The Slaughterhouse Informer

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

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

The Voice of the White House

                “Washington, D.C., September 20, 2008: “Putin’s total humiliation of his enemy, Georgian President Saakashvili, George Bush and the Israel government and military, .in the brief but deadly war in Georgia that was instigated by Saakashvili ,has caused a wave of fear in Kiev. The Ukraine, an American satellite, knows that Putin has his eye on their country and has proven that he can seize it at any time, un-hindered by a useless NATO. Their diplomatic representatives have been engaging in frantic and panic-stricken phone calls, emails and personal visits to key Americans such as Bush, Cheney, McCain (whose chief foreign affairs specialist is a neo-con and a paid agent for Georgia) and members of the U.S. military. The Ukraine is terrified that if Putin institutes some kind of an Anschluss , NATO can, and will, do nothing to counter it , and that Washington will quickly abandon them as they did Georgia last month and today, there was news that the Crimean parliament has asked Kiev to recognize Georgia’s breakaway provinces . The Crimea, which is peopled with ethnic Russians, is home to the Sebastopol naval base, used by Russia. Our people view this area as the most likely flash point for future problems.

            The United States has very clearly abandoned one ally, Georgia, and is now attacking a second, Pakistan. Georgia was intended to serve as an American showcase for its brand of democracy, a democracy mirroring the wishes of Washington, as well as acting for a probable base to attack Iran, and Pakistan was to assist our military in attacking the Afgahnistani Taliban. Now that our man, General Musharrif, has fallen from power to be replaced with a weak and vacillating government that is terrified of the Taliban and also strongly anti-American, the Bush people, goaded by a frightened India, are considering immediate military strikes, with U.S. Special Forces, deep into the territory of their former ally in order to secure Pakistan’s nuclear weaponry.

                And a comment about the “rescue of the collapsing credit market” by the Bush people: In essence, Secretary Paulson wants to set up a Federal agency which will scoop up billions of dollars of bad debt the greedy banks ‘suddenly’ found themselves stuck with. This financial fraud will be dumped onto the American taxpayer and is privately estimated to exceed 6 trillion dollars. The banks involved, who were criminally responsible for this situation, get off with a Pass Free card and can get their golden parachutes, or the golden shower if they want it.And when the banking community realized that this payoff might actually happen, they lined up in groups of fifty with outstretched hands for their friends to press money into.  Also, Paulson and McCain are going to insure all investors in U.S. money-market funds which will cost our taxpayers many more hundreds of millions. And as to the ‘fiscal fix,’ recall the words of Patrick Henry. ‘Trust it not sir, it shall prove a snare and a delusion.’

                Smile, children, and swallow.”

A Brief History of the Subprime Swindle

September 21, 2008

by Brian Harring

On  January 29, 2008, the following information was made public in the old Wall Street Journal::

Federal investigators at the FBI have opened a criminal investigation of 14 mortgage-related companies, focusing on alleged accounting fraud, insider trading and securitization practices, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday afternoon.

Even bankrupt firms aren’t free from the scrutiny, with the Journal quoting FBI economic crimes chief Neil Power as saying that investigators were combing the books of failed mortgage lenders to identify if evidence of wrongdoing exists — given that there aren’t that many really, really large failed lenders, it’s probably not too hard to guess which firms are included in that group of 14. Even if the FBI isn’t naming names right now.

FBI officials say the bureau has 1,200 mortgage fraud cases under investigation and that they believe many more cases are in the offing, based on the number of so-called suspicious activity reports filed by banks. The number of SARs documented by the FBI has rocketed from 35,000 in 2006, to 48,000 in 2007, and are projected to reach 60,000 in 2008.

“We have observed that subprime loans are decreasing, but the suspicious activity reports we see…have noted that suspicions of mortgage fraud are increasing,” said Sharon Ormsby, the financial crimes section chief in the FBI’s criminal investigative division.

The FBI’s investigation coincides with similar probes already underway at the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Journal reported.

       At this point in time, it is not difficult to locate the causes of the subprime mortgage disaster that threatens to effectively wreck the American banking and credit entities. It all began with very poor underwriting policies that just simply grew and were compounded. At every level of the methodology by which a known risky home loan to unqualified borrowers grew into an asset-based security which was elevated to a ‘collaaterized debt obligation’ and was then sold to unsuspecting  investors.

                In theory, there is no problem with lending to borrowers from the lower income groups and to those with much lower credit scorings. But it is obvious that in making so-called “subprime loans,” the lenders must strictly evaluate the borrower and set up much higher standards for loan collateral.

                But the primary level lender did not follow any of these practical standards but abandoned the normal lending standards in both subprime and ‘Alt-A’ (located somewhere between prime and subprime) levels of lending. As an added problem, many, if not most, of these very risky loans were made to people with no  job and no assets. The loans were made with very low initial interest rates (which, by the obscure terms of the loan were certain to be sharply raised after a set period of time) These were often called ‘interest only” loans but these loans always increased their payments and this was rarely understood  by the borrower.
               

                It was reasoned that such inherently risky loans were easily justified by the fact that the housing market in the United States was booming and that if the borrower failed to repay the loan as agreed and on time, the increased value of the house would cover the loan, the accrued interest and penalties in the event of forclosure

                The really dangerous problems arose when masses of these highly speculative mortgages became transformed into securities (in which the income and principal payments are passed, through a trust, to investors) added problems. Whereas all pass-through, mortgage-backed-securities (MBSs) issued by the U.S. government–sponsored enterprises (GSEs)— Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—have common underwriting standards, the MBSs issued by the major Wall Street firms had varying loan standards. This made the costs of understanding disclosed information, and the premium on maintaining confidence, much higher. Due diligence from investors did not increase enough to compensate for this greater information burden.

Instead, investors increased their reliance on the assessments of credit rating agencies. Although these agencies have a long and well-known track record rating bonds, subprime residential MBSs and CDOs were new and more complex. CDOs are structured credit securities backed by pools of securities, loans, or credit derivatives whose cash flows are divided into segments, called tranches, with different repayment and return characteristics.

Because subprime mortgages were a relatively new entity, there was limited information on their past performance, a shortcoming that was especially important when trying to determine how these mortgages—individually and as a group—would perform during economic stress. Optimism about how subprime mortgages would perform led to more than 90 percent of securitized subprime loans being turned into securities with the top rating of AAA

 More problems occurred when the securities were distributed and traded. The vulnerability of leveraged, or thinly capitalized, investment positions and the illiquidity of many structured credit markets were exposed when trading was disrupted in a host of other markets. Mortgage originators, broker-dealers, hedge funds, and the structured investment vehicles, which the  banks maintained off their balance sheets were highly leveraged. The principal risk management strategy was to plan to trade rapidly out of a loss-making position. But such a strategy, which relies on markets remaining liquid, failed when markets rapidly became illiquid.

 Many major American and European banks have suffered, and are still suffering, enormous losses which they are certain a very friendly Bush administration will compensate them for. Added to these losses, are absorbed assets from failed SIVs and hedge funds onto their balance sheets, and which the banks have been forced to honor loan commitments. As a result, they have had to ration capital more strictly. With capital impaired and difficult, or very expensive, to raise externally, banks have sought to reduce voluntary loans and tighten the terms of the credit they already extend—whether on home equity loans to consumers or on loans to hedge funds. Commercial banks are naturally leveraged—holding capital that is a small fraction of total assets—and so a relatively small decline in capital can result in a much larger decline in total lending. One estimate is that the $400 billion of U.S. banking system losses from the current crisis would result in a $2 trillion decline in total lending and a 1.2 percent reduction in U.S. GDP

US Financial Crisis

'The World As We Know It Is Going Down'

September 18,2008

by Marc Pitzke in New York

Spiegel

Panic is the word of the hour on Wall Street. Now even Morgan Stanley is fighting for survival. The commercial bank Wachovia and China's Bank Citic are being discussed as possible rescuers. The crisis has led President Bush to cancel a trip.

The original plan actually called for humor. On Wednesday evening, actress Christy Carlson Romano was supposed to ring the closing bell on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) to mark her debut in the Broadway musical "Avenue Q." She plays two roles on stage -- a romantic kindergarten assistant, and a slutty nightclub singer.

After that day on the floor, the stock traders could have used a bit of comic relief. But it was not to be. Instead of Christy Carlson Romano, a NYSE employee in a joyless gray suit stood on the balcony and silently pressed a button. The bell rang and he disappeared. No waving, no clapping, none of the usual jubilation.

By the end of Wednesday, no one here was in the mood for laughter. The bad news on Wall Street was coming thick and fast. All the US indexes were crashing again after Tuesday's brief and deceptive breather. In its wild, rollercoaster ride, the Dow Jones lost about 450 points, which was almost as much as it lost on Monday, the most catastrophic day on US markets since 2001.

Investors were turning their back to the market in droves and fleeing to safer pastures. The price of gold broke its record for the highest increase in a one-day period.

Panic Is the Word of the Hour

Traders abandoned the NYSE temple visually defeated and immune to the TV crews waiting. The disastrous closing prices were flickering on the ticker above the NYSE entrance: American Express -8.4 percent; Citigroup -10.9 percent; JPMorgan Chase -12.2 percent. American icons, abused like stray dogs. Even Apple took a hit.

I don't know what else to say," stammered one broker, who was consoling himself with white wine and beer along with some colleagues at an outdoor bar called Beckett's. Ties and jackets were off, but despite the evening breeze, you could still make out the thin film of sweat on his forehead. His words captured the speechlessness of an industry.

Things got worse after the markets closed. Washington Mutual, America's fourth-largest bank, announced that it had started the process of putting itself up for sale. The Wall Street Journal reported that both Wells Fargo and the banking giant Citigroup were interested in taking over the battered American savings bank.

And then came the announcement that would dominate all of Thursday's market activities: Morgan Stanley -- the venerable Wall Street institution and one of the last two US investment banks left standing -- had lost massive amounts and was fighting for survival. Media reports were saying that it was even in talks about a possible bail-out or merger. Rumor had it that possible suitors might include Wachovia or China's Bank Citic.

China?

"Folks," economist Larry Kudlow, a host on the business channel CNBC begged his viewers that evening, "don't give up on this great country!"

End of an Era

In fact, it really does look as if the foundations of US capitalism have shattered. Since 1864, American banking has been split into commercial banks and investment banks. But now that's changing. Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch -- overnight, some of the biggest names on Wall Street have disappeared into thin air. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are the only giants left standing. Despite tolerable quarterly results, even they have been hurt by mysterious slumps in prices and -- at least in Morgan Stanley's case -- have prepared themselves for the end.

"Nothing will be like it was before," said James Allroy, a broker who was brooding over his chai latte at a Starbucks on Wall Street. "The world as we know it is going down."

Many are drawing comparisons with the Great Depression, the national trauma that has been the benchmark for everything since. "I think it has the chance to be the worst period of time since 1929," financing legend Donald Trump told CNN. And the Wall Street Journal seconds that opinion, giving one story the title: "Worst Crisis Since '30s, With No End Yet in Sight."

But what's really happening? Experts have so far been unable to agree on any conclusions. Is this the beginning of the end? Or is it just a painful, but normal cycle correcting the excesses of recent years? Does responsibility lie with the ratings agencies, which have been overvaluing financial institutions for a long time? Or did dubious short sellers manipulate stock prices -- after all, they were suspected of having caused the last stock market crisis in July.

The only thing that is certain is that the era of the unbridled free-market economy in the US has passed -- at least for now. The near nationalization of AIG, America's largest insurance company, with an $85 billion cash infusion -- a bill footed by taxpayers -- was a staggering move. The sum is three times as high as the guarantee provided by the Federal Reserve when Bear Stearns was sold to JPMorgan Chase in March.

The most breathtaking aspect about this week's crisis, though, is that the life raft -- which Washington had only previously used to bail out the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- is being handed out by a government whose party usually fights against any form of government intervention. The policy is anchored in its party platform.

"I fear the government has passed the point of no return," financial historian Ron Chernow told the New York Times. "We have the irony of a free-market administration doing things that the most liberal Democratic administration would never have been doing in its wildest dreams."

Bush Cancels Trip

The situation appears to be so serious that George W. Bush cancelled two domestic trips he had planned for Thursday on short notice. Instead, the president will remain in Washington to discuss the "serious challenges confronting US financial markets." He said the president remained focused on "taking action to stabilize and strengthen the markets." Bush had originally planned to travel to events in Florida and Alabama.

So far, the US presidential candidates have made few helpful remarks about the crisis other than the usual slogans. Both are vaguely calling for "regulation" and "reform" -- bland catchphrases almost universally welcomed with applause.

Republican Party presidential candidate John McCain had the most to say. On Monday, he said "the foundation of our economy" was "strong," adding that he opposed a government-led bailout of US insurer AIG. But now he's promising further government steps "to prevent the kind of wild speculation that can put our markets at risk." McCain's explanation for the current crisis: "unbridled corruption and greed."

But Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama didn't move past superficialities, either. "We're Americans. We've met tough challenges before and we can again."

What else are they supposed to say? After all, US presidents have very little influence on stockmarkets. And Wall Street is expecting the status quo for the next president. On Wednesday an almost palpable mix of tension and melancholy filled the air above New York's Financial District. The beloved trader bar Bull Run was half empty, and many tables were free at fine-dining establishments like Cipriani, Mangia and Bobby Van's, which are normally booked days in advance.

At the side entrance to Goldman Sachs on Pearl Street, limo chauffeurs sat waiting for their customers, still above in their office towers cowering over the accounts. "If they go under," said Rashid Amal, who works as a chauffeur for a firm called Excelsior, "then I will soon be out of a job, too."

Your Money at Work, Fixing Others’ Mistakes

September 21, 2008

by Gretchen Morgenson 

New York Times

It looks as if we may get through this weekend without another scramble to save a troubled financial firm with a trillion-dollar balance sheet.

 But that doesn’t mean taxpayers are out of danger. No, sir. No, ma’am. Because lawmakers are at work on a bailout fund that would buy the kind of distressed assets (defaulted mortgages, for example) that have ignited this firestorm.

Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. has called the fund the “troubled asset relief program.” I’ll just call it TARP for short (you know, the kind of thing they spread over muddy fields so you don’t soil your Guccis).

And depending on how TARP is operated, and how the assets are valued before taxpayers are forced to buy them, it could bloat our final bill for this mess while benefiting the very institutions that got us into it.

Yes, we need a smart plan and a concerted effort to get the frozen credit markets up and running. But we also have to be certain that the types of conflicts of interest that riddle Wall Street aren’t visited upon TARP.

Consider: A bank wants to sell the TARPistas (also known as TAXPAYERS) a pile of stinky mortgage securities that it currently values at 60 cents on the dollar. Let’s assume that the most recent actual trade between market participants for similar assets was struck at 30 cents on the dollar.

So what’s a fair price that we TARPistas should pay for the assets?

If we bought at 60 cents, a price that the bank would argue is appropriate, we would most likely face a loss. The bank, however, would be much better off than if it had to dump at 30 cents.

Conversely, if the assets were sold at 30 cents, taxpayers could wind up making a profit on the purchase if the assets performed better than expected over time. But the bank would have to write down the value of the assets as a result of the sale, possibly threatening its financial standing yet again.

Do you think, perchance, that financial services lobbyists might be working their Hill contacts right this very minute to ensure that the TARP valuations are rigged in their favor?

You know the answer to that.

And you also know that we should steel ourselves for heavy losses as the TARP gets pulled over our eyes. Never mind that it was the banks, with their reckless lending and monumental leverage, that drove us into this ditch.

Such is our lot today: They break it. We own it.

Taxpayers deserve better than this, of course. But we have no lobbyists, so we get skinned.

If federal regulators and political leaders want to earn back some trust, they could do two things. First, they could provide us with some transparency about whom precisely we are backing in the recent bailouts.

Take, for example, the rescue on Tuesday of the American International Group, once the world’s largest insurance company. It was pretty breathtaking. Since when do insurance companies, whose business models seem to consist of taking in premiums and stonewalling claims, deserve rescues from beleaguered taxpayers?

Answer: Ever since the world became so intertwined that the failure of one company can topple a host of others. And ever since credit default swaps, those unregulated derivative contracts that allow investors to bet on a debt issuer’s financial prospects, loomed so big on balance sheets that they now drive every bailout decision.

The deal to save A.I.G. involves a two-year, $85 billion loan from taxpayers. In exchange, the new owners — us — get 80 percent of the company. If enough of A.I.G.’s assets are sold for good prices, we may get our money back.

Credit default swaps, which operate like insurance policies against the possibility that an issuer of debt will not pay on its obligations, were the single biggest motivator behind the A.I.G. deal.

A.I.G. had written $441 billion in credit insurance on mortgage-related securities whose values have declined; if A.I.G. were to fail, all the institutions that bought the insurance would have been subject to enormous losses. The ripple effect could have turned into a tsunami.

So, the $85 billion loan to A.I.G. was really a bailout of the company’s counterparties or trading partners.

Now, inquiring minds want to know, whom did we rescue? Which large, wealthy financial institutions — counterparties to A.I.G.’s derivatives contracts — benefited from the taxpayers’ $85 billion loan? Were their representatives involved in the talks that resulted in the last-minute loan?

And did Lehman Brothers not get bailed out because those favored institutions were not on the hook if it failed?

We’ll probably never know the answers to these troubling questions. But by keeping taxpayers in the dark, regulators continue to earn our mistrust. As long as we are not told whom we have bailed out, we will be justified in suspecting that a favored few are making gains on our dimes.

A.I.G.’s financial statements provided a clue to the identities of some of its credit default swap counterparties. The company said that almost three-quarters of the $441 billion it had written on soured mortgage securities was bought by European banks. The banks bought the insurance to reduce the amounts of capital they were required by regulators to set aside to cover future losses.

Enjoy the absurdity: Billions in unregulated derivatives that were about to take down the insurance company that sold them were bought by banks to get around their regulatory capital requirements intended to rein in risk.

Got that?

Which brings us to Item 2 for policy makers. Stop pretending that the $62 trillion market for credit default swaps does not need regulatory oversight. Warren E. Buffett was not engaging in hyperbole when he called these things financial weapons of mass destruction.

“The last eight years have been about permitting derivatives to explode, knowing they were unregulated,” said Eric R. Dinallo, New York’s superintendent of insurance. “It’s about what the government chose not to regulate, measured in dollars. And that is what shook the world.”

And it will continue.

SECRECY NEWS
 from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2008, Issue No. 92

September 22, 2008
 

 IDEOLOGICAL CONFLICT PUTS AL QAEDA ON THE DEFENSIVE

Al Qaeda is "imploding," a State Department counterterrorism official told the Associated Press last week, as a result of growing opposition in the Muslim world.

The implication that al Qaeda's demise may be imminent is almost certainly incorrect. But what is true is that "a severe intellectual conflict has emerged" within the jihadist movement, said Kamal Habib, a former official of the Egyptian Jihad Organization (Al Arab, September 14).
 
                Over the past year, al Qaeda has been publicly criticized by several of its own former supporters and ideological leaders, most notably Sayyid Imam Al-Sharif, also known as Dr. Fadl, who once saved the life of Usama
bin Laden.

                "Sayyid Imam is viewed as the greatest and most important authority for all of the jihadist salafist groups," said Kamal Habib.

So when Sayyid Imam declared in a November 2007 book that killing non-combatant civilians, including Christians and Jews, is prohibited and that Al Qaeda's conduct of jihad against the west was illegitimate, itproduced an ideological earthquake within Islamist ranks.
 
 

"Fadl's arguments undermined the entire intellectual framework of jihadist warfare," wrote Lawrence Wright in an illuminating article in The New Yorker (June 2, 2008).
 
 http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/06/02/080602fa_fact_wright
 

"Al Qaeda senior leaders in 2008 have devoted nearly half their airtime to defending the group's legitimacy," observed National Intelligence Officer Ted Gistaro in an August 12 speech. "This defensive tone ... reflects concern over allegations by militant leaders and religious scholars that al Qaeda and its affiliates have violated the Islamic laws of war, particularly in Iraq and North Africa."

One of the major al Qaeda responses came in a book by bin Laden deputy Ayman al Zawahiri called "The Exoneration." The book is an attempt to defend the legitimacy of al Qaeda's tactics, including the killing of civilians, against the critiques of Sayyid Imam and other Islamic figures.
 

"Those who claim that killing innocent persons is absolutely forbidden are in a position of accusing the prophet, may God's peace and prayers be upon him, his companions, and the generation following them that they were killers of innocent persons, as they see it," wrote Zawahiri.

He noted that the prophet authorized the use of catapults, which do not discriminate between innocent and guilty, and he also killed all the males of a Jewish tribe "and made no distinction between one person and another."

"The Exoneration," which was published in January 2008, was translated a few months later by the DNI Open Source Center. The translation has not been approved for public release, but a copy was obtained by Secrecy News.  http://www.fas.org/irp/dni/osc/exoneration.pdf
 
 

"Zawahiri's strategic thinking and understanding of asymmetrical warfare and revolutionary violence is heavily indebted to vanguardism, a Leninist theory of revolution which posits that a small, revolutionary elite uses violence to rouse the people to fight against the government," according
to a contractor analysis performed for the Department of Defense and obtained by Secrecy News.

"The potential problem with Zawahiri's application of the theory of vanguardism... is that terrorism usually diminishes the support of both the government as well as the terrorist organization," as appears to be the case today.

                See "Zawahiri Tries to Clear Name, Explain Strategy," Transnational Security Issues Report, prepared for the Department of Defense by the International Research Center, April 21, 2008:
 http://www.fas.org/irp/eprint/zawahiri.pdf
 

"Is Al Qaeda going to dissipate as a result of the criticism from its former mentors and allies? Despite the recent internal criticism, probably not in the short term," said analyst Peter Bergen at a July 30
congressional hearing.

"However, encoded in the DNA of apocalyptic jihadist groups like Al Qaeda are the seeds of their own long-term destruction: Their victims are often Muslim civilians; they don't offer a positive vision of the future; they keep expanding their list of enemies, including any Muslim who doesn't precisely share their world view; and they seem incapable of becoming politically successful movements because their ideology prevents them from making the real-world compromises that would allow them to engage in
genuine politics," Mr. Bergen said.
 
 
BOOK: THE SECRET WAR WITH IRAN
 

In 1997, acting on intelligence that a Hizballah cell was preparing to blow up the American embassy in Asuncion, Paraguay, a U.S. special forces team reportedly flew to the scene in several giant transport planes where it arrested the conspirators and prevented the attack.

If that episode happened as described (and it cannot readily be confirmed), it left no traces on the public record. It "is only one of many hidden battles" between Iran and the West, writes Israeli journalist
Ronen Bergman in his new book "The Secret War with Iran" (Free Press, 2008) http://www.thesecretwarwithiran.com/
 
                The book, translated from the Hebrew and based on extensive interviews with Israeli intelligence officials and others, provides a wealth of insights, unfamiliar anecdotes, and telling observations regarding the three-decade-old confrontation with Iran. A few random examples:

                Hizballah, acting as a proxy for Iran, temporarily refrained from taking American hostages between June 1985 and September 1986 in support of the arms sales deal between the U.S. and Iran that later became known as the Iran-contra affair.
 
                Israel itself helped arm revolutionary Iran in an operation codenamed "Seashell" and described in the book. Earlier, Israel had also supplied advanced weaponry to the Shah, and "if Khomeini had not taken power as early as he did, he might have taken over a country [equipped] with long-range missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads... as well as a jet fighter that was supposed to be the best in the world."
 
                Out of a list of some 500 opposition figures targeted by Khomeini, nearly 200 of them were killed by Iranian assassins in Europe between 1980 and 1997.
 
 
                Writing from an Israeli perspective, Mr. Bergman does not delve deeply into Iranian grievances or aspirations. But neither does he flatter the competence, judgment or morality of Israeli intelligence and military officials.
 
                Categorized as "political science," the book is more of a work of intelligence history, with numerous strange tales of intelligence deeds and misdeeds, like the Israeli intelligence officer who was arrested for murdering his agent, and the Lebanese source who provided perfect warning of an impending attack only to be ignored in a turf battle between Israeli security agencies. The CIA is credited with "brilliantly" dismantling the Abu Nidal Organization, "sewing discord among its members by getting them
to believe that they were being robbed by other operatives."

                Mr. Bergman, an investigative journalist who writes for Israel's Yediot Aharonot, earned his doctorate under historian Christopher Andrew at Cambridge University. His dissertation explored Israeli intelligence operations in Africa.
 

Conversations with the Crow: Part 33

Editor’s note: When we ran the first conversation  in this series, there was the question of reader interest and acceptability. It is pleasant to report that our server was jammed with viewers and the only other tbrnews story that has had more viewers was our Forward Base Falcon story that had a half a million viewers in less that two days. We are now going to reprint all of the Crowley conversations, including a very interesting one on John McCain,  in chronological sequence. It is also pleasant to note that two publishers and three reporters have all expressed concrete interest in the Crowley conversations. It is even more pleasurable to note that a number of people inside the Beltway and in McLean, Virginia, have been screaming with rage!

                On October 8th, 2000, Robert Trumbull Crowley, once a leader of the CIA's Clandestine Operations Division, died in a Washington hospital of heart failure and the end effects of Alzheimer's Disease. Before the late Assistant Director Crowley was cold, Joseph Trento, a writer of light-weight books on the CIA, descended on Crowley's widow at her town house on Cathedral Hill Drive in Washington and hauled away over fifty boxes of Crowley's CIA files.

                Once Trento had his new find secure in his house in Front Royal , Virginia, he called a well-known Washington fix lawyer with the news of his success in securing what the CIA had always considered to be a potential major embarrassment. Three months before, July 20th of that year, retired Marine Corps colonel William R. Corson, and an associate of Crowley, died of emphysema and lung cancer at a hospital in Bethesda, Md.

                After Corson's death, Trento and a well-known Washington fix-lawyer went to Corson's bank, got into his safe deposit box and removed a manuscript entitled 'Zipper.' This manuscript, which dealt with Crowley's involvement in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, vanished into a CIA burn-bag and the matter was considered to be closed forever.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

After Crowley’s death and Trento’s raid on the Crowley files, huge gaps were subsequently discovered by horrified CIA officials and when Crowley’s friends mentioned Gregory Douglas, it was discovered that Crowley’s son had shipped two large boxes to Douglas. No one knew their contents but because Douglas was viewed as an uncontrollable loose cannon who had done considerable damage to the CIA’s reputation by his on-going publication of the history of Gestapo-Mueller, they bent every effort both to identify the missing files and make some effort to retrieve them before Douglas made any use of them.          

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

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

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

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

Date: Thursday, January 9, 1997

Commenced: 9:47 AM CST

Concluded:10:28 AM CST

RTC: Ah, good morning, Gregory. Did you talk to Bill yesterday?

GD: Yes, he actually called me. He was discussing Kronthal with me mostly but I think he was on a fishing trip. Was asking me about the new Mueller book…what was in it and such like.

RTC: Did you tell him anything?

GD: No, not in specific. I find him entertaining and sometimes truthful but I don’t trust him. And I don’t trust Kimmel, either.

RTC: Probably a good idea. I rarely hear from Kimmel these days.

GD: I wonder why?
RTC: I think you’re the reason. Bill was cautioning me against talking too much to you because it might hurt my reputation.

GD: I think it must be the fact that I’m a practicing vampire. You know, Robert, it’ll be tough sledding this winter.

RTC: Why is that?

GD: No snow.

RTC: I walked right into that one, didn’t I? Has anyone discussed the Kennedy business with you?

GD: Corson did, once. Said he had the real story in his safe deposit box and Plato or Aristotle would get it when he was called to Jesus.

RTC: Plato. That’s the fix lawyer around here. Little favors for this person or that one, little jobs for the Company and so on.

GD: They probably deserve each other.

RTC: Probably. And how is the Mueller book doing?

GD: Well enough. I’m starting to block out the Kennedy book and yes, I know not to talk about it…

RTC: Or even write something up about it. If Tom thought you were into this, he’d have his boys do a black bag job on you and get into your hard drive.

GD: I could put a bomb in it… When they turned it on, somebody would be carrying a white cane and being nice to his German Shepherd guide dog.

RTC: Now, now, Gregory, not to make jokes about things like that.

GD: If people don’t want me to punt them in their fat ass, they shouldn’t bend over. On the other hand, it might be an invite for something more romantic.

RTC: I can see you’re in a good mood today.

GD: Foul mouthed as ever.

RTC: Sometimes but always entertaining.

GD: I know Kimmel doesn’t find me entertaining. I make fun of the establishment and he is so obviously a dedicated and vocal part of it.

RTC: Everyone has to have something to cling to.

GD: What a waste of time. People are so predictable and so pathetic. You know, Robert, it’s like visiting your ant farm every morning and watching the ants leading their programmed lives.

RTC: Isn’t that a bit arrogant, Gregory?
GD: It’s not that I’m so smart, Robert, although I am, but it’s because so many are so stupid. Anyway, enough weltschmertz.

RTC: Pardon?

GD: Pain with the world. Burned out. Bored. Frustrated.

RTC: I see. When you get to my age, that’s the whole thing.

GD: Well, if youth knew and age could, Robert. I think that’s from Mary Baker Eddy, the woman who invented aspirin. You know, God is Love, there is no pain. They ought to put that up in the terminal cancer wards. It would be such a comfort. I understand Mary was buried with a telephone in her coffin. High hopes and impossibilities sums it up and have an aspirin.

RTC: That’s Christian Science, isn’t it? You heard about the Christian Scientist? He had a very bad cold and pretty soon, the cold was gone and so was the Christian Scientist.

GD: That’s how it goes, I guess. Now let me get serious about this Zipper business. If you want me to do a treatment on this that will be to your benefit, I need to get from you, on the phone is fine, some kind of a rationale for what happened. I mean, that’s what you want, isn’t it? To let those who come after you fully understand the reasons for your actions.

RTC: Yes, that’s it exactly. If that ever got out, though by now, it probably won’t, I don’t want my son and my grandchildren thinking I was just a common or garden variety assassin. They should know the reasons for why we acted as we did.

GD: Fine. Go ahead.

RTC: You must understand that we took our duties very seriously. Angleton was a first class counter intelligence man and very dedicated. And he discovers that the most important intelligence reports, the President’s daily briefings from the CIA, are ending up in Moscow.  Within a week of them being given to the President. A week. And this was not a one-time incident but had been going on for some time. We then tried to find out how this was happening. A major intelligence disaster, Gregory, major. Now there were several copies of this report disseminated, never mind to whom, so in each one, a little spice was put in. An identifier as you will. Nothing that changed the thrust of the report but a little bit of spice as Jim used to say. Jim’s contact in Moscow was a diplomat, never mind which country because we don’t need to make trouble for him. So from him, we got copies of what Nikita was getting. So can you imagine how stunned we all were to learn that it was the President’s copy that was being leaked? My God. So we couldn’t just walk up to him and ask him how come Khrushchev was reading his briefings a week after we gave them to him. Jim couldn’t find a way how this was done but then we had a report that Bobby, his brother, was known to be friendly with a prominent KGB fellow, Bolshakov. No question of who he was. The TASS man here. Top level. Bobby was known to have had at least one meeting with him. Hoover was having Bobby watched day and night because Hoover hated him and wanted to catch him doing something bad so he could leak it to the Post and get him sacked. Anyway, they found out that Bobby was talking to the Commie on the phone from his home so we, and Hoover, tapped his phone. Hoover didn’t know we were doing it too but that’s Washington politics for you. And we heard, for sure, that Bobby was sending thermofax copies of this report to him. I mean, there was no question. And, we learned too that Kennedy was keeping in direct contact with Khrushchev by Bobby and the Russian. I mean they were subverting the entire diplomatic system and God alone knows what Kennedy was talking about. We had to make sure of this, and really sure. It was explosive, believe me. Jim and a few of us sat down, listened to tapes and agent reports and tried to decide what to do. I mean, Gregory, here we had our President giving, actually giving, the most secret documents to our worst enemy, a man who swore in public he would destroy us. So, what to do? Make it public? Who would dare to do this? Of course we had strong media contacts but we all decided this was just too mindboggling and negative to let outside that room. And that is where the decision was made to simply get rid of Kennedy. He was too independent, he had sacked Dulles and Bissel over the Cuban thing and threatened to Mansfield to break the Agency up. And here he was giving our worse enemy top secret inside information. I mean it really wasn’t open to discussion. You can see this all, can’t you?

GD: I can see your point of view very clearly.

RTC: What would you have done?

GD: I’m not an important person like those people so what difference does my opinion make in all this? I’m just trying to find the rationale.

RTC: Well, do you have it?

GD: Yes, very clearly.

RTC: Well, the rest was lining up the players. Jim did his part, McCone did his part and he talked to Hoover to get his cooperation. We never went directly to him but we used Bill Sullivan, his right hand trouble-shooter. That’s how it was done. Hoover hated the Kennedys;, especially Bobby and we had to have him on our side because it was his people that would investigate any killing that had to be done. It took about a week of back and forth but finally it was agreed on. Johnson was no problem. He was a real rat; a wheeler-dealer whom you couldn’t trust to the corner for a pound of soft soap. The Kennedy bunch were treating him like shit and planned to dump him as VP so of course he went for the wink and the nod. Fortas was his bagman, just like Sullivan was Hoover’s. These are people who know the value of silence from long experience. And it went on from there. I have a phone conference record which I will dig out, when the time comes, and send to you. At this point are you clear on the motivations? I mean this was not just some spur of the moment thing, Gregory. We felt it had to be done to stop what we could only call high treason. Hoover and Johnson both went along on those grounds. A matter of treason. And it had to be stopped. I don’t see this as heroic but a vital necessity. For the country.

GD: I remember reading somewhere that treason doth never prosper for if it prospers, none dare call it treason.

RTC: Something like that.

GD: Very like.

RTC: But if you look at it carefully, and I hope you will, Gregory, you will see that Kennedy was committing the treason, not us. It was he and his vile brother who were passing our most sensitive and secret documents to our enemies. What were we to do? Confront him? We’d all be fired, or worse. What choice was there? Tell me that.

GD: From that point of view, none.

RTC: We are making progress. One thing…Jim was thinking about blowing up Kennedy’s yacht while and was sailing around off Cape Cod but since there certainly would be children on board, I put a stop to that. Kennedy is one thing but not the children.

GD: And the wife? Our American saint.

RTC: Oh that one. Don’t be fooled, Gregory. Jackie claims descent from French nobility but in fact, her French ancestor wasn’t a nobleman but an immigrant cabinetmaker. And crap about her being related to Robert E. Lee is more crap. That part of her family were lace curtain micks from the old sod. The woman is a fraud. She married Kennedy for his father’s money, that’s all. Wonderful backgrounds here, Gregory. Old Joe was as crooked as they come. He was an associate of Al Capone, a bootlegger, and worse, and in 1960, he and the mob rigged the election so Jack could get in. Yes, I know all about that. They did their work in Chicago with the Daley machine and the local mob. That’s right, vote early and vote often. They even voted the cemeteries. I never really liked Nixon but they connived and stole the election from him slicker than snot off a glass-handled door knob.

GD: Ain’t it nice living in a democracy? So Kennedy wasn’t a saint by any stretch.

RTC:We can overlook all the women and the wild drug and sex orgies in the White House but, Gregory, passing our top secrets to the enemy was too damned much. I would like you to show that very clearly if and when you get into this.

GD: Well, from a pragmatic view, Robert, it is the very best and clearest reason for the killing. A question here.

RTC: Certainly.

GD: A plot. Good but then how do you keep it quiet? Someone might talk.

RTC: Remove them, Gregory.

GD: But what about those who remove those who know too much? Then they know too much.

RTC: Oswald knew a little too much, just a little but enough. And he could prove he never shot Kennedy. So he had to go before he started to talk. Oswald knew some of our people and he worked directly for ONI so there were dangers there. On the other hand, the man who shot King, Ray, knew nothing so he got to live and end up in jail until he died. He knew there was something wrong but, and this is important to note Gregory, he had no proof.

GD: You did King?

RTC: No Hoover did King. He hated him with a visceral passion. Hoover was a nut, Gregory, but a very powerful and very dangerous nut. There is a long-standing rumor here that Hoover had passed the color line and that he was part black. Hoover was a homosexual and there we have two reasons to hate yourself. King was black and he was a womanizer. And Bobby was AG and loathed Hoover. He used to go into Hoover’s office while he was taking his after-lunch nap and wake him up. And he laughed at him and called him a faggot behind his back. Not to do that to Hoover. He stayed in absolute power because he had enough real dirt on Congress to put most of them away in the cooler or the loonie bin. No, Bobby signed his death warrant when he did those things. No, Hoover did King and Hoover did Bobby. Not himself but he got Bill Sullivan to do it. Sullivan was his hatchet man and we worked directly with Bill. But then Bill got old and was starting to babble like old people do and he was hinting about Hoover, who had sacked him after he had used him. No, that doesn’t make it so some kid shot Bill right through the head. He thought he was a deer. My, my.

GD: And Bobby?

RTC: That was Hoover too. It was an agreement. We did John and Edgar did the others. We had one of our men there when they did Bobby, just to observe. We got George the Greek to keep an eye open. They got one of Kennedy’s people to steer him into the kitchen after a speech and the raghead was waiting. One of the Kennedy bodyguards did him from behind while all the shooting and screaming was going on. Much better than John. They had a real shooter in front of real people. None of the questions like we had in Dallas. No loose ends so to speak. And King was another clean job. Sullivan was very good.

GD: And that’s why he turned into a deer.

RTC: Yes, he turned into a very dead deer.

GD: And you got Cord’s wife on top of it.

RTC: Jim said she was hanging around with hippies and arty-farty people and running her mouth.

GD: Did she know anything?
RTC: No, but she was well-connected and some people might believe her. She’d been humping Kennedy and they apparently really go along with each other. She was a lot more of a woman than Jackie and she never nagged Jack or acted so superior like Jackie loved to do. Her brother in law worked for us and we all agonized over this but in the end, Jim had his way. Of course Cord thought it was peachy-keen. He hated her but then Cord hated everybody. The vicious Cyclops!

GD: One eye.

RTC: Yes. Oh, and like Jim, he too was a profound poet. God, spare me from the poets of the world. You don’t write poetry, do you, Gregory.

GD: No, but really filthy limericks, Robert. Would you like to hear some?

RTC: Oh not now. Maybe later.

GD: Probably just as well. Once I get started on those, I’ll be going strong an hour later. But let me tell you just one. Not a dirty one but after about an hour of limericks, I love to end the night with this one. Can I proceed?

RTC: Just one?

GD: Yes, just one.

RTC: Go on.

GD: ‘There was an old man of St. Bees,

      Who was stung on the arm by a wasp.

      When asked if it hurt,

      He replied ‘No, it didn’t,

    ‘I’m so glad that it wasn’t a hornet.’

(Concluded at 10:28 AM CST)

Letters to the Editor

From: xxxxx xxxxxxxxx
Subject: Fw: question
To: brianharring@yahoo.com
Date: Saturday, September 20, 2008, 1:24 PM

Dear Mr. Harring

Can you tell me what will happen if I stop paying my credit cards?  I already have credit companies calling me daily for a bad car loan my husband made and a failure to pay off a contract with a satallite company that did not live up to their contract.

Thanks for your help.

Xxxxxxxxx

Response:

                Well, much depends on your situation. If you are borderline moneywise, ditch the suckers or pay just the one you want. How do you keep the swine from calling you all the time? Do what I do: have caller ID on your phone and don't answer or if you accidentally do, say you are the cleaning lady and no one is home or, for kicks, act sad, say you are the sister and the person you are calling died yesterday in a car crash.

                 Don't answer the door unless you know who it is and beware of some fat guy with a big package. He will pretend to be delivering you a gift but you get served instead. I love to answer to answer the door and when they say, "Are you Mr. Harring?" you say no, you aren't. I tell them he moved out suddenly a month ago but I have a forwarding address for the UPS. Give them some Godawful deadend cart track way up on a local mountain or in some bad neighborhood they will never go into...and come out alive.

Credit counselors just make sure you pay the bills but stretch out the payment...with interest, of course. So many people are maxed out financially and emotionally that this nation is heading into a serious period of its existence. Millions and millions of people got caught up in the credit bubble...easy credit cards, easy loans, easy mortgages...that when the day of reckoning comes, as it always does in such things, the roof falls in.

There are many other ways to get out from these suckers and I can tell you that the major credit card companies, bank-owned or not, invested so heavily in the mortgage scams that they are now going to squeeze their regular customers, jack up their interest, refuse to up their credit limits and so on.

The result will not be more money for them but their clients  who just have had enough will finally walk away from money they should not have spent and now, cannot pay. . You don't really have to walk away and there are many ways to make them think you have. Collection agencies will only go to so much trouble before putting your account on an inactive stack. They focus on jobs, homes, telephone numbers, car registerations, phone hook ups credit card activity, etc.

Don't forget, a bill collector coming to your door has no idea what you look like. "Oh, Maud passed away two weeks ago. I'm her sister, Irma. Are you one of the Brownlow brothers Maud used to talk about?" They give up and tell their boss they think you are dead.

My father died suddenly. He had a rich wife in a nursing home. When I cleaned up his place, I found a thick stack of really valuable credit cards in his and his wife's names. She was cubically rich...that's why he married her of course.

I activated the cards since we had the same name, dad and I. Went to Hawaii for a week, bought a new camera and lenses, lots of books and good classical cds, spent a week at Yosemite in a private cottage with a nice fireplace and room service, but always paid the amounts due every month.

I know credit and bill collecting (I hated it) so when the card people began to get a little nervous, I maxed all of them out the same day and got a doctor's bag stuffed full of money. And in time the registered letters came, the phone calls came and eventually, the collectors came. I was polite to them but told them my father had died...which he had...and his wife was a turnip in a nursing home. They did not notice the nice car on the driveway that I bought with the money and put in my cousin's name (the collectors take license numbers and run them so another name is a good idea.)

I have boxes of checks from old businesses, with payroll checks I never wrote so if you or your husband want to get some free credit, I will send them to you and you can fill in the stubs to make it look like you have had a good-paying job for years. Helps to rent apartments under a different name.

                Believe me, I've been rich and I've been poor.

                Rich, of course, is better but I did learn when I was poor.

                How to become another person? Ask and it shall be opened unto you.

Brian

www.brianharring@yahoo.com

                Editor’s note: We have had quite a number of these questions lately and are going to start a section called: “Beat the Bills with Brian” so readers with questions should write to him. If we use your email and his response, we take off your name and address and anything else that might help the rat-faced gits in  finding you..

The New ‘Bushvilles’ are Growing in a Neighborhood Near You Today!

'Tent cities' of homeless on the rise across the US
Homeless encampments dubbed "tent cities" are springing up across the US, partly in response to soaring numbers of home repossessions, the credit crunch and rising unemployment, according to a report.
September 20, 2008

by Our Foreign Staff

Telegraph/uk

                Nearly 61 per cent of local and state homeless organisations say they have witnessed an increase in homelessness since the foreclosure crisis began in 2007, the Washington DC-based National Coalition for the Homeless study says.

                And the problem has intensified since the report was produced in April, along with rising repossessions, soaring energy and food prices and job losses, the group says.

                "It's clear that poverty and homelessness have increased," Michael Stoops, acting executive director of the coalition, said.

                "The economy is in chaos, we're in an unofficial recession and Americans are worried, from the homeless to the middle class, about their future."

                Homeless groups and government agencies from Seattle, in Washington state, to Athens in Georgia, report the most visible increase in homeless encampments in a generation.

                "What you're seeing is encampments that I haven't seen since the '80s," said Paul Boden, executive director of the Western Regional Advocacy Project, an umbrella group of homeless groups in west coast cities.

                In Reno, Nevada, the state with the nation's highest repossessions rate, a tent city recently sprung up on the city's outskirts and quickly filled up with about 150 people. Many, such as Sylvia Flynn, 51, who came from northern California, ended up homeless after losing their jobs and home.

                Officials say they do not know how many homeless the city has. "But we do know that the soup kitchens are serving hundreds more meals a day and that we have more people who are homeless than we can remember," Jodi Royal-Goodwin, the city's redevelopment agency director, said.

                In California, the upmarket city of Santa Barbara is housing homeless people who live in their cars in city car parks while Fresno, has several tent cities. Others have sprung up in Portland in Oregon, and Seattle, where homeless activists have set up mock tent cities at city hall to draw attention to the problem.

                Meanwhile, new encampments have appeared, or existing ones grown, in San Diego, Chattanooga in Tennessee, and Columbus, Ohio.

                A recent report by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development noted a 12 per cent drop in homelessness across the nation, but the latest figures – from 2007 – predates the current housing and economic crisis.

                http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/2991742/Tent-cities-of-homeless-on-the-rise-across-the-US.html

Two Cowboys: Vladimir & George W

September 20, 2008

by Christopher Brauchli

CommonDreams.org

Thy spirit, Independence, let me share;
Lord of the lion heart and eagle eye,
Thy steps I follow with my bosom bare,
Nor heed the storm that howls along the sky.

--Tobias George Smallett, Ode to Independence

It was quite a contrast. And that's not to say that what Russia did was right. It's just interesting for the outsider to contrast George Bush's response to events in Kosovo with his response to events in Georgia. In examining the two responses one is made aware of the fact that Mr. Putin's Russia and Mr. Bush's United States have come far since George first met Vladimir and, exercising his parapsychology skills, looked into Mr. Putin's soul and liked what he saw. What he saw in Mr. Putin's soul was a reflection of his own cowboy mentality.

It was the cowboy mentality that enabled George Bush (who history may remember as Don Quixote's direct descendant) to swagger into Iraq in pursuit of an imagined adversary. Not finding the sought-after enemy, he created one remarkably similar to the one he was chasing. (Don Quixote was less fortunate.) It was George Bush's cowboy mentality that convinced him to place corrals in the form of radar installations inside the Czech Republic and missiles inside Poland, ostensibly to protect Europe from a nuclear strike should Iran succeed in developing nuclear weapons. In the eyes of Vladimir Putin and many foreign policy mavens, the installations were meant to protect Europe from Russia.

Following Russia's invasion of South Ossetia in support of South Ossetia's bid for independence from the former Soviet Republic of Georgia, the cowboy in George Bush told George he should send his head wrangler off to Georgia to let the Russian cowboy know who was boss in that part of the world even though that part of the world is more closely related to the Russian cowboy's sphere of influence than the Texan's.

During Cowboy Dick's visit to Georgia he not only assured the Georgian people of Mr. Bush's support for Georgia's insistence that the breakaway republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia remain part of Georgia, but promised the Georgians Cowboy George would continue his support for Georgia's pursuit of NATO membership. Both positions were the equivalent of pushing a thumb into the eyes through which George had first gotten a glimpse into their proprietor's soul since Mr. Putin opposes Georgia's entry into NATO and supports the bids of South Ossetia and Abkhazia for independence from Georgia. What made the pronouncements even more interesting, however was that in opposing independence for the two break-away Republics George and Dick were taking positions diametrically opposed to the position taken by George only slightly more than one year earlier.

In June 2007 George visited Fushe Kruje in Albania before the vote was taken on whether or not Kosovo should be independent of Serbia and become an independent country. There were pictures of a back-slapping George Bush greeting people in Albania and expressing his support for Kosovo's bid for independence from Serbia. According to a report of his visit in the Guardian Mr. Bush announced that he had made up his mind that Kosovo should be independent from Serbia and let it be known that if agreement were not soon reached permitting the U.N. Security Counsel to vote on its bid for statehood, he might encourage Kosovo to declare independence. Following that, said he, George and his people would give it diplomatic recognition. George said: "Independence is the goal. That's what the people of Kosovo need to know. If it is apparent that is not going to happen in a relatively quick period of time, in my judgment, we need to put forward the resolution. Hence, deadline." In a press conference in Tirana, the Albanian capital, Mr. Bush said: "Sooner rather than later you've got to say enough's enough. Kosovo's independent."

Russia and Serbia opposed Kosovo's bid for independence. Among other things Serbia was concerned that if Kosovo were independent Serbia would lose 15% of its territory. It also observed that the independence of Kosovo would create a dangerous precedent for secessionists in other places around the world (like South Ossetia?) although that was not stated. Responding to Mr. Bush's meddlesome statements Mr. Putin said Russia remained firmly opposed to Kosovo's bid for independence. Kosovo declared its independence in May 2008. Now South Ossetia's independence has been recognized by Russia. George has responded by sending warships to unload humanitarian aid to those affected by the conflict. Watching the two cowboys one can only hope that George will leave the scene before he is able to sponsor a shootout at the OK Corral.

None of the foregoing is to suggest that Vladimir is a nice man. But then, as we all know, neither is George.

Mis-Adventures of The Devine Sarah 

The Evolution of John McCain:Why He Picked Sarah Palin, Carbon Queen
September 21, 2008

by Chip Ward

TomDispatch.com

Despite the media feeding frenzy, we still may be asking ourselves, "Just who exactly is Sarah Palin?" Mixed in with the Davy-Crockett-meets-SuperMom vignettes -- all those moose hunting, ice fishing, snowmobiling, baby-juggling, and hockey-momming moments -- we've also learned that she doesn't care much for her former brother-in-law and wasn't afraid to use her office to go after his job as a state trooper; that she was for the "bridge to nowhere" before she was against it; that she's against earmarks unless they benefit her constituents; that she can deliver a snappy wisecracking speech, thinks banning books in libraries is okay, considers herself a pit bull with lipstick, and above all else, wants to drill the ever-lovin' daylights out of every corner of her home state (which John McCain's handlers have somehow translated into being against Big Oil, since she insisted on a marginally bigger cut of the profits for Alaskans).

Oh, and -- not that this is very important to Americans or the planet -- she now thinks that global warming might possibly be human-made… sorta… though she didn't before, despite the fact that the state she governs is on the frontline of climate change. And, of course, she's a classic right-wing, fundamentalist Christian: against abortion -- check; against same-sex marriage -- check; against stem-cell research -- check; favors teaching Creationism in public schools -- check.

It's that last item, her willingness to put Creationism up against the teaching of evolutionary science in the classroom on a he-says-she-says basis, that's far more revealing of just who our new Republican vice presidential candidate is than we generally assume. It deserves the long, hard look that it hasn't yet gotten. Most Democrats and progressives tend to think of the teaching of Creationism as a mere sidebar item on their agenda of political don't-likes, but it's not. Sarah Palin's bias towards Creationism is a window into her political soul and a measure of John McCain's hypocrisy.

It's possible that the public has been fooled into thinking of McCain as a "maverick" when it comes to his party's abysmal record on the environment, but his selection of Palin as his running mate sends quite a different message. In fact, he's potentially put future generations on a "bridge to nowhere" (or perhaps to the fourteenth century). Whether we know it or not, we should now be duly warned: The Palin nomination is the equivalent of launching a "surge strategy" in the Republican war on the environment.

The Republican Holy War on Nature (Continued)

For the past eight years, the Bush administration's assault on environmental quality has been so deliberate, destructive, and hostile that the usual explanations -- while not wrong -- are hardly adequate. Yes, Republican animosity to government regulation is long-standing. Yes, they believe in the power of an unrestricted marketplace to shape our collective behaviors. And yes, they emphasize property rights over notions of the commons and have often been comfortable sacrificing wildlife, air, and water quality in the pursuit of profits. In addition, despite recent claims, they are indeed the party of Big Oil. But none of this quite explains the Bush administration's shameful record on the environment. In the final analysis, the only explanation that fits the nightmare of the last eight years is this: It has been on a holy war against nature -- and the nomination of Sarah Palin is essentially an insurance policy taken out on its continuation.

The idea that the environment matters is ingrained in Americans, even those who don't think of themselves as environmentally inclined. Democrats and Republicans alike have learned the hard way that the decisions we make about what we allow into our air, water, and soil gets translated into our skin, blood, and bones. We now sense that we all live downwind and downstream from one another, and that it is prudent to practice restraint and take precautions when making environmental decisions.

This unspoken consensus is one of the great accomplishments of the modern environmental movement. The policies of the Bush regime have been shocking and shameful exactly because they fly in the face of these shared values and beliefs. Only when we grasp that the narrow Republican base both Bush and McCain pander to no longer shares these basic values and beliefs, does their war on the natural world make sense.

If you believe that a look-alike God made the world for you to dominate and use, that you are among God's chosen few, and that He will provide for you no matter what you do to your surroundings, then you are likely to see yourself as above the natural order. If you believe that the world will be ending soon anyway, that you will be "raptured" while non-believers are "left behind" (as fundamentalist Tim LeHay so vividly describes the process in his bestselling novels), then precaution and restraint are moot. Remember, more than 60% of the nation's 60 million evangelicals believe that the Bible is literally true, every last word of it, and more than a third believe the end of the world will occur in their lifetime.

That's why a pro-Creationist stand is no sideline issue, but the litmus test that reveals whether a politician shares the religious right's ideology -- a literal interpretation of the Bible, a disparaging attitude towards science, belief in mankind's unfettered dominion over the natural world, and a willingness to impose its religious doctrines on others.

Both of Sarah Palin's churches -- the Wasilla Assembly of God where her faith was shaped as a child and the Wasilla Bible Church that she attends today -- believe in just such a literal interpretation of the Bible. From Biblical study, Creationists have calculated that the Earth is only about 6,000 years old. That this is contradicted by the fossil record matters little to those who also think Revelations is a reasonable guide to foreign policy in the twenty-first century. Asked during her run for governor if Creationism should be taught in the public schools, Palin responded that the theory of evolution and Creationism should be taught side by side, and then "the students could debate" which is true.

Why Evolution Matters

When many Americans think "evolution," they probably recall that illustration of an ape, then a Neanderthal, then a hairy caveman, and finally, a modern homo sapiens walking in a line and growing ever more upright as they proceed. That illustration crudely highlights the aspect of evolutionary theory that pinches the nerves of Christian zealots who prefer a creation scenario like the one painted on the roof of the Sistine Chapel -- God tagging Man with life, finger to finger. But the human common ancestry with primates is just a fraction of what evolutionary theory is all about.

Evolution is largely about connection and interaction -- the linear connection of one species evolving into another (speciation), but also how species fill niches created by one another, how they interact, exchanging energy and information, how they compete as well as cooperate, and how all of them -- from microbial soils to migrating birds -- form dynamic communities that, in turn, are also woven together, web within web within web. Pull one thread of that living tapestry and you tug at so many others, which is why precaution is so wise.

Evolutionary theory does not preclude God. It uncovers the how of life, but leaves the why of it quite open. Many devout Jews and Christians, even evangelicals, believe in evolution, just not Biblical literalists.

Evolutionary theory shapes and informs the ecological sciences that are the very basis for our environmental laws and policies. The emerging, European-led global movement -- so far lacking U.S. participation -- that aims to deal with global climate chaos and restore the earth's vital operating systems is premised on understandings gained through the evolutionary sciences. Cast doubt on those sciences and you undermine the basis for changes that are urgently needed.

The Creationist campaign means to dumb-down and confuse our kids by pushing the evolutionary sciences off the educational stage. America's Taliban want to make room for Creationism's dull sister, Intelligent Design, in order to undermine the emerging environmental consensus that is our best hope for a sustainable future. According to that consensus, we humans are embedded in natural systems that are in crisis; our well-being, even our survival, depends on the vitality of those systems.

Kiss the Polar Bear Goodbye

So how does all this translate into actual behavior? As governor, Sarah Palin recently sued the Interior Department to keep the polar bear -- the iconic symbol of her state -- from being listed as a threatened species under the provisions of the Endangered Species Act. Additional protections, she argued, might inhibit oil and gas drilling and pipeline construction in the region.

The Endangered Species Act is a favorite target of the religious right since they are convinced it elevates lowly creatures to, or above, the status of human beings. They see "charismatic carnivores" and other protected species as the means used by conservationists to pursue broader protections for whole ecosystems. And that's true enough, in that "keystone species" like the polar bear regulate a wide network of relationships within a whole ecosystem. Those bears, for example, keep a lid on seal populations that could otherwise devastate fish populations and skew the arctic food web. Numerous animal and bird species depend on scavenging bear kills for food. But without reference to ecological science, the role of a keystone species and the value of biodiversity itself are hard to appreciate.

Palin, of course, also wants to drill for oil in the ecologically fragile Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and has expressed her hope that she can convince McCain to abandon his opposition to it. She is an active promoter of Alaska's aerial hunting program where wolves and bears (again, keystone species) are shot from the air or chased until exhausted, after which the pilot lands the plane and a gunner can shoot them point blank. She tried to raise the bounty on wolves to encourage more killing and strongly opposed a ballot initiative to end the aerial hunting program. In the Lower 48, we learned the hard way that eliminating top predators upsets a chain of relationships in their ecosystems. No wolves in Yellowstone meant big, lazy herds of elk trashing streams, driving away beavers, and thus eliminating the wetlands that beavers create -- a cascade of unintended, harmful consequences. That's why naturalists are reintroducing wolves in parts of the West, and health is returning to the land with them. Under Palin, Alaska is going to relive our old mistakes at a time when Alaskans -- and humanity -- can ill afford it.

The Carbon Queen

Even in Alaska, known oil reserves are dropping. Nonetheless, Palin is determined above all else to keep the current flow of energy moving, explore and develop new oil fields, and ramp up natural gas and coal production. She gave special permission to Chevron to triple the toxic waste it can pour into the waters of the Cook Inlet, despite scientific research concluding that the Beluga whale population there is endangered. She has refused to pressure Exxon to pay-up for damages caused by the infamous Exxon-Valdez oil spill. She has supported virtually every mining proposal that has landed on her desk, including one for a vast gold mine in the Bristol Bay watershed that would risk the world's largest run of sockeye salmon. She favors open-cast mining for coal in the pristine Brooks Range. She has refused to enhance safety measures for trans-Pacific shipping along the Alaskan coast. All that and she's been governor for barely two years!

Her deplorable environmental record was such common knowledge that John McCain couldn't have missed it, even if he napped through his vetting committee's report.

So if the McCain/Palin ticket is elected, you should know what to expect. Although John McCain may once have openly refused to subscribe to the beliefs of the Republican Party's religious right, famously describing them as "agents of intolerance," his selection of Sarah Palin is a message (and not just to the Party's fundamentalist right): If you thought that he understands the need to kick our fossil-fuel addiction and address global warming, if you believed his promises to build a green economy, forget about it. A McCain/Palin administration, just like the one before it, will continue -- and this is the best-case scenario -- to fiddle while the planet burns.

Driving Into the Future Without a Map

Ed Kalnins is Sarah Palin's former pastor at the Wasilla Assembly of God Church which she attended for 26 years. He sees powerful signs that the end of the world is drawing nigh and assured a London Times reporter that Biblical scripture specifically mentions shortages of oil and wars for its control. When the end comes, he expects to be "raptured" with other righteous Christians and spared the suffering of those of us who will be left behind. He believes the apocalyptic destruction of our planet will happen in his own lifetime; in fact, that is exactly the future he hopes for. He has urged his congregation to make ready a "refuge" for good Christians fleeing northward in "the Last Days." Although Kalnin's orientation may seem -- to be polite -- extreme, it is typical enough of those who push a Creationist agenda. And it's a perspective Sarah Palin knows well, having spent a lifetime in Kalnin's Pentecostal church, and even now, she is in no hurry to disown it.

We need environmental science in our schools more than ever. An ecologically illiterate generation of students will be ill-prepared to meet our real, less than rapturous future. They won't have a clue about what's happening around them or how to deal with the damage we've done. They won't be able to create new technologies that mimic nature's models for recycling waste and energy. They will drive blindly into the future, burning fossil fuels, without a map they can read. They may even let the Ed Kalnins of our world take the wheel.

The Evolution vs. Creationism debate appears to be an argument over the distant past. But it's actually about the future. It's about, in fact, who will define the cultural mindset that will generate that future. Let us pray it is not defined by a pit bull with lipstick who thinks she is "tasked by God" to drill for oil.

Chip Ward is a former public library administrator in Utah, where the separation of church and state is always unclear. As a grassroots activist, he led several successful campaigns to make polluters accountable. He wrote about his various political adventures in Canaries on the Rim and Hope's Horizon.