THE DAWN OF AQUARIUS,A NEW PEOPLE,NEW CONSCIOUSNESS

The Dawn of Aquarius
A New People, A New Consciousness,
A New Era


BY MEHMET SABEHEDDIN

Aquarius will be the new age, the new life. First there will be disastrous events, gigantic upheavals, turmoil and change of all kinds….
– Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov (1900-1986)

The transition to a new zodiacal age is altering the political map of the world. For the last two thousand years much of human history has been determined by events in Europe and the near Middle East. From Greece and Rome, the great power centres of two millennia ago, with their inheritance from ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, a distinct civilisational impulse spread westward into Europe, eventually reaching North America. Decisions made in the grand capitals of Europe and, for much of the last century in New York and Washington, have impacted the lives of millions of people in every part of the planet.

The advent of the Age of Aquarius coincides with the emergence of new world power centres. Just as old Egypt, Babylon and Sumeria were eclipsed by Greece and Rome, so too the ‘old world’ of Western Europe and North America will be overtaken by new geopolitical alliances and fresh centres of global influence. And this will be accompanied by a dramatic change in consciousness, as the worn-out Western values and Eurocentric rationalist thought prevailing for the last few centuries surrender to the new Aquarian thinking.

The current turmoil and conflict unleashed on the planet by the United States and Britain is only the beginning of the climax of a struggle between cosmic influences of which most people are completely unaware. Today, America and Britain embody atrophied and degraded Piscean energies. The Anglo-Americans, as the standard bearers of bankrupt Western materialism, are trying to reorganise the world, imposing their imbalanced, egoistic approach to life on all societies. Yet their latest brutal and insane actions, witnessed in the tragic invasion of Iraq, are part of a frantic effort to prolong their collapsing system. Despite all their apparent power and wealth, Anglo-American universalism is in a state of rapid decline leading to death.

A new era, a new consciousness and a new people are on the horizon, as the planet goes through a turbulent transitional period paving the way to the Aquarian Age.

Aquarian Consciousness

Whether the earth is shaken by natural catastrophes, or nuclear warfare, or both, earth and the life upon it does survive. More than that, however: A New Age emerges and the devastating changes that have preceded it are understood to have been necessary purgations effecting the transformation of humanity into a new mode of being. By analogy, just as the individual near death experiencer may have to endure the pain and suffering associated with the trauma of almost dying before positive personal transformation can take place, so the world may need to undergo a “planetary near-death experience” before it can awaken to higher, more spiritual, collective consciousness with universal love at its core.
– Kenneth Ring, Transpersonal Psychologist

Two thousand years ago, at the time of transition from the Age of Aries to that of Pisces, there were secret schools, most notably the Essenes, trained and taught to align themselves with the spiritual impulses of the incoming age. These small communities worked quietly, in retreats; but with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls we now know they were actually the ‘seedbed’ from which came the original Christian revelation.

These separated mystic communities provided the necessary environment for the message of Jesus the Christ. With their unique synthesis of Zoroastrian, Pythagorean, Egyptian and Israelite spirituality, the Essenes acted as a bridge between the ‘old age’ religions and the unfolding new revelation. Above all, they represent the budding of a new consciousness which would impact history for two millennia. The declining Roman Empire’s embrace of Christianity led to the triumph of the new religion in Europe. With the arrival of the Age of Pisces, Christianity became synonymous with ‘Western civilisation’.

Writing a century ago, the gifted Englishman Edward Carpenter speculated about Man’s evolutionary future and the development of a new humanity imbued with a new consciousness. “We do not know,” he observed, “what possible evolutions are to come, or what new forms of permanent place or value, are being already slowly differentiated from the surrounding mass of humanity.” Carpenter noted that “at the present time certain new types of humankind may be emerging, which will have an important part to play in the societies of the future – even though for the moment their appearance is attended by a good deal of confusion and misapprehension.”

Throughout the writings of the 20th century’s most influential spiritual teachers from Charles W. Leadbeater and Rudolf Steiner, to Bhagwan Shri Rajneesh and Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov, we find numerous references to the immanent emergence of a new human type. With one voice they link this new humanity to the dawn of the Aquarian era, which they warn will be ushered in by a major purging of mankind. In the words of Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov: “The Age of Aquarius is fast approaching, and it is going to overturn and shatter all the old forms and values that human beings thought of as permanent.”

According to all the great mystic teachers and seers, the Age of Aquarius is heralded by a time of immense conflict and turmoil never before witnessed in recorded history.
Writing in his book Love and Sexuality, Aivanhov notes:

Human beings need to suffer before they begin to wish for harmony and peace and the splendour of the new life. If they are not ground down by all kinds of sufferings, they will never understand or make up their minds to work for the Kingdom of God.

John White, a respected New Age author, observes in Science and Spirit that if modern civilisation is destroyed, “some people will survive, according to the predictions and prophecies. The great loss of life will open up niches in the environment where new life forms can emerge. Those most deeply attuned to cosmic processes will become the seedbed from which, it is said, a new race, a higher humanity will evolve in accelerated fashion.”

The survivors of this ‘great tribulation’ ushering in the Aquarian Age will be those men and women who have not been ensnared by the ‘strong delusions’ of the dying old order.

A remnant, who like the ancient Essenes before them, renounce the ephemeral fleeting attractions of the old era, will also live on to protect the law of the truth and lead the survivors in the new era.

Most professing Christians are looking for the return of Christ who they expect to establish a new age. But how many Christians are willing to prepare themselves, after the manner of the Essenes and the Gnostic secret schools, for this new era? Christians are fighting each other over dogmas and doctrines. They are like the Pharisees of Christ’s day, searching the Scriptures in vain, unable and unwilling to see the plain truth in front of their eyes! Christians spend their time serving the very System of Money and Power which crucified Jesus the Christ and persecuted his early followers. The True God is not to be found in any of today’s Christian Churches. Christianity, a religion of the Piscean Age, has chosen to stay with the old order and will invariably perish with it.

A new community is now being prepared in response to the first impulses of Aquarius. They are the ‘seedbed’ of the new era, a Noah’s Ark of Safety and Light in a time of turmoil, confusion and chaos.

New Eurasia

The Truth of Life descends from the world of Eternal Light to illuminate the minds, regenerate the hearts, raise and renew the souls of all the sons of Truth destined to constitute the nucleus of the new humanity of which the Slavs will be the cradle.
– Peter Deunov, Bulgarian Mystic, 1898

The inspired Gnostic Master Teacher Peter Deunov (Beinsa Douno), who lived in Bulgaria from 1864-1944, prophesied the birth of “a new type of man” on Earth to coincide with the astrological Age of Aquarius. According to Deunov, the final stage of the previous Piscean Age, transmitted by the Anglo-Saxons, was passing. In the new aeon the Slavic people are predestined to play a leading role. Speaking to his early Gnostic students, Deunov announced: “You are the chosen children of truth who were preordained to form the seed of the new humanity of which Slavdom as a family, descendants of Judah, will become the hearth.”

The 20th century, in Deunov’s prophetic scheme, was a preparatory period distinguished by the waxing and waning of Anglo-American civilisation. From this perspective the collapse of the British Empire and the rise of the USA at the end of the Second World War marked a key turning point in history. Anglo-American culture having reached its peak is now in its death-throes, and the first light of the new culture is dawning in keeping with the incoming Aquarian influences.

Russia constitutes the largest Slavic nation, and the last hundred years may rightly be said to have been the time of Russia’s ‘Golgotha’ or ‘crucifixion’. A hundred years of incredible human suffering and enormous national sacrifice claimed millions of Russian lives. Within the first five decades of the 20th century the Apocalyptic Horseman of Famine and War ravaged the vast Russian land. Archaic landmarks swept aside and old values overturned only to be replaced by radical new ways which themselves were soon found wanting. Spectacular material triumphs accomplished at the cost of personal liberty and paid for by human sacrifice. Was such collective suffering a preparation for the new era?

Could it be Russia, a land that has endured so much in the 20th century, will finally find its prophetic destiny in this third millennium? Revolutions, civil war, famine, two world wars, political repression…. were these all part of a cleansing process signaling the beginning of a new era in which Russia discovers her true mission?

Alice A. Bailey, who is credited by many as the founder of the contemporary New Age movement, saw a unique role for Russia in ushering in the new era. Writing at a time when Russia was firmly behind the communist iron curtain, she predicted:

Behind the closed borders of that mysterious and magnificent country [Russia], a great and spiritual conflict is proceeding, and the rare mystical spirit and the truly religious orientation of the people is the eternal guarantee that a true and living religion and culture will finally emerge.

Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), who established the Anthroposophical society, believed the Slavic “folk soul” would play a major role in the future development of a new humanity. He saw the Slavs as a bridge between the Orient (East) and the Occident (West). According to Steiner, the religious thought of the Orient belongs to the past; the Occident’s philosophical-scientific thought to the present; the Slavic soul will bridge the two and create a pathway to a spiritual future. More than any other national soul, claimed Steiner, the Russian group soul strives to realise the world of the spirit. In Russia the synthesis of the highest features of both Eastern and Western cultures would one day be achieved.

“Its geographic location places Russia between two extreme, monolithic cultures – between the materialist countries of the West and the passive, world-denying countries of the East. It is appropriate that Russia creatively unite these extremes,” wrote Nikolai Belotsvetov, one of Steiner’s leading Russian followers.

“Our country is a peculiar country, placed between the hammer of Europe and the anvil of Asia, destined to reconcile them in one way or another,” wrote the world famous chemist Dmitri Mendeleev. “It is my deep conviction that Russia is called to allay the age-old hostility between Europe and Asia, to reconcile and unite those two different worlds, and find a proper balance between the progressive but proud and inconsequent individualism of Europe and the sense of social and political cohesion of Asia...”

For the last two thousand years of the Piscean Age, civilisation has traveled the course of the Sun from East to West, reaching its apogee in the modern USA. With the end of the Piscean era, history and civilisation is reorienting. We are seeing a return to origins with the emergence of a new power centre at the cross-roads of the East and West, in Eurasia, the great heartland of Russia.

The history of Russia is not the history of a country, but of a world. It is, in fact, the history of a vast organic whole which had for its cradle the immense open spaces of Eurasia. In the words of one author:

The Eurasian world, as such consists of vast plains which extend, broken here and there by low mountain ranges, between the Arctic Ocean, the Pacific, the Black Sea, the Caucasian Range, the Iranian plateau, the heights of the Pamir and the Hindu Kush, and join up, through the tortuous valleys and foothills of the Tian Shan and the Altai ranges, with the plains of Eastern Turkestan and Mongolia.1

According to the Ancient Wisdom teachings, in remote prehistory a spiritual disaster accompanied by a catastrophic shift in the Earth’s axis caused a great migration to Eurasia from the primal northern region of Hyperborea. Theosophical writers believe that millions of years ago Eurasia was the homeland of the people who:

…later descended into the Indian peninsula those peoples who call themselves ‘Aryans,’ the ‘High Caste,’ who later were divided into Four Castes: Brahmanas, Kshattriyas, Vaisyas, and Sudras. From the southeastern parts came later the Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Medes and the Persians; and the peoples of Europe, Greeks, Romans, especially.2

Viewed in the light of the Ancient Wisdom teachings, the appearance of Eurasia on the global stage is not only an affirmation of arcane origins but also of the Shambhala influence in our day. Eurasia, the Russian heartland, has long been called “Northern Shambhala” by Buddhist teachers. Having studied Tibetan Buddhism, Nikolai Roerich developed a deep interest in Shambhala and led a scientific expedition through Eurasia to look for traces of the hidden kingdom.3 He later remarked, “The East has said that when the Banner of Shambhala would encircle the world, verily the New Dawn would follow.”

At this crucial period in world history we see the first signs of a Eurasia-oriented geopolitical alliance between Germany, Russia, India and China, as a counter balance to the Anglo-American order. Russia, together with the former Soviet states of Central Asia, constitutes the Eurasian ‘kernel’. In the West this Eurasian alliance reaches to Germany, while in the far East it includes China and north Korea. Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan make up the southern flank of Eurasia. The geopolitical struggles and wars of the first years of the 21st century are the outcome of not only political and economic factors, but of resistance to incoming cosmic energies. All around us we’re confronted with clear proof of the passing of one age and the dawn of a new era in human history.

Britain and the United States represent the final phase of a Western civilisation which succeeded a decaying Rome at the start of the Piscean Age. And like ancient Rome before its collapse, the Anglo-American rulers are desperately seeking to expand what the writer Philip K. Dick termed the ‘Black Iron Prison’. However, the West at its zenith can only be the ‘evening land’, the place where the Sun sets to rise again in the East. To the ancient Egyptians the western lands were, after all, the kingdom of the dead.

The End & The New Beginning

For as the lightning cometh out of the East, and shineth even unto the West; so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be.
– Jesus, Matthew 24:27

The time in which we now live is charged with cosmic significance as nations and peoples unconsciously struggle to align themselves either with the old aeon influences or the incoming forces of the new Aquarian Age. The prophecies and predictions of so many gifted seers leave us in no doubt – we are right now in a turbulent, even chaotic, transitional period. Nations who cling to the dying old order will fall, to be finally swept away in the coming cataclysm, eclipsed by new global powers, of which Eurasia is preeminent.

Out of this world catastrophe will come a new era attuned to Aquarius. Now is the time of decision, preparation and separation. People who separate from the old order and prepare themselves by harmonising with the rhythm of Aquarius will form the ‘seedbed’ from which develops a new culture and a new consciousness. Those who today place their trust in rampant materialism and the exploitation of the planet, all the while glorying in their wealth, power and might, will be debased.

One hundred years ago the venerable European monarchies looked safe and secure, impervious to change. The British Empire, on which it was said the ‘sun never sets’, straddled the globe triumphant. Less than a century later the British Empire is no more and the traditional European monarchs a vague memory. A similar fate awaits today’s triumphalist powers. The victims of history will soon be the victors as the Earth is bathed in the Great Light of the Aquarian Age.

Footnotes:

1. Before and After Stalin by Cyril Ielita-Wilczkovski

2. Theosophical Forum, June 1937

3. "Mystery of Shambhala" by Jason Jeffrey, New Dawn No. 72, May-June 2002

Mehmet Sabeheddin is a long time contributor to New Dawn. His past articles examined Nazi Occultism, Middle Eastern mysteries and ancient Babylon. He is currently conducting research into the arcane wisdom of Eurasia.

3-22-09 MONTANA PLANE CRASHES INTO CEMETERY,17 DEAD

BUTTE, Mont. — A small plane crashed Sunday as it approached an airport in Montana, killing 17 people, including several children, a Federal Aviation Administration spokesman said.

The single engine turboprop plane crashed about 500 feet from the airport in Butte while attempting to land, said spokesman Mike Fergus. The Montana Standard reported in an online story that it crashed in Butte's Holy Cross Cemetery.

The aircraft had departed from Oroville, Calif., and the pilot had filed a flight plan showing a destination of Bozeman, about 85 miles southeast of Butte. But the pilot canceled his flight plan at some point and headed for Butte, Fergus said.

Preliminary reports indicate the dead include numerous children, he said. There were no known fatalities on the ground, he added.

"We think that it was probably a ski trip for the kids," Fergus said.

The plane was registered to Eagle Cap Leasing Inc. in Enterprise, Ore., Fergus said. He didn't know who was operating the plane.

Calls to local authorities were not immediately returned.

Witnesses told the Standard that they saw the plane go into a nosedive into the cemetery.

Martha and Steve Guidoni, who were at a gas station across from the cemetery, said the plane "just nose-dived into the ground."

"My husband went over there to see if he could do anything," Martha Guidoni said.

Fergus said the Pilatus PC-12 aircraft was manufactured in 2001.

National Transportation Safety Board spokesman Keith Holloway said its investigators were expected to arrive in Butte late Sunday or early Monday.

The incident was the country's third major plane crash this year. All 155 people onboard survived after a US Airways jetliner landed in New York's Hudson River in January when a flock of geese disabled both engines, and a commuter plane fell on a house in a suburb of Buffalo, N.Y., killing all 49 passengers and a man in the home in February.

BLACK HOLES: ETERNAL PRISONS NO MORE,STEPHEN HAWKING'S LECTURE

Black Holes: Eternal Prisons No More, Stephen Hawking's Lecture
March 16th, 2009 By Susan Andrews Black Holes: Eternal Prisons No More

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Stephen Hawking, author of the best seller A Brief History of Time, explains to a full house in Bovard Auditorium that black holes aren't as black as they are painted. Photo credit Taylor Faust

Celebrated physicist, Stephen Hawking, delivered an inspiring speech to a full house in Bovard Auditorium on March 10. USC College Dean Howard Gillman kicked off the event by introducing Nick Warner, professor of physics, mathematics and astronomy. Hawking was Warner’s academic adviser while he studied at the University of Cambridge.


Warner said that Hawking has contributed greatly to popularizing science with his successful book A Brief History of Time, which sold 10 million copies and focuses on black holes and the big bang theory. With a lifetime spent studying cosmology and black holes, Hawking’s scientific prowess has also been captured by Hollywood in “Star Trek,” “Futurama” and “The Simpsons” television shows.

“Hawking has completely changed the way scientists think about black holes by first showing they are real natural phenomena and then giving us remarkable new insights into how quantum theory implies that they must evaporate,” Warner said.

Hawking’s lecture focused on black holes, a term coined by American physicist John Wheeler. Hawking discussed the history of black holes beginning with British physicist John Michell in 1783, who suggested that there might be “Dark Stars” whose gravity is strong enough to trap light and prevent the stars from being seen from far away.

Two Americans, Albert Michelson and Edward Morley, proved that the speed of light is invariant and does not depend upon where it comes from. Therefore, Michell’s picture of Dark Stars is not entirely correct. Next, Albert Einstein weighed in with his theory of relativity where space and time are no longer independent entities, but rather different directions in four-dimensional space-time.

Einstein’s theory demonstrates that space-time is curved by the presence of matter. Hawking said it is like putting a heavy ball on a rubber sheet, the sheet bends and if you increase the weight of the ball then eventually, at a critical mass and size, the ball will make a bottomless hole in the sheet that particles can get into, but not out of. Stars do the same to the curving of space and time, and at a critical mass and size a star will collapse into a black hole.

From outside a black hole, you cannot tell what is inside. Hawking noted that you can throw television sets, diamond rings or your worst enemy into a black hole — he is humorous as well as brilliant. All the black hole remembers is the total mass and the state of rotation.

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The boundary of a black hole is the event horizon where gravity is strong enough to pull light back. Hawking likened it to going over Niagara Falls in a canoe. If you are above the falls, you can get away if you paddle fast enough. But once over the edge you are lost, there is no way back.

Hawking also described how he discovered that particles could slowly leak out of black holes and release energy. A miniature black hole of the mass of a mountain could generate enough power to supply the world’s energy needs. However, the energy would be difficult to harness as the power could not be maintained in a power station. It would drop through the floor and end up at the center of the Earth.

Scientists have searched for miniature black holes but to no avail. Hawking said this is a pity as he would have garnered a Nobel Prize. However, if a black hole is found through the Large Hadron Collider at CERN (the world’s largest and highest-energy particle accelerator), he interjected humorously, he will get a Nobel Prize after all.

Hawking also described how black holes seem to conflict with one of the fundamental ideas of science, namely determinism: That is, given enough detail about the state of the universe at present one can predict the future and reconstruct the past. The fact that black holes can absorb matter and then emit something completely different means that black holes appear to undermine determinism. However, Hawking believes he has found a resolution in the ideas of Richard Feynman, who believes that quantum theory involves looking at all possible alternative histories.

This perspective also supports the idea that if you fall into a black hole, you may come out in another universe. If there is a large hole and if it is rotating, you may pass through it and into another universe. So, you cannot come back to our universe. Though Hawking said that he is keen on space flight, he is not willing to transport himself to another universe.

Hawking said that the message from his talk is that black holes are not the eternal prisons once thought. If you feel you are in a black hole, don’t give up. There is a way out.

Provided by USC College

FULL VIDEO:THE OBAMA DECEPTION

SHOOTINGS IN GERMANY,ALABAMA UNDERSCORE VIOLENT SIDE EFFECTS OF PSYCHIATRIC MEDICATIONS

Mike Adams
NaturalNews
Thursday, March 12, 2009

A 17-year-old former student opened fire near Stuttgart, Germany, killing at least 16 people. The teenager was a former student at a Winnenden school, where he initiated the shooting spree. Three teachers and at least 10 students were killed by his actions.

The media is reporting that Tim Kretschmer, “walked calmly into three classrooms and opened fire, without saying a word.” Following the shooting at his school, Tim ran to a psychiatric clinic school and killed an employee there. (Did he have a link to the psychiatric staff members there?)

A day earlier, a man in his mid-30’s opened fire in Alabama, killing ten people before he was shot and killed by law enforcement.
It’s the medication, not the firearms

In seeing the news reports on these events, the ignorant masses quite predictably leaped to the conclusion that “guns are the problem.” Apparently in their minds, these shootings were carried out solely by guns and have nothing whatsoever to do with the people pulling the triggers. But the truth is far more insidious: It is the psychiatric medications that are causing violent shooting sprees in America, Germany and elsewhere.

Shootings in Germany, Alabama Underscore Violent Side Effects of Psychiatric Medications obamadecept_340x169

These dangerous psychiatric medications drastically imbalance brain chemistry, causing teens (and adults) to feel distanced from reality, as if they are walking through a video game. In fact, this was exactly how the Columbine school shooters described their experience of carrying out the infamous shootings in Colorado.

The report that Germany’s shooter, Tim Kretschmer, “walked calmly into three classrooms and opened fire, without saying a word” is a strong indication that he was almost certainly suffering the brain-altering side effects of psychiatric medication.

The pharmaceutical companies, of course, incessantly attempt to deny the reality that their drugs cause school shootings. In fact, their psychiatric drugs actually cause the very same things they often claim to treat! Antidepressants, for example, can cause depression, suicidal thoughts and violent behavior. They also directly promote weight gain, obesity and diabetes, and those health conditions can then lead to more depression, requiring more “treatment” with medication.

It’s all a gigantic scam. These drug companies are just selling patented chemicals for profit while destroying the lives of human beings in the process. In my view, Big Pharma is responsible for the deaths of all those killed by drug-induced shooting sprees. Read the jaw-dropping collection of quotes (below) from authors on this issue to learn even more.

Not surprisingly, the mainstream media remains virtually silent on this issue, not even mentioning any link between psychiatric drugs and school shootings. The media, you see, is largely funded by drug company advertisements.
A film you must see

A truly remarkable documentary film on the history of psychiatric medication is now available through CCHR (the Citizens’ Commission on Human Rights). Watch it here: http://www.cchr.org/#/videos/makin

US WARSHIPS HEAD FOR SOUTH CHINA AFTER STANDOFF

From The Times
March 12, 2009
US warships head for South China Sea after standoff
Tim Reid in Washington

A potential conflict was brewing last night in the South China Sea after President Obama dispatched heavily armed American destroyers to the scene of a naval standoff between the US and China at the weekend.

Mr Obama’s decision to send an armed escort for US surveillance ships in the area follows the aggressive and co-ordinated manoeuvres of five Chinese boats on Sunday. They harassed and nearly collided with an unarmed American vessel.

Washington accused the Chinese ships of moving directly in front of the US Navy surveillance ship Impeccable, forcing its crew to take emergency action, and to deploy a high-pressure water hose to deter the Chinese ships. Formal protests were lodged with Beijing after the incident.

On a day that Mr Obama and his senior officials met the Chinese Foreign Minister, Yang Jiechi, in Washington, Beijing showed no sign of backing down. Its military chiefs accused the unarmed US Navy ship of being on a spying mission.
Related Links

* Chinese 'harass' US Navy surveillance ship

* Analysis: so much more than a naval water fight

The US keeps a close eye on China’s arsenal, including its expanding fleet of submarines in the area. Washington says that the confrontation occurred in international waters, but Beijing claims nearly all the South China Sea as its own, putting it in conflict with five other nations that have claims over different parts of the waters.

The episode complicated fragile military relations between the US and China, which appeared to have improved after the two held defence talks in Beijing last month.

Mr Obama yesterday urged more military dialogue with China to avoid similar incidents after talks with Mr Yang, the White House said. “The President also stressed the importance of raising the level and frequency of military-to-military dialogue,” it said.

A hotline was established between the Chinese Defence Ministry and the Pentagon in April last year, but it was not used during or after Sunday’s standoff, defence officials said. The US Government immediately protested to Chinese authorities after the incident, about 75 miles south of Hainan Island.

Beijing has rejected the US account and demanded that the United States cease what it calls illegal activities in the South China Sea. The Chinese maintain the area is part of the country’s exclusive economic zone.

Washington insists that the area is part of international waters and that US ships have a legal right to operate there.

AFRICAN-AFRICAN BUYING POWER RISES GREATLY

NEW YORK African Americans constitute the largest racial minority market, wielding greater economic clout than ever before, according to the Selig Center for Economic Growth.

That sector's buying power was $318 billion in 1990. But 18 years later, African-American buying power equaled $913 billion, and is projected to increase to $1.24 trillion in 2013, per Selig. That would mark a 35.7 percent gain over those five years.

The African-American Internet population reflects the high percentage of young people in the general African-American community: 30 percent overall are under age 18, and 71 percent of that group is online.

While 45 percent of African-American households had some type of Internet access in 2007, this group is more likely than white Americans to surf the 'Net via mobile phone, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

HERSH: "EXECUTIVE ASSASSINATION RING" REPORTED DIRECTLY TO CHENEY

Hersh: 'Executive assassination ring' reported directly to Cheney
Muriel Kane
Published: Wednesday March 11, 2009




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Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh dropped a bombshell on Tuesday when he told an audience at the University of Minnesota that the military was running an "executive assassination ring" throughout the Bush years which reported directly to former Vice President Dick Cheney.

The remark came out seemingly inadvertently when Hersh was asked by the moderator of a public discussion of "America's Constitutional Crisis" whether abuses of executive power, like those which occurred under Richard Nixon, continue to this day.

Hersh replied, "After 9/11, I haven’t written about this yet, but the Central Intelligence Agency was very deeply involved in domestic activities against people they thought to be enemies of the state. Without any legal authority for it. They haven’t been called on it yet."

Hersh then went on to describe a second area of extra-legal operations: the Joint Special Operations Command. "It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently," he explained. "They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. ... Congress has no oversight of it."

"It’s an executive assassination ring essentially, and it’s been going on and on and on," Hersh stated. "Under President Bush’s authority, they’ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That’s been going on, in the name of all of us."

Hersh told MinnPost.com blogger Eric Black in an email exchange after the event that the subject was "not something I wanted to dwell about in public." He is looking into it for a book, but he believes it may be a year or two before he has enough evidence "for even the most skeptical."

Stories have been coming out about covert Pentagon assassination squads for the last several years. In 2003, Hersh himself reported on Task Force 121, which operated chiefly out of the Joint Special Operations Command. Others stories spoke of a proposed Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group.

As Hersh noted in Minnesota, the New York Times on Monday described the Joint Special Operations Command as overseeing the secret commando units in Afghanistan whose missions were temporarily ordered halted last month because of growing concerns over excessive civilian deaths.

However, it appears that Hersh is now on the trail of some fresh revelation about these squads and their connection to Vice-President Cheney that goes well beyond anything that has previously been reported.:

BILL GATES RICHEST MAN IN WORLD AS BILLIONAIRES SHRINK DUE TO GLOBAL RECESSSION

US tycoons are back on top with Microsoft founder Bill Gates again the world's richest man in a year when even billionaires felt the heat of the global recession, Forbes magazine said Wednesday.

The wealthy few did not escape big shocks this year, with net worth on the list of 793 billionaires -- down from 1,125 billionaires in 2008 -- plummeting to 2.4 trillion dollars from 4.4 trillion, Forbes said.

The annual rich list put Gates back on top with a net worth of 40 billion dollars, although he saw his bank balance lose 18 billion over the last 12 months.

In second came investor Warren Buffett with 37 billion dollars, despite losing 25 billion dollars this year in the value of his Berkshire Hathaway shares.

Also losing 25 billion dollars, Mexican telecoms king Carlos Slim still managed to come in third with 35 billion dollars.

The US surge sent billionaires from India, Russia and Turkey into retreat.

US rich fill 10 of the 20 top spots and New York replaced Moscow as home to most billionaires, with 55 to 27. London comes in second with 28.

Russia, where wealth is closely tied to commodity prices, lost two thirds of its billionaires, down to 32.

Two Indians appear in the top 20, but not one from Russia, which had four in the previous year's list.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg was notable as the only top 20 member to see a net gain.

That was not because of his salary, which is a symbolic dollar a year, but thanks to re-evaluation of Bloomberg financial news agency after the mayor bought a 20 percent stake from Merrill Lynch last year for 4.5 billion dollars.

TIMELINE: GLOBAL SCHOOL SHOOTINGS

Timeline: Global school shootings
A shooting rampage at a high school in southern Germany has left 16 people dead, including the teenage gunman, in the country's worst such incident since 2002 [Reuters]

Schools, colleges and universities across the world have been the scenes of multiple shooting incidents in recent years:

September 23, 2008: Kauhajoki, Finland

Matti Juhani Saari, 22, kills nine students and a teacher at the Kauhajoki School of Hospitality. He then shoots himself and dies later in hospital.

February 14, 2008: Illinois, US

Stephen Kazmierczak, 27, opens fire in a crowded lecture hall at Northern Illinois University, killing five students and injuring 18 others before committing suicide.

November 7, 2007: Tuusula, Finland

Pekka-Eric Auvinen, 18, kills seven fellow students and a teacher at Jokela High School before shooting himself.

April 16, 2007: Virginia, US

Cho Seung-hui, 23, fatally shoots 32 people at Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg, then kills himself in the deadliest gun rampage in the country's history.

November 20, 2006: Emsdetten, Germany

Sebastian Bosse, 18, an expelled student, kills 14 teachers, two students and a policeman during a gun rampage at Gutenberg School, his former high school, which ends with him taking his own life.

April 20, 1999: Colorado, US

Students Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, kill 12 students and a teacher, and wound 26 other people before taking their own lives, in a carefully planned attack on Columbine High School in Littleton, Denver.

March 13, 1996: Dunblane, Scotland

Thomas Hamilton, 43, kills 16 Kindergarten children and their teacher during a three-minute shooting spree in a primary school gymnasium before committing suicide.

SNEAK PEAK:SCENES FROM THE OBAMA DECEPTION

2O KILLED IN RIOT AT CIUDAD JUAREZ PRISON

20 killed in riot at Ciudad Juarez prison
Miguel Tovar / Associated Press
A soldier stands guard at the prison in Ciudad Juarez during the riot. The violence comes as the ravaged city is being placed under military control
It takes security forces nearly three hours to contain the unrest among members of three gangs. All of the dead are gang members, authorities say.
By Tracy Wilkinson and Cecilia Sánchez
March 5, 2009
Reporting from Mexico City -- A fierce battle between rival drug gangs at a prison in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez on Wednesday left at least 20 inmates dead and three critically wounded, authorities said.

It took guards, police and military reinforcements nearly three hours to contain the unrest. Black smoke drifted from the cinder-block prison and helicopters patrolled overhead as anxious families waited outside for news.


Most of the victims had been beaten or stabbed to death.

The violence comes as the ravaged city is being placed under military control. Ciudad Juarez, just across the border from El Paso, has been the epicenter of Mexico's raging drug war. More people have been killed there than anywhere else -- 1,600 last year and 250 just last month.

In recent weeks, the city's police chief was driven from office by powerful drug traffickers who began slaying cops to underline their threat. The state governor was ambushed; he survived but a bodyguard was killed.

President Felipe Calderon ordered the deployment of additional troops and police officers to Ciudad Juarez, nearly tripling the number, in an attempt to restore law and order.

On Tuesday, city officials announced that the military would also take command of the local, corruption-ridden police force as well as transportation and city prisons.

Wednesday's prison uprising took place at a state facility that was not slated to go under military authority.

Warden Cesar Martinez Acosta stressed that the fighting did not target guards or security forces, and was not part of a breakout attempt. He denied reports that two federal agents were among the dead.

The brawl, which erupted around 6 a.m. at the end of overnight conjugal visits, pitted the Aztecas gang against the Mexicles. Also fighting was the Mexicles' ally, Artistas Asesinos (Murdering Artists).

The Aztecas work with the so-called Juarez cartel, the trafficking syndicate that has controlled Ciudad Juarez for years. It is now locked in deadly competition for the area with the Sinaloa cartel.

All of the dead were from the Mexicles and Artistas Asesinos gangs, authorities said, suggesting that the Aztecas started the fight. One report said members of the Aztecas stole a guard's keys and were able to free their cohorts and begin a rampage into parts of the prison controlled by their rivals.

Police with tear gas backed by the army eventually put down the riot.

At one point, inmates could be seen on the roof of the prison, torching mattresses. Witnesses said they saw bodies being hurled from second-story windows.

Carlos Gonzalez, spokesman for the state public security ministry, said the exact causes of the brawl were not yet known, but that bad blood between the Aztecas and Mexicles runs deep. They fight over control of drugs, guns and other contraband in the prison.

"There have been conflicts between these two gangster groups for a very long time, and there have been fights in the past," he said in an interview. He said guns and sharp instruments were used in Wednesday's melee.

Meanwhile, the military buildup in Ciudad Juarez has continued. An additional 3,200 troops arrived last weekend and more are on the way, officials said Wednesday.

The troops will patrol the city and set up nighttime checkpoints aimed at preventing the free movement of traffickers.

The office of Mayor Jose Reyes Ferriz issued instructions to citizens to approach roadblocks with care, turning on the lights inside their cars and rolling down their windows so that soldiers can identify passengers easily.

Eventually the army will also take up positions in rural areas around Ciudad Juarez to block traffickers from fleeing to neighboring states.

TROOPS ASSASINATE PRESIDENT OF GUINEA-BISSAU & HIS POLITICAL RIVAL

Renegade soldiers have shot dead the president of the West African country of Guinea-Bissau, officials say.

The killing of Joao Bernardo Vieira is thought to have been a revenge attack, after the army chief of staff died in an explosion a few hours earlier.

The army denies there is a coup, and the capital Bissau is said to be quiet.

Guinea-Bissau is one of the world's poorest states. It has a history of coups and has become a major transit route for smuggling cocaine to Europe.


It's not only the assassination of a president or a chief of staff, it's the assassination of democracy
Mohamed Ibn Chambas
Ecowas

'I saw Bissau rocket attack'
Haunted by history of crisis

The cabinet announced seven days of national mourning for both leaders and launched a judicial inquiry into the deaths.

"President Vieira was killed by the army as he tried to flee his house, which was being attacked by a group of soldiers close to the chief of staff Tagme Na Waie, early this morning," military spokesman Zamora Induta told AFP news agency.

He accused Mr Vieira of being responsible for the death of the army chief of staff, with whom he had fallen out.

'Avenge'

Braima Camara, a reporter from privately-owned Radio Pindiquiti in Bissau, told the BBC the president had been killed at his private house, not far from the presidential palace.

He said the president had been shot and stabbed in retaliation after he admitted giving the orders for Gen Tagme to be killed.

The president's house was largely destroyed in the assault and later looted by soldiers, he said.


JOAO BERNARDO VIEIRA
1939: Born
Electrician by trade
Key figure in struggle against Portuguese colonial rule
1980: Came to power in coup, as head of armed forces
1994: Won country's first multi-party elections
1999: Overthrown after sacking army chief
2005: Returned from asylum to win presidential election

Obituary: President Vieira
He added that the military had taken the president's wife and family to the UN representative in Bissau.

Chief of staff Gen Tagme died after a blast late on Sunday that destroyed part of the military headquarters.

The army then ordered two private radio stations in the city to cease broadcasting.

Armed forces spokesman Samuel Fernandes told reporters at one station: "We are going to pursue the attackers and avenge ourselves".

But in a statement on state radio following Mr Vieira's death, the military insisted no coup was in progress.

The armed forces statement said the military would respect the constitutional order - in which the head of the parliament succeeds the president in the event of his death.

The national assembly speaker - Raimundo Pereira - has now taken over at the helm of a transitional government and must organise presidential elections within 60 days.

The president and army chief are said to have been at odds for months.

File photo of Gen Tagme Na Waie, chief of staff of Guinea-Bissau's armed forces, who was killed on Sunday
Relations between Gen Tagme (above) and President Vieira had soured
Renegade soldiers last November attacked the presidential palace with automatic weapons in a failed coup attempt.

The African Union, the European Union and former colonial ruler Portugal condemned the killing of 69-year-old Mr Vieira - nicknamed "Nino" - as did Mohamed Ibn Chambas from the regional economic bloc Ecowas.

"It's not only the assassination of a president or a chief of staff, it's the assassination of democracy," Mr Chambas told AFP.

Ecowas is due to hold an emergency summit about the crisis in Bissau on Tuesday, while the AU is reportedly arranging its own meeting over the situation.

Plagued by coups

The West and Central Africa head of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime said he did not think the killing had anything to do with the drug trade.

Antonio Mazzittelli told the BBC's Focus on Africa programme it was more "the result of an institutional and personal character crisis rather than anything else".

After last November's attack, the president was subsequently given his own 400-strong militia for protection.
BBC map

In January, that militia was accused of trying to kill the head of the army and was then disbanded.

Some analysts suggested an ethnic dimension to the unrest.

President Vieira, from the minority Papel ethnic group, once accused officers from the majority Balanta community of plotting against him. Several were condemned to death and others to long prison sentences.

Guinea-Bissau has been plagued by coups and political unrest since it gained independence from Portugal in 1974.

President Vieira, just like the country's previous leaders, relied on the army to stay in power, and personal rifts made it a rocky relationship, the BBC's West Africa correspondent Will Ross says.

Guinea-Bissau is a major transit point for Latin American cocaine headed for Europe and some army officials are known to have become involved in the trade, our correspondent says.

WORLDS ONLY PINK DOLPHIN SEEN IN LOUISIANA

FOR ALL MY CONSPIRACY BUFFS:
"from the writings of the 19th Century writer and explorer George Catlin, who for eight year (1832-39) complied the most knowledge ever assembled of the ancient tribes of North America ... we learn of the ancient myth of the Chitimacha Indians (Louisiana) as related to the mysterious Mandan Tribe about this pink dolphin that warns that “when the little sea savior [Chitimacha name for dolphins] returns with the coat of our children [pink in colour] for only 20 more times will the small eye [Moon] rise from its nest in the great tree [sky] when it will be overturned/turned over again to be born again in great chaos and pain and to our most sacred hiding places all must flee.”


The world's only pink Bottlenose dolphin which was discovered in an inland lake in Louisiana, USA, has become such an attraction that conservationists have warned tourists to leave it alone.

Charter boat captain Erik Rue, 42, photographed the animal, which is actually an albino, when he began studying it after the mammal first surfaced in Lake Calcasieu, an inland saltwater estuary, north of the Gulf of Mexico in southwestern USA.

Capt Rue originally saw the dolphin, which also has reddish eyes, swimming with a pod of four other dolphins, with one appearing to be its mother which never left its side.

He said: "I just happened to see a little pod of dolphins, and I noticed one that was a little lighter.

"It was absolutely stunningly pink.

"I had never seen anything like it. It's the same color throughout the whole body and it looks like it just came out of a paint booth.

"The dolphin appears to be healthy and normal other than its coloration, which is quite beautiful and stunningly pink.

"The mammal is entirely pink from tip to tail and has reddish eyes indicating it's albinism. The skin appears smooth, glossy pink and without flaws.

MUST READ!!!!SPEECH BY COMRADE CHI HAOTIAN-VICE CHAIRMAN OF CHINA'S MILITARY COMMISSION

December, 2005
3-1-9

The following is the actual text of a speech delivered in December, 2005 by Comrade Chi Haotian ­the Vice-Chairman of China's Military Commission to top officers and generals. Keep in mind that China has for many years advocated deceitful and covert warfare against its enemies. This is their Modus Operandi. There should be little question that a "Bird Flu" Pandemic would deeply excite them. (Don't forget how they have poisoned thousands of American pets and knowingly placed lead paints on toddler's toys.)

"Comrades, I'm very excited today, because the large-scale online survey sina.com that was done for us showed that our next generation is quite promising and our Party's cause will be carried on. In answering the question, "Will you shoot at women, children and prisoners of war," more than 80 per cent of the respondents answered in the affirmative, exceeding by far our expectations. Today I'd like to focus on why we asked sina.com to conduct this online survey among our people. My speech today is a sequel to my speech last time, during which I started with a discussion of the issue of the three islands [Taiwan, Diaoyu Islands and the Spratley Islands --- Ott] and mentioned that 20 years of the idyllic theme of 'peace and development' had come to an end, and concluded that modernization under the saber is the only option for China's next phase. I also mentioned we have a vital stake overseas. The central issue of this survey appears to be whether one should shoot at women, children and prisoners of war, but its real significance goes far beyond that. Ostensibly, our intention is mainly to figure out what the Chinese people's attitude towards war is: If these future soldiers do not hesitate to kill even noncombatants, they'll naturally be doubly ready and ruthless in killing combatants. Therefore, the responses to the survey questions may reflect the general attitude people have towards war..We wanted to know: If China's global development will necessitate massive deaths in enemy countries; will our people endorse that scenario? Will they be for or against it?

The fact is, our 'development' refers to the great revitalization of the Chinese nation, which, of course, is not limited to the land we have now but also includes the whole world. As everybody knows, according to the views propagated by the Western scholars, humanity as a whole originated from one single mother in Africa. Therefore no race can claim racial superiority. However, according to the research conducted by most Chinese scholars, the Chinese are different from other races on earth. We did not originate in Africa. Instead, we originated independently in the land of China. Therefore, we can rightfully assert that we are the product of cultural roots of more than a million years, civilization and progress of more than ten thousand years, an ancient nation of five thousand years, and a single Chinese entity of two thousand years. This is the Chinese nation that calls itself 'descendants of Yan and Huang.'

During our long history, our people have disseminated throughout the Americas and the regions along the Pacific Rim, and they became Indians in the Americas and the East Asian ethnic groups in the South Pacific. We all know that on account of our national superiority, during the thriving and prosperous Tang Dynasty our civilization was at the peak of the world. We were the centre of the world civilization, and no other civilization in the world was comparable to ours. Later on, because of our complacency, narrow-mindedness, and the self-enclosure of our own country, we were surpassed by Western civilization, and the centre of the world shifted to the West.

In reviewing history, one may ask: Will the centre of the world civilization shift back to China? Actually, Comrade Liu Huaqing made similar points in early 1980's Based on an historical analysis, he pointed out that the centre of world civilization is shifting. It shifted from the East to Western Europe and later to the United States; now it is shifting back to the East. Therefore, if we refer to the 19th Century as the British Century and the 20th century as the American Century, then the 21st Century will be the Chinese Century! (Wild applause fills the auditorium.)

Our Chinese people are wiser than the Germans because, fundamentally, our race is superior to theirs. As a result, we have a longer history, more people, and larger land area. On this basis, our ancestors left us with the two most essential heritages, which are atheism and great unity. It was Confucius, the founder of our Chinese culture, who gave us these heritages. These two heritages determined that we have a stronger ability to survive than the West. That is why the Chinese race has been able to prosper for so long. We are destined 'not to be buried by either heaven or earth' no matter how severe the natural, man-made, and national disasters. This is our advantage. Take response to war as an example. The reason that the United States remains today is that it has never seen war on its mainland. Once its enemies aim at the mainland, the enemies would have already reached Washington before its congress finishes debating and authorizes the president to declare war. But for us, we don't waste time on these trivial things. Maybe you have now come to understand why we recently decided to further promulgate atheism. If we let theology from the West into China and empty us from the inside, if we let all Chinese people listen to God and follow God, who will obediently listen to us and follow us? If the common people don't believe Comrade Hu Jintao is a qualified leader, begin to question his authority, and want to monitor him, if the religious followers in our society question why we are leading God in churches, can our Party continue to rule China??

The first pressing issue facing us is living space. This is the biggest focus of the revitalization of the Chinese race. In my last speech, I said that the fight over basic living resources (including land and ocean) is the source of the vast majority of wars in history. This may change in the information age, but not fundamentally. Our per capita resources are much less than those of Germany's back then. In addition, economic development in the last twenty-plus years had a negative impact, and climates are rapidly changing for the worse. Our resources are in very short supply. The environment is severely polluted, especially that of soil, water, and air. Not only our ability to sustain and develop our race, but even its survival is gravely threatened, to a degree much greater than faced Germany back then Anybody who has been to Western countries knows that their living space is much better than ours. They have forests alongside the highways, while we hardly have any trees by our streets. Their sky is often blue with white clouds, while our sky is covered with a layer of dark haze. Their tap water is clean enough for drinking, while even our ground water is so polluted that it can't be drunk without filtering. They have few people in the streets, and two or three people can occupy a small residential building; in contrast our streets are always crawling with people, and several people have to share one room.

Many years ago, there was a book titled Yellow Catastrophes. It said that, due to our following the American style of consumption, our limited resources would no longer support the population and society would collapse once our population reaches 1.3 billion. Now our population has already exceeded this limit, and we are now relying on imports to sustain our nation. It's not that we haven't paid attention to this issue. The Ministry of Land Resources is specialized in this issue. But we must understand that the term 'living space' (lebenstraum) is too closely related to Nazi Germany.

The reason we don't want to discuss this too openly is to avoid the West's association of us with Nazi Germany, which could in turn reinforce the view that China is a threat. Therefore, in our emphasis on He Xin's new theory, 'Human Rights are just living rights' we only talk about 'living' but not 'space' so as to avoid using the term 'living space.' From the perspective of history, the reason that China is faced with the issue of living space is because Western countries have developed ahead of Eastern countries. Western countries established colonies all around the world, therefore giving themselves an advantage on the issue of living space. To solve this problem, we must lead the Chinese people outside of China, so that they can develop outside of China.

Would the United States allow us to go out to gain new living space? First, if the United States is firm in blocking us, it is hard for us to do anything significant to Taiwan and some other countries! Second, even if we could snatch some land from Taiwan, Vietnam, India, or even Japan, how much more living space can we get? Very trivial! Only countries like the United States, Canada and Australia have the vast land to serve our need for mass colonization.

Therefore, solving the 'issue of America' is the key to solving all other issues. First, this makes it possible for us to have many people migrate there and even establish another Chinaunder the same leadership of the CCP. America was originally discovered by the ancestors of the yellow race, but Columbus gave credit to the White race. We the descendants of the Chinese nation are ENTITLED to the possession of the land! It is historical destiny that China and United States will come into unavoidable confrontation on a narrow path and fight. In the long run, the relationship of China and the United States is one of a life-and-death struggle. Of course, right now it is not the time to openly break up with them yet. Our reform and opening to the outside world still rely on their capital and technology. We still need America. Therefore, we must do everything we can to promote our relationship with America, learn from America in all aspects and use America as an example to reconstruct our country. Only by using special means to 'clean up' America will we be able to lead the Chinese people there. Only by using non-destructive weapons that can kill many people will we be able to reserve America for ourselves.

There has been rapid development of modern biological technology, and new bio weapons have been invented one after another. Of course we have not been idle; in the past years we have seized the opportunity to master weapons of this kind. We are capable of achieving our purpose of 'cleaning up' America all of a sudden. When Comrade Xiaoping was still with us, the Party Central Committee had the perspicacity to make the right decision not to develop aircraft carrier groups and focused instead on developing lethal weapons that can eliminate mass populations of the enemy country. Biological weapons are unprecedented in their ruthlessness, but if the Americans do not die then the Chinese have to die. If the Chinese people are strapped to the present land, a total societal collapse is bound to take place. According to the computations of the author of Yellow Peril, more than half of the Chinese will die, and that figure would be more than 800 million people! Just after the liberation, our yellow land supported nearly 500 million people, while today the official figure of the population is more than 1.3 billion. This yellow land has reached the limit of its capacity. One day, who know how soon it will come, the great collapse will occur any time and more than half of the population will have to go.

It is indeed brutal to kill one or two hundred million Americans. But that is the only path that will secure a Chinese century, a century in which the CCP leads the world. We, as revolutionary humanitarians, do not want deaths, But if history confronts us with a choice between deaths of Chinese and those of Americans, we'd have to pick the latter, as, for us, it is more important to safeguard the lives of the Chinese people and the life of our Party. The last problem I want to talk about is of firmly seizing the preparations for military battle. The central committee believes, as long as we resolve the United States problem at one blow, our domestic problems will all be readily solved. Therefore, our military battle preparation appears to aim at Taiwan, but in fact is aimed at the United States, and the preparation is far beyond the scope of attacking aircraft carriers or satellites. Marxism pointed out that violence is the midwife for the birth of the new society. Therefore war is the midwife for the birth of China's century."

CORRUPTION USA- HOW WALL STREET PAID FOR ITS OWN FUNERAL

CORRUPTION-US: How Wall Street Paid For Its Own Funeral
By Marina Litvinsky

WASHINGTON, Mar 4 (IPS) - A new report says that Wall Street has only itself to blame for the misguided deregulation that led to the current deepening financial crisis.

Issued Wednesday by Essential Information and the Consumer Education Foundation, the report documents billions of dollars spent by the financial sector on what would eventually be their own downfall.

The 231-page report, "Sold Out: How Wall Street and Washington Betrayed America," shows that the financial sector invested more than 5 billion dollars on purchasing political influence in Washington over the past decade, with as many as 3,000 lobbyists winning deregulation and other policy decisions that led directly to the current financial collapse.

"The report details, step-by-step, how Washington systematically sold out to Wall Street," said Harvey Rosenfield, president of the California-based non-profit organisation Consumer Education Foundation.

"Depression-era programmes that would have prevented the financial meltdown that began last year were dismantled, and the warnings of those who foresaw disaster were drowned in an ocean of political money," he said. "Americans were betrayed, and we are paying a high price - trillions of dollars - for that betrayal."

According to the report, government regulators, Congress and the executive branch have, on a bipartisan basis, spent the past three decades steadily eroding the regulatory system that restrained the financial sector from acting on its own worst tendencies.

From 1998-2008, Wall Street investment firms, commercial banks, hedge funds, real estate companies and insurance conglomerates made political contributions totalling 1.725 billion dollars and spent another 3.4 billion on lobbyists - a financial juggernaut aimed at undercutting federal regulation.

"Congress and the Executive Branch responded to the legal bribes from the financial sector, rolling back common-sense standards, barring honest regulators from issuing rules to address emerging problems and trashing enforcement efforts," said Robert Weissman of Essential Information and the lead author of the report.

"The progressive erosion of regulatory restraining walls led to a flood of bad loans, and a tsunami of bad bets based on those bad loans," he said. "Now, there is wreckage across the financial landscape."

The report documents a dozen distinct deregulatory moves that, in concert, led to the financial meltdown.

For example, the "rise of the culture of recklessness" was aided by the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act. The Financial Services Modernisation Act of 1999 formally repealed the 1933 statute and related laws, which prohibited commercial banks from offering investment banking and insurance services. Erasing them from the books helped create the conditions in which banks invested monies from checking and savings accounts into creative financial instruments such as mortgage-backed securities and credit default swaps - investment gambles that rocked the financial markets in 2008.

The report also said that banking regulators retained authority to crack down on predatory lending abuses, which would have protected homeowners and lessened the current financial crisis if the regulators hadn’t "sat on their hands." The Federal Reserve took just three formal actions against subprime lenders from 2002 to 2007. The Office of Comptroller of the Currency, which has authority over almost 1,800 banks, took three consumer-protection enforcement actions from 2004 to 2006.

Another deregulatory federal law that benefited mortgage lenders at the expense of the public deals with assignee liability. It states that with limited exceptions, only the original mortgage lender is liable for any predatory and illegal features of a mortgage - even if the mortgage is transferred to another party.

The report points out that this arrangement effectively immunised acquirers of the mortgage ("assignees") for any problems with the initial loan, and relieved them of any duty to investigate the terms of the loan. Wall Street interests could purchase, bundle and securitise subprime loans, including many with pernicious, predatory terms, without fear of liability for illegal loan terms.

The arrangement left victimised borrowers with no cause of action against anyone but the original lender, and typically with no defences against being foreclosed upon.

Other misdeeds that led to the financial crisis include prohibitions on regulating financial derivatives; a voluntary regulation scheme for big investment banks; and the repeal of regulatory barriers between commercial banks and investment banks.

The report presents data on financial firms’ campaign contributions and disclosed lobbying investments, which supports its claim that "political decisions were influenced by political expenditures and extraordinary lobbying," as Weissman put it.

For example, securities firms invested more than 504 million dollars in campaign contributions, and an additional 576 million dollars in lobbying, while commercial banks spent more than 154 million dollars on campaign contributions and invested 383 million dollars in officially registered lobbying.

Individual firms spent tens of millions of dollars each. During the decade-long period Goldman Sachs spent more than 46 million dollars on political influence buying; Citigroup spent more than 108 million; and the now defunct Merrill Lynch spent more than 68 million dollars.

According to the report, the financial contributions were bipartisan: about 55 percent of the political donations went to Republicans and 45 percent to Democrats, primarily reflecting the balance of power over the decade. Democrats took just more than half of the Wall Street’s 2008 election cycle contributions.

The financial sector also bolstered its political strength by placing Wall Street expatriates in top regulatory positions, including the post of Treasury Secretary held by two former Goldman Sachs chairs, Robert Rubin and Henry Paulson.

Financial firms employed a legion of lobbyists - maintaining nearly 3,000 separate lobbyists in 2007 alone. Insurance companies had 1,219 lobbyists working for them; Real estate interests hired 1,142.

These firms drew heavily from former government officials in choosing their lobbyists. Surveying 20 leading financial firms, the report found that 142 of the lobbyists they employed from 1998-2008 were previously high-ranking officials or employees in the executive branch or Congress.

"It’s very important to identify the causes of the crisis if we are to fix it and prevent it from occurring again," Weissman told IPS, speaking to the report’s relevance.

He adds that one of the ways through which many deregulatory moves were justified was the claim that they facilitated "financial innovation - a buzz word on Wall Street and Washington."

"Our review suggests that while there may be some innovations that are socially beneficial, in general (financial innovation has served as) a code word for complexity," he explained. "It has been a means for Wall St. to confuse consumers and investors, extract money from them and the overall economy, and build up a house of cards that has now tumbled down to disastrous effects."

The report calls on Congress to adopt the view that Wall Street has no legitimate seat at the table. "This time, legislating must be to control Wall Street, not further Wall Street’s control," it says.

"The first substantive recommendation we make is to undue the deregulatory decisions that we have profiled," said Weissman.

Other recommendations include prohibiting some forms of financial instruments, as well as a financial transaction tax to slow down speculation and curb the turbulence in the markets.

(END/2009)

WORLDS POOR SUFFERING MOST IN THE CREDIT CRUNCH

• Development goals under threat from global slump
• Shrinking GDP will see $4.6bn fall in EU aid flow
Comments (4)

* Ashley Seager
* The Guardian, Thursday 5 March 2009
* Article history

The credit crunch is hitting the income of the world's poorest people the most and will make the UN's Millennium Development Goals more difficult to achieve than ever, according to research released today. The Global Monitoring Report from Unesco estimates the 390 million poorest Africans will see their income drop by around 20% - far more than in the developed world.

The global financial crisis has seen a fall in commodity prices as well as a drop in investment flows to poorer countries. The report's authors - Kevin Watkins and Patrick Montjourides - estimate this will cost sub-Saharan Africa's poorest people $18bn (£12.8bn), or $46 per person.

"These numbers will bring the region's limited progress in poverty reduction to a shuddering halt," says Watkins.

Douglas Alexander, the international development secretary, is hosting a conference in London next week to discuss the future of the goals, such as reducing child mortality and poverty amid growing concern progress towards these, agreed with great fanfare in 2000, is grinding to a halt.

The study also highlights wider human development impacts, including the prospect of an increase of between 200,000 and 400,000 in infant mortality. Child malnutrition, already a rising trend, will be one of the main drivers of higher child death rates. "Millions of children face the prospect of long-term irreversible cognitive damage as a result of the financial crisis," says Montjourides.

The Unesco warning follows hot on the heels of one from the International Monetary Fund. It said the world's 22 poorest countries might need an additional $25bn aid this year to cope with the financial crisis. If the crisis is worse than the IMF expects, though, that could hit $140bn.

Unesco reckons poor countries will need around $7bn to meet key education targets which form part of the goals. That compares with the $380bn of public money pumped into banks by rich countries in the fourth quarter of 2008. "Aid donors could clearly do far more to protect the world's poorest people from a crisis manufactured by the world's richest financiers and regulatory failure in rich countries," says Watkins.

The report analyses the scope of many of the poor countries affected by the credit crunch to use tax and spending measures to help themselves combat it. The conclusion is their capacity to do so is very limited. Using a new indicator for fiscal capacity, the analysis estimates 43 out of 48 low-income countries lack the wherewithal to provide a pro-poor fiscal stimulus.

Fiscal constraints are especially marked in many of the countries furthest from the international goals, it adds. There is a real danger these countries, many of which have been making progress towards universal primary education, will suffer setbacks, it says. The at-risk group includes Mozambique, Ethiopia, Mali, Senegal, Rwanda and Bangladesh.

The report says aid budgets in rich nations are being squeezed because they are expressed as a share of GDP, which is contracting. It estimates the EU's commitment to provide 0.56% of GDP in aid by 2010 will actually mean a drop of $4.6bn.

Unesco wants a concerted international effort to limit the impact of the financial crisis on the poor. Suggested measures include an increase of more than $500bn in IMF special drawing rights, along with governance reforms to give developing countries an increased voice.

The authors also call for the EU to provide a $4.6bn aid adjustment premium. They argue increased aid should be directed towards social protection and safety nets for the most vulnerable.

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By JOE NOCERA
Published: February 27, 2009

Next week, perhaps as early as Monday, the American International Group is going to report the largest quarterly loss in history. Rumors suggest it will be around $60 billion, which will affirm, yet again, A.I.G.’s sorry status as the most crippled of all the nation’s wounded financial institutions. The recent quarterly losses suffered by Merrill Lynch and Citigroup — “only” $15.4 billion and $8.3 billion, respectively — pale by comparison.

* American International Group

At the same time A.I.G. reveals its loss, the federal government is also likely to announce — yet again! — a new plan to save A.I.G., the third since September. So far the government has thrown $150 billion at the company, in loans, investments and equity injections, to keep it afloat. It has softened the terms it set for the original $85 billion loan it made back in September. To ease the pressure even more, the Federal Reserve actually runs a facility that buys toxic assets that A.I.G. had insured. A.I.G. effectively has been nationalized, with the government owning a hair under 80 percent of the stock. Not that it’s worth very much; A.I.G. shares closed Friday at 42 cents.

Donn Vickrey, who runs the independent research firm Gradient Analytics, predicts that A.I.G. is going to cost taxpayers at least $100 billion more before it finally stabilizes, by which time the company will almost surely have been broken into pieces, with the government owning large chunks of it. A quarter of a trillion dollars, if it comes to that, is an astounding amount of money to hand over to one company to prevent it from going bust. Yet the government feels it has no choice: because of A.I.G.’s dubious business practices during the housing bubble it pretty much has the world’s financial system by the throat.

If we let A.I.G. fail, said Seamus P. McMahon, a banking expert at Booz & Company, other institutions, including pension funds and American and European banks “will face their own capital and liquidity crisis, and we could have a domino effect.” A bailout of A.I.G. is really a bailout of its trading partners — which essentially constitutes the entire Western banking system.

I don’t doubt this bit of conventional wisdom; after the calamity that followed the fall of Lehman Brothers, which was far less enmeshed in the global financial system than A.I.G., who would dare allow the world’s biggest insurer to fail? Who would want to take that risk? But that doesn’t mean we should feel resigned about what is happening at A.I.G. In fact, we should be furious. More than even Citi or Merrill, A.I.G. is ground zero for the practices that led the financial system to ruin.

“They were the worst of them all,” said Frank Partnoy, a law professor at the University of San Diego and a derivatives expert. Mr. Vickrey of Gradient Analytics said, “It was extreme hubris, fueled by greed.” Other firms used many of the same shady techniques as A.I.G., but none did them on such a broad scale and with such utter recklessness. And yet — and this is the part that should make your blood boil — the company is being kept alive precisely because it behaved so badly.

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When you start asking around about how A.I.G. made money during the housing bubble, you hear the same two phrases again and again: “regulatory arbitrage” and “ratings arbitrage.” The word “arbitrage” usually means taking advantage of a price differential between two securities — a bond and stock of the same company, for instance — that are related in some way. When the word is used to describe A.I.G.’s actions, however, it means something entirely different. It means taking advantage of a loophole in the rules. A less polite but perhaps more accurate term would be “scam.”

As a huge multinational insurance company, with a storied history and a reputation for being extremely well run, A.I.G. had one of the most precious prizes in all of business: an AAA rating, held by no more than a dozen or so companies in the United States. That meant ratings agencies believed its chance of defaulting was just about zero. It also meant it could borrow more cheaply than other companies with lower ratings.

To be sure, most of A.I.G. operated the way it always had, like a normal, regulated insurance company. (Its insurance divisions remain profitable today.) But one division, its “financial practices” unit in London, was filled with go-go financial wizards who devised new and clever ways of taking advantage of Wall Street’s insatiable appetite for mortgage-backed securities. Unlike many of the Wall Street investment banks, A.I.G. didn’t specialize in pooling subprime mortgages into securities. Instead, it sold credit-default swaps.

These exotic instruments acted as a form of insurance for the securities. In effect, A.I.G. was saying if, by some remote chance (ha!) those mortgage-backed securities suffered losses, the company would be on the hook for the losses. And because A.I.G. had that AAA rating, when it sprinkled its holy water over those mortgage-backed securities, suddenly they had AAA ratings too. That was the ratings arbitrage. “It was a way to exploit the triple A rating,” said Robert J. Arvanitis, a former A.I.G. executive who has since become a leading A.I.G. critic.

Why would Wall Street and the banks go for this? Because it shifted the risk of default from themselves to A.I.G., and the AAA rating made the securities much easier to market. What was in it for A.I.G.? Lucrative fees, naturally. But it also saw the fees as risk-free money; surely it would never have to actually pay up. Like everyone else on Wall Street, A.I.G. operated on the belief that the underlying assets — housing — could only go up in price.


That foolhardy belief, in turn, led A.I.G. to commit several other stupid mistakes. When a company insures against, say, floods or earthquakes, it has to put money in reserve in case a flood happens. That’s why, as a rule, insurance companies are usually overcapitalized, with low debt ratios. But because credit-default swaps were not regulated, and were not even categorized as a traditional insurance product, A.I.G. didn’t have to put anything aside for losses. And it didn’t. Its leverage was more akin to an investment bank than an insurance company. So when housing prices started falling, and losses started piling up, it had no way to pay them off. Not understanding the real risk, the company grievously mispriced it.

Second, in many of its derivative contracts, A.I.G. included a provision that has since come back to haunt it. It agreed to something called “collateral triggers,” meaning that if certain events took place, like a ratings downgrade for either A.I.G. or the securities it was insuring, it would have to put up collateral against those securities. Again, the reasons it agreed to the collateral triggers was pure greed: it could get higher fees by including them. And again, it assumed that the triggers would never actually kick in and the provisions were therefore meaningless. Those collateral triggers have since cost A.I.G. many, many billions of dollars. Or, rather, they’ve cost American taxpayers billions.

The regulatory arbitrage was even seamier. A huge part of the company’s credit-default swap business was devised, quite simply, to allow banks to make their balance sheets look safer than they really were. Under a misguided set of international rules that took hold toward the end of the 1990s, banks were allowed use their own internal risk measurements to set their capital requirements. The less risky the assets, obviously, the lower the regulatory capital requirement.

How did banks get their risk measures low? It certainly wasn’t by owning less risky assets. Instead, they simply bought A.I.G.’s credit-default swaps. The swaps meant that the risk of loss was transferred to A.I.G., and the collateral triggers made the bank portfolios look absolutely risk-free. Which meant minimal capital requirements, which the banks all wanted so they could increase their leverage and buy yet more “risk-free” assets. This practice became especially rampant in Europe. That lack of capital is one of the reasons the European banks have been in such trouble since the crisis began.

At its peak, the A.I.G. credit-default business had a “notional value” of $450 billion, and as recently as September, it was still over $300 billion. (Notional value is the amount A.I.G. would owe if every one of its bets went to zero.) And unlike most Wall Street firms, it didn’t hedge its credit-default swaps; it bore the risk, which is what insurance companies do.

It’s not as if this was some Enron-esque secret, either. Everybody knew the capital requirements were being gamed, including the regulators. Indeed, A.I.G. openly labeled that part of the business as “regulatory capital.” That is how they, and their customers, thought of it.

There’s more, believe it or not. A.I.G. sold something called 2a-7 puts, which allowed money market funds to invest in risky bonds even though they are supposed to be holding only the safest commercial paper. How could they do this? A.I.G. agreed to buy back the bonds if they went bad. (Incredibly, the Securities and Exchange Commission went along with this.) A.I.G. had a securities lending program, in which it would lend securities to investors, like short-sellers, in return for cash collateral. What did it do with the money it received? Incredibly, it bought mortgage-backed securities. When the firms wanted their collateral back, it had sunk in value, thanks to A.I.G.’s foolish investment strategy. The practice has cost A.I.G. — oops, I mean American taxpayers — billions.

Here’s what is most infuriating: Here we are now, fully aware of how these scams worked. Yet for all practical purposes, the government has to keep them going. Indeed, that may be the single most important reason it can’t let A.I.G. fail. If the company defaulted, hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of credit-default swaps would “blow up,” and all those European banks whose toxic assets are supposedly insured by A.I.G. would suddenly be sitting on immense losses. Their already shaky capital structures would be destroyed. A.I.G. helped create the illusion of regulatory capital with its swaps, and now the government has to actually back up those contracts with taxpayer money to keep the banks from collapsing. It would be funny if it weren’t so awful.

I asked Mr. Arvanitis, the former A.I.G. executive, if the company viewed what it had done during the bubble as a form of gaming the system. “Oh no,” he said, “they never thought of it as abuse. They thought of themselves as satisfying their customers.”

That’s either a remarkable example of the power of rationalization, or they were lying to themselves, figuring that when the house of cards finally fell, somebody else would have to clean it up.

That would be us, the taxpayers.