Saturday, September 20, 2008
THE UNKNOWN $19 TRILLION DEPOSITORY TRUST COMPANY
This exclusive report is a compilation of interviews and background research from October 1995 through April 1999.
The Depository Trust Company (DTC) is the best kept secret in America. Headquartered at 55 Water Street in New York City, the average American has no clue that this financial institution is the most powerful banking corporation in the world. The general public has no knowledge of what the DTC is or what they do. How can a private banking trust company hold assets of over $19 trillion and be unknown? In a recent press release dated April 19, 1999, the Depository Trust Company stated:
The Depository Trust Company (DTC) is the world's largest securities depository, holding nearly $19 trillion in assets for its Participants and their customers.... Last year, DTC processed over 164 million book-entry deliveries valued at more than $77 trillion.
In dealing with the trust department of Midlantic Bank, N.A. in New Jersey [now PNC Bank, N.A.], this writer was authorized, as trustee and power of attorney, to transfer original trust assets comprising of common stocks and bonds to a new trust set up in another jurisdiction. An Assistant Vice President from the Trust & Financial Management Office of Midlantic Bank said to me "it will take at least 6 weeks to do this as the majority of the stocks and bonds are not held in the name of the trust". This same Midlantic Bank Assistant V.P. also stated in a letter dated November 17, 1995, "Of the 11 municipal bonds, 8 are held in book entry only. This means they cannot be physically re-registered with a certificate sent to the new trustees." (* these are not the actual figures quoted in the letter in order to protect the privacy of the account holder, at their request. Also, we were asked not to name the Midlantic Assistant V.P. in order to protect her privacy Rights. We respect these requests with full moral compliance). In disbelief, I brought this matter to the attention of our research assistants at the Christian Common Law Institute [formerly the North Bridge News] and we began our lengthy investigation into the matter. After 3 years, the can of worms we've opened up should frighten every American. With the advent of reported Y2K computer glitches and the possible collapse of our 'paper asset' economy, every person who has a stock or bond in their portfolio had better read this report and act on the information we are disclosing here.
In November 1995, after encountering numerous "no comments" and a myriad of "that's not my department" excuses via telephone, I eventually spoke with Mr. Jim McNeff who told me his position was Director of Training for the DTC. He said he'd been employed there for 19 years and was "very proud" of his employer. During my initial telephone interview, either Jim's employer or some other unknown person or persons were illegally listening or taping our telephone conversation according to the electronic eavesdropping equipment we have installed on our end. Why did anyone feel it was necessary to illegally record our conversation without advising us? Was some federal alphabet agency monitoring DTC calls to safeguard National Security? That in itself is suspicious enough to warrant a big red warning flag.
Jim informed me back then (1995) that "the DTC is the largest limited trust company in the world with assets of $ 9.1 trillion". In July 1998, I spoke with Ms. Rose Barnabic of the DTC Finance Department who said that "DTC assets are currently estimated at around $11 trillion". As of April 19, 1999, the DTC itself has stated that their assets total "nearly $19 trillion" (see above). Mr. McNeff had also stated "the DTC is a brokerage clearing firm and transfer center. We're a private bank for securities. We handle the book entry transactions for all banks and brokers. Every bank and brokerage firm must secure their membership with us in case they become insolvent, so your assets are secure with DTC". Yes, you read that correctly. The DTC is a private bank that processes every stock and bond (paper securities) for all U.S. banks and brokerage houses. The big question is this; Just who gave this private bank and trust company such a broad range of financial power and clout?
The reason the public doesn't know about DTC is that they're a privately owned depository bank for institutional and brokerage firms only. They process all of their book entry settlement transactions. Jim McNeff said "There's no need for the public to know about us... it's required by the Federal Reserve that DTC handle all transactions". The Federal Reserve Corporation, a/k/a The Federal Reserve System, is also a private company and is not an agency or department of our federal government, according to the 1998 Federal Registry. The Federal Reserve Board of Governors is listed, but they are not the owners. The Federal Reserve Board, headed by Mr. Alan Greenspan, is nothing more than a liaison advisory panel between the owners and the Federal Government. The FED, as they are more commonly called, mandates that the DTC process every securities transaction in the US. It's no wonder that the DTC (including the Participants Trust Company, now the Mortgage-Backed Securities Division of the DTC) is owned by the same stockholders as the Federal Reserve System. In other words, the Depository Trust Company is really just a 'front' or a division of the Federal Reserve System.
"DTC is 35.1% owned by the New York Stock Exchange on behalf of the Exchange's members. It is operated by a separate management and has an independent board of directors. It is a limited purpose trust company and is a unit of the Federal Reserve." -New York Stock Exchange, Inc.
Now, let's see how this effects the average working American family. If you're not aware how the system works, you should visit or call a stock broker or bank and instruct them you want to purchase some shares of common stock or a small municipal bond, for example. They will set up a brokerage account for you and act as your agent with full durable power of attorney (which you must legally sign over to them) to conduct business on your behalf, upon your buy or sell instructions. The broker will place your stock or bond purchase into their safekeeping under a "street name". According to Mr. McNeff of the DTC, no bank or broker can place any stock or bond into their firm's own name due to Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) regulations.
The broker or bank must then send the transaction to the DTC for ledger posting or book entry settlement under mandate by the Federal Reserve System. Remember, since your bank or broker can't use their name on the certificate, they use a fictitious street name. "Since the DTC is a banking trust company, we can't hold the certificates in our name, so the DTC transfers the certificates to our own private holding company or nominee name." states Mr. McNeff. The DTC's private holding company or street name, as shown on certificates we have personally examined from numerous certificate holders, is shown as either "CEDE and Company", "Cede Company" or "Cede & Co". We have searched every source known to learn who CEDE really is, but have been unable to get any background information on them. Is Cede Company fictitious or is their identity perhaps a larger secret than DTC? We must presume that the information Mr. McNeff gave us was correct when he confirmed that Cede Company was a controlled private holding company of the DTC. We have now found the following proof that CEDE is real from the Bear Stearns internet site:
NEW YORK, New York - March 16, 1999 - Bear Stearns Finance LLC today announced that it will redeem all of the 6,000,000 outstanding 8.00% Exchangeable Preferred Income Cumulative Shares, Series A ("EPICS") of Bear Stearns Finance LLC, liquidation preference of $25.00 per Series A Share, CUSIP number G09198105. All of the Series A Shares are held by Cede & Co., as nominee of The Depository Trust Company, and the payment of the redemption price will be made to Cede & Co. by ChaseMellon Shareholder Services, LLC, as paying agent, whose address is: 85 Challenger Road, Ridgefield Park, New Jersey 07660.
The banks and brokers are merely custodians for their clients. By federal law (SEC), they cannot hold any assets in the customer's name. The assets must be held in the name of DTC's holding company, CEDE & Co. That's how DTC has more than $19 trillion dollars of assets in trust... or is it really in "trust" if the private Federal Reserve System is technically holding it in their "unknown" entity's name? Obviously, if stock and bond certificates you've purchased aren't in your name, then the "holder" (the Federal Reserve System) could theoretically refuse to surrender them back to you under a "national emergency" according to the Trading with the Enemy Act (as amended). Is this the collateral being held by the private Federal Reserve System to pay off the national debt owed to them by our federal government, first initiated by Lincoln's debt bonds of 1864?
According to Mr. McNeff, the DTC was a former member of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), and "Our sister company is the National Securities Clearing Corporation... the NSCC" (they have since merged). He was correct since we now know that the NYSE holds 35.1% of the "ownership" of the DTC on behalf of their NYSE members. Simply put, the Depository Trust Company absolutely controls every paper asset transaction in the United States as well as the majority of overseas transactions, and they now physically hold (as of April 1999) 99% of all stock and bond book-entrys in their street name, not the actual owner's names. If you have stock or bond certificates in your name buried in your back yard or under your mattress, we suggest you keep them there. If not, it might be very wise to cancel your brokerage account and power of attorney status, re-register the stocks and bonds in your name (if you still can), and keep them hidden where only you know their location. Otherwise, you have absolutely no control over them (see Part II of our exclusive research report on the DTC for more information on beneficial ownership status). However, getting a stock or bond certificate these days is not so easy if possible at all:
"For the most part, issuers know little about the role of the Depository Trust Company (DTC). The DTC was created in 1973 as a user-owned cooperative for post-trade settlement. Our members are banks and broker/dealers, whom we refer to as participants. We handle listed and unlisted equities, including 51,000 equity issues and 170,000 corporate debt issues, equating to more than 78% of shares outstanding on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). We also have more than 95% of all municipals on deposit.
In the 1980s, the "Group of 30" [business leaders] recommended that stock certificates be eliminated, because physical certificates create risk. The Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) issued a concept release in 1994 to gradually decrease certificates, providing optional direct registration on the books of the issuer instead of a certificate.... this enhances the portability of shares between transfer agents and brokerage accounts. With the direct registration system, brokers transmit instructions to purchase through DTC, which the issuer or transfer agent then registers, so shares can be delivered electronically." -John D. Faith, Manager, Corporate Trust Services, The Depository Trust Company (1996)
Now we're about to reveal to you the most shocking discovery we came across during our research into this matter. Most of us remember a few years back the purported computerized selling of stocks that resulted in Wall Street's "Black Monday":
Dow Dives 508.32 Points in Panic on Wall Street
"The largest stock-market drop in Wall Street history occurred on "Black Monday" -- October 19, 1987 -- when the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 508.32 points, losing 22.6% of its total value. That fall far surpassed the one-day loss of 12.9% that began the great stock market crash of 1929 and foreshadowed the Great Depression. The Dow's 1987 fall also triggered panic selling and similar drops in stock markets worldwide" -Source: Facts on File World News CD ROM
The stock exchanges had dramatic record losses, and a record volume of shares were traded on that infamous Monday in October 1987. We all asked ourselves how computers could have done this by themselves without someone knowing about it. After all, someone has to program a computer to tell it what to do, what not to do, or even when to do or not do it.
During my telephone conversation, Mr. McNeff was trying to assure me that they [the DTC] have "never lost a certificate or made a mistake in a book ledger transaction". In attempting to give me an example of how trustworthy the DTC is when I asked him how he could back up such a statement, he replied "DTC's first controlled test was 4 or 5 years ago. Do you remember Black Monday? There were 535 million transactions on Monday, and 400 million transactions on Tuesday". He was very proud to inform me that "DTC cleared every transaction without a single glitch!". Read these quotes again: He stated that Black Monday was a controlled test. Black Monday was a deliberately manipulated disaster for many Americans at the whim of a controlled test by the DTC.
What was the purpose of this test? Common sense tells you that you test something before you intend to use it. It's quite obvious that the stock markets are going to 'crash and burn' at some future date and for some 'unknown' reason since the controlled test was so successful. Was this just one of the planned tests for a Y2K internationally planned worldwide economic meltdown? The Great Depression is about to be repeated, and it will be as deliberate and manipulated as the first one that began with the stock market crash of 1929. We are, without a doubt, on the brink of the Mother of all economic Depressions. As of May 3, 1999, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) went above a record 11,000 points. Just prior to the 1929 stock market crash, Wall Street was posting record prices, record earnings, and record profits.... just like the scenario we are experiencing today. Will Y2K be a manipulated and deliberate a financial meltdown? Too many facts already support this probability.
On June 7, 1995, the federal government issued a new regulation requiring stock and bond certificate transfers to be cleared in three days instead of the previous five day time period. It coincided with the infamous Regulation CC that purportedly gave us faster three day availability of funds from deposited checks. This means that brokers and banks must get your stock or bond transaction into the street name (Cede & Co.) of the DTC within 3 working days. That's hard to do considering banks claim it takes 3 or more days to clear a check that you've submitted to pay for a stock purchase. But, there's a reason for this new regulation and it coincides with the introduction of the new FRS "dollars".
On February 22, 1996, "the DTC will flip the switch" according to Mr. McNeff. "What switch?", I asked. "This is the day that clearing house funds will no longer be accepted for stock or bond transactions" was my reply from Jim. "Instead, only Fed Funds will be accepted". Fed Funds, or a Fedwire, are electronic computer ledger debit transfers between Federal Reserve System member banks. No checks or drafts have been allowed from that day, just as Mr. McNeff accurately stated. This is more commonly called a 'cashless transaction'. I call it the reality of the mark of the beast. This is the manifestation of the new international god, the New World Order [I prefer the term 'New World DISorder' as a more accurate description].
Consider this my fellow Christian Americans: All pension funds and other institutional 'managed funds' are comprised of paper asset investments such as stocks, bonds, and mutual funds. These certificates are technically in the name of DTC's private holding company, CEDE and Company. The DTC is owned by the private Federal Reserve System owners (Click for a complete list of names). Congress has attempted, on no less than two occasions since 1995, to pass legislation allowing pension funds to be used by the government as purported 'loans'. All the Federal Reserve System has to do is hand it over. But, what happens to the people counting on those pension fund investments in order to feed themselves in their retirement? Too bad for them.... they're out of luck because for the 'good of the nation', they may be forced to share or relinquish their lifetime of hard-earned wealth. This can be done without the consent of Congress under an Executive Order based on the War and Emergency Powers Act and a state of National Emergency, just like we are already under (See further Executive Orders). Since the Federal Reserve System already holds our stocks and bonds in their fictitious DTC "street name", CEDE, then perhaps they'll cash them in for the federal government's failure to repay the loans that have become way overdue. Heck, some of Lincoln's gold backed bonds from 1864 have not been repaid yet.... and for a reason.
On March 6, 1933, all bullion gold and gold coins were forcibly taken from the hands of private citizens (see New York Times). Under the War Powers Act, President Roosevelt declared a national emergency touted as a "Banking Holiday". It was declared due to the deliberately calculated stock market crash that preceded the Great Depression. Where did this gold end up? Into the hands of the Federal Reserve System owners. The majority is stored in the impervious rock vaults they own beneath New York City. Is it any surprise that the DTC physically holds all the remaining non-book entry issued stock and bond certificates in the same place?
Technically, our entire nation is still under the Executive Order declaration of the War Powers Act and in a continual state of national emergency (See Clinton's 1994 Executive Order 12919). The President can enforce any new emergency at any time under Executive Order or Presidential Directive. In 1995, we [the former North Bridge News] published that we expected a new national "dollar" emergency to be declared within a year or two. Just like we thought at the time, they have now blamed it on the purported drug dealers who are allegedly destroying our currency by money laundering schemes.
Since late 1996, old U.S. $100 FRB notes issued by the Federal Reserve Bank are being exchanged for new $100 FRS issued by the Federal Reserve System. These new notes have scanable magnetic platinum encryption on the plastic strips embedded inside the bills. The U.S. Treasury claims this is for "the blind". Now, new $20 and $50 FRS's are replacing the older notes as well. What people don't realize is that very soon, the older FRB notes will no longer be 'legal' and there will be a penalty for hoarding them. This is what happened to those Americans holding gold and gold coins after 1933.
"We are most gratified with the successful introduction of the new $100 and $50 notes and look forward to the same success with the new $20s," Chairman Greenspan said. For the first time, a machine-readable capability has been incorporated for the blind. A new feature in the $20 will facilitate the development of convenient scanning devices that could identify the note as a $20. -U.S. Treasury, Office of Public Affairs, RR-2449 released May 20, 1998.
Why new paper 'money' and for what purpose? Because the new FRS notes in your pocket can be scanned and whoever scans them can know exactly how much money you have on you. The older FRB notes are not encoded to do this. This writer knows firsthand of at least one machine, manufactured by Diebold, Inc. (a/k/a InterBold) that scans the money in your pockets, wallet or purse no different in theory than a credit card scanner, but much more sophisticated. I participated in a 'test' of this machine at a U.S. international airport in 1998. To me, it looks much like the standard metal detector scanners you walk through at all airports. I was asked (by who I believe was a U.S. Treasury Agent, as he introduced himself and flashed his ID quickly in my face so I couldn't read it) if I had any of the new $100 or $50 bills in my pockets. I looked in my wallet and saw I had one new $100 FRS note. I told him "yes", then he said "Good, but don't tell me how much". After saying he would "really appreciate it" if I would help them with a test, he asked me to walk through what looked like a typical airport scanner. No beeps. No noise. No sound at all. He looked at a computer screen and said "Do you have a new $100 bill?". When I confirmed that was true, he thanked me and told me to please move on. I tried to ask him how the machine knew that, but he ignored my question. I took a good look at the scanning system and believe I have now spotted them at Kennedy, Atlanta, Miami and Los Angeles airports.
The odd part about this is that these machines seem to all be located in the customs areas where you enter the U.S. from a foreign country. Obviously, they want to know if someone is carrying more than $10,000 into the U.S. Common sense dictates that they should be more concerned about people leaving with more than $10,000 if they're really trying to thwart the drug dealers.... until you begin to realize that there must be some other hidden agenda: They are apparently going to stop money from entering the U.S. for a reason.
Will the President call for the confiscation of all gold bullion and bullion coins as Roosevelt did? Who will end up with it? The Federal Reserve System owners, just like before. Since June 1998, international gold supplies have been so low that some private Swiss Banks have been paying a premium above the market wholesale value for gold bullion. This was confirmed to us by a gold and diamond mining Chief Executive from Rex Mining in Guinea, West Africa, who supplies raw gold to a major Swiss Banking company smelter and processor The spot gold market has been manipulated to keep the price low so that the Federal Reserve System owners can purchase all that is available through their various trusts and corporations. World gold availability on the open market is now at a record low and mining production of gold is also at a record low output.
What happened to 'supply and demand' with gold and silver? Normally, when supply is high the price decreases. When supply is low, precious metal prices increase. Perhaps the private FED will peg the new dollar to gold prices, as many experts have already speculated. What will stocks and bonds purchased with old dollars be worth then? Pennies to the dollar, so to speak. Who ends up being the only winner? The Federal Reserve System stockholders. They control the circulation amounts of paper money in the U.S. Combine that with the new scanner to stop large amounts from entering into the U.S., and the scenario amounts to a planned shortage of paper FRS notes, the banning of the older FRB notes, and the soon to be astronomical price of gold which most Americans will be forbidden to have or hoard, once again. The facts we've presented in this report all point to this.
People will be at the mercy of the federal government for daily food and for jobs. Checks are soon to be totally phased out. Banks issue ATM debit cards and tell you they must charge more for your account if you use a real live human teller instead of the machine. The switch is being turned on. This is not speculation. This is the truth of reality. It's already been tested, and their new system works. Just ask Jim McNeff of the DTC.
The day has come when you must decide to accept or reject the beast and the New World Disorder.
Part II of II-
You don't own your Stocks....or any of your Bonds...The Depository Trust Company does.
by Anthony Wayne
In Part I of this series, excerpts of which were first published in November 1995 by the former North Bridge News, we exposed The Depository Trust Company (DTC) as the Unknown $ 9.1 Trillion Company. It appears that our startling discoveries of the inner-workings of the DTC had only scratched the surface. We'd like to add more fuel to this blazing fire by further exposing the DTC and those behind it.
The Depository Trust Company has grown since October 1995. On July 1998, this amount was estimated by a DTC employee at more than $11 Trillion. As of April 19, 1999, the DTC itself has stated in a press release that their asset value is nearly $19 trillion. In 3 1/2 years, their assets increased nearly $ 10 Trillion. That's a lot of stocks and bonds supposedly held in trust. The latest trend over the past ten years is for stock and bond brokers to offer "book-entry ownership" only. Every book-entry stock or bond is literally owned by the DTC. Since 1985, most bond and many stock issuers have converted from the issuance of certificates to book-entry systems administered and controlled by the DTC. As of March 1999, the National Securities Clearing Corporation (NSCC) and the Participants Trust Company (PTC) are now merged into the DTC. Practically, there isn't one stock or bond issued that is not controlled by the DTC.
If you purchase any stock or bond through a broker, it is being held for you under a "street name" by the DTC unless you have specifically requested to hold the certificate yourself. If you have a book entry stock or bond, you won't be issued a certificate. It's important to note that you have purchased that particular stock or bond without becoming a registered holder of the actual stock or bond certificate. Instead, you have become a beneficial owner. The difference between the two is like night and day. Take the time to absorb and understand the following definitions:
REGISTERED HOLDER- A Registered Holder literally possesses, owns, and holds, his stock or bond with his name appearing on the face of the certificate. The company that issued the certificate has registered the owner's (holder's) name on their official books. This is the safest way to own a paper asset. You literally possess the fully registered certificate and only you can transfer or sell it. By all Rights and definition of law, you are the owner. You have it, you hold it, you possess it, and you keep it. You have the complete control over it.
BENEFICIAL OWNER- A Beneficial Owner is nothing more than a beneficiary, "One who is entitled to the benefit of a contract"- A Dictionary of Law, 1893. All book-entry stocks and bonds you purchase make you the beneficial owner, not the registered holder. The owner of a book-entry stock or bond is the entity or name that it is registered under.
The DTC owns that bond or stock, not you. Rather than in your name, it's registered (as the legal Registered Owner or agent) in their "street name", Cede & Company. (In the past, it may have been registered in your broker's street name, but this is no longer allowed). The DTC is the Registered Owner - holder - of your stock or bond. The DTC is the legal property-holder, share-holder, stock-holder, owner and purchaser. Your name appears nowhere on the book entry or certificate as the actual owner. Instead, you have been designated by the legal registered owner, the DTC, as the Beneficial Owner. This means that your lawful Rights in that stock or bond are confined to that of a successor or heir.
At the University of Utah College of Law, we found the following examination question about Cede & Co.:
The common stock of LargeCo, Inc. is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Over 2/3rds of the shares are registered on LargeCo's books in the name of Cede & Co. Cede is a depository company which holds the shares as nominee on behalf of brokerage firms, mutual funds and other active traders. The brokerage firms in turn are also nominees with respect to some of the shares, which they hold on behalf of their customers. Nominees, such as Cede and brokerage firms holding for customers, view the customer as the beneficial owner of the shares and consider the customer to be the one with the right to vote the shares; mutual funds, however, view the fund as the owner of the shares it holds and vote the shares themselves.
Most of the remainder of LargeCo's stock (26% of the total) is held by the Large family, which is still actively involved in management. LargeCo is aware that the beneficial owner of about half the stock registered in Cede's name is the Small family, who live next door to the Larges in downtown Rome, and that the remainder of the Cede stock is beneficially owned by several well known mutual funds.
According to the DTC, under the US Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) rules, you only have the right to "receive proceeds or other advantages as the beneficiary". You are not the owner... you are the consignee, "One who has deposited with a third person an article of property for the benefit of a creditor"- A Dictionary of Law, 1893. In legal terms, you are considered the heir presumptive or heir at law to the stock or bond you paid for. The DTC controls, possesses as creditor, holds and owns your book-entry stock or bond. This is a difficult pill to swallow for those who have placed their assets in stocks and bonds over the past decade. Your broker sends you a fancy accounting every month of your purported holdings, along with dividend and interest payments paid. The fact is, you only receive the benefit of ownership (interest and dividends) without holding title to your property. You are at the mercy of the registered owner, the DTC. If you don't believe this is true, then call your broker right now and ask them who's name is listed as the Registered Holder of your book-entry stocks and bonds. If you're lucky, the broker will tell you "why of course you're the Beneficial Owner", then you'll know the truth. He may emphasize to you that the stocks and bonds are being held in "safe keeping" for your own protection. This is broker language for "your stocks and bonds are held by the DTC in their street name as the creditor".
From J.P. Morgan's internet site:
Registered and beneficial shareholders
There are two types of shareholders: registered, who hold an ADR in physical form, and beneficial, whose ADRs are held by third-parties and are listed under a "nominee" or "street" name.
Registered shareholders are listed directly with the issuer or its U.S. transfer agent. The transfer agent handles the record-keeping associated with changes in share ownership, distribution of dividend payments, and investor inquiries; it also facilitates annual meetings. An issuer's depositary bank can provide the identities of registered shareholders on a regular basis. However, this may not provide the level of shareholder identification required for a successful investor relations effort. Registered shareholders are typically individual investors who have physical possession of their share certificates, generally in lots of 100 shares or fewer. The registered list also includes nominee names such as Cede & Co., which represent the aggregate position of the Depository Trust Company (DTC), the primary safekeeping, clearing, and settlement organization for securities traded in the United States. DTC uses electronic book-entry to facilitate settlement and custody rather than the physical delivery of certificates.
Beneficial shareholders, which can include individual as well as institutional investors, do not have physical possession of their certificates; third-party broker-dealers or custodian banks hold their securities on their behalf. These shares are said to be held in street name because they are kept with the DTC in the name of the broker-dealer or the custodian bank - not the underlying shareholder. Lists of beneficial shareholders who do not object to disclosing their holdings are available from banks and broker-dealers. These lists, called NOBO for Non-Objecting Beneficial Owner, typically provide the names of individual investors.
To help identify institutional investors, who do not usually disclose their holdings, issuers use publicly available filings. Large holders, including investment managers, are required to make periodic filings - such as 13-F, 13-G, and 13-D - with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) disclosing the name and value of the positions in their portfolios.
Which brings us to the street name used, registered, and designated by the DTC as the registered owner of over $19 Trillion (USD) of our stocks and bonds... CEDE & Co. Everyone in the brokerage business keeps pronouncing this name as "See Dee" and Company, but it's spelled C-E-D-E and pronounced "Seed". This is where the real irony comes.
According to Black's Law Dictionary, Sixth Edition, 1990, the word Cede is defined as "To yield up; to assign; to grant; to surrender; to withdraw. Generally used to designate the transfer of territory from one government to another". In the Black's 1951 Fourth Edition, it lists the following as supportive case law; Goetze v. United States, C.C.N.Y., 103 Fed. 72.
Have you made the connection yet? Your book-entry stocks and bonds and all stock and bond certificates purchased through your broker and held by them under your brokerage account are owned by CEDE & COMPANY (the DTC) as the registered owner. You have surrendered, assigned and granted ownership to someone else other than yourself. Their name says it all.
How ironic and sarcastic can they be?
"CEDE- To surrender possession of, especially by treaty. See Synonyms at 'relinquish'." -American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 3rd Edition of 1992
If Americans had any idea that they have relinquished the lawful ownership of their stocks and bonds to someone or something else, there would be a revolution. In a sense, that's why we are exposing this paper asset scam to you. The point is, now that you know the truth, do something about it and get your assets back into your name.
Our suggestion to you is this: If you don't literally have every stock and bond registered certificate in your possession, then promptly call your broker and tell him you want all your securities transferred and re-registered into your name as the Registered Holder and Owner. If he says he can't do that because your stock or bond is a book-entry transaction only, we strongly suggest, for your own security, that you sell your book-entry assets immediately. Don't let the broker tell you that it's "safer" for you if they keep your certificates. Remember, you know the truth. Even if all your stock and bond certificates were burned in a fire, the process to have them replaced is simple. If someone were to steal your certificates, you simply report them stolen to the company that issued them and they're automatically cancelled, just like a stolen credit card. Replacement certificates are then issued to replace the lost or stolen originals.
Most people don't realize that when they open a brokerage account, they have entered into an contractural agreement allowing the broker to assign the stocks and bonds to an undisclosed creditor, the DTC. (We suggest you read the small print on your brokerage agreement). This gives the broker your express written permission to place all your securities into the ownership of the DTC. Your broker is an agent for the DTC through mandatory Securities and Exchange Commission regulations and mandates by the Federal Reserve System private bank. Your broker represents them, not you. Your brokerage account is nothing more than a ledger of accounting. It reflects no assets held in your name. The assets are registered in a "street name" that is not you or your name. Sure.... you receive the interest and dividends, but you do so as a beneficiary to the real owner. Your brokerage account in no way, shape, or manner reflects who literally owns your securities. What you own is a brokerage account and nothing more.
A greater consideration is just exactly who does the DTC hold these securities for? As the owner, who has the DTC pledged these securities to? Our research points to the Federal Reserve System, an international private banking cartel with major offices found in Moscow, London, Tokyo, and Peking. By treaty with the United Nations and in compliance with the Bretton Woods Agreement, the DTC under regulation of the Federal Reserve System has pledged all those stocks and bonds to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). These are the same paper securities found in your IRA and pension fund accounts, as well as in your brokerage account. Remember, you don't own them.... you're just a beneficiary.
The truth is, the securities you purchased and paid for with your hard earned money is collateral for the United Nations which is backed by the Federal Reserve System and it's associated agencies, such as the International Monetary Fund. Is it any wonder that the UN can operate year after year with increasing budgets, but without sufficient funds? The UN has nearly $19 Trillion of backing and reserves, thanks to millions of duped Americans. We are financing the New World Dis-Order with our stocks and bonds.
Friday, September 19, 2008
GOLD PRICES POST THEIR BIGGEST ONE DAY GAIN IN HISTORY
NEW YORK (AP) — Gold prices exploded Wednesday — posting the biggest one-day gain ever in dollar terms — as fears of more credit market turmoil unnerved investors and triggered a flood of safe-haven buying.
Gold for December delivery rose as much as $90.40, or 11.6 percent, to $870.90 an ounce in after-hours trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange after jumping $70 to settle at $850.50 in the regular session. That was the biggest one-day price jump ever; gold’s previous single-day record was a $64 gain on Jan. 29, 1980. In percentage terms, it was gold’s largest one-day advance since 1999.
The huge rally came after the government moved overnight to rescue troubled insurer American International Group Inc. with an $85 million bailout loan. The Federal Reserve stepped in after AIG, teetering on collapse from losses tied to the subprime crisis and the credit crisis, failed to find adequate capital in the private sector.
The emergency measure came a day after Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., a 158-year-old investment bank, filed for bankruptcy after failing to find a buyer.
Fearing more tightening of credit markets, investors reacted swiftly and began dumping stocks and socking money into gold, silver and other safe-haven commodities. Gold is especially attractive during times of crisis because the metal is known for holding its value.
Jon Nadler, analyst with Kitco Bullion Dealers Montreal, said buying accelerated as rumors spread across trading floors that another financial firm may be in trouble.
“The psychology right now has everyone asking, ‘Who’s next?,” Nadler said. “If another big bank falls, we could see an implosion and that has people very worried.”
A weaker dollar also boosted gold prices. A falling greenback encourages investors to shift funds into hard assets like gold and other commodities that are bought as hedges against inflation and weakness in the U.S. currency.
Gold rocketed above $1,000 an ounce for the first tme in March, boosted by record oil prices, a weak dollar and worries that the U.S. economy was sliding into a recession. It has since pulled back sharply as a global commodities boom loses momentum.
“The same market participants who got out of gold are coming back in now. This is the start of an upward move,” said Carlos Sanchez, analyst with CPM Group in New York, who predicted prices could climb back to $1,000 by year’s end.
Silver prices also jumped. The December contract soared $1.158 to settle at $11.675 an ounce. December copper, however, fell 4.65 cents to settle at $3.0425 a pound.
Wednesday’s gold rally lifted virtually every other commodity, with crude oil, corn, wheat and soybeans all trading higher.
"BLACKS AGAINST OBAMA" INTERRUPT OBAMA RALLY IN FLORIDA
DEAR UNITED STATES,WELCOME TO THE THIRD WORLD!
via LA Times
Dear United States, Welcome to the Third World!
It’s not every day that a superpower makes a bid to transform itself into a Third World nation, and we here at the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund want to be among the first to welcome you to the community of states in desperate need of international economic assistance. As you spiral into a catastrophic financial meltdown, we are delighted to respond to your Treasury Department’s request that we undertake a joint stability assessment of your financial sector. In these turbulent times, we can provide services ranging from subsidized loans to expert advisors willing to perform an emergency overhaul of your entire government.
As you know, some outside intervention in your economy is overdue. Last week — even before Wall Street’s latest collapse — 13 former finance ministers convened at the University of Virginia and agreed that you must fix your “broken financial system.” Australia’s Peter Costello noted that lately you’ve been “exporting instability” in world markets, and Yashwant Sinha, former finance minister of India, concluded, “The time has come. The U.S. should accept some monitoring by the IMF.”
We hope you won’t feel embarrassed as we assess the stability of your economy and suggest needed changes. Remember, many other countries have been in your shoes. We’ve bailed out the economies of Argentina, Brazil, Indonesia and South Korea. But whether our work is in Sudan, Bangladesh or now the United States, our experts are committed to intervening in national economies with care and sensitivity.
We thus want to acknowledge the progress you have made in your evolution from economic superpower to economic basket case. Normally, such a process might take 100 years or more. With your oscillation between free-market extremism and nationalization of private companies, however, you have successfully achieved, in a few short years, many of the key hallmarks of Third World economies.
Your policies of irresponsible government deregulation in critical sectors allowed you to rapidly develop an energy crisis, a housing crisis, a credit crisis and a financial market crisis, all at once, and accompanied (and partly caused) by impressive levels of corruption and speculation. Meanwhile, those of your political leaders charged with oversight were either napping or in bed with corporate lobbyists.
Take John McCain, your Republican presidential nominee, whose senior staff includes half a dozen prominent former lobbyists. As he recently put it, “I was chairman of the [Senate] Commerce Committee that oversights every part of the economy.” No question about it: Your leaders’ failure to notice the damage done by irresponsible deregulation was indeed an oversight of epic proportions.
Now you are facing the consequences. Income inequality has increased, as the rich have gotten windfalls while the middle class has seen incomes stagnate. Fewer and fewer of your citizens have access to affordable housing, healthcare or security in retirement. Even life expectancy has dropped. And when your economic woes went from chronic to acute, you responded — like so many Third World states have — with an extensive program of nationalizing private companies and assets. Your mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are now state owned and controlled, and this week your reinsurance giant AIG was effectively nationalized, with the Federal Reserve Board seizing an 80% equity stake in the flailing company.
Some might deride this as socialism. But desperate times call for desperate measures.
Admittedly, your transition to Third World status is far from over, and it won’t be painless. At first, for instance, you may find it hard to get used to the shantytowns that will replace the exurban sprawl of McMansions that helped fuel the real estate speculation bubble. But in time, such shantytowns will simply become part of the landscape. Similarly, as unemployment rates continue to rise, you will initially struggle to find a use for the expanding pool of angry, jobless young men. But you will gradually realize that you can recruit them to fight in a ceaseless round of armed conflicts, a solution that has been utilized by many other Third World states before you. Indeed, with your wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, you are off to an excellent start.
Perhaps this letter comes as a surprise to you, and you feel you’re not fully ready to join the Third World. Don’t let this feeling concern you. Though you may never have realized it, you’ve been preparing for this moment for years.
R.I.P USA :DISSECTING THE DEATH OF A DYNASTY
By PMoor
On Monday, September 15 the chickens came home to roost. Now, when those words were used 45 years ago to describe the assassination of America’s beloved president John F. Kennedy it caused a rift in the Nation of Islam between Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X, who erroneously mouthed those sentiments against the wishes of his advisers. We all know how that ended up. So, in the spirit of harmony I ask that you don’t shoot the messenger, I am just stating the obvious.
When the obituary for the American Empire is written, its death will not be attributed to Al Qaeda or Middle Eastern terrorists. The eulogist won’t say that everything came to an abrupt end because the country was on the cusp of electing it’s first “Black President.” No, it may read something more like this: In the end, the wagging dog ate it’s own tail. America, that great bastion of freedom and capitalism was consumed by unprecedented GREED.
Seven score years ago, one of the most tragic events in modern times took place in our beloved City of New York (9/11). An attack took place, that much we know, and the financial heart of the Empire, the World Trade Center was the target. Apparently the plan was to bring America to her knees by crippling her financial markets and destabilizing the economy through FEAR. Did it work? On the contraire, citizens were instructed to go shopping to infuse the economy with a stimulus so that we may fight the terrorist with our ‘wallets.’ Then an amazing thing happened as the wallets parted ways and the cash was delivered: under periods of stress and duress, America flourished. Red, white and blue flags were waving from places where years ago the same flag was burned to a crisp in protest of the Imperialistic agenda these jihadist were raging against.
Harlem, Bed Stuy, I seen them fly. It was the closest we’ve ever come to realizing King’s dream of holding hands and singing Kumbaya with lil’ black boys and girls and lil’ white boys and girls. In the cowboy tradition of Americanism though, we knew it was time to kick some ass, so the folk songs around the camp fires would abruptly come to an end and those same lil’ boys and girls would be outfitted with camouflaged fatigues, AK-47’s and sent to the mountains of Afghanistan to smoke Osama Bin Laden out of his hole, or cave, or something like that. Bush amassed a coalition of “friends” to join him in this Crusade against the infidel powers of Islam. This Coalition of the Willing set it’s sights on Iraq and justified preemptively ridding the region of any agitators, such as the Butcher of Baghdad, Saddam Hussein.
Also amassed in that coalition were the business interests that have had its sights set on not only the Iraqi oil fields but the coveted pipe lines that run through Afghanistan to the Caspian Sea, ironically enough. Also private contractors (mercenaries) like Black Water rode in with the caravan to lay waste to the region and set up paramilitary outposts from which smaller, undocumented wars are being fought in Iran, Pakistan, Georgia, and parts of Africa as we speak. These black ops are agitating already fragile relations that the US has around the world, but if these conflicts aren’t “technically” mandated by Congress then we will never see a diplomatic solution to them. All we’re privy to is pictures of burning embassies and we think, “dammit, those terrorist have struck again.” The “Shadow Government” lead by Dick Cheney and Co. is hard at work on behalf of the American taxpayer to drag the US into the very same 100 Year Conflict that McCain speaks so highly of. I know I sound like I’m tearing pages out of a Tom Clancy book, but click these links and do some research into these claims being made.
As a backdrop to all of this, we have the financial crisis that has forced itself to the forefront of the American consciousness. A 900 TON Gorilla that can’t be moved, swayed and refuses to go anywhere, anytime soon. On Monday, the crisis hit a crescendo with the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the subsequent bailout the following day of AIG, to the tune of $85 Billion. Guess who’s footing the bill? The Good Ole American taxpayer who nowadays is synonymous with the childhood icon “Mikey” from the LIFE commercials, because as consumers they’ll eat anything.
Coincidentally enough while the taxpayer is hemorrhaging nearly a trillion dollars in bailout money for financial institutions that went belly-up by defrauding these very same taxpayers not only is the Fed making no concessions to protect the average consumer who is facing foreclosure due to these cooked up schemes but the only form of recourse or redress they are being offered is the chance to make “Change” this upcoming election cycle by casting a ‘vote’ as if that is to cause some miraculous reversal of fortune. It is being predicted that in the next few months, a thousand banks are forecast to fail. FDIC is rumored to be tinkering on failure. Washington Mutual is on the auction block. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac went belly up. Bear Sterns failed. Merill Lynch has blood on its hands. The only two mega institutions left standing are Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. If they fail, then what? The complacency of Americans is frightening.
So here is the scenario. Almost seven years ago to the day, allegedly a band of Arab terrorist brought down the Twin Towers. Legislation (already prepared prior to the attacks, coincidentally enough) is immediately ushered through the halls of Congress that reformats the structure of our Constitution as we know it, making it possible for Bush to erode and deregulate government oversight. This is tantamount to stripping a computer of its firewall, then viruses of all forms start attacking and lay waste to the infrastructure. In this case the virus was the bankers (it’s always the money changers, ask Jesus) who came to pick apart the carcass that was America. They preyed on the weak, the feeble, the unsuspecting, and disproportionately the poor. Predatory lenders victimized the very people who looked towards the government for security. While unprecedented legislation was passed to create new bureaus such as Homeland Security, little was done to secure the homes in the land. The very same men who had the most to lose on that Tuesday in September turned into the very same animal that supposedly callously preyed on them. Not to mention the bleeding of Americans this summer by Bush’s cronies via the escalating gas/energy prices. Under George’s watch the rich got super rich and the poor got thrashed.
“Blacks” have been notoriously victimized by the current administration, whether it be Katrina, or loss of jobs, or subprime mortgages. As the saying goes the more things change the more they stay the same. This time around though the ramifications are massive but who wins? People are still out of their homes and the country will soon be out of fiat currency. The Fed, which is NOT a government agency, but a privately held consortium of international bankers cannot continue to issue federal reserve notes against growing inflation, deficit and a faltering dollar. A late night emergency session was called on the 18th to craft a plan to subsidize all of the failing financial institutions (M.other O.f A.ll B.ailouts) that are destroying the soundness of EVERY financial market on the market. To the tune of nearly a trillion dollars, the U.S. will be in further depth to the Fed, the IMF and the World Bank but victims from Hurricane Ike can’t get any ice down in Texas, the lame duck president’s home state. Obama, sounding presidential, stressed that relief for Wall Street shouldn’t come before, or at the expense of relief for Main Street, but no concrete plans are being laid out. The bill for Iraq is hovering around a trillion dollars, with $10 Billion a month being spent. You have Iran and Russia licking their chops right now, playing the waiting game before they make a strategic war move to force the hands of the Americans. Where is the U.S. going to get the money to fight all these wars?
The only thing that backs the “money” is the faith of the people. How fitting then, that the soundness of the financial institutions would fall on its face on the 15th, during a full moon in Pisces, and Pisces denotes “BELIEF” of course and the end of an ‘Age’ (reports are already referring to the crash on Monday as the end of Capitalism as we know it). It was conjoined by Uranus which represents AWARENESS, and the interpretation is once people become AWARE of the predicament this country has found itself in, the FAITH that they’ve blindly invested in this bankrupt corporation will dissipate and wane, just as the governments faith in Lehman Brothers dissipated and the fallout will be one of monumental, disastrous proportions. Got gold? Better get you some.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
THE WONDROUS DEATH SQUADS OF THE AMERICAN ELITE
September 16, 2008
Terror the Human Form Divine And Secrecy the Human Dress
-- William Blake
I.
Another way station on our plunge into darkness was passed last week with the publication of Bob Woodward's new book, The War Within. Along with the usual backstairs gossip dished out by self-serving insiders eager to plant their spin on events, Woodward revealed -- or, rather, confirmed -- the existence of what he called the key element to the "success" of Bush's escalation of the war crime in Iraq: a "secret killing program" aimed at assassinating anyone arbitrarily deemed a "terrorist" by the leaders of the foreign forces occupying the conquered land.
In a TV appearance to puff the book, Woodward celebrated the arbitrary murder, by methods unknown, of people designated "terrorists," by criteria unknown, as "a wonderful example of American ingenuity solving a problem in war, as we often have." The White House acknowledged the existence of the assassination program, but insisted that it was the "surge" of troops that was mainly responsible for the drop in violence from the howling hell of 2006 to today's level, which, as Juan Cole has pointed out, is still greater than some of the most horrific civic conflicts of the last century. (It is a strange country indeed that can celebrate the creation of a blood-gushing sinkhole of violence and destruction as a "success beyond our wildest dreams," to use Barack Obama's new take on the surge.)
Of course, Woodward, the consummate Beltway courtier, embraces this bipartisan conventional wisdom about the success of the surge. And he is certainly right, at least from one point of view, as we noted here recently:
But beyond this little insider quibble over the most effective element in the prolongation of the war -- Woodward, a former military intelligence officer, naturally plumps for the covert op, while the White House ballyhoos the high-profile presidential directive to increase troop levels -- what is most noteworthy about the "revelations" is that they have provoked no controversy at all. The United States admits that it is operating secret death squads in Iraq, and this barely rates a passing mention in the press, and certainly no comment whatsoever on the campaign trail, no debate among the national leadership. And this despite the fact that, as Woodward makes clear, the targets of the American death squads are not merely "terrorists," as the general public broadly understands the term -- i.e., religious extremists in the al Qaeda mold -- but anyone arbitrarily designated an "insurgent" or a leader in "the resistance."
That is, anyone who resists the invasion and occupation of his native land is deemed a legitimate target for a secret death squad. For execution without charges, without trial, without evidence. And this, to Woodward, is "wonderful" and "amazing." By this logic, of course, the Nazis were fully justified in murdering leaders of the French resistance in World War II. The British would certainly have been justified in sneaking into George Washington's house and killing the insurgent leader in his bed. (And his wife too, no doubt, as an acceptable level of "collateral damage.") In fact, Woodward sternly warns members -- members, mind you, not just leaders -- of "the resistance" to "get your rear end out of town;" i.e., leave your native land or else be murdered in your bed by secret assassins of the occupying power.
This is the heroic, honorable stance of the American elite in the 21st century. What the Nazis did, we do, and for the same reason: to secure the forcible occupation of a land we conquered through an unprovoked war of aggression. It is indeed wonderful and amazing that such a state of affairs -- such an abyss of depravity -- is accepted so calmly by the great and good among us....and by tens of millions of our fellow citizens.
II.
But as noted above, there is really nothing new about Woodward's "revelations." I've been writing here, and elsewhere, for several years about the "global death squad" of the Terror War. These reports were based not on any insider knowledge but on universally accessible stories from the most staid and respectable media sources: mainstream papers, news agencies, leading magazines, etc.
And of course, it began long before the war crime in Iraq. As I noted in 2005:
The existence of this universal death squad – and the total obliteration of human liberty it represents – has not provoked so much as a crumb, an atom, a quantum particle of controversy in the American Establishment, although it's no secret. The executive order was first bruited in the Washington Post in October 2001. I first wrote of it in my Moscow Times column in November 2001. The New York Times added further details in December 2002. That same month, Bush officials made clear that the dread edict also applied to American citizens, as the Associated Press reported.
The first officially confirmed use of this power was the killing of an American citizen in Yemen by a CIA drone missile on November 3, 2002. A similar strike occurred in Pakistan this month, when a CIA missile destroyed a house and purportedly killed Abu Hamza Rabia, a suspected al Qaeda figure. But the only bodies found at the site were those of two children, the houseowner's son and nephew, Reuters reports. The grieving father denied any connection to terrorism. An earlier CIA strike on another house missed Rabia but killed his wife and children, Pakistani officials reported.
But most of the assassinations are carried out in secret, quietly, professionally, like a contract killing for the mob. As a Pentagon document unearthed by the New Yorker in December 2002 put it, the death squads must be "small and agile," and "able to operate clandestinely, using a full range of official and non-official cover arrangements to…enter countries surreptitiously."
The dangers of this policy are obvious, as a UN report on "extrajudicial killings" noted in December 2004: " Empowering governments to identify and kill 'known terrorists' places no verifiable obligation upon them to demonstrate in any way that those against whom lethal force is used are indeed terrorists… While it is portrayed as a limited 'exception' to international norms, it actually creates the potential for an endless expansion of the relevant category to include any enemies of the State, social misfits, political opponents, or others."
It's hard to believe that any genuine democracy would accept a claim by its leader that he could have anyone killed simply by labeling them an "enemy." It's hard to believe that any adult with even the slightest knowledge of history or human nature could countenance such unlimited, arbitrary power, knowing the evil it is bound to produce. Yet this is what the great and good in America have done.
And this is what they continue to do, to this very day, this very hour, as the non-response to Woodward's macabre and freakish celebration of covert murder demonstrates so clearly.(Continued after the jump.)
In Iraq, the death squads were in operation almost from the start. For example, one of the earliest reports about the American formation of "paramilitaries" and "commando squads" to "track down" insurgents came from the Washington Post in December 2003:
An even earlier Post report, in August 2003, also noted the hiring of Baathist operatives to hunt "insurgents." As I put it in the Moscow Times that month:
Perhaps that's not the precise wording used by the Washington Post this week, but it is the absolute essence of its story about the Bush Regime's new campaign to put Saddam's murderous security forces on America's payroll.
Yes, the sahibs in Bush's Iraqi Raj are now doling out American tax dollars to hire the murderers of the infamous Mukhabarat and other agents of the Baathist Gestapo – perhaps hundreds of them. The logic, if that's the word, seems to be that these bloodstained "insiders" will lead their new imperial masters to other bloodstained "insiders" responsible for bombing the UN headquarters in Baghdad – and killing another dozen American soldiers while Little George was playing with his putts during his month-long Texas siesta.
Naturally, the Iraqi people – even the Bush-appointed leaders of the Potemkin "Governing Council" – aren't exactly overjoyed at seeing Saddam's goons return, flush with American money and firepower. And they're certainly not reassured by the fact that the Bushists have also re-opened Saddam's most notorious prison, the dread Abu Ghraib, and are now, Mukhabarat-like, filling it with Iraqis – men, women and children as young as 11 – seized from their homes or plucked off the street to be held incommunicado, indefinitely, without due process, just like the old days. As The Times reports, weeping relatives who dare approach the gleaming American razor-wire in search of their "disappeared" loved ones are referred to a crude, hand-written sign pinned to a spike: "No visits are allowed, no information will be given and you must leave." Perhaps an Iraqi Akhmatova will do justice to these scenes one day.
So here -- in August 2003 -- the leading newspaper in the nation's capital is openly reporting that goon squads are being sent to take care of insurgents and "terrorists," while the leading newspaper in the capital of America's war ally, Britain, is openly reporting that the notorious Abu Ghraib prison is being glutted with new captives -- including children -- sealed off behind American razor wire. The seedbed of the whole panalopy of the horrors to come was already there, in the open, from the very beginning.
And so it went on. As I noted early last year:
"Do you remember the right-wing execution squads in El Salvador?" a former high-level intelligence official said to Hersh. "We founded them and we financed them. The objective now is to recruit locals in any area we want. And we aren’t going to tell Congress about it." A Pentagon insider added: "We’re going to be riding with the bad boys." Another role model for the expanded dirty war cited by Pentagon sources, said Hersh, was Britain's brutal repression of the Mau Mau in Kenya during the 1950s, when British forces set up concentration camps, created their own terrorist groups to confuse and discredit the insurgency, and killed thousands of innocent civilians in quashing the uprising.
Bush's formal greenlighting of the death-squad option built upon an already securely-established base, part of a larger effort to turn the world into a "global free-fire zone" for covert operatives, as one top Pentagon official told Hersh. For example, in November 2002 a Pentagon plan to infiltrate terrorist groups and "stimulate" them into action was uncovered by William Arkin, then writing for the Los Angeles Times. The new unit, the "Proactive, Pre-emptive Operations Group," was described in the Pentagon documents as "a super-Intelligence Support Activity" that brings "together CIA and military covert action, information warfare, intelligence and cover and deception."
Later, in August 2004, then deputy Pentagon chief Paul Wolfowitz appeared before Congress to ask for $500 million to arm and train non-governmental "local militias" to serve as U.S. proxies for "counter-insurgency and "counterterrorist" operations in "ungoverned areas" and hot spots around the world, Agence France Presse (and virtually no one else) reported at the time. These hired paramilitaries were to be employed in what Wolfowitz called an "arc of crisis" that just happened to stretch across the oil-bearing lands and strategic pipeline routes of Central Asia, the Middle East, Africa and South America...
Brazen daylight raids by "men dressed in uniforms" of Iraqi police or Iraqi commandos or other Iraqi security agencies swept up dozens of victims at a time. For months, U.S. "advisers" to Iraqi security agencies – including veterans of the original "Salvador Option" – insisted that these were Sunni insurgents in stolen threads, although many of the victims were Sunni civilians. Later, the line was changed: the chief culprits were now "rogue elements" of the various sectarian militias that had "infiltrated" Iraq's institutions.
But as investigative reporter Max Fuller has pointed out in his detailed examination of information buried in reams of mainstream news stories and public Pentagon documents, the vast majority of atrocities then attributed to "rogue" Shiite and Sunni militias were in fact the work of government-controlled commandos and "special forces," trained by Americans, "advised" by Americans and run largely by former CIA assets. As Fuller puts it: "If there are militias in the Ministry of Interior, you can be sure that they are militias that stand to attention whenever a U.S. colonel enters the room."
...With the Anglo-American coalition so deeply embedded in dirty war – infiltrating terrorist groups, "stimulating" them into action," protecting "crown jewel" double-agents no matter what the cost, "riding with the bad boys," greenlighting the "Salvador Option" – it is simply impossible to determine the genuine origin of almost any particular terrorist outrage or death squad atrocity in Iraq. All of these operations take place in the shadow world, where terrorists are sometimes government operatives and vice versa, and where security agencies and terrorist groups interpenetrate in murky thickets of collusion and duplicity. This moral chaos leaves "a kind of blot/To mark the full-fraught man and best indued/With some suspicion," as Shakespeare's Henry V says.
Or as Blake put it:
The Human Dress is forged Iron The Human Form a fiery Forge The Human Face a Furnace Seal'd The Human Heart its hungry Gorge
PAKISTAN TRIBESMEN TO FIGHT US ARMY IF INCURSIONS CONTINUE
‘Tribesmen to fight US if incursions continue’
* 3,000-strong jirga accuses Kabul of misleading US about Qaeda presence in FATA
By Iqbal Khattak
PESHAWAR: Every Ahmedzai Wazir tribesman will fight US forces on Afghani soil if their incursions into South Waziristan continue, a 3,000-strong jirga ruled on Wednesday.
The jirga consisting of pro-government tribal elders and pro-Taliban clerics was held in Wana.
“Each and every Ahmedzai Wazir tribesman, be young or old, will take up arms against the US and fight alongside the Pakistan Army,” eyewitnesses told Daily Times, quoting pro-Taliban Noor Muhammad reading a unanimous resolution at the end of the jirga.
The resolution came hours after US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Michael Mullen met the Pakistani political and military leadership in Islamabad to defuse tension between the two countries following the September 3 US-led ground assault in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).
“We will take the war to Afghanistan to confront the Americans,” the resolution said.
Tribal elders said on condition of anonymity that clerics developed differences over the time to deliver the resolution, adding Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) clerics had wanted to delay the resolution until JUI-F chief Fazlur Rehman returns from Umra. “Other clerics opposed the delay, saying the US needs urgent response,” the tribal elders added.
Kabul: The resolution also accused Kabul of ‘misleading’ the US forces about the presence of Al Qaeda in South Waziristan. “Let it be clear to the Americans that the Kabul regime is misleading them. Tribesmen have no business to do with Al Qaeda,” the resolution stated. Jirga members lauded Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Kayani’s statement to defend the country against foreign aggression, and reprimanded the political leadership for its ‘soft stand’ on the issue.
The jirga demanded a more active political administration, suggesting military actions in FATA should require the political administration’s approval. The jirga participants said they wanted a true implementation of the collective responsibility clauses of the Frontier Crimes Regulation.
The political administration has become ineffective after the Pakistani military started doing operations in FATA following the September 2001 attacks in the US.
PAKISTAN BLACK OPS INVADES AMERICA-"WITHOUT PERMISSION"
NEWS YOU WON'T FIND ON CNN
By M. Junaid Levesque-Alam
17/09/08 "MRZine" -- -- The U.S. State Department lodged a sharp protest over ongoing Pakistani missile strikes and ground raids today, saying the Islamic Republic was violating American sovereignty.
"We will try to convince Pakistan . . . to respect [the] sovereignty of the United States -- and God willing, we will convince," State Department Spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters.1
The controversy stems from the Pakistan Army's recent decision, leaked in a prominent Pakistani newspaper, to mount intensifying air attacks and new ground assaults against extremists hiding in American safe havens across the ocean.
American papers reported that under the new policy, the Pakistani military will no longer seek America's permission in killing Americans, but will inform American diplomats about these killings as a friendly gesture between close allies.2
Pakistan Army General Ashfaq Kayani told reporters outside Islamabad late last night that the new strategy was justified. "We are working to prevent more attacks on the Pakistani people," he said.3
The general's stance signified strong Pakistani dissatisfaction with America's reluctance to crack down on religious fundamentalists and neoconservatives, who, experts note, have deep ties to American intelligence services and military leaders. The largely unchecked extremists, experts observe, have used America to bolster the agenda of their ideological counterparts across the ocean in Israel, and to strike directly against Pakistan and other parts of the Muslim world.
"We have to strike them over there so that they cannot order strikes against us here at home," General Kayani said, referring to American firepower that has terrorized hundreds of thousands of civilians on either side of the Pak-Afghan border and in the Middle East.
As Kayani spoke, new precision attacks and commando raids were being conducted against ranches in Texas, small towns in Alaska, the offices of AIPAC and energy-related lobbying firms in Washington, D.C. Commandos were also dispatched to America's unruly federally-administered Bible Belt, where resentment of government authority runs high.
Several high-value targets were killed in the attacks. Local media outlets claimed 50 civilians were also killed, but these assertions could not be independently verified. Pakistani officials said they would send in their own team to investigate the claims, time permitting.
Seeking to assuage domestic concerns, American officials downplayed the actions of their staunch ally. "The nation should not be upset by the statement of Pakistani General Kayani," White House Press Secretary Dana Perino said in an official statement.4 "Pakistan respect U.S. sovereignty and looks at us as partners," she added.5
U.S. officials also insisted no secret deal had been reached beforehand allowing Pakistanis to strike inside American territory. "Media reports about authorization for Pakistani raids into the U.S. are incorrect," the American ambassador to Pakistan, Anne Patterson, told Fox News last night. She added that the South Asian country had "no aggressive designs or postures" toward America.6
Regimes allied to Pakistan, including those in Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Palestine, expressed support for the new Pakistani strategy, citing the need to "remove and destroy" strongholds where key militants have masterminded attacks against their countries.7
Informed of this, Ambassador Patterson appeared unfazed, saying, "Pakistan respects American sovereignty." She insisted that Pakistani officials provided her with assurances that "no such order had been given" for new rules of engagement.8 Finally, the ambassador explained, America had already carried out its own recent military offensive that left hundreds of rural Americans dead, relieving the need for further Pakistani intervention.
But in Islamabad, Pakistani corps commanders said their new strategy would see continued implementation in the coming weeks. Speaking on condition of anonymity, one commander said that as far as Pakistan was concerned, "most things have been settled in terms of how we're going to proceed."9
Notes
Except for note 2, all the above-quoted statements are real quotes; only the roles have been switched.
1 Quote actually taken from Pakistani PM Yousaf Gilani. Reuters, Sept. 12, 2008. (http://wiredispatch.com/news/?id=343756)
2 It was actually the Pakistan daily, Dawn, which reported on the U.S. policy shift as follows: "Under this new policy, the US military will notify Pakistan's government when it conducts raids, but will not seek its permission." Sept. 12, 2008.
3 Quote actually taken from US Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen. Dawn (Pakistan Daily), Sept. 12, 2008.
4 Quote actually taken from PM Gilani. (Source: note 3)
5 Quote actually taken from Pakistani Ambassador Husain Haqqani. (Source: note 3)
6 Quotes actually taken from Ambassador Haqqani. (Source: note 3)
7 Quote actually taken from U.S. ally and Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Washington Post, Sept. 12, 2008. ()
8 Quotes actually taken from Ambassador Haqqani. (Source: note 7)
9 Quote actually taken from anonymous U.S. official. (Source: note 7)
M. Junaid Levesque-Alam is a Pakistani-American who blogs about America and Islam at Crossing the Crescent (www.crossingthecrescent.com). He writes about American Muslim identity for WireTap magazine and has been published in CounterPunch, Dissident Voice, The Nation (online), and The American Muslim. He works as a communications coordinator for an anti-domestic violence agency in the NYC area and obtained his undergraduate degree in journalism from Northeastern University. He can be reached at: junaidalam1 AT gmail.com
THE FINAL DESTRUCTION OF THE MIDDLE CLASS-THE GREAT 2008 TRANSFER OF WEALTH
By Joan Veon
9-18-8- Americans are confronted with what appears to be the worse economic situation since the Great Depression. What will history say about the U.S. credit crisis turned global financial crisis? At every turn investors are faced with new problems, new crises, and less than desirable solutions which include debt, deflation and a transfer of wealth.
- With regard to debt, the American taxpayer has been made the lender of last resort for international bank Bear Stearns and now the two Government-sponsored Enterprises-GSEs, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. On top of the $29B for Bear Stearns, Fannie and Freddie's debt of $5.4T has been effectively transferred to the balance sheet of the USA. This is equal to the entire publicly traded debt of the U.S. which is also the same as the total of America's mortgage-related assets. In addition to personal debt, every American now has a financial responsibility for Bear Stearns and Fannie and Freddie.
- We, the people, have saved the foreign investors such as China which owns $376B, Japan which owns $228B, South Korea which owns $65B, Taiwan which owns $55B, and Australia which owns $33B, from losing faith in America. It is the stockholders, both common and preferred, that have been given the raw end of the deal. While large financial institutions such as JP Morgan, which owns $1.2B of Freddie and Fannie stock, said a complete loss would only erase one or two months of profits, contrast this to smaller banks such as the Central Virginia Bank in Richmond which has $20M in shares of Freddie and Fannie. That type of loss will put them in the same kind of trouble as Lehman Brothers, not enough capitalization. There are 15 other banks that hold 10% or more of their capital in shares of Freddie and Fannie.
- The Federal Accounting Standards Board is requiring more stringent standards for banks and savings and loans to maintain a certain amount of capital to protect against insolvency. Those rules are in the process of being changed to conform to international rules issued by the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland which Congress has voted on. These rules which were only to pertain to international banks are now being applied to national banks.
- Furthermore those in retirement who thought their money was safe-invested in the highest ranked bonds in the country are going to lose their dividends. Depending on the price they invested, they could have principal losses of up to 80 or 90% of their investment. Ouch.
- The credit crunch began a year ago when the various investment banks both here and abroad stopped buying each others paper, a very uncommon practice between them. As a result of no liquidity for mortgage paper caused by their decision, we have the most serious slowdown in real estate in decades. The decision to not buy mortgage paper includes the sub-prime loans made to home buyers that had no down payment. To relate, I recently met a young Latino who is worried about her home. Five years ago she bought a $370,000 townhouse with $14,000 down. Her interest rate varies causing her monthly payment to jump from $2700 per month to $3500. She cleans houses for a living.
- Freddie and Fannie decided they could make more money by buying subprime mortgage paper. Today there is an eleven month inventory of unsold homes. Higher interest rates as a result of the hidden clauses on floating interest rates have put many people in jeopardy of foreclosure. All of these problems have given the Federal Reserve the opportunity to seize total control of powers they did not oversee in order to protect our economy. Perhaps we should ask where the desire to put poor people into homes came from? It was part of the Bush Administration's policy to conform to the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals unveiled in the year 2000.
- Exacerbating the credit crunch have been the historically high oil prices which have caused pain at the gas pumps and a weak dollar which has made imports more expensive. To counter high oil prices, Americans have drastically reduced how many miles they drive and a number of buying habits. In light of a tight job market and job losses in housing and the automotive industries, we are confronted with higher energy costs to heat and cool our homes, increased costs for food, and the inability to refinance mortgages. Basically the economy is now in deflation. When people stop spending, it moves from deflation to stagflation-no matter how cheap an item becomes, people can't afford to buy. All this without knowing what the real fall out will be from the bailout of Freddie and Fannie.
- The situation we are confronted with did not happen in the last few years, but began in 1913 when a group of cunningly deceitful legislators passed the Federal Reserve Act on December 24 at 11:45 p.m., after those who were opposed went home for Christmas. The entire financial system of the U.S. was transferred from Congress to a private corporation that is NOT accountable to Congress. They create and destroy the business cycle by various means: raising and lowering interest rates. The government of the United States is in bondage to a group of individuals who own the Federal Reserve. The reason why the American people cannot forgive themselves the interest on our debt is because we do not owe it to ourselves we owe it to the Federal Reserve! Every single time since then that the Federal Reserve Act was amended, over 195 times, the Federal Reserve gathered more power over various aspects of our economy. However, they are in the final throes of stripping America of any remaining vestiges of sovereignty as has been laid out in the Treasury "Blueprint for a Modernized Financial Regulatory System."
- The Blueprint was written under the watchful eye of one of America's most successful international bankers, former Goldman Sachs CEO Hank Paulson, who is now our illustrious Treasury Secretary. Is this not a case of the fox in the chicken coup? Long time investment sage Marty Whitman commented on his actions, "Paulson thinks he is in Russia and is not giving any value to stockholders. It is outrageous that the Treasury Secretary is not giving any consideration to the shareholders."
- The Blueprint calls for key components of our financial system, not currently under Federal Reserve control, to be transferred to them. In order to do this, a number of changes will be necessary which Congress will have to approve. First, it recommends changing the banking charter to include all financial institutions, thus effectively transferring control over "national banks, federal savings associations, and federal [and state] credit union charters." For your information, Washington Mutual is a savings and loan while Lehman Brothers is and Bear Stearns was an international bank. The Fed is to be given authority over the U.S. Payment and Settlement System thereby controlling the settlement process for securities. It will be given the role of Market Stability Regulator and it will have total control over the market. The Blueprint provides for the entire mortgage system of the U.S. to be federalized and to be under the control of the Mortgage Origination Commission. The Federal Reserve will be part of the Commission. Additionally the Federal Reserve will be given a say in the insurance industry which will be federalized and a new Office of Insurance Oversight will oversee its activities. The Federal Reserve will have a place on the Insurance Oversight commission.
- By the time Congress votes on the Blueprint, there will be so many reasons for them to transfer the last vestiges of our financial sovereignty to the Federal Reserve that they will not even have to read the prepared legislation. So far, we have the bailout of Freddie and Fannie by giving Treasury a blank check to act; the Federal Reserve worked all weekend to find a buyer to Lehman, another international bank, their next project might be to rescue Washington Mutual, a savings and loan, and the Fed has been given initial powers to act as the Market Stability Regulator. The only component that is missing is the demise of an insurance company, AIG anyone?
- For the record, at the heart of the Blueprint is changing our financial/banking and securities regulatory system from a national system to an international system to bring America into the world governmental system that functions above the nation-states. I have maintained that in order to get Congress to go along, we would have to have a huge problem which would allow Congress to be convinced that they need to act, however, the truth of the matter is they no longer have the power they once had because the majority has been transferred to the Federal Reserve.
- History will determine how the final stage was set but I believe it started in 2000 with the Crash of the Nasdaq. Who would have ever thought that a stock would drop 90% in value? About $7T vanished from the balance sheets of investors. But we did not have to worry, as a result of 9/11, the Federal Reserve started to reduce interest rates to 45 year lows to get Americans to support the economy by buying the dream home. We bit the bait. It was the Roaring 20s all over again. At one point in the housing boom, one out of four jobs was created by the housing industry. No one asked if they could afford the debt, they only asked if they could afford the payment: a big difference. They did not ask the right questions about their mortgage because the mortgage industry was not required to disclose to them, when it should have. At one time the mortgage industry was run on honesty and integrity, but that changed too and people have been caught in a terrible snare.
- The Bailout of Freddie and Fannie provide us with the latest excitement in the diabolical saga of the raping, robbing, and pillaging of America. Interestingly enough it took place 13 months after the beginning of the credit crunch. Lastly, I have maintained since the beginning of the credit crunch last August that it was planned and managed destruction in order to accomplish the final transfer of America's financial sovereignty. All of the above only confirms my original suspicion. Sadly, only the strong will survive, only those who did not use their house as a checking account will survive, only those who turn to the Creator of the Universe, the Lord God who created heaven and earth, and His Son, Jesus, will survive in the midst of the Great 2008 Transfer of Wealth.
- © 2008 Joan Veon - All Rights Reserved