Brad Pitt blasts oil spill execs says death penalty might be considered
Spike Lee If God is Willing and Da Creek Don't Rise youtube
Brad Pitt blasts oil spill execs says death penalty might be considered
Brad Pitt blasts oil spill execs
23/08/2010 13:32
Email · Print
Brad Pitt says that executives responsible for the Gulf of Mexico oil spill deserve the death penalty.
The Inglourious Basterds star speaks out against those behind the oil rig explosion in a new documentary titled If God is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise. The oil spill last April caused the worst environmental disaster in US history with millions of gallons of oil flooding into the sea.
Of the people responsible for the disaster, Brad says: “I was never for the death penalty before; I am willing to look at it again.”
The oil spill, which happened after an explosion on the BP operated Deepwater Horizon rig, resulted in the decimation of wildlife and habitat of marine and coastal animals, as well as loss of livelihood for many fishermen and other people who depend of the area for work. As yet the root cause of the disaster remains unconfirmed.
Brad’s comments are at the end of the documentary, filmed by Spike Lee, about the effects of Hurricane Katrina on the city of New Orleans, Louisiana, the closest major US city to the Deepwater rig, five years after the hurricane devastated the city, leaving 80 per cent of it waterlogged.
Brad spearheaded the Make it Right project after the natural disaster, which built 150 affordable and sustainable homes in one of the areas of New Orleans that was worst hit.
The documentary originally ended on a positive note, with the New Orleans saints NFL team winning the Super Bowl, but after the oil spill, Spike extended the programme to include the effects of it.
He said: "This would have been a much more upbeat documentary for sure."
An estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil leaked into the Gulf of Mexico during the 87-day spill. An operation to seal the leak will not be completed until next month.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Monday, August 23, 2010
This first youtube is 28 mins. and the Doping e Coli starts midway......about 15 mins. It's a must watch and then pass far and wide.
Frontiers: Doping e Coli youtube
Aspartame made from genetically modified e-coli youtube
GM E-coli
EXCERPT:
"These alcohols are typically trace byproducts in fermentation," Liao said. "To modify an organism to produce these compounds usually results in toxicity in the cell. We bypassed this difficulty by leveraging the native metabolic networks in E. coli but altered its intracellular chemistry using genetic engineering to produce these alcohols."
The research team modified key pathways in E. coli to produce several higher-chain alcohols from glucose, a renewable carbon source, including isobutanol, 1-butanol, 2-methyl-1-butanol, 3-methyl-1-butanol and 2-phenylethanol.
Intralylix
Food Safety
Foodborne illness of microbial origin continues to be a serious food safety problem worldwide. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has estimated1 that foodborne pathogens cause approximately 76 million illnesses and 5,000 deaths each year in the United States alone. At the present time, the leading causes of death due to foodborne bacterial pathogens are Listeria and Salmonella, followed closely by other foodborne pathogens such as Escherichia coli (E. coli O157:H7, in particular) and Campylobacter jejunii. Bacteriophages may provide a natural, non-toxic, safe, and effective means for significantly reducing or eliminating contamination of foods with specific pathogenic bacteria, thereby eliminating the risk, or significantly reducing the magnitude and severity, of foodborne illness caused by the consumption of foods contaminated with those bacteria. Intralytix has developed and is continuing to develop bacteriophage-based products targeting some of the deadliest foodborne bacterial pathogens, including L. monocytogenes and E. coli O157:H7.
Listeria monocytogenes and ListShield™
Disease caused by L. monocytogenes (listeriosis) has one of the highest fatality rates (approximately 20%) among all foodborne bacterial diseases and, therefore, is of particular concern for human safety. Several outbreaks of foodborne listeriosis have been reported since 1980, when the bacterium was first associated with foodborne transmission. A variety of contaminated foods, including coleslaw, unpasteurized cheese, pasteurized milk, delicatessen meat, and other ready-to-eat (RTE) meat products have been reported to be sources of the etiologic agent. The high fatality rate associated with listeriosis caused the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Food Safety Inspection Service of the United States Department of Agriculture to establish a “zero tolerance” for L. monocytogenes in RTE foods. However, eliminating L. monocytogenes from food processing plants has proved to be a very difficult task and foods contaminated with L. monocytogenes have continued to be important public health problem which have resulted in numerous food recalls.
Intralytix has developed a bacteriophage-based preparation, designated ListShield™, to reduce or eliminate the risk of foodborne listeriosis. The preparation consists of six naturally occurring bacteriophages isolated from the environment and exhaustively studied and carefully selected for inclusion in ListShield™ by Intralytix’s scientists. The preparation, when sprayed onto RTE foods, significantly reduces (usually by 100 to 1000-fold) contamination of those foods with L. monocytogenes. ListShield™ is an all-natural product, and media and components of animal origin are not used during its preparation. Also, it does not contain preservatives or known, potentially allergenic substances (wheat, milk, soy, etc.), and it does not alter the general composition, taste, odor or color of foods. On 18 August 2006, the FDA approved ListShield™ as an additive for RTE foods (21 CFR §172.785). At the present time, Intralytix is the only company in the world to have received FDA approval for using a bacteriophage-based preparation as a food additive. Intralytix considers ListShield™ to be one of the safest and most environmentally friendly natural products for significantly reducing the risk of foodborne human listeriosis due to the consumption of contaminated RTE foods.
ListShield™ is a Star K-certified kosher product and can be used on all foods without affecting their kosher designation.
Escherichia coli O157:H7 and EcoShield™
E. coli O157:H7 is a significant contributor to foodborne illnesses worldwide. It has been estimated to cause approximately 62,000 cases of foodborne disease/year (and ca. 1,800 foodborne illness-related hospitalizations/year) in the United States alone, at an annual cost of ca. 0.7 billion dollars.
Intralytix has developed a new phage-based product, designated EcoShield™, which is effective against E. coli O157:H7. Similar to ListShield™, EcoShield™ is 100% natural, and it does not contain preservatives or any known, potentially allergenic substances. The product is highly effective in reducing contamination of various foods (e.g., ground beef, fruits, vegetables, etc.) with E. coli O157:H7, thus providing a much-needed modality for significantly reducing or eliminating contamination of various food products with the bacterium.
EcoShield™ is a Star K-certified kosher product and can be used on all foods without affecting their kosher designation.
References:
1. Mead, P. S., Slutsker, L., Dietz, V., McCaig, L. F., Bresee, J. S., Shapiro, C., Griffin, P. M., and Tauxe, R. V., Food-related illness and death in the United States, Emerg Infect Dis 5 (5), 607-25, 1999.
2. Buzby, J. C., Children and microbial foodborne illness, Food Review 24, 32-37, 2001.
Viral Meat Spray
HEALTH NEWS
FDA Oks Spray-On Virus Additives for Meat
Written by Rita Jenkins| 20 August, 2006 04:38 GMT
The FDA has approved a spray-on mixture of bacteria-killing viruses as additives to cold cuts, wieners and sausages to destroy Listeria microbes, which kill hundreds of people in the US each year. The latest US-approved additive to ready-to-eat lunchmeat and poultry products is a combination of six bacteriophages -- parasitic viruses that destroy the Listeria monocytogenes bacterium, which sickens thousands and kills hundreds of people each year.
The Food and Drug Administration on Friday declared the virus mix safe to spray on such foods as cold cuts, hot dogs, sausages, sliced ham and turkey prior to packaging.
Foods like these are especially vulnerable to Listeria because they are often not reheated prior to consumption, explained Andrew Zajac of the FDA's Office of Food Additive Safety. Cooking meat kills the Listeria bacterium, but foods can become contaminated after processing.
The FDA's approval of the mixture -- the first time viruses have been approved for use as a food additive -- is a "huge milestone" in the fight against food-borne illnesses, said John Vazzana, chief executive officer of Intralytix. Pregnant women, newborns and adults with weakened immune systems are especially vulnerable to listeriosis. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated that 2,500 people become seriously ill with the infection each year, and 500 ultimately die from it.
Bacteriaphages are grown in a preparation of the same bacteria they are designed to kill, and then purified.
According to Intralytix, typical phages have hollow heads that store their viral DNA and tunnel tails with tips that bind to specific molecules on the surface of their target bacteria. The viral DNA is injected through the tail into the host cell, where it directs the production of progeny phages.
These "young" phages burst from the host cell, thereby destroying it, and go on to infect more bacteria. The viruses will not kill any organism other than their target bacteria.
Prior to issuing its approval, the FDA was concerned that the virus preparation might contain toxic residues associated with the bacteria. Tests found no residues present, however. In small quantities, such residues would be unlikely to cause any health problems, the FDA said.
Salem News GM Foods
EXCERPT:
Our United States Bill of Rights prohibits the federal government from depriving any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law. Wikipedia defines Liberty as a concept of political philosophy and it identifies the condition in which an individual has the right to act according to his or her own willl. Has this not taken place against our will?
From Monsanto’s Web Site: “Our Human Rights Policy is guided by the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, which provides the most widely recognized definition of human rights… Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world; Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people; Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law…”
Author's note: Little of this information that I’m sharing with you is new. This debate has gone on for at least two decades. In mainstream media it has received very little coverage, because typically they are guided by advertising dollars. Food manufacturers have plenty of that. This article was written using a compilation of the research, which is diligently noted below. As a consumer, there is something you can do about it. Your dollar says it all. Think about what you buy. Below is a shopping list put out by the Center for Food Safety to help you determine what may or may not contain genetically modified foods products or ingredients?
Recent Victories - Center for Food Safety Victories/v
Frontiers: Doping e Coli youtube
Aspartame made from genetically modified e-coli youtube
GM E-coli
EXCERPT:
"These alcohols are typically trace byproducts in fermentation," Liao said. "To modify an organism to produce these compounds usually results in toxicity in the cell. We bypassed this difficulty by leveraging the native metabolic networks in E. coli but altered its intracellular chemistry using genetic engineering to produce these alcohols."
The research team modified key pathways in E. coli to produce several higher-chain alcohols from glucose, a renewable carbon source, including isobutanol, 1-butanol, 2-methyl-1-butanol, 3-methyl-1-butanol and 2-phenylethanol.
Intralylix
Food Safety
Foodborne illness of microbial origin continues to be a serious food safety problem worldwide. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has estimated1 that foodborne pathogens cause approximately 76 million illnesses and 5,000 deaths each year in the United States alone. At the present time, the leading causes of death due to foodborne bacterial pathogens are Listeria and Salmonella, followed closely by other foodborne pathogens such as Escherichia coli (E. coli O157:H7, in particular) and Campylobacter jejunii. Bacteriophages may provide a natural, non-toxic, safe, and effective means for significantly reducing or eliminating contamination of foods with specific pathogenic bacteria, thereby eliminating the risk, or significantly reducing the magnitude and severity, of foodborne illness caused by the consumption of foods contaminated with those bacteria. Intralytix has developed and is continuing to develop bacteriophage-based products targeting some of the deadliest foodborne bacterial pathogens, including L. monocytogenes and E. coli O157:H7.
Listeria monocytogenes and ListShield™
Disease caused by L. monocytogenes (listeriosis) has one of the highest fatality rates (approximately 20%) among all foodborne bacterial diseases and, therefore, is of particular concern for human safety. Several outbreaks of foodborne listeriosis have been reported since 1980, when the bacterium was first associated with foodborne transmission. A variety of contaminated foods, including coleslaw, unpasteurized cheese, pasteurized milk, delicatessen meat, and other ready-to-eat (RTE) meat products have been reported to be sources of the etiologic agent. The high fatality rate associated with listeriosis caused the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Food Safety Inspection Service of the United States Department of Agriculture to establish a “zero tolerance” for L. monocytogenes in RTE foods. However, eliminating L. monocytogenes from food processing plants has proved to be a very difficult task and foods contaminated with L. monocytogenes have continued to be important public health problem which have resulted in numerous food recalls.
Intralytix has developed a bacteriophage-based preparation, designated ListShield™, to reduce or eliminate the risk of foodborne listeriosis. The preparation consists of six naturally occurring bacteriophages isolated from the environment and exhaustively studied and carefully selected for inclusion in ListShield™ by Intralytix’s scientists. The preparation, when sprayed onto RTE foods, significantly reduces (usually by 100 to 1000-fold) contamination of those foods with L. monocytogenes. ListShield™ is an all-natural product, and media and components of animal origin are not used during its preparation. Also, it does not contain preservatives or known, potentially allergenic substances (wheat, milk, soy, etc.), and it does not alter the general composition, taste, odor or color of foods. On 18 August 2006, the FDA approved ListShield™ as an additive for RTE foods (21 CFR §172.785). At the present time, Intralytix is the only company in the world to have received FDA approval for using a bacteriophage-based preparation as a food additive. Intralytix considers ListShield™ to be one of the safest and most environmentally friendly natural products for significantly reducing the risk of foodborne human listeriosis due to the consumption of contaminated RTE foods.
ListShield™ is a Star K-certified kosher product and can be used on all foods without affecting their kosher designation.
Escherichia coli O157:H7 and EcoShield™
E. coli O157:H7 is a significant contributor to foodborne illnesses worldwide. It has been estimated to cause approximately 62,000 cases of foodborne disease/year (and ca. 1,800 foodborne illness-related hospitalizations/year) in the United States alone, at an annual cost of ca. 0.7 billion dollars.
Intralytix has developed a new phage-based product, designated EcoShield™, which is effective against E. coli O157:H7. Similar to ListShield™, EcoShield™ is 100% natural, and it does not contain preservatives or any known, potentially allergenic substances. The product is highly effective in reducing contamination of various foods (e.g., ground beef, fruits, vegetables, etc.) with E. coli O157:H7, thus providing a much-needed modality for significantly reducing or eliminating contamination of various food products with the bacterium.
EcoShield™ is a Star K-certified kosher product and can be used on all foods without affecting their kosher designation.
References:
1. Mead, P. S., Slutsker, L., Dietz, V., McCaig, L. F., Bresee, J. S., Shapiro, C., Griffin, P. M., and Tauxe, R. V., Food-related illness and death in the United States, Emerg Infect Dis 5 (5), 607-25, 1999.
2. Buzby, J. C., Children and microbial foodborne illness, Food Review 24, 32-37, 2001.
Viral Meat Spray
HEALTH NEWS
FDA Oks Spray-On Virus Additives for Meat
Written by Rita Jenkins| 20 August, 2006 04:38 GMT
The FDA has approved a spray-on mixture of bacteria-killing viruses as additives to cold cuts, wieners and sausages to destroy Listeria microbes, which kill hundreds of people in the US each year. The latest US-approved additive to ready-to-eat lunchmeat and poultry products is a combination of six bacteriophages -- parasitic viruses that destroy the Listeria monocytogenes bacterium, which sickens thousands and kills hundreds of people each year.
The Food and Drug Administration on Friday declared the virus mix safe to spray on such foods as cold cuts, hot dogs, sausages, sliced ham and turkey prior to packaging.
Foods like these are especially vulnerable to Listeria because they are often not reheated prior to consumption, explained Andrew Zajac of the FDA's Office of Food Additive Safety. Cooking meat kills the Listeria bacterium, but foods can become contaminated after processing.
The FDA's approval of the mixture -- the first time viruses have been approved for use as a food additive -- is a "huge milestone" in the fight against food-borne illnesses, said John Vazzana, chief executive officer of Intralytix. Pregnant women, newborns and adults with weakened immune systems are especially vulnerable to listeriosis. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated that 2,500 people become seriously ill with the infection each year, and 500 ultimately die from it.
Bacteriaphages are grown in a preparation of the same bacteria they are designed to kill, and then purified.
According to Intralytix, typical phages have hollow heads that store their viral DNA and tunnel tails with tips that bind to specific molecules on the surface of their target bacteria. The viral DNA is injected through the tail into the host cell, where it directs the production of progeny phages.
These "young" phages burst from the host cell, thereby destroying it, and go on to infect more bacteria. The viruses will not kill any organism other than their target bacteria.
Prior to issuing its approval, the FDA was concerned that the virus preparation might contain toxic residues associated with the bacteria. Tests found no residues present, however. In small quantities, such residues would be unlikely to cause any health problems, the FDA said.
Salem News GM Foods
EXCERPT:
Our United States Bill of Rights prohibits the federal government from depriving any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law. Wikipedia defines Liberty as a concept of political philosophy and it identifies the condition in which an individual has the right to act according to his or her own willl. Has this not taken place against our will?
From Monsanto’s Web Site: “Our Human Rights Policy is guided by the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, which provides the most widely recognized definition of human rights… Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world; Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people; Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law…”
Author's note: Little of this information that I’m sharing with you is new. This debate has gone on for at least two decades. In mainstream media it has received very little coverage, because typically they are guided by advertising dollars. Food manufacturers have plenty of that. This article was written using a compilation of the research, which is diligently noted below. As a consumer, there is something you can do about it. Your dollar says it all. Think about what you buy. Below is a shopping list put out by the Center for Food Safety to help you determine what may or may not contain genetically modified foods products or ingredients?
Recent Victories - Center for Food Safety Victories/v
Negro Spies vs Jew Spies (Nixon) youtube
Nixon Tape Discusses Homosexuals at Bohemian Grove youtube
New Tapes Reveal Depth of Nixon's Anti-Semitism
Nixon Tape Discusses Homosexuals at Bohemian Grove
EXCERPT:
By George Lardner Jr. and Michael Dobbs
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, October 6, 1999; Page A31
Beset by the leak of a top-secret history of the Vietnam War and rising unemployment statistics that were hurting his standing in the polls in summer of 1971, President Richard M. Nixon lashed out repeatedly at "the Jews" he saw at the root of his problems.
Source: scanned from The Nixon Administration Public Broadcasting Papers: A Summary, 1969-1974, published by the National Association of Educational Broadcasters, 1979
The Nixon Administration Public Broadcasting Papers, 1969-1974
These memoes and other documents from the Nixon White House cover a period of peak conflict between the President's staff and public broadcasting.
The documents were released by the government five years later in response to a Freedom of Information Act request in 1978 by the second Carnegie Commission. These summaries were prepared and released during the Carter Administration by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, the successor agency of the White House Office of Telecommunications Policy, a central player in the 1969-74 conflict.
The summaries were published as The Nixon Administration Public Broadcasting Papers 1969-1974 by the National Association of Educational Broadcasters.
Foreword to NAEB printing | NTIA letters of transmittal
1969 | 1970 | 1971 | 1972 | 1973 | 1974
Foreword [to NAEB publication]
In publishing The Nixon Administration Public Broadcasting Papers 1969-1974, the NAEB is making available to its members and other interested parties a record of a particularly critical period in the history of public broadcasting. Distribution of this summary whose origin and content are explained in the covering memoranda, is intended to illustrate a chapter in the study and analysis of certain constitutional issues in and the structural framework of public broadcasting, and to bring to light "a pattern of practices" that will focus serious attention on the need for insulation from political interference.
This summary can be regarded as a companion document to a Public Telecommunications Review reprint of a series of articles written by Dr. Robert K. Avery and Dr. Robert Pepper, The Politics of Interconnection: A History of Public Television at the National Level. Another treatment of public broadcasting's recent history, the Avery/Pepper series includes the articles "Interconnection Connection"; "Interconnection Disconnection"; "Interconnection Reconnection"; and "Interconnection Redirection." This PTR series is now available in reprint form from the NAEB.
As part of the continuing examination of the statutory and internal structure of public broadcasting, the NAEB hopes to stimulate, through the PTR, further discussion and opinion on these basic issues. It is hoped that interested parties, among them constitutional scholars and communications attorneys, will examine these issues placing them in current contexts as well as citing past incidences.
NTIA letters of transmittal
February 23, 1979
Ms. Sheila Mahony
Executive Director
Carnegie Commission on the Future of Public Broadcasting
1270 Avenue of the Americas
New York, New York 10020
Dear Ms. Mahony:
This is in further response to your November 9, 1978, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) , 5 U.S.C. Section 552, request for all records within the custody of NTIA dealing with public broadcasting from 1967 to the present.
Pursuant to your request, we have made a search of NTIA files, including those of NTIA's predecessor, the Office of Telecommunications Policy, and located more than 10,000 pages of material regarding public broadcasting.
Having now reviewed all of the material--this accounts for the time it has taken us to respond to you--we find that many of the documents are exempt from disclosure under 5 U.S.C. Section 552(b) (5), which allows agencies to withhold "inter-agency or intra-agency memorandums or letters which would not be available by law to a party other than an agency in litigation with an agency." This exception has been interpreted to allow an agency to withhold policy memorandums which are a part of the deliberative or advisory process or which involve attorney work product, although purely factual material must be disclosed.
The decision to withhold documents is discretionary and, in this case, we have determined that the public interest would be served if certain of the exempt documents were disclosed.
Specifically, many of the Nixon Administration policy documents show a pattern of practices that evidence the extent to which public broadcasting has been subject to political pressures--practices which are germane to issues raised both by your Commission's recent report and current legislative activities of the House and Senate Communications Subcommittees. These issues include the sensitive problem of the government's relationship to a First Amendment medium. This goes to the essence of current proposals to provide public broadcasting greater insulation from political interference. Therefore, in addition to making available to you all Carter, Ford and Nixon Administration documents which are of a strictly factual nature, we are also making available those Nixon Administration policy memorandums which bear on the subjects of public broadcasting programming and system control.
Based upon discussion between counsel, we are enclosing approximately 1,000 pages of material. Consistent with the above, we will provide such additional material as you may request.
Department of Commerce regulations provide that a fee of seven cents per page be charged for duplication costs in connection with FOIA requests. We would appreciate remittance of a check or money order in the amount of $70.00, payable to the U.S. Department of Commerce, to cover the cost of the enclosed material.
Sincerely,
Henry Geller
[Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information, U.S. Department of Commerce]
February 22, 1979
TO: C.L. Haslam
FROM: Gregg P. Skall
SUBJECT: Carnegie Commission FOIA Request
The attached is a summary of the policy documents NTIA plans to provide to the Carnegie Commission on the Future of Public Broadcasting. As you know, this is a working document that we have prepared to aid in reviewing the requested. material. There are very few changes from the draft I sent you two weeks ago.
The summary quotes only from policy documents that are covered by the Carnegie request. Since no other material was used in its preparation, the summary represents only a condensation of roughly 10,000 pages of material, and should be understood to be only a reasonable effort to summarize that material.
There has been no attempt to comment or editorialize on the documents. We consider the summary a strictly factual, chronological accounting.
I hope this is helpful to you.
Source: scanned from The Nixon Administration Public Broadcasting Papers: A Summary, 1969-1974, published by the National Association of Educational Broadcasters, 1979
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Public Broadcasting PolicyBase
A service of Current Publishing Committee and the National Public Broadcasting Archives
Web page created Jan. 27, 2000
E-mail: webcurrent.org
Foundation for Floridas future and Jeb Bush more
Our Vision: An education system that allows each child to achieve his or her God-given potential and prepares all students to succeed in the 21st Century economy.
Our Mission: To make Florida's education system a model for the nation.
Message From the Chairman
A quality education can change a life. It can break the cruel cycle of poverty and end generations of dependence on government. It opens the door to opportunity and provides the skills for success after school. An engaging and challenging education is the proven path to prosperity and a life-long love of learning.
Florida has made great strides to improve the quality of education. A decade ago, the Sunshine State ranked at the bottom nationally. Nearly one-third of third graders couldn’t read on grade level and close to half of fourth graders were functionally illiterate. Too many students were dropping out of school, while those who stayed weren’t gaining the knowledge to succeed after graduation.
So much has changed since then. Today, Florida’s elementary and middle school students are reading above the national average. Math proficiency is on the rise. More students are taking and passing rigorous courses that prepare them for college. The graduation rate has jumped by double digits and fewer students are dropping out.
Our success was built on a foundation of core principles. Starting with the A+ Plan in 1999 and continuing today, our reforms combine high expectations, standardized measurement, a clear and achievable system of accountability, rewards and consequences for performance, effective teaching in the classroom and more choices to customize education to each student.
The path to rising student achievement was not easy or painless. In the first year schools were graded on the simple A-F letter scale, Florida had more Ds and Fs than As and Bs. When Florida ended social promotion for third graders who couldn’t read, the retention rate skyrocketed. Every time we raised the bar, scores and grades dropped – for a time – but then slowly climbed back to the higher levels of achievement.
Thanks to the courageous leadership of the Florida Legislature, the state didn’t abandon reform when times got tough. Instead, lawmakers focused on the long-term benefits of providing a quality education to every student in our state. As a result, Florida did what few other states have accomplished – reversed a generation of decline in public schools.
The results of our reform prove what we have said for more than a decade – all students can achieve when schools are organized around the singular goal of learning.
While Florida is now a model for the nation, our job is far from done. We must continue to reform education to keep the promise of a quality education for all Sunshine State students. Join us today.
Nixon Tape Discusses Homosexuals at Bohemian Grove youtube
New Tapes Reveal Depth of Nixon's Anti-Semitism
Nixon Tape Discusses Homosexuals at Bohemian Grove
EXCERPT:
By George Lardner Jr. and Michael Dobbs
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, October 6, 1999; Page A31
Beset by the leak of a top-secret history of the Vietnam War and rising unemployment statistics that were hurting his standing in the polls in summer of 1971, President Richard M. Nixon lashed out repeatedly at "the Jews" he saw at the root of his problems.
Source: scanned from The Nixon Administration Public Broadcasting Papers: A Summary, 1969-1974, published by the National Association of Educational Broadcasters, 1979
The Nixon Administration Public Broadcasting Papers, 1969-1974
These memoes and other documents from the Nixon White House cover a period of peak conflict between the President's staff and public broadcasting.
The documents were released by the government five years later in response to a Freedom of Information Act request in 1978 by the second Carnegie Commission. These summaries were prepared and released during the Carter Administration by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, the successor agency of the White House Office of Telecommunications Policy, a central player in the 1969-74 conflict.
The summaries were published as The Nixon Administration Public Broadcasting Papers 1969-1974 by the National Association of Educational Broadcasters.
Foreword to NAEB printing | NTIA letters of transmittal
1969 | 1970 | 1971 | 1972 | 1973 | 1974
Foreword [to NAEB publication]
In publishing The Nixon Administration Public Broadcasting Papers 1969-1974, the NAEB is making available to its members and other interested parties a record of a particularly critical period in the history of public broadcasting. Distribution of this summary whose origin and content are explained in the covering memoranda, is intended to illustrate a chapter in the study and analysis of certain constitutional issues in and the structural framework of public broadcasting, and to bring to light "a pattern of practices" that will focus serious attention on the need for insulation from political interference.
This summary can be regarded as a companion document to a Public Telecommunications Review reprint of a series of articles written by Dr. Robert K. Avery and Dr. Robert Pepper, The Politics of Interconnection: A History of Public Television at the National Level. Another treatment of public broadcasting's recent history, the Avery/Pepper series includes the articles "Interconnection Connection"; "Interconnection Disconnection"; "Interconnection Reconnection"; and "Interconnection Redirection." This PTR series is now available in reprint form from the NAEB.
As part of the continuing examination of the statutory and internal structure of public broadcasting, the NAEB hopes to stimulate, through the PTR, further discussion and opinion on these basic issues. It is hoped that interested parties, among them constitutional scholars and communications attorneys, will examine these issues placing them in current contexts as well as citing past incidences.
NTIA letters of transmittal
February 23, 1979
Ms. Sheila Mahony
Executive Director
Carnegie Commission on the Future of Public Broadcasting
1270 Avenue of the Americas
New York, New York 10020
Dear Ms. Mahony:
This is in further response to your November 9, 1978, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) , 5 U.S.C. Section 552, request for all records within the custody of NTIA dealing with public broadcasting from 1967 to the present.
Pursuant to your request, we have made a search of NTIA files, including those of NTIA's predecessor, the Office of Telecommunications Policy, and located more than 10,000 pages of material regarding public broadcasting.
Having now reviewed all of the material--this accounts for the time it has taken us to respond to you--we find that many of the documents are exempt from disclosure under 5 U.S.C. Section 552(b) (5), which allows agencies to withhold "inter-agency or intra-agency memorandums or letters which would not be available by law to a party other than an agency in litigation with an agency." This exception has been interpreted to allow an agency to withhold policy memorandums which are a part of the deliberative or advisory process or which involve attorney work product, although purely factual material must be disclosed.
The decision to withhold documents is discretionary and, in this case, we have determined that the public interest would be served if certain of the exempt documents were disclosed.
Specifically, many of the Nixon Administration policy documents show a pattern of practices that evidence the extent to which public broadcasting has been subject to political pressures--practices which are germane to issues raised both by your Commission's recent report and current legislative activities of the House and Senate Communications Subcommittees. These issues include the sensitive problem of the government's relationship to a First Amendment medium. This goes to the essence of current proposals to provide public broadcasting greater insulation from political interference. Therefore, in addition to making available to you all Carter, Ford and Nixon Administration documents which are of a strictly factual nature, we are also making available those Nixon Administration policy memorandums which bear on the subjects of public broadcasting programming and system control.
Based upon discussion between counsel, we are enclosing approximately 1,000 pages of material. Consistent with the above, we will provide such additional material as you may request.
Department of Commerce regulations provide that a fee of seven cents per page be charged for duplication costs in connection with FOIA requests. We would appreciate remittance of a check or money order in the amount of $70.00, payable to the U.S. Department of Commerce, to cover the cost of the enclosed material.
Sincerely,
Henry Geller
[Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information, U.S. Department of Commerce]
February 22, 1979
TO: C.L. Haslam
FROM: Gregg P. Skall
SUBJECT: Carnegie Commission FOIA Request
The attached is a summary of the policy documents NTIA plans to provide to the Carnegie Commission on the Future of Public Broadcasting. As you know, this is a working document that we have prepared to aid in reviewing the requested. material. There are very few changes from the draft I sent you two weeks ago.
The summary quotes only from policy documents that are covered by the Carnegie request. Since no other material was used in its preparation, the summary represents only a condensation of roughly 10,000 pages of material, and should be understood to be only a reasonable effort to summarize that material.
There has been no attempt to comment or editorialize on the documents. We consider the summary a strictly factual, chronological accounting.
I hope this is helpful to you.
Source: scanned from The Nixon Administration Public Broadcasting Papers: A Summary, 1969-1974, published by the National Association of Educational Broadcasters, 1979
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Public Broadcasting PolicyBase
A service of Current Publishing Committee and the National Public Broadcasting Archives
Web page created Jan. 27, 2000
E-mail: webcurrent.org
Foundation for Floridas future and Jeb Bush more
Our Vision: An education system that allows each child to achieve his or her God-given potential and prepares all students to succeed in the 21st Century economy.
Our Mission: To make Florida's education system a model for the nation.
Message From the Chairman
A quality education can change a life. It can break the cruel cycle of poverty and end generations of dependence on government. It opens the door to opportunity and provides the skills for success after school. An engaging and challenging education is the proven path to prosperity and a life-long love of learning.
Florida has made great strides to improve the quality of education. A decade ago, the Sunshine State ranked at the bottom nationally. Nearly one-third of third graders couldn’t read on grade level and close to half of fourth graders were functionally illiterate. Too many students were dropping out of school, while those who stayed weren’t gaining the knowledge to succeed after graduation.
So much has changed since then. Today, Florida’s elementary and middle school students are reading above the national average. Math proficiency is on the rise. More students are taking and passing rigorous courses that prepare them for college. The graduation rate has jumped by double digits and fewer students are dropping out.
Our success was built on a foundation of core principles. Starting with the A+ Plan in 1999 and continuing today, our reforms combine high expectations, standardized measurement, a clear and achievable system of accountability, rewards and consequences for performance, effective teaching in the classroom and more choices to customize education to each student.
The path to rising student achievement was not easy or painless. In the first year schools were graded on the simple A-F letter scale, Florida had more Ds and Fs than As and Bs. When Florida ended social promotion for third graders who couldn’t read, the retention rate skyrocketed. Every time we raised the bar, scores and grades dropped – for a time – but then slowly climbed back to the higher levels of achievement.
Thanks to the courageous leadership of the Florida Legislature, the state didn’t abandon reform when times got tough. Instead, lawmakers focused on the long-term benefits of providing a quality education to every student in our state. As a result, Florida did what few other states have accomplished – reversed a generation of decline in public schools.
The results of our reform prove what we have said for more than a decade – all students can achieve when schools are organized around the singular goal of learning.
While Florida is now a model for the nation, our job is far from done. We must continue to reform education to keep the promise of a quality education for all Sunshine State students. Join us today.
Pat Tillman Movie in Bay Area Sept. 3, 2010
Pat Tillman movie likely to revive debate over football player's death
Julia Prodis Sulek
jsulek@mercurynews.com
Posted: 08/21/2010 12:00:00 AM PDT
Pat Tillman and brother Kevin, after they enlisted in the U.S. Army in 2002. Courtesy the...«123»Six years after San Jose native and football star Pat Tillman was shot to death on an Afghanistan hillside, a new, high-profile documentary is likely to bring the controversy over how he died and the military's bungled attempt at a cover-up back to the forefront of public debate.
"The Tillman Story" -- directed by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Amir Bar-Lev and narrated by actor Josh Brolin -- opened in New York and Los Angeles to rave reviews Friday.
While the documentary sheds little new light on the military cover-up of Tillman's "friendly fire" death at the hands of fellow soldiers in April 2004 and doesn't provide satisfactory answers to persistent questions, the film makes one thing perfectly clear: Military officials who used Tillman's death as a propaganda tool "lied to the wrong family."
The documentary -- which opens Sept. 3 in the Bay Area -- also provides a glimpse into the guilt and anguish of two soldiers who were with Tillman the day he died, who knew it was American soldiers who fired the shots that killed him, not enemy soldiers as the military first had led the family -- and the nation -- to believe. One soldier had been huddled next to him when gunfire sprayed across Tillman's head, and the other kept the truth to himself as he accompanied Tillman's body -- and brother -- home to San Jose.
In its review, the Los Angeles Times said that "thanks to Bar-Lev's skill and the remarkable personalities of the Tillman clan, 'The
Tillman Story' is utterly entertaining, even as it infuriates." Slate called it "a thoughtful and nuanced story about a mother and son's mutual devotion, a fresh take on relationships that spring from wartime tragedy, and an important lesson for today's military families." And The New York Times, in its review, described the film as a "sorrowful, devastating documentary" about "the cynical chain of command that lied to (the Tillman family) and used their son as a propaganda tool."
Director Bar-Lev -- who coproduced the Oscar-nominated documentary "Trouble the Water," about Hurricane Katrina -- said he was not only interested in how Tillman died, but also in the myth surrounding the man himself. When Tillman gave up a multimillion-dollar NFL contract after 9/11 to join the Army Rangers with his brother, Kevin, he instantly became the most famous enlisted man.
"What I hope for the film is that Pat becomes more heroic when people understand who he was," Bar-Lev said in an interview at the Four Seasons Hotel in San Francisco.
The movie is rich in film clips and family photos of Tillman's youth growing up in the tiny San Jose enclave of New Almaden, playing football for Leland High and for the Arizona Cardinals, getting married to his high school sweetheart and heading off to war with Kevin. It shows him as an intellectual, an avid reader of philosophy, a mentor who took a scrawny young recruit under his wing. That very recruit, Bryan O'Neal, was beside him when Tillman was shot, when he shouted to his fellow soldiers firing from the canyon below, "I'm Pat f----ing Tillman."
In the movie, O'Neal said he still struggles with guilt.
"I blamed myself for quite some time that maybe Pat wasn't in a place he should be because I didn't put forth more effort," O'Neal said. "Because of my lack of faith, he may be suffering for it."
Russell Baer, another Army Ranger and close friend of the Tillman brothers, said he was ordered to keep quiet about what really happened on the hillside. He kept the truth to himself on the entire flight accompanying the body with Kevin Tillman, and in meeting with the family, who asked what had happened.
"I didn't say two words to Kevin the whole time we were flying home. I was afraid he might ask me what happened to Pat," Baer said. To the family, "I gave them my narrative excluding certain possibilities."
Afterward, he refused orders to rejoin his platoon and named his first son after Tillman.
As much as Bar-Lev admired the Tillman family's resolve to find the truth, they also presented challenges.
Just as Tillman never spoke publicly about why he joined the Army, his family declined to discuss it as well, saying only that his reasons were complex. Media outlets have been left with repeats of an interview he gave, along with the rest of the Cardinals players, about his feelings of patriotism the day after the Sept. 11 attacks.
That left a soldier, interviewed in the documentary, to fill in the blank, saying there was a "low mumble" among soldiers in their unit "that he was looking to be a political leader."
The family also refused to share Tillman's handwritten journal entries with Bar-Lev, even though they had given them to best-selling novelist Jon Krakauer for his book "Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman." Bar-Lev said Tillman's widow, Marie, told him she didn't want her husband's journal "in the hands of a moviemaker" who would likely hire an actor to do a voice-over of Tillman's written words.
Still, what Bar-Lev came to appreciate about the family, he said, is that the information they resisted giving him, the questions they refused to answer, were their way of "holding onto Pat."
As Marie Tillman said in the documentary about the media storm after her husband's death: "I had a sense of holding on to what I could. Pat, who he was as a person, was lost."
Tillman's mother, Mary Tillman, didn't return a phone call to talk about the movie. In a clip from the documentary taken from the congressional hearings into the fratricide investigation, she considered the cover-up reprehensible.
"To write these glorious tales is a disservice to Pat," Mary Tillman says in the movie. "It might not be pretty, it might not be out of a John Wayne movie," she said, but he deserved the truth.
'The Tillman Story'
Opens: Sept. 3 in the Bay Area
Narrator: Josh Brolin
Director: Amir Bar-Lev
Running time: 1 hour, 34 minutes
Watch Mary Tillman Interview
Pat Tillman's Mom and Michael Moore speak out about Stanley McChrystal's appointment at Yale
Mother of Pat Tillman, Michael Moore, speak out about Gen. McChrystal's appointment to teach at Yale
Gatecrasher
Friday, August 20th 2010, 4:00 AM
Quraishi/PoolGeneral Stanley McChrystal was recently fired from his post for indiscreet comments made to a Rolling Stone reporter. Yale University announced that it appointed him a Senior Fellow.
Lee/EverettPat Tillman (l.) and his brother Kevin. Related NewsThe mother of Pat Tillman and filmmaker Michael Moore have something to say about Yale University’s hiring of Gen. Stanley McChrystal.
Mary Tillman, whose discovery that McChrystal orchestrated the cover-up of her son’s death by friendly fire in Afghanistan, is depicted in Amir Bar-Lev���s documentary "The Tillman Story" tells us the Ivy League institution’s hiring of the general that President Obama fired is "insulting." And Moore wonders if university administrators would re-think their offer after seeing some of the jaw-dropping information in the film.
This week, Yale announced that McChrystal had been appointed a Senior Fellow at Yale’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs and will be teaching a graduate course on the complexity of leadership at the university this fall. The general retired this year after the president relieved him of command after he made disparaging remarks to interviewer Michael Hastings in Rolling Stone magazine.
But even before he was fired, McChrystal had become the subject of controversy thanks, in large part, to Mary Tillman���s dogged investigation into the military’s cover-up of the death of her son, which is covered in "The Tillman Story," which opens today.
When asked Tillman if she had any comment on McChrystal’s hiring, she released the following statement: "McChrystal showed poor judgment and he exercised little restraint during his interview with Michael Hastings. His involvement in the tortures at Camp Nama and in the cover-up of Pat’s death has never been satisfactorily scrutinized. The House Armed Services Committee failed to vet him properly in the spring of 2009. The fact that Yale wants to employ him to instruct courses on leadership is extremely insulting and unsettling."
Meanwhile, Moore says the film is "one scene after another where you’re sitting there with your jaw opening, wondering, ‘How come I don’t know this.’" And the filmmaker adds, "You see that McChrystal and his office were coordinating the big lie that was put out about how Pat Till man was killed, when, in fact, they knew the truth." The military initially sold a story about Tillman’s heroic death fighting Afghan forces when, in reality, he’d been killed by friendlies.
Moore says administrators should watch the documentary and take a look at the documents, many "redacted" that the Tillman family dug up on Pat’s death. The filmmaker adds that if the university’s administrators have "any integrity and they care about their institution," then "maybe they’d reconsider" whether they wanted McChrystal "lecturing at their institution of higher learning."
Yale University Press Secretary Thomas Conroy responds: "Part of the strength of a great university is bringing a wide range of knowledgeable views before its students. McChrystal, he adds, "seems well-positioned to speak to the issues that form the topic of the seminar he will be teaching."
Conroy adds that The Jackson Institute "is recruiting several policy practitioners with the goal of contributing to a better understanding by students of global affairs. The institute believes general McChrystal complements a team of teachers who will do that."
With Carson Griffith cgriffith@nydailynews.com
Where Men Win Glory Odyssey (Pat Tillman)
Book Description
The bestselling author of Into the Wild, Into Thin Air, and Under the Banner of Heaven delivers a stunning, eloquent account of a remarkable young man’s haunting journey.
Like the men whose epic stories Jon Krakauer has told in his previous bestsellers, Pat Tillman was an irrepressible individualist and iconoclast. In May 2002, Tillman walked away from his $3.6 million NFL contract to enlist in the United States Army. He was deeply troubled by 9/11, and he felt a strong moral obligation to join the fight against al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Two years later, he died on a desolate hillside in southeastern Afghanistan.
Though obvious to most of the two dozen soldiers on the scene that a ranger in Tillman’s own platoon had fired the fatal shots, the Army aggressively maneuvered to keep this information from Tillman’s wife, other family members, and the American public for five weeks following his death. During this time, President Bush repeatedly invoked Tillman’s name to promote his administration’s foreign policy. Long after Tillman’s nationally televised memorial service, the Army grudgingly notified his closest relatives that he had “probably” been killed by friendly fire while it continued to dissemble about the details of his death and who was responsible.
In Where Men Win Glory, Jon Krakauer draws on Tillman’s journals and letters, interviews with his wife and friends, conversations with the soldiers who served alongside him, and extensive research on the ground in Afghanistan to render an intricate mosaic of this driven, complex, and uncommonly compelling figure as well as the definitive account of the events and actions that led to his death. Before he enlisted in the army, Tillman was familiar to sports aficionados as an undersized, overachieving Arizona Cardinals safety whose virtuosity in the defensive backfield was spellbinding. With his shoulder-length hair, outspoken views, and boundless intellectual curiosity, Tillman was considered a maverick. America was fascinated when he traded the bright lights and riches of the NFL for boot camp and a buzz cut. Sent first to Iraq—a war he would openly declare was “illegal as hell” —and eventually to Afghanistan, Tillman was driven by complicated, emotionally charged, sometimes contradictory notions of duty, honor, justice, patriotism, and masculine pride, and he was determined to serve his entire three-year commitment. But on April 22, 2004, his life would end in a barrage of bullets fired by his fellow soldiers.
Krakauer chronicles Tillman’s riveting, tragic odyssey in engrossing detail highlighting his remarkable character and personality while closely examining the murky, heartbreaking circumstances of his death. Infused with the power and authenticity readers have come to expect from Krakauer’s storytelling, Where Men Win Glory exposes shattering truths about men and war.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Amazon Exclusive: Jon Krakauer in Afghanistan
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. There may be no better example of the tragic aftermath of 9/11 than the story of pro-football-player-turned-Army Ranger Pat Tillman, whose death in the wilds of Afghanistan in 2004 created a scandal of government cover-up. In this masterful work, bestselling adventure writer Jon Krakauer (Into the Wild) renders an intimate portrait of Tillman and brilliantly captures the sadness, madness and heroism of the post-9/11 world. After the attacks, Tillman, a rising football star, eschewed a $3.6 million NFL deal with the Arizona Cardinals to join the military with his brother. From the outset, Pat was elevated by politicians and pundits as a symbol of America’s resolve, a role he detested and shunned, believing his football career afforded him no special status. After a grueling three-year training with the elite Army Rangers, however, instead of fighting terrorists, he found himself first deployed to Iraq--a war he called "an imperial whim." Tillman was later redeployed to Afghanistan, where he was killed in an almost unfathomable incident of friendly fire, which the Army obfuscated for weeks while the government hailed Tillman as a hero. Drawing on interviews with family, fellow soldiers and correspondence, Krakauer’s page-turning account captures every detail--Tillman’s extraordinary character, including the “tragic virtues” that led him to give up a comfortable life and athletic stardom for the army; the harshness of military training and life; the rugged terrain of remote Afghanistan--and, of course, the ravages of war. Most critically, Krakauer, by telling Tillman's personal story and blowing apart the "cynical cover-up" that followed his killing, Krakauer lays bare the best--and worst--of America's War on Terror.
Pat Tillman movie likely to revive debate over football player's death
Julia Prodis Sulek
jsulek@mercurynews.com
Posted: 08/21/2010 12:00:00 AM PDT
Pat Tillman and brother Kevin, after they enlisted in the U.S. Army in 2002. Courtesy the...«123»Six years after San Jose native and football star Pat Tillman was shot to death on an Afghanistan hillside, a new, high-profile documentary is likely to bring the controversy over how he died and the military's bungled attempt at a cover-up back to the forefront of public debate.
"The Tillman Story" -- directed by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Amir Bar-Lev and narrated by actor Josh Brolin -- opened in New York and Los Angeles to rave reviews Friday.
While the documentary sheds little new light on the military cover-up of Tillman's "friendly fire" death at the hands of fellow soldiers in April 2004 and doesn't provide satisfactory answers to persistent questions, the film makes one thing perfectly clear: Military officials who used Tillman's death as a propaganda tool "lied to the wrong family."
The documentary -- which opens Sept. 3 in the Bay Area -- also provides a glimpse into the guilt and anguish of two soldiers who were with Tillman the day he died, who knew it was American soldiers who fired the shots that killed him, not enemy soldiers as the military first had led the family -- and the nation -- to believe. One soldier had been huddled next to him when gunfire sprayed across Tillman's head, and the other kept the truth to himself as he accompanied Tillman's body -- and brother -- home to San Jose.
In its review, the Los Angeles Times said that "thanks to Bar-Lev's skill and the remarkable personalities of the Tillman clan, 'The
Tillman Story' is utterly entertaining, even as it infuriates." Slate called it "a thoughtful and nuanced story about a mother and son's mutual devotion, a fresh take on relationships that spring from wartime tragedy, and an important lesson for today's military families." And The New York Times, in its review, described the film as a "sorrowful, devastating documentary" about "the cynical chain of command that lied to (the Tillman family) and used their son as a propaganda tool."
Director Bar-Lev -- who coproduced the Oscar-nominated documentary "Trouble the Water," about Hurricane Katrina -- said he was not only interested in how Tillman died, but also in the myth surrounding the man himself. When Tillman gave up a multimillion-dollar NFL contract after 9/11 to join the Army Rangers with his brother, Kevin, he instantly became the most famous enlisted man.
"What I hope for the film is that Pat becomes more heroic when people understand who he was," Bar-Lev said in an interview at the Four Seasons Hotel in San Francisco.
The movie is rich in film clips and family photos of Tillman's youth growing up in the tiny San Jose enclave of New Almaden, playing football for Leland High and for the Arizona Cardinals, getting married to his high school sweetheart and heading off to war with Kevin. It shows him as an intellectual, an avid reader of philosophy, a mentor who took a scrawny young recruit under his wing. That very recruit, Bryan O'Neal, was beside him when Tillman was shot, when he shouted to his fellow soldiers firing from the canyon below, "I'm Pat f----ing Tillman."
In the movie, O'Neal said he still struggles with guilt.
"I blamed myself for quite some time that maybe Pat wasn't in a place he should be because I didn't put forth more effort," O'Neal said. "Because of my lack of faith, he may be suffering for it."
Russell Baer, another Army Ranger and close friend of the Tillman brothers, said he was ordered to keep quiet about what really happened on the hillside. He kept the truth to himself on the entire flight accompanying the body with Kevin Tillman, and in meeting with the family, who asked what had happened.
"I didn't say two words to Kevin the whole time we were flying home. I was afraid he might ask me what happened to Pat," Baer said. To the family, "I gave them my narrative excluding certain possibilities."
Afterward, he refused orders to rejoin his platoon and named his first son after Tillman.
As much as Bar-Lev admired the Tillman family's resolve to find the truth, they also presented challenges.
Just as Tillman never spoke publicly about why he joined the Army, his family declined to discuss it as well, saying only that his reasons were complex. Media outlets have been left with repeats of an interview he gave, along with the rest of the Cardinals players, about his feelings of patriotism the day after the Sept. 11 attacks.
That left a soldier, interviewed in the documentary, to fill in the blank, saying there was a "low mumble" among soldiers in their unit "that he was looking to be a political leader."
The family also refused to share Tillman's handwritten journal entries with Bar-Lev, even though they had given them to best-selling novelist Jon Krakauer for his book "Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman." Bar-Lev said Tillman's widow, Marie, told him she didn't want her husband's journal "in the hands of a moviemaker" who would likely hire an actor to do a voice-over of Tillman's written words.
Still, what Bar-Lev came to appreciate about the family, he said, is that the information they resisted giving him, the questions they refused to answer, were their way of "holding onto Pat."
As Marie Tillman said in the documentary about the media storm after her husband's death: "I had a sense of holding on to what I could. Pat, who he was as a person, was lost."
Tillman's mother, Mary Tillman, didn't return a phone call to talk about the movie. In a clip from the documentary taken from the congressional hearings into the fratricide investigation, she considered the cover-up reprehensible.
"To write these glorious tales is a disservice to Pat," Mary Tillman says in the movie. "It might not be pretty, it might not be out of a John Wayne movie," she said, but he deserved the truth.
'The Tillman Story'
Opens: Sept. 3 in the Bay Area
Narrator: Josh Brolin
Director: Amir Bar-Lev
Running time: 1 hour, 34 minutes
Watch Mary Tillman Interview
Pat Tillman's Mom and Michael Moore speak out about Stanley McChrystal's appointment at Yale
Mother of Pat Tillman, Michael Moore, speak out about Gen. McChrystal's appointment to teach at Yale
Gatecrasher
Friday, August 20th 2010, 4:00 AM
Quraishi/PoolGeneral Stanley McChrystal was recently fired from his post for indiscreet comments made to a Rolling Stone reporter. Yale University announced that it appointed him a Senior Fellow.
Lee/EverettPat Tillman (l.) and his brother Kevin. Related NewsThe mother of Pat Tillman and filmmaker Michael Moore have something to say about Yale University’s hiring of Gen. Stanley McChrystal.
Mary Tillman, whose discovery that McChrystal orchestrated the cover-up of her son’s death by friendly fire in Afghanistan, is depicted in Amir Bar-Lev���s documentary "The Tillman Story" tells us the Ivy League institution’s hiring of the general that President Obama fired is "insulting." And Moore wonders if university administrators would re-think their offer after seeing some of the jaw-dropping information in the film.
This week, Yale announced that McChrystal had been appointed a Senior Fellow at Yale’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs and will be teaching a graduate course on the complexity of leadership at the university this fall. The general retired this year after the president relieved him of command after he made disparaging remarks to interviewer Michael Hastings in Rolling Stone magazine.
But even before he was fired, McChrystal had become the subject of controversy thanks, in large part, to Mary Tillman���s dogged investigation into the military’s cover-up of the death of her son, which is covered in "The Tillman Story," which opens today.
When asked Tillman if she had any comment on McChrystal’s hiring, she released the following statement: "McChrystal showed poor judgment and he exercised little restraint during his interview with Michael Hastings. His involvement in the tortures at Camp Nama and in the cover-up of Pat’s death has never been satisfactorily scrutinized. The House Armed Services Committee failed to vet him properly in the spring of 2009. The fact that Yale wants to employ him to instruct courses on leadership is extremely insulting and unsettling."
Meanwhile, Moore says the film is "one scene after another where you’re sitting there with your jaw opening, wondering, ‘How come I don’t know this.’" And the filmmaker adds, "You see that McChrystal and his office were coordinating the big lie that was put out about how Pat Till man was killed, when, in fact, they knew the truth." The military initially sold a story about Tillman’s heroic death fighting Afghan forces when, in reality, he’d been killed by friendlies.
Moore says administrators should watch the documentary and take a look at the documents, many "redacted" that the Tillman family dug up on Pat’s death. The filmmaker adds that if the university’s administrators have "any integrity and they care about their institution," then "maybe they’d reconsider" whether they wanted McChrystal "lecturing at their institution of higher learning."
Yale University Press Secretary Thomas Conroy responds: "Part of the strength of a great university is bringing a wide range of knowledgeable views before its students. McChrystal, he adds, "seems well-positioned to speak to the issues that form the topic of the seminar he will be teaching."
Conroy adds that The Jackson Institute "is recruiting several policy practitioners with the goal of contributing to a better understanding by students of global affairs. The institute believes general McChrystal complements a team of teachers who will do that."
With Carson Griffith cgriffith@nydailynews.com
Where Men Win Glory Odyssey (Pat Tillman)
Book Description
The bestselling author of Into the Wild, Into Thin Air, and Under the Banner of Heaven delivers a stunning, eloquent account of a remarkable young man’s haunting journey.
Like the men whose epic stories Jon Krakauer has told in his previous bestsellers, Pat Tillman was an irrepressible individualist and iconoclast. In May 2002, Tillman walked away from his $3.6 million NFL contract to enlist in the United States Army. He was deeply troubled by 9/11, and he felt a strong moral obligation to join the fight against al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Two years later, he died on a desolate hillside in southeastern Afghanistan.
Though obvious to most of the two dozen soldiers on the scene that a ranger in Tillman’s own platoon had fired the fatal shots, the Army aggressively maneuvered to keep this information from Tillman’s wife, other family members, and the American public for five weeks following his death. During this time, President Bush repeatedly invoked Tillman’s name to promote his administration’s foreign policy. Long after Tillman’s nationally televised memorial service, the Army grudgingly notified his closest relatives that he had “probably” been killed by friendly fire while it continued to dissemble about the details of his death and who was responsible.
In Where Men Win Glory, Jon Krakauer draws on Tillman’s journals and letters, interviews with his wife and friends, conversations with the soldiers who served alongside him, and extensive research on the ground in Afghanistan to render an intricate mosaic of this driven, complex, and uncommonly compelling figure as well as the definitive account of the events and actions that led to his death. Before he enlisted in the army, Tillman was familiar to sports aficionados as an undersized, overachieving Arizona Cardinals safety whose virtuosity in the defensive backfield was spellbinding. With his shoulder-length hair, outspoken views, and boundless intellectual curiosity, Tillman was considered a maverick. America was fascinated when he traded the bright lights and riches of the NFL for boot camp and a buzz cut. Sent first to Iraq—a war he would openly declare was “illegal as hell” —and eventually to Afghanistan, Tillman was driven by complicated, emotionally charged, sometimes contradictory notions of duty, honor, justice, patriotism, and masculine pride, and he was determined to serve his entire three-year commitment. But on April 22, 2004, his life would end in a barrage of bullets fired by his fellow soldiers.
Krakauer chronicles Tillman’s riveting, tragic odyssey in engrossing detail highlighting his remarkable character and personality while closely examining the murky, heartbreaking circumstances of his death. Infused with the power and authenticity readers have come to expect from Krakauer’s storytelling, Where Men Win Glory exposes shattering truths about men and war.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Amazon Exclusive: Jon Krakauer in Afghanistan
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. There may be no better example of the tragic aftermath of 9/11 than the story of pro-football-player-turned-Army Ranger Pat Tillman, whose death in the wilds of Afghanistan in 2004 created a scandal of government cover-up. In this masterful work, bestselling adventure writer Jon Krakauer (Into the Wild) renders an intimate portrait of Tillman and brilliantly captures the sadness, madness and heroism of the post-9/11 world. After the attacks, Tillman, a rising football star, eschewed a $3.6 million NFL deal with the Arizona Cardinals to join the military with his brother. From the outset, Pat was elevated by politicians and pundits as a symbol of America’s resolve, a role he detested and shunned, believing his football career afforded him no special status. After a grueling three-year training with the elite Army Rangers, however, instead of fighting terrorists, he found himself first deployed to Iraq--a war he called "an imperial whim." Tillman was later redeployed to Afghanistan, where he was killed in an almost unfathomable incident of friendly fire, which the Army obfuscated for weeks while the government hailed Tillman as a hero. Drawing on interviews with family, fellow soldiers and correspondence, Krakauer’s page-turning account captures every detail--Tillman’s extraordinary character, including the “tragic virtues” that led him to give up a comfortable life and athletic stardom for the army; the harshness of military training and life; the rugged terrain of remote Afghanistan--and, of course, the ravages of war. Most critically, Krakauer, by telling Tillman's personal story and blowing apart the "cynical cover-up" that followed his killing, Krakauer lays bare the best--and worst--of America's War on Terror.
BCCI
EXCERPT:
BCCI and Argentine Arms Deals
In response to the Foreign Relations Committee subpoena to BCCI, BCCI's liquidators produced documents concerning two proposed arms sales involving Argentina that had been maintained at BCCI's offices in Miami.
The first set of documents held at BCCI-Miami referred to the sale by the Argentine Air Force of what handwritten notes described as "22 units of Aircraft plus adequate space parts, including 6 spare engines at a price of $110,000,000.00," consisting of Mirage IIIC/B jets manufactured in France and "modified to Argentine Air Force requirements following years of combat experience."(26)
The prospectus included technical drawings of the Mirage jets and basic military specifications, with a commitment that the "AAF," or Argentine Air Force, would provide all technical documentation in support of the planes, ground support equipment, and, if the "customer country" wished, a full program of flight training in Argentina for customer country pilots. (27)
This proposal had never gone through the legal processes in Argentina required for such sales, and was a secret in Argentina until the Subcommittee released these documents. As former Argentine Defense Secretary Raul Alconada Sempe testified before the Subcommittee, the sales had never been authorized, and that if such a proposal had been made legally, it would have required notification to the Argentine parliament:
Sales without the Defense Minister knowing, from 1983 on, it was impossible, because it was only the Defense Ministry that authorized such sales. What does exist, and I think this is a general problem throughout all countries, is that there are countries that have arms, countries that need arms, and the famous middleman crop up. The brokers, the sales agents, and these are the people that try to match the buyer and the seller. . . . They just try to look for such a deal. This is what may have happened.(28)
Following the conclusion of the hearing, investigators in Argentina determined that the sale appeared to be a proposal made unofficially by a general in the Argentine air force to various countries in the Middle East, including Iraq. BCCI had offered to act as a broker and possible financier for the proposed sale of the Mirage jets, which represented a substantial percentage of the total possessed by Argentina. However, the general involved had never been able to convince Argentine governmental figures that the transaction was in the interest of Argentina, and the proposal died.
Other BCCI documents describe BCCI's involvement in a possible sale of night vision equipment by Litton Electron Devices in Arizona to the Government of Argentina, guaranteed by an Argentine government bank, through a company owned by the Argentine government. It is not clear from the documents whether BCCI ultimately financed the night-vision equipment sales or not.
Litton Electron Devices Tempe AZ
Address:
Litton Electron Devices, Tempe Mailing Address:
Litton Electron Devices
1215 S. 52nd St.
Tempe, AZ 85281
USA
BANGLADESH
When BCCI was closed globally on July 5, 1991, one of the nations that was worst hit was Bangladesh, which had deposits of $171 million at the time of its closure. Following the collapse, some 40,000 depositors threatened a hunger strike after losing their life savings, 500 depositors actually conducted a sit-down strike in the capitol's financial district, and another thirty depositors threatened to engage in self-immolation if the government did not find a way to restore some of their losses. One month later the Bangladeshi government promised to provide up to $1400 to each of the banks depositors, as a means of ending the highly-publicized strikes.
Thus, the impoverished government of one of the poorest countries in the world was forced, in essence, to raid its own treasury to alleviate the suffering of the small depositors to make up for millions stolen from Bangladesh by BCCI and former Bangladeshi government officials, including the man who had been president and dictator of Bangladesh throughout the 1980's, Mohammed Ershad. These schemes included massive tax evasion and an equally massive and illegal currency trafficking ring involving then-president Ershad, top aides, and President Ershad's mistress, which continued until Ershad was deposed in December, 1990.
According to various press accounts, supplemented by information from BCCI insiders provided the Subcommittee, President Ershad worked with his brother-in-law, former Bangladeshi diplomat A.G.M. Mohiuddin, to smuggle millions of dollars out of Bangladesh through BCCI into the United States. BCCI also hired various relatives of Ershad to work at BCCI branches in Hong Kong, Britain and Canada, and in return, Bangladesh hired one of BCCI's top officers to serve as Bangladesh's first ambassador to Brunei -- whose embassy functioned primarily as a sales office in Brunei for BCCI.(29)
The BCCI-Ershad connection was essential to the Bangladesh president because given his country's impoverishment, he had relatively limited opportunities outside of what BCCI could bring him to get rich. His salary was only $13,000 a year as president, but through making use of BCCI he was able to move millions of dollars of fund siphoned out of Bangladesh governmental accounts.
As BCCI officer Abdur Sakhia testified in response to a question about payments by BCCI to the leading political families of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, including President Ershad:
The payoff [came] either in the form of cash, or hiring of their relatives, contribution to their favorite charities, payment of their medical bills. It took various shapes. So in some cases cash may have been given, in some cases their relatives were hired, in other cases their charities were funded, their projects were financed at favorable rates, loans at favorable rates. So it took different shapes and forms.(30)
In the case of Bangladesh, the payoffs in fact came in almost every shape and form. By far the most detailed account of these payoffs was provided by the Los Angeles Times, which sent a reporter to Bangladesh to interview government officials, BCCI officers, and private business there about the relationship between BCCI and Bangladesh after BCCI's collapse. Its account has been generally corroborated by testimony to the Subcommittee from statements by BCCI officials, including Sakhia and Chinoy. As the Times found:
Here, in a land that perpetually ranks among the poorest of the world's poor, BCCI stretched the law to its limits to avoid paying desperately needed government taxes, to skirt national banking regulations and to remit as much profit as possible out of Bangladesh and into the bank's international web of corporations and subsidiaries.(31)
The practices described in the Los Angeles Times article were typical of BCCI's practices in other countries. After the Central Bank of Bangladesh forbid BCCI from exporting profits in Bangladesh abroad -- the "flight capital" BCCI specialized in -- BCCI created the BCCI Foundation, a charitable trust based in Bangladesh, whose official purpose was to fund scholarships, rural health care centers and school libraries. Funding for the BCCI Foundation came from BCCI's banking operations in Bangladesh. Those profits became tax-free because they were given to the Foundation. And the foundation in turn gave funds not principally to the needy, but to a joint venture investment bank, called the Bank of Small Industries & Commerce or BASIC, staffed by BCCI officials, in which President Ershad and his top aides had a financial stake.(32)
Towards the end of Ershad's rule in Bangladesh, the scheme had become sufficiently transparent that it created outrage within the country. For example, the Foundation's most important scholarship program, to provide interest-free loans to talented college students, received about $10,500 in donations from the Foundation in 1990, in a year when the Foundation earned over $21,000 in interest alone.(33)
In the meantime, BCCI hired three of Ershad's close relatives, along twelve other sons and daughters of prime ministers, finance ministers, police chiefs, central bank governors and deputy governors.(34)
In late 1990, Ershad resigned under fire, and was tried for a variety of arms trafficking offenses in Bangladesh, and sentenced to a ten year prison term, while awaiting trial on additional corruption charges, including some pertaining to his relationship with BCCI. Following BCCI's collapse, the new government retained an investigative firm in New York in an attempt to trace what the new government contended as much as $520 million in funds misappropriated from the Bangladesh treasury by BCCI, Ershad, and his relatives. The investigators have alleged that Ershad moved millions of dollars through BCCI accounts in London and Hong Kong.(35)
Even disaster relief aid provided by foreign governments to Bangladesh to help victims of a devastating cyclone in 1990 wound up being deposited in BCCI and lost with the closure of the bank.(36)
Thus, BCCI, which promoted itself as a Third World Bank devoted to assisting the Third World in development, stole millions from Bangladesh, in concert with Bangladesh's ruling political family, in what one BCCI official was later to describe as "a perverse, reverse Robin Hood."(37)
BCCI and the Bush family
EXCERPT:
‘Frauds-R-Us’
The Bush Family Saga
Part II - Part I Here
BCCI (Bank of Credit & Commerce)
By William Bowles
05/11/03: (Information Clearing House)
"BCCI defrauded depositors of $10 billion in the '80s in what has been called the "largest bank fraud in world financial history" by former Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau."
BCCI and the cover-up Continues today
EXCERPT:
2. BCCI SYSTEMATICALLY BRIBED WORLD LEADERS AND POLITICAL FIGURES THROUGHOUT THE WORLD.
BCCI's systematically relied on relationships with, and as necessary, payments to, prominent political figures in most of the 73 countries in which BCCI operated. BCCI records and testimony from former BCCI officials together document BCCI's systematic securing of Central Bank deposits of Third World countries; its provision of favors to political figures; and its reliance on those figures to provide BCCI itself with favors in times of need.
These relationships were systematically turned to BCCI's use to generate cash needed to prop up its books. BCCI would obtain an important figure's agreement to give BCCI deposits from a country's Central Bank, exclusive handling of a country's use of U.S. commodity credits, preferential treatment on the processing of money coming in and out of the country where monetary controls were in place, the right to own a bank, secretly if necessary, in countries where foreign banks were not legal, or other questionable means of securing assets or profits. In return, BCCI would pay bribes to the figure, or otherwise give him other things he wanted in a simple quid-pro-quo.
The result was that BCCI had relationships that ranged from the questionable, to the improper, to the fully corrupt with officials from countries all over the world, including Argentina, Bangladesh, Botswana, Brazil, Cameroon, China, Colombia, the Congo, Ghana, Guatemala, the Ivory Coast, India, Jamaica, Kuwait, Lebanon, Mauritius, Morocco, Nigeria, Pakistan, Panama, Peru, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, the United States, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
3. BCCI DEVELOPED A STRATEGY TO INFILTRATE THE U.S. BANKING SYSTEM, WHICH IT SUCCESSFULLY IMPLEMENTED, DESPITE REGULATORY BARRIERS THAT WERE DESIGNED TO KEEP IT OUT.
In 1977, BCCI developed a plan to infiltrate the U.S. market through secretly purchasing U.S. banks while opening branch offices of BCCI throughout the U.S., and eventually merging the institutions. BCCI had significant difficulties implementing this strategy due to regulatory barriers in the United States designed to insure accountability. Despite these barriers, which delayed BCCI's entry, BCCI was ultimately successful in acquiring four banks, operating in seven states and the District of Colombia, with no jurisdiction successfully preventing BCCI from infiltrating it.
The techniques used by BCCI in the United States had been previously perfected by BCCI, and were used in BCCI's acquisitions of banks in a number of Third World countries and in Europe. These included purchasing banks through nominees, and arranging to have its activities shielded by prestigious lawyers, accountants, and public relations firms on the one hand, and politically-well connected agents on the other. These techniques were essential to BCCI's success in the United States, because without them, BCCI would have been stopped by regulators from gaining an interest in any U.S. bank. As it was, regulatory suspicion towards BCCI required the bank to deceive regulators in collusion with nominees including the heads of state of several foreign emirates, key political and intelligence figures from the Middle East, and entities controlled by the most important bank and banker in the Middle East.
Equally important to BCCI's successful secret acquisitions of U.S. banks in the face of regulatory suspicion was its aggressive use of a series of prominent Americans, beginning with Bert Lance, and continuing with former Defense Secretary Clark Clifford, former U.S. Senator Stuart Symington, well-connected former federal bank regulators, and former and current local, state and federal legislators. Wittingly or not, these individuals provided essential assistance to BCCI through lending their names and their reputations to BCCI at critical moments. Thus, it was not merely BCCI's deceptions that permitted it to infiltrate the United States and its banking system. Also essential were BCCI's use of political influence peddling and the revolving door in Washington.
EXCERPT:
BCCI and Argentine Arms Deals
In response to the Foreign Relations Committee subpoena to BCCI, BCCI's liquidators produced documents concerning two proposed arms sales involving Argentina that had been maintained at BCCI's offices in Miami.
The first set of documents held at BCCI-Miami referred to the sale by the Argentine Air Force of what handwritten notes described as "22 units of Aircraft plus adequate space parts, including 6 spare engines at a price of $110,000,000.00," consisting of Mirage IIIC/B jets manufactured in France and "modified to Argentine Air Force requirements following years of combat experience."(26)
The prospectus included technical drawings of the Mirage jets and basic military specifications, with a commitment that the "AAF," or Argentine Air Force, would provide all technical documentation in support of the planes, ground support equipment, and, if the "customer country" wished, a full program of flight training in Argentina for customer country pilots. (27)
This proposal had never gone through the legal processes in Argentina required for such sales, and was a secret in Argentina until the Subcommittee released these documents. As former Argentine Defense Secretary Raul Alconada Sempe testified before the Subcommittee, the sales had never been authorized, and that if such a proposal had been made legally, it would have required notification to the Argentine parliament:
Sales without the Defense Minister knowing, from 1983 on, it was impossible, because it was only the Defense Ministry that authorized such sales. What does exist, and I think this is a general problem throughout all countries, is that there are countries that have arms, countries that need arms, and the famous middleman crop up. The brokers, the sales agents, and these are the people that try to match the buyer and the seller. . . . They just try to look for such a deal. This is what may have happened.(28)
Following the conclusion of the hearing, investigators in Argentina determined that the sale appeared to be a proposal made unofficially by a general in the Argentine air force to various countries in the Middle East, including Iraq. BCCI had offered to act as a broker and possible financier for the proposed sale of the Mirage jets, which represented a substantial percentage of the total possessed by Argentina. However, the general involved had never been able to convince Argentine governmental figures that the transaction was in the interest of Argentina, and the proposal died.
Other BCCI documents describe BCCI's involvement in a possible sale of night vision equipment by Litton Electron Devices in Arizona to the Government of Argentina, guaranteed by an Argentine government bank, through a company owned by the Argentine government. It is not clear from the documents whether BCCI ultimately financed the night-vision equipment sales or not.
Litton Electron Devices Tempe AZ
Address:
Litton Electron Devices, Tempe Mailing Address:
Litton Electron Devices
1215 S. 52nd St.
Tempe, AZ 85281
USA
BANGLADESH
When BCCI was closed globally on July 5, 1991, one of the nations that was worst hit was Bangladesh, which had deposits of $171 million at the time of its closure. Following the collapse, some 40,000 depositors threatened a hunger strike after losing their life savings, 500 depositors actually conducted a sit-down strike in the capitol's financial district, and another thirty depositors threatened to engage in self-immolation if the government did not find a way to restore some of their losses. One month later the Bangladeshi government promised to provide up to $1400 to each of the banks depositors, as a means of ending the highly-publicized strikes.
Thus, the impoverished government of one of the poorest countries in the world was forced, in essence, to raid its own treasury to alleviate the suffering of the small depositors to make up for millions stolen from Bangladesh by BCCI and former Bangladeshi government officials, including the man who had been president and dictator of Bangladesh throughout the 1980's, Mohammed Ershad. These schemes included massive tax evasion and an equally massive and illegal currency trafficking ring involving then-president Ershad, top aides, and President Ershad's mistress, which continued until Ershad was deposed in December, 1990.
According to various press accounts, supplemented by information from BCCI insiders provided the Subcommittee, President Ershad worked with his brother-in-law, former Bangladeshi diplomat A.G.M. Mohiuddin, to smuggle millions of dollars out of Bangladesh through BCCI into the United States. BCCI also hired various relatives of Ershad to work at BCCI branches in Hong Kong, Britain and Canada, and in return, Bangladesh hired one of BCCI's top officers to serve as Bangladesh's first ambassador to Brunei -- whose embassy functioned primarily as a sales office in Brunei for BCCI.(29)
The BCCI-Ershad connection was essential to the Bangladesh president because given his country's impoverishment, he had relatively limited opportunities outside of what BCCI could bring him to get rich. His salary was only $13,000 a year as president, but through making use of BCCI he was able to move millions of dollars of fund siphoned out of Bangladesh governmental accounts.
As BCCI officer Abdur Sakhia testified in response to a question about payments by BCCI to the leading political families of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, including President Ershad:
The payoff [came] either in the form of cash, or hiring of their relatives, contribution to their favorite charities, payment of their medical bills. It took various shapes. So in some cases cash may have been given, in some cases their relatives were hired, in other cases their charities were funded, their projects were financed at favorable rates, loans at favorable rates. So it took different shapes and forms.(30)
In the case of Bangladesh, the payoffs in fact came in almost every shape and form. By far the most detailed account of these payoffs was provided by the Los Angeles Times, which sent a reporter to Bangladesh to interview government officials, BCCI officers, and private business there about the relationship between BCCI and Bangladesh after BCCI's collapse. Its account has been generally corroborated by testimony to the Subcommittee from statements by BCCI officials, including Sakhia and Chinoy. As the Times found:
Here, in a land that perpetually ranks among the poorest of the world's poor, BCCI stretched the law to its limits to avoid paying desperately needed government taxes, to skirt national banking regulations and to remit as much profit as possible out of Bangladesh and into the bank's international web of corporations and subsidiaries.(31)
The practices described in the Los Angeles Times article were typical of BCCI's practices in other countries. After the Central Bank of Bangladesh forbid BCCI from exporting profits in Bangladesh abroad -- the "flight capital" BCCI specialized in -- BCCI created the BCCI Foundation, a charitable trust based in Bangladesh, whose official purpose was to fund scholarships, rural health care centers and school libraries. Funding for the BCCI Foundation came from BCCI's banking operations in Bangladesh. Those profits became tax-free because they were given to the Foundation. And the foundation in turn gave funds not principally to the needy, but to a joint venture investment bank, called the Bank of Small Industries & Commerce or BASIC, staffed by BCCI officials, in which President Ershad and his top aides had a financial stake.(32)
Towards the end of Ershad's rule in Bangladesh, the scheme had become sufficiently transparent that it created outrage within the country. For example, the Foundation's most important scholarship program, to provide interest-free loans to talented college students, received about $10,500 in donations from the Foundation in 1990, in a year when the Foundation earned over $21,000 in interest alone.(33)
In the meantime, BCCI hired three of Ershad's close relatives, along twelve other sons and daughters of prime ministers, finance ministers, police chiefs, central bank governors and deputy governors.(34)
In late 1990, Ershad resigned under fire, and was tried for a variety of arms trafficking offenses in Bangladesh, and sentenced to a ten year prison term, while awaiting trial on additional corruption charges, including some pertaining to his relationship with BCCI. Following BCCI's collapse, the new government retained an investigative firm in New York in an attempt to trace what the new government contended as much as $520 million in funds misappropriated from the Bangladesh treasury by BCCI, Ershad, and his relatives. The investigators have alleged that Ershad moved millions of dollars through BCCI accounts in London and Hong Kong.(35)
Even disaster relief aid provided by foreign governments to Bangladesh to help victims of a devastating cyclone in 1990 wound up being deposited in BCCI and lost with the closure of the bank.(36)
Thus, BCCI, which promoted itself as a Third World Bank devoted to assisting the Third World in development, stole millions from Bangladesh, in concert with Bangladesh's ruling political family, in what one BCCI official was later to describe as "a perverse, reverse Robin Hood."(37)
BCCI and the Bush family
EXCERPT:
‘Frauds-R-Us’
The Bush Family Saga
Part II - Part I Here
BCCI (Bank of Credit & Commerce)
By William Bowles
05/11/03: (Information Clearing House)
"BCCI defrauded depositors of $10 billion in the '80s in what has been called the "largest bank fraud in world financial history" by former Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau."
BCCI and the cover-up Continues today
EXCERPT:
2. BCCI SYSTEMATICALLY BRIBED WORLD LEADERS AND POLITICAL FIGURES THROUGHOUT THE WORLD.
BCCI's systematically relied on relationships with, and as necessary, payments to, prominent political figures in most of the 73 countries in which BCCI operated. BCCI records and testimony from former BCCI officials together document BCCI's systematic securing of Central Bank deposits of Third World countries; its provision of favors to political figures; and its reliance on those figures to provide BCCI itself with favors in times of need.
These relationships were systematically turned to BCCI's use to generate cash needed to prop up its books. BCCI would obtain an important figure's agreement to give BCCI deposits from a country's Central Bank, exclusive handling of a country's use of U.S. commodity credits, preferential treatment on the processing of money coming in and out of the country where monetary controls were in place, the right to own a bank, secretly if necessary, in countries where foreign banks were not legal, or other questionable means of securing assets or profits. In return, BCCI would pay bribes to the figure, or otherwise give him other things he wanted in a simple quid-pro-quo.
The result was that BCCI had relationships that ranged from the questionable, to the improper, to the fully corrupt with officials from countries all over the world, including Argentina, Bangladesh, Botswana, Brazil, Cameroon, China, Colombia, the Congo, Ghana, Guatemala, the Ivory Coast, India, Jamaica, Kuwait, Lebanon, Mauritius, Morocco, Nigeria, Pakistan, Panama, Peru, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, the United States, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
3. BCCI DEVELOPED A STRATEGY TO INFILTRATE THE U.S. BANKING SYSTEM, WHICH IT SUCCESSFULLY IMPLEMENTED, DESPITE REGULATORY BARRIERS THAT WERE DESIGNED TO KEEP IT OUT.
In 1977, BCCI developed a plan to infiltrate the U.S. market through secretly purchasing U.S. banks while opening branch offices of BCCI throughout the U.S., and eventually merging the institutions. BCCI had significant difficulties implementing this strategy due to regulatory barriers in the United States designed to insure accountability. Despite these barriers, which delayed BCCI's entry, BCCI was ultimately successful in acquiring four banks, operating in seven states and the District of Colombia, with no jurisdiction successfully preventing BCCI from infiltrating it.
The techniques used by BCCI in the United States had been previously perfected by BCCI, and were used in BCCI's acquisitions of banks in a number of Third World countries and in Europe. These included purchasing banks through nominees, and arranging to have its activities shielded by prestigious lawyers, accountants, and public relations firms on the one hand, and politically-well connected agents on the other. These techniques were essential to BCCI's success in the United States, because without them, BCCI would have been stopped by regulators from gaining an interest in any U.S. bank. As it was, regulatory suspicion towards BCCI required the bank to deceive regulators in collusion with nominees including the heads of state of several foreign emirates, key political and intelligence figures from the Middle East, and entities controlled by the most important bank and banker in the Middle East.
Equally important to BCCI's successful secret acquisitions of U.S. banks in the face of regulatory suspicion was its aggressive use of a series of prominent Americans, beginning with Bert Lance, and continuing with former Defense Secretary Clark Clifford, former U.S. Senator Stuart Symington, well-connected former federal bank regulators, and former and current local, state and federal legislators. Wittingly or not, these individuals provided essential assistance to BCCI through lending their names and their reputations to BCCI at critical moments. Thus, it was not merely BCCI's deceptions that permitted it to infiltrate the United States and its banking system. Also essential were BCCI's use of political influence peddling and the revolving door in Washington.
Monday, August 9, 2010
I'm on my last nerve, I swear. First off Nancy Pelosi is gonna be on a chef's show. That together with Jill Biden being on Army wives was enuff. BUT, and I say but lightly......... I hear that Liz Cheney is sitting in for Hannity. and and and then Karl Rove sits in for Limbaugh......... OMG! Could you get a bigger bucket please as I wanna hurl big time, WTF? ......... are they trying like the Nixon gang to set up house in the media after their stints in jail?
This showing of all these political people from both sides, what think tank did they scrape the bottom of?
I don't think these idiots have a clue what they are doing. It's getting obviouser and obviouser, eh? (Good new word.... obviouser but that's what they expect of US, isn't it?) THEY ARE SIMPLY PISSING ME THE HELL OFF. (Could we really be any worse off?)
I was talking on the social line the other night and boy oh boy did I piss off one conservative repug. (Maybe not, after I told him I was a socialist he came back with a limp dick and then hung up, hee hee.) I got the feeling that even though we were JUST on the phone, his tail was between his legs...... sowy, I can't help myself. (A dog tucks it's tail between it's hind legs
when it's scared. The farther between it's legs it's tail is, the more terrified it is.)
Anyways what are the 'right' and 'left' people thinking, eh? They are simply acting CRAZY, INSANE, DISCUSTING. I guess as long as we keep holding their feet to the fire, they will eventually just burn the fuck up, eH? OMG!!! (What was I thinking; CRAZY, INSANE, and DISCUSTING is the way they always act???)
Putin on a Harley youtube
Putin is Christian
EXCERPT:
THE ZIONIST CONTROLLED WESTERN MEDIA has been waging a savage campaign against Vladimir Putin for the last 8 years.
Yet the Zionist controlled media had nothing but praise for Boris Yeltsin who misgoverned Russia and appointed Jewish oligarchs and their Harvard Jewish friends as his “economic advisors” who looted Russia under the cover of the so called “privatizing” of Russia’s industries.
God on a Harley
EXCERPT:
When I first saw the title of this book, "God on a Harley," I must have laughed for several minutes straight. I leafed through a few pages, wondering if the story was any good, and was quite surprised to discover that this spiritual romance novel is not just good -- it's excellent!
What if God appeared as a gorgeous man with long sable hair and a black jacket atop a Harley Davidson 1340cc motorcycle to a single 37 year-old woman? Could this be what it takes to help her shake off the self-limiting behaviors and beliefs that have stood between her and a happy life? You'd better believe it! As our heroine, Christine, slowly begins a life-altering journey to transform her life into one she actually enjoys living, she finds the meaning of love, and the secrets to enjoying a happy life.
Even if you normally don't enjoy romance novels, I'm sure you'll love "God on a Harley". This book is sheer genius, and can help you see your life in a whole new light!
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
This review is from: God on a Harley (Paperback)
This book was given to me by a female friend who shares a love of reading, as I do. Quite honestly, the title put me off a little. But after reading it, twice, I came away with a different view on a lot of issues relating to life and relationships on the whole and how women see the same things. I found it to be both inspirational and entertaining at the same time. Moving and thought provoking without being heavy handed or biased from a woman's perspective. My Christmas shopping encluded 10 copies which I gave as gifts, and I recieved several "Thank yous" after they had read it. Some of my friends even sent other copies to their friends. Very few books have actually impacted my life, but this one has. Not only has it reafirmed my belief that God does care about each of us, but that He has not lost His faith and there still is hope if we will just listen to what He has to say. Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
This review is from: God on a Harley (Hardcover)
I got this little treasure from the library. I say little because it is very short, but it is jam packed with such truth, such faith.
It's the story of Christine, a burned out nurse who is lonely and downright angry with the way her life has turned out. She bases her life on whether she has a relationship or not and is increasingly miserable and angry at the start of this fable.
Then God arrives. He comes in the form of a handsome stranger on a Harley. Slowly, through this fable, he teaches her what she's been doing wrong and helps her find the meaning of life.
This short book packs a very heavy message ... one that will make you reexamine your own thought processes and the direction of your life. It's a story that will linger in your thoughts for a long time ... it will hopefully make you think ... make you change ... grow.
What's going on here
EXCERPT:
Our city sops up the marketing opportunities, too. Although the "Top Chef D.C." opening episode makes no reference to a half-smoke, a charred and split wiener certainly must be in store -- as are appearances by a variety of predictable Beltway-ers. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, CIA director Leon Panetta and White House assistant chef Sam Kass will make appearances in coming weeks, as will MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, the Washington Nationals and the always-available-for-TV Buzz Aldrin.
Liz Cheney filling in for Hannity
Liz Cheney Filling In for Sean Hannity
By Alex Weprin on Aug 06, 2010 04:08 PM•
Fox News Channel contributor Liz Cheney will be filling in for Sean Hannity on the cable network tonight, according to the "Keep America Safe" Facebook page. Cheney is a board member for Keep America Safe. (h/t J$P)
Rove sits in for Limbaugh
EXCERPT:
Romer returning to UC Berkeley Karl Rove is sitting in for Rush. Rush is off and this is the first time Rove has done his radio show. He runsdown Romer’s wrongo assessment under the VP what’s his name. They both got it wrong. It’s like saying if you spend more money you will automatically have more money in the bank!
She claimed that for every dollar of stimulus spent, Joe Biden over the stimulus, that the feds would see a 1.60 return on its money. Rove’s point then why not spend a fucking trillion dollars? No gov has ever spent its way out of a recession or depression. You have to have right policies and patience.
Jill Biden on Army Wives
EXCERPT:
***Dr. Jill Biden pays a visit to “Army Wives” at 10 p.m. Sunday on Lifetime. The wife of Vice President Joe Biden plays herself and talks to military spouses about the challenges they face. A public-service announcement with Dr. Biden will play during the episode.
3 blind mice -Clinton, Pelosi and Feinstein
EXCERPT:
NANCY PELOSI - The first woman Speaker of the House - We were overjoyed, excited, the future held hope. We heard it, read it, and then watched as you, surrounded by children, took first the gavel, and then your oath. Do you remember that oath you swore, Nancy? In case you have forgotten the following words are those you spoke on January 4, 2007.
Do you solemnly swear or affirm that you will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, that you will bear true faith and allegiance to the same, that you will take this obligation freely, without any mental reservations or purpose of evasion, and that you will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which you are about to enter, so help you God?
We called one another on the phone, e-mailed, wrote about it on our blogs, and hailed our sisters in the market and the mall to share the wondrous news... the Speaker of the House was now a woman, the first ever, and a Democrat, too! Women across America were buoyant!
Our hearts began to warm and beat. We felt as if we could breathe again. Something would be done to stop the destruction and death. Children in Iraq and the young men and women in our military would once again be valued and protected. Priorities like jobs, health care, housing, and education would receive our hard earned tax dollars while the thrust for global empire would wither from financial neglect. The reign of terror in America would surely be brought to an end.
We would restore trust both within America and abroad by treating our international neighbors as we ourselves wished to be treated. To do so, it was necessary to impeach the madmen who were responsible for multiple war crimes and treason. Accountability would be insured by subjecting the criminal leaders to the full extent of prosecution under international law.
What happened Nancy? Did you misunderstand or "misunderestimate" or something? Just what didn't you understand about "support and defend the Constitution?" We have domestic enemies who have trampled our rights, lied, stolen, and murdered. Our nation is in direct danger from the criminals who occupy its two highest elected offices. Yet you chose to excuse their treachery. What mental reservations made you shirk you sworn duty and pledge your allegiance to George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney?
It is said that you are one of the richest women in America. Given your priviledged background perhaps your first loyalty is to wealth and class. How long do we have to wait for the leftovers trickle down to us? That you were removed and out of touch with your constituents became evident when you uttered those appalling words, "IMPEACHMENT IS OFF THE TABLE" over and over again.
We were stunned. However, the crushing disappointment and bitterness caused by your betrayal soon gave way to anger. You didn't listen to us. You even said that IMPEACHMENT was a waste of time. WTF??
Your voting record is equally disappointing. You voted for war in Afghanistan, for the Patriot Act, for the establishment of Homeland Security, and nay when a bill condemning the torture of prisoners in Iraq was presented. As Speaker of the House your performance has been abysmal. You have presided over a democratically controlled congress full of weak, corporate addicted, Constitution shredding, fascist wannabes and have thus, failed the American people.
You, my dear girl, bring to mind another, who decades ago, capitulated and appeased a nation into harm's way. I draw your attention to the tall man standing to the far left of Mussolini and Hitler in the above photograph - Neville Chamberlain.
Shame on you, House Mouse, numero deux ,
Our message, it seems, you've misconstrued.
This showing of all these political people from both sides, what think tank did they scrape the bottom of?
I don't think these idiots have a clue what they are doing. It's getting obviouser and obviouser, eh? (Good new word.... obviouser but that's what they expect of US, isn't it?) THEY ARE SIMPLY PISSING ME THE HELL OFF. (Could we really be any worse off?)
I was talking on the social line the other night and boy oh boy did I piss off one conservative repug. (Maybe not, after I told him I was a socialist he came back with a limp dick and then hung up, hee hee.) I got the feeling that even though we were JUST on the phone, his tail was between his legs...... sowy, I can't help myself. (A dog tucks it's tail between it's hind legs
when it's scared. The farther between it's legs it's tail is, the more terrified it is.)
Anyways what are the 'right' and 'left' people thinking, eh? They are simply acting CRAZY, INSANE, DISCUSTING. I guess as long as we keep holding their feet to the fire, they will eventually just burn the fuck up, eH? OMG!!! (What was I thinking; CRAZY, INSANE, and DISCUSTING is the way they always act???)
Putin on a Harley youtube
Putin is Christian
EXCERPT:
THE ZIONIST CONTROLLED WESTERN MEDIA has been waging a savage campaign against Vladimir Putin for the last 8 years.
Yet the Zionist controlled media had nothing but praise for Boris Yeltsin who misgoverned Russia and appointed Jewish oligarchs and their Harvard Jewish friends as his “economic advisors” who looted Russia under the cover of the so called “privatizing” of Russia’s industries.
God on a Harley
EXCERPT:
When I first saw the title of this book, "God on a Harley," I must have laughed for several minutes straight. I leafed through a few pages, wondering if the story was any good, and was quite surprised to discover that this spiritual romance novel is not just good -- it's excellent!
What if God appeared as a gorgeous man with long sable hair and a black jacket atop a Harley Davidson 1340cc motorcycle to a single 37 year-old woman? Could this be what it takes to help her shake off the self-limiting behaviors and beliefs that have stood between her and a happy life? You'd better believe it! As our heroine, Christine, slowly begins a life-altering journey to transform her life into one she actually enjoys living, she finds the meaning of love, and the secrets to enjoying a happy life.
Even if you normally don't enjoy romance novels, I'm sure you'll love "God on a Harley". This book is sheer genius, and can help you see your life in a whole new light!
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
This review is from: God on a Harley (Paperback)
This book was given to me by a female friend who shares a love of reading, as I do. Quite honestly, the title put me off a little. But after reading it, twice, I came away with a different view on a lot of issues relating to life and relationships on the whole and how women see the same things. I found it to be both inspirational and entertaining at the same time. Moving and thought provoking without being heavy handed or biased from a woman's perspective. My Christmas shopping encluded 10 copies which I gave as gifts, and I recieved several "Thank yous" after they had read it. Some of my friends even sent other copies to their friends. Very few books have actually impacted my life, but this one has. Not only has it reafirmed my belief that God does care about each of us, but that He has not lost His faith and there still is hope if we will just listen to what He has to say. Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
This review is from: God on a Harley (Hardcover)
I got this little treasure from the library. I say little because it is very short, but it is jam packed with such truth, such faith.
It's the story of Christine, a burned out nurse who is lonely and downright angry with the way her life has turned out. She bases her life on whether she has a relationship or not and is increasingly miserable and angry at the start of this fable.
Then God arrives. He comes in the form of a handsome stranger on a Harley. Slowly, through this fable, he teaches her what she's been doing wrong and helps her find the meaning of life.
This short book packs a very heavy message ... one that will make you reexamine your own thought processes and the direction of your life. It's a story that will linger in your thoughts for a long time ... it will hopefully make you think ... make you change ... grow.
What's going on here
EXCERPT:
Our city sops up the marketing opportunities, too. Although the "Top Chef D.C." opening episode makes no reference to a half-smoke, a charred and split wiener certainly must be in store -- as are appearances by a variety of predictable Beltway-ers. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, CIA director Leon Panetta and White House assistant chef Sam Kass will make appearances in coming weeks, as will MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, the Washington Nationals and the always-available-for-TV Buzz Aldrin.
Liz Cheney filling in for Hannity
Liz Cheney Filling In for Sean Hannity
By Alex Weprin on Aug 06, 2010 04:08 PM•
Fox News Channel contributor Liz Cheney will be filling in for Sean Hannity on the cable network tonight, according to the "Keep America Safe" Facebook page. Cheney is a board member for Keep America Safe. (h/t J$P)
Rove sits in for Limbaugh
EXCERPT:
Romer returning to UC Berkeley Karl Rove is sitting in for Rush. Rush is off and this is the first time Rove has done his radio show. He runsdown Romer’s wrongo assessment under the VP what’s his name. They both got it wrong. It’s like saying if you spend more money you will automatically have more money in the bank!
She claimed that for every dollar of stimulus spent, Joe Biden over the stimulus, that the feds would see a 1.60 return on its money. Rove’s point then why not spend a fucking trillion dollars? No gov has ever spent its way out of a recession or depression. You have to have right policies and patience.
Jill Biden on Army Wives
EXCERPT:
***Dr. Jill Biden pays a visit to “Army Wives” at 10 p.m. Sunday on Lifetime. The wife of Vice President Joe Biden plays herself and talks to military spouses about the challenges they face. A public-service announcement with Dr. Biden will play during the episode.
3 blind mice -Clinton, Pelosi and Feinstein
EXCERPT:
NANCY PELOSI - The first woman Speaker of the House - We were overjoyed, excited, the future held hope. We heard it, read it, and then watched as you, surrounded by children, took first the gavel, and then your oath. Do you remember that oath you swore, Nancy? In case you have forgotten the following words are those you spoke on January 4, 2007.
Do you solemnly swear or affirm that you will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, that you will bear true faith and allegiance to the same, that you will take this obligation freely, without any mental reservations or purpose of evasion, and that you will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which you are about to enter, so help you God?
We called one another on the phone, e-mailed, wrote about it on our blogs, and hailed our sisters in the market and the mall to share the wondrous news... the Speaker of the House was now a woman, the first ever, and a Democrat, too! Women across America were buoyant!
Our hearts began to warm and beat. We felt as if we could breathe again. Something would be done to stop the destruction and death. Children in Iraq and the young men and women in our military would once again be valued and protected. Priorities like jobs, health care, housing, and education would receive our hard earned tax dollars while the thrust for global empire would wither from financial neglect. The reign of terror in America would surely be brought to an end.
We would restore trust both within America and abroad by treating our international neighbors as we ourselves wished to be treated. To do so, it was necessary to impeach the madmen who were responsible for multiple war crimes and treason. Accountability would be insured by subjecting the criminal leaders to the full extent of prosecution under international law.
What happened Nancy? Did you misunderstand or "misunderestimate" or something? Just what didn't you understand about "support and defend the Constitution?" We have domestic enemies who have trampled our rights, lied, stolen, and murdered. Our nation is in direct danger from the criminals who occupy its two highest elected offices. Yet you chose to excuse their treachery. What mental reservations made you shirk you sworn duty and pledge your allegiance to George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney?
It is said that you are one of the richest women in America. Given your priviledged background perhaps your first loyalty is to wealth and class. How long do we have to wait for the leftovers trickle down to us? That you were removed and out of touch with your constituents became evident when you uttered those appalling words, "IMPEACHMENT IS OFF THE TABLE" over and over again.
We were stunned. However, the crushing disappointment and bitterness caused by your betrayal soon gave way to anger. You didn't listen to us. You even said that IMPEACHMENT was a waste of time. WTF??
Your voting record is equally disappointing. You voted for war in Afghanistan, for the Patriot Act, for the establishment of Homeland Security, and nay when a bill condemning the torture of prisoners in Iraq was presented. As Speaker of the House your performance has been abysmal. You have presided over a democratically controlled congress full of weak, corporate addicted, Constitution shredding, fascist wannabes and have thus, failed the American people.
You, my dear girl, bring to mind another, who decades ago, capitulated and appeased a nation into harm's way. I draw your attention to the tall man standing to the far left of Mussolini and Hitler in the above photograph - Neville Chamberlain.
Shame on you, House Mouse, numero deux ,
Our message, it seems, you've misconstrued.
Friday, August 6, 2010
To whom it may concern:
cc to all the dirty politicians of the world
I have recently committed to a hunger strike on behalf of the people.
I didn't do this out of the goodness of my soul although it may end up being just that. I like to eat and I like to enjoy.
I was eating a burrito the other day as my son-in-law insists on eating 'his way'. (Brainwashing) In about 30 minutes I had a horrific experience. I didn't know if it was a heart attack or food poisoning but right near my breast bone I had an awful pain. It eventually subsided and I dedided I was ok.
I've never claimed to be the sharpest knife in the drawer and what I did next proves it.
It got along to be about dinner time and I ate another burrito and voila........ same experience. I decided then and there it was the hamburger. (I also experiment a lot and decided if I wasn't going to the hospital I wanted to know for sure what I was dealing with.)
It was the strangest thing as it felt like a huge army boot had been pressed against my chest with a lot of pressure. Even after the initial pain, it felt like the inside of my chest was bruised. (Sorry for this explanation but it was simply my experience.).........so don't try to divert me from my own diagnosis. (If you try, just ask someone who knows me and he/she will tell you JUST how stubborn I can be when I know I'm right.)
I still didn't feel well for 3 more days......... and I got the shits all over myself at least 5 times during that period.
Years ago when I was visiting Arizona from California I think I had food poisoning then as well. I would burp and the smell from the burp tasted and smelled like poop. It was one the worst experiences of my life. I decided then and there that if I had to live with that for life I would rather be dead. (and no, I have never eaten shit that I know of but I definitely know what it tastes like after that experience.)
Yesterday I pooped myself again and then I got really pissed off. The initial experience was on July 31. What the hell, am I living in a world that is poisoning me. Hey, that's NOT ok but I have already lived a full and long life I also REALLY don't like the fact that not only am I being poisoned, my grandkids are being poisoned............ hense, more PISSED!!!
I have a tendency to get really pissed and this case was no different. I went in pulled myself a bath, lit a candle, and poured myself a glass of tea. I was literally livid with anger. Had the initial episode been a heart attack, I'm pretty sure I would have drowned.
As I sat in the fluoride filled bathwater I started remineising. I remember back in the day when my parents were still alive. My dad's heart stopped beating once when he was at Jerry's restaurant in Los Banos, Ca. Daddy slumped over and the paramedics were called. I didn't know until talking to my father 2 days later that he had messed himself when this happened. hmmmmmmmmmmmm (My dad's heart eventually stopped again and he was 6 weeks in the hospital in a coma before they pulled the plug.)
As I was talking to my father he shared with me that he would rather die than to ever have to experience that humiliation again.
Now don't get me wrong, I ain't that all twisted up about it but I've never experienced it in public either. My daddy was a proud hardworking man that had tried and tried to get into the military but couldn't during WWII. He finally signed up for the Merchant Marines and went out as a chef on a boat. WHAT the hell, he saw the same actions as the military and he 'SERVED' the military only to be put down time and time again by the same people he wanted to serve with because he wasn't in the core.
Anyways enough on that for now and down to the 'BRASS' tacks of this blog.
I've done a bit of researching on Hunger Strike and I figure I have maybe a month or two before my actual demise from it or less if I give in and eat. It can be damaging to my organs and it can do damage for the rest of my life. SO, if you think I'm kidding about this think again.
I feel rather helpless in this situation, especially after watching Alex Jones last couple of videos on what's being done to our food. I also have done a lot of research on Codex Alimentarius and that scares the living shit out of me.
Food: The Ultimate Secret Exposed - PT 1/2 youtube
Food: The Ultimate Secret Exposed - PT 2/2 youtube
Dr Rima Laibouw - Codex Alimentarius (2 of 5).flv
I am here today writing this as I don't want to wait so long that I'm not coherent.
I am asking my friends and followers on the internet to copy Vladimer Putin, Hugo Chavez, Raul Castro on this if and when my obituary shows up in the papers. (A few other world leaders as well but I won't know as my partners have their own ideas.)
But hey, I'm sure if it's going to go to Putin at any time, he'll get this same copy as you do today. I could be wrong...... I was one other time. I'm asking of these people what I feel would be ridiculed by the UN if WE were to ask them as the UN is just as corrupt as the US Government.
I would like to ask on behalf of the American people that these leaders come together and decide how to get the criminal element out of our political system and the media.
I know Russia has had problems with their own BP relationship....... and maybe there are other international companies that have not done well in Russia. (That probably pisses the hell out ot the elites, eh?P
I would like that Mr. Putin and his folks target our American media as well. I would to put the names Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Glen Beck yadayadyada. I think that Mr. Putin will know from his KGB days how to go about finding the appropriate names and will do what he has to to stop the insanity.
I will suggest the congressman and sentators that know for facts that they are themselves the crooks resign immediately........... my2cents???????? ...hey, or wait and see if I live thru this and it's a bluff, maybe then you'll be safe from Putin? I don't know about you but I was raised in a climate that Russia was bad ass and dirty.
I've watched the media lately and it's all crazy. John McCain says one thing out of the right side of his mouth and exactly the opposite the next day out of the left side. Maybe he should be one of the first who resigns........ I've also thought Arlen Spechter should resign as he was on the Warren Commission and the 911 Commision I think.
I never did much like these guys that are Republicans and then become Democrats, I'm pretty sure you can't trust em.
Arlen Specter Interrogates Anita Hillyoutube
OK, back to Putin, I'm pretty sure from my following experience that there are Russian cells already pretty damn deep on US soil.....
Back 4 or 5 years ago when I was working in the mental health community and I had a peer who was living with a young Russian name of Gergon.
When I met Gergon, known as Michael at his work (Walgreens)he was very polite and very respectful and damn smart. He spoke 4 langueage fluently and he was a whiz on the internet.
Anyways, Gergon left one day for work and his girlfriend shared with me that Gergon went out on manuevers at night. hmmmmmmm, it peeked my interest and the next time we met up Gergon made light of it. (I was later to learn that Gergon HATED BILL CLINTON.) He had seen the Americans kill his grandfather right in front of their house when he was just a child.
Personally I think Gergon was over here to kill US citizens in retaliation for his painfull childhood.
Gergon's girlfriend and I talked freely about the things that had been done to US and our families. When Rachel was little in NY city her parents had been dragged out of their home in handcuffs and taken to jail because ot being Seven Day Advantists. They had been ruffed up and harassed for 2 days before let go and no charges where ever filed??????? Anyways, soon after I started seeing Rachel Gergon broke off the affair. He moved out and started drinking heavily (he was only 23) and I think the information he absorbed from Rachel and me changed his whole life and I think he realized that the American people weren't the bad guys we were made out to be.
I wonder how hard it would be to get folks like Gergon directed at the same people who killed his grandfather and away from his desire to simply attack Americans? hmmmmmmm Any resignations yet???
cc to all the dirty politicians of the world
I have recently committed to a hunger strike on behalf of the people.
I didn't do this out of the goodness of my soul although it may end up being just that. I like to eat and I like to enjoy.
I was eating a burrito the other day as my son-in-law insists on eating 'his way'. (Brainwashing) In about 30 minutes I had a horrific experience. I didn't know if it was a heart attack or food poisoning but right near my breast bone I had an awful pain. It eventually subsided and I dedided I was ok.
I've never claimed to be the sharpest knife in the drawer and what I did next proves it.
It got along to be about dinner time and I ate another burrito and voila........ same experience. I decided then and there it was the hamburger. (I also experiment a lot and decided if I wasn't going to the hospital I wanted to know for sure what I was dealing with.)
It was the strangest thing as it felt like a huge army boot had been pressed against my chest with a lot of pressure. Even after the initial pain, it felt like the inside of my chest was bruised. (Sorry for this explanation but it was simply my experience.).........so don't try to divert me from my own diagnosis. (If you try, just ask someone who knows me and he/she will tell you JUST how stubborn I can be when I know I'm right.)
I still didn't feel well for 3 more days......... and I got the shits all over myself at least 5 times during that period.
Years ago when I was visiting Arizona from California I think I had food poisoning then as well. I would burp and the smell from the burp tasted and smelled like poop. It was one the worst experiences of my life. I decided then and there that if I had to live with that for life I would rather be dead. (and no, I have never eaten shit that I know of but I definitely know what it tastes like after that experience.)
Yesterday I pooped myself again and then I got really pissed off. The initial experience was on July 31. What the hell, am I living in a world that is poisoning me. Hey, that's NOT ok but I have already lived a full and long life I also REALLY don't like the fact that not only am I being poisoned, my grandkids are being poisoned............ hense, more PISSED!!!
I have a tendency to get really pissed and this case was no different. I went in pulled myself a bath, lit a candle, and poured myself a glass of tea. I was literally livid with anger. Had the initial episode been a heart attack, I'm pretty sure I would have drowned.
As I sat in the fluoride filled bathwater I started remineising. I remember back in the day when my parents were still alive. My dad's heart stopped beating once when he was at Jerry's restaurant in Los Banos, Ca. Daddy slumped over and the paramedics were called. I didn't know until talking to my father 2 days later that he had messed himself when this happened. hmmmmmmmmmmmm (My dad's heart eventually stopped again and he was 6 weeks in the hospital in a coma before they pulled the plug.)
As I was talking to my father he shared with me that he would rather die than to ever have to experience that humiliation again.
Now don't get me wrong, I ain't that all twisted up about it but I've never experienced it in public either. My daddy was a proud hardworking man that had tried and tried to get into the military but couldn't during WWII. He finally signed up for the Merchant Marines and went out as a chef on a boat. WHAT the hell, he saw the same actions as the military and he 'SERVED' the military only to be put down time and time again by the same people he wanted to serve with because he wasn't in the core.
Anyways enough on that for now and down to the 'BRASS' tacks of this blog.
I've done a bit of researching on Hunger Strike and I figure I have maybe a month or two before my actual demise from it or less if I give in and eat. It can be damaging to my organs and it can do damage for the rest of my life. SO, if you think I'm kidding about this think again.
I feel rather helpless in this situation, especially after watching Alex Jones last couple of videos on what's being done to our food. I also have done a lot of research on Codex Alimentarius and that scares the living shit out of me.
Food: The Ultimate Secret Exposed - PT 1/2 youtube
Food: The Ultimate Secret Exposed - PT 2/2 youtube
Dr Rima Laibouw - Codex Alimentarius (2 of 5).flv
I am here today writing this as I don't want to wait so long that I'm not coherent.
I am asking my friends and followers on the internet to copy Vladimer Putin, Hugo Chavez, Raul Castro on this if and when my obituary shows up in the papers. (A few other world leaders as well but I won't know as my partners have their own ideas.)
But hey, I'm sure if it's going to go to Putin at any time, he'll get this same copy as you do today. I could be wrong...... I was one other time. I'm asking of these people what I feel would be ridiculed by the UN if WE were to ask them as the UN is just as corrupt as the US Government.
I would like to ask on behalf of the American people that these leaders come together and decide how to get the criminal element out of our political system and the media.
I know Russia has had problems with their own BP relationship....... and maybe there are other international companies that have not done well in Russia. (That probably pisses the hell out ot the elites, eh?P
I would like that Mr. Putin and his folks target our American media as well. I would to put the names Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Glen Beck yadayadyada. I think that Mr. Putin will know from his KGB days how to go about finding the appropriate names and will do what he has to to stop the insanity.
I will suggest the congressman and sentators that know for facts that they are themselves the crooks resign immediately........... my2cents???????? ...hey, or wait and see if I live thru this and it's a bluff, maybe then you'll be safe from Putin? I don't know about you but I was raised in a climate that Russia was bad ass and dirty.
I've watched the media lately and it's all crazy. John McCain says one thing out of the right side of his mouth and exactly the opposite the next day out of the left side. Maybe he should be one of the first who resigns........ I've also thought Arlen Spechter should resign as he was on the Warren Commission and the 911 Commision I think.
I never did much like these guys that are Republicans and then become Democrats, I'm pretty sure you can't trust em.
Arlen Specter Interrogates Anita Hillyoutube
OK, back to Putin, I'm pretty sure from my following experience that there are Russian cells already pretty damn deep on US soil.....
Back 4 or 5 years ago when I was working in the mental health community and I had a peer who was living with a young Russian name of Gergon.
When I met Gergon, known as Michael at his work (Walgreens)he was very polite and very respectful and damn smart. He spoke 4 langueage fluently and he was a whiz on the internet.
Anyways, Gergon left one day for work and his girlfriend shared with me that Gergon went out on manuevers at night. hmmmmmmm, it peeked my interest and the next time we met up Gergon made light of it. (I was later to learn that Gergon HATED BILL CLINTON.) He had seen the Americans kill his grandfather right in front of their house when he was just a child.
Personally I think Gergon was over here to kill US citizens in retaliation for his painfull childhood.
Gergon's girlfriend and I talked freely about the things that had been done to US and our families. When Rachel was little in NY city her parents had been dragged out of their home in handcuffs and taken to jail because ot being Seven Day Advantists. They had been ruffed up and harassed for 2 days before let go and no charges where ever filed??????? Anyways, soon after I started seeing Rachel Gergon broke off the affair. He moved out and started drinking heavily (he was only 23) and I think the information he absorbed from Rachel and me changed his whole life and I think he realized that the American people weren't the bad guys we were made out to be.
I wonder how hard it would be to get folks like Gergon directed at the same people who killed his grandfather and away from his desire to simply attack Americans? hmmmmmmm Any resignations yet???
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)