Newsletter No 343

                                                                               ISSN 1440-9828
                                                                       August 2007
                                                                  No 343

Next 9/11, Summer, 2007?

By Captain Eric H. May

July 23, 2007

From: Captain May [mailto:captainmay@prodigy.net
Sent: Monday, 23 July 2007 10:55 AM
Subject: Next 9/11, Summer, 2007? (w/ Top Three U.S. Nuke Targets)

All Ghost Troops and Infowar Allies:

I've published a new article today, 7/22/07; its title is the subject line above:

Next 9/11, Summer, 2007? (w/ Top Three U.S. Nuke Targets)

http://www.thepriceofliberty.org/07/07/23/may.htm

I believe the article will greatly interest my readers and researchers:

Best regards, CPTMAY

PS: I will be doing an interview on the topic of my article with Dr. Kevin Barrett, on 9/11 and Empire Radio. In our last interview, three weeks ago, we anticipated the current "Al Qaeda Attack" PR blitz by the Bush Administration. The interview will be Tuesday, 7/24/07, at 10:00 p.m. Central, which you can access at: www.wtprn.com

The Nameless Past

If it were only happening in another place and time it would be so easy to see through!

The son of a national leader relies on his father's political cronies, who ensure that he inherits his father's position and power. It's a story that has happened throughout history, whether in times of monarchy or of democracy. At first, he promises a benign, faithful reign.

Unknown to the people, though, he and his cronies have already committed the nation to an unending world war to control Middle East oil resources and to advance Israel's regional policies. All it would take, they have written, is a sudden terrifying attack, a "New Pearl Harbor," to rouse the people of the United States for the Middle East war needed to bring about a "New American Century."

The much-desired attack was carried out on 9/11/01, within a year of the new leader's elevation to power. The media helped him and his cronies tell the people what happened:

"Middle Eastern terrorists have treacherously attacked us because they hate America and Israel! The same terrorists intend to attack us again, probably with nukes! It's not a matter of IF they will attack, but WHEN they will attack! Terrorists are everywhere, and we must have a Homeland Security Agency! We must have a powerful unitary executive and an enabling Patriot Act! We must fight wars of self-defense to liberate Afghanistan and Iraq!"

It all worked like a charm. After 9/11, nine out of ten Americans approved of him, and two out of three still approved of him when he attacked Iraq on 3/19/03.

The Perilous Present

Five years later, though, his wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are unmitigated fiascoes. His ends and means are becoming the matter of national opposition and investigation. His media, which sold us his Global War on Terror, is discredited. Key members of his formerly unified Republican party are defecting. A few bold mainstream pundits are calling his "unitary executive" approach to ruling our democracy "Bush's Dictatorship" and "King George's Monarchy." They have even begun to call for his impeachment.

His standing with the people is worse yet.

Three quarters disapprove of him and his Quisling Congress.

Three quarters want us out of his Iraq fiasco.

Half believe that he ordered or allowed 9/11 to happen.

Half want him and his henchman Cheney impeached.

Desperate situations require dire remedies. Bush cronies have lately been saying that what this nation needs is another 9/11 attack, preferably nuclear and mass-casualty-producing, to get back in line with Bush. This long-promised "9/11-2B" attack would vindicate him for everything he has already done, and empower him for everything he must still do to continue with the New American Century war plan. Coincidentally, this 9/11-2B nuking of an American city is just what the Homeland Security Agency and national military forces have been practicing regularly in recent years.

This spring, on 5/9/07, Bush signed National Security Presidential Directive 51, which allows him and his Homeland Security Agency to establish a dictatorship in the event of a national catastrophe -- like 9/11-2B.

More recently, on 7/10/07, Homeland Security Agency Director Michael Chertoff told the Chicago Tribune that he had a "gut feeling" that Al Qaeda would attack us this summer.

The next day, on 7/11/07, a leaked National Intelligence Estimate affirmed Chertoff's gut feeling by announcing that Al Qaeda is rested and ready to hit us again with a 9/11-2B attack.

Last week reliable Bush sirens Condi Rice and Judith Miller made the rounds with obliging TV talking heads, discussing the enormity and inevitability of 9/11-2B.

On 7/20/07 ABC News presented articles carrying an official 9/11-2B worst-case scenario: a nuked Sears Tower -- or something equally catastrophic in another U.S. city:

U.S. Intel Chief: Tall Buildings and Mass Casualties Top AQ's Hit List

The Nuclear Loophole: U.S. Still at Risk

Clearly the media is regurgitating whatever lies are fed it by Bush and his cronies to develop the 9/11-2B plot, and they are doing so in a hurry. Public support for the war president and his war policy has already evaporated, and the Quisling Congress now demands improvement in Iraq if they are to support the war. General Petraeus, the new Bush commander in Iraq, will deliver an Iraq "surge" progress report to official Washington in September. Military and political officials have already predicted that the report will be dismal, and end Bush's war project for a New American Century. It may be now or never for 9/11-2B, sometime before the end of the summer, as Chertoff said.

The Future: Where & When

Primary Target: Houston. Over the past three years military and police veterans like me have been alerting the public to government exercises aiming at the nuclear destruction of Houston petro-suburbs Texas City, Baytown and New Caney. Four times in those three years we were able to predict to within a day major petrochemical explosions in those petro-suburbs. The odds against this kind of accuracy are astronomical. As the center of Big Oil and the Bush Family, Houston remains the most endangered city in America. Any patriotic group, like mine, trying to alert its home city to the dangers of a 9/11-2B attack should read the Arctic Beacon account of our efforts to derail a nuclear attempt against Texas City on 1/31/06.

Secondary Target: Chicago. While Houston is the most endangered city, the most endangered building -- the best candidate to be the next World Trade Center -- is the Sears Tower. Official sources have pronounced it just that ever since the original 9/11 attack, when they said it was on the Al Qaeda hit list. Larry Silverstein, who bought the WTC two months before 9/11, led a group that purchased the Sears Tower on 3/11/04, the day of the Madrid bombings. Again, anyone interested in how we citizens can counter a possible 9/11-2B attack should read a communique we sent Illinois Governor Blagojevich in May, 2006. That's when the government had scheduled secret 9/11-2B exercises in Chicago, while Chicago Mayor Daley was tucked conveniently away in Israel for his first visit ever.

Tertiary Target: Portland. I have never been involved in earlier 9/11-2B exercises in Portland, but the city has certainly shown up on my radar recently, thanks to worried Internet chatter. Citizens in the Pacific Northwest are smart to be concerned about the upcoming "Noble Resolve" exercise, which federal officials describe in their own publications: "In August, Noble Resolve will coordinate with officials in Oregon to model a nuclear attack on Portland."

Red Zone Dates: 7/27/07 - 9/22/07. 7/27/07, the beginning of the red zone, will be a week before the congressional break. 9/22/07, the end of the red zone, will be a week after Petraeus' mid-September report. It is my fondest wish that the entire red zone will pass uneventfully. It's up to us to make sure it does. My experience since 9/11 has shown me and countless other alarmed patriots that exposure of potential 9/11-2B attacks can shut them down, or transform them to relatively minor explosions. Simply put, if the government knows that we know what they are setting up, then they can't go through with it.

ABC Online
The World Today - Murder allegation raised against FW de Klerk

Monday, 23 July , 2007 12:24:00

Reporter: Barbara Miller

ELEANOR HALL: Fourteen years after he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the former South African president F. W. de Klerk has been accused of approving a murder attempt on a leading anti-apartheid activist.
The allegations are reported to have been made by a former Police minister who's now been charged over the crime which allegedly took place in the late 1980s.
While some in South Africa welcome any development which could establish the truth about atrocities committed under apartheid, some say that these moves will only harm the country's fragile reconciliation process.
Barbara Miller has our report.

BARBARA MILLER: Just a few days ago it was announced that a former South African police chief and former minister had been charged with the attempted murder in the late 1980s of the Reverend Frank Chikane.
Frank Chikane was injured, but survived the attempt to murder him by impregnating his underwear with a potentially fatal poison.
Now, South African media are reporting that the former president F. W. de Klerk has been implicated in that assassination attempt.

MEDIA REPORT (voiceover): The Sunday Times can reveal that Vlok and former police commissioner Johan Van der Merwe, who were both charged this week with the attempted murder of the Reverend Frank Chikane, director general in the office of President Thabo Mbeki, are angry that they are the only ones taking the blame for atrocities committed during apartheid.
The Sunday Times understands that both Vlok and Van der Merwe have made submissions, pointing fingers at de Klerk and his cabinet, who allegedly approved their activities.

BARBARA MILLER: In response to the reports, F. W. de Klerk has issued a statement denying his involvement. His spokesman, Dave Steward, says the allegations will only endanger reconciliation efforts.

DAVE STEWARD: I don't think it's going to destabilise the situation in South Africa, but it could cause further recriminations and further alienation, which would not be good for our society at this time.

BARBARA MILLER: Andrea Durbach was previously involved in anti-apartheid political trial work in South Africa, and now teaches law at the University of New South Wales. She says that now that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has finished its hearings, it's inevitable that this kind of allegation will surface. She doesn't agree that that puts reconciliation at risk.

ANDREWA DURBACH: I think there's the risk more of losing the opportunity to bring justice to people who are very deserving of it, and actually remind people of the extent to which the former South African government were implicated in these atrocities.
So I think there's a lot of unmet need that's still there within victims of apartheid who don't feel they were properly served by the TRC, and that frustration remains, and I think it turns into anger and that becomes violence.
So either way I think some resolution, coupled with accountability and regret and then finality, is important in order for the country to try and move on with a very difficult future ahead.

BARBARA MILLER: The former minister at the centre of this case, Adriaan Vlok, last year washed the feet of the Reverend Frank Chikane in an apparent gesture of contrition.
Frank Chikane said when Vlok brought out a bowl and a towel and asked to wash his feet, he at first told him it was unnecessary.

FRANK CHIKANE: When he insists that he must do it, it became clear to me that something must have happened to this man. And so I had to ask if he was very genuine about what he believes. He can't live with the past, he wants to get over it.

BARBARA MILLER: While Frank Chikane said he believed the former minister's sorrow was genuine, others doubted Vlok's sincerity.
These latest reports that Vlok is working on a deal with prosecutors will fuel cynicism about his motivations.
Andrea Durbach says that's not the issue.

ANDREA DURBACH: I think the act of washing feet was a deeply symbolic act. Who knows what kind of additional pressures there are still for him to confront, despite that act. One doesn't know what is motivating these people to act in the way they have. You know, who knows what is still going to come out, and who knows what there is still that needs to be dug up for whatever reason.

ELEANOR HALL: That's lawyer Andrea Durbach, who's worked in South Africa on anti-apartheid trials. She was speaking to Barbara Miller.

http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2007/s1985593.htm

The Alleged Homicidal Gas Chambers At Auschwitz Krema I and Krema II Never Existed!

The girl is 11 years old. One day in 1934, she is traveling from her boarding school in Kent back to her home in Vienna when her train breaks down in Nuremberg. The German Red Cross, perhaps thinking to entertain her, find her a seat at the Nazi Party Congress, and she is swept away by its fearsome pageantry: when she returns to school she writes and essay, ‘The happiest day of my holiday’, describing it.

Four years later, one night in a Viennese park in March, 1938, she hears her best friend Elfie reveal that her father is a member of the Nazi Party – which had been illegal – that he says Australia will be “disinfected” of Jews, while all around them in the dark she hears shout: Germans awake! Jewry perish!

Later, she stands beneath the balcony of the Imperial Hotel and hears Hitler speak. Later still, she sees the paediatrician who saved her life made to scrub the pavements with a toothbrush. Yet it would be some time before that girl, Gitta Sereny, rejected what she had seen.

Over 60 years later, in the comfortable sitting room of a book-lined flat in Kensington, Sereny is clearly still affected by what she saw as a girl – by what she saw as a girl – by what she failed to understand.

“I remember extremely well sitting high up in this huge arena and these men – and Hitler of course – were tiny, far away and tiny. But their voices were huge – they had what must have been the most sophisticated sound system there was, even now it seems extremely well done. And it was just so beautiful. It was beautiful.

And I am sure that all the children around me responded as I had done. What is more frightening is that in 1938,when the Nazis came into Austria, I would have thought that I would have known better, and I was again overcome. That is really strange. That was after I knew of my friend Elfie’s horror that her father had been an illegal, that she must never speak to any Jew again; had heard the terrible chorus of Deutschland erwache! Juda verrecke! Listening to that probably was more frightening than anything else. Standing in that dark park in Vienna, where I had played my whole childhood … It was the most peaceful place on earth for me.

And there we stood, just below the statue of Johannes Strauss, and we heard these terrible words. All right, so I had all that – and then the encounter with my paediatrician … so I knew. For God’s sake, I was 15 years old, I knew.

And I think this is the question that we need to ask ourselves very seriously. Why do we succumb? Why do the Africans succumb to Mugabe? What is it? What is it in these individuals who have this hellish gift – which Hitler had – that pulls us? Because it persuades us. I swear to you, I think of this now very, very often.”

That Sereny knew – as she says – and was still persuaded, is perhaps what has enabled her to do what she does: to explore what it is that makes what we might call monsters. Into That Darkness was her account of Franz Stangl, commandant of Treblinka; Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth looked into the soul of Speer, Hitler’s cultured Minister of Munitions and who, as Sereny wrote, “I knew well and grew to like”; Cries Unheard was her second book about Mary Bell, who, in 1968, killed two little boys when she was the same age as the Sereny who sat in the arena at Nuremberg.

Now comes the paperback publication of The German Trauma, a collection of essays – in one of which she tells the story of her childhood experience of the Nazi Party Congress and the Anschluss – that reflects her life’s work in connection with that country, a country she believes has now changed out of all recognition.

“This book is supposed to show that the German personality has really changed, which is an admirable thing. It is the only country in the world that has taken issue with its past. Don’t you think that’s extraordinary? Given the awful things their grandfathers did. The German young are really so different now.”

Sereny, now at work on a history of Vienna in the 20^th century, believes in redemption – which is remarkable, given what she has seen. Born in the Austrian capital to an actress mother and a Hungarian father who died when she was two, at 16 she fled finishing school for Paris, and worked as a volunteer nurse when France was occupied.

After the war she joined the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration as a child welfare officer to work in the displaced persons camps in what became the American zone of Germany. From this stems the two aspects of her work: her interest in children and her interest in the Third Reich.

In 1946 she attended the Nuremberg trials, and caught her first glimpse of the “startlingly handsome” Albert Speer.

To the discomfiture of many, she has worked all her life to understand what makes such men as they are. It is that understanding, she believes, that can lead to change.

“I am interested in perpetrators,” she says. “It is not that I am not interested in victims. I am sad for the victims. But what can we learn from them? That’s really the question. Writing about the perpetrators, I really feel that one does learn from it. I wish I could say that we learn enough to prevent. But I don’t think so.

I don’t think any one experience or work or any two or any three, can make it so, but a collection of works – by other people, too – which investigate people such as those I write about – I do think it has an effect. I know it does.

I’ve had thousands of letters. There is barely a day when I don’t get letters from young people who have read my books and who say God, you showed me this and I know this now. Of course, “she laughs, “they all want to come and talk more – it really is rather difficult! What more can I say?”

Sereny’s laugh is warm and generous, and it comes often in our conversation, despite its serious subject. It comes often too, when we speak on the phone about the pieces she writes for The Times book pages, when she pleads for more space and I usually give in. When I think of her, it is her laugh that comes to mind. Nearly a lifetime of considering the worst of which humankind is capable appears to have left her unscarred, and never dented her belief that change is possible: if some good can come of investigating evil, then there is still the space for laughter.

I am not surprised that her correspondents want to talk further with her –her books are powerful in that they are dialogues not only with her subjects but with her readers and herself. If she appears to have a high opinion of herself, she has the same opinion of her readers – but her trust that they will be able to be as intelligent and thoughtful as she is has not always been justified, especially in the case of Mary Bell.

Her evident sympathy with the woman Bell had become and her publisher’s payment of Bell for her time gained her much opprobrium. Her ruthless desire to stick to the facts – that, say, Auschwitz was not a ‘death camp’ – has not always won her friends. She is particularly scathing about the identification of Hitler’s evil with the death of the Jews and only the Jews. She deplored the use of the word “holocaust”, she says.

I deplore it because what happened to the Jews was the sort thing that was done – but it has now become the only thing. And that is totally wrong. If one wants to be disgustingly numerical, one would have to say that Hitler killed more Christians than Jews. But we don’t want to be like that. It’s all wrong.

But if we concentrate entirely on what happened to the Jews, we cannot see its parallels – and you know many in the Jewish community refuse to see such parallels because they think it diminishes their suffering.

But it’s not just terrible to kill Jews – it’s terrible to kill anybody. This whole thing of the murder of the Jews – we must never forget it, it is part of history, children as long as the world lasts must know that this happened – but we badly need to accept it now as part of a terrible history, not the terrible history. I don’t want anyone to think that I diminish it. I don’t diminish it. It was the worst thing. But it was not the only thing.”

Sticking to the facts is the only way to avoid playing into the hands of people such as David Irving. “Untruth always matters,” she writes, “and not just because it is unnecessary to lie when so much terrible truth is available. Every falsification, every error, every slick rewrite job is an advantage to the neo-Nazis.”

She is puzzled, too, by what she perceives as a reluctance to confront the truth by those who seem to have the most interest in it: “Why on earth have all these people who made Auschwitz into a sacred cow … why didn’t they go and look at Treblinka which was an extermination camp? It was possible. There were survivors alive when all this started. Nobody did. It was an almost pathological concentration on this one place. A terrible place – but it was not an extermination camp.”

Then she sighs; and suddenly the fierceness leaves her. “The distinctions are important,” she says more quietly. “But – death is death.”

If her subject, Albert Speer, battled with truth, Sereney battles for truth. In this good fight, she has been supported for over 50 years by her husband, the American photographer Don Honeyman, who appears at intervals during our talk, fetching this, copying that, pouring drinks, making coffee. Watching them together I say that the work she has done must have come at some personal cost – she has two children, long grown up, and grandchildren too.

She is reluctant to bring her private self into our discussion. Earlier I had asked her, as a friend once asked her with reference to her book on Stangl, why you? She answered with seeming lightness: “Why not me?” And then gave me a list of perfectly practical reasons (her perfect German, her social class, her not being Jewish) as to why she was suited to this particular project.” I don’t understand the question,” she said, or “it is impossible to answer”. But, having eluded that, she admits that yes, there has been a cost – and that what she has undertaken would have been impossible without the support of her family.

The emotional strain of writing Cries Unheard was great: “Sometimes, at the end of the day with her, Don and I would just lie in our beds, unable to speak or do anything.” And there was, too, the price that all working women with families pay. Recently her son’s daughter came to stay, and asked to see pictures of her father when he was a boy. When she saw the pictures – of Gitta playing with her little son – she was amazed. “What did you expect?” Gitta said, astonished. “He just told me about the nannies,” said her granddaughter.

What is extraordinary about Gitta Sereny is not only her understanding of evil; it is her faith in goodness. Perhaps this remains in her because she knows, from her own experience, that it is possible to refuse evil. I ask whether her early experiences might not have offered her a kind of inoculation against it. “It’s interesting what you say, it may be true,” she says. “The advantage is to reach this age and to have this continuity of thinking on these subjects, so that despite having had a perfectly normal life with a husband, children, love and friends – there hasn’t been an interruption in the sense of concentration.

So the inoculation, if that happened – carried me, helping me to have the detachment that I needed. Gave me understanding and protection. I hesitated to put that story of my 11-year old self into the book, but I was determined to get across to myself and to the reader that I thought this spectacle was wonderful. I think that is important, at least to me. Somebody younger would perhaps feel, oh, I can’t say that. But at this point, there’s no reason why I can’t say that I thought this was extraordinary. And that I, knowing how awful it was, stood in front of the Imperial Hotel, and shouted Heil! It’s incredible. Can you imagine me, shouting Heil?”

And she throws her head back and laughs.

Anyone who claims that homicidal gas chambers existed at the Auschwitz concentration camp, makes the terrible allegation against Germans, and those of German descent, that during World War Two Germans exterminated European Jewry, et al, therein.

Individuals who make such an allegation owe it to the world to answer Dr Robert Faurisson´s challenge:

“Show me or draw me the Auschwitz homicidal gas chambers!”

To date not a single person has produced evidence that proves these huge chemical slaughterhouses ever existed.

What has been done, though, is to stifle debate on this contentious historical matter by developing laws that criminalise those individuals who courageously ask:

“Show me the murder weapon!”

It is not good enough to produce so–called witnesses who say that they know of someone who saw the homicidal gas chambers at Auschwitz.

Remember the Auschwitz Trial at Frankfurt, 20 December 1963 to 20 August 1965?

“…we must call to mind…what endless detail work is performed in a murder trial in our days — how out of small mosaic–like pieces the picture of the true occurrences at the moment of the murder is put together. There is available for the court´s deliberations above all the corpse, the record of the post–mortem examination, the expert opinions of specialists to the causes of death and the day on which the deed must have occurred, and the manner in which the death occurred. There is the murder weapon…All this was missing in this trial…The possibilities of verifying the witness declarations were very limited.”

Scientific investigations of the alleged Auschwitz homicidal gas chambers — The Leuchter Report, The Rudolf Report, The Lüftl Report, et al - have not confirmed the claim that it was possible individuals were killed therein.

No wonder that those who believe such fatuous nonsense also believe that the following is a profoundly reasoned argument presented by Pierre Vidal–Naquet, Leon Poliakov, et al.:

“…It is not necessary to ask oneself how, technically, such a mass murder was possible. It was technically possible since it took place. Such is the point of departure required of any historical enquiry on the subject. This truth obliges us to state quite simply: there is not, there cannot be, any debate on the existence of the gas chambers.”

The upholders of the homicidal gas chamber allegations fear truth. They want to believe in the existence of the alleged homicidal gas chamber rather than wanting to know the facts.

What about the number of Jewish deaths during World War Two? If you research this matter, it is always six million deaths. Though the four million death number at Auschwitz has been reduced somewhat, the six million figure remains constant. What kind of arithmetic is that: 6 - 3 = 6? Talmudic dialectics? One explanation is offered in the following extract from Le Monde, 23 July 1990:

“Collective memory has seized upon the figure of four million — the very number which, based on a Soviet report, was inscribed until now on the monument erected at Auschwitz to the memory of the victims of Nazism — not withstanding that in Jerusalem, the museum of Yad Vashem has indicated that this total is far from correct. Nevertheless, from the war´s end, scholarly memory set to work. Patient and minute investigations revealed that the figure of four million did not rest on a serious foundation and could not be retained. The [Nuremberg] tribunal, after all, had relied on a claim by Eichmann, according to which extermination policy had caused the death of six million Jews, four million in the camps. Based on the most recent works and on the most reliable statistics — as in Raul Hilberg´s Destruction of the European Jews — one arrives at about one million dead at Auschwitz. This is a total corroborated by all the experts, since today they agree on a number of victims that varies from a minimum of 950,000 and to a maximum of 1.2 million.”

Such explanations are untidy and deceptively simplistic, especially if you remember that individuals were hanged, shot, or jailed for stating otherwise. The thought patters on which such fraudulent thinking rests is akin to that which during the Witch Trial frenzy condemned innocent women to their deaths — all because they dared to think for themselves!

Remember the thought patterns? A mature woman cannot simply go along with the nonsense that some men espouse, and so she is libelled and defamed as a dissident who will not be controlled by a man´s ideology. If her heretic stance threatens the man´s power base, she will be hauled before the court and charged with witchcraft, a capital offence at one time. Witnesses are paraded before a judge whose duty is to listen to the evidence offered in court.

Witness One: The accused is a witch because I saw her with a broomstick.

Witness Two: She is a witch because I saw her consorting with the devil.

Witness Three: I saw her having sex with the Devil.

Witness Four: The Devil´s semen is ice–cold.

Without empirically testing the Devil´s semen, the woman is found guilty of witchcraft. So, mere words from some questionable person who fronts up as a witness, is enough to sentence someone to death. The woman is then stuffed in a bag and thrown into the river. If the bag floats longer than expected, it proves that she is using witchcraft to stay afloat. If the bag sinks quickly, that proves that the sentence was just.

Another example of this absurd reasoning process is the case in medieval Germany where a woman was accused of being a witch — she had, supposedly, killed and eaten her own child. Her husband disputed the charge, he stated that the child had died of fever and was buried in the church cemetery. The body was exhumed, but the court ruled that the woman was a witch and that the body was an illusion created by the devil!

Very similar to modern German justice when it comes to the homicidal gas chamber allegations — any scientific evidence that contradicts the established ‘belief’ is disallowed by the judges!)

In the Salem witch trial a young woman accused of witchcraft exacerbated her dilemma by laughing at her accusers. Such behaviour reinforces the belief that the guilty verdict is just.

When Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commissioner McEvoy found against Dr Fredrick Töben, she adopted the witchcraft–trial mindset because her work was not limited by the Rules of Evidence. Nor did she affirm to Töben that telling the truth is a defence (i.e. you can be found guilty simply for telling the truth). Hence Töben called the proceedings immoral because telling the truth is a moral virtue.

It is part of human nature´s maturation process to develop a dissenting mind–set, unless we relish in developing slave–like individuals who cannot think or speak for themselves, where the moral virtue of truth–telling and the ideal of free speech have no home in their minds.

This does not mean that by becoming a dissenting voice one automatically becomes antisocial. It means that one´s moral values are highly developed.

What is revisionism? It is an heuristic method. A revisionist is a thinking person who rejects the confines of an ideology. Further, when a thinking person sees wrongs, then the moral imperative requires him not to be silent but to speak out and seek truth and justice.

Truth–seekers radically and fearlessly discriminate against control–freaks and against liars. The revisionist method shies away from Talmudic dialectics and instead embraces the civilising influence of dialogue.

One such method is the scientific method, which is best explained by one of the world´s greatest ‘recent’ philosophers, American Charles Saunders Peirce (pron. Purse):

“Though infallibility in scientific matters seems to me irresistibly comical, I should be in a sad way if I could not retain a high respect for those who lay claim to it, for they comprise the greater part of the people who have any conversation at all. When I say they lay claim to it, I mean they assume the functions of it quite naturally and unconsciously. The full meaning of the adage humanum est errare, they have never waked up to. In those sciences of measurement which are the least subject to error — metrology, geodesy, and metrical astronomy — no man of self–respect ever now states his result, without affixing to it its probable error; and if this practice is not followed in other sciences it is because in those the probable errors are too vast to be estimated.”

Think on these things when you are confronted by the claim that homicidal gas chambers were operated at the Auschwitz concentration camp.

From: Peter Myers - myers@cyberone.com.au Sent: Sunday, 22 July 2007 6:58 PM

Trouble in Hedgistan: “Its gonna get a lot worse”

Mike Whitney, ICH, 07/21/07

Two columns of black smoke can be seen rising over Wall Street and disappearing into the ice-blue New York sky. Terrorism? Not quite. The plumes of smoke are all that’s left of two major hedge funds which blew up just weeks ago leaving nothing behind but a few smoldering embers and a mound of black soot. The compiled assets of the Bear Sterns High-Grade Structured Credit Strategies Fund—nearly $20 billion—have vanished into the miasma of cyber-space where they will soon be joined by $1.4 trillion of other, equally worthless, Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDO). If you look carefully, you can almost see the mangled and bloodied bodies of the CDOs, the CSDs, the RMBS and the other shaky debt-instruments being pulled from the wreckage and tossed unceremoniously on the bonfire. Is this how it all ends? The first whiff of trouble in the housing market and then—in a flash--all the funds in “Hedgistan” begin teetering towards earth?

According to Bloomberg News, Bear Sterns announced last week that there’s “little value left” in one of its funds and “no value left” in the other. Nothing, nada, zippo. The news was like a bucket of cold water dumped on the stock market leaving slack-jawed traders shuddering in trepidation. What does it all mean? Does that mean that the entire hedge fund empire—which is built on a foundation of dodgy loans and quicksand---may be headed for the crapper? No one really knows. But a pall has settled-in over downtown Manhattan where gloomy-looking men in pinstriped suits are waiting for the other shoe to drop. Y’see, the hedge fund industry is based on the bizarre notion that one does not have to produce anything of value to make boatloads of money. You don’t even need assets any more---just a risky loan that can be transformed into an investment grade security through the magic of “securitization” a sprinkling of Wall Street snake oil. Abrah Kadabra---presto-chango!

It’s like taking shards of bottle-glass and selling it as the Hope Diamond. Who’s gonna notice? The only catch is that--now that these toxic CDOs are going to auction--there are no bids. That’s a bad thing.

“No bids” means that $1.4 trillion of shaky investments have no discernable market-value. The CDOs were graded “mark to model” which translates into “mark to fantasy”. It means that the investment bankers and hedge fund managers got together over Martinis one night and pulled a number out of a hat. Now no one wants to buy them. They’re worthless. The skydiving hedge funds just pulled the CDO rip-chord and nothing came out but confetti. Aaaaaaaahhhh!

And that’s just half the story. There’s trillions of dollars in derivatives riding on these shaky CDOs. That’s enough to bring down the whole market in a heap once interest rates rise or liquidity dries up.

Now it’s just a matter of “when” now, not “if”. This illustrates an important point, though. It shows what it takes to be a good hedge fund manager: Take a shabby sub-prime mortgage; chop it into “investment”, “mezzanine” and “equity” tranches. Bundle it with other equally suspect mortgage backed securities (MBS). Decide (arbitrarily) what the CDOs are worth Tell your banker. Leverage at a ratio of 10 o 1. Take 2% “off the top” plus salary for your efforts. Buy a summer home in the Hampton’s and a Lexus for the wife. Wait for the crash. Then repeat.

Congratulations; you are now a successful hedge fund manager! Oh yeah; and don’t forget to prepare a few soothing words for the investors who just lost their entire life savings and will now be spending their evenings squatting beneath a nearby freeway off-ramp. “We’re so very sorry, Mrs. Jones. Can we get you some cardboard-bedding to keep off the rain?”

The problems that are appearing in the stock and bond markets all started at the Federal Reserve when Fed-Chief Alan Greenspan opened the sluice-gates in 2003 and lowered interest rates to 1%. (Way below the rate of inflation) Since then, trillions of dollars have flooded into the markets creating multiple equity bubbles in real estate, stocks and credit. Serial bubble-maker Greenspan is to finance-capitalism what Wrigley is to chewing gum. The greatest flim-flam man of all time. The Fed has tried to conceal the massive increase to the money supply, but the evidence is everywhere. (Many analysts now calculate that inflation is running at roughly 13%) Food and energy have skyrocketed. Housing prices have soared. Everything has gone up except the cheapo imports which the Fed uses to manipulate the inflation stats. The gigantic housing bubble is mostly Greenspan’s doing. After printing-up mountains of cash and creating artificial demand through low interest rates; he promoted his product-line with the typical huckster sales-pitch. “Maestro” advised us that the extension of credit to all-God’s creatures, worthy or not, is a good thing.

Here’s a clip of Alan praising subprime lending in a speech on April 8, 2005 : "With these advances in technology, lenders have taken advantage of credit-scoring models and other techniques for efficiently extending credit to a broader spectrum of consumers. . . . As we reflect on the evolution of consumer credit in the United States, we must conclude that innovation and structural change in the financial services industry have been critical in providing expanded access to credit for the vast majority of consumers, including those of limited means. . . . This fact underscores the importance of our roles as policymakers, researchers, bankers and consumer advocates in fostering constructive innovation that is both responsive to market demand and beneficial to consumers." Yes, of course, with all these “advances in technology” and new-fangled “credit-scoring models” why would we need to verify a loan-applicant’s income or require that he scrape together a measly $5,000 for a $450,000 mortgage? That’s all so 20th Century! Now that foreclosures are mushrooming at an unprecedented pace, the Fed is trying to distance itself from the problem by blaming the banks for their shoddy underwriting practices. But the guilt lies with the Central Bank. Its all part of their whacko plan to crush the dollar and create a police state. It may sound trite, but “inflation is theft”. Unfortunately, inflation is also part of the ruling class’ strategy to rob the poor, fuel the stock market with cheap credit, and move jobs overseas. It is the autocrat’s method of “social engineering”---shifting wealth from one class to another by simply printing more money and pumping it through the system via low interest rates. Remember, bankers know that people will ALWAYS borrow money if lending standards are relaxed and the money is cheap enough. At 1%, the Fed was basically losing money on every transaction, but persisted with their plan anyway. Anyone who cares to go back and trace interest rates moves for the last 7 years will see that the Fed is really a political organization that decides monetary policy entirely on the basis an elite agenda that supports endless war, outsourcing of American jobs, and domestic repression. Are you surprised?

Now, a bad situation is about to get a whole lot worse. Consumer credit rose last month by a whopping 12.9%---credit card debt by 9.8%! Since housing prices have flattened out, homeowners can no longer borrow on their dwindling equity (Mortgage Equity Withdrawal; MEWs) which is forcing the maxed-out American consumer to use plastic even though rates are averaging from 18% to 27% monthly. Automobile repos have also hit historic highs. But the real damage is showing up in the subprime market where the percentage of defaults continues to rise unabated. In itself, a correction in real estate is not enough to bring down the whole economy. Unfortunately, the contagion from the subprime meltdown has spread to the stock market, the insurance industry, banking and pensions. Not even Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Paulson or Fed-master Ben Bernanke are claiming that the subprime problems are “contained” anymore. Just this week, the scholarly looking Bernanke said to Senators on the Hill that the housing market has “deteriorated significantly”. It’s about time. If anyone still has any doubts about the magnitude of fiasco, I recommend they look over these eye-popping charts which tell the whole story. The housing blowdown will spread the carnage from “sea to shining sea”.

http://www.itulip.com/forums/showthread.php?p=12232#post12232

The faltering housing market has drawn attention to an even more colossal credit bubble that is limping towards earth as loan requirements tighten and liquidity dries up. The prevailing fear on Wall Street is that we may be seeing the beginning of a global credit crunch. The danger is not just the subprime loans or even the mortgage companies that made the loans, but the overall risk to the secondary market where these loans have been sold as CDOs to the tune of $1.8 trillion. In this new deregulated environment, the banks don’t have to rely on savings anymore to make the loans. They simply originate the loans, take their commission, and sell the debt as CDOs. They’re even allowed to sell the risk of default through credit default swaps (CDS) which are a form of insurance that minimizes the banks exposure. These weird innovations have spawned riskier and riskier loans and increased the likelihood of damage to the broader market.

Economics correspondent, Stephen Long, explains it like this : “The problem that arises from the subprime mortgage collapse is that it creates a toxic cycle of debt. Banks originate loans or bundle up loans that mortgage companies have made and sell the risk on to the hedge funds. Then the hedge funds say, ‘Hey, we’ve got this product that has an investment grade rating so we’ll borrow against it from the banks.’ (oftentimes leveraged at a ratio of 10 to 1) Now the hedge funds are trying to buy the original loans to stop them from going into default.”(The hedge funds are forced to slow the rate of foreclosures so they won’t go bankrupt.) So, what happens when these shaky bonds (CDOs) are “down-graded”? Will the hedge funds fall like dominos just like the subprime mortgage-lenders? Will we see liquidity evaporate in the broader market triggering a plunge in the stocks and a massive sell-off in the bond market?

CDOs were conjured up with the idea that vast amounts of money could be made on very meager assets through a complex expansion of leverage. They were promoted as “limiting risk” by spreading it to a greater number of investors and providing extra protection through derivatives. Mortgage Backed Securities were sliced and diced into “more risky” and “less risky” tranches depending on investor appetite. Only now—to everyone’s surprise---“collateralized debt obligations with stellar Triple-A ratings have been getting hit by the subprime market’s woes.” (Wall Street Journal, “Bernanke revises subprime outlook”) On top of that, the ABX derivative index “has started showing pronounced weakness at the top of its ratings structure.” (ibid WSJ, 7-19-07) Get it? In other words, even the VERY BEST of these multi-trillion dollar investments are beginning to falter. The contagion is spreading through the entire market. The CDOs are worthless. No one wants them. In fact, the whole new regime of exotic debt-instruments which emerged from 2000-on, is barely hanging on by a thread. One minor downturn in the stock market and the hedge funds will go freefalling through open space.

A speech by Robert Rodriguez of First Pacific Advisors (CFA) gives us a good idea of the enormity of the money involved. In his “Absence of Fear” address in Chicago on June 28, 2007 he states : “Since 2000 hedge funds have more than doubled in number, while their assets have tripled.

They too are using elevated levels of leverage, as are PE (Private Equity) firms and investors in highly leveraged fixed income securities. These funds are heavy users of derivatives. The Global derivatives market grew nearly 40% in 2006--the fastest pace in the last nine years--to $415 trillion, per the Bank of International Settlements. The amount of contracts based on bonds more than doubled to $29 trillion.

The actual money at risk through credit derivatives increased 93% to $470 billion, while that amount for the entire derivatives market was $9.7 trillion. The International Monetary Fund, in its April 2006 Global Financial Stability Report, estimated that credit-oriented hedge fund assets grew to more than $300 billion in 2005, a six-fold increase in five years. When levered at 5-6x, this represents $1.5 to $1.8 trillion deployed into the credit markets. Fitch, in their June 5, 2007 special report, “Hedge Funds: The Credit Market’s New Paradigm,” says that despite the upward trend in maximum allowable leverage, “notably, no prime broker reported raising margin requirements in response to historically tight credit spreads and growing concerns about the general level of risk-complacency in the credit markets.”

If Rodriguez’s “eye-popping” numbers are accurate and the market slumps a mere 5%, “the value of a hedge fund’s assets could lead to a forced sale of as much as 25% of its assets”. If the market falls just 10%, the fund would get a 50% haircut! Yikes! That just shows how over-exposed the industry really is. As the requirements on mortgages gets tougher and the subprime market continues to languish; bankers will naturally become more hesitant to loan zillions of dollars to hedge funds and private equity firms. When credit gets tighter, the hedge funds will begin to nosedive which will send the stock market in a long-term swoon.

That’s what happens when a market is this over-leveraged. It’s unavoidable. The markets are now perfectly poised for a full-system breakdown. FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair expects a CDO time bomb.

She summed it up like this : "Its going to get worse before it gets better. How much worse, I don't know."

Freedom has no compromise

The Advertiser, June 27 2007-07-25 www.adelaidenow.com.au

Our liberty depends on the freedom of the Press, and that cannot be limited without being lost. – US President Thomas Jefferson, 1786.

These words are as true today as they were 221 years ago. The Advertiser believes the public has a right to know.

This newspaper, like all legitimate media outlets, has a responsibility, indeed a right to publish information which is in the public interest. Yet that right has been eroded (further) by Victorian County Court chief judge Michael Rozenes who recorded convictions against two Melbourne News Limited journalists, Michael Harvey and Gerard McManus, and fined them $7000 each for refusing to reveal the sources for a story which they wrote.

The story exposed a secret Federal Government plan to cut benefits to war veterans which reversed an earlier undertaking and was at odds with the Government’s claim that the plan provided benefits to veterans. The story was right. It was in the public interest. Once the story was published the Government scrapped its plans to cut veterans’ benefits. The press had fulfilled its role. As Jefferson said, liberty cannot be guarded without the freedom of the press. Yet the Government launched a witch-hunt for the source of the story.

The journalists who refused to reveal those sources now have criminal records. They could easily have been sent to prison for contempt of court because they would not reveal their sources. Laws must be changed as a matter of urgency to protect journalists, and people who provide journalists with legitimate information, from censorship, harassment and legal discipline.

The Advertiser is not seeking privileges for journalists but basic rights to information for the public. The McManus-Harvey case demonstrates that governments, through the courts, are prepared to imprison people who seek to bring injustices or potential injustices to public notice. The Advertiser accepts that issues of national security, information which could jeopardise the safety or efficiency of police or the armed forces, must be protected. But that protection must not and cannot prevent journalists from questioning issues of public interest, particularly when it involves government and community authority.

Freedom has no compromise. The moment governments attempt to limit the public reporting of one issue, the public has a legitimate right to ask what else is being suppressed. People in positions of leadership, of decision-making, should have the confidence to be scrutinised and if necessary criticised. If the right of the media to expose bad decisions, humbug and potential corruption are suppressed or eroded, then a supporting beam of democracy is also removed.

*Responsibility for all editorial comment is taken by The Editor, Melvin Mansell, 31 Waymouth St, Adelaide, 5000.

Three Revisionists who have considered the above matter in some detail. From l. to r. Michael Mazur,

Fredrick Töben, Richard Krege, enjoying a pub meal in Brunswick, Melbourne, in May 2007.