Editorial

NY Times Complicit in FBI Anthrax Coverup

Published in the March, 2009 Rock Creek Free Press

by Sheila Casey

Back in 2001, just months after the anthrax attacks that killed five people, several articles came out in mainstream newspapers that pointed clearly to the CIA and Army as the most likely sources of the weaponized anthrax. Articles in The Baltimore Sun, Miami Herald, Washington Post and New York Times laid out the facts that incriminated Battelle Memorial Labs in West Jefferson, Ohio, and the Army’s lab at the Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah as the only logical sources for the anthrax. These facts, as reported in 2001, include:

1. For over a decade, Army scientists at Dugway have been making weapons-grade anthrax that is “virtually identical” to the anthrax used in the attacks.

2. The anthrax used in the 2001 attacks was extremely concentrated, with a trillion spores per gram. The Dugway anthrax had a similar concentration.

3. The FBI was increasingly focused on US government bioweapons research programs as the source of the deadly anthrax.

4. Both the lab in Utah and the lab in Ohio received anthrax samples from the United States Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick, although USAMRIID deals only with wet anthrax and ships it wet.

5. The investigation was focused on the Dugway anthrax, and Dugway was described as the only facility that was known to be weaponizing anthrax.

6. One FBI official said that the CIA’s anthrax was “the best lead we have at this point.”

7. Army officials said that Fort Detrick did not have the equipment for weaponizing anthrax.

The FBI has never explained what became of this initial focus on the labs in Utah and Ohio. Instead, after the death of Fort Detrick anthrax researcher Bruce Ivins in July, 2008, the FBI attempted to make the case that Ivins was the murderer and all other suspects had been cleared of suspicion.

Since Ivins’ death, the media have, with very few exceptions, passively swallowed the line dispensed by the FBI, and have acted as little more than stenographers in parroting the hollow arguments presented by the FBI that Ivins is guilty.

Genetically modified cotton seeds "could lead to total destruction of soil organisms, leaving dead soil unable to produce food"

From Global Research, here.

A recent scientific study carried out by Navdanya, compared the soil of fields where Bt-cotton had been planted for 3 years with adjoining fields with non GMO cotton or other crops. The region covered included Nagpur, Amravati and Wardha of Vidharbha which accounts for highest GMO cotton planting in India, and the highest rate of farmers suicides (4000 per year).

In 3 years, Bt-cotton has reduced the population of Actinomycetes by 17%. Actinomycetes are vital for breaking down cellulose and creating humus.

Bacteria were reduced by 14%. The total microbial biomass was reduced by 8.9%.

Vital soil beneficial enzymes which make nutrients available to plants have also been drastically reduced. Acid Phosphatase which contributes to uptake of phosphates was reduced by 26.6%. Nitrogenase enzymes which help fix nitrogen were reduced by 22.6%.

At this rate, in a decade of planting with GM cotton, or any GM crop with Bt genes in it, could lead to total destruction of soil organisms, leaving dead soil unable to produce food.

Note: this image is of a drought.

Are you an obedient taxpayer? Happy to bail out the banksters?

Bush bribed reporters to ask specific questions

The Wall Street Journal editorialized today about the revelation that Obama was looking for specific reporters to call on in the White House press corps:

About half-way through President Obama's press conference Monday night, he had an unscripted question of his own. "All, Chuck Todd," the President said, referring to NBC's White House correspondent. "Where's Chuck?" He had the same strange question about Fox News's Major Garrett: "Where's Major?". . . .

The President was running down a list of reporters preselected to ask questions. The White House had decided in advance who would be allowed to question the President and who was left out. . . .

We doubt that President Bush, who was notorious for being parsimonious with follow-ups, would have gotten away with prescreening his interlocutors.

Former President Bush not only pre-screened his questioners, at least one of them was offered a ride on Air Force One if he asked the question the White House wanted asked. 

Although this story was related to me in 2006, I have held back on revealing it, as my friend Dermot Bennett was still a working journalist at the time.  Now, sadly, Dermot is too sick to work and not expected to recover.  His career will not be harmed by this revelation.

Dermot was a correspondent with Agence France Press.  He related this story to me (rough paraphrase):

I was sitting in the back of the White House briefing room when Tony Snow approached and asked me "How would you like to ride on Air Force One?"  I said "love to," and Tony said "Okay, when the President calls on you, please ask this question." 

And he told me what they wanted asked.

I put my hand up and Bush called on me by first name "Dermot."  I asked exactly the question they gave me and later was told who to contact to arrange for a trip on Air Force One.

Dermot then asked me (Sheila):  "So, you want to go on a ride with me on Air Force One?" 

I hate Bush and didn't want to be near him, so declined. 

Yet more evidence--as if we need it--that our press is utterly corrupt. The goings on in the White House briefing room amount to little more than mutual masturbation.

Obama now appears to be equally afraid of unscripted questions.  New boss, same as the old boss.

Bailout exceeds cost of all US wars combined (plus the New Deal and NASA)

from the Rock Creek Free Press:

According to CRS, the Congressional Research Service, all major US wars (including such events as the American Revolution, the War of 1812, the Civil War, the Spanish American War, World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, the invasion of Panama, the Kosovo War and numerous other small conflicts), cost a total of $7.5 trillion in inflation-adjusted 2008 dollars.

Casey Research, of Vermont, (no relation) has analyzed the costs of the government bailouts of the housing crisis, the credit crisis and others and has concluded that the total is $8.5 trillion, which is more than the cost of all US wars, the Louisiana Purchase, the New Deal, the Marshall Plan and the NASA Space Program combined.

Bureau of Labor Statistics: we are falling off a cliff

We are so screwed

In Paul Craig Roberts' most recent column, the former Wall St. Journal editor lays out the gravity of the situation for the USA:

The unreality in which the US government operates is beyond belief.  A  bankrupt government  that cannot pay its bills without printing money is rushing headlong into wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran.  According to the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Analysis, the cost to the US taxpayers of sending a single soldier to fight in Afghanistan or Iraq is $775,000 per year!  

The world has never seen such total mindlessness.  Napoleon’s and Hitler’s march into Russia were rational acts compared to the mindless idiocy of the United States government.

Obama’s war in Afghanistan is the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party.  After seven years of conflict, there is still no defined mission or endgame scenario for US forces in Afghanistan.  When asked about the mission, a US military official told NBC News, "Frankly, we don’t have one."  NBC reports: "they’re working on it."  

Speaking to House Democrats on February 5, President Obama admitted that the US government does not know what its mission is in Afghanistan and that to avoid "mission creep without clear parameters," the US "needs a clear mission."

How would you like to be sent to a war, the point of which no one knows, including the commander-in-chief who sent you to kill or be killed?  How, fellow taxpayers, do you like paying the enormous cost of sending soldiers on an undefined mission while the economy collapses?

What possible explanation is there for the Executive branch and the Congress to collude in destroying America?  Is there no one to stand up for the American worker or taxpayer or soldier? 

Once again, we will be asked to believe that this crisis was caused by incompetence--just like Iraq, Katrina and 9/11.  There must be no Ph.Ds in government, no one who understands economics, finance or even logic.

Once again, no heads will roll, there will be no demotions for this so-called incompetence.  Instead we see the prime villains--the bankers who first pleaded for less government oversight and then exploited that lack of oversight to build a huge debt bubble and destroy the economy--we see these same people being rewarded with trillions of dollars from the US treasury.  Dollars they can, and do, use for luxury vacations and enormous bonuses for themselves.

Rational economists such as Karl Denninger have argued that the banks need to fail.  In the words of Mexican banker Hugo Salinas Price:

There is no other way out of this swamp of excessive debt - and we state this categorically - other than by the cancellation of enormous amounts of debt, as noncollectable.

If the banks are too big to fail, why was there no anti-trust activity to prevent these behemoths from robbing us? 

It is not incompetence, it is an intentional sinking of the American middle class, ie, everyone other than the super-rich.  In this context, the middle class includes your surgeon, your accountant, your real estate broker. 

Americans who have lost their jobs, now will have time to go on the internet and explore the origins of our failed banking system, and might ask themselves why a private corporation, the Federal Reserve, was given the power to control the US economy. 

Has the Fed fulfilled its mission responsibly?  If not, why is it allowed to continue acting as king and monarch of of a soon to be former SuperPower?

The answer was given to me by film maker Laurel Jensen, who worked in the Reagan White House.  In June of 2008 she told me:

The President is only a PR guy.  He meets every Wednesday afternoon with representatives of the major banking families, who give him his marching orders.  He then goes and sells that plan to the American people.

Have you ever seen an article in the mainstream media seriously questioning the role of the Fed?  Are its decisions subjected to any kind of oversight? 

Of course not, for they are the controllers, dictators and rulers of this world.  Our visible government--Obama, Biden, Hillary--are just the public face of this cabal, the functionaries installed in power by the cabal's PR arm (aka the mainstream media) to implement its desires. 

And 98% of Americans are still oblivious to this. 

Yes, we are screwed.