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Prescott Sheldon Bush · Guest

http://ftrsummary.blogspot.com/2005/11/ftr-531-interview-with-lucy-komisar.html
FTR #531 Interview with Lucy Komisar about Offshore
Recorded October 30, 2005
http://spitfirelist.com/?p=157

Featuring the brilliant investigative journalist Lucy Komisar,
this program highlights the use of "Offshore" entities to
evade taxes, maximize corporate profits and finance a
variety of criminal enterprises. Much of the first
side of the program consists of analysis and
discussion of insurance giant AIG and its
prolific use of "offshore" scams.
In addition to presenting AIG's pioneering
devlopment of "captive" reinsurance companies
to launder profits and evade taxes,
the program highlights AIG's use of
Coral Reinsurance for a variety of
illegal gambits. It should be noted
that AIG's illegal operations have
been aided by a number of powerful
and influential people. Much of the
second side of the program consists
of review of the pivotally important
Clearstream network, and its use by
intelligence agencies, corporations,
criminal syndicates and
terrorist organizations.

Program Highlights Include:
A working definition of "Offshore;"
the links of AIG to the intelligence community;
assistance given to AIG's scams by luminaries
such as Henry Kissinger and former Secretary of
the Treasury Richard Rubin; Clearstream's use
of unregistered accounts; the role of the
Clearstream network in the Banco Ambrosiano,
October Surprise and BCCI scandals; the role
of the Clearstream network in the financing
of Al Qaeda and 9/11; the role of the Clearstream
network in the machinations of the Russian criminal
networks of Mikhail Khordokovsky; discussion of
the "Bermuda Inversion" gambit; discussion of
"Transfer Pricing;" discussion of an organization
formed by Lucy Komisar that is working to
eliminate corporate tax evasion through the
use of "offshore."

1. In this return appearance by the formidable
Lucy Komisar, we begin the discussion of "Offshore"
with a functional definition:

"DAVE: 'Define 'Offshore' for us, Lucy.'

LUCY: 'Offshore financial centers are, mostly,
confidential and parallel financial systems
segregated from the traditional banking structure
of the jurisdiction and restricted to non-residents.
There are more than 4000 offshore banks thought to
exist in about 70 offshore jurisdictions.
They lack the regulation and supervision of
banks found in developed onshore jurisdictions.
In many OFCs, a bank can be formed, registered
and its ownership placed in the hands of nominee
directors via the Internet. There are few, if any,
disclosure requirements, bank transactions are
free of exchange and interest rate restrictions,
there are minimal or no capital reserve requirements,
and transactions are mostly tax-free. Some OFCs
permit the licensing and registration of 'shell banks'
that exist only on paper and do not have a
physical presence. They generally have legal
frameworks designed to obscure the identity of
the beneficial owner. Some OFCs offer the ability
to form and manage secretly a variety of
international business companies (IBCs), trusts,
investment funds and insurance companies, many with
nominee - that is front -directors, nominee
officeholders and nominee shareholders.'

2. Much of the program focuses on the scandals
surrounding the insurance giant AIG. We begin
with an introductory discussion of this
enormous corporation and its position in the
corporate landscape.

"DAVE: 'Now, let's turn to the subject of
insurance giant AIG, the focal point of two
of your Alternet articles. Tell us about the
company's size and importance in the industry
and the corporate landscape in general.'

'LUCY: 'AIG is the world's second largest
financial conglomerate and the largest
underwriter of commercial and industrial
insurance. In 2003, AIG reported net income
of $10 billion. It has $648 billion in assets,
a market value of $195 billion, $77 billion in
sales and $6.5 billion in annual profits.
It has operations in 130 countries and nearly
77,000 employees. It ranks third on Forbes'
list of the world's biggest companies, after
Citigroup, and General Electric."

(Note that the material on AIG was drawn from
Lucy Komsar's two articles written for AlterNet:
"The Fall of a Titan" by Lucy Komisar; AlterNet;
3/17/2005; "Take the Money and Run Offshore"
by Lucy Komisar; AlterNet.)

3. AIG and its CEO Maurice ["Hank"] Greenberg
are very closely related with the
intelligence community.

"DAVE' 'Tell us about AIG chief Maurice [Hank] Greenberg,
and his relationship to the intelligence community.'

'LUCY: 'The American International Group at its origins
was linked to the OSS (Office of Strategic Services)
the forerunner of the CIA.
It grew from the Asia Life/C. V. Starr companies
founded by Cornelius Starr who started his insurance
empire in Shanghai in 1919, the first westerner to
market insurance in China. Starr served with the OSS
during World War II, and the Starr Corporation,
located in the same building as the OSS in New York,
provided intelligence on shipping, manufacturing and
industrial bombing targets in Asia and Germany.
When Casey became CIA director in the Reagan
Administration, he wanted Greenberg to be his deputy,
but Greenberg decided to stay with AIG. After the
Ames scandal, Sen. Spector floated his name as a
replacement of Woolsey, but the job went to Tenet.'"
(Idem.)

4. AIG features a number of luminaries on its
board of directors and international
advisory boards:

"DAVE: 'Tell us about some of the prominent
people on the board of directors and international
advisory boards of AIG.'

LUCY: 'Henry Kissinger chairs AIG's
International Advisory Board. Its board of
directors includes William S. Cohen,
Former United States Secretary of Defense
and Senator, Caria A. Hills, Former United
States Trade Representative,
Richard C. Holbrooke, Former United States
Ambassador to the United Nations.'' (Idem.)

5. AIG's illegal and/or unethical stratagems
feature a pioneering use of "captives."

"DAVE: 'Let's turn to the subject of what AIG does.
What are 'captives' and how does AIG use them?'

LUCY: 'A captive is an insurance company that
is owned by the company it insures - and has
that company as its only client. Reinsurance
is insurance that an insurance company buys
so that if it has to pay out a claim, it doesn't
take all the risk. I discovered and reported on
a case where AIG used a reinsurance company
secretly owned by its client's CEO to help him
evade taxes, and by the way, to increase AIG
profits in a way that cheated the client's
stockholders. I wrote about the case on Alternet,
but it has not been reported in the corporate press.
Victor Posner, who died in 2002, was a crook known
as the original 'corporate raider,' famed for
engineering hostile takeovers of companies and
looting them. He had a history of corrupt dealings.
He owned a Delaware factory called NVF that made
Vulcan rubber. NVF had a workers compensation policy
with an AIG company, which reinsured it with
Chesapeake, a reinsurance company based in Bermuda,
an offshore center. It turned out that Chesapeake
was owned by Posner. In the early 90s, a Delaware
insurance investigator discovered that NVF was
paying twice the market rate to AIG for the insurance.
The transaction meant all the parties came out
ahead: AIG would keep a portion of the inflated
NVF premium before sending the rest to Chesapeake,
which meant AIG would have a higher commission.
Posner would write off the entire amount as a
business expense and enjoy the extra cash in
Bermuda, tax free. A former Delaware insurance
regulator told me, 'This was not an isolated
case with Vulcan. AIG did that a lot.' He said,
'AIG helped companies set up offshore captive
reinsurance companies. AIG would then overcharge
on insurance and pay reinsurance premiums to the
captives, giving the captive owners tax-free
offshore income.' However, the Delaware
Insurance Department took no action against
the insurer. When I gave AIG the details of
this scam, company spokesman Andrew Silver
told me, 'We don't have any comment on that.'
AIG declares on its website that it 'pioneered
the formation of captives almost 60 years ago,'
and it offers management facilities to run the
captives in offshore Barbados, Bermuda,
Cayman Islands, Gibraltar, Guernsey, Isle of Man,
and Luxembourg - all places where corporate and
accounting records are secret and taxes minimal
or nonexistent.'' (Idem.)

6. AIG also used offshore insurance interests
to move debt off its books, thereby making the
company appear to be more profitable than it
actually was. Of course, this did nothing to
damage the price of its stock.

"DAVE: 'What else did [does] AIG engage in
that was illegal?'

LUCY: 'In the late 90s, four state insurance
departments New York, Delaware, Pennsylvania
and California were aware that AIG was moving
debt off its books via the use of an offshore
insurance company it secretly set up and
controlled. But despite clear evidence of
wrongdoing, no sanctions were ordered.
State laws require insurance companies to
keep a certain amount of capital available
to pay out claims. If they have reinsurance,
that amount can drop. The reinsurer, of
course, has to be an independent company;
the risk isn't reduced if it's just moved
to another division of the same company.'"
(Idem.)

7. The program turns to the subject of
AIG's Coral Re gambit, and the considerable
assistance provided by investment firm
Goldman Sachs to the furtherance of this
scam: "'In the mid-80s, two of AIG's reinsurers
failed. AIG now was going to show unacceptably
high levels of debt on its books from claims
it would now have to pay out itself.
So Hank Greenberg decided to set up Coral Re,
a reinsurance company, to move his bad debts
off AIG books. It set up a shell company in
Barbados, where capital requirements and
regulation was minimal compared to the U.S.,
where American regulators couldn't readily
discover AIG's involvement and where, as an
added incentive, it could move money out of
reach of U.S. taxes. The scam company was
arranged with the help of Goldman Sachs then
headed by Robert Rubin, who would become
President Clinton's Treasury Secretary and
is now chairman of the executive committee
of Citigroup. It got some high-level corporate
executives to front for this supposedly
independent company. But I have a confidential
memorandum by Goldman Sachs which told why the
company was formed. 'AIG's interest in
creating the company is to create a reinsurance
facility which will permit its U.S. companies
to write more U.S. premiums. For a U.S.-domiciled
company, a high level of surplus is required to
support insurance premiums in accordance with
U.S. statutory requirements. The statutory
requirements in Barbados are less restrictive.'
The people who got this memo were corporate
executives who, in exchange for their names,
were offered a guaranteed return of $25,125
in the first year and $45,225 each subsequent
year. They didn't have to put up any money:
they got financing from Sanwa Bank of Chicago
secured by the Coral Re shares, a guarantee
of enough dividends from Coral Re to cover
the interest, and agreement they could hand
off the shares and debt whenever they chose.
Who got this no-lose so-called investment?
They included serving or former chairmen of
Reynolds Metals; Kraft; Itel, Mennen Company;
Morton Thiokol. The Arkansas Finance and
Development Authority, headed by a man who
went to work in the Clinton White House,
became lead investor, although state law
banned it from buying stocks. Clinton was
then governor of Arkansas. He would make
Rubin his Treasury Secretary. The new company
was not a legitimately independent business.
For investors, there was no money at risk;
the board of directors never made a decision;
and Coral Re had no office of its own but was
managed by American International Management,
a subsidiary of none other than AIG.
Eventually, the scheme unraveled.
In 1992, Delaware examiners smelled a rat,
AIG initially refused to provide Coral Re
documents to the examiners, and it took
them a couple of years to nail the connection.
When AIG finally supplied Coral Re's financial
papers, the regulator was incredulous.
He told me, 'The books were definitely cooked.'
But the cowardly regulators in Delaware,
Pennsylvania, New York and California, though
they agreed in 1996 that AIG owned Coral Re
and that there was no transfer of risk, did
not act to punish AIG, just told it to stop
using Coral Re. If Coral Re was an AIG affiliate,
it would have to pay taxes on its income.
If it was 'independent,' that money came tax-free.
But the IRS didn't have the guts to go after
them, either. AIG spokesman Andrew Silver simply
denied the validity of what all the insurance
commissions found. He told me that 'AIG was not
involved in the offer and sale of Coral Re's shares.
That was done by Goldman Sachs, which approached
potential investors with which it had relationships.
AIG did not control or have an equity interest
in Coral Re.' That of course it completely untrue.
Goldman Sachs failed to respond to inquiries about
its role in setting up Coral Re. In May this
year (2005), New York State Attorney General
Eliot Spitzer filed suit against AIG and Greenberg,
charging a pattern of fraud through the use
of 'sham transactions' that bolstered the
conglomerate's financial statements." (Idem.)
[CONTINUED] http://spitfirelist.com/?p=157
http://ftrsummary.blogspot.com/2005/11/ftr-531-interview-with-lucy-komisar.html

Koyaanisqatsi Fahrvergnug · Guest

"Sister Sarah the Stealth Candidate" --THE FAMILY http://tinyurl.com/43r2xl
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Sister+Sarah+the+Stealth+Candidate

"THE DEVIL WE KNOW" --Robert Baer
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=THE+DEVIL+WE+KNOW%2BRobert+Baer

£&$£&$£&$£&$£&$£&$£&$£&$£&$£&$£&$£&$£&$£&$£&$£&$£&$£&$£&$£&$£&$£&$£&$

"Now is the Time to Resist Wall Street's Shock Doctrine."
By Naomi Kleinhttp://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine
http://www.naomiklein.org/articles/2008/09/now-time-resist-wall-streets-shock-doctrine

"Using PET imaging rather than fMRI, researchers investigated
brain activation associated with anticipation of revenge..."
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=PET+Imaging%2BRevenge

AIG's pioneering devlopment of "captive" reinsurance
companies to launder profits and evade taxes
http://ftrsummary.blogspot.com/2005/11/ftr-531-interview-with-lucy-komisar.html

FTR #531 Interview with Lucy Komisar about Offshore
Recorded October 30, 2005
http://spitfirelist.com/?p=157

________________________________________

Kucinich: Bailout Must Protect Home Ownership
http://kucinich.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=104160

Contact: "Nathan White" <Nathan.white@mail.house.gov>
Phone: (202)225-5871

Rep. Dennis Kucinich
http://kucinich.house.gov/

Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, HR 3997
<http://kucinich.house.gov/UploadedFiles/Kucinich%20Letter.pdf>

http://kucinich.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=104160

Print version of this document
http://kucinich.house.gov/News/DocumentPrint.aspx?DocumentID=104160

# # #

Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies (BAASS)
http://www.bigelowaerospace.com/careers/

Ponzi schemes?

See: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/sep2008/bush-s25_prn.shtml

The Greatest Swindle in History
Much has been written, dissected, and discussed
about the current US money market meltdown.
It is the greatest swindle in history, the
intentional conversion of real assets (land,
houses) to fictional assets (numbers in a banking
system computer).

Fact #1 - The US Federal Reserve is neither
Federal, nor has reserves.
It is a PRIVATE institution owned by foreign bankers.
They are:
1) Rothschild Banks of London and Berlin;
2) Lazard Brothers Banks of Paris;
3) Israel Moses Seif Banks of Italy;
4) Warburg Bank of Hamburg and Amsterdam;
5) Lehman Brothers of New York;
6) Kuhn, Loeb Bank of New York (Now Shearson American Express);
7) Goldman, Sachs of New York.
Source: Secrets of the Federal Reserve
by Eustace Mullins, 1952 & 1993.
Mullins was the first researcher
to find out who owns the Federal Reserve.
It was first published in 1952.
In 1955 a German edition was seized
and all 10,000 copies were burned,
the only book that has been burned
in Germany since WWII. Used copies
are for sale at www.abebooks.com

Fact #2 - The Federal Reserve Act of 1913
stipulates that the shareholders of
the Bank are to be kept secret, and that it
is NOT subject to audits. It has never been
audited. Another good book is
"The Creature from Jekyll Island"
by Edward Griffin. Buy it at his web site:
http://www.realityzone.com/info.html.
There is a free 42 minute video here:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6507136891691870450.

A great video that takes you through the rise,
and fall, of the previous four private central
banks in the U.S.: The Money Masters. It's an
absolutely riveting production.
It's on Google Video, or buy the DVD at
his web site: http://www.themoneymasters.com

Fact #3 - This is not the first private bank in the US.
The US has had 4 previous private, FORPROFIT central banks.
President Andrew Jackson's re-election platform was,
"Abolish the Bank!" The current is the longest-running
one, however, from 1913 to the present date. How much
longer will it last? Depends how many people are protesting:
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/sep2008/db20080924_430418.htm

Fact #4 - The Federal Reserve is NOT part of the U.S,
government! Go to the library and open a white city
of New York phone book. See the blue pages in the back?
That's for government listings. The Federal Reserve Bank
of New York is not listed in there. It's listed in the
white pages. So why are American taxpayers, and not the
Federal Reserve, left with the debt?

Fact #5 - The media is not telling the truth.
Last week when the world's largest insurer, AIG,
was bailed out, media such as The Wall Street
Journal reported that, "the U.S. government seized
control of American International Group Inc. -- one
of the world's biggest insurers -- in an $85 billion deal":
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122156561931242905.html
No, the shares of AIG were transferred to the Governors
of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, NOT the
U.S. Government. Here is the Securities and Exchange
Commission filing showing this:
http://sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/5272/000095012308011147/y71385e8vk.htm

Fact #6 - All the shareholders in the Federal Reserve
are in business together, not against each other.
Right now they're either buying their competitors
cheap, or asking the US taxpayer to prop up their
own companies.

Fact #7 - Lehman was bought by Barclay's for
$1.35 billion. (Buy your own for a fire sale price).
Rothschild has links to Lehmans, the Federal Reserve,
and Barclays. Heck, it was his idea to set up the
U.S. Federal Reserve!

Fact #8 - JP Morgan bought out a competitor,
Bear Stearns in March 2008. It could have waited
and paid less, but no matter; the Fed has now
lent $29 billion to Stearns in a non-recourse loan.
This means the loan is collateralized by mortgage
debt and that the government cannot seize JP Morgan's
assets if the mortgage debt collateral comes
insufficient to repay the loan. So, if mortgages
fail, US taxpayers get saddled with the debt.

Fact #9 - This morning JP Morgan bought WaMu
(Washington Mutual), another former competitor,
for $1.9 billion. Starting to see a pattern?

Fact #10 - When Lehman failed their debt
to asset ratio was 30 to 1.

Fact #11 - Canadian banks, since 1991,
are no longer required to do fractional
banking. In other words, they can "create"
as much money as they like.
In the old days they were restricted to
lending, let's say, 10 times what they
had in customer's deposits and other assets.
Who got this passed? Why, Brian Mulroney.
(This was never in the news.)

Fact #12 - The Bank of Canada, of which
all shares are owned by the Minister
of Finance, are all non-voting shares.
So, if you own all the shares, but have no
vote, who's in control? Not the Canadian
government. Source:
Deliberately in Debt, by Nora Galenzoski.

Fact #13 - The Ottawa phone book shows
the Bank of Canada listed in the white pages,
and not under the blue government pages.
The Bank of Canada is not part of the
Canadian government.

Fact #14 - The 1984 U.S Grace Commission Report,
requested by Ronald Reagan, said, "100% of what
is collected is absorbed solely by interest
on the Federal debt and by Federal Government
contributions to transfer payments. In other words,
all income tax revenues are gone before one nickel
is spent on the services which taxpayers expect from
their Government." Source:
http://www.freecanadian.net/articles/grace.html

Fact #15 - Canada's debt in 1992 was
$423 billion. Of this, the principal was
$37 billion. The rest, or $386 billion,
was interest.
Source: Canada's 1993 Auditor General's Report

Translation - most of the income tax
US taxpayers pay goes into the pockets, as
PROFIT, of the shareholders of the private
US Federal Reserve, and not for services for
the country, contrary to what the media tells us.
Oh, wait - we already caught them lying
(See #5 above).
Canada? It's probably not that much
different from the U.S.

Fact # 16 - The bailout will cost the
approximately 100 million US taxpayers
$10,000 each.
However, interest payments on the debt
(like debt on a credit card) means the
final bill will be much higher.

Fact #17 - The US Income Tax Act and the
US Federal Reserve Act, which gave the
power of a central bank (again) to private
bankers, were both passed in 1913.
Coincidence?

Fact #18 - The Federal Reserve creates
money out of thin air, and then lends it, with
interest, to the US government. If the Fed is
out of money, no problem; just type in a figure
with a bunch of zeros into the computer.
So what's the real motive? It's not the money;
it's about using money to control people through
economic slavery.

Have you had enough yet?

My Opinion
This was all designed to happen by the
shareholders of the US Federal Reserve.
They re-wrote the U.S. bankruptcy laws about
2 years ago to make it much harder to
declare bankruptcy. They allowed the predatory
lending to happen. People who opposed this practice
were "taken out" - like Eliot Spitzer, where in his
article, "Predatory Lenders Partners in Crime",
documents the Bush administration deliberately and
wilfully looking the other way (this is a must read!):
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/13/AR2008021302783.html.

This article was published Feb 14th; the New
York Times "outed" him on March 10th. The industry
then re-packaged these high-risk mortgages and sold
them as triple-A blue-chip investments. Competitors,
with clients also demanding high-return products, sold
the same toxic products. This forced some of their own
firms into bankruptcy but, hey, no problem; the government
will bail them out! And we can now buy our competitors at
fire-sale prices! It's absolutely brilliant.

Money is not the real issue. The Fed has created
money out of thin air for many years.
The goal is more control. Here's a big clue
(obviously not meant for public consumption):
The Banker s Manifesto of 1892 Revealed by US
Congressman Charles A. Lindbergh, SR from
Minnesota before the US Congress sometime
during his term of office between the
years of 1907 and 1917 to warn the citizens.

"We (the bankers) must proceed with caution and
guard every move made, for the lower order of people
are already showing signs of restless commotion.
Prudence will therefore show a policy of apparently
yielding to the popular will until our plans are
so far consummated that we can declare our designs
without fear of any organized resistance.

Capital must protect itself in every possible
manner through combination (conspiracy) and
legislation. The courts must be called to our
aid, debts must be collected, bonds and mortgages
foreclosed as rapidly as possible. When, through
the process of the law, the common people have lost
their homes, they will be more tractable and easily
governed through the influence of the strong arm of
the government applied to a central power of imperial
wealth under the control of the leading financiers.
People without homes will not quarrel with their leaders.

History repeats itself in regular cycles.
This truth is well known among our principal
men who are engaged in forming an imperialism
of the world. While they are doing this, the
people must be kept in a state of political
antagonism. The question of tariff reform must
be urged through the organization known as the
Democratic Party, and the question of protection
with the reciprocity must be forced to view through
the Republican Party. By thus dividing voters,
we can get them to expand their energies in fighting
over questions of no importance to us, except as
teachers to the common herd. Thus, by discrete action,
we can secure all that has been so generously planned
and successfully accomplished."

Is this why Lindberg's grandson was kidnapped
and killed? (The grandson was the son of aviator
Charles Lindbergh, Junior, the first to fly non-stop
across the Atlantic in 1927 in his plane, The Spirit
of St. Louis). And people think they will make change
by voting for either Republican or Democrat?

So my prediction for the future is:
The taking over of the central bank for the U.S was
not enough for these people. They are going for the
control of the entire financial system, and assets,
of the United States (and ultimately, the world.)
They then saddle the burden on the taxpayers.

The US government will become the largest landlord
in the world. There are rumours that they might change
the mortgage system to be similar to the feudalistic
system in Europe, where the majority of people pay
rent their entire lives. Economic slavery is
ultimate control.
And when people cannot pay their rent to their master,
they can always go get a job with the US Military,
thus fulfilling the US's role in the New World Order
(England = monetary control,
Vatican = religious control,
Washington = military control).

A final video - for fun - on YouTube, less than two
minutes. What if George Bush was in The Dark Knight?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1X6RQLZtoA
And it's not over yet. And you still want to
pay income tax?

Have you had enough yet?

Eric Ho, Human Rights Educator
Paradigm Education Group
eric@naturalperson.ca
www.naturalperson.com
778-834-8640

Today I received an email from my congressman,
Peter DeFazio informing me that he had
emphatically objected to this bail-out.
I think we should acknowledge those who have
spoken against it.

Read the important message below and forward
to all on your lists. The more people we reach
with these messages, the more effective
we become. S. S.

"Thanks But No Thanks: What Lincoln Would Have
Said to Paulson's $700 Billion Bailout"

Ellen Brown

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10359

"These capitalists generally act harmoniously
and in concert to fleece the people, and now
that they have got into a quarrel with themselves,
we are called upon to appropriate the people's money
to settle the quarrel." - Abraham Lincoln, speech
to Illinois legislature, January 1837

In July, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said
of his massive underwriting scheme for Fannie Mae
and Freddie Mac, "If you have a bazooka in your
pocket and people know it, you probably won't have
to use it." On September 7, Paulson pulled out his
bazooka and fired, effectively nationalizing the
mortgage giants.
Last week, Paulson pulled out the bazooka again and
held it to Congress's head. "Seven hundred billion
dollars or your credit system will collapse!"
Seven hundred billion dollars is more than the
country currently pays annually for Social Security;
and for what do we owe this ransom? To bail out bankers
from their own folly in speculating in a giant derivative
Ponzi scheme that is now imploding. But policymakers
justify rewarding the guilty parties at the expense of
the taxpayers by arguing that "we have to do it
to save the banking system."

Abraham Lincoln was faced with a similar
situation when he stepped into the Presidency
in 1861. The country was suddenly in a civil war,
and there was insufficient money to fund it.
The British bankers, knowing they had him over
a barrel, agreed to lend him money only at 24
to 36% interest, highly usurious rates that would
have bankrupted the North. Our fearless forefather
said, "Thanks but no thanks, I'll print my own."
Issuing the national currency is the sovereign
right of governments. A government does not need
to borrow its national currency from bankers
"merely pretending to have money."
That was the phrase used by Thomas Jefferson
when he realized the bankers' "fractional reserve"
lending scheme meant that they were lending the
same "reserves" many times over.

The federal dollars issued by Lincoln were
called U.S. Notes or Greenbacks. They allowed the
North not only to win the Civil War but to create
the greatest industrial giant the world had ever
seen. Lincoln's government launched the steel
industry, created a continental railroad system,
promoted a new era of farm machinery and cheap tools,
established free higher education, provided government
support to all branches of science, organized the
Bureau of Mines, increased labor productivity by
50 to 75 percent. The Greenback was not the only
currency used to fund these achievements; but they
could not have been accomplished without it, and
they could not have been accomplished on money borrowed
at 30% interest.

There are other historical examples.
In the 1930s, Australia and New Zealand avoided
the Depression conditions suffered elsewhere by
drawing on a national credit card issued by
publicly-owned central banks. The governments of
the island states of Guernsey and Jersey have
been issuing their own money for two centuries,
creating thriving economies without carrying
federal debt.

In none of these models has government-issued
money created dangerous price inflation.
Price inflation results either when the supply
of money goes up but the supply of goods
doesn't, or when speculators crash currencies
by massive short selling, as in those cases of
Latin American hyperinflation when printing-press
money was used to pay off foreign debt. When new
money is used to produce new goods and services,
price inflation does not result because supply and
demand rise together. Prices increased during the
American Civil War, but this was attributed to the
scarcity of goods common in wartime. War produces
weapons rather than consumer goods.

Today in most countries, money is created privately
by banks when they make loans; but the banks create
only the principal, not the interest necessary to
pay the loans back.
The interest must be borrowed into existence,
continually increasing the money supply, in a
Ponzi scheme that has reached its mathematical
limits. The latest desperate proposal for propping
up this collapsing system is to deliver $700 billion
of taxpayer money to ex-Goldman Sachs CEO Henry Paulson
to buy unmarketable derivative paper from the banks,
shifting the loss on this dodgy paper from the banks
to the taxpayers. Seven hundred billion is just the
opening figure; losses on the imploding derivatives
pyramid could wind up being in the trillions.
And where will this money come from? It will no doubt
be borrowed into existence from the banking system.
We the people will be in the anomalous position of
paying interest on a debt to the banks to bail out the
banks! At the very least, doesn't it seem that the
banks should be paying interest on the $700 billion
to us?

Rather than propping up an unsustainable system
with taxpayer money, it may be time to let the
private money-making scheme collapse and replace
it with something better. Banks that have thrived
in an unregulated free market should be left to
work out their fates in that market. If they go
bankrupt, they can be put into receivership and
reorganized in return for an equity interest in
the banks, as was done recently with AIG.
The government would then own a string of banks,
which could issue "the full faith and credit of
the United States" directly, returning the country
to productivity and prosperity just as Lincoln did.

As for the derivatives mess, there may be some
derivatives that serve useful market functions,
but most of them should be declared an illegal
form of gambling and void. Neither party would
owe on the deal; the bets would cancel each other
out. True, dodgy assets transformed into "triple-A"
investments by fake derivative insurance would
lose that rating; but they aren't triple-A investments,
and the pension funds now holding them should dump them.
The downgrades could wreak havoc on the balance sheets
of some banks, but that's the free market.
If they go bankrupt and we the people have to bail
them out, we should do it only in return for
adequate quid pro quo in the form of their
stock. Like Lincoln, we should say "Thanks but
no thanks" to Paulson's $700 billion ransom.

Ellen Brown, J.D., developed her research skills
as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles.
In Web of Debt, her latest book, she turns those
skills to an analysis of the Federal Reserve and
"the money trust." She shows how this private cartel
has usurped the power to create money from the people
themselves, and how we the people can get it back.
Her eleven books include the bestselling Nature's
Pharmacy, co-authored with Dr. Lynne Walker, and
Forbidden Medicine. Her websites are
www.webofdebt.com and www.ellenbrown.com .

'The important thing is to begin to build a conscious, "thought"
network... to link the warriors together. Every person who knows
has to connect with everyone else in their lives who would want to
know." --James Redfield "The Secret of Shambhala"
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/sep2008/bush-s25_prn.shtml

"It is well enough that people of
the nation do not understand our
banking and monetary system, for
if they did, I believe there
would be a revolution before
tomorrow morning."
Henry Ford (1863-1947)
http://pweb.netcom.com/~mthorn/stargate.htm

# # #

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:Diane Murphy
Diane Murphy, VP Marketing/Communications
media@SpaceX.com
1.310.363.6714

SpaceX Successfully Launches Falcon 1 to Orbit
http://www.spacex.com/press.php?page=20080928
-------------------------------------------------

HAWTHORNE, CA -- September 28, 2008 --
Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX)
announces that Flight 4 of the Falcon 1 launch
vehicle has successfully launched and achieved
Earth orbit. With this key milestone, Falcon 1
becomes the first privately developed liquid
fuel rocket to orbit the Earth.

"This is a great day for SpaceX and the culmination of
an enormous amount of work by a great team," said
Elon Musk, CEO and CTO of SpaceX. "The data shows we
achieved a super precise orbit insertion--middle of
the bull's-eye -- and then went on to coast and restart
the second stage, which was icing on the cake."

Falcon 1, designed from the ground up by SpaceX,
lifted off at 4:15 p.m. (PDT) / 23:15 (UTC) from the
Reagan Test Site (RTS) on Omelek Island at the
..S. Army Kwajalein Atoll (USAKA) in the Central
Pacific, about 2,500 miles southwest of Hawaii.

Preliminary data indicates that Falcon 1 achieved an
elliptical orbit of 500 km by 700 km, 9.2 degrees
inclination--exactly as targeted.

Falcon 1 carried into orbit a payload mass simulator
of approximately 165 kg (364 lbs), designed and built
by SpaceX, specifically for this mission. Consisting
of a hexagonal aluminum alloy chamber 1.5 meters
(5 feet) tall, the payload remains attached to the
second stage as it orbits Earth.

This was the fourth launch of the Falcon 1 launch
vehicle and second flight for the new SpaceX-developed
Merlin 1C regeneratively-cooled engine.
A "hold before liftoff" system was used to enhance
reliability by permitting all launch systems to be
verified as functioning nominally before launch was
initiated. A single SpaceX-developed Kestrel engine
powered the Falcon 1 second stage.

For more information about the Falcon family of
vehicles, and to watch the archived video of
the Falcon 1, Flight 4 launch, visit the SpaceX
website athttp://www.spacex.com

About SpaceX

SpaceX is developing a family of launch vehicles
intended to increase the reliability and reduce the
cost of both manned and unmanned space
transportation, ultimately by a factor of ten.
With its Falcon line of launch vehicles, powered
by internally-developed Merlin engines, SpaceX
offers light, medium and heavy lift capabilities to
deliver spacecraft into any altitude and
inclination, from low-Earth to geosynchronous
orbit to planetary missions.

As a winner of the NASA Commercial Orbital
Transportation Services competition (COTS),
SpaceX is in a position to help fill the gap in
American spaceflight to the International Space
Station (ISS) when the Space Shuttle retires in 2010.
Under the existing Agreement, SpaceX will conduct
three flights of its Falcon 9 launch vehicle and
Dragon spacecraft for NASA, culminating in
Dragon berthing with the ISS. NASA also has an
option to demonstrate crew services to the ISS
using the Falcon 9 / Dragon system. SpaceX is
the only COTS contender that has the capability
to return pressurized cargo and crew to Earth.
The first Falcon 9 will arrive at the SpaceX launch
site (complex 40) at Cape Canaveral by the end of
2008 in preparation for its maiden flight in 2009.

Founded in 2002, the SpaceX team now numbers
over 550, located primarily in Hawthorne, California,
with four additional locations: SpaceX's Texas Test
Facility in McGregor near Waco; offices in
Washington DC; and launch facilities at Cape
Canaveral, Florida, and the Marshall Islands in
the Central Pacific.
http://www.spacex.com/press.php?page=20080928

"Earthly troubles cloud China's space walk"
by Kent Ewing <kewing@hkis.edu.hk>
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/JI30Ad01.html
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&suggon=0&safe=off&q=China+Space+Walk

# # #

Army Combat Brigade to take on
first-of-its-kind homeland security detail
By Paul Schmelzer
http://minnesotaindependent.com/10466/army-combat-brigade-to-take-on-first-of-its-kind-homeland-security-detail
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%223rd+Infantry+Division%27s+1st+Brigade+Combat+Team+%22%2BOctober+1
_________________________________________________________________

http://lhc.web.cern.ch/lhc/Cooldown_status.htm

"Annual seminar at Ananda Schweibenalp 9.-12.10.2008" wrote:

"This year Ananda will talk about:
The extraterrestrial presence
Exopolitics and the development of
worldwide concepts for the interaction
with an extraterrestrial Intelligence (ETI)"
http://www.schweibenalp.ch

http://phoenix.akasha.de/~aton/AOHM1.htm
Wooly Mammoth Dusty MindGland Supersymmetry
Dwarf Spheroidal Galactic Data Stream......
http://pweb.netcom.com/~mthorn/mindland.htm

LHC NEWS http://lhc.web.cern.ch/lhc/News.htm
September 23, 2008 3:26 PM PDT
LHC shut down until early spring
http://www.news.google.com/news?hl=en&suggon=0&safe=off&q=LHC%20CERN
*************************************************************

Lt. Aoclazteuq · Guest

On Oct 2, 10:48 pm, Koyaanisqatsi Fahrvergnugen
<koyaanisqa...@ziplip.com> wrote:


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