” trying to acclimate to what might be a typical modern life style (never could achieve the money part, though I was a reader of Playboy – – – I suspect, like so many divorced or single men, my main concern was being lonely, afraid, disenfranchised, and somehow fending the “wolves” that were then snarling at the “target” on my back). Those years, however, seemed a combination of good and bad experiences. And, much like my childhood, I tried to “invent” adventure – – – be out and about “people”, places, and things (like Barbra Streisand says her song People: “people who need people….”) – – – to negate the harsh realities that pounced upon me. Some of my childhood experiences I’ve told you about. Some of the more-darker experiences, I just couldn’t speak of (as Uncle Tonoose [Hans Conried] use to say on the Danny Thomas Show – Make RoomFor Daddy – “Never allow the camel to stick his nose under the tent, before too long, you will have the whole camel inside the tent”). Those experiences have probably, much like you, entrenched the conflicting-feelings that have grown within me.
But would I give up the “good” memories just because they don’t fit in or satisfy some Luddite-separatist philosophy? It is not clear what you are asking; and, again, I am not sure anyone should care. Why would you ask that I become a self-abolitionist of everything in my past just to suit you?
NO CONSPIRACY
The Red Robin restaurant was a first-time event for most of the people on that trip. It was my first time. Did you feel there was a conspiracy to dragging you in there? None that I know of. I know for a fact that church members have gone to some very nice restaurants in the past. It just happened that this was a very poor choice for you personally ( I think it was just an impulsive decision: do you remember the swimming pool scene in the movie It’s A WonderfulLife with James Stewart and Donna Reed [one of your “Oldie but Goodie” movies] where George Bailey and Alice Hatch fall into the pool at the high school graduation dance [while dancing the Charleston to a Swing-Band {OH MYGOSH!}, along with all the other Jitterbugging students?).
What did you expect them to do: stand up in societal revolt – – – some kind of frenzy of polyphobia – – – – acoustic phobia, deipnophobia, panphobia – – – – walk out? I thought that group handled it very well, not knowing about your personal anthropophagic misanthropy; your black-on-white world view and recusantism. Besides, it’s not the first noisy restaurant we’ve been in: why did it really bother you to such a raw degree? My wife and I recently went to a new Golden Corral restaurant as a first-time event. The price seemed reasonable, the food fairly good. But it is a buffet and was a circusof all kindsof people and family chatter. My wife met some friends she had not seen for a while, and that made her happy. She was hungry and she really enjoyed the food. What did I expect? Not as quiet as some places, to be sure.
Did I feel the need to hand out pamphlets on how it may have offended my subjective sensitivities? Or go to the manager and start a harangue? No, and considering many other social and political problems (like the enormous economic fiasco America is under; or my personal health), it wouldn’t be on my top-ten list of personal challenges; that is, unless I had a phobia about noise and people! More than likely I’d line-up my preferences of restaurants and make a selection next time from my private list, depending on my mood and other factors (we have to get our priorities straight sometimes, especially in this ‘survival’ climate [I prioritize my concern over my diabetes, kidney failure {July 1}, hip and back arthritis, etc., first and then I add on and go down my list of my other eccentricities that I have like my painting my toenails green and walking barefoot down Grand Avenue, or gathering up stones from the roadside and carrying them on my head, or wearing shoes just one time and then discarding them: these, while interesting, are not high priority things to do right now – – – – It is ‘that’ simple].)
Maybe you just wanted to vent your usual cynicism (your misanthropic anti-social, antithetical feelings) now. And that is fine. I just don’t know why you aimed your diatribe of society at that group of people? I don’t believe they haveany great love for Red Robin restaurantsor were even practitioners of RedRobin (I suspect that if you would have attacked the issues in a different way [not make it a specific attack on those people] you would not have appeared so unkind).
Poor Fred was trying to help make the day enjoyable with his occasional ventures into weak humor [the Balsams are financially comfortable and own a farm and know a lot about crops, seeds, weather and things like that; not necessarily being a “suave” interpreter of restaurant styles]. They all were trying to socialize the best they could (if they had only slid their cars a few doors east, they would have selected The Bread Company restaurant – now, you and I had beenthere before on Watson Boulevard): Kenny Herman’s widow paid our way into the Butterfly House. I honestly don’t believe they were involved in a secret world of some esoteric fantasy world of elitist debunking. They wouldn’t even know what the heck that means.
Maybe, John would (and I could be wrong, but I don’t believe John is a full-fledged Communist even though he is a Democrat. I just think he got fed-up with politics as usual and the Bush administration [as have so many people; Obama was – again – a poor choice]). The invite to see the remake film of The Day the Earth Stood Still wasno ploy to upset you, though it somehow did. I forgot all about wishing you to go upon reading your letter. It was only meant as a friendly gesture anyway (yes, I didn’t like the movie as much as the original: but that was no condemnation to any good qualities it genuinely may have had). It was that nostalgia thing.
Years ago when, I worked at Pisa Group on Watson Road, I had the choice of going down the street to a number of nearby restaurants (including White Castle, Jack in the Box, and MacDonald’s). But I chose Happy Joe’s Pizza because [1} it was close, {2} it had a good selection on their salad bar, {3} and was cheap. Now, Happy Joe’s is known for catering to families that make arrangements (appointments) to celebrate their child’s birthday and it gets quite loud with singing, laughter, etc. Have you ever had your birthday celebrated when you were little, Dave? If so, shame on you! Did they sing and celebrate? Well, shame on you! At any rate, I still drop in on Happy Joe – – – just for their salad bar (they did away with the pepperoni) – – – – and do you know what? It gets “quiet” at times at the restaurant: no noise! DO I GET A FEW EXTRA STARS?
Which leads me to some other thoughts on this matter: hymns and singing in church – – – – – maybe they should just hum or meditate for fear of being uncivilized and not Schrothian? Which brings up some more other thoughts – but at another time: like Steve Allen’s ‘‘liberal” politics, slap-stick comedy, and his promotion of negro entertainment on his show. Hmmmmmm………………….
(At a later time)
STEVE ALLEN AS OUR HERO
We often cite Steve Allen as a leader, a bulwark, against uncritical thinking (Debunker? Or was he a rationalist of sorts: but couldn’t have been a diehard debunker, based on his actions and politics, etc.). Dave Schroth has praised him for his seeming stance on ‘decency.’ But Steve Allen was a “Liberal” for that period and time. He was at one time a practicing Roman Catholic and so was religious (in Vulgarians at the Gate, he alluded to his belief in God: “…If there is a God – which I assume to be the case….” But David Schroth stands against religion as a waste of time and mythological). He promoted many Negro acts on his television show, breaking down race barriers. Allen said in his book, Vulgarians At The Gate, that movies such as The Mask (which was toned down to receive the Dover Seal), Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan and The God-fatherTrilogy (pages 357-358) seemed acceptable to people 12-years on up…..aahhhh……….
(This only shows how your imagined and so-called “creeping” degeneracy became even acceptable toSteve Allen: I saw those movies and, to a puritan-train-of-thought, they contained some of the most horrid scenes imaginable: parents and grownups werevery skeptical of those movies and the Godfather Trilogy.)…….
Allen was the creator to some of the silliest, zany, cock-eyed, slap-stick comedy on his television show; comedy that would appear far from the aristocratic snobbishness of the upper-class “au courant.” He featured radical guests such as Lenny Bruce. He featured a MAD Magazine caricaturist and parody artist on his March 16, 1958, show (demonstrating his affinity to this style of comedy – – – – many parents were in askance over MAD Magazine {we couldn’t get enough: brought it to school all the time}). If there was one thing that seemed to typify Stephen Valentine Patrick William Allen: It was “contradiction,” much like Schroth is creepily becoming the King of Incongruity!
Steve Allen was a supporter of One World Government (he was a member of the World Federalist Association [David Icke would have undoubtedly added Allen to his list of Reptilian Merovingian’s]). He considered himself a Secular Humanist yet also considered himself an “involved Presbyterian.” He was accused of being a Communist (by aka Harry Goren). Steve Allen was a longtime activist who championed migrant worker rights. He idolized and hailed fellow comedians Sid Caesar, Mickey Rooney, Buddy Hackett, Ethel Merman, Phil Silver, Jimmy Durante, Buster Keaton, Jonathan Winters, Edie Adams, Dick Shawn, Peter Falk, Dorothy Provine, Arnold Stang, Jack Benny, Carl Reiner, Jerry Lewis, Don Knotts, Andy Devine, Terry-Thomas, and Eddie “Rochester” Anderson: All these appeared in the Stanley Kramer 1962 movie production of It’s a Mad, Mad World, a production that typified the slap-stick, zany 50s-60s style of comedy that was close to Allen’s heart.
Now I know all kinds of alibis and rationalizations have been made about Allen’s professed “PURITY OF THINKING” academic statements and the seeming contradictory teenage and juvenile “silliness” his alter-ego presented. His explanations seemed equally bizarre: Allen said: “we laugh at our tragedies to prevent our suffering…if we think about the tragedies on our planet; we could spend all day in bed crying, so we laugh to survive, to continue our lives.” Allen also said: “Humor is a social lubricant that helps us get over some of the bad spots ….why do we do it? Because we’re crazy.” When pressed further, Allen said (mimicking the cartoon character Popeye): “All I can say is what Popeye says: ’I am what I am…….’”
I don’t think thatAllen was all that “uptight” about things as people say he was. At least, he did not go to the black-on-white schizoid extremes that you and I go to (you “took off” at Fred’s attempt at poor humor at the Butterfly House as he jokingly referred to swans by a pond as butterflies: I KNOW – come on Fred! But trying to be humorous is far better than your sardonic swipes at his juvenility). Richard Zogline says of Allen: “Though a lifelong liberal…in recent years he embarked on a vocal crusade to restore ‘family values’ in television. This was a little uncomfortable for those of us who remember Allen as the irreverent kid who like to turn the studio upside down.” The PlayboyMagazine article written back in 1988, I believe, on the evangelist Jimmy Swaggart scandal, warned about (what playboy Magazine terms as the puritanical pitfalls as well as…..) the darker and inevitable reaction to human sexual repression. Similarly, it is the “extremes” that we appear to go to; the doctrinaire, the ideological, demagoguery we pathologically speak from. Allen always added his humor: his serious side was only an after-thought.
“So much of life is an interpretation”, says Liz Murray, author of Breaking Night. It has to be this way for Allen, because if he was so whacked-out (fanatical) on such things as Rock N’ Roll (his sarcastic rendition of Elvis Presley singing Hound Dog on his television show in a tuxedo [he also lampooned I Left My Heart In San Francisco as I Left My Nose In San Francisco: does that mean he hated that song too?])…..why did he play the part of Benny Goodman in the movie The Benny Goodman Story? As is with so many things that Allen espoused: there is a direct contradiction (and error {he wasn’t infallible}). Surely he was aware that Goodman’s style was a growth of a very lively and radical “background” which included Rock N’ Roll.. …….
……..(Readers, here we are branching out into deeper territory as to Schroth’s vexations and temperaments on ‘sound,’ ‘noise,’ ‘manners,’ and ‘other’ Schroth prohibitions indicative of his Communist-conspirator fantasy, as compared to the ‘real’ world in which we grew-up [not some cloistered hidden den of books, libraries and Skeptic propaganda cherry-picked in a makeshift private ideology of Skeptic Cultism] in and related to the community about us back then)…………..
THE PARTNERSHIP IN RYHTHMS
Benny Goodman was a direct child of jazz and swing! Many parents were very suspicious of the new “jazz movement”. It was the younger generation that carried it through (and many oldsters joined in later. Arthur Murray Dance Studios billed itself as The King of Swing and taught the Charleston and the Lindy Hop). And like so many ‘movements’, the youngsters carried the wave. It has been a vibrant force (the Nazis censored the Swing Kids for fear of revolt- – – – -Russia did the same thing at one time: “…listening to smuggled jazz records was tantamount to political rebellion.…artistic freedom was strictly underground, considered by the authorities to be either dangerous subversives or misguided fools…”, ‘Guitars Of The Cold War’, Jan. and May 2002, Vintage Guitar Magazine). Larry Schweikart in his Seven Events That Made America, America saysthat Rock N’ Roll, as a musical device of the 20th Century, helped bring the Berlin Wall down. It was so American; so jazz- and- Country. Its very structure speaks to freedom: The individualism of the 1960s. The same phenomena happened with the Beatles: young people all over the world used this music as their Marching Orders and their inspiration to challenge tyranny and bad government. (www.patriothistoryusa.com.).
WE BEGIN TO ‘DIG IT’
Len Weinstock says jazz originated somewhere about 1895-1917 by Creole musicians that had trained in conservatories in Europe; European music that was blended with Blues, Ragtime, Brass Band Music, hymns, spirituals, minstrel music, and Work Songs, blended with African polyrhythm and European dance rhythms. Kansas City’s jazz roots began in the 1900s when marching band music, Ragtime music, and Blues music started to merge. Piero Scaruffi tells us that when jazz moved to Chicago, jazz musicians were often employed by gangsters. Their first audiences were the “mob”. New York’s jazz pianists began blending Blues and Ragtime. The Stride Piano appeared on the scene. In Atlantic City jazz was supported in the red-light district and in many cities Rent Parties were thrown where predominantly white tourists paid to listen to black bands and the money was used to “pay the rent”. There was Eubie Black from Baltimore (1906), Lucky Roberts from Philadelphia, Willie ’the lion’ Smith and James Johnson (1914) from New York. In the 1920s, Harlem was home to Blues music and white tourists visited The Savoy and the Harlem Cotton Club. Charles “lucky” Roberts reworked Ripples of the Nile (1912)into the classic Moonlight Cocktail (1942) for the Glenn Miller band. He also wrote Miniature Syncopated rhapsody. The Big Band sound was gaining momentum. Fletcher Henderson (1920) and Benny Carter were two progenitors. Keep A Song In Your Soul (1930). Jean Schwartz: Chinatown My Chinatown (1930). And then, guess who?, Benny Goodman – – – – New York, 1928. Benny employed Fletcher Henderson to arrange Jelly Roll Martin’s King Porter’s Stomp.
A cavalcade of music: Moon Glow, Juke Box Saturday Night, Satin Doll, TuxedoJunction, In the Mood, Mood Indigo, Woodchopper’s Ball, Cherokee, Take the ‘a’ Train, Don’t Sit under the Apple Tree, and many, many more.
www.nfo.net/Jazz in “jazz” says: “The 1920s are still called the ‘jazz-age’. Ladies shortened their tresses and bobbed their hair; they hiked up their skirts, rolled down their stockings, and rouged their lips.”
Welcome! Louie Jordan and his hipster slang and saucy double entendre (Caldonia, Is You Is Or Is You Ain’t My Baby?), Tommy Dorsey, Artie Shaw, Glenn Miller, Raymond Scott (Harry Warnow)…Kansas City Jazz, Boogie Woogie, The Shouters, and the Crooners. “During the 1940s“, says Scaruffi, “The Big Swing Band had become the voice of America abroad.” Benny Goodman played at the Palomar Ballroom in August 1935. There was Fletcher Henderson and an audience of young white dancers are moving to “hot” rhythms” and daring “hot swing” arrangements. Soldiers and sailors in the 1940s: It becomes our patriotic syncopation. We all remember Glenn Miller’s rendition of ST. Louis Blues March. Dance styles ran the gamut: the Short George, Hip Cat, the Jitter Bug, Cats, Brook Position Jitter Bug, The Boogie-Woogie, Hit That Jive, The Black Bottom Rag (The Benny Goodman movie also highlighted the Lindy Hop, Baboa, West Coast Swing and musicals such as Let’s Dance, California Here I Come, You Turned The Talles On Me, Sing-Sing-Sing, Bugle Call, Tiger Rag, Roll‘em, Hot House, Gotta Be This Or That, featuring Dizzy Gillespie, Gene Krupa, Harry James).
“Tain’t no sin to step out of your skin and dance in your bones.” The Big Band Era: “Swing was ‘the’ thing, and ‘jump-jivin’ ‘kats’ and ‘kitchens’ were Lindy hopping in every ballroom and dancehall in the land……” (Big Bands Database, http://www.nfo.net.)
If Steve Allen couldn’t “Rock’’, he certainly could “Roll” into swing. And why didhe write the 1963 Grammy award -winning jazz piece, The Gravy Waltz?
JAZZ UNTO ROCK
Rock music was born out of a hybrid of Rhythm and Blues music and Country music, originated in the Appalachian-mountains, part Irish fiddle, part German derived dulcimer, and African American banjo. Anglo-Celtic ballads and dance tunes, immigrants brought to America were come to be known as “old time” music that ranged from 1900 to the 1930s: A mixture of vaudeville music, African American minstrel show tunes, the 1930s brought Hank Williams and Brother Groups like the Delmones, the Stanley’s, and the Louvain’s. Jimmy Rogers. There was Okie Boogie, Cowboy Boogie And Honky Tonk. There was Eddy Arnold. There was the introduction of Swing, horns, electricity, and Bluegrass. Songs like Blue Moon Of Kentucky (Carl Perkins recalls his early battered acoustic guitar lessons with fellow field worker John Westbrook, “Uncle John”. who told him; “Get downclose to it! You can feel it travel down the strings, come through your head and down to your soul where you live. You can feel it. Let it vib-a-rate!” In 1955, Perkins made the original version of Blue Suede Shoes. The old traditional music of the mountains gave way to the beginnings of modern commercial country, or, as Syd Masters (The Swing Riders) would say, “Vintage western cowboy swing.”
About the time that Ethel Waters and Trixie Smith were singing tunes like My Man Rocks me, Bill Haley was listening to jimmy Preston and Haley would travel to the Marcus Hook Theater to see his idol, Gene Autry. It was the “Hillbilly” era. Ralph Peer (1926) typified the Antebellum Folk Songs of string bands and Appalachian fiddles; Marion-Troy-Slaughter. There were “okehs”; Henry Whittler Emmett Miller. There was the group called the Georgia Crackers (which included bandleadersTommy and Jimmy Dorsey on trombone and saxophone). Ralph Peers discovered Jimmy Rodgers in 1927. John Clifton says: “Like Roy Rodgers and other hayseed Hollywood harmoniums, Autry dipped liberally into jazz and swing, giving his music a nice little bounce.” This became the hallmark of legendary figures such as Bob Wells and Roy Acuff, as well as Roy Rodgers and Gene Autry, through the 1930s – 1950s. Country Pop typified by Lloyd Perryman and The Gold Star Rangers (1937) was also seen in movies such as Outlaws Of The Prairie and Spoilers Of the Range. It became to be known as the “Swinging Hollywood- Hillbilly-Cowboys”.
Bill Haley tried to imitate his idol Gene Autry and could be found “singing like Autry” at the Booth’s Corner Auction Mart (1946). Haley went on to join groups as Shorty Cook’s Down Homers and The Range Drifters. But…“G.I’s returning from World War II were looking for something different, something more upbeat and exhilarating,” says Jim Dawson and Ian Whitcomb, “and they were finding it in California’s hillbilly boogie, Texas’s Western Swing, New Orleans’ Rumba.” It was flavored by piano R and B, Chicago’s electrified Mississippi guitar blues and St. Louis’s Swing Jazz. (For Steve Erdmann this all came together at Mary’s Confectionary on South Broadway in St. Louis where he and the “gang” listened to the best of all worlds on Mary’s juke box). Haley found employment at WPWA radio where many young whites continually requested rhythm and blues records. The Jimmy Preston radio program as heralded by the noisy theme song Rock the Joint. It was a time of Pee Wee King’s Golden West Cowboys (“The Tennessee Waltz”), James “Slim” Allsman, and the premier of the electric Gibson: all made popular with the help of the Philadelphia crime syndicate and their mafia-owned juke boxes. Rock was a money-maker and the mob knew money: Roulette Records was mob owned and had Rock singer Tommy James in their palm (Me, The Mob and the Music, Simon & Schuster, 2010).
ROCKABILLY
Rockabilly partly came out of Haley with his “cowboy yodeling”. But there was also Jimmy Rodgers who fused Hillbilly Cowboy, gospel, jazz, blues, Pop, and Folk. “And then, out of nowhere, came Bill Haley…..Crazy Man Crazy…..an exuberant, pulsating blend of guitar, sax, and piano, riding the best of a slap-back bass and a whip-crack snare,” says Michael Satchell, “It was utterly different from any music we ever heard….now, we had music we could dance to. It was exciting. It was cool. It was ours…… (he was) a cowboy poet.” Haley had tired of country yodeling – western swing: he changed his band’s name from the Saddle men to The Comets (based on the tales of Mark Twain and Hailey’s Comet): became one of the most successful of the early “blue-eyed” Rockers. Later, Ray Charles expanded on the tradition of Country Swing with songs like Hit The Road Jack, I Got A Woman, Georgia, Born To Lose. (“I was born with music inside of me…music was one of my parts, like blood. It was a force already with me when I arrived on the scene”, said Charles.) Billie Barnette. Mama Thornton (HoundDog). Fats Domino (made the Top Ten with Aint That A Shame, 1955). Jackie Deshannon. Buddy Holly – The Big Bopper – Richie Valens (“We sang dirges in the dark the day the music died…..”, Don Mclean’s American Pie.). There was Chuck Berry (which I saw often passing through Lambert Airport). Jerry Lee Lewis. Ricky Nelson (I’m walkin, Stood Up, It’s Late, Lonesome Town, Poor Little Fool, Hello Marylou: “His artistry in using his ‘smooth’ monotone tenor to subtly and feelingly convey a wide range of teen angst emotions”) {Wikipedia}. Eric Hilliard Nelson (Ricky) preferred Rockabilly and up-tempo Rock songs like believe What You Say and I Got A Feeling. Little “Ricky” was a prophet: he use to say on The Adventures Of Ozzie and Harriet television program: “I don’t mess around, boy!”
(His father, Ozzie Nelson, had the number one hit And Then Some in 1934 and his rendition of Ain’t That AShame made the top ten in 1955; Nelson made the 1957 Rutgers University “Doctor of Humane Letters,” and ranked number 21 in the TV Guide’s list of the 50 greatest TV dads of all time. (What a shock this must Be to David Schroth, who twinges at radio programs while driving in a car, or cringes at necklaces and doodads hanging from an auto mirror or is puritanically selective of music or programs played on TV or radio, and so much other.)
About this time, media producer Dick Clark came upon the television scene with groups like Danny and the juniors and their Rock And Roll Will Never Die and At The Hop.
CHARLES HARDIN HOLLY
Charles Holly’s, better known as Buddy Holly, success lasted only a year and a half, but, as critic Bruce Elder said, Holly was “the single most influential creative force in early rock n’ roll…” His early version of his hit song That’ll BeThe Day took its title from a line that John Wayne’s character says repeatedly in the 1956 film The Searchers. That song topped the U.S ‘Best Sellers’ chart in stores September 1957. By coincidence, Sputnik took off that year as well. On October 21, 1958, Holly recorded a ballad for his wife, True Love Ways. On February 3, 1959, due to a tight tour schedule, during very inclement weather, Holly traded a bus seat with artist Waylon Jennings for a seat aboard a small, chartered airplane – along with recording artists Richie Valens and J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson —- which crashed ending the lives of all three artists. Holly and singer Waylon Jennings had jokingly traded friendly bards before the flight; Holly said to Jennings, “I hope your ol’ bus freezes up!” Jennings replied: “Well, I hope your ol’ plane crashes!” It was a statement that would haunt Jennings for years to come. This incident made its way into Don Mclean’s American Pie…..”…..the day the music died…..”
MISSISSIPPI RIVER DIXIE AND RAG
Ronnie Smith and I would venture about Carondelet, St. Louis and often travel to the Vulcan Street bridge in the “patch,” and there listen to the Dixie and Rag rhythms that came floating through the summertime breeze as we faced the Showboats catering to tourists traveling on the Mississippi River; In the air was that special primal and primitive smell of mud and waste from the river,
www.hoover.archives.gov says: “The Mississippi River has been host to a musical heritage ranging from Native American drumbeats to Anglo-Celtic ballads, French folksongs to African-field-hollers. Emerging in the late 1800s, an original American sound drifted up from the southern cotton fields, choir lofts, juke joints, and river barges….Distinctive songs of suffering were sung by the poorest, mostly illiterate blacks, a reaction to the demeaning existence lived by sharecroppers in the Mississippi Delta. Accompanied by acoustic guitar or harmonica, these earthy songs were primitive and gritty….The Delta blues became the cornerstone of modern music. It became the basis for Gospel, Jazz, Dixieland. Ragtime, Bluegrass, Country, Rock and Roll, Rhythm And Blues, Soul Music….A gumbo mix of blues, ragtime, Spirituals, and Caribbean Music erupted….Musicians worked the riverboats and spread their hypnotic rhythms and brassy tones up the Mississippi, and by the 1920s and 1930s, Dixieland brass ensembles were all the rage.” I am reminded of Paul Robeson’s rendition of Ole’ Man River (he sang it in the “oldie but goodie” movie Show Boat) and Lawrence Brown’s Songs of Free Men. In the 1890s, a group of musicians, including Scott Joplin, were living in and around Sedalia, Mo., writing rags. Louis Armstrong became one of the greatest riverboat celebrities of the 20th century with his “hot” jazz tempos; said Armstrong: “What we play is life!”
CREATIVITY OR DESTRUCTIVITY?
(Otherwise known as ’Smock! Smock!’)
Steve Allen would be the last to stifle creativity (he personally used it in the creation of his brash and upbeat theme song This Could Be the Start of Something Big). He often extolled creativity. In the 1995 No. 61 General Semantics Bulletin , Allen said of himself: “I’m just a musical illiterate…I cannot read music….I’m just versatile….some little, tiny little thing is where that talent comes from….that’s way in the Twilight Zone….(but) so is the whole universe…..you cannot make scientific statements so ephemeral as humor….eye of the beholder….there being no further testimony in this case, the jury will now retire to render a verdict….”
Steve Allen would outline the lives of people like automotive tycoon Charles Kettering as a gifted child who worked his way out of extreme poverty and used those gifts to obtain grand success. But I also agree that those people could have easily been overlooked if they did not get help and support along the way. Sometimes talent and support don’t always mesh in life.
Or as Steve Allen would tell his television audience from time to time: “Smock! Smock!”
SOFT AND CLASSICAL MUSIC
We have nothing against what has been called soft music, crooning, classical or light sounds: not at all: These are all interesting and sometimes entertaining. We have no special fight here other than some music and songs we like much better than others. We have no special agenda other than popular criticisms or opinions. I like Bobby Darin ballads (Somewhere Beyond The Sea – 1959 – also sung by Gisele Mackenzie and played by Benny Goodman – 1948 – and also Annuncio Paolo Mantovany) and Frank Sinatra ballads (Laura, Young At Heart, Without A Song), Nat King Cole (Ramblin Rose, Mona Lisa), and especially Perry Como (Shadows Follow Me and his 1955 hit It’s Impossible), Jo Stafford (YouBelong To Me) – – – – and pass over the usual ironies and conflicts in their backgrounds. Enoch Light And The Light Brigade renditions of 30’s and 40’s: Marie, April In Paris, I Can’t Get Started With You (but his jazz renditions as well: Sing, Sing, Sing and Tuxedo Junction). Eddie Fisher recently passed away in September 2010: you may remember his ever popular tune Oh My Papa.
THE FIRST ROCK STAR?
I even like Ludwig Von Beethoven, and his Choral Symphony No. 9 really “Rocks” — – – – it picks you up and shakes you down to core of your being! And again, there are his symphonies No. 5, 3 and 7! Wikianswers says: “Beethoven bridged the classical and romantic periods of music. The latter period involved less emphasis on strict rules and more on pure emotion. Beethoven’s style, particularly later in his life, reflects this period well. His works involve strong emotion and broke several of the musical rules that existed in the Brogue and Classical periods…late classical and early romantic styles….” His music searched out vibrations that where so dynamic that some people believed he must have an African heritage. Ira F. Brilliant says: “He was the first composer to invigorate European Classical music with prodigious use of this decidedly inherent African rhythmic trait….one of the first composers to deviate from the musical template of eighteenth-century rules and regulations……” Max Chandler says that many musicians and writers today were heavily influenced by Beethoven: Bud Powell, Dave Brubeck, Charlie “bird” Parker, Duke Ellington, Charles Mingue, Ornette Coleman and others (and writer Anthony Burgess and movie producer Stanley Kubrick on their respective works on A Clockwork Orange depicting a futurist society chuck-full of Beethoven). Wagner says of him that Beethoven faced the world with a defiant temperament and kept an almost “savage” independence. He rejected sham, humbug, conventionality, and above all things: Beethoven may have been our First Rock Star!
In part, the problem is that we don’t live in a black-on-white reality and we are wanderers with eccentric philosophies trying to force ourselves into round holes when we are square pegs. Schizotypal personalities, such as us, often have difficulty. We tend to relinquish to our obsessive-compulsive square pegs and see our views as the best of everyday, real-world “holes.” We are playing “Connect – The – Dots”- – – -drawing lines between dots all over the page of life (dots that are topics or subjects that strictly support our deep prejudices, biases, idiosyncrasies) and then we pull a magic little strong at the bottom of the page that draws all those ideas and topics into a stiff, straight line of “dots” and we call these eccentricities: The real factual world. We all do it – some worse than others. Even so-called professionals: they are not getting it right. Like Tim Zell use to quote someone (Carl Sagan?): “the universes are a lot bigger than our head.”
NOT KOOL
No one was deliberately performing for you personally so that they could be gauged by your private obsessive-compulsive and pensive review of their every action. This reminds me of the Jack Nicholson’s performance of Marvin Udall in the movie As Good As It Gets. Marvin was surrounded by everyday people doing everyday things on a regular outing and being their everyday selves. Udall, in the movie, as a misanthrope and masochist, hated everything and everybody (I hate that when it happens to me). I don’t believe we were worried about matching up to someone’s esoteric-philosophical library in someone’s head that day of the outing. Myself, my diabetes was acting up (I’ve gone from pills to insulin: in July my kidney stopped functioning for a few days) and I was feeling “out of sorts” — and I had my broken toe and joint arthritis to contend with; my hips are painful, even when I walk a short distance). As Carol Connelly said to Marvin in the movie (Udall was both a brilliant writer and a literaryartist): “Do you have any control over how creepy you allow yourself to get?” (Udall had allowed everything to be viewed through the prism of his sickness.)
On a “picnic” (do you remember the movie Picnic?SteveAllen wrote some of the music for that movie) people don’t usually approach it as if were involved in a political dissertation. They just want to be “cool” and relax and let their hair down: But it still is a matter of give and take. Without some leeway, it could turn out to be a “political desecration.”
But beware – – – – beware of the world of contradiction – – – – (and more on that next time) – – – – our recusant separatist has such a tight noose around his neck, that even when “he” claims his pristine black-on-white world as the only correct world, out of his library world of books and paper, through the corner of his eye, he sees other people somewhere watching, causing him to think there just might be much more to life out there, and the noose is not really a halo of glory.
PART II
DECEMBER 22, 2008
(THERE WILL NOT BE A LOT RESEMBLING THE ORIGINAL LETTER IN THIS DOCUMENT AS THERE HAS BEEN HEAVY REVISIONS THROUGHOUT)
The preceding was held off from mailing and probably would have been regulated to the waste basket or some far distant revision, for fear of not being “purist” enough to match Dave Schroth’s atelopoboa, tropophobia. allodoxaphobia, polyphobia, or whatever combination of social phobia or philosophical derivatives he evolved from. Claiming a personal philosophical psyche is his inherent personal right. It is mine too. I enjoy many of the things in my life, and I do not feel that I need to be a “pure scientist” (there is no such thing!), or, stand “aloof” from “humans” because I want to match what various “ideologues” say in books and papers that assuage my psychological world: I much prefer “real life.”
Says Humanistic Theories Of Psychology: “Alfred Adler….in applying holistic principals to psychology, Adler argued that if we want to understand humans, we need to view them as whole (or individuals) rather than bits and pieces (i.e., Freud’s ‘id’, ‘ego’ and ‘super ego’). Holism also emphasizes the need to take human’s physical and social environments into account when trying to understand them, therefor the concept of ‘gemeinschaftsgefuhl’ (Boeree, 1997).”
While I did not have debunkers like Phil Klass as a personal mentor, I did have what could be called mentors of sorts (Keyhoe, Ruppelt [the early version], Palmer, Jules Verne, others; but also Space Patrol, Space Cadets, Sky King, Howdy Doody, Mr. Wizard, Jules Verne’s From The Earth To The Moon, Walt Disney, Sputnik, Wernher von Braun, Herb Philbrick: I led Three Lives, AlfredHitchcock, Dave Garroway, Science-fiction Theatre, The Twilight Zone, The LorettaYoung Show, and so on), none of those could compete with my fulltime occupation of staying alive physically, psychiatrically and psychologically, and fitting in and creating my own Wonderland of Adventure amid the harsh reality of my life in the 50s and 60s (most of which only a few people around me could have been aware of).
THE HIDDEN FACTORS DON’T ALWAYS MATCH THE PRETEND SCHROTH WORLD
(There is always the incongruous side to Mr. Schroth)
It was a Dark verses a Happy Sunshine world I lived in. And I had hoped that the Sunshine adventures I got into would cast over the Dark Side- – – -that was before Star Wars movies– – – – but like Luke Skywalker, I hoped my happy-go-lucky Huckleberry Finn/Tom Sawyer adventures would save me from going “over to the Dark Side”. My life in Carondelet was a symphony of tragedy, happiness, adventure and mysticism, stark, raw life and naked brutality, the life or a boy and, soon, teenager in the 50s – 60s with all the panorama of A Rebel without a Cause and other traits of that era. My life was several movie and television scripts come to life. My mom would often compare me to Timmy in the television program Lassie or Ricky from Ozzie And Harriet. Said of “little” Nelson: “…he was ’an odd little kid’….likeable, shy, introspective, mysterious and inscrutable……” Later, I guess, I could be compared to teenage movie parts that the late actor Vic Morrow played. Parts like Artie West in The Blackboard Jungle, Richard Brooks’ 1955 drama: “A scary and unfamiliar fringe of the youth movement.”
When did you graduate from that upper-class, high style “finishing school”? Was there one in Carondelet? And how did you get “protected” from being a real-life scene out of The Black Board Jungle movie? I did attend that school! I didn’t get a chance to attend the Finishing School. Not many people were envisioning great and wonderful things for me: other than myself. But I lost track or got “sucked under” (as one might say) by the muck of blue-collar workaday fiasco and drama of lower middle-class lifestyle and teenage depression and psycho angst. Let’s see: you lived on Pennsylvania Avenue which was not far from where I lived on Michigan Avenue and that was not too much distance from where John Moeller lived on Field Avenue. Are you saying those “books” you were reading at 16-17 years of age “thrust” you into that more elite and magnanimous lifestyle? And when did you receive a degree or post-graduate degree? That always makes you a better human and good-hearted-person, doesn’t it? If not that, at least “superior”!
However, I did have the opportunity to hypocritically refer to myself as a somewhat of a journalist (“maybe”). But it would be a journalist that has no firm, innate, rigid, convictions. I don’t think I claim to be one of those armchair pseudo-scientists of some fundamentalist “Rationalist” Cult (you’ll soon notice that I stopped using “skeptic” as a title description in as much as skeptics are not “debunkers” at all: in fact the term has been greatly misused…..
Says Celeste Adams: “Dr. (Raymond) Moody explains that the so-called ‘skeptics’ are not skeptics at all: ‘the skeptic tradition goes back to ancient Greece, and it’s a spiritual tradition about not drawing conclusions. So, when someone says, ‘I’m a skeptic…I think it’s just (this or that),’ they have contradicted themselves. They have said, ‘I am a person that doesn’t draw conclusions,’ then they draw a conclusion….to be a genuine investigator….belief or disbelief is irrelevant. We only need to ask ‘What’ is the ‘Nature’ of what we’re dealing with?’” Scientist Dr. Bill Bankston concurred: “The ego needs to get out of the way. Not a lot to do with trying. Let nature take its course. Be a Lightening rod. Let it happen…..inside and outside the box. Thinking in a different box, but we ignore the anomalies to keep the box we are in: it’s the way we frame the world….a good scientist is a skeptic: cautious but in a fluid state. A Believer already says he knows the answer, he is not “open.” It is scary both ways; to be open, fluid, and willing to be wrong”…..).
I am not a scientist (obviously) and I don’t believe I have pawned myself off as one. Maybe I am a true Skeptic: The average “Joe Citizen” kind as a work-a-day-world-kind-of-a-Skeptic. I see you as more of a religious quest on behalf of the Debunkers Over All Church, much like John SXXXXXXXX is spreading the UFO Spaceship Religion. It’s all religion; just at the opposite ends of a scale. Could be that this is caused by the pontifical ideology of the various political and Cultist religions? There is a world of scientists out there interested in UFOs and psychic phenomena, such as Robert Bigelow and Jacques Vallee, thousands of others. There is The Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness, Society for Scientific Exploration. There are, As well, many others, consisting of legitimate scientists: I’m not about to call them idiots, as you will. You’d call Einstein an idiot, if it served your Religion. And you might include Brian Greene, Michio Kakui, Charles Seife, Martin Rees, Marcelo Gleiser, Ralph Alpher, John Wheeler, David Bohm, M. Talbot and a whole host of others like them. Might as well, they are pushing the Outer Limits of science. I’m just not prepared to castigate them. You do that. Neither am I able to adjudicate and ostensibly expatriate the fate of Carl Jung or many other scientists. Maybe after I get to attend that Finishing School you attended. However, maybe I can hope and see Magic still going on in the universe. Maybe………….
WHAT IS A SHAVERIAN-DERO-HOBBIT?
I recall you going about social and public circles back through years 1967 (circa 60s to the near present), smirking, like some little Shaverian-Dero-hobbit, cackling, “idiots!”, “you’re a liar!”, “trash!”, “crazy!”, “junk!”, and other symptoms of seeming schizoid tourettes-like coprolalia (normal acid drollery or stereotypic movement disorder? You said you didn’t remember going about making such remarks). Michael Guillen, PH.D., Senior Science editor for ABC-TV had a much more refreshing use of the language (1998): “my goal is to report accurately and open-mindedly any interesting and credible goings-on within science, be they orthodox or iconoclastic….apply the scientific method…only through rigorous studies…can we get beyond the endless and largely emotional- philosophical arguments between ’skeptics’ and ’believers’….they’re open as evidenced by the continuing disagreement among intelligent, well-educated people….many of today’s research results….are routinely contradicted by some subsequent study….it’s not the nature of science ever to know anything with absolute certainty. Which is why Mr. Park’s remarkable ability to know exactly what is and isn’t possible, to distinguish between ‘good’ and your ’bad’ science with such complete confidence strike me, well, as just so much voodoo….”
I recall you were castigating people for their opinions way back in 1967. I was a “liar” when I published Thomas Fairbanks’ letters as MR. X in Dissenter/Disinter Magazine (which claimed he knew David Ferrie in New Orleans and some of the other people who were interconnected in the Kennedy assassination). I was not supporting his comments at that time; just reporting them without any absolute judgment. Subsequently, apparently, Fairbanks’ comments had some merit. I didn’t deserve your attack: Fairbanks ran into some of those characters while living in New Orleans. But you shouldn’t have been “wrong” — you are not permitted that in what could be called the schizoid “PERFECT WORLD” – – – – – was that the world taught to people in that Secret-Carondelet-Finishing-School?[1]
JUST WHAT DO YOU ‘MEAN’ : SHAVERIAN HOBBIT!?
(A little “sidebar” on the Richard Shaver Mystery and why it is such a continued motif of legendary significance to me; I guess like Mickey Spillane and Mike Hammer and other mystery noir that are inspirational to detective and mystery fans, the time was “right” for many science-fiction and prophetic stories of controversial reputation. For Morgan Robertson in 1898 it was writing his novel Futility—-The Wreck Of The Titan which seemed to foreshadow [14 years ahead of time] the real sinking of the Titanic. Jules Verne prophetic fiction that heralded nuclear submarines, trips to the moon, and H.G. Wells spoke of time travel and a future World Pax where science reigned supreme. Richard S. Shaver, along with writers William Beebee, Dr. John Coleman, The Reverend Jim Slaw, Dr. Anthony Sutton, George A. Lehew, Jerry La-Prione, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and many other mystery noir writers spoke of our world being scrutinized by evil beings that have controlled us from time immemorial. A.J. Streichert said in 1958: “…most dangerous because its nonsense seems to make sense.” John thine added more insight: “Shaver’s delusions are the dark and cloudy glass that which we see myths at the end of history; his obsessions mirror the concerns of us all, and as we look into his private abyss our fears and hopes as a species emerges out of the emptiness. Shaver’s work is not fact, it is not even true; it is real, in a way only the right myth at the right moment can be real…. ”)
(In Shaver’s particular mythos, noble and genetically pure Supermen — The Elder Race — lived out in the dark reaches of space away from the detrimental effects of the sun’s radiation…..
“……………..Princess Vanic……..sunless Nor…….Nortans…..dark space is filled of Titans, Atlantis and Nor-tans..….it’s high time we ran away from the Black Death. I’ve worried and waited for it to strike me long enough. The Elder station on the cold planets is the best natured men you can find in space: Haven’t been near a sun in centuries, and don’t know the meaning of the word ‘evil’.” (I Remember Lemuria, 1948)………
“……..you will go at once far beyond any influence from Mother Mu’s rodite, under another space- group of planets, and there we will learn how to live where such things as the black death does not exist…….”
…..to escape war and the “black death” of de-te-rio-ra-tion (Mantong: an incredibly ancient language: a type of cipher translating English letters into symbolic meanings) the Elder Race came to earth and placed a canopy of protective vapor around the planet: which eventually proved inadequate against the sun. The canopy collapsed and many raced into the interior of the earth were the Super Technology backfired and their machinery actually began to poison them — yet force them to stay alive for a span of time. They were “abandondero,” and they consisted of two camps, those who were progressively “evil” [Dero} and those who somehow had avoided the poison – Tero. The vast majority escaped into the far reaches of outer space…..
……”Our sun has begun to throw out great
Masses of these poisonous particles. They
Fall upon Mu in a continual flood, enter-
ing into living tissue, and infecting it with
The radioactive disease we call age……”
The Teacher, I Remember Lemuria, 1948…..)
(A large range of writers had an effect on Shaver and Shaver had a wide range effect on a lot of writers; H.P. Lovecraft, A. Merritt, James Churchword, Guy de Maupassant’s The Horla, others. Shaver said the Dero caused all kinds of havoc, terror and destruction on the “surface world”- – – – -and while most people slough off his story as the outcome of his stay in a Ypsilanti state hospital [Jim Pobst said it was only two weeks and only for disorderly conduct. His former wife Sophie said Shaver had gone on a binge and she asked that he be held on July 27, 1934 {July 27 is also Steve Erdmann’s birth date} for observation]- – – – -Shaver’s “discoveries” were far more ebullient. Publisher Ray Palmer said: “On December 27, 1949, Albert Einstein came out with a new theory of gravitation and electromagnetic fields,” taunted Palmer, “months before that, Mr. Shaver (minus the mathematical formula) told me the same thing! For the record I want to say that if any credit for a new and revolutionary theory of gravity goes to anybody it should go to Richard S. Shaver on the basis of prior publication.” Palmer went on to expound: “Shaver described the Flying Saucers and predicted their appearance. And all this he said came from the information he got from the caves. So whether or not [the story] came from his own mental process of some kind, the information was correct and the information he’s given us has been correct so many times it’s impossible to discard it as fiction.” Website http://www.anti-state.com said: “Shaver claimed he owed all this astounding information to technologically advanced beings that, like it or not, communicated with him.”)
HIS OWN MENTAL PROCESS
(Later in 1971 in his Hidden World series, Palmer admitted that Shaver’s conduit to his Caves [though highly debated and resisted by Shaver] were by way of an Altered state of consciousness similar to a hypnotic trance or what might have occurred when in psychic states such as that of John Ballou Newbrough (1828-1891), when he did inspired writing of the Oahspe Bible.
Even “debunkers” such as Michael Shermer (who at one time denied that hypnotism existed), in reviewing Robin Waterfield’s Hidden Depths: The Story Of Hypnosis, had to admit the reality of altered-states: “…an altered state of consciousness explains little for a simple reason: we don’t know what consciousness is, making it difficult to explain what an altered state of it means…in that borderland between reality and fantasy where the power and mystery of hypnosis lies…it is with hypnosis in particular that I depart ways from many of my skeptical colleagues who argue that it is nothing more than fantasy role-playing, or worse, pure fakery.” [Shermer was hypnotized successfully on his own television show]).
SHAVER AS JUNGIAN RUMOR AND METAPHOR
(Some of this debate almost seems immaterial with topics such as Ted Phillips’ search for Tony Horak’s Marley Woods, Slovakia cave which housed an ancient artifact, perhaps millions of years old [Project Moon Shaft]; not to even mention reports of our own government shoveling out huge underground facilities; there are said to be an estimated 100 secret exits in the Archuleta Mesa on a Dulce, New Mexico complex, as testified by John Anderson and Paul Bennewitz. The Madigan Military Hospital complex near Fort Lewis in Washington state; the Jicarilla Apache Reservation; the complex under the New Denver International Airport, east of Denver, Colorado; China Lake Naval Weapons Centre in the California desert; the town of Ridgecrest near Death Valley; Page, Arizona; Taos, Carlsbad and Patil, New Mexico; as well as Springs, Creede, and Castello, Colorado. Chris Tinkler speaks of existing tunnels and nuclear Safe havens below Canbeira near the Australian location of Melbourne and Townsville [not to mention historical reports such as the 1700s “hatch” reported by Dr. Plot at a Staffordshire. England entrance consisting of a large oval and ring {A History Of Staffordshire}. There is the Bell Witch Cave found by William Mitchell Mott in the 1800s in Robertson County, Tennessee, or the Moon Pool found by Abraham Mott in 1919, or Norman Kinley’s find 90 miles southeast of Marthon, Texas at the foot of the Del Norte Mountains, or the cave with a smooth stone wall and staircase found by Tal and Mary Levesque in Hell Canyon 62 miles north of Branton, California, or the talk about a huge network of underground caverns beneath the Caribbean island of Bonaire.])
But perhaps no better tribute can be made than that which Richard Toronto gave: “(my) one and only mentor as writer and artist was Richard S. Shaver, who had a good heart no matter what history says about him.” Science-fiction/fiction has away of forecasting reality (and we’ve seen this historically time and time again).
Maybe Shaver was just seeing human nature for all its scope and grandeur— itsbreath and even horror; Shaver said: “The unseen world beneath our feet, malignant and horrible, is complete in its mastery of earth. And most horrible of all, it’s a world of Madmen.”
(As an even further aside topic [“big” sidebar], in Michael Greenberg’s telling of his daughters slide into insanity, the story reveals how little we know about mental illness in the more hardened cases [far more complex than I can go into here: Or even the panoramic descriptions of various states of consciousness]. In describing a moment of his daughter’s dementia: “…a wavelet of energy swelled through the center of being. She could see the hidden life in things, their detailed brilliance, the funneled genius that went into making them what they are. Sharpest of all was the misery on the faces of the people she passed. She tried to explain her vision to them but they just kept rushing by…Spinoza spoke of vitality as the purest virtue, the only virtue. The drive to persist, to flourish, she said, is the absolute quality shared by all living beings…Spinoza’s virtue is inverted, and instead of flourishing, one is driven to eat oneself alive…” (Hurry Down Sunshine)
Comparatively, David Darling, Ph.D., (English Astronomer and Science Writer) speaks of these states in his Soul Search: “There will always be a gap between what science can measure and what human beings feel. Yet everything we know about the way the two brain hemispheres work, everything psychology has taught us about the constructed nature of the world, and everything that those who have had mystical experiences told us, point to the same direction….Hindus call it Samadhi, Buddhists…Nirvana…Rinzai school of Zen…Satori….Zen Masters and others are powerless to relate how it feels. Words and descriptions do not encompass it.” (Ken Wilber summed it up this way: “I believe that logic has its limits and needs to be transcended in order to gain deep knowledge and wisdom…”)
GOOD OLD DAYS AS MYTH
(There must be an interjection here on another Schrothian puritan concept, that of “the good ole’ days” [along with ‘good ole pure manners’ sometime from 1970 back to the 1900’s, possibly including the ‘Gilded Age.’ {Schroth always had these handy-dandy concepts he would magically be pull-out from his Schizoid-Cultist-Skeptic-Religion handbook at opportune times}].)
Shaver’s World View certainly punched holes in your “good ole’ days” peruse, that view might be said to be just as much a “myth” as was your feelings on UFOs and psychic phenomena as myths: Otto Bettmann said so in his The Good Old Days – They Were Terrible! Bettmann concentrated on the 1820s to 1890s period, and while it might be said to be not so bad for the very affluent in society, it was terrible for the average person. There was manure piled up high on sidewalks! There were no 40-hour work weeks but just unrelenting sweatshops. No osha. Constant disease and fly infestation. On and on, so forth. This book explains why the “good old days” were only good for a preferred few and why they were unrelentingly harsh for most and very sobering.
LIFE ON THE SURFACE
Writer Jack London (1876-1916), a Capitalist (all his life….[read Wolf – The Lives Of Jack London, James L. Haley]), joined the Socialist Movement upon seeing and experiencing personally the harsh realities of man’s inhumanity to man…..
(London was born a working-class, fatherless Californian in 1876. In his youth he was a boundlessly energetic adventurer on the bustling West Coast…playing the role of hobo, sailor, prospector, and oyster pirate)….
He wrote about the lower-class often: “In his research, Jack discovered that these people who lived in the slums did so not by choice and not through laziness, but because of old age, disease, or accidents that had reduced their labor value.” (The People Of The Abyss, Macmillan, 1903).Speaking of the ghetto, London said: “a new race has sprung up, a street people. They pass their lives at walls and in the streets. They have dens and stairs into which to crawl for sleeping purposes, and that is all.”
Alfred Lord Tennyson saw this too:
It is well within the range of science, glorying in the time; city children soak and blacken soul and sense in the city slime. There among the gloomy alleys progress halts on palsied feet; crime and hunger cast out maidens by the thousands on the street…”
Robert E. Haggard speaks of it in The Persistence Of Victorian Liberalism “….by definition dreary, squalid and filthy…fetid…poisonous…gangs of burglars, garrotters, and pickpockets operate almost without check…”
THE FIVE POINTS
In America, similarly, horrid conditions were found in the Five Points district of New York circa 1842-1863. Says Gregory Christiano: “The name Five Points evokes images of poverty, rampant crime, decadence and despair, which are true. The Five Points was a lurid geographical cancer filled with dilapidated and unbelievable tenement houses, gang extortion, corrupt politicians, houses of ill-repute and drunkenness and gambling. This was a place where all manner of crime flourished, the residents terrorized and squalor prevailed…Among the places the most crowded in proportion to their actual size, the worst ventilated and whose mortality is the greatest at all times….the term ‘cellar’ are not conveying a proper idea of the place when used as a residence….these dens, or artificial caves of the earth….often send bands of murderers, who live by thieving alone…”
Charles Dickens was likewise astounded at what he saw in 1842: “This is the place – Five Points —- these narrow ways, diverging to the right and left. Such lives as are led here bear the same fruits here as elsewhere. The coarse and bloated faces at doors have counterpart at home, and all the wide world over. See how the rotten beams are tumbling down, and how the patched and broken windows seem to scowl dimly, like eyes that have been hurt in drunken frays. Many of the pigs live here. Do they ever wonder why their masters walk upright in lieu of going on all fours? And they talk instead of grunting…? All that is loathsome, drooping, and decayed is here.”
Martin Scorsese fashioned his film The Gangs Of NewYork on such a reality: “It was chaos, tribal chaos….claustrophobic, where everyone was crushed together…70,000 men and women…rampaged through the streets of New York, setting houses afire, battling police and lynching African-Americans. Federal troops had to be brought in to quell the disturbances….confronted one another in the streets of New York. Here competing groups vied for living space and economic survival in a cramped district near the tip of Manhattan…” Police records indicate that nearly every building did house a brothel. There were gangs so vicious that they posted signs warning police to stay out of their neighborhoods. Saloon halls, gambling dens, and winding alleys; destitution and shocking violence – a turbulent era – rogues gallery of prostitutes, pimps, poisoners, pickpockets, murderers and thieves. Carol D. Bos., J.B said: “Tammany Hall…degenerated into a power-hungry greed machine, its members looked to local gangs as ‘enforcers’…”
Names denoted the reality: Slobbery Jim, Sow Madden, Piggy Noles, Eat’ em Up Jack, McManus Hell-Cat Maggie, Bowery Boys, Dead Rabbits, Plug Uglies, Short Tails, Slaughter House, Swamp Ants, Billy The Butcher. Says historian Tyler Anbinder: “In ‘Five Points’ tenements, families and other groups lived crammed into one or two dark rooms. The outhouses were too few and often overflowing. Sewage and pigs ran in the streets….the whole neighborhood just stank….some holding camphor-soaked kerchiefs to their noses to ward off the stench…middle-class tourists would go ‘slumming’ in Five Points __ escorted by the police…Some of the hard-to-believe stereotypes are true.”
A Methodist reformer, of that period, said: “Five Points, the synonym for ignorance the most entire, for misery the most abject, for crime of the darkest dye, for degradation so deep that human nature cannot sink below it.”
THE WILD WEST
What could be said of Five Points could be said of many an untamed town stranded out in the western frontier: Dodge City, Deadwood, Tombstone…but there was also Las Vegas, New Mexico. So said Howard Bryan in Wildest of The Wild West…
‘“Without exception there was no town which harbored a moredisreputablegang ofdesperadoes andoutlaws thatdid Las Vegas,” said historian Ralph Emerson Twitchell, “beforelong,outlaws, bunko artists, murderers and thieves werebecoming so common that theeastern partof the settlement had become utterly lawless…”
There was Handsome Harry, the Dance Hall Rustler, the Dodge City Gang, J.J. Webb, Mysterious Dave Mather, Joe Canary, Dirty Dave Rudelbaugh, Hoodoo Brown, Doc Holliday, Mike Gordon, Big Nose Kattie, Jesse James, Billy The Kid, Bob Ford, Web-fingered Billy, Rattlesnake Sam, Cock-eyed Frank, Hook-nosed Jim, Wyatt Earp, StutteringTom, Durango Kid, and Vicente Silva and his gang called the White Caps and the Forty Bandits.
Said the vigilantes of the town:
“Theflow of blood must and shall be stopped in this community, and the good citizens of both the old and newtowns have determined to stop it, if they have to hang bythe strong arm of force everyviolator of the law in this County.”
REALISTIC DEPICTIONS
Recent movie depictions granted more human character and portrayal of the real west such as the early years of Billy The Kid portrayed by Michael J. Pollard in Stan Dragoti’s 1972 movie Dirty Little Billy on the early years ofWilliam Bonney (aka William McCarty). The movie also depicted early western towns as they probably really were: barebones and often ram-shackled.
Coffeyville, Kansas, which was depicted in the movie, as told by Frank W. Blackman and William G. Cutler and http://www.legendofkansas.com: “…much disorder prevailed in the small settlement, so much so that the main thoroughfare took the name ‘Red Hot Street’, and crime and murder were a common occurrence…1872…New Town site…earned Coffeyville the status of yet another lawless Kansas Cow Town…the town was wild with excitement and society was a chaos. The reckless cowboy knew no restraint, gamblers plied their avocation openly, and saloons were quick to ply their customers with liquor…the streets resounded with the rattle of beer glasses and the clicking of the Keno and billiard rooms; quarrels were frequent, and the reports of the pistol, announcing that some unfortunate man had fallen victim to the well- aimed instrument, were common…dance halls with lewd women lined the streets…
…… (The Mayor) instructed the police officers
To invade and arrest the offenders….before
The judge…..wassurprisedto find before him,
The majority of theCity Council…”
OLD CRIME IN AN OLD CITY
But much of the 19th century crime was of course big city crime; as indeed it was in Chicago: the curious case of Dr. Herman mudgett, alias Henry H. Holmes (1896). After graduating from the University Of Michigan medical school, he embarked upon a life of swindling, torture and murder. The second floor of the lodge building he built at 63rd and Wallace was designed expressly for the purpose of murder, being equipped with gas chambers, of incinerators and other horrible devices, chutes and a variety of inventions to dispose the bodies he killed. He Had about thirty known victims and was suspected of murdering hundreds of others using poison and gas.
In Erik Larson’s book Devil in the White City (VintagePress, 2004), the events are described as taking place at Holmes’ World’s Fair Hotel west of the 1893 World’s Columbia Exposition. There they found a dissection table and a 3,000-degree crematorium. In the book, the smoke, romance, and mystery of the Gilded Age comes alive as never before, forging questions as to the relationship between opulence and grandeur of the Fair and the poverty and the degradation that surrounded it. Larson Said: “The juxtaposition of pride and unfathomable evil struck me as offering powerful insights into the nature of men and their ambitions.” (p. 393)
“Chicago in the 1890s was a time of great strikes, fierce nationalism, social activism and protest, an unpopular foreign invasion and building – of street car lines, factories, meat packing plants, businesses, libraries, and civic and art institutions,” says www.florencekelley.northwestern.edu, “The city’s political and legal culture was characterized by energy, corruption and ambition. During the Pullman strike more than n 5,000 federal troops were encamped along the lake, and the legacies of Haymarket were palpable. The Vice District, the Levee, was as famous as the city’s skyscrapers and elevators…”
“A nineteenth-century Chicagoan looking for a prostitute could easily find one in any of the city’s wide-open vice districts,” says www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org, “Like gambling houses until they were dispersed by raids in 1894, brothels and street walkers clustered in those areas partly because they were convenient for customers, but mainly because of selective law enforcement. Public officials and many private citizens viewed prostitution as a necessary evil that should be segregated into a few poor neighborhoods to protect the rest of Chicago.” Prostitution thrived along the southern edge of the “Loop”, Near West Side and Near North Side. The brothels paid bribes to police, politicians, and politically connected crime bosses.
“The Levee”, on the Southside, was one of the nation’s largest vice districts, controlled by imaginable late-century crime bosses and racketeers: There was alderman “Bathhouse John” Coughlin and Michael “Hinky Dink” Kenna. “The residential slums began about a mile west and south of the loop. The poor, many of them immigrants, lived in old wooden houses standing cheek by jowl with factories and bars or in once elegant apartments and mansions converted into rooming houses and mansions converted into rooming houses and then tenements,” says Alice Sinkevich in AIA Guide To Chicago, “Some lots were filled front to back with ram shackled frame houses; others became refuse pits in front of houses that had not been elevated when the street grade was raised. Many of the tiny units had no bathroom or kitchen. While other neighbors were adopting electricity and steam heat, the slums had yet to see gas lighting or coal stoves in every room.”
The working conditions for the thousands employed at the Union Stock yards were terrible. Laborers on the killing – floors had to work amidst the stench and piercing shrieks of animals being slaughtered while standing on blood-soaked floors. They worked long hours – usually ten to twelve a day – in temperatures exceeding 100 degrees in the summertime. Employees could beg wages low and withhold benefits due to the ready supply immigrant workers desperate to earn a living. The situation is adequately described in Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. Carl Sandburg chose the word “brawling” to describe Chicago of this period.
These are just conditions of the 19th century as existed in America and England; to get into similar or worse conditions in othercountries (the disease, crime, poverty) are beyond the limits of my time. Nor have we really gotten into the mountain of facts about the matters of disease, plague, poverty, and destruction in 19TH century America: Such as the Civil War (61,800 dead with direct costs of 3.3 billion dollars to the confederacy).
Others: World War 1 (20 million injured and dead with direct and indirect costs of 337 billion dollars); World War 2 (over 60 million injured and dead and total costs of 2,091.3 billion dollars); the influenza pandemic of 1918 (20 to 40 million dead): “The most devastating epidemic in recorded history”. So on.
And then we come to another topic that Schroth feels is “too esoteric,” too “off the rails” to be included in his ‘perfect’ worldview of science, religion, and humanity: that of the continuing and even growing number of UFO reports, or UAO (Unidentified AERIAL) objects.
THE UFO QUESTION
UFOS: TO BE OR NOT TO BE?
The argument as to whether UFOs exist as “spaceships” from outside the earth or from Nazi strongholds — or exist as myths or delusion or outright “lies,” is somewhat immaterial to me. I tend to approach this subject as I do other subjects; as a writer who tries to write an interesting story. That can mean I can write or might write from a certain “point of view” and that can depend on multiple factors. I recall attending a speech or rally at a north St. Louis church in which Dick Gregory and fellow members spoke of the black man’s plight in society. I wrote a short piece from the speaker’s point – of – view as best I could. Does that mean I agree 100% with everything they said? Not necessarily. And that is the way I usually write; I keep a little part of me to myself and my own private feelings — that doesn’t always come out in my format. And, then again, it does at times; depending on what I write about, how I feel, and to whom I am targeting. Private “feelings” are still allowable in America: even yours. Many writers love to “brain storm” or even listen to gossip: such is life.
And what ”if”you had been born black in the 19th century?[2]
PART III
WE WANT YOU, MR. X
AN INDEPTH ANALYSIS OF MY PERSONAL UFO SIGHTING AND THE SUBJECT IN GENERAL
Since you have directly involved me by referring to my private UFO sighting as a “Mr. X,” it behooves me to make a reply, although I don’t intend to get into a real lengthy debate. UFO debates are and can be a bottomless pit!
The sighting, which may have happened in either the summer of 1959 or 1960 – depending on which date and which showing of the Steve Reeves movie at the Fox Theatre in up-town St. Louis (Hercules Unchained [I believe]) was happening. And the object which I saw was significantly different and bizarre as to its nature as to classify it as a UFO. You refer to the “moon,” “flares,” “floating hoax balloons.” Without getting into a lot of “action-packed” descriptions (which you probably expect of me), allow me to quickly go through your references:
I have noted, this last August, (2018) in fact, that when the moon arises from the horizon, the altitude in the sky starts from zero at the horizon at a certain time at night and can almost reach “high noon” (so-to-speak) azimuth and altitude. Now, the time at which I had my “sighting” (delusion, misconception, and lie) was somewhere about 1200 a.m. or later – – – after midnight. The moon would be at a certain summertime azimuth andaltitude at that time. Comparing the position at which the moon would be in the sky about 12:30 a.m. (give or take some minutes) and comparing how it really was being seen between the branches of a tree (at first) and where that would place it in the sky: It would have to have been in an approximate 9:00 p.m. or 9:30 p.m. position – – – approximately, an estimated, 30-degrees or so in its arc across the sky, as opposed to its almost 80 to 90-degree position it would have been after midnight. No, there could be no doubt it was near or after midnight — but since Schroth feels we are all deluded liars — anything is possible.
THAT OLD DEVIL MOON
(“…it’s that old devil moon, that you stole from the skies…,” Old Devil Moon, Frank Sinatra)
The length of the gangway is short, just the length of the house; and the tree was at the very end of the gangway, it would be assumed that the object had to be not above the tree at a “high noon” position, but about 30 to 50-degrees above the horizon azimuth and altitude along the transit of the meridian, allowing it to be seen through the tree limbs and branches from a gangway position. When viewed in the “clear” portion of the sky —- which appeared to be on the other side of the tree —– it was as if I were viewing it directly north and somewhat ‘above.’ Since that was a “clear patch” of sky directly over my neighbors’ yards and my own, there were no good reference points to measure its size or distance. Even when it disappeared, it did so still in those clear patches of sky, arcing upward – to about the middle of my yard — and then moving away and up until it faded beyond my range of vision at about an 80-degree angle. These are all estimates.
Fifty-years ago are a long period to bring back crystal-clear memories, but I still believe I have one of two striking impressions. At the moment I first saw the object through the branches of the tree there may have been a slight “bounce” to it as if a ping-pong ball was gently placed on fluid water, but since I was not completely focused on it yet, I cannot be sure.
INSTITUTIONALIZED FLARES
You refer to this UFO as a “flare” in a “heavily industrialized” area. Well, first, it just didn’t actlike a flare — even fancy fireworks: and, boy, I’ve seen my share of fireworks. But, yes, it is possible that somebody worked up a sophisticated “fireworks” that were designed to portray a mysterious event: I suppose that is possible. I mean, I just didn’t have my million-dollar instrumentation with me at the moment to catch this thing on film and graph! And who might “they” be that did this time-consuming prank? You once mentioned a hologram: I’ve seen holograms and they look pretty real: I just don’t know how that would work in this instance, if the technology was possible in 1959-1960 to be contemporary with what I saw. And how would they hide the equipment? I sat stunned on my back porch for a long time and did not hear a sound, not even dogs barking, if I recall correctly. But the incompetent boobs that we are, anything………
Schroth questions: A heavily-industrialized-area? Yes, there are businesses in the area (there are businesses all over St. Louis and Carondelet: there was a lumberyard one block away near Tesson street: but that is south of my northward sighting!), but the major ones are southeast of my sighting: the grain silos on the river directly in line with the east view on Primm Street is about a mile or so away; the Titanium Smelting Facility, and the ship fabrication yards which are directly across the railroad tracks from the Titanium facility. That’s about as industrialized as you’ll get in that neighborhood. Those are all at the foot of Davis Street which is southeast of the slightly northeast view I was having. The object did head over to that area but went suddenly straight up into a clear patch of sky until it went out of my range-of-vision — ascending upward at a great rate of speed.
There are barges moving up and down the river, but in the many years of living in Carondelet, I’ve never seen flares being shot off barges in that fashion (unless it was the 4th of July Famous and Barr display: which is quite a distance away and very different). The cardboard factory is west of my sighting, across Michigan Avenue. You don’t think those guys were playing with matches that night, do you? In the slightly northwest area at which I saw this UFO, it was a clear patch of sky. There are some Illinois facilities that are across the Mississippi river, such as the factories in Saguet….but that is up-river across from mid-town St. Louis (there was the Monsanto plant [which produced polychlorinated biphenyl’s into the Dead Creek: you don’t think it came ‘a flaming’ over to Primm Avenue, do ya?]; and there was the W.G. Krummich Plant, the Clayton Chemical property). You don’t think the guys over at those factories were sending flares over to Primm and Minnesota Avenues, do ya? Maybe railroad employees sending off a flare? But why would the flare be an “in-coming” object from the north over Primm and Minnesota Avenues and the railroad tracks are south of Primm by one block at Tesson? Anything is possible, I guess, especially with us lying boobs looking on…
When I first saw this object (or, what seemed to me to be an object) it appeared seemingly motionless beyond the tree at the foot of my gangway to the house. No real motion was noticed until I turned back to take a hard look at it: at that point, as I approached my back steps and I stood to take a strong look, that it appeared to “quicken” into action – – – it now reminds me of the video technique used in some movies were they are showing a “still” frame of a photo (or scene) and then “suddenly” spring it “into action” as supposed real people walking or moving. In that split moment I saw it “hanging” in that clear patch of sky, I was electrified. I had a feeling of tremendum mysterium! It was as if in a moment of time I had come face to face with some unexpected miraculum – keuthonymos! Of course, that is quite personal and quite subjectively psychological, but, hay, you were not there!
“Plastic balloons with candles in them?” The summer of 1960 some pranksters were sitting up these balloons and were caught. If my UFO were in fact these balloons: boys, you are master pranksters! I would say “no”, but how can an incompetent boob be sure? And that poses some other questions: Why 1960? Might it have been 1959? No mention of prank balloons then. But debunkers are so stringent in their rear-view mirror hindsight coaching, they have no leeway for “error”: They cannot be wrong: they “must” be absolutely correct! They have no excuses! They demand absolute perfection of their subjects and themselves.
(And the debunker ‘The Amazing Randi’ confessed to being a homosexual?! And the correct name for Peter Kor is ‘TomComella’. [True-skeptics, on the other-hand, do have excuses!]).
And, why July for my sighting; whynot August, June, or September?
(The question has been asked me: Why have I been so sloppy in my investigation? You are talking about a 15-year-old boy from a lower middle-class family: One family which was hell-bent on destroying itself amidst my personal teenage angst and tragedy (of which you only have been told asmall portion). I was more interested in “surviving” (we are dealing with real, physical danger; not a very protected and loving environment from which you operated); and I had several “personal-mechanisms” to do that. There was no UFO Study Group of Greater St. Louis then. I was much more l interested in girls and roaming the Carondelet neighborhoods with Ronnie Smith or John Moeller orthe SouthBroadway “gang.” I believe at some point I became interested in Space Exploration and, later, model rocketry; but that may have been after age 15. From where should I have gotten this sudden“sophistication”?)
THE SOPHISTICATED INVESTIGATGOR
Why didn’t I go to the newspapers the next day – – – or, in fact, go down to the papers that night? Or call the police?! Or go banging on the neighbors’ doors?! I mean, if I was sincere and not one of the lying boobs? You obviously are not aware, or had missed out, in part, of what are some of the daily activities, and the living, perilous times of a 1960s teenager! You ask: Why did I not mention it to someone immediately! Well, I did: my mother, the very next day. But the problem child that I was, I don’t think my mention carried a lot of weight. I did write it up in my diary — some loose pages tucked away in my desk. But my mother discovered them in one of her snooping ventures and destroyed the pages because it carried descriptions of family fights and horrors. In fact, sometime around 1967 (possibly), once my ‘space’ interest kicked off into a ‘UFO’ interest, I wrote a short piece for a UFO magazine which is now in the garage storage; so unsophisticated, ill-timed, ill-planned, and not according to script.
PART IV
STRUGGLE; NOT SOPHISTICATION
“Life” is not according to script. Not all teenagers in the 1960s were interested or capable of protesting the educational system or taking trips to England to visit Summer Hill College. However, I do believe there is a “NEXUS” here, because – – – – like so many children in the 1960s — – – – you and I (like others) were into the “protest” movement. It was the age of the JFK assassination, the Vietnam War, controlling, and oft-times “destructive” parents (at least, in my case; of course, my family had good times, how else could I have survived?). I know you were involved in personal, private struggles of your own (and still are), and though not identical to mine, we both seemed to carry burdens that were in some way very similar, though not strictly replicate. It led to varying degrees of “fear-flight syndrome” and schizoid behavior. Somewhat of a elongated “post-traumatic stress syndrome” (events compiled over and over in a life-time, in what could be said to be, in retrospect [divorce, controlling power or government structures, menacing and frequently unquestioned and often corrupt “professionals”, etc.]), unrelenting and leading into chronic conditions. I am reminding of the battle-in-life the Nick Nolte character, Wade Whitehouse, had in Paul Schrader’s 1997 film (based on the Russell Bank’s book) Affliction. [I understand you’ve said you don’t believe there is such a thing as mental-illness.]. Persons with a lot of support groups and psychological and physical backing “snap out of it”; wealthy families or families or friends with great resources of love and various kinds of support (what I understand from your reports and photos, you had, relatively speaking, fairly loving and stable parents). Even wealthy-motion-picture-Stars can “come back.” I believe ‘our’ UFO movement came out of this syndrome and era: at least, the UFO movement as we know it: UFO researchers against evil governmental authority: that was attractive to many people. That may have been where we came in; as well as your interest in astronomy and mine in space exploration.)
What did I see? I don’t know! I have some favorite theories; but I would not give them to you to “feed off.” I will say, UFOs were not consciously on my mind at the moment, other than we had just seen a movie about an hour or more earlier on Greek legend. And, of course, 15-years-of-age is a typical age of teenage angst when poltergeist activity has been reported. And as far as UFO sightings go: Mine just isn’t that interesting —- not in a newsheadlines sense —- I’ve read far more interesting UFO cases. Butmine was personal!
(John Wheeler, professor emeritus, Princeton University, has said: “May the universe in some strange sense be ‘brought into being’ by the participation of those who participate?” [G. Zukav, The Dancing Wu LiMasters, pg. 54]. John Allero, M. Ed., MAPP, might add more insight, this way: “When we are not intentional in our thinking, life brings us things from our dark subconscious, whether we consciously want it or not. Jonathan Hardt would say that the elephant overtakes the rider, life brings its own stretch goals…).
That I did not “parade” my UFO sighting at the time and since: this somewhat contradicts the theory that all UFO witnesses run amuck to get publicity. It would seem that you can’t have it both ways – – – unless you are fair-minded and objectively explorative.
UFOs: THE SUBJECT IN GENERAL
UFOS GALORE
In your critique of the UFO situation, you mention and debunk past UFO Greats and their erroneous UFO sightings: Walt Andrus, Leo Wicklinski, and others. I wish you could have confronted them while were living: these people are all dead and have no way to confront you or defend themselves..
I hope you didn’t think I was sending you UFO and other materials to “pick a fight.” It just was my way of sharing and trying to inspire. As far as the UFO Mystery itself: I am just a simple observer that is just as ‘completely’ lost as anyone else. It makes no difference to me whether they are spaceships from mars, another dimension, multi-universes, government projects, etc. In fact, I suspect the Mystery is “multifarious.” There is no “one” explanation; and one aspect is as interesting as another . . . especially to a journalist. Some people have turned it into a religious battle: the Space Ship Doctrine versus the Pure Bunk Debunkers.
I’m afraid it is far too complex to show this kind of if arrogance. And if Bigelow and Vallee want to use their time and money to investigate- – – – it’s their time and money and no government, yet, can stop them! If sociologists like Leon Festinger want to study them as myth, that is real science – – – they should go for it!
Michel Monnerie (What If UFOs Don’t Exist?), Bertrand Meheust (Science-fiction And Flying Saucers) and Carl Gustav Jung all spoke of UFOs as psychological-psychosocial phenomena using pre-existing motifs and memetic selection (though Jung saw more “meat” to UFOs, as an intelligent phenomenon, having synchronisms other than rumor). A description of The Society for Scientific Exploration describes their Ufological interest as varying from fringe proponent David Icke to respected mainstream scientists like Peter A. Sturrock, Jacques Vallee, James E. McDonald, J. Allen Hynek or Auguste Meesen, some of whom argue that UFO reports are as worthy of study as any topic, and deserve case by case analysis using the scientific method: and not all ufologists–scientists believe that UFOs are necessarily extraterrestrial spacecraft, or even that they are objective physical phenomena. Even those UFO cases that are exposed as hoaxes or found to be delusions or misidentification may still be worthy of serious study from a psychosocial point of view.
(It may be out of this “soup” that some of our 20th century “marvels” and scientific inventions have appeared: Certainly, our Space-Program. Recently it was announced that our Army had obtained a 4 million dollar ___ Carnegie-Mellon-“electroencephalography”-program ___ at the United States University of California-Irving to invent “thought helmets” for jet pilots to communicate by brainwave [sounds a lot like Richard Shaver-type material such as the Telog, Ray Machines, Elder-Mech, Stim Rays, and {guess what?} “Thought-machines”]).
Similarly, Winston Wu, Graduate from California State University, had this to say on Carl Sagan’s approach: “Carl Sagan, though an amazing thinker, was wrong here. Extraordinary claims merely require evidence. Good evidence has to exist before we can draw conclusions, to be sure, but certainly not extraordinary evidence….legitimate science is conducted by examining all evidence, not by myopic rushes to judgment.”
Diana Palmer Hoyt describes it this way: “The UFO seems to bear a closer resemblance to problems in meteorology than in physics. The phenomena are observed occur episodically, are not reproducible, and in large part, are identified by statistical gathering of data for possible organization into patterns. They are not experiments that can bereplicated at will at thelaboratory bench under controlled conditions.”
What is wrong with a multifaceted study? Life is multifaceted: why pull that string on the bottom of life’s page and try to force all those dots into a straight line? We won’t see that “STRAIGHT LINE” for millions of years, if ever. It is not the “scientific method” or the scientific community that should be faulted (right or wrong, they’lldo what they have to do), but individual maniacs with a deprived sense of value that parade as “pure scientists.”
Micah Hanks spoke on this in a fairly well-rounded book UFOs: Reframing the Debate (www.whitecrowbooks,com; info@ whitecrowbooks.com – 2017): “Modern skepticism can, I think, be summarized in many instances, as an ideology, around which a social movement has been built – one that today also runs tangent with atheism – and as a paradoxically evangelical attitude about the supremacy of science above all other form of knowledge.” (p. 74.)
Also, in UFOs; Reframing the Debate, Joshua Cutchin expanded on this same topic: “Science is nothing more than a set of questions and tools to evaluate reality honestly and objectively, whereas materialism is an assumption based on the notion that only things replicable in a labeling as ‘real’ … confirming the objective reality of telepathy, remote viewing, clairvoyance, or any other psi effect would devastate our understanding of natural laws, which would in turn cripple the surety with which the scientific method operates It would shatter materialism.” (pp. 57- 58.)
M.J Banias also added the following observation on so-called ‘science’ in the same book UFOs: Reframing the Debate: “We have given ‘science’ a sort of anthropomorphic consciousness, but science is not a literal ‘thing,’ rather it is a collection of socially accepted ideological constructs, methods and mechanisms, financially controlled by economics and political forces.” (p. 137.)
Speaking of antiqued, pretentious, and unrealistic views of what ‘science’ actually ‘is,’ you’re not going to claim, as some do, that Hitler was always on a quest for “pure science”- – – his “pure race” ideas: the Reich’s talk about “pure-science”, “pure-books”? Hitler was ill! History says he was suffering from Huntington’s disease and there apparently was a linage of mental illness.
(Hitler’s Reich has its origins in Guido von List and Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels “theozoology”; Madame Blavatsky’s “The Order of The New Templars”. Many of his SS and military were steeped in esoteric, occult practices, such as the Thule Society. It was called the Black Order, and The Vril Society: spoke of the “vril force”. Heinrich Himmler and Herman Goering considered Hitler as the ‘King of Fear’. The Edelweiss Society spoke of the Nordic Master Race, the Aryans, The Thule Society, and Rudolf Glaver, Dietrich Eckardt. Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels spoke of “castration” of subordinates and victims).
Some other miscellaneous comments: yes, animal mutilations exist, cats, dogs, rabbits, cattle – – – – no way around it —— cow hearts cut out and put in a bucket, mutilated cows left with scalpels, on and on. What you would like to see, and perhaps are doing, is trying to frame the mystery as “Mutilations As An ‘unknown’” versus The Grand Debunker Gang (in regard to and as much as they are against ‘space ships’, ‘ghosts’, etc.): and that, I, or other people won’t do. That is giving into your jaded psychological Doctrines (just like John Sxxxxxxxx has his perverted Doctrines on the other end of the scale).
Yes, there are and were real stealth craft made by terrestrial governments: And on some craft, there are even patents in the government patent offices.
You comment that in the James Fox production on UFOs called Out OfThe Blue, that the name of Major Hector Quintanilla was ‘misspelled’. If we are going to hold the UFO community guilty of such High Crimes then we will have to do the same to Dave Schroth and one of his Debunking Mentors: Phillip Klass: In The Skeptics UFO Newsletter, September1,1998 ,Klass “misspells” presumably as “…..presum –ably (sic).”
PART V
THE LEE POPE SAGA AND ‘OTHER’ CONTINUED
WATCH OUT, I SEE A STEVE CONTRADICTION
However, I can greatly sympathize with Dave Schroth’s positions on some matters, or I would be contradicting myself. The paranormal or Fortean field of study is rift with deceptions, absurdities, unfounded religious belief (thebelievers) and fraud. No doubt about it. And I agree with Schroth that after so much exposure, one can only become loathsome of the topic and its pranksters. When this becomes obvious to me: I get quite upset. It is a department of study of its own dimensions. If a UFO organization presents itself – more or less – as a fact-finding, scientific organization but continually is side-tracked into obvious sessions of story-telling and even science-fiction and invention: they obviously are not fulfilling their charter to the public ———- only to the their perverted or questionable egos. They can be basically nice, sometimes eccentric, people or they can be stinkers in disguise. But aren’t we all that way?
Several incidents arose in my meetings with the Study Group that, as Dave Schroth, would agree, would cast doubt on their sincerity. Pope, on a visit to his home, introduced me to a neighbor who, at one point, almost as if prompted, began to speak about his personal UFO sighting of a “boomerang” UFO. I noticed that both had smirks and grins on their faces at the telling.There had been several incidents that seemed suspiciously insincere. One “field investigation” to a family who reported several Fortean incidents in mass (a one-day incident), including a Bigfoot sighting, here in St. Louis County, almost seemed “staged” and even rehearsed. And, yes, I recall the barely subdued grins once again!
The UFO field certainly seems dull or even bleak without fresh, dramatic UFO and Fortean cases coming in every day, and the stench of overlaid lies and fabrication amidst large clumps of “play acting”, makes the subject very difficult and risky (VoodooHistories, David Aronovitch – 2009: recommended with reservations). Most people have turned their backs on the topic because of this. There are the “Repeater” Phenomena, where persons continually have Fortean events, causing great suspicion. John Sxxxxxxxx may be one of those as his life is a long string of weird paranormal events, nonstop, almost always lacking in hard evidence. Most of them are not very believable (not that I can’t sympathize with that plight having been a ‘victim’ of a UFO sighting myself).
One example: several years ago the Rev. Sxxxxxxxx had a Parapsychological Subcommittee of the Ufosgogs that would meet at his home; at that time on Miami Avenue. At this particular time, Schroeder was conducting sessions of the supposed hypnotic regression of a member in an alleged “ET” contact. I invited Tim Zell, a professional psychologist and a trained hypnotist to witness the affair. It was not very long into the session before Tim Zell exposed the fallacious hoax that it was – – – – – Sxxxxxxxx and ‘company’ were at a loss for words that their ploy fell through. The ‘minutes’ of the meeting weakly mentions having better “controls” of any experiments in the future. Good suggestion: but I have never seen it practiced or hoax prevented in the Ufosgogs. Recently, Reverend Sxxxxxxxx had visions that the late Dr. J. Allen Hynek was a “Reptilian” monster in disguise (I wonder how professional paleontologists would handle the factson the reality of Reptilian bodiesnever being foundin the last 100,000 years?); Sxxxxxxxx oftensays he gets his information from god! The “scientific controls” need to be greased and shined-up and brought back out of storage!
That UFO Cults are heavily weighted in various forms of psychobabble and esoteric mannerisms is true, as Leon Festinger and co-workers will testify (When ProphecyFails, University of Minnesota Press) in their 1956 expose’ of a UFO cult. These “groups” are rift with what I suspect would be ample medical histories in various psychiatric files: Histrionic or Schizotypal personality disorder, Paranoid-narcissistic personalities, superiority personality syndromes, antisocial personalities, fantasy-prone minds, confabulation, fantastical-myth-mania, capgras delusion, fregoli delusion, delusional disorder (yes, yes, I’m in there somewhere), so on and so on: but most are just average street people with varying degrees of neurosis and stress (count me in that bunch!).
There is a list of psychiatric syndromes that could very well come into play in the topic of Fortean events; and never make mention outside of the doctor’s office. There was a study dated 2001 called Fantasy Proneness And Other PsychologicalCorrelates Of UFO Experiences byGow, Laurie, Popper, Powell and Basterfield (almost sounds like the name of a law firm that I know: Buoy, Wee, Cheetham and Howe, LLP), Which suggests that those individuals with a high threshold for fantasy (like fiction writers and science-fiction writers) are more apt to have UFO experiences (and that does not necessarily denote fabrication!): opens a whole dimension for study (not myopic censorship, debunking or avoidance).
But Dave Schroth has stated in pass letters and correspondence that ‘mental illness’ and a lot of psychiatry is another one of those ‘myths’ and ‘lies’ that his private doctrine attacks and disagrees with (and the scam of psychiatry has been noted by others), which usually leaves Schroth in a bit of a quandary and more incongruity.
CRITICS AND DEBUNKERS ARE CRAZY TOO
(At LEAST, They have the same identical illnesses and faults)
That paranormal participants (and, yes, even debunkers: Phyllis Glade noted in her “I See By The Papers” column in Fate Magazine that a chemical was medically discovered in the bodies of ‘debunkers’ that might be a clue as to their cynicism) will admit to these shortcomings (that undoubtedly affect their viewpoints) is doubtful. As one person, having schizoid personality disorder, confessed: “I went from being arecluse who didn’t give a fuck about others to a genial, appreciated successful guy who still doesn’t give a fuck about others, but pretends he does – and peoplefall for it…I basically have two personalities inside me…a selfish, narcissistic prick who doesn’t give a shit about others…then…my Coping Personality…tofunction on the outside world….was able to infiltrate the texture of society….” www.reddit.com/schizoid.
Hilary Freeman wrote in Psycho Bosses on The Loose, “Not all psychopaths areviolent criminals and fewer still have a desire to eat you for dinner. Many are highly successful businessmen and women, lawyers, academics, politicians, doctors and teachers. Psychopaths wear suits too; in fact, there could be one in your office”. Robert Hare, professor of psychology at the University of Vancouver, says: “These individuals are every bit as egocentric, callous and manipulative as the average criminal psychopath.” John Clarke, psychologist at the University of Sydney, refers to “serial bullying” rather than “serial killing.” (One could also add “serial hoaxing,” “serial hating,” “serial lying,” and so forth).
And the ‘media’ misrepresentation can go hand-in-hand with the above as well as I witnessed in Elsberry, Missouri in the 70s as the ‘hysteria’ by UFO enthusiasts and some public concerning cattle mutilations and UFOs.
(Might as well include my TIA [“mini-stroke”] episode from back in 1973-1974 at this point, wherein I described a daytime sleep [though I was not asleep] paralysis and “tunnel” travel [in a room with bustling kids, a house-cleaning wife, and streaming sunlight through uncovered windows]: that was a weird medical state! I described that episode in detail to Doctor Eric J. Lenze, Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Washington School of Medicine, St. Louis, and he said it was ”not” a TIA [maybe some other kind of crazies; but not a TIA]: Just another “speed bump” on the roadbefore “armchair paranormal debunking”!)
Says the RRR Group in www.ufocon.blogspot.com: “Displaying everything UFO-related won’t ever get to the heart of the UFO mystery. The panoply of flying saucer detritus merely showcases how discombobulated the UFO community is, with an obvious lacuna in serious research.”
Dave Schroth has said in a past bibliography that he had considered past members and some late members of the Ufosgogs as his friends (written in 2008), and that Isuppose that is true enough (and it is true enough for me as well for I recall some affection and affinity with them) – – – – but, apparently, they were not friendly enough to prevent him from questioning their integrity as far and in regards to their respective UFO sightings or Fortean beliefs: these he has later questioned and even attacked repeatedly.; strange friendships.
THE LEE POPE SAGA
His friendship with “Lee Pope” may have been built on more than a UFO connection: and these all seem very conflicting and contradictory: Pope was a strict right-wing Roman Catholic (Schroth does not believe in any religion at all or even God); likewise Christian had a personal UFO sighting, along with his son Terry, the whole family – including son Terry — were alleged to have been involved in several Fortean, even Satanic, events (Schroth disowns any belief in any Forteanisms). The only possible true kinship may have been Christian’s vehement and virago “anti-Semitism” (Christian may have been making allusions to Super-rich Jewish descendants and families, I am not sure). One time, I recall Pope marching into the Study Group engaging Leo Wicklinski in a conversation in which he announced that the “Jews” were behind the Flying Saucers! I spoke to Christian several times by which he announced the same topic and other things about the Jewish “takeover” and the theory that the Jewish Holocaust did not happen (but Ikeep reading something about, like, 9 million were murdered). Now, these are beliefs that Schroth may “not” have been so tightly against!
But Schroth shouldn’t have liked his “friends” to hoax, spawn weak theories, or be incompetent (for Schroth has said he is against all these things). Schroth speaks in sardonic tones when he speaks against UFOs as spaceships (he implicates, as well, there should be “no” serious study). Yet when the late Leo Wicklinski, his good friend, spoke about the July 27, 1978 Clora Evelyn WinscherUFO case (in which an, alleged, pursuing UFO hit her car and left several dents in the rear of her automobile), at a room-filled Sunday Ufosgogs meeting circa 1978, Leo announced this case asevidence of extraterrestrial spaceships thousands of years in advance of terrestrial technology (to the hysterical applause of enthusiastic on-lookers): was thisnot in direct confrontation and contradiction with Schroth’s core belief?
Ufosgogs members Rosetta and Dick Holmes, also declared as friends, were practitioners of the extraterrestrial theory and had intimately sponsored the late Betty Hill (of the famous September 19, 1961, UFO abduction case) lecture of which she was speaker at the Forest Park Community college in the 1970s.
Dave Schroth has said in a past bibliography that he had considered past members and some late members of the Ufosgogs as his friends (written in 2008), and that I suppose that is true enough(and it is true enough for me as well for I recall some affection and affinity with them) – – – – but, apparently, they were not friendly enough to prevent him from questioning their integrity as far and in regards to their respective UFO sightings or Fortean beliefs: these he has later questioned and even attacked repeatedly; Strange friendships.
His friendship with Lee Pope (not his real name; Pope was a Study Group member who was vital in the groups incorporation, I disguise him and his family to protect against law suits and to abate shame to them) may have been built on more than a UFO connection: and these all seem very conflicting and contradictory: Pope was a strict right-wing Roman Catholic (Schroth does not believe in any religion at all or, apparently, as even having a belief in God [in the 60s he was labeling himself as an atheist]); likewise Pope had a personal UFO sighting, along with his son Larry (not his real name), the whole family – including son Larry — were alleged to have been involved in several Fortean, even Satanic, events (Schroth disowns any belief in any Forteanisms; at least his dark diatribes of anything related to the topic gives that impression: he even told me at one time he was an Atheist). The only possible true kinship Wild had with Pope then or since may have been with pope’s vehement and virago “anti-Semitism” (Pope may have been making allusions to Super-rich Jewish descendants and families only and not average Jews, I am not sure; some of the literature he was reading and had shown me struck me as somewhat Hitlerian: he demonstrated a strong kinship with Hitler’s hatred of Jews and the cold strength and power that he brought to Germany as he took control). One time, I recall Pope marching into the Study Group engaging Leo Wicklinski in a conversation in which Pope announced that the “Jews” were behind the Flying Saucers! I spoke to Pope several times at which moments he announced the same topic and other things about the Jewish “takeover” and the theory that the Jewish Holocaust did not happen (but I keep reading something about, like, 9 million Jews were murdered). Now, these are beliefs that Schroth may “not” have been so tightly against!
Schroth summarized that Lee Pope, as far as he can remember, shied away from the ET hypothesis as a weak theory: in actuality, in many conversations I had with Lee Pope, “ran the gamut” of all kinds of theories and possibilities, including Jewish-Zionist-Cabal-inventions, and secret government inventions, as well as other realm dimensions, and all kinds of possibilities. He had a theory for everything, including his own son having been demon-possessed.
What could have been behind Schroth’s quizzical pattern that allowed his incongruousness in associating with an avidly traditionalist Roman Catholic who believed in the customary miracles, God, doctrines of which Schroth vehemently rebuked on the one hand.[3] What Schroth also failed to utilize or even recognize was that Steve Erdmann had multiple visits and episodes with Lee Pope over the years, going into as much as interviewing Pope, visiting and having many general associations with him as did Wild, maybe even more so; so much so that the Lee Pope story does not end just yet on the above mentioned few curiosities mentioned Schroth describes as a staunch and upright example of the century’s emblem of the best “good citizen” does not quite hold-up. This “pretense” is ‘not’ entirely true, and is not identical to the Lee Pope I knew.
But the ‘Lee Pope’ mentioned several paragraphs earlier, was still highlighted even further by additional oddities. Schroth, as a purported strict atheist, seemed in the manufacture for incongruous and strange ‘bed fellows’ for Schroth (who emphatically denounces the ultimate reality of anything at all of the spiritual, supernatural or religious nature) and those he esteems as associates, for Schroth is constantly on a mission, every moment of the day, enduring, unrelenting, to discover those enemies that are ‘improper,’ “nonfactual,” “imperfect,” and have been “contaminated” by the Fabien conspiracy (and other societal contaminations, at least, as he sees them from his arm-chair diagnostics) and at almost any cost.[4]
It is nice and perhaps wonderful that Schroth had become friends to Lee Pope, as Schroth’s discourses praise Pope highly, and that he deliberately marks Pope’s military career with esteem, and that the Popes treated Schroth so kindly and fondly, but this ultimately says nothing at all about the underlying stark reality of the baser side of the family and the discordant and conflicting practices they held that are so in variance with the ending and final Doctrine of Schroth’s Cultist and private peaching. It is nice that Pope’s wife, Marian (not the real name), baked cookies and served meals to him in friendship (they did the same to me as well), but this should not, in the framework of Schroth’s stringent, unyielding, crass, Doctrine of “perfectionism” allow one iota of leeway of divergence from the stark reality that he has enshrined himself in.
Likewise, I too had many friendly conversations with members of the Ufosgogs, and if compatibility were any criteria for putting these people as one-off, icons of virtue, merely because of their friendliness, then most of those—as well as many in the so-called UFO community— should receive the same stamp of approval and almost deification.
And that Lee Pope had served in the military and was a veteran, should in no way, abate or delineate from the millions of other men who served in and perhaps gave their lives in the service of their countries; again, not one iota. This includes both my brother and half-brother and my cousin George Banjak—and myriad others. My grandfather, John Bork, served in the submarine division in the German Navy, while he was no UFO organization-organizer; I feel his military service is likewise honorable and praiseworthy.
Spirituality and a host of other religious sentiments: Schroth was fervidly opposed to these. What could have been the kinship between these elements that appeared to be so incongruous? The answer is: shared Cultist-beliefs[5], almost in concert and replica, if not identical, but certainly in large part. Both Schroth and Pope were sterling attackers of the “Fabian-sponsored” Communist conspiracy to over-throw America (which I am also a dissentient, but in modified degrees and severity outside of any Skeptic or radical Debunking-of-Society cult), as well as the conspiracy of Jewish-aristocrats (which some presently are labeling Zionists) to help destruct authentic American culture.
In many discussions with Pope, Erdmann discovered that Pope had a wide-interest in a large range of topics that were very “‘speculative,” “‘visionary,” “‘on-going,” and “intrigued,” and, what be termed by some, as “wide-eyed”— “Mysteries.” They usually reflected major paranormal topics floating around at the time. At one interval, as example, when the book and movie THE EXORCIST was popular, Pope divulged, under strict secrecy, story in this matter. I told him I was going to write on that topic for BEYOND that his son ‘Larry’ (an alias to protect him) had “also” become possessed by demons and he had a personal REALITY Magazine and asked if I could interview him; yes, I could, but he and his family could not be identified (and they weren’t in the article at all). Unfortunately, for Schroth (and Pope), the whole interview was “taped” on cassette tape of which I still have and was not destroyed in a later storage debacle.
But Schroth shouldn’t have liked his “friends” to hoax, spawn weak theories, or be incompetent (for Schroth has said he is against all these things). Schroth speaks in sardonic tones when he speaks against UFOs as spaceships (he implicates, as well, there should be “no” serious study).[6] Yet when the late Leo Wicklinski, his good friend, spoke about the July 27, 1978 Clora Evelyn Winscher UFO case (in which an, alleged, pursuing UFO hit her car and left several dents in the rear of her automobile), at a room-filled Sunday Ufosgogs meeting circa 1978, Leo announced this case as evidence of extraterrestrial spaceships thousands of years in advance of terrestrial technology (to the hysterical applause of enthusiastic on-lookers): was this not in direct confrontation and contradiction with Schroth’s core belief?
The crime here, if that might be used as a descriptive term, is not that Schroth ‘liked’ or spoke of these people in ‘friendly’ terms, it is the incongruousness and contradictory nature of those relationships that cause one to take pause: 1) Schroth has a deep hatred of those who hold these beliefs (and there can be no doubt that he has spoken so vividly and disparagingly about this), 2) he abhors supernaturalism, religion and such supposed ‘myths’ with a deep passion, 3) yet, he associates with these ‘infidels’ and ‘enemies’ as if they were somehow comrades or, in fact, were indirectly or secretly upholding his Luddites’ Radical- Skeptical-Cultist Religion.
It is a shame that Schroth has built a wall of complete alienation between society at large and his tortured, private beliefs, as society does not actually operate in this way in every instance.
Which all goes to prove that friendships can be stronger than politics or beliefs (and it can also go to show how we can have strange bed-fellows; which is a goodthing)!
THE KING OF INCONGRUITY
(Thomas A, Fairbanks, Jacques Vallee, and Masking)
In Schroth’s campaign for his private concept of “perfectionism” he overlooks or does little accounting on citizens’ Right to research, use their personal thinking brains, create a vast historical library of written material, and read and collect data, in his shrouding it all, somehow, under a death mask of worthlessness and Fabian-Communist deception and ‘savage’ uselessness; this he again did in one specific instance when I wrote about letters I had received from a Thomas A. Fairbanks who claimed in the 1960s to have known and associated with some of the John Kennedy conspirators (responding to an article in my Dissenter/Disinter Magazine back then), inflamed in his vitriolic abuse, calling me, once again, a liar.
I have in my possession about three hand-written letters from a Thomas A. Fairbanks who was quoted from those letters to tell of his episodes with those that are connected in the Kennedy Assassination case back in the 1960s, telling of a Church that held several homosexuals and worked behind the scenes to aid people that were involved. Thomas Fair banks was eventually mentioned by Joan Mellen in her biographical book on Jim Garrison in a chapter number 18 titled “Upheaval,” about 26 paragraphs into that chapter (A FAREWELL TO JUSTICE; Jim Garrison, JFK’s Assassination, And The Case That Should Have Changed The World, Potomac Books, 2007).
In a series of 2008 letters, Schroth removes all doubt about his invidious and deeply penetrating hatred of mankind, which he states unequalviably as relentless hatred and philosophical venom for people (see URL article with footnote no. 9):[7]
In later 2018 comments, Schroth expanded his Cultism into several other attacks and inaccuracies, one aimed directly at the noted researcher Jacques Vallee as unscientific and apparently ‘loose’ for using the Willamette Pass Oregon UFO photo as a possible indication of a UFO ‘dematerializing’ as published in a 1974 issue of PSYCHIC Magazine. Fortunately, nineteen years later the case was exposed by Vallee in the Society for Scientific Exploration (of which Vallee is a council member) in the 1993 Vol. 7- No. 2 issue of the Journal of Scientific Exploration. Twenty-five years later, in 2018, Schroth is still mistakenly using an already exposed case in 1993 to further attack Vallee, at which point Schroth should have long before recognized the SFSE’s discovery.
As a ‘perfectionist,’ Schroth has no excuse for such mistakes,[8] especially since his whole existence and extraordinaire Cultist-Skeptic-Religion is deeply fastened to it.[9]
Apparently, Schroth has no qualms in overlooking the several UFO cases that Vallee has exposed and debunked himself in his investigations. Neither is Schroth knowledgeable of the time, expense and number of UFO cases that Vallee has readily investigated, far outpacing anything that Schroth has accomplished or even comes close to.
To make matters worse, Schroth speaks on behalf and uses the so-called “mainstream science” concept as a ‘tool’ or ‘club’ to erroneously bash those whom he disagrees with. He is inaccurate on several counts: 1) the nature of scientific inquiry is expanding daily in an ever-growing and widening hemisphere of newly accomplished facts and theories by multiple scientists in the science and academic fields, and 2) quite a few of those ‘scientists’ are legally interested in the subject of UFOs in a multiple line of disciplines and study.
Schroth’s use of some mysterious ‘mainstream’ (used as a weapon only when he needs to cover his tracks or pretenses) seems often frivolous at times, in as much as these authors, many of the ones he acknowledges, are, in fact, considered ‘outside the main stream’ and not really accepted by major cabals or Think Tanks. Authors such W. Cleon Skousen, Gary Allen, John A. Stormer, and others, while frequently quoted are not necessarily held in esteem by the majority of Schroth’s supposed “solid, strong, main stream.”
Perhaps, which all goes to prove, that friendships can be stronger than politics or beliefs (and it can also go to show how we can have strange bed-fellows, which is a good thing)!
Iranian soccer players matched against American teams, and despite intense competition, they had developed intimate and deep friendships that went beyond the sport; as one of the Iranian players said later: “you don’t let politics get in the way of good friendship.” (Among friends, you tend to loosen your behavior and act more spontaneously because of the bond that may have developed; this can be a “trap” depending on how deceptive your ‘partner’ really is: and why trust in marriage or other partnerships are so vital and so exhausting)
(on the doctrinal or political horizons, I suppose I am an Agnostic; politically, I like to call myself an “Independent” with leanings towards the Conservative side – sometimes toward the Right, but not very far. In fact, and usually depending on individual case-histories, I can sympathize with people on the left – the ‘common’ person – I am and have been there – I have no reason to not empathize in their plight: I am not a relic of past elite aristocracy. You, as compared, seem a staunch Conservative Right-wing Aristocrat (and religious Skeptic Cultist) that deems the masses incapable of uplifting themselves to higher levels (except by nature of their given hard-work and destiny), and they must drown in their putrid ignobility as a lesson to all. And who can argue with this absolute correctness? All of this can be said to be subjective malarkey; this is why “friendships” can’t be based on such polarized and inflamed, diametrically opposed positions – and true friendship, comradeship and love must exceed such limits.) As John F. Kennedy said:
“If now we cannot end our differences, at least we can make the world safe for diversity. For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal….Best we shall also do our part to build a world of peace, where the weak are safe and the strong are just. We are not helpless before that task or hopeless of its success.”
PART IV
THE GOOD OLE’ DAYS VERSUS MODERNISM
(More Schrothian concepts, doctrines and biases)
Schroth has sent out letters and opinions on movies and television and different societal mannerisms and functions of modern-day society and how it has degenerated, especially since the 1960s — but, then again, generally somewhere from the late 1880s through the 1920s and on into the 1960s. I recall one day we were at the Record Exchange (a record, CD, disc and DVD shop) on Hampton Avenue in St. Louis, and I was trying to help him select a movie, unfortunately from a very current date, and he shrieked like a wounded animal “but I am child of the 60s!”Dave had and still has some very stringent and psychologically deep philosophies that have been developed over the years as his personal belief-system – – – a form of anthropophobia, however, makeshift to his personal liking based on books and articles he is reading at the time. This is somewhat different from my glossophobia: which is very real at times and is not a product of any “psychological play-acting” on my part (and play-acting may be part of the problem in this topic). Some of his complaints I agree with, but not in the depth and dark psychology (extreme?) he has developed. I have watched Dave on occasion “struggle” with a decision to exchange a DVD he was returning for the supernatural-themed movie the MOTHMAN PROPHECIES, but apparently deciding not to exchange it because it collided with his deep beliefs. As inmost religious belief, everything has to be carefully andsoulfully weighed. I have watched Dave with the same struggle after winning a raffle at a Citizens’ Council picnic and he torturously wrangled mentally to decide (as to whether) to take a copy of one of David Icke’s paranormal books on ‘reptilians’ offered at the gift table.
Certainly, I am exaggerating the drama of these incidents; any person will do expressions such as the above at any given time. But we pause to highlight this activity in this case because Dave Schroth would also micro-analyze the behavior of others this way. But this seems to change at times, as well.
His complaint that modern movies are not only bad but almost evil is both true and not so true. His approach is almost Christian Fundamentalist (almost puritan) — but Schroth disavows religion. (Side-bar: The Pilgrim Thanksgiving celebration of 1621 was described as a big three-day party, breaking racial barriers, “…all slumbering discontents they smothered with common rejoicings.”, W. Deloss Love, Jr.) And I definitely will agree that some movies seem so much better than others: that is for a variety of reasons and personal tastes. The one complaint seems to be the use of a lot of modern technology in movies rather than “pure acting” – – – like in the “oldie but goodies” movies (there is that allusion to “pure” again). And this also seems tied in to one’s personal preference, guided howbeit from our subjective psychological mayhem. But, hey!, we are also children of our present milieu: and I don’t think Schroth has been able to escape that entirely, no matter how much his “play-acting” or phobias comes into action.
Another area that seems to be heavy on his mind is that of public etiquette and “manners” —- over and above what might be termed “common street behavior”: perhaps from that Carondelet Finishing School or perhaps from some Victorian Age of which he may be reincarnated (but not in a religious sense, no). I am afraid I did not have that opportunity.
My role models were scattered and somewhat distant. My one brother was a typical teen-ager who was employed as a bus driver right before the time he died – – – it now reminds me of the HONEYMOONERS in the 60s television program with Jackie Gleason.[10] He often talked about Ahmad Jamal as one of his jazz musician favorites, and I often remember his listening to jazz on the radio (i.e., Poinciana, 1963). He liked to draw and paint. Other than that, he was a typical, affable and likeable, 1950s teenager: with “buddies” and girlfriends and a pompadour hairstyle and even those dark teenage moods.
It was a time when the ‘Beatnik Era’ had appeared as a curiosity (….a new trend analogous to the influential Lost Generation….[there was the] Dobie Gillis television show….The beat philosophy was generally counter cultural and ant-materialistic and it stressed the importance of bettering one’s inner self over and above material possessions….antipathy towards capitalism….much of the beat culture represented a negative stance rather than a positive one: It was animated more by a vague feeling of cultural and emotional displacement, dissatisfaction and yearning….”) en.wikipedia.org. And, I must say: many of the kids, and me, were influenced by this idea in the 50s and 60s [ I recall Ronnie Smith and I had our little ‘club’ room in his basement where we played a jazz radio station and drew ‘art].
[I miss my brother something terrible at times!] My other half-brother (much like a real brother) was a strong role-model and ended up with a great amount of success as a Manager at Caterpillar Tractor in Illinois. [He is a proudand good brother!] Next door neighbors Ronald and Phyllis Smith were fairly good models: Ronnie Smith now owns and operates a successful printing firm with over 200 employees (or so I amtold; I believe I located Ronnie’s business: R. L. Smith Printing Company, Inc., 4030 Simon Road, Youngstown, Ohio. 44512-1320 [10 employees: 1 million dollars in business a year]) and Phyllis Smith is now on the cast of the famous and successful television program – THE OFFICE. The flip side to this card (outside of a teenage girlfriend which I adored and may have been my salvation), is twisted, sometimes sordid, a somewhat darker side. No one told me of or led me to the door of the Carondelet South Side Finishing School.
MEMORIES: THE WAY WE WERE
Barbara Streisand highlighted these longings (as did Morris Albert in his song Feelings). Streisand sang them in her rendition of The Way We Were (..…Memories, may be beautiful and yet….what what’s too painful to remember we simply choose to forget…..so it’s the laughter, we will remember, whenever we remember, the way we were….) She even sang it more poignantly in Memory (..…..Memory – all alone in the moonlight. I can dream of the old days….Life was beautiful then…..I remember the time I knew what happiness was…Let the memory live again….”)
I sometimes long for the memories of my childhood — the good portion — “this” nostalgia is all that I have; and aside from that, “it is still me” (My mother trying to teach me to polka in our kitchen on Michigan Avenue while she was busy fixing our usual – full-bloomed – Sunday dinner [a booming voice on the radio with a heavy German brogue announcing records on the German Hour radio program]. The summertime, back-yard barbeques with various laughing and friendly aunts and uncles and relatives arriving — roll out the barrel! — [when my mother danced the polka {and I’ve seen her in action} it was what she called “authentic German Polka”: flipping her heels and giving a “yip! Yip! Yip!” hollers….and so much more……..).
When we talk about the nostalgia of earlier days, that haunting and mysterious feeling about past lives and homesteads, we are also talking about their “spiritual” dimensions – a feeling of “saudades” – we are also speaking of those people whose lives are composite of all their beliefs, faiths, loves, longings, mishaps in life. When we travelled about Carondelet looking at relics of times past, the styles of their lives: this is not just a cold, aloof, dissecting “chopped liver” approach to the past, but one that sees the totality of those lives, even in intimate detail; their “longings”; their hopes; their aspirations; their religions. Yes, many of them had religious beliefs that they strongly upheld and it is often embedded in to the architecture of their homes. It could be said that these ingredients go into cases of “hauntings.”
This takes a certain amount of human empathy. It is an embodiment of what they were and may still be and how they synchronize with the extent of history as a whole.
IF WALLS COULD TALK
Andrew Carnegie could be an interesting example in a microcosmic sense. Here is a man of multiple layers of wealth and great accomplishment. In his youth he lived in a typical weaver’s cottage with only one main room consisting of half the ground floor which they shared with the neighboring weaver’s family: the main room served as a living room, dining room and bedroom. At the time of his death, Carnegie had a 64-room mansion with a private Otis elevator: many years of wealth in between. But those years also included his philosophic and religious struggles – he spoke about the irresponsibility and ostentatious living of the wealthy, was vehemently against war, helped form the League of Nations, turned from an atheist to a Positivist and then to a person who believed in “an infinite and eternal Energy from which all things proceed”; an “infinite intelligence”. When we look at the artifacts of Carnegie’s life, we are seeing much more than steel, wood and cloth (or even the music he loved to listen to): We are seeing and feeling the very essence of the psychic qualities imprinted upon them.
“Today’s brain imagery techniques lend support to the theory that thoughts and beliefs not only affect one’s psychological state, but also cause the body to undergo measurable biological changes,” says Doctor Jeffrey D. Palmer, “What is known, beyond doubt is that we can create healing energies with our minds alone….what we know and understand about the nature and mechanism of thought and thought energy pales in comparison to the vast amount of information that we do not have….expectation, beliefs and thought energy related physiological and biological changes….thoughts are real….a real influence on people, places and objects which is not bound by time or space.”
Researcher Stephen Wagner says it might be possible for events to be imprinted on the environment in some holographic psychic way that we do not understand yet. “Oft-repeated events remain recorded in the environment in which they originally occurred,” he says.
IF I ONLY HAD A BRANE
(“The anarchic principle follows from quantum mechanics, which tells us that all particle interactions that can happen will happen. In quantum field theory, everything that is not forbidden will occur”, Lisa Randall, Ph.D., Warped Passages,, HarperCollins, 2005: Randall is a theoretical particle physicist and is a student of warped geometry, sink holes, and branes. She received the 2006 Klopsted award from the American Physics Teachers (AAPT), and the 2007 Julius Lilienfeld prize from the American Physical Society).
.
We often see and find “coincidence” in this respect – but some coincidences are, as Peter A. Jordan says, “Almost too purposeful, too orderly” – and boarder on what Leibnitz calls “monad” – pre-established harmonies – or, as Schopenhauer called it – “interrelated and mutually attuned”. It is what Braina Lolgram, Carl Jung, and neuroscientist (Stanford University) Karl Pribram labeled “patterns inherent in the human psyche and shared by all mankind – – – -primordial images.” Jung also spoke of synchronistic phenomena of strange coincidence too striking to be mundane, in case after case. Meg Lundstrom says in A Wink From the Cosmos, “participants in a sensitive flowing web of information. Physicists have shown, for example, that two protons are separated, no matter by how far: a change in one creates a simultaneous change in the other”.
Shirley MacLaine, a life-long mystical practitioner, artist and motion-picture actress, had this to say: “Jung defined synchronicity as ‘any apparent coincidence that inspires a sense of wonder and personal meaning or particular significance in the observer…it is a perceived conviction between two or more objects or events or persons without any recognizable cause’…..I don’t think it can be called coincidence. I don’t think it can be called accident….we are beginning to realize that we’re connecting with the very essence of primordial life itself, and maybe to the roots of what I call time-less consciousness….point towards an organizational principle of the universe and suggest that our connection with a higher order of consciousness is never far from the surface of ordinary awareness….The right person, the right place, the right time enters our life as a strategic moment, which seems blindingly without logical motivation.”
(Closely aligned to the Cosmic-Consciousness idea is that of the Gaiahypothesis or principle that the planet earth is an interacting system, a homeorhesis, on an earth feedback loop as a single organism. A number of scientists support this idea, including William Golding, James Lovelock, Microbiologist Lynn Margulous and others. Carl Sagan, speaking of (1959) space probes, said planetary observations appeared to say that planets have the “character of a planet preparing to go to seed…..”)
(St. Trinity recently announced that the church will have to close down in a few years because of their expenses and lax membership. When that congregation passes away, so will the embodiment of hundreds of memories and sentiments that gave those person’s lives meaning in their minds, those days will live on. To me: it will be a haunting by memories of Christmas celebrations, school episodes, love affairs —- cold winter days — and hot summer nights — the kisses of Margie —- John Moeller/Steve Erdmann ‘Army-Navy Club’ —– the invigorating smell of church banquet dinners…….. )
(Surprisingly, due to the efforts of a new Pastor, David Lewis and some parishioners, events through 2009-2018 have revived the church and it has made a phenomenal come-back.)
Carl Sagan and Albert Einstein were not oblivious to this side of human nature; they spoke of it often: (Carl Sagan) “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known…science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality..…imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were, but without it we go nowhere.” (Albert Einstein) “There are two ways you can look at the world: one as if nothing were a miracle, the other as if everything was a miracle”.
“Quantum physics will in the near future be an inevitable, indispensable and useful part of everyday life,” says Johan Hansson, “It is coming, and is impossible to stop. In fact, we are already there, but have yet only scratched the surface of an enormous iceberg, the majority of which is hidden and unused…..” (www.enzinearticles.com)
(Speaking of coincidence: we once talked about travelling to the old north St. Louis area were the Sportsman’s Park use to be to take photos, and decided it would be too dangerous, I had worked as security guard on the weekends at the Herbert Hoover Boys and Girls Club on Dodier Avenue at that precise spot alongside of the old Carter Carburetor site; and I’m more accustomed to that area now: still want to take photos? Come along!)
BUT SCHROTH IS CORRECT?
(Unbelievable, but not really true!)
But Dave Schroth has been a supposedly admirably dedicated, innovative and self-determined “researcher”: but that is only a ‘surface’ appearance, a ‘mask’ to cover his inner demons of fanatical and religious ‘extremes.’ I’ve seen some of his exploratory research into crime (particularly in the Black communities where the “gangsta” mentality has been glorified), the tracing of liberal philosophies into the Communistic Movements of the 30s and 40s. How the term “liberal” had been shanghaied into the Communist Movement (he once showed me a flowchart of the many branching Communistic movements flowing through the Fabian vein and into such organization as the American Civil Liberties Union); and that the word “Liberal” (as in the Liberal political movement) is nothing but a “front” for the values of Karl Marx and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and their motto to bring America to its heels. His research ranks similar to that of John Earl Haynes (American Communism And Anticommunism: a Historian’s Bibliography And Guide To The Literature, February 18, 2009. www.johnearlhaynes.org). Schroth indicated that the black community is and has been a “wedge” caused by decadent socialism in America.
What we’re lacking in our/his purview were the tell-tale signs of Schrothian-Moriarty Wild schizoid fanaticism tailor-made to his own private world of cynicism with all its twists and turns and perverted doctrinaire visions of Ted Kaczynski type “purity” and “uncontaminated” madness of taking any seeming ‘normal’ situation and contorting it to fit in to his schizoid and suspect cultist worldview. His inner demons, his hidden motivations, tarnish his alleged printed words, unfortunately, and they can’t always been seen for what he pretends they are, now that ‘that’ is discovered.
W.E.B Dubois was an independent socialist since 1904, who travelled extensively in the Soviet Union in 1926, 1936, and 1949. Through the 1940s he believed that the black liberation movement in America had to incorporate a socialist perspective and be in the forefront in promoting peaceful co-existence with the Soviet bloc. But the Communist party had its roots in black culture as early as 1919 when Cyril Biggs, African Blood Brotherhood leader, spoke of Marx and how African Americans could find their home and be taken seriously within the Communist Credo. “here was a party that seemed to have the goal of the lower-class citizen in mind and was out in public being vocal and defiant to white power,” says Denman, Scullin, and Goracy in Black And Red: a journey ThroughCommunism In The Black Community (www.tcns.edu), “They realized that the black social status was not much different from that of Americans as a whole….they decided to focus their energy on the lower class.”
Similar views were espoused by Claude Lightfoot in his Black Power AndLiberation: A Communist View: “The present moment can be characterized as one charged with economic, political and social turbulence….the people are striking back. Sometimes they strike according to plan. Sometimes they erupt spontaneously….these are all struggles by the people against a system…..must go forward today in new forms…..yesterday’s approach is too mild to meet the problems of this storm period.”
In Jim Marrs’ The Trillion-Dollar Conspiracy (HarperCollins Publishers, 2010), he speaks of “creeping socialism”: “A few older citizens may recall the words of Norman Mattoon Thomas, a pacifist who ran for president six times between 1928and 1948 under the Socialist Party of America banner. ‘The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism…But under the name of ‘liberalism’ they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.’….In a 1948 interview, Thomas said he was retiring from American politics because both the Democratic and Republican parties had adopted every plank of the Socialist’ platform and there was no longer a need for the alternative Socialist Party.”
In a meeting with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, 1959, former Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson quoted Khrushchev as saying a reasonable facsimile (there is a debate over when and where): “You Americans are so gullible. No, you won’t accept communism outright. But we’ll keep feeding you small doses of socialism until you finally wake up and find you already have communism. We won’t have to fight you; we’ll so weaken your economy until you fall like overripe fruit into our hands.” Khrushchev made a similar, earlier remark on November 18, 1956: “Whether you like it or not, history is on our side: We willbury you…….”
True politics
(This is a play on words comparing to the TV series true detective.)
AMERICA: TO ITS KNEES!
Says Gary Allen in None Dare Call It Conspiracy: “If one understands that socialism is not a share-the-wealth program but is in reality a method to consolidate and control the wealth, the seeming paradox of superrich men promoting socialism becomes no paradox at all. Instead, it becomes the logical, even the perfect tool of power-seeking-megalomaniacs. Communism, or more accurately, socialism, is not a movement of the downtrodden masses, but of the economic elite..…If you wanted to control the nation’s manufacturing, commerce, finance, transportation and natural resources, you would need only to control the apex, the power pinnacle, of an all-powerful socialist government. Then you would have a monopoly and could squeeze out all your competitors. If you want – a worldwide monopoly, you must control a world socialist government. That is what the game is all about….Communism is an arm of a bigger conspiracy to control the world by power-mad billionaires (and) brilliant but ruthless academicians who have shown them how to use their power….” (Concord Press, 1971)
Allen describes these “robber barons” that are willing to fix prices, rig markets, establish monopolies, buy politicians, exploit employees and fire them the day before they are eligible for pensions, but are also planning to rule the world and even use Communism “as the striking edge of their conspiracy”. That “striking edge” became Jack the Ripper in America on Wall Street in 20081
“Incentives to make good investments had deteriorated as the free-market-food-back-loop was being distorted: bad investments and irresponsible behavior was being rewarded on a massive scale, encouraging even more misallocation of capital and sloppy habits,” says Gabe, September 30, 2008, Did Minority LendingDrive Crisis?, www.marginalrevolution.com, “the frugal and ‘old fashioned’ were being made losers by a system backed by a Greenspan Put and bailout ideology, thus encouraging even fewer to be frugal or cautious. The habits and values most important to free-markets were being destroyed – – – the 5th plank of the Communist Manifesto was doing its work and slowly destroying our economy….”
W. Cleon Skousen in his The Naked Capitalist (Buccaneer Books, 1970) outlines 45 “declared goals” by communists to overtake America. Some of them stick out like a sore thumb in the growth of the 2008 Crash. Joseph M. Schwartz, professor of Political Science at Temple University, blames a 30-year “joint” project of Republican monetarios and Democrat neo-liberals going back to Jimmy Carter’s deregulation, Reagan’s “gutting” of regulation, and Clinton’s abolition of the Glass-Steagal Act. This all worked hand-in-glove with a liberal move such as a ”drive” by Bill Clinton to increase home ownership primarily to the lower-income and despite racial questions or warnings of repercussions……
(Fannie and Freddie popularized low-income securitization. The government pushed for greater mortgage securitization in an effort to increase CRA (Community Reinvestment Act) lending: A study put out by the Treasury Department in 2000 found that the CRA encouraged the mortgage services to provide loans to low-income borrowers; further, these lax lending standards spread to the rise of the market. Says John Carney about Clinton: “His administration went to ridiculous lengths to increase the national homeownership rate..….paper-thin down-payments….shaky financing and income..…opened floodgates to minority lending.”, Business Insider…...
…….Communist rule no.32: support any socialist movement to give centralized control over to any part of the counterculture…..Communist rule no. 15; capture one or both of thepolitical parties in the United States……Communist rule no. 40: discredit the family as an institution…….)
“Liar Loans” were given carte blanche and triple-A ratings and packaged in speculative investment banking and sold as derivatives around the world. Said former U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission chairperson Brooksley Born: “The market was virtually unregulated and many, many times as big as the trading on the futures exchanges. The commission had kept some nominal authority over the market, but there was no mechanism for enforcing the rules. For example, anti-fraud rules were retained, but no reporting was required. The Market was completely opaque. Neither the commission nor any other federal regulator knew what was going on in that market!”…..
……[Communist rule no. 37: infiltrate andgain control of big business……
“Meanwhile, economists were screaming from the rooftops that Democrats were forcing mortgage lenders to issue loans that would fail the moment the housing market slowed and dead-beat borrowers couldn’t get out of their loans by selling their houses”, says Charlotte Iserbyt, “A decade later, the housing bubble burst and, as predicted food-stamp-backed mortgages collapsed, Democrats set an affirmative action time-bomb and now it has gone off.”
“Although it’s well known that the economic mess began with the banks, mortgage lenders, and real estate companies,” says Jim Marrs, “the current housing and mortgage mess actually was the result of maneuvering by both Democrat and Republican politicians, a fact that adds considerable weight to the argument that both major parties are controlled by the same globalists seeking to install a worldwide socialist system.” (The Trillion-Dollar Conspiracy)
Says Joseph E. Stiglitz in Freefall: “….(banks) engage(d) in excessive-risk-taking and to lend to those who can’t repay, There have been repeated instances of such lending giving rise to housing bubbles. It’s one of the reasons for regulations.., …Yet, in the deregulatory frenzy of the 1980s, 1990s, and the early years of this decade, even attempts to restrict the worst lending practices ___ such as the predatory lending in the subprime market ___ were beaten back.”
Rhodes Scholar (a graduate of the – gold and diamond magnate – Cecil Rhodes’ Round Table organization for a “new world order”) William Jefferson Clinton was also an attendee to the Bilderberg Group in 1991 (Germany) and 1999 (Portugal) (an equally secret group, consisting of very wealthy and powerful people, started in 1954 at the Bilderberg Hotel in the Netherlands; Hillary Clinton, our present Secretary of State and president Clinton’s wife, recently attended a Bilderberg meeting in 1997). (The William J. Clinton Foundation has aworth of over 300 million dollars to date)
Our current President Barrack H. Obama was said to possibly have attended a Bilderberg meeting in 2008.
“There does exist, and has existed for a generation, an international Anglophile network which operates, to some extent, in the way the Radical Right believes the communists act. In fact, this network which we identify as The Round Table Groups, has no aversion to cooperating with the Communists, or any other groups, and frequently does so.” (Tragedy and Hope: A History of The World In Our Time, Carroll Quigley, 1966, Macmillan Publishers)
Barrack Obama began his left-wing leanings as a teenager listening to his “Uncle Frank” (Frank Marshall Davis), who was a member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). John Edgar Tidwell says that Davis had ties with several communist-front organizations. Later Obama aligned with far-left community forces such as the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) in his days as community organizer in Chicago. There were associations with former Weatherman terrorist William Ayers, European socialist groups, Socialists International (SI), Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), Carl Davidson, and in 1996, Obama gave his endorsement of the Chicago branch of the DSA. Obama eulogized for Saul Mendelson, a long-time socialist in the Chicago Democratic Left.
Speaking of the present Barrack Obama Washington administration, created in the heat of the 2008 Wall Street “meltdown”, Micelle Malkin (Culture OfCorruption, Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2009), says: “Obama’s team – the ‘best of the Washington insiders’, as David Brooks called them – is a dysfunctional and dangerous conglomerate of business-as-usual cronies….they are every bit as disreputable and demanding as their 1940s counterparts….ethically challenged bailout-burglary money men (such as) Larry Summers and Tim Geithner at Treasury, crime-coddling corporate lawyer Eric Holder at DOJ….Executive Ron Sims at the Department of Housing And Urban Development, fined for suppressing public records from taxpayers……”
As the build-up of the housing and mortgage fiasco was progressively put in place prior to 2008, Obama had his own 1.7-million-dollar Chicago manse financed with a discount mortgage from Northern Trust, associated with convicted felon/donor/developer tony rezko. One of the “boiler pot” companies in the Meltdown, Countrywide, gave Obama minion Jim Johnson more than 7 million dollars in below-market-rate loans from Countrywide. The left-wing Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) was deeply involved in the housing contribution to the sub-prime housing bubble (over-shadowed by the CRA), worked hand-in-hand with the rubber-stamp leftist SEIU (Service Employee International Union). “These foreclosure con artists are just the top of ACORN’s fraudulent enterprises….voter fraud, corporate shakedowns, partisan bullying, and pro-illegal immigration lobbying,” says Malkin, “This is the bread and butter work that ACORN does. President Obama knows it, and he appreciates it.”
The Obamas worked on the boards of the left-wing Woods Fund – along with Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers – and the Joyce Foundation: both which poured money into ACORN. But there was a Republican/Democrat agenda! “In October 2008 under the Bush administration, HUD announced more than 44 million dollars in new housing counseling grants to over 400 state and local efforts. The Bush Whitehouse increased funding for housing counseling by 150 percent since 2001.”
“The mortgage crisis, for example, arose out of a long-standing erosion of the property rights concept – first on the part of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but also on that of the Federal Reserve” says Bloomberg columnist Amity Shlaes, “Broadening FDR’s entitlement theories, Congress taught the country that home ownership was a ‘right’ This fostered a misunderstanding of what property is. The owners didn’t realize ownership entailed – that is, they didn’t grasp that they were obligated to deliver on the terms of the contract of their mortgage. In the bipartisan enthusiasm for everyone an owner, our government debased the concept of home ownership.”
“….trying to assign blame to either Democrats or Republicans is pointless,” said Kathleen Parker of The Washington Post, “Everyone is culpable. From the early 1980s when Ronald Reagan deregulated banks, through the two Bushes, Bill Clinton and now Barack Obama, each administration has endorsed – and each Congress has helped tweak —- laws and rules that made systemic abuses and the meltdown not only possible but, looking back, inevitable….many investment bankers knew the mortgage loans they were packaging and selling were junk. They knew because their own analysts told them so. Tens of thousands of loans failed to meet basic underwriting standards, according to recent testimony before the Financial Crisis inquiry Commission, a bipartisan group created to examine the causes of the meltdown. Not only that, (but) Wall Street insiders were betting against their own customers and institutions.”
In 2008, America entered into a multi-trillion-dollar debacle when its economycollapsed, rankling and kidnapping the security of foreign countries, and bringing America to its knees!
That debt still stands in America of about, more or less, at $21,854,296,172, 540 (trillion), causing a personal debt of about $66,976 (dollars0 in 2018.
There is no disputed doubt that the ”Capitalism” utilized in the 2008 financial fiasco was just plain old “greed” that existed continually in a so-called Constitutional Republic.
And as Kathleen Parker pointed out above, the fiasco was not actually a traditional Communist conspiracy, ultimately, there are no real differences between the ideologies; they are intimately caused by aristocratic overlords and Rulers down through the ages; even Karl Marx was guided by Secret overlords and aristocratic societies and gave him the inspiration to form his movement.[11]
The problem lies in the ‘extremes’ that the human ID can go to; recent scandal and bizarre political events in Congress in 2018 only prove that in abundance, and none of it is limited to one political party or another. Humans, no matter what religion, politics, cult, or “ism” they belong to, ‘Mask’ their inner most agendas and evil motivations from the world at large. This is universal and is not protected by any professed belief, be it Skeptical or Perfectionist. It was personified by culprit Errol Childress to Detective Rust Cohle in the TV series TRUE DETECTIVE: “Take off your mask, little priest!”
(The events involved in the financial debauchery are far more complex than this short rendition, and all areas would need to be aired and investigated [and even challenged by opposing viewpoints for clarity and revision]).
THE DESTRUCTION OF THE FAMILY
“The decline of the American family has reached critical and truly dangerous proportions….The breakdown of the family now touches virtually every American. It is not only the major source of social instability in the government..….the erosion of marriage, out-of-wedlock births, divorce, and fatherless children are now mainstream problems that threaten the general society.” (Taken Into Custody, Stephen Baskerville, Cumberland House, 2007)
”As we will see,” says Baskerville, “the astonishing but incontrovertible fact is that with the exception of convicted criminals, no group in our society today has fewer rights than fathers….parents summoned to these courts have entered a nightmare world where children are abducted and exploited and even abused by government order, where parents are forced to stay away from their children, prevented by the police from protecting them, incarcerated without charge or trial, and driven into bankruptcy and poverty, and where the Bill Of Rights may as well not exist.”
He continues: “Far from merely exploiting family breakdown after the fact then, domestic relations law has turned the American family into a game of ‘prisoners’ dilemma….willingly or not, all parents are now prisoners in this game….In short, state officials now possess the power to break up families by imposing divorce on happily married parents….Harsh as it may sound, it cannot be denied that these officials are united by one overriding interest; having children separated from their parents. Without the power to remove children from their parent – and most often the father – this industry cannot thrive, and these officials will have no business….put simply, the first principle of the divorce industry, the basic premise without which it has no reason to exist, is the removal of the fathers from the family. Once this is accomplished, the state is free to assume control over mothers and children as well.”
Baskerville quotes Rabbi Lapin in The American Enterprise in Lapin’s quoting of Adolf Hitler: Hitler says: “The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasury of the people. As long as government is perceived as working for the benefit of children, the peopled will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty.”
Comparing Child Support enforcement to institutionalized Marxist principles (“from each according to his ability, to each according to her need….”), Baskerville says child support has nothing to do with “justice” but is interwoven in a long panoply of unusual punishments and punitive measures in a regime were the father is forced “to finance the filching of his own children”, becoming the subject of a national demonology as officially designated villains whose “guilt is assumed unquestionably by politicians, press, and public alike….Not since the collapse of the Weimar republic have the top leaders of a major western democracy used their public office to verbally attack millions of their own citizens.” As an example of ‘Soviet Logic’, Ronald Henry, says that coerced child support is not predicated on uniting children with Fathers but keeping them apart: “despite the touchy-feely language about family and stability and relationship, such decisions have nothing to do ‘with enforcing anything other than financial obligations’”.
Walter Olson writes in The Litigation Explosion: “Lawyers have more power to ruin your life in America than they do in any other advanced country…..power without responsibility.” “The legal system is increasingly run for the enrichment of lawyers and not the public,” writes columnist Robert Samuelson. “The idea that American courtrooms strive toward justice is no long taken seriously…the courts are greatly feared for their ability to ruin…” says the Wall StreetJournal.
Family law today is the largest and fastest-growing sector of the civil judiciary, accounting for at least 35 percent of all litigation. It is estimated that, as a percentage of the state cases filed between 1984 and 1995, family cases grew by 70 percent. Much of this growth is self-generating. “Child-support enforcement is now a $4 billion national industry in terms of the money expended,” says Baskerville, “in terms of the money it aims to collect, it is a multibillion-dollar enterprise with targets upward of $100 billion.”
Some 24 million American children or about 34 per cent live in households without their fathers. For African American children that figure is 66 percent. Nearly 2.5 million children join the ranks of the fatherless each year. Since automatic wage garnishing has been mandatory for all new child-support orders since 1992, the question arises as to how so many fathers allegedly avoid their payments? The principal method is by being unemployed. Sherri Heller, OCSE Director, says that about two-thirds of the debt and about two-thirds of the people who owe it earned less than $10,000 last year. It appears that most of thedebt is owed by extremely poor debtors.
WE TOO ARE HUMAN
Poor people (including Socialists and persons on the Left), however, are not all the evil, heartless, deprived people I seem to depict in the above remarks on Socialists (certainly, most do not knowingly consider themselves as Communists). Neither are lower–income and poor people included as knowingly evil. Most are warm, caring, kind people who see the more elitist and aristocratic areas and people of society as the truly evil elements. The real witches cackling about the caldron may be closer to home and even more deeply implanted. Concerning the “common poor person” (and I am one of them, by the way): I had the opportunity to live with the poor in my trips to Jamaica, West Indies. They, as john F. Kennedy said, breathe the same air, have blood in their bodies as well as the next human, a beating heart, and the pains and hopes that all other humans do. They have feelings of love, passion, fear, and hunger as other life-forms that we call “human beings”.
A father of a very wealthy family took his son to visit a “poor” country family for one day as a lesson (the kind of bravado that only rich people can provide: sort of, “if you can hold your head up with magnanimity after being kicked in the nuts by a Clydesdale, then you can call yourself a man” mentality) about how ‘good of a life’ their rich lifestyle entailed. After a day of visiting, the father smugly asked the son: “What did you think of being poor for a day?” The son smiled and began: “Well, we have one dog – but they had four! We have a pool that runs to the middle of our garden: but they had a creek that never ends! We havea patiothat runs to the middle of our front yard – they have a front yard that runs to the horizon!”
Barron’s Book notes at www.pinkmonkey.com spoke of the empathy that novelist John Steinbeck had for the poor and downtrodden (my mother, Clara Moser, had left my father’s collection of Steinbeck’s books to me upon her death): “Closely related to the Common Man theme is Steinbeck’s creation of a naturalist or realistic atmosphere. Steinbeck is not a romantic who makes a big deal about people or natural wonders. Like a scientist, he observes things as they are and sees people as just a small part of the overall natural world.”
www.cyberessays.com says: “throughout history, less fortunate people have been set apart or shunned from the general public. In The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, this statement holds true. Through-out the book, all of the less fortunate people are treated like they aren’t human. This is not much different than how our society is now….in The Grapes of Wrath, and in the present time, the general public has set the less fortunate apart from themselves without even realizing it….”
Latoya Peterson, commenting on Insight Center for Community and EconomicDevelopment, “As the report explains the key to financial stability is wealth (for example, assets, savings, stock holdings, business income) which can be passed from generation to generation to ease the path for those struggling in their youth. However, for more than 46 percent of single-parent black households that have zero or negative wealth, there is literally nothing to pass on….” Says Megan Cottrell: “…… (We) lift as we climb, but we’re also bogged with baggage – positive or negative – the baggage our parents left us.”
The number of people in poverty rose to a record level in 2009, 14.3 percent, a national rate which is the highest since 1994 and, among the work-age poor, the highest level since 1960s in the U.S. population, grown by more than 130 million in that time. Recently, a shocking 37 million Americans live in poverty or 12.7 percent of the population – the highest percentage in the developed world. Photographer Glenn H. Austin says 32.9 million. Each year since 2001 their numbers have grown.
In 2017, 39.7 percent of Americans lived in poverty.
During George Bush’s Administration an extra 5.4 million have slipped below the poverty line: yet they are not examples of the destitute or even the unemployed; some work and have two jobs. Films such as Once Upon A Time In America show the poor in searinghonesty.
The United States had 269 billionaires in 2008, and in 2018 there were 2,200: the highest number in the world.
Photographer Glenn Austin went about State Street visiting the homeless (www.inside-voices.com) and had this to say: “They are not cardboard cutout poor people; they are real, living, breathing, human beings. They have problems and feelings…..they are the discards of our society: the poor, the veterans, the homeless, the drug addicts, the alcoholic, the runaways, the abused, the unemployable that nobody wants. They deserve something better than the lives they lead now, but these photos are not about how bad their lives are. These pictures are mostly how good their lives are….stop and talk to these folks that you have previously been ignoring. You will discover that they are just people. Contrary to popular myth, poor people do not enjoy being poor, and they do not enjoy panhandling. They panhandle because they are poor….jails and prisons are filled with poor people. There are very few rich people in prison; I guess theydon’t commit any crime? They give each other social and physical support, acceptance and human touch. ‘We are family; the State Street family,’ one person said. Disabled people on crutches, quite a few who are mentally ill, can come to State Street and find unconditional acceptance, not as freaks, but as human beings”. One is reminded of scenes in the movie Down And Out In Beverly Hills.
“We are complex beings. I believe that there is a great deal more to us than the ubiquitous battleground of good versus bad,” says Charles S. Weinblatt, “most of us are not one or the other, but both. We are beautiful and ugly, soothing and terrifying, brutal and caring: we love and we depose…I believe that people find it easy to hate because tolerance requires effort. Haters live with haters in a community of malevolence…..” (www.enotalone.com)
There “is” some seemingly familiar thins thatDave Schroth speaks about that s fleetingly correct —– and a lot he is not (ifonly on a personal, private level). It is hoped that this lengthy treatise, if only scratching the surface of the debates and problems inherent herein, can shed some light. I thank him for the opportunity to speak my mind on these matters. I hope that, even we as Marvin Udalls, will (at least) agree that differences of opinions are allowed.
PART V
Arlene and I, as well as some of the members at St. Trinity, were quite concerned with you when you spoke of an illness – possibly cancer. There was talk about getting you free or reduced medical help. I personally tried to find some patient care for you. Also, the pastor and I discussed having the parish nurse visit you, or other avenues of help. I hope that it was nothing as serious as that. From what I last heard; your pains were related to pinched nerves. Now, I know how that canbe after dealing with a herniated disc and surgery of my back. You were talking about the expenses involved (I believe you were out of work at the moment, and we were trying to map out the possible avenues you might take as suggestions). There appeared to be some miscommunication; It is hard to interpret everything that is going on about you, especially when a number of people are involved and there is unplanned and hidden information involved. This is why good communication and information is always necessary.
(And to mention again, in September 2010, after several meetings, the laity voted to ‘close down’ the church as soon as possible due to lax membership and rising expenses. The Church did continue and even grow under the leadership of a new past, David Lewis and staff.)
In so many ways, I understand your alarm at and disgust with “the human situation.” I’ve about given up on pleasing people – “costumer service.” Thosehumans can be hard to handle and even “devastating.” I find myself caring formany of them some-times: strangest doggone thing.[12] People can be pretty rough and raw (“Society isfull of hypocrites, arrogance, self-righteousness, thoughtlessness ignorance, envy, etc. These are things evidentand rampantin our society,” says ME, Atheist in www.amplicate.com, “and these weren’t mentioned just because of the SevenDeadly Sins and that religion thing”.): I have seen and even have been victim of immense cruelty of humans-by-humans time and time again (if only I could tell you). To that extent: your point is well taken. Why should we forgive anyone? Because we are human also, and we make mistakes – sometimes, great mistake! “We think that when we forgive, we need to reconcile….for those whose lives have been tragically altered by the mindlessness of others, this process can take a long time because the wound could be very deep,” says Rosanna C. Rogacion, “Forgiveness is a process and it is one that must not be rushed. The important thing is to take the first step: make the decision to forgive…” We are going to be here in this life only a short time. And when you get a certain age, you are so tired of the struggle: you don’t care who wins the “boxing match” and you just want to turn the television off. Does that make me a “humanist,” a “sophist,” a “Communist” or just “pissed”? But, still, one wishes for some “hope” – and you dream. As a humane person, I wish you no harm nor ask harm from you in return…
“To my mind, there is no better demonstration of the folly of human concepts than this distant image of our tiny world. To me it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and perceive and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known…For small creatures such as us the universe is bearable only through love.”’ (Carl Sagan)
Steve Erdmann:
Recent Update: Several through the years till December 11, 2018.
Significant and meaningful updates have been made since the last updates in 2008.
[1] I have in my possession about three hand-written letters from a Thomas A. Fairbanks who was quoted from those letters to tell of his episodes with those that are connected in the Kennedy Assassination case back in the 1960s, telling of a Church that held several homosexuals and worked behind the scenes to aid people that were involved. Thomas Fair banks was eventually mentioned by Joan Mellen in her biographical book on Jim Garrison in a chapter number 18 titled “Upheaval,” about 26 paragraphs into that chapter (A FAREWELL TO JUSTICE; Jim Garrison, JFK’s Assassination, And The Case That Should Have Changed The World, Potomac Books, 2007).
[2] David Schroth has often mentioned, as part of his composite theories, his struggle with and stance against “multi-culturalism” and the population of mixed cultures—particularly blacks, Hispanics, and Asian—in America as related to America’s coming destruction and downfall. This is truly a mixed bag of worms, and controversy, in as much as a large portion of worldwide societies are non-European at the present time presenting harsh realities to Schroth. I will discuss this further in depth at another point, but somehow Schroth again aligns cultural-mixing as against his ‘perfectionist-puritan’ viewpoint. Which raises questions about me, as my wife is Pilipino.
[4] In one of Schroth’s many praises of Pope, he mentions that Pope was seen watching his television (one Schrothian strike) and was seeing movie starlet Vera Miles in a movie scene: now, was see acting in one of Alfred Hitchcock’s horror thrillers which Schroth probably would rank as ‘poor taste modernism’ (another Schrothian strike)? Another Schrothian ‘icon,’ TV calibrate, Charlotte Peter’s interviewed Hitchcock as a Master of Art, the same Hitchcock that produced wild horror films PSYCHO and the BIRDS (Schroth is against modern movies too, designating some magical era in the 1950s to 1920s or there about as some ‘purer’ phase of entertainment). Peters likewise paraded ‘zany’ comedians on her TV show, and some very controversial talent, such as Steve Allen.
[5] In Schroth’s criticism of Ufologist David Marler using the term “skeptical believer,” Wild likewise fits a bizarre and incongruous term I would apply to Wild as a “religious cultist/atheist.” It was ‘not’ Marler that coined the term, but someone at U&M. The Religious Skeptic Cultist also uses all sorts of ‘handy-dandy’ titles and slogans, as well, to attack others.
[6] Schroth Doctrine seems to also have gone to the extreme of discarding or attacking, “Mystery” (stated in a 2018 letter) as a component of his Religion, spreading a wide net over what, in essence, has been, as still is, the motivating factor in ‘all’ science through the ages, books and novels, human inspiration for all kinds of 100% of existence and talents, including Schroth’s own interests and motivations, taking his Religion to ludicrous and bizarre extremes, even slapping his own endeavors in the face, sort of a “rubbing your belly and patting your head at the same time,” or, “shaking one’s hand and slapping him with the other.”
[7] Both Pope and Schroth herald “Pure” European culture and the preferred culture outstanding above all other cultures, ignoring the vast realm of billions of people that are outside of the traditional European culture (cited by Schroth and Skeptic Cultists-Cohorts as “anti-multi-culturalism). Sadly, this would exclude my family and wife which is Filipino on my wife’s side.
[9]Nor any excuse for his contradictions in lifestyle, Schroth has criticized ‘socialism,’ as part of the alleged creeping Fabian Communist conspiracy enveloping the globe, and, in this respect, has spoken out against Social Security as having elements in this movement. Well, sometime circa 2017 or so, David Schroth has applied for and has gotten his personal Social Security benefits started, even early; we always ‘hide’ our ID Monsters behind our ‘Masks,’ and as culprit Errol Childress told Detective Rust Cohle in the TRUE DETECTIVE TV series: “Take off your mask, little priest!”
[10] Another “hero” of Dave Schroth fails into Schroth’s incongruity, paraded by Schroth as a symbol of his ‘golden age’ of ‘goodness’ (part of that 1800s – 1960s or so magical paradigm) Entertainer Jackie Gleason, like Steve Allen and other Schroth fictions, was supposed “good clean comedy” (not everyone saw it that way) and “clean living”; but Gleason had a vast and large UFO library indicating his personal interest in defiance of Shrothianism, considered himself religious, also in defiance, and was said to visit preserved aliens along with pal Richard Nixon, certainly in defiance of Schroth’s cherry-picking.
[12] Steve Erdmann is not a diehard and unrelenting nemesis of mankind as Schroth is, no matter how discouraged I become. Neither was Mark Twain, despite his pessimisms.
COMMENTS AND ESSAYS FROM THE Facebook Dissenter/Disinter Group as Achieve Material
SE – Once again, we try to explain (as we have done in the past several times) our general approach to news, the media, politics. Here is a reproduction of private comments in a reply to one of my critics:
“We like some of your ideas, facts, and thoughts, and we welcome them – if presented within reason and decor. This is what we don’t like and try to avoid: Stephen Erdmann: We promote very few human endeavors in an absolute sense, Russian or otherwise, as all fail and all fall within the scope of the loop of human evil and frailty. We look for those foes that all humankind seems to be battling from ‘any’ corner they are hunkered in.
“This Group is not a ‘platform’ for one single person’s private opinions or ‘sermons.’ It is a ‘forum’ whereby ‘all’ have an opportunity to add to the ongoing investigation. Hopefully, most will participate and not just become ‘observers.’ Likewise, this Group will not become monopolized by the thinking and propaganda of just one individual – this was not its purpose.
“We are not affiliated with the KKK or any other political faction said that many times, over and over, as well as has explained why we present all sides of news and media questions, without censorship, if possible. We are against the Military/Industrial/Corporate/Complex/Matrix (MICCM) and all its ‘isms,’ “cants,” ‘crats,’ ‘cans,’ and ‘doms.’ All it takes to see this and prove it, is to use your mouse or enter scroll and have a strong browser and investigate back to 2011. We refuse to become any one person’s private, personal pulpit (that is why you have your own Timeline). We allow most to speak their minds continually here — even to the point of opulently and often stuporous ferociousness — over and over — but apparently that is not good enough for a few. It takes a strong mind and will to live under the 1st Amendment and really abide by it.
“When I say ‘we,’ I usually mean ‘me’ – though I am speaking editorially on behalf of all those members who follow and agree with the Preamble religiously — they get the idea and message — and are giving me their full support.
“All the twisting, stretching and manipulating of my stated words and intended feelings will not help these matters and being completely uncompromising, unreasonable and deliberately uncouth certainly won’t help either.
“Please, read my text and postings in their full context and their entirety, if possible, to adjust to the real story and picture I present. Don’t settle for ‘half-baked’ interpretations or careless understanding.
“When any one person begins to use these spaces as solely his or her private podium to demonized (and shout down or otherwise badger) all other voices, he will be informed and given a mandate to cease and desist. This is a ‘forum’ Group and that connotes some fairness and inspection and equipoise of one’s behavior: we hope that each member will reflect on their behavior and not allow it to become effluvium.”
(This does not mean we will allow boring, tiring, inaccurate propaganda about the alleged Israel-cabal of so-called Zionism, which in many cases is far too short-sighted when it concerns the worldwide Military-Industrial-Corporate-Complex-Matrix (MICCM). Well documented pieces on ‘how’ Zionism is part and parcel of the “overall” MICCM, might be tolerated; but, singling out propaganda trying to prove Hitler was virtuous and the killing of the Jewish population as justified, will not be tolerated.
We do not automatically share anti-Semitic views and do not state everyone should or does. In fact, those that appear to be promoted from a Hate standpoint usually won’t coexist on this Group. This Group does not endorse, knowingly, anti-Semitic propaganda per se and any Hate Speech that is the basis for it.)
There is a big difference between a source that publishes outright invented news, and a source—or sources—that you just “don’t like,” or says things that are philosophically different than your views or opinions. Things said on the Left spectrum and the Right Spectrum may annoy us, but they have the Constitutional Right to speak and be heard by willing listeners (you can always turn a deaf ear to the opinion). Myself, I think both sides of the “aisle” are filled with evil intentions and hogwash, but that shouldn’t prevent me printing interesting ‘tidbits,’ unless I decide one day to go completely “off the grid.”
Political terms, names and meanings have evolved, changed, and transformed over the years as many other concepts that have also transmogrified. Some “liberal” concepts once seemed to uphold “freedom,” ‘free speech’ and protected ‘human rights’: now have turned into a ‘power-based’ ‘force’ to change society, even if by ‘radical’ or ‘militant’ means. Some blatantly attack those idealistic overtures the Founding Fathers eluded to (some hiding behind those precepts but being actually treacherous to them). Conservatives tried to parade themselves as preserving the principals that were expounded underlying the Founding Fathers up to and through the Bill of Rights, have much, in the same way, become the lair of the wealthy and ultra-rich which want to control the masses, preserve their power and wealth, and hide behind a disguise of being the protectors of the Rights of Mankind, when they are only another power-based ‘force’ for control and greed using the slavery to the masses. They have far surpassed the British overlords the colonialists fought. All of these have become Monsters.
(I know from experience that security guards are nothing but Whipping Boys, a ‘buffer’ between the Security Guard company, the police and the Landowner (they have three (3) bosses). They are the ‘Fall guys,’ if anything goes wrong, it is their job to take the heat, to not make the Landlords or the company to look bad (nor the police, who often treat them as low, second-class citizens and nothing more). They are given a whole list of phony ‘rules’ to make them robots to ‘slice the heat’ and put on a good ‘public face’ (often at low or very moderate wages), sometimes in very dangerous and life-threatening situations. It is Crony Capitalism at its worst; most guards will not admit this for fear of losing their jobs. They could really tell you some stories: but it would expose the ‘system.’ They are allowed to do what they have to to ‘protect’ this ‘status quo and system.’ I am quite sure this goes beyond the Security Guard profession, and the same mentality exists in most businesses and professions, one way or the other.)
We are here to promote ‘news’ from all different angles and sources, it is not my or anyone else’s purpose to knowingly or even unknowingly ‘prejudge’ the news, unless it becomes so apparent it is false there is no other alternative. But getting to that point can be a rocky and wearisome struggle. We have no prejudice about exposing ‘multiple’ viewpoints, because we realize that reality is multi-sided, often multidimensional, complicated and not always easily discernible: so we present many sides of that struggle. If you read my editorial comments, you should see that I have no particular stake in the sordid political fights and feel such political ‘gamesmanship’ is illusory and almost impossible. Some people feel that such deception is beyond their party, club or faction. You may feel yours is Holy, as well. I doubt that sanctimoniousness. Only the strong-minded need to tread here. That closed-mindedness of “my viewpoint only” needs to be “taken down.”
There is a big difference between a source that publishes outright invented news, and a source—or sources—that you just “don’t like,” or says things that are philosophically different than your views or opinions. Things said on the Left spectrum and the Right Spectrum may annoy us, but they have the Constitutional Right to speak and be heard by willing listeners (you can always turn a deaf ear to the opinion). Myself, I think both sides of the “aisle” are filled with evil intentions and hogwash, but that shouldn’t prevent me printing interesting ‘tidbits,’ unless I decide one day to go completely “off the grid.”
Political terms, names and meanings have evolved, changed, and transformed over the years as many other concepts that have also transmogrified. Some “liberal” concepts once seemed to uphold “freedom,” ‘free speech’ and protected ‘human rights’: now have turned into a ‘power-based’ ‘force’ to change society, even if by ‘radical’ or ‘militant’ means. Some blatantly attack those idealistic overtures the Founding Fathers eluded to (some hiding behind those precepts but being actually treacherous to them). Conservatives tried to parade themselves as preserving the principals that were expounded underlying the Founding Fathers up to and through the Bill of Rights, have much, in the same way, become the lair of the wealthy and ultra-rich which want to control the masses, preserve their power and wealth, and hide behind a disguise of being the protectors of the Rights of Mankind, when they are only another power-based ‘force’ for control and greed using the slavery to the masses. They have far surpassed the British overlords the colonialists fought. All of these have become Monsters.
(I know from experience that security guards are nothing but Whipping Boys, a ‘buffer’ between the Security Guard company, the police and the Landowner (they have three (3) bosses). They are the ‘Fall guys,’ if anything goes wrong, it is their job to take the heat, to not make the Landlords or the company to look bad (nor the police, who often treat them as low, second-class citizens and nothing more). They are given a whole list of phony ‘rules’ to make them robots to ‘slice the heat’ and put on a good ‘public face’ (often at low or very moderate wages), sometimes in very dangerous and life-threatening situations. It is Crony Capitalism at its worst; most guards will not admit this for fear of losing their jobs. They could really tell you some stories: but it would expose the ‘system.’ They are allowed to do what they have to in order to ‘protect’ this ‘status quo and system.’ I am quite sure this goes beyond the Security Guard profession, and the same mentality exists in most businesses and professions, one way or the other.)
Yes, we have covered this phenomena every now and then since 2011. I’ve been through the Divorce Racket (and other rackets) over the years and have tried to speak out in various formats and scenarios; it all follows a common thread. It makes one wonder why we are fighting each other, rather than the ‘common enemy.’ That enemy is hard to see and I’ve done what I can to expose it and make it visible. These pages are open to fellow dissidents and ‘explorers’ and ‘exposers.’ You’re welcome to tell your stories here and add to the exposition. It is all part of a megalith monster I call the Military-Industrial-Corporate-Complex- Matrix (MICCM).
Concerning a separate and special Rights For Women Manifesto: Don’t know why it has to be signatured by “women” as these are basic Human Rights for all mankind, male or female, which, unfortunately many women, in their symbiotic and parasitic alliance with the Legal Industry Cabal, causes them to tarnish and violate those basic Rights for both Men and Women. See how far these Rights go without falling into the trap (as they have already been) of being used or overtaken by the MICCM and other Legal Industry Masterminds which only serve their own Power, Profit and Prestige.
“Outspoken” should pertain to those who are proven to be true heroes opposing physical and psychological dangers, as opposed to brats and punks, calling themselves adults, trashing and destroying others for very vain and greedy purposes.
It is equally infuriating to be unnecessarily misquoted and misunderstood, when an opponent or debater is just flouting his ingrained and innate propaganda brainwashed into him from birth and is making no attempt to truly analyze and comprehend what you are telling them. Sometimes, their minds are so closed, they just ignore anything you say or do. Instead of approaching the arguments from “in your shoes,” they continue to be the little robots our society has invented and further spiel the usual venom and grade-school invectiveness in which they have ‘not’ tried to unlearn.
I am at a point in my life that I want to undo the evils that I forgot or refused to fight against in my life, and give others a choice to do the same, before it is too late, utilizing my 1st Amendment Rights and no longer turning a blind eye to the fates of the world. To teach others to ‘think’ and discover and use their mind, not to become simple sheep and blind slaves to those who control their reality:. Take off their masks, those little deceiving priests!
People get stuck in very old ideologies, concepts and “isms” and refuse to move out of those ‘boxes.’ We always like to think that we are the ones that are wearing the ‘white hats,’ and are the ‘only’ ones that know how to wear them and, even, the only ones that know where to ‘buy’ them: when, in reality, they are just grey, smudged, soiled and fraying old hats that have been passed around for generations through many, many secret hands.
“Some kind” of compromise and “understanding” is always needed when these debates appear, and try to look at “root” problems and not bring up too many private situations; and even then, always be willing to compromise and see each other’s point-of-view. Other than that, as I have said many times previously, the terms “fascist, liberal, left, right” are thrown around too loosely and with no historical meaning, always being projected from each person’s “private boxes.”
We shouldn’t condemn ‘socialism’ any more than ‘conservatism’: both are aimless, meaningless terms that don’t reflect the hidden agendas they are used for: fascist control and imperial elitism, the real enemy. At least ‘socialism’ had a true and genuine use in history well before America came into being and the bastardization of political terms. Most “political sensations” are nothing but masks to hide our inner evils and to gang together and destroy each other rather than help each other. A lot of national patriotism is the same baby-gook. We tend to fall for false histories, rather than the real histories: take off your masks little priests! Stop living in a world of ancient slogans and worn-out propaganda created by deceptive brain controllers and illusory political ideals.
Putting your full faith behind any one political party or personage is like trying to find virtue in a whorehouse: there are no such animals. Tyrannical and fascistic thinking are par for the course in any arena of life: it is the way humanoids operate. Ideologies are things only on ‘paper’: the real world should circumnavigate those illusory dreams and get down to the true facts; take off your masks, little priests.
I am the real oddball: and I have been sick and tired of the masking and erroneous parading of the so-called “Political Parties” for some time; watching the circus of flying monkeys never changes, even when one monkey is somewhat likable and seems to be alien to all the rest, it never changes. Still, we forge ahead and root and rant like the Romans at the Coliseum.
‘Pure’ Capitalism has never existed, nothing politically and socially has ever existed as ‘pure.’ It is easy to write something on paper and claim it is pristine and infallible, but quite another to see it operate in cold, stark reality. So-called Americanism as Capitalism was corrupted right out of the gate (i.e., see past postings and comments elsewhere). It is nice to write idealistic doctrine, but quite another thing to see it corrupted, inadequate, and having no fail-safe due to the monstrosity of the human condition. I know all about the dictionary definition but applying it to real human accomplishments is a pipedream, daydream, fable that has never really existed in all practically. I ‘sure as hell’ see proof of that every day.
So-called “Capitalism” has had its problems too, part of which redesigning what is a theory on ‘paper’ and inventing it according to our own evil images, in the form of Crony Capitalism, Fascism, etc., etc. Like so much in life, there never has been “pure” Capitalism (like there have never been ‘pure’ heroes, or ‘pure’ religion, or ‘pure’ politics) because any such “ism” is run by nefarious and weak and inhumane “humans.” We have a classical bent to destroy, pervert and warp the things about us. It is just one of many fairy tales and play-toys that humans like to toss around and manipulate. Looking for this Holy Grail (like looking for the Golden Fleece) is ‘fun’ and can be used to bolster our usual Id Monsters (to take a metaphor from the movie FORBIDDEN PLANET), but it is in no way ‘reality.’
Capitalism is a cheap term used on paper only, a fairy-tale used by mega-Monsters to wave in the face of others and hide behind their own magnanimous quests to control and prosper—it is a concept on paper, an ideology, that does not truly represent what is actually being done in reality. Crude Crony Mercantilism as a guise to hide under a fictitious Capitalism might be another way to describe it, but no matter what term you use, it has never really existed, any more than “pure” Communism, “pure” Christianity, or other “pure” ‘isms’ which we use to mask the real person or the real institution as it should be nakedly exposed for what it “is” and for what is really being done in all their corrupt and inglorious actions. Being a Monster in any fashion, no matter, how wealthy or powerful, does not justify its existence, Might does not Make Right, as history blatantly shows, and the defense of such corruption and any extension or characteristic of it only shows the evil it is and continues to become. Thank you Dorian Gray.
Fighting each other instead of the common enemy: what a waste! Some members are correct when they say America has strong fascist elements, but America is “not” the ‘only’ place that this evil does and can take root. We are overemphasizing the wrong places, time and things! Why is it that vampires can’t see themselves in the mirror?
It would appear that “enslavement” — or slavery — is a universal, ingrained mechanism of human nature — a very cruel and often contradictory facet of humans: which we can see today as it is incorporated, mechanized and used in our Modern World; and it is aimed at and applied “to all humans” (except for those who try to rule and use enslavement).
The vile vindictiveness that the public is confronted with by many judges in the legal system goes beyond the words “fair and equal justice,” where the lives of citizens become mere playthings in the Westworld-type of robotic recreation on the floors of the courthouse. The worldwide multi-billion-dollar Legal Industry has permeated every fiber of our lives and directed our realities to the dictates of this despotic Puppet-Master. Ask any divorce man or domestic court victim, they will attest that a man has only five (5) foes when he enters the system: his lawyer, her lawyer, the judge, her innate sexuality and the status quo.
Many live in their little “isms” they were raised in from birth and do not look beyond or question who are the core sponsors (do you have a mirror; can you look in a mirror?). They do not realize how intricately they are crafted and brainwashed. They are robotized goose-stepping zombies, and there is no changing. The MICCM has trained them well.
No concept or leaf is left alone by the MICCM: it is part of evil human nature, even so-called national pride or patriotism. Look down through history and see how often humans have used these for evil and destructive purposes.
The human being is love-challenged and intelligence-challenged and has proved themselves as such down through history. The humans believe that owning tons of money makes them superior to their fellow creatures and creating millions of enslaved and blindly devoted employees makes themselves even better rulers and elitists. It has always been that way, on the micro and macro levels; they also abhor psychological mirrors and will even kill to the death if their empires are challenged, taking millions of fellow humans to their death. They “group” in mutual ‘clubs’ as a way to protect and even ‘mask’ their true natures.
Reality is shifting beneath your very own feet: what we have been taught about the righteousness of the Left or Right, Democrats or Republicans, this ‘wing,’ or that ‘wing,’ and we do not reflect the innate and basic social realities that are taking place before our own eyes. In my years since July 27, 1944, based on my experience and the questions I have asked, and my eyes have seen, we have been deluded over and over, from the day we were born. See my past comments. When confronting attorneys in private and putting hard questions to them, often in confidence, many have said there is no real freedom, anywhere, in any party — that they are in control and they hold allegiance to no one but their Bar Association cabal. Right out of Orwell’s 1984, but only worse and complete. This: because all “isms” are under the evil rule of the “Humans.” Humans that glorify every evil act they do as good and pure: it won’t change, and we won’t challenge it unless we see the real “enemy.” We will continue to form “clubs” (social and physical) — and expound those clubs — with power and greed and evil to be used as ‘clubs’ against each other — until this final Truth becomes too evident to deny.
These lawyers have opened a Pandora’s box. In my meetings with attorneys, they have shown hardened, darkened commitment to fascistic, despotic rule by corporate giants and big business, in stark, no-uncertain-terms—those terms are evident in the elements of its manufacture, such as Fire-At-Will laws and the disrespect of Human Rights.
Note the synchronistic similarities between corporate “government,” popular “government,” social “government,” corporations as “people,” corporate “government” bribing and sleeping with “popular government,” all mixed together in what I call the Military/Industrial/Corporate/Complex/Matrix (MICCM) “Government.”
We don’t understand “government.” We think it is a separate entity, alone and separate from us. Government is the darkest, evilest, macabre parts of our own psyche, and when those elements ‘group’ in the various forms and combinations (such as the MICCM) and materialize, we see the Monster ‘we’ have become. In the science-fiction thriller THE FORBIDDEN PLANET, it was called monsters of the ‘id.’ Until we see the true ‘enemy’—us—we will never, ever come to terms or defeat it.
Part of the problem is our throwing terms around for loose and lop-sided reasons without any real background or roots. These are very powerful people in the IMF and the United Nations, they are not a bunch of poor people trying to grub-up a livable wage for themselves. All this talk about entitlements: some of these ‘official’ people are born-and-breed aristocracy; they don’t know what it is like to live in the slums of India, Africa or the lowest of the low. It is a matter of the wealthy controlling the masses and it is usually the wealthy that profit and the masses that suffer. They spend billions of media-propaganda-dollars guaranteeing that ‘that’ brainwashing is successful so the masses don’t attack them and “keep the lowly in their place.” That is the way it has always been! What is so sad, is when some of these executives, in a “little-bit-than-better-CEO-middle-class-salary,” actually have convinced themselves they are on the “winning side” —yes, they are actually safely on the side of the “elite”—that is ‘their’ team—and yet they don’t realize or are not aware that this is all self-delusion and they are only a few steps away — in actuality — from their very own destruction as outsiders also. It is all part of the programming by the MICCM.
It is very difficult and painful to suddenly realize that lullabies and fairy stories are things that are used to placate us and even control us, stories put down on paper, while they make us feel good and justified, are usually used by ourselves against ourselves as weapons hurting or obscuring ourselves. But we keep trudging on, programmed to believe that our ‘pipe dreams’ will come true and the scribbling we have made—or were programmed to make–mean something and will fly off the paper into reality. We can always pretend and hope.
(An aside: We have a ban on personal and unreasonable attacks on each other, or any other excuse one would try to come up with. If some are allowed to attack private family and friends, then any one is allowed to.
Attacks on one’s personal parents, children, or relatives are not allowed for whatever reason one can imagine. No posting or site or Group justifies hitting below the belt: if your arguments are good, they will not sink this low. That is not just espousing another opinion, that is vicious attack.
We welcome all civil comments. We are running into, now and then, more and more, the questionable muck that is so often displayed across the Internet that ‘free’ speech’ is confused with slander, personal attacks and just being downright nasty and unkind for no other reason. We are happy to see you are not one of them.)
(I am not so sure the Reich disappeared but was transformed into the Fourth Reich, and the transformation and partnerships went further and further: the constant transmogrifications and transformations with partners sleeping in same bed. All the “isms” have blended into sub-Rosa deals: you are dealing with one huge Industrial/Military/Corporate/Complex/Matrix [MICCM]. The Party system is a mask, as are so many other masks. “Take off your mask, little priest,” says murderer Errol Childress to detective Rustin Spence in TRUE DETECTIVE, a mask we all wear and deny. ######################################## “He’s saying to take off the mask of his persona. They both know that the whole concept of being a ‘person’ is an illusion, and that everything just repeats over and over again, that good and evil will always exist, and yet Rust continues to fight the ‘good’ fight, because that’s simply his role. He is aware that it is futile, and yet continues this masquerade, nonetheless. Errol is telling him to take off his mask and reveal his ‘true’ self; that the darkness is really within him. That this is all just a play, created by himself. A dream that he had within a locked room. And the only way to reveal this truth is in death.” ################### https://www.quora.com/True-Detective-Season-1-Episode-8-Why… ##### Lindsey Krumhar.) ######### https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIdB8LX4pGs.)
It is sad if we still have to use the terms Liberal and Right as human qualifiers, as if it is a baseball sport, instead of just looking at the people as humans and just look at the facts: without all the banner- “my side versus your side” – waving. Slogans are masks to hide the evil, take off your masks little priests.
How in the world do the readers/members equate “non-coercion” with capitalism, when capitalistic countries have far more than a share of human torment and inhumanity? The fact is: there are no ‘pure’ systems of human relations that are devoid of evil and human mistreatment, be that capitalism or other. A lot of corruption happens in this system, and others, that can’t be gainsaid or explained away with fluffy, pie-in-the-sky make-believe. We need to take off our masks!
I think there is far more fear of the wealthy right-wing tyranny taking over America than the poor, underprivileged underclass swarming the Elite-ruling class. This fear of the “reds” coming to get our money was instilled in the 30-50’s to fight Communism by Intelligence operations in America. You are stuck in an era that was not all-together true. I don’t think presenting you with other evidence will do much good, if you are not willing to move out from behind that propaganda.
Having no great love for the current Parties, or any “ism,” does not mean I cannot pick out those bits and pieces and statements of logic that seem – seem – to point to good directions. It doesn’t mean I am giving “WHOLEHEARTED” endorsement of any Party or organization: just respecting some things that they occasionally say that are reasonable. History – true history – exists as bits and pieces in a large jigsaw puzzle; it is up to us to locate and assemble those pieces in honest efforts.
This should be an independent look at facts and issues, not “wings”: this is not a Kentucky-Fried restaurant. And this so-called “Right wing”—that must be a spicy part of the bird—or are they just Muppets dressed in white robes and gold halos floating around with their all-powerful wands and gimmicks?
This Group is not a hodgepodge of confused (nor a melting pot of all kinds of), aimless political quips and slander: do not come here to just “get something off your chest” – speak with purpose, clarity, and humanity and reason: childish tantrums belong in the alley. We need some new, innovative, investigation and reasoning: not the same old, worn-out, repetitive ageless tantrums about Left versus Right. If we cannot change – we are lost.
Members are always welcome to state their detailed reasons for disagreement, but usually none are forthcoming. We encourage members to post their own analysis and other areas of news, no matter how disconcerting; but, apparently, most just rather be by-standing critics that have little to say of value.
If you want further specifics other than what is said here: you need to help locate those persons and names and pin down their actual substance and actions: nothing is being handed on a silver-platter, and we ask all to add further names and specific items; you are welcome to do that. Readers are welcome to speak up and demonstrate their findings, rather than vaguely complain. Sometimes, specific and detailed questions bring forth specific and detailed answers; bad questions, bad answers.
I don’t necessarily believe Putin or “anybody”: I try to present a lot of interesting comments and facts with not so much an unduly “prejudgment” so as to get opinions from all sides, rather than censor from some hidden or inner sanctum crap-pot of judgmental facts; and then I sometimes let the chips fall where they may.
(Please read and follow the Preamble, it is there for a reason. While we abhor censorship, but we do have rules: this is not a “let it all hang out” assembly with wild and ravishing comments. Use reason and purpose and humanity.
For all those out there who occasionally complain about the choice of content [and I am fighting the heavy-hand of the 1st Amendment and no censorship as well]: please submit – submit content that you would like to see, be active to this extent, and not just bystanders and curbside spectators.)
We welcome all the stories of tragedy in the lives of people who have encountered the Power Cabal. Most people are unaware of the day-to-day destruction of the family and other ‘taboo’ topics because the Powers-That-Be are not predicated upon its disclosure and they rather hide the cold, stark and naked facts: it would expose their true, evil intentions. Your stories can be told here.
Concerning child custody and domestic problems: We are interested in presenting ‘both’ sides, not just one side, but ‘all’ the facts as we realize there is important information in each argument. The real enemy is the Monster of a legal profession that is only interested in their Power, their Profitand their Prestige (PPP); a part of the Military-Industrial-Corporate-Matrix (MICCM). To be too exclusive and depositing the argument into one small example is not fair to the whole picture. There are always areas of gray; it is never black and white. ###### I would love to have my children ‘cry’ to see me; I would come running post haste! I am afraid that Parental Alien Syndrome (PAS) has weighed heavy against me. Have you visited Hope Henderson’s Timeline? She has some examples were ‘females,’ as well, have been denied custody and are victims of PAS. ###### I recently went through — and still am — with a case where lawyers have more or less given a doctor a clean bill of health despite cogent and important complaints because the Laws, as written, allow much foolishness to slide through. The medical profession is not immune from the MICCM, but is a part of it. Might always Makes Right. Washington University Physicians are one such Power Structure in which they do not allow ‘real’ dissent and your life is totally in their hands.
We dance around some of the “core” problems and dress our dance in all kinds of (getting to be) “worn out” slogans, chants, and aimless threats, some very inaccurate, often, pretending to be on the “right side” of history — as the ground is shifting beneath our feet and the very reality of things is and has changed drastically in the matrix before our very eyes. More to come.
Some Groups are quite paranoid and hyperventilated, suspecting all people and persons to some curious agenda they ‘have’ or suspect others of having. The JFK groups are mostly like that, being a landscape of suspicion, unreasonable debate, slander, attack and wild accusations. Doesn’t say much for fair and sane investigation, tending to be grade-schoolish and parochially petty. I tend to shy away from such radical and wild climates, not doing science or any one any good: Mostly private “in” Groups, if you are friends of friends of friends, or know same or even if you associate with the wrong people they dislike (not the basis for good journalistic enquiry). Good luck.
But I repeat myself.
(We go back to 2011,for genuine researchers and not just spectators, so use a powerful browser and go searching. Good luck.)
. ################# . PRIVACY Warning: Steve Erdmann: . Due to the fact that Facebook has chosen to involve software that will allow the theft of my personal information, I do declare the following: on this day, September 28, 2016, in response to the new Facebook guidelines and under articles L.111, 112 and 113 of the code of intellectual property, I declare that my rights are attached to all my personal data, drawings, paintings, photos, texts etc… published on my profile. For commercial use of the foregoing my written consent is required at all times.
Those reading this text can copy it and paste it on their Facebook wall. This will allow them to place themselves under the protection of copyright. By this release, I tell Facebook that it is strictly forbidden to disclose, copy, distribute, broadcast, or to take any other action against me on the basis of this profile and/or its contents. The actions mentioned above apply equally to employees, students, agents and/or other staff under the direction of Facebook.
The contents of my profile include private information. The violation of my privacy is punished by the law (UCC 1 1-308 – 308 1 -103 and the Rome Statute). Facebook is now an open capital entity. All members are invited to post a notice of this kind, or if you prefer, you can copy and paste this version. If you have not published this statement at least once, you will tacitly allow the use of elements such as your photos as well as the information contained in your profile update. https://www.facebook.com/groups/171577496293504/## https://www.facebook.com/stephen.erdmann1.
NOTE; Many members and readers say this is worthless and of no legal value. I borrowed it from another Group. Worth a try. SE.
*******
Barry Smith I cannot stand this woman. She is a tin pot dictator. God help the persons in her court room.
Stephen Erdmann Money and power does that to a person: there are hundreds more like her, regardless of Party or “ism.” They ae a brood in the MICCM.
Verna Safran I like and respect Judge Judy. This looks like a man/woman thing. Men don’t like being judged by a female. But she’s invariably right and has a great sense of humor. she’s against unmarried couples liv The only bone I have to pick with her is that she’s against unmarried couples living together and buying property together. She calls it “playing house.” But it is true that the law does not allow unmarried partners to inherit, and if there’s a split — they’re on their own. As for “shrew:” and “dictator” — imagine how we feel having nothing but male judges for so many years living together and buying property together
Stephen Erdmann Male, female, it makes no difference when it comes to the MICCM and the courts: it is just another opportunity to expand and control. Her arrogance is so typical, and “tin pot dictator” about covers it all for her and so many others.
Stephen Erdmann Sense of humor? Has about as much humor as an alligator chewing down.
Verna Safran Then how come it’s just you boys who find her so offensive? Judges are expected to pass judgment. She does her job and does it brilliantly.
Emil Donofrio Oh please she doesn’t get 45 million because she a great judge, it’s all about ratings and sponsors.
Stephen Erdmann Men do face a bigger burden when in the courts than women. On the others, I guess Hitler and Stalin did their jobs and did it brilliantly too? For a Progressive Liberal, Verna, you show a major contradiction here: I think that is, in part, by not seeing the true enemy.
Verna Safran If the true enemy for you is women in power and women who have a lot of money, I feel sorry for you because you must be a very unhappy person.
Verna Safran P.S. Always a sign of a losing argument when people drag in Hitler and Stalin for no reason.
Verna Safran Since when did you join the “old boys club, Leo?” Men who put down women in power or try to are the condescending ones. Judge Judy has had her program for over 20 years and it’s one of the most popular ones on TV. Nobody’s forcing you to watch it, but give credit where credit is due. I’m done with this conversation, since prejudice is pretty hard to combat, especially when fellows like you don’t know they have it.
Stephen Erdmann I never said that, read closely, Verna, and also remember what has already been said (but of the biggest faults of Facebook: no content indexing). Every reason to drag in Hitler and Stalin as they demonstrate these human tendencies at their worst. There are millions of Hitlers and Stalin’s out there with those same qualities, they just need to look in the mirror. Seeing the worst of their ID is the beginning of seeing the real problem. Misquoting me – certainly won’t help. Blanketing it over with a lot of hero-worship won’t do it either. Having a hodgepodge Political construct only harms us all. Any man that has entered domestic court will testify to a stacked deck. We all suffer from the tyranny of the MICCM.
Verna Safran Well, I won’t leave yet until I respond to your latest spilling of invective. I didn’t quote you exactly, but there are certain key words in the above posts that I find VERY offensive: “Dictator” “power mad” “corrupt” — and a comparison of a worthymember of the American legal system to fascists. Do you feel the same way about male judges? Or do your libertarian sentiments prevent you from any sense of order in society and respect for those whose job it is to prevent chaos?
Stephen Erdmann I think the meme has more to do with power and tyrannical regimes, than women’s rights. You have woman’s rights on the brain, but this isn’t presented specifically for a woman’s rights argument. You are forcing it out of context. Read what has been said. ############## So you ‘like’ her, that’s your problem. I think she symbolizes all that is bad with the media, society, power grabs, greed, and on and on. That ‘that’ is popular does not say much for those fans, that is all I can say. Hey, each has their own opinions; I just think yours is misguided and wrong.
Verna Safran I think your opinions are based on your hating your mommy. Bye now.
Stephen Erdmann Again, the posting was more aimed at general power-issues, misuse of the media, greed, and other related points: you are in error to turn it into a woman’s rights issue (as you often do). It was meant to point out a common foe: the all-powerful MICCM (and yes, I have a big gripe with judges in general).
Stephen Erdmann Now, that was an intelligence-less and very unprofessional comment, Verna, enough said. As you commented yourself somewhat: “Always a sign of a losing argument when people drag in (your mother and your father) for no (good) reason.” Please read and abide by the Preamble or leave the Group. Vindictiveness is not owned just by men, not by a long shot.
Verna Safran: Very good reason if you bother to think about it.
Verna Safran: And don’t you think that throwing your weight around as someone who can kick people off of Facebook is an illustration of your own theory about abuse of power? As Burke said, “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” If you want to throw me off of here for disagreeing with you, so be it. I’m finding a lot of the comments puerile and discussions with bigoted people a waste of time.
Stephen Erdmann: It was not disagreeing that was the issue. It was attacking someone’s family and being outside the rules. If she felt that was fine: go fight in a alley somewhere, not here.
Stephen Erdmann: We have a ban on personal and unreasonable attacks on each other, senility (or, what appears to be) should be no excuse, or any other excuse you are trying to come up with. If you are allowed to, then any one is allowed to. The decision is yours: It ends here.
Stephen Erdmann: Verna Safran: has left the building. Attacks on one’s personal parents, children, or relatives not allowed for whatever reason one can imagine. No posting or site or Group justifies hitting below the belt: if your arguments are good, they will not sink this low. That is not just espousing another opinion, that is vicious attack.
Richard Callahan Waiariki: “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Which is a problem if you are powerless. I feel for you Verna!
Stephen Erdmann: Do you subscribe to personal attacks, Richard, then have it at: only do it on your Timeline, not here, this is not the place for wild, dirty and victimizing personal attacks? Facebook doesn’t even approve of that. Alley fights and gang mentality lives somewhere, just not here, I hope.
Stephen Erdmann: We do know the different between civil debates and attacking one’s personal family and friends, do we not? I am wondering.
Stephen Erdmann: It was not “disagreeing” that was the issue. It was attacking someone’s family and being outside the rules. If she felt that was fine: go fight in an alley somewhere, not here.
Stephen Erdmann: One other thought, along similar lines: If you accept someone’s Friendship, it should be done in a certain vain, and both parties should make efforts to be just that: Friends. That means doing your utmost to be friends and associate in a loving (to a degree) and fine way. This is not Texas Wrestling or a bar fight. Verna has her own Timeline to do cruel and mean things and she can show her personal disrespect to anyone anywhere else. Why do you want it here?
Emil Donofrio: Oh, please she doesn’t get 45 million because she a great judge, it’s all about ratings and sponsors..
Stephen Erdmann:Thanks Leo, I just don’t understand from where she gets all those so-called ‘fans,’ unless they are birds of a feather flocking together.
Emil Donofrio:Republicans live to see people passing judgment on other people. Besides it’s all about ratings and sponsors they could care less about how good of a judge she is.
Stephen Erdmann:True, it is a circus for money. Power. The same old story. Verna hopscotched around too much between ‘women’s rights’ and ‘left – right’ motivations and other junk: very hard to get a handle on. The issue here, to me, was the age-old scenario of power and control. Verna, by the way, was not Republican, I believe she leaned to the left.
To Jimmy Garst: September 3, 2015: Stephen Erdmann: You mention D and D propagandists that are against unions: why don’t you name who you are talking about? I am not against unions, if I am the one you are referring to, so you are inaccurate. Instead of painting everyone with your inaccurate brush time and again, document your accusations. I know for a fact, not all members are against unions. I also know that not all members fit your constant descriptions that you wildly parade. I don’t mind you speaking your mind, just when you hand out BS, which you do from time to time. Setting yourself against everyone and everything in a blind rage won’t work here, because I hope there are more Group members working “together” for the Preamble “goals” than stirring up dung for the hell of it.
Verna Safran has been blocked from the Dissenter/Disinter Group for attacking family members, yet she persists in contacting me with harassment, please investigate her:
I’m the one who said that about the battle of wits, dfarlin’. You’re sure not good at giving credit where credit is due. Maybe the “I” being the source of your typing (and other?) problems is trying to tell you something.
44 minutes ago
You sarcasm is tolerable to a point: but when you put your vindicativeness to the extreme of
attacking one’s family, you go outside everyones’ boundaries. If you can’t apologize, don’t present your usual hatred and spite here or you will be reported.
Verna Safran:
Oh, do you have a family? If so, I don’t remember insulting it. I just wondered why you hated old people so much, enough to lambast them in a nasty fashion. I guessed it started with your mom. You can correct me if I’m wrong. Meanwhile, keep your vicious cracks to yourself or I’ll report you!
Steve Erdmann:
You have no intention of being reasonable or fair: I owe your attacks nothing. Stop contacting me with your smartass remarks, or I will report you. This is why you are censored, you are into this kind of stuff. You do it without a second thought or empathy. What does that say? Cease and desist. Stop. Now.
Verna Safran:
I’ve counted over a hundred “likes” to my remarks on Facebook. For some reason I seem to get under your skin, so just don’t read what I write. Simple solution for a simple mind.
Steve Erdmann:
I said what I said: If you have no consideration for the feelings of others, that is your problem – don’t contact me.”
Verna Safran: What would you say about a person who calls an elder citizen “senile” and accuses her of “talking smack” when she posts something that disagrees with your opinion?
Verna Safran: Evidently Steve’s plea for politeness and analysis of aggression applies to everyone but himself. He was incredibly rude to me in his posts, called me names and ridiculed me, exhibiting a disrespect for older people. I asked him why he hated older people, and asked the question therapists would ask (half joking because it’s a Freudian cliche) Did he hate his mother? At this point he totally lost it, freaked out, said I was attacking his family (not so, I never met his family) and he’s been nurturing his imaginary wounds ever since. I don’t wish to continue this discussion because Steve obviously has issues preventing him from courtesy to women and to older folks. I do enjoy communicating with others on Facebook, and most of them “get” my sense of humor. Lordy, I hope the political debates, once we get to see them on television, don’t descend to the level of name-calling and nastiness that Steve has displayed.
Verna Safran: Calling people senile when they are alert and active seniors is a form of slander and goes against the principles that Steve Erdmann set out in his preamble. What hypocrisy!
Verna Safran: Some folks, when they get older, acquire wisdom. Do you think Bernie Sanders is “senile”? Was Eleanor Roosevelt “senile”? I can only hope it happens for Stephen Erdmann, and maybe it will, when he comes home from his power trip.
Verna Safran John G. — What were you doing awake at 2:55 a.m.? Do you elderly folks have a hard time falling asleep? Or have you mentally reverted to an earlier time in your life and are having nightmares? Don’t worry, the boogeyman won’t get you. And Verna has put away her broom. :>) Just kidding.
Jimmy Garst: Robert Prudente, Is that neo-con Reagan glorification another example of what you call the socialist take over and their propaganda mind manipulation? Robert thinks trickle down is where those socialist not the elite piss all over the Working Man?Reagan was a Commie hater just like you. I’m surprised you would criticize your hero! Bobby, You are so UnAmerican! You starting to sound like that Commie you hate so much. Hypocrite boy!!
Jimmy Garst: Robert Prudente, Given your self professed hatred of Evil Commie’s, I’m surprised that you would dare to criticize Fearless Leader, the all time champion in the fight against the Evil Commie Empire, the fight against those Godless socialists, Ronny the the Bush puppet. Boy, You are such a hypocrite! You better be careful or true fascists live Steve the Mworm will attack you for being an UnAmerican Commie lover. You should really stop with the hate mongering and self loathing, and come out of the closet and admit it is okay to be a Christian Socialist. You might actually become a true Christian, not just another poser.
Jim Tarr: Ronnie wasn”t even president,he was just reading his prompts,Sr Bushy tail was running the show
Stephen Erdmann: Please stop attacking fellow members with name-calling. Professionally attack the issues rather than people – analyze the facts and comment on those facts only.
Stephen Erdmann: If Communists are symbols of love and compassion, there is not much here! I am quite sure there are some loving Communists that are true compassionate individuals: just not this one: you can’t prove love and compassion by being a wild hate-spitting Monster. Avoid and desist in name-calling and personal attacks, professionally examine the issues, not attack the person.
September 5, 2015: Stephen ErdmannWell, your time is limited: can you quote exactly where this was said? I don’t recall seeing anyone calling that you are a “Godless socialist hate monger,” do you make this stuff up as you go along? That ‘would’ be mongering.
Stephen Erdmann:Again, face the issues and refrain from personal attacks: they are not allowed here.
Steve Maiworm:Boy these videos really show the truth
Barry SmithSteve, if you still believe the “official conspiracy theory”, you are intellectually lazy. I suggest you you look into groups such as Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, Pilots for 9/11 Truth, Fire Fighters for 9/11 Truth. If you possess even a rudimentary understanding of Newtonian physics then you would have known instantly that we have all been lied to.
Jimmy Garst: Barry Smith, This site commonly has memes on 9/11. However, Steve Maiworm has the intellectual capacity of a worm. He is willfully ignorant, and a brain washed fascist toad. Trying to have an intelligent conversation with an narrow minded myopic hater is almost impossible.
Steve Maiworm:Voltaire was a left wing progressive nut and socialistic fascist like you Jimmy garst.
Steve Maiworm : Jimmy your posts are so ridiculous they actually amuse me
Jimmy Garst: Steve Maiworm, You are absolutely one of the most stupid, most ignorant and biggest waste of oxygen I have ever encountered. You are a poor excuse for a human. Your hate mongering is OTT and not amusing. The fact that you God Bless Nazi, and you the world of fascism puts you at high-question.
Jimmy Garst: Barry Smith and Stephen Erdmann, one final note on Steve the Worm Steve Maiworm. He claims he is not a paid propagandist in the CIA legion of flying monkeys. Interestingly, when I went to his FB page to block the ugly fascist pig, low and behold, the man acts very much like a spy.
Steve Maiworm: Actually that hot dog is you James Jimmy comrade general secretary garst
Jimmy Garst: I’m disgusted that my tax dollars are wasted on the salary of ugly, fascist, scum bag, piles of pig poo, propagandist monkeys, like Steve the Worm. He is a parisite sucking on the fascist tit of his Uncle Sam. A brain washed troll hate monger of DHS. hate mongering idiot who believes in and promotes propaganda nonsense is a waste of time. Truth is irrelevant to Steve. He is easily one of the biggest tools and fools I have ever encountered. I kick myself for wasting my oxygen on this ignorant fascist pile of pig poo. He is a evil, horrible, war monger, hate monger, waste of skin. The world would be a better place without fascist pigs like the Worm. Honestly,to make a comment about proof of 9/11 conspiracy on this site, suggest steve is a paid propagandist in the CIA legion of flying monkeys. It is really hard to believe that anyone could be as stupid as Steve. But then, “Patriotism is the last refuge for a scoundrel and coward”.” Voltaire.
Stephen Erdmann: Okay, I’ve asked gentlemanly and clearly, not to indulge in character assassination and name-calling: it is against the Preamble. I’ve asked you to deal with the issues in a professional way. Spewing aimless diatribes do nothing to help the situation.
Jimmy Garst: Barry Smith, this comment by the Worm, Steve Maiworm, is a good example of the OTT stupidity of this moron. He claims, “America is weak.” HAHAHAHA! STUPID!!!! FYI Stevie Stupid, America has the largest most powerful military in the world. The US spends more on militarism than the next 20 countries combined, and half of them are our Allies. Steve has obviously been listening to Trump’s propaganda. Steve does not live in a world of reality. His brain is totally polluted with propaganda nonsense. Steve the fascist lives in a fantasy world I call fascist pigland. America has been bankrupt both morally and financially by patriotic Americans like Steve. With citizens like Steve, who needs Commies for enemies. These morons are doing a fine job of destroying America all on their own.
Jimmy Garst: Barry Smith, You must laugh at OTT stupid likeSteve Maiworm. He thinks socialist are unAmerican and evil, but Steve is okay with patriotic Nazi Americans who kill our President, bomb the WTC and murder millions of innocent civilians in the name of freedom, liberty and Democracy. With patriotic fascist hate mongers like Steve and Bobby P, America does not need to worry about the minorities, the Commies and the Muslims, These fascist pigs are totally capable of destroying not only the USA but the World, all on their own. God Bless America, the land of the fascist and the stupid.https://www.facebook.com/MintpressNewsMPN/photos/a.427073724002835.96035.277613075615568/876154342428102/?type=1&theater
Jimmy Garst: Barry SmithandStephen Erdmann, one final note on Steve the WormSteve Maiworm. He claims he is not a paid propagandist in the CIA legion of flying monkeys. Interestingly, when I went to his FB page to block the ugly fascist pig, low and behold, this scum bag hate monger works for DHS. This pig ridicules me while he and his fellow thugs in the fascist police state steal my social security to fund their unholy failed wars of the perpetual war machine and this fascist arse’s salary. . FICA / SOCIAL Security is the largest source of income for the US government at $1.2 trillion annually. The alphabet soup of DoD, CIA, FBI, NSA, DHS (Steve), WAR costs America $1.2 trillion annually. I think Steve’s employment at DHS make it obvious he is no dissenter, but a boot licking Nazi widget. This scum bag is not only a waste of oxygen, but a waste of my tax dollars. You are such a loser, Get a real job Steve. Stop sucking on Uncle Sam’s Tit, you parasite. Get a real job, cos hate mongering, advancing hegemony and WWIII is unproductive, and down right evil. DHS is a waste of my tax dollars, I wish I could make it go away as easily as blocking a fascist pig like Steve on FB. Steve, Please do the world and American tax payers a favor and die soon!https://www.facebook.com/pandaunite/photos/a.486974971319177.98235464.214899805193363/1006928499323819/?type=1&theater
Jimmy Garst: I’m disgusted that my tax dollars are wasted on the salary of ugly, fascist, scum bag, piles of pig poo, propagandist monkeys, like Steve the Worm. He is a parisite sucking on the fascist tit of his Uncle Sam. A brain washed troll hate monger of DHS! Not to be confused with CIA!. The opinion of hate mongers like Steve are irrelevant to the truth . He and his opinion are unimportant. I sincerely wish for your speedy death.
Jimmy Garst, You recently had a pretty free run on your comments last few days in the Dissenter/Disinter Group. I need to get answer to just one question and then leave with one comment: I notice that I cannot comment to topics in your Timeline: are you going to allow me the same ability and freedom to make comments on your Timeline as you have been allowed to do on Dissenter? #### Lastly, I ask as a personal favor that you refrain from the rather harsh treatment on other members, as requested. I am making the same request of Steve Maiworm and Robert Prudente and all other members.
CIA employee as of at least 1963. Was alleged to have been seen with Jack Ruby at Ruby’s Carousel Club. According to researcher Paris Flammonde, he was friends with Dave Ferrie (Ferrie, as well as being up to where his eyebrows would have been in the Kennedy assassination, was a practitioner of hypnosis and black magic) and knew Lee Harvey Oswald. He was an employee of the Double-Chek Corporation and the Evergreen Advertising Agency (both CIA fronts).
“In his youth, Gordon Novel belonged to a neo-Nazi group and was arrested and charged with bombing a Metarie, Louisiana, theater that admitted blacks. Later, he sold spy devices in New Orleans. Gordon Novel claimed he worked with the Cuban Revolutionary Front during the Bay of Pigs, as a Director of the CIA proprietary, the Evergreen Advertising Agency, and had created cryptographic messages for the CIA.”
In 1967, the CIA reported that they never utilized either Novel or the Evergreen Advertising Agency.
During New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison’s investigation of the Kennedy assassination, Novel was recommended to him by one of Garrison’s political supporters, automobile dealer Willard Robertson. Novel was then an anti-eavesdropping expert, and Garrison was reportedly worried about FBI surveillance. Novel told Garrison about Dave Ferrie’s arms pickup in Louisiana to arm anti-Castro Cuban exiles.
When information regarding Garrison’s investigation was leaked to NBC reporters, Garrison suspected Novel, and Novel was subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury. Novel instead fled to Ohio, where he was arrested on burglary charges Garrison had filed accusing Novel of participating with Ferrie in the arms pickup.
“After some initial reluctance, Ohio Governor James Rhodes finally agreed to extradite Novel to Louisiana if Garrison would complete the papers within sixty days,” which Garrison reportedly never bothered to do. Later, Garrison would claim that people in high places, up to and including President Lyndon Johnson, were preventing him from obtaining his witnesses.
During this time, Novel became an informant for the FBI regarding the Garrison investigation.
Chris Patorov: both sides are pawns in the agenda that is hidden from the citizens both do a small amount of “good deeds” to appease the masses but to be honest both have done too little too late …in this group out of respect this will be the last time i have a political commentary it is the system itself it is flawed and corrupt and only complete disintegration and over haul will fix this money has no business in politics no man ( not to be sexist or woman) born into wealth can ever really comprehend the needs and fears and wants of a general public nor its toils and trials they can never truly make legislation that covers the myriad of difficulties the average person goes through in a lifetime as they themselves cannot comprehend the complexities of struggle only political leaders who have risen from nothing can help our people bottom line money needs to be excluded from politics for it to run efficiently.
Abraham Bolden: In this video, Files said that 5 months before Dallas, plans were made to hit JFK in Chicago. This would have been around late March, 1963. Files is right. Before Kennedy’s plane landed at O’Hare Field, in Chicago, a call came into the SS office from some person calling himself “Lee”. This person said that there was a plan to assassinate Kennedy along the I94 Expressway. The SS, because of staffing problems and short notice, assigned Lt. Bob Linski to try and trace the call. An extra detail of Chicago Policemen were placed atop every underpass along I94. IN THE MEANTIME, THE MOTORCADE WAS cancelled and JFK was helicoptered into Meigs Field. To my knowledge, it was never confirmed that the caller was Oswald but Judyth Baker may be able to shed some light on that. When ASAIC Martineau was questioned about this before the AARB, his answer was a curt, “I don’t remember.” How Files could have known about this incident without being an inside participant is impossible to explain. Also, the biting of the shell casing and placing it on top of a board behind the Grassy Knoll, how could he have known about that and how the mark was indeed found on a casing with a mark on it like the one he describes?
Robert Prudente: This is a special coincidence…Without going into detail, I am on FMLA (Family Medical Leave Act) for a PTSD event brought on by my employer…I have now been diagnosed by 2 psychiatrists that I am suffering from anxiety disorder brought on by a specific event perpetrated by my employer…I further expect the employer to reject my claim as a work related injury.
Robert PrudenteI recently filed a workers compensation against my employer…I spoke with the adjustor this morning…My injury is PTSD and a diagnosis of anxiety disorder..I do have a serious case of anxiety…This is a work place injury perpetrated by my employer…These types of claims are next to impossible to attain however, my circumstances are well above the norm…I was threatened with termination of employment for insubordination however, I refused citing safety concerns that are addressed in 49 CFR, the Code of Federal Regulations….The bottom line is…”Did the employer have a legitimate threat of termination”…Now, we play the waiting game.
Robert PrudenteRight now, we do have a bit left of protection for the working class in the form of organized labor (unions) and the department of labor…however, both are under attack…Corporatism declared war on labor many moons ago and are not letting up.
The attempt to control those who disagree with you is called: Neophobia, Cainophobia, Cainotophobia, Cenophobia, Centophobia, Kainolophobia, Kainophobia – An abnormal and persistent fear of anything new including new things, ideas or situations, of novelty.
*******
Dissenter/Disinter Magazine goes back to 1967 when I gave birth to a little fanzine that seemed to be my contribution to the media flavor of that time: the Viet Nam war, the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination, the late Jim Moseley’s Saucer News, Ray Palmer’s provoking Search Magazine and Hidden World series, as well as a line of “controversy” radio programs such as Long John Nebel, Suspense, Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, with television shows such as Science Fiction Theater and Twilight Zone. In St. Louis in the 60s there was WIL “Steve Clark” controversy radio. There was a section of the media that was some kind of renaissance to the investigating of the more curious and often sinister elements at that time, and it gave birth to myself and others that have continued in that vein to this day (many will include Coast to Coast radio and Alex Jones and others to this list). We still try to contribute to the emblem of “controversy and protest” as a way of getting to the truth.
Subsequently, in the years following, my life embodied further “discovery” of these “realities” of the mysterious Powers-that-Be (which were quite depressing and decorated with flight-or-fight syndromes), and my waking hours were consumed with survival and making “ends meet” (as with so many of the population, I did not have the luxury of always devoting myself to media publishing or even schooling). That story may or may not be left to my memoirs (and my Timeline), if at all.
We try not to “conform” to predisposed or status quo “images” that people have in their heads, or were born with. We approach all topics from different viewpoints and suggestions, because we realize solutions are never black and white (I hail back to H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, George Orwell, Charles Fort (http://www.experienceproject.com/…/Protest-The-Use-…/2923915), Info Journal, and a host of New Age and Protest scientists [study my Timeline]). We offer a forum for discussion, within reason. Questions are always open. I, personally, am ‘independent’ politically, neither bowing to the Left or Right, and neither do I encourage others to bow to them either (or any “ism”). It is a matter of finding out who the tyrants are and how much you relinquish to being a slave. Others may participate from their own level of evaluation, that is their right; but I cannot “endorse” everyone’s politics or religion. We offer a platform to search these things out (in a civil and humane fashion: see Preamble) through questioning and debate. How do you see applying censorship in Groups and Timelines? Use it every time something grinds against your personal opinion? And what about the next person? And the next person? Seems that our Founding Fathers grappled with these questions as well. It is amazing with all the common threads of agreement that ‘can’ be found in fighting tyrannical government and evil conspiracies, we are tearing each other apart, for some reason, over petty feuds and personality squabbles that detract from common core efforts (those little nuggets of gold that make us all as one in protest). We (we are speaking editorially) hope we are able to stand in a “common core” against Tyranny and the evils that are associated with it.
In the end, we are all brothers and sisters.
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TO: Julien Landau: April 3, 2018: Facebook:
Stephen Erdmann: Sounds like you are looking for a “robot-god,” not a human being, humans aren’t Holy, Pure and without blemish, none of them; that’s why they wear ‘masks’ and go to Church on Sunday and beg forgiveness, and the prance about afterwards singing praises and hoyden while they continue their usual crimes and schemes, all the while under their sanctimonious masks You are looking for the supreme male-god that always wears the White Hat, but are blind to the fact that even the wealthy and rich male-icon hides the greatest blemishes and scars that most people refuse to see, and often, are disguised demons; the humblest of us are usually the kindest and most pure of all, as Christ taught. We live under many myths and propaganda, and it seems you have fallen for some of them.
Facebook, April 23, 2018. There is good and bad in all situations, and any group or ‘ism’ can be misused and fall into the same error-filled stance, especially once it reaches a point of power. We use what clubs we can to obtain our goals, but they all ultimately fail in some way. Look at the Dems and Repubs. Yes, I have belonged to unions, even a Teamster Union, and it kissed the company’s ass over and over, and only appeared to be a useless mediator between you and the company: a lackey branch. But how would you like to put your ‘life’ on the line, as when being a security guard posited in some dire and scary situations, yet to be a bottom fall-guy when things fall apart: you have to take the heat for your four (4) bosses above you: Your security company, the police department, the contractor, and the state EEOC which gives them a lackey thumbs-up and sells their party-line? Now, what would you call that situation?
August 18, 2018, to Tony Elliott: The more basic and even accurate cause of human slavery and suppression goes far beyond any “ism” or philosophy, it is despotism and tyrannical thinking and that is global. Trying to put human evil and the human ID Monster in nice, neat little ‘boxes’ only shows our failure to recognize the real culprit and the basic evil involved. All ‘leaders’ have shared this evil trend since history recorded. There is no political “safe haven,” and what is written on ‘paper’ is nothing but masks that hide this innate manipulation.
August 19, 2018, Ron Schmidt: Stephen Erdmann I am well aware of the battles, debates and distortions going on with this corporate giant, as anyone else who researches the Internet, apparently much more so than you in making pompous, vain and illogical comments just to gain points. Do you just puke this stuff to just feel the hot air stream out of your mouth, or what? There are many more interested in going further into the Human Rights issues and how corporates are abusing that. Yes, I realize Facebook censors conservative viewpoints and I have also stated the futility and hopelessness of participating in partisan politics. Do you really read my comments, or just vainly pound your chest and whistle Dixie? Getting lopsidedly on a site and starting to spell misquoted and unrelated comments in some weird disjointed way are certainly of no help. I pay attention to “what is going on” apparently far more closely and tightly than you do. It might be considered “the wrong battle” to those who are connecting to the broader issue of Human Rights (which you apparently can’t connect), but it is a battle many are joining in and making the overall connection. If you can’t take it elsewhere, we don’t need it here, and if you really want to see ‘censorship’ keep it up.
(Same) Stephen Erdmann We’ve been over the proper definition of spam many, many posts ago, and, no, I’m not going to drag it up just for your distorted interest, go dig for yourself. You won’t find it with the legalese blinders you wear or by sticking your head up corporate butts as you do. Name-calling is no substitute. I’ve done my research and it does ‘not’ kowtow to ‘official’ or ‘blind’ definitions and corporate ass-kissing. Heard it from you over and over like a busted recording that can’t get out into the fresh air and look at real problems, if the bossman says no, with a swelled head and chest and nothing else. And, sadly, ‘that’ private definition you refer to is not the real definition of spam. (Besides. take it somewhere else, this is my Timeline, not yours.) Furthermore, the usual definition of spam is not what many Facebook users and Internet users are complaining about, they are reporting arbitrary, senseless removals and deletions that sometimes border on Facebook, or anyone’s, insanity; in a much broader sense, corporatism is not guided by any good morality and public sense or duty, other than profits and that gross manipulation of same (strangely, we somehow find ‘laws’ abound against these ‘private’ companies). And, yes, if they could get away with ‘murder’—and actually have—they would.
Facebook; September 14, 2018: There is no doubt that the assassination was a well-planned, military and psyops conspiracy, involving many faces, many secret operatives, partially to make it virtually impossible to trace or trail-back to the many shots involved. It is my theory that some shooters were unbeknownst to each other, making the trail even more difficult to outline. Dallas that day was a virtual “Spook City” with all kinds of intelligence and clandestine operatives walking the streets, many with their own parts and agendas to play, which also would obfuscate and confuse any investigation (this also suggests that our society has become nothing but a virtual deep state and psyops living- nightmare everywhere). Much evidence would be needed to prove that Jackie had a part to play or did the things alleged, but in this society, such is the makings of our diabolical world.
Persistence is one word that best describes the previous books by UFO investigators Thomas J. Carey and Donald R. Schmitt, authors of WITNESS TO ROSWELL and INSIDE THE REAL AREA 51. Persistence is also a watchword in their book THE CHILDREN OF ROSWELL.
“We now know that the American government stooped to the lowest level of humanity by going so far as to issue death threats to child witnesses. This should inform the reader of two things; there was a big secret to be kept…and the secret keepers were willing to go to any lengths to keep it.”
Ben Hensey, Sci-Fi Factor Fakes, Paranormal Files, foreword.
America was besieged by reports of strange crescent-shaped objects, particularly in the West, and especially around the 509th Atomic Bomb Wing of Roswell, Mexico in the summer of 1947. A head of Counter Intelligence Corps was sent (and later denied what he found). The Army base closed-down for one week under high security, and any visitors refused. A major sense of hidden panic prevailed Roswell overall.
(THE CHILDREN OF ROSWELL: A Seven-Decade Legacy of Fear, Intimation, and Cover-ups, Thomas J, Carey and Donald R. Schmitt, The Career Press, Inc., 12 Parish Drive, Wayne, New Jersey 07470, www.careerpress.com, 2016, 255 pages, $16.99)
Conventionally downed balloons were discovered and often recovered on Mack Brazel’s tour on the ranch he worked, such as the Mogul balloon train found on June 14, 1947, described as “rubber strips, tin foil, a rather tough paper and sticks.” What foreman W.W Mack Brazel discovered on J.B. Foster’s ranch on July 3, 1947 was “quite different.”
The military arrived in short-order and discovered remains of a crashed vehicle that also had dispersed debris for almost a mile from a mid-air explosion into a “fan-shaped” pattern.
Intelligence officer, Jesse Marcel, did a hasty “stop-off” at his home to show his wife and son the strange parts of debris. Following, also came a discovered object 40-miles to the North: the remains of a small ship with additional bodies.
All areas were cordoned off, road-blocks, and a severe security-blanket began to cover the Roswell area, all farms, all media, the Air Base was shut down for all purposes for one week, and a drastic and penetrating search for any and all artifacts of the crash that citizens may have taken.
The crash 40-miles north of Roswell needed more equipment, such as a flatbed, and it was declared a matter of clandestinely deep National Security. It included engineers and ambulance trucks. It was a strategic project.
Mechanical engineers examined some of the wreckage back at Hanger P-3, even pounded the material with a 16-pound sledge hammer with no effect.
A scapegoat event was created at Fort Worth were, along with “neoprene rubber, wooden sticks, blank masking tape, string, and one-sided reflective foil,” while the real material was sent to Ohio. “The FBI’s Dallas office confirmed that.” (p. 37) All tell-tale equipment had been ‘cleared out’ by dawn and the “weather balloon” headline had raced across the media.
The White House had become a war room connected with the Departments of the Army Air Force chief, the Secretary of War, the head of the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project, the Chair of the Joint Chiefs, as well as the President.
Mack Brazel began “retractions” of the incident on July 9th. The military was the easiest to censor as it was a dictatorship, but non-military citizens had Constitutional Rights. Fool-proof evidence as “hardware” had to also be “dealt with and no time to loose”: intimation of public citizens also began as the military conducted cover-up operations and collect the “near-indestructible, paper thin material that has perfect memory.”
THE DEBUNKING PROGRAM
The Army’s new policy was to dismiss all flying disk sightings or UFOs: a full-scale ‘scourged-earth policy’ ensued.
On September 23, 1947, Lieutenant General Nathan F. Twining signed a secret memorandum through the Pentagon to Brigadier General George Schulgen of the Air Intelligence requiring the Division to consider “the phenomenon was real.”
Their investigative “web” (later called the Military-Industrial-Complex) included many sources such as Air Force T-2, Bureau of Standards, General Electric, Rand Corporation, Hughes Air Craft and the Battelle National Laboratories.
Since 1947, agents of governments were often monsters that hid in closets to guard truisms that they wanted to control.
Witnesses Mac Brazel and Timothy “Dee” Proctor were also threatened that if they told what they saw that Dee Proctor would never see his family again. Personnel of radio station KGFL, Walt Whitmore, Jr., Jud Roberts, Frank Joyce likewise received threats that would eventually generate their silence.
Joseph Montoya, Lieutenant Governor of New Mexico, was called to Hanger P-3, and incidentally saw the “little bodies with big heads.” In a panic, Pete and Ruben Anaya came and got Montoya. Because he could speak Spanish, Sheriff Wilcox delivered the “death threat” to Montoya. Wilcox never ran for the office of Sheriff again (p. 64).
Author Antony Bragalia interviewed the daughter of Hunter G. Penn who had taken “a deadly serious assignment back in the summer of 1947” to “help manage civilian-military affairs after the crash…(an) information black-out.” Penn told his foster daughter, Michelle Penn, that he was authorized to use physical force and weapons to obtain their silence. “He tried to ‘heart-attack’ people,” Michelle said.
Barbara Duggar, George and Inez Wilcox, Phyllis McGuire, all had been threatened for their direct observations or some knowledge of the 1947 crash.
Frankie Dwyer Rowe was a 12-year-old daughter of a crew chief of the Roswell Fire Department and had witnessed Robert Scrogging unveiling a mysterious piece of foil that couldn’t be destroyed and “flowed like water.” When the military learned what she had witnessed they came to visit her with such people as Arthur Philbin of the 390th Air Service Squadron (ASS) threatening her: “If you say anything, not only will you be killed, but we will come back for your family. There’s big desert out there, no one will ever find you.”
Roswell Fire Station crewmen, Dan Dwyer and Lee Reeves, arrived earlier at a crash site to observe “an egg-shaped vessel of some sort,” small bodies and one still living.
The full-weight and consequence of the ‘family’ of UFO witnesses, both Dan Dwyer and Ken Letcher, had married into Roswell paranoia, especially when “telephone wire-tapping” was discovered in 1997 (pp. 91-95).
Captain Oliver W. “Pappy” Henderson and Dr. John Kromschroeder had knowledge of the transport of the fragments and bodies. Not surprisingly, “someone from Washington” came to retrieve the material “Pappy” had and reminded him of his security oath.
Guarding his involvement with the crash and Hanger P-3, Provost Marshal at RAAF Major Edwin Easley kept his promise to President Truman in 1947 that he would was “never to speak about the incident again.”
CRATES TO FORT WORTH
Major Edgar R. Skelly ordered a special crew a road a Silverplate B-29 Bomber Straight Flush to fly a crate containing alien bodies to Forth Worth on July 9, 1947. He headed a nine-man crew to escort a heavily-guarded crate loaded at Bomb Pit Number 1. They were told “to keep their mouths shut throughout their assignment.” This Skelly did, despite researcher prodding, until his death in 2002.
Both, Jesse Marcel, Sr., his son Jesse Marcel, Jr., who witnessed the original crashed parts, were harassed by mysterious phone calls and threats until the day of their deaths. Senior Jesse Marcel believed he was under a death threat and had a meeting with a mysterious “Dick D’Amato” which certainly didn’t lesson that belief. D’Amato said the truth was buried deep under Black budgets and witnesses that were heavily watched.
The RAAF base hospital administrative executive secretary was a Miriam ‘Andrea’ Bush who allegedly had observed alien bodies on July 9, 1947. It was an event that deeply haunted her until her bizarre death in December 1989 in a Fremont, California motel.
One of the biggest threats to the military was the plights of “souvenir collectors” of the crash. Other nearly lost accounts of witnesses were in fear of coming forward. Sydney “Jack” Wright, Dan Richards, Trinidad Chavez, Ralph A. Multer, Charles Austin Wood, Frank Vega, James Wood, Sally Tadolini, Randy Lovelace, June Crain, Walter Haut, Tom Brookshier, were among these.
“To a journalist, it’s always about what happened and why,” said broadcast journalist Cheryll Jones. “This book underscores the bigger issue that the UFO/ET phenomenon is truly a significant part of a bigger picture of lies, deception, and deceit prevalent in our world today. People brave enough to challenge that are a vital part of the journalist’s quest for answers in trying to figure that out. This takes us a big step further in that direction.” (p. 21)
https://wordpresscom507.wordpress.com/2020/06/07/stephen-erdmann-trust-and-foundatin/wordpresscom507 - Stephen Erdmann Foundation-Dissenter/Disinter Magazine 
