Back around the time of WWII, the average farm worker expended about 5,500 calories a day. There used to be something called the "Hickock Index." It was the average belt size worn by men (made by Hickock, natch) and it was about 32.

I wonder what it is today?

Forty what???

And I wonder myself, jeffmoskin!

People are getting very large these days, and young people, to boot!

I was getting my hair cut recently, and a young man who was waiting in line was talking about having had one of these operations, after weighing something like 400 pounds!

Incredible!

And being trained as a public health professional, I have to wonder just how much things like what are talked about in this next article have to do with this sea change in what human beings are beginning to look like anymore, especially this obesity thing that we witness and hear about so much anymore, especially among children?

"Administration kept mum about unapproved modified corn sold"

Tue Mar 22, 6:25 PM ET

By Seth Borenstein, Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - The federal government kept it secret for three months that genetically modified corn seed was sold accidentally to some U.S. farms for four years and may have gotten into the American food supply.

The accidental use of unapproved seed became public when the scientific journal Nature published a story about it Tuesday.

The corn seed was probably safe.

America's food supply and plant and animal stocks weren't harmed and remain safe to eat, according to officials of the seed company and the federal government.

But the government's secrecy about the mistake - one affecting the public food supply - raises serious concerns, according to independent experts.

Spokesmen for the Department of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency said there was no need to notify the public because the government had determined that Bt 10 was safe.

In addition, the USDA is investigating the whole incident involving the seed company, which faces up to $500,000 in fines, Agriculture Department spokesman Jim Rogers said.

"We're gathering evidence that we may need in front of a judge," Rogers said.

"If there was a health risk, you would have heard about it and there would have been a recall."

Syngenta, a Swiss-based company, distributed the unapproved genetically altered corn seed, called Bt 10.

It mixed the Bt 10 with a near-identical and approved corn seed called Bt 11, company officials said Tuesday afternoon in a hastily called news conference.

The Bt 10 was modified with a gene from the pesticide-like bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis.

"Most of the corn is used for industrial and animal use," Syngenta spokeswoman Sarah Hull said.

"It may have gotten into the food supply, but regardless, the proteins are deemed safe and there's no food concern."

Remaining seeds have been destroyed or isolated, Hull said.

The unapproved seeds grew into 37,000 U.S. acres of corn over four years.

That involves one-one-hundredth of 1 percent of the corn acreage in America, Hull said.

Sygenta's U.S. headquarters is in Greensboro, N.C.

It runs its seed operation out of Golden Valley, Minn.

"I personally don't see it would be a major issue," said Kendall Lamkey, the head of Iowa State University's plant-breeding center.

But the way the federal government kept the mistake secret is alarming, Lamkey said, and may undermine public confidence in the growing field of genetically modified crops.

"The whole GMO (genetically modified organism) controversy surrounds a lack of transparency on both (the part of) the companies and regulatory agencies," said Lamkey, who served on a National Academy of Sciences panel in 2002 on the environmental impact of genetically modified crops.

"There's too much secrecy."

In mid-December, Syngenta told the EPA, the Agriculture Department and the Food and Drug Administration about the mistake, Hull said.

EPA scientists reviewed seven packets of information from Syngenta from Jan. 7 to March 10, and "as more data came in, the confidence of our scientific determination (of no risk) increased," EPA spokeswoman Cynthia Bergman said in an e-mail.

"Had there been a human health concern, we would have alerted the public immediately."

That's not acceptable, said Sheldon Krimsky, a Tufts University environmental-policy professor who's a longtime foe of genetically modified crops.

"They have both a moral and legal obligation to reveal violations," Krimsky said.

"This is a government that's operating in a stealth manner that wants to keep bad news from the public."

end quotes

Sound like we have yet another candidate for a "psychiatric takedown" on hand, here, to eliminate him as a witness ON OUR behalf!

BAD NEWS getting out to the PUBLIC?

BAD FOR BUSINESS!

Can't have that!

AND SO!

The expert witnesses ON BEHALF OF THE PEOPLE just have to go!

Thus, the "PSYCHIATRIC TAKEDOWN", in all of its perverted glory!

http://www.ccemt.org/forumviewmessage.cfm?...cussionnbr=4725

(if you try this link, and get an error message in the main part of the ceemt screen, just look to your left and go down to "forums", and when you click on that, and get the next window, scroll down to MISCELLANEOUS, and click on "A case of psychiatric expert witness intimidation", to see one example of how the "expert witness elimination system" actually works, in order to assure that the PEOPLE of OUR America remain UNREPRESENTED in these public health issues involving CORPORATE PROFITS over PUBLIC HEALTH and SAFETY!)

AND .....

IF the seed is really safe for humans, WHY DID THEY DESTROY WHAT WAS LEFT?

IF, it is safe, WHY NOT JUST USE IT, INSTEAD?

ESPECIALLY SINCE THEY ALREADY HAD, and then DEEMED it safe?

SO?

What don't follow here?

What don't "track"?

Besides just about everything we're being told here by the Bush Co.s?

SHENANIGAN:

a) a devious trick used especially for an underhand purpose;

b) tricky or questionable practices or conduct; or

c) high-spirited or mischievous activity!

In a post above, Istoodforu spoke about Bush Co.'s SHENANIGANS, and when I first read that, I took the meaning of "shenanigans" in the CONTEXT of the third definition above, as if Bush Co. was going out with Dick Cheney while wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with "I'M WITH STUPID!", or maybe giving Dick Cheney a "HOT-FOOT" while Dick Cheney was holding one of his now-famous "TAY-RISTS LUV JOHN KERRY" press conferences, or hanging a "KICK ME" sign on the back of Donald Rumsfeld, or "SHORT-SHEETING" Condo Rice's bed on Air Force I!

And I thought to myself, "IF ONLY that is all it was with this Bush Co.", then I probably would not even bother to come in here and make a single post, and there really would not be much need to do so!

I certainly don't have either the time or the inclination to engage in what Istoodforu calls "Bush-bashing", as what purpose does that serve?

Certainly if I were a stand-up comic, or some kind of lampoonist-for-hire, perhaps I would see a "GIG" here with respect to the foibles of George W. Bush, BUT I AM NOT!

I am not a stand-up comic, and I am not a lampoonist-for-hire, either!

I am an older, disabled American citizen who occupies what is known as the "LAST CLASS" here in OUR America, or the "OUTCAST CLASS", and I wonder at that, to be truthful, especially when I read stories like this "CORN" one above, where once again, what the Bush Co.'s are saying sounds so very questionable, like with Iraq, and well, Social Security, and, like everything this administration seems to put its hands on!

It all just seems to turn murky, and starts to stink to high heaven, to boot, when the fabulous Bush Co.'s "come to town" and get near seemingly anything at all that had any integrity whatsoever associated with it BEFORE the entrance of the fabulous Bush Co.s, LIKE OUR GOVERNMENT!

Like the Italian "NEGOTIATOR" over there in Iraq!

Who shot him, Condo?

Why the need for secrecy here?

Just a little SHENANIGAN there, among the BOYS?

Kids will be kids?

And what about OUR rights, OR DON'T WE REALLY HAVE ANY, if those rights INTERFERE with corporate profits?

And this, of course, brings us right on back to what Istoodforu said about Bush Co.'s SHENANIGANS, above here, and it casts it into the more likely proper LIGHT of definitions (a) and (b) above, which is a devious trick used especially for an underhand purpose; or, tricky or questionable practices or conduct, which seems to cover the gamut here, and so ......

IF this article above on the alleged "CORN SEED COVER-UP" accurately reflects WHAT I THINK are REAL Bush Co. SHENANIGANS, how I have DIVERTED ATTENTION AWAY FROM THE SHENANIGAN, by talking in a different post about the atmosphere or climate of HATRED that I am experiencing here in OUR America, SINCE the Bush Co. first TOOK POWER in 2000!

IF I talk about all the outright lying and deception that seems to be the very HALLMARK of this administration, HOW am I diverting attention AWAY FROM Bush Co.'s alleged SHENANIGANS, where the lying and deception could properly be termed a devious trick used especially for an underhand purpose; or, tricky or questionable practices or conduct?

HOW?

Istoodforu, I must admit, you have handed me a real CONUNDRUM here, and you have me stumped!

SO!

Apparently, you have won!

SO!

How about that?

Looks like I got beat here, and I don't even know how it happened!

WOW!

Just like that, too!

And by a shenanigan, of all things!

And speaking of Terry Schiavo, now another Bush is stepping in to the LIMELIGHT here, TO TAKE CUSTODY OF HER, of all things, and this story is on its way to being more and more bizarre, when what should have been afforded to the family was PRIVACY:

"Gov. Bush seeks to take custody of Schiavo"

By JILL BARTON, Associated Press
Last updated: 7:06 p.m., Wednesday, March 23, 2005

PINELLAS PARK, Fla. -- Terri Schiavo's parents saw their options vanish one by one Wednesday as a federal appeals court refused to reinsert her feeding tube and the Florida Legislature decided not to intervene in the epic struggle.

Refusing to give up, Gov. Jeb Bush sought court permission to take custody of Schiavo.

The desperate flurry of activity came as President Bush suggested that Congress and the White House had done all they could to keep the severely brain-damaged woman alive.

As of Wednesday afternoon, Schiavo had gone five full days without food or water; doctors have said she could survive one to two weeks.

Supporters of Schiavo's parents grew increasingly dismayed, and 10 protesters were arrested outside her hospice for trying to bring her water.

"When I close my eyes at night, all I can see is Terri's face in front of me, dying, starving to death," Mary Schindler said outside the Pinellas Park hospice.

"Please, someone out there, stop this cruelty."

"Stop the insanity."

"Please let my daughter live."

The Schindlers have vowed to take their fight to the U.S. Supreme Court, which refused to get involved previously.

Schiavo's tube was pulled Friday afternoon with a Florida judge's approval.

By late Tuesday, her eyes were sunken and her skin, lips and tongue were parched, said Barbara Weller, an attorney for the Schindlers.

Schiavo suffered brain damage in 1990 when her heart stopped briefly from a chemical imbalance believed to have been brought on by an eating disorder.

Court-appointed doctors say she is in a persistent vegetative state with no hope of recovery.

Her parents argue that she could get better and that she would never have wanted to be cut off from food and water.

Schiavo's husband, Michael Schiavo, has argued that his wife told him she would not want to be kept alive artificially, and a state judge has repeatedly ruled in his favor.

The battle played out on several fronts Wednesday.

A three-judge panel from the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the family early Wednesday, and hours later the full court refused to reconsider in a 10-2 vote.

Jeb Bush and the state's social services agency filed a petition in state court to take custody of Schiavo and, presumably, reconnect her feeding tube.

It cites new allegations of neglect and challenges Schiavo's diagnosis as being in a persistent vegetative state.

The request is based on the opinion of a neurologist working for the state who observed Schiavo at her bedside but did not conduct an examination of her.

The Florida Legislature also jumped back into the fray, but senators rejected a bill that would have prohibited patients like Schiavo from being denied food and water if they did not express their wishes in writing.

The measure was rejected 21-18.

The Legislature stepped in before, in 2003, and Schiavo's feeding tube was reinserted.

But "Terri's Law" was later struck down by the state Supreme Court as an unconstitutional attempt to interfere in the courts.

The Senate vote Wednesday came after a bitter debate, with Terri Schiavo's brother, Bobby Schindler, watching from the gallery above the floor.

He covered his eyes with his hands and lowered his head during the debate.

"I'm here pleading for mercy."

"Have mercy on Theresa Marie Schiavo," said bill sponsor Sen. Dan Webster, a Republican.

But Senate Democratic Leader Les Miller warned:

"By the time the ink is dry on the governor's signature, it will be declared unconstitutional, just like it was before."

A lawyer for Michael Schiavo said he was pleased by what happened in the appeals court.

But he was bothered that the governor was attempting to intervene again.

"They have no more power than you or I or a person walking down the street to say we have the right to take Terri Schiavo," attorney George Felos said.

Meanwhile, President Bush suggested that he and Congress had done their best to help the parents prolong Schiavo's life, and the White House said it had no further legal options.

"I believe that in a case such as this, the legislative branch, the executive branch, ought to err on the side of life, which we have," the president said.

"Now we'll watch the courts make their decisions."

Federal courts were given jurisdiction to review Schiavo's case after Republicans in Congress pushed through unprecedented emergency legislation over the weekend aimed at prolonging Schiavo's life.

But federal courts at two levels rebuffed the family.

"There is no denying the absolute tragedy that has befallen Mrs. Schiavo," Judges Ed Carnes and Frank M. Hull said in the 2-1 decision by the 11th circuit panel.

"We all have our own family, our own loved ones, and our own children."

"However, we are called upon to make a collective, objective decision."

Dissenting Judge Charles R. Wilson said Schiavo's "imminent" death would end the case before it could be fully considered.

"I fail to see any harm in reinserting the feeding tube," he wrote.

SO!

Does everyone follow this latest twist, or turn, to this story?

Refusing to give up, Gov. Jeb Bush sought court permission to take custody of Schiavo, so, Jeb Bush and the state's social services agency filed a petition in state court to take custody of Schiavo and, presumably, reconnect her feeding tube; and the JEBULON BUSH petition cites new allegations of neglect and challenges Schiavo's diagnosis as being in a persistent vegetative state, BASED on the opinion of a neurologist working for the state who observed Schiavo at her bedside but did not conduct an examination of her.

SO?

IF this doctor DID NOT conduct an examination of Terry Schiavo, what can his opinion be based on?

And IF this doctor did not conduct any examination of Terry Schiavo, then isn't the JEBULON BUSH petition just an EMPTY DOCUMENT not worth the paper that it is written on?

A FRIVOLOUS LAWSUIT, in fact?

And now we have the BUSH BASE weighing in here on this Terry Schiavo matter, BUT WAIT ....

YES!

It looks like the BASE just might be against the fabulous Bush Co's in this one and HOORAY for them if that is the case, which it sure looks like it is from where I am sitting here!

"Poll: Evangelicals oppose gov't on Schiavo"

Associated Press
Last updated: 6:47 p.m., Wednesday, March 23, 2005

More than two-thirds of people who describe themselves as evangelicals and conservatives disapprove of the intervention by Congress and President Bush in the case of the Terri Schiavo, the brain-damaged woman at the center of a national debate.

A CBS News poll found that four of five people polled opposed federal intervention, with levels of disapproval among key groups supporting the GOP almost that high.

Bush's overall approval was at 43 percent, down from 49 percent last month.

Over the weekend, Republicans in Congress pushed through emergency legislation aimed at prolonging Schiavo's life by allowing the case to be reviewed by federal courts.

That bill was signed by the president early Monday.

Most Americans say they feel sympathy for family members on both sides of the dispute over the 41-year-old Schiavo, according to a CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll.

More than eight in 10 in that poll said they feel sympathy for Bob and Mary Schindler, parents of Schiavo, who want to keep her alive.

And seven in 10 said they're sympathetic for Michael Schiavo, the husband of Schiavo who says she should be allowed to die.

The CBS News poll of 737 adults was taken Monday and Tuesday and the CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll of 620 adults was taken Tuesday.

Both have margins of sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

------

On the Net:

CBS: http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/opinion/main215.shtml

CNN: http://www.cnn.com

And speaking of Bush Co. SHENANIGANS, looks like the United States Army is now suffering a drop in enlistments BECAUSE ....

Because Bush Co. thought WE WERE ALL STUPID AS A BOX OF ROCKS when it pulled its IRAQ SHENANIGAN on us two years ago, with its deceptions about Saddam Hussein and the non-esistent WMD's serving as a basis for what really appears to have been a military adventure on the part of the Bush Co.'s, USING OUR AMERICAN MILITARY, to steal Iraq's oil resources as their own!

"Army likely won't meet recruiting goals"

By ROBERT BURNS, Associated Press
Last updated: 6:47 p.m., Wednesday, March 23, 2005

WASHINGTON -- The Army expects to miss its recruiting goals this month and next and is working on a revised sales pitch appealing to the patriotism of parents, Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey said Wednesday.

Whether that boosts enlistment numbers or not, Harvey said he sees no chance of a military draft.

"The `D' word is the farthest thing from my mind," the former defense company executive told a Pentagon news conference, his first since becoming the Army's top civilian official last November.

Because of the military manpower strains caused by simultaneous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, some in Congress have raised the possibility of re-instituting the draft, although there is a strong consensus against it among Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and the military chiefs.

This is the first time the United States has been in a sustained period of combat since the all-volunteer force was introduced in 1973.

The Air Force and Navy, which have relatively smaller roles in Iraq and Afghanistan, have no recruiting problems, but the Army and Marines are hard pressed.

The Army missed its recruiting goal for February by 27 percent, and that was the first time it had missed a monthly goal since May 2000.

The last time it missed its full-year goal was 1999.

As of Feb. 28, the regular Army was 6 percent below the number of recruits it had expected to sign up at that point in the recruiting year, the Army Reserve was 10 percent off and the Army National Guard was 25 percent off.

The Army is forecasting that all three elements -- active, Guard and Reserve -- will fall short of their targets for March and April.

That means they will have to make up the lost ground this summer -- traditionally the best recruiting season -- in order to meet their full-year goals.

"I'm clearly not going to give up," Harvey said.

"At this stage we still have six months to go" before the recruiting year ends Sept. 30.

"I've challenged our human resource people to get as innovative as they can."

"And even as we speak we've got a number of new ideas."

One of those new approaches is designed to persuade more parents to steer their children to the Army.

"We're going to appeal to patriotism," he said.

That might be done through a new advertising campaign, he said.

He also is encouraging more members of Congress as well as senior Army leaders and Army boosters to spend time in local communities touting the benefits of military service.

The Army also has increased the number of recruiters on the street by 33 percent and is offering bigger signup bonuses.

Last week the Army announced that the National Guard and Reserve were raising the maximum age for recruits from 34 to 39 in order to expand the pool of potential enlistees.

The regular Army could not raise the maximum age without congressional approval.

In a related matter, the Army said more people in the Individual Ready Reserve -- those no longer in uniform and not obligated to train -- are going to be hearing from the Army in the weeks ahead.

The Army has revised upward the number of IRR soldiers it plans to put on active duty, from the 4,402 announced last summer to 4,653.

Of those given mobilization orders so far, 370 have failed to report for duty, according to Lt. Col. Pamela Hart, an Army spokeswoman.

An additional 2,229 have asked for delays in their reporting dates or for exemptions.

Harvey also disclosed that the Army is "looking at" changing its policy on having more than one sibling in a combat zone at the same time.

He did not say how the policy might be altered, and he declined to say more about the subject, other than to indicate that it came up when he visited the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, where wounded U.S. troops are treated.

The current policy is that if one of two siblings in a combat zone is killed, the Army will consider removing the remaining one from the combat zone if the surviving soldier or his parents request it, according to spokeswoman Hart.

She said she was not aware of any planned change.

Lt. Col. Tom Collins, spokesman for Harvey, said later that Harvey was in the early stages of thinking through the whole issue and that no proposed changes had been developed yet.

Bingo. Now I see what this is all about - - -

JEB BUSH

The man needs some face time on TV (coming to a big screen near you) so he can get the recognition he will need to perpetuate the Bush Dynasty

Boy, you're reading someone's mind here, jeffmoskin!

And that is the term these days, isn't it: FACE TIME!

Now we need to start learning, and remembering, of course, what yet another Bush looks like, so that we can start getting into OUR heads that this is what OUR next president is going to look like, which is America's JEB!

And as to Bush's, I got to thinking this morning that George W. Bush should be the very first in OUR America to show HIS PATRIOTISM in accordance with this new ARMY advertising campaign that intends to exploit the patriotism of America's parents, BY PUTTING ONE BUSH DAUGHTER RIGHT INTO THE MARINES, AND THE OTHER INTO THE ARMY!

Think what an example for all of America Bush Co. would make by doing that!

Get other parents out there to thinking, "Why, if that is good enough for OUR George, well, by dang, it just might be good enough for me, too"!

In fact, every supporter of this Bush Co. HOLY WAR in OUR Congress who has military age children should join George W. Bush in setting a positive example, perhaps their first ever, by sticking their children into either the Marines, if the Marines would have them, or into the Army, if only as cannon fodder, which someone has to be if there ever is to be a proper war made out of things by those who make their money off of war, and the more, the better!

And when their children are all safely in uniform, then, well, America's parents should think of following suit, but only after the Bush daughters and the children of all these politicians in OUR Congress are safely ensconced right up there in the harmest of harm's way in Iraq, or whereever else the Bush Co. is out bringing death and destruction in the name of his god, and the REPUBLICAN PARTY OF ALL AMERICA, and those corporate entities in America and the world who make real big bucks off of war, and so support George W. Bush waging it on behalf of their personal wallets!

They lead, by having their children always in harm's way, and perhaps, just perhaps, we will follow!

So long as these politicians pledge us to always have their own children on line where those who are the first to die always end up standing!

And speaking of Iraq, and "harm's way" for the children of ordinary Americans, BUT NOT BUSH CHILDREN, what is the latest from over there, anyway, besides more death and destruction in the name of George W. Bush's blood-loving and craving god, and OIL, of course, possession of, but not pumping of, so as to send the cost of a barrel of crude above the $100 mark!

Dick Cheney needs the money, after all, and we, the American people, have a God-given obligation to see that he has it, right there in his own pocket, where he wants it!

And so, we have war to make it be so!

Middle East - AP

"Insurgents Target Iraqi and U.S. Forces"

30 minutes ago

By EDWARD HARRIS, Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Insurgents kept up their campaign Thursday against Iraqi security forces and U.S. troops, targeting Americans with roadside bombs in the north and attacking Iraq's nascent army in the capital.

Two separate explosives planted in the streets of the northern city of Mosul detonated near U.S. patrols, according to witnesses, who said they didn't believe there were any casualties.

One blast near a Mosul school caused panicked children to pile out of the building, said Khairy Ilham, a shopkeeper who witnessed the blast.

The U.S. military wasn't immediately available for comment.

In Baghdad, gunmen opened fire on a two-ton army truck transporting Iraqi soldiers in an eastern neighborhood.

The truck overturned, injuring 12 troop members, police Maj. Mousa Hussein said.

As Iraq's post-election political process unfurls, the top U.N. envoy in Iraq, Ashraf Qazi, sat down with a group of leading Sunni religious leaders Thursday in a Baghdad mosque.

In the meeting with the Association of Muslim Scholars, Qazi "stressed the importance of ensuring that all components of Iraqi society are adequately represented in the constitutional making process," a U.N. statement said.

Shiite Muslim and ethnic Kurdish parties, expected to announce within days the top leadership of their promised coalition government, say they're considering involving the Sunnis beyond even just the eventual writing of Iraq's constitution.

The Sunnis, from whose ranks many insurgent fighters are believed drawn, largely stayed away from Iraq's historic Jan. 30 elections.

Kurdish and Shiite negotiators say they're discussing handing a Sunni Arab the defense minister's post in an effort to include them in the process.

Shiite and Kurdish negotiators were expected to continue discussions Thursday in the capital, Baghdad.

Kurds are thought to number between 15 percent to 20 percent of Iraq's 26 million people, with Sunni Arabs making up about the same number.

Shiite Arabs make up 60 percent of the population.

In the southern city of Basra, over 200 protesters demanded an individual from their petroleum-rich region be named head of the oil ministry — and some demonstrators threatened to strike if their demands aren't met.

The provincial governor, Mohammed al-Waeliz, expressed solidarity with the demonstrators.

The Iraqi government said Wednesday that U.S. and Iraqi forces killed 85 militants at a suspected training camp along the marshy shores of a remote lake, one of the highest guerrilla death tolls of the two-year insurgency, officials said.

The U.S. military declined Wednesday to confirm the Iraqi government's death toll of 85 militants, however, and the death toll couldn't be independently verified.

The raid at Lake Tharthar in central Iraq turned up booby-trapped cars, suicide-bomber vests, weapons and training documents, Iraqi Maj. Gen. Rashid Feleih told state television on Wednesday.

He said the insurgents included Iraqis, Filipinos, Algerians, Moroccans, Afghans and Arabs from neighboring countries, and added that local residents told troops of the camp.

"What's really remarkable is that the citizens this time really took the initiative to provide us with very good information," Feleih said Wednesday.

In three days, troops have killed at least 128 insurgents nationwide, according to Iraqi and U.S. officials' accounts.

Iraqi authorities credited recent successes against insurgents to a torrent of intelligence from citizens heartened by the Jan. 30 elections and emboldened by film footage aired on state television that shows captured insurgents confessing their roles in attacks.

"Before, the people had a neutral stance toward this issue," said Sabah Kadhim, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry.

"Now, they have turned against the terrorists."

And here is yet another view of the Iraq situation and the sort of "peace" that George W. Bush has brought into their lives, with HIS HOLY WAR, through the eyes of an Iraqi, or several of them, perhaps:

Mideast - AFP

"Terror-stricken Iraqi villagers wonder will bloodshed end"

33 minutes ago

TAJI, Iraq (AFP) - Four leaders from villages near the US military base in Taji, 15 kilometres north of Baghdad, met a US captain and begged him to seal off their communities with concrete blast walls and barbed wire.

The worried men wanted their homes turned into enclaves resembling the fortified Green Zone in Baghdad, home to the Iraqi government and the US embassy.

This sleepy green farmland heading north from the capital is a terrain of bombings, kidnappings and rebel checkpoints.

On this treacherous roadway stands Taji and its cavernous Saddam Hussein era military base that has been converted into a major US airfield and training centre for the Iraqi army, hosting more than 8,000 US soldiers and contractors.

Taji's surrounding villages are home to army veterans, many of whom pride themselves on being Baath loyalists.

Some villages mix Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds and have broken with former regime elements involved in the insurgency.

Despite the area's paranoia about attacks, violence has actually gone down around Taji since landmark elections two months ago.

The dip has nourished the belief among American commanders and locals that this is a pivotal moment where the insurgency might be beaten.

However, it is still too soon to tell.

In their meeting with the US captain, the community leaders, who did not want their names or villages identified, asked the Americans to dynamite the road from the former rebel bastion of Fallujah to the west, down which insurgents travel to Taji.

The stunned American officer promised to get back to them.

All of the men looked exhausted from years of hard-living in the Iraqi military before retiring to what was supposed to be a pastoral village life.

One of them cannot leave his community without bodyguards or risk being gunned down.

He received a fresh death threat dropped off in a letter on his doorstep last week.

American hopes for improving the Taji area are tied to the 307th battalion of the Iraqi national guard.

On cracked tarmac covered with coiled barbed wire, dried weeds and rocks, the Iraqi soldiers run war games from dawn till late into the night.

Two soldiers have crude green ink tattoos of anchors that they say represent their muscles.

A tattoo in an anemic Arabic scrawl says "I love my mother".

US army Captain Dan Getchell, a 27-year-old from Vale, Oregon, is the chief advisor for this 889-man battalion.

Getchell trained in 2003 and early 2004 the nucleus of the current Iraqi army battalion that was put in charge of Baghdad's dangerous Haifa Street last month.

But his new group is sorely lacking.

Getchell believes it will take at least a year to train them.

"They don't have accountability for property or personnel..."

"It's a societal norm not for them to have accountability."

At least 78 men are absent without leave.

Despite US efforts over the last year to stand up a strong army -- judging by Taji --- some battalions have yet to be whipped into shape.

Aware of the problems, the US army decided in January to send more soldiers to instruct Iraqi troops.

For the 307th battalion, the Pentagon decision means it now has 60 advisors, compared to only 10 just one month ago.

Before last month, Getchell says the battalion was neglected and not a priority.

"They are not a terrific example of what has been done at all," he says, about past American training efforts here.

"They (the US trainers) didn't care about the people, the progress."

The 307th's commander Lieutenant Colonel Saleh Ghadah Khadim has welcomed the new American leadership.

He was just appointed to his job on December 27.

"The soldiers had poor morale."

"They didn't have the ability to fight."

"Now they're 80 percent ready," he says, in an assessment far more rosy than Getchell's.

But there is still plenty to be grim about.

Khadim says his battalion may have been infiltrated by insurgents, with seven of his soldiers kidnapped last month when they went on vacation.

Since January, 10 of his men have been killed.

Another 42 battalion soldiers have been killed in the last two years.

Still he says if the Americans give him heavy weapons he could beat the insurgents.

The best hope in what is a slow and plodding war are young men like Staff Sergeant Seif, a Sunni Muslim, who joined the battalion at its inception late 2003.

He has weathered a suicide bombing that killed two fellow soldiers and watched bullets strike down two American soldiers.

Seif, a scrawny 21-year-old with a touch of grey in his hair, has been told to quit the ING three times by insurgents who visited his home village.

"It makes me work harder," he says.

And against this "backdrop", let's take a hop over to Jolly Olde and see what's happening with the "GREAT APPEASER", the Nevill Chamberlain of OUR times, Mr. Tony "DAPPER MAN" Blair:

Mideast - AFP

"Pre-election Blair hit anew over Iraq war's legality and planning"

1 hour, 12 minutes ago

LONDON (AFP) - British Prime Minister Tony Blair's government was challenged anew over whether the Iraq invasion was legal and how well it planned for the aftermath, just weeks before general elections.

The challenge came from publication of a resignation letter from an adviser who called the war "illegal" and a parliamentary panel's report that found the US-led coalition had failed to prepare enough for the ensuing insurgency.

The developments added to the pressure on a government which has lost popularity over its decision to join the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, though analysts still predict it will win elections expected May 5.

The government's opposition seized on the resignation letter from the Foreign Office's former deputy legal adviser Elizabeth Wilsmhurst, who reportedly said the war amounted to an "unlawful use of force" and a "crime of aggression."

The BBC News website said Wilmshurst made the claim in her letter dated March 18, 2003, part of which was obtained by the broadcaster under the new Freedom of Information Act.

She was also quoted as saying: "Nor can I agree with such action in circumstances which are so detrimental to the international order and the rule of law."

However, private television Channel 4, without giving a source, said a missing part of the letter also shows how Attorney General Lord Peter Goldsmith had considered the war illegal before changing his mind at the last minute.

The Foreign Office said the missing part of the letter was covered by exemptions relating to the professional privilege applying to a law officer in the formulation of government policy.

A spokesperson for the attorney general told the BBC that he had made it "very clear" that the view set out in his parliamentary answer of March 17, 2003 was his "own genuinely held independent view, that military action in Iraq was lawful."

However, Dominic Grieve, the main opposition Conservative party's legal expert, urged the government to "come clean" about the full legal advice it received from Lord Goldsmith in the runup to the invasion.

It is "quite clear the attorney general changed his mind," Grieve told BBC radio.

"Initially the war was illegal without a further UN resolution."

"Then he seems to have taken an equivocal view where he said it might be legal but he was concerned there was a legal challenge," Grieve said.

"Then finally he appears to have told the cabinet immediately before the war (on March 17) he was quite satisfied that the legal basis was established," he said.

What is troublesome, he said, is that the changes occurred while Prime Minister Tony Blair himself was making his own "selective" case for war, in part over claims Saddam Hussein was harboring weapons of mass destruction.

Meanwhile, the House of Commons defense committee said in a report that "a series of mistakes and misjudgements" occurred during the initial stages of the campaign and not enough importance was attached to boosting Iraq's own police force.

"Only belatedly did the coalition begin building the Iraqi security forces," it said.

British troops would likely have to stay until after 2006 because of the state of Iraq's own security forces, it said.

And while that is all happening over there in Jolly Olde, what about Lebanon, which just might be high up on the list of targets that the Bush Co.'s will wage aggressive war against next, in their campaign to dominate everything that ever was, is, or will be:

Mideast - AFP

"Lebanese president mulls broader probe into Hariri killing"

1 hour, 18 minutes ago

BEIRUT (AFP) - Lebanese President Emile Lahoud said he was considering an appeal to international and Arab bodies to determine who was behind the February 14 assassination of former prime minister Rafiq Hariri.

"I am determined to employ all efforts, use all means and to rely on all international and Arab bodies to get at the truth," Lahoud said in a statement.

He said he was prepared to "severely punish all perpetrators, managers, partners, accomplices and those who have been incompetent."

The anti-Syrian Lebanese opposition and the Hariri family have been demanding an international commission of inquiry into the assassination and have rejected an Arab-led investigation.

Despite denials by authorities here and in Damascus, the Lebanese opposition has accused Lebanese and Syrian security agents in the assassination.

The Lebanese judge who had been charged with carrying out a probe, Michel Abou Arraj, stepped down Wednesday, citing a heavy workload at Beirut's criminal court.

A United Nations factfinding team, made up of Irish, Egyptian, Moroccan and Swiss investigators, has in addition completed a mission here and reported to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.

Annan said Wednesday he would release the report "within the next few days" but added that "a more comprehensive investigation may well also be necessary."

end quote

Lahoud says he is going to "severely punish" all those who have been "incompetent"?

Is he threatening to severely punish George W. Bush, then?

A sign of "DISRESPECT", here, for the Ruler of the SUN, MOON and STARS and all in between?

Will that apparent threat to George W. Bush to severely punish him for being "incompetent" then be OUR next pretext to wage aggressive war on yet another Middle Eastern nation, in the name of America's economy?

Stay tuned!

Developments as they happen!

Live!

Late-breaking!

LIFE!

In OUR America!

Hmmm.

Punish the incompetent.

I like the concept.

Let's see how it works in Crawford, TX

And since we are flying all around the world in here this morning, well, why not check in on what's going on over there in "PUTIN LAND", as the former "EVIL EMPIRE" of Ronald Raygun days is now known as, and from here, it looks like SCANDAL!

Oh, no!

Somebody, call in the SECRET POLICE, quickly!

Russian national honor is at stake here, and seriously so, from what I can see of this developing "MESS" over there!

Which raises the question of whether Connie "CON JOB" Rice should now make an appearance over there, or maybe Helsinki, or some neutral ground such as that, to DEMAND a full accounting as to exactly WHAT is really going on over there in Bush Co. buddy Putin's "Land of the less-than-free", with this MORAL CRISIS which will surely have to be a threat to OUR own national security over here through the feared DOMINO EFFECT if it is not put down, and put down hard at that, preferably by a massive dose of Bush Co. SHOCK AND AWE, immediately, if not sooner!

Entertainment - Reuters

"Scandal Rocks Bolshoi's First New Opera in 30 Years"

Wed Mar 23,11:28 AM ET

By Olga Petrova and Sonia Oxley

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The stage is set for the opening of the Bolshoi theater's first new opera for 30 years on Wednesday, but Russian critics are branding it pornographic and conservatives want it banned before the curtain even goes up.

The scandal over "Rosenthal's Children" has nothing to do with its content since critics had not even read the text before they condemned it, but everything to do with the libretto's author Vladimir Sorokin and his past.

Sorokin provoked outrage with his 1999 novel "Blue Lard" because of a sex scene involving clones of Soviet leaders Nikita Khrushchev and Josef Stalin.

While the opera has no link to the book, some say none of his work is fit for the historic Bolshoi.

The opera does feature more clones as it tells the story of a scientist who creates genetic copies of composers Wagner, Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, Verdi and Mozart who hang out with tramps and prostitutes.

"It is offensive."

"Five great composers are presented as tramps ... they play music in underground passageways ... they drink vodka."

"The 16-year-old Mozart is befriending prostitutes," Russian parliamentarian Sergei Neverov told Reuters.

"The Bolshoi theater is a symbol of Russia -- these symbols of Russia should not be defiled by such productions."

Neverov has urged Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov to ban the opera, drawing wrath from the theater's management, who compared his appeal to Soviet-era cultural suppression.

"This is called censorship and, by law, censorship has been abolished," said Anatoly Iksanov, head of the Bolshoi.

Sorokin said the work had come under fire because of his past, including a failed attempt to sue him on pornography charges over "Blue Lard."

"In Russia there are forces that want to return to the past ... where culture was like a castrated cat," he said.

Russia is already under scrutiny for what Western critics describe as President Vladimir Putin's increasingly autocratic rule, including concerns over media censorship.

MORAL CRISIS

Neverov said staging Sorokin's work at the state-funded Bolshoi amounted to an "aesthetic and moral crisis," a view endorsed by the dozens of protesters who have picketed the columned entrance to the theater this month.

"Protect Russia's main stage from pornography!" demand the banners carried by a pro-Putin youth group, Walking Together, which three years ago encouraged its members to throw Sorokin's book down a giant toilet set up on a Moscow street.

"It doesn't matter what the opera is about."

"There are lots of clubs where he could put it on, just not in the Bolshoi," said protester Mikhail Nasayedov.

Sorokin says the opera is not violent, pornographic or even erotic and was generally well-received at dress rehearsals.

"It is an ironic and sad story in which there are some metaphors of our Russian life," he said at his sparse Moscow apartment, where his dog Savva barely left his side.

The composer, Leonid Desyatnikov, chose Sorokin to write the libretto and agreed there was nothing offensive in the work.

The Bolshoi is in the midst of a three-year renovation project to install modern stage technology and repair run-down backstage areas.

Sorokin believes the multi-million-dollar facelift could be used as a tool to oust the opera from the theater, since there were no legal grounds for banning it.

"What could they do?"

"Send in troops, send in the police?"

"It is ... not possible."

"But they could withhold money for the restoration," he said.

end quotes

"What could they do?"

"Send in troops, send in the police?"

"It is ... not possible?"

I'm not so sure of that, myself, that it is "not possible"!

Never underestimate what George W. Bush might do if his sensibilities are irritated is my advice to you, Mr. Sorokin!

Uh, uh, uh, jeffmoskin!

Watch your thoughts here!

I hear George W. Bush now has in place a QUA-TRILLION DOLLAR sensor system that will let him personally know what exactly you are thinking everytime the word "CRAWFORD, TEXAS" comes to your mind, and that he is now keeping a list, and he is checking it twice, in fact, in order to know who is naughty, which just might be you, jeffmoskin, shame, shame, versus those who are "NICE", or at least know how to "MAKE NICE" by sending George W. Bush and the REPUBLICAN PARTY OF AMERICA AND THE WORLD AND MARS, TOO, LOTS AND LOTS of "GEETUS" amd "MOOLAH" to keep them safe, for the moment, anyway, from the WRATH OF GEORGE!

And if that Lahoud fellow over there in Lebanon knows what's good for him, he too better watch out with his own thoughts about punishing anyone for incompetence, lest they be one of George's own!

Elsewise, he just might find a cruise missle with a NU-CLAR warhead aimed right at the bridge of his nose, or maybe his temple, depending upon the particular message the Bush Co.'s want to send to everyone else in the candid world, LIKE THE ITALIANS, that particular day!

Which reminds me, WHEN ARE WE EVER GOING TO HEAR ANYMORE about that Italian guy who got popped in the head over there in Iraq by one of George's so many days ago, now, right after he secured the release of that Italian woman from the TAY-RISTS who so plague the otherwise PERFECT world of George W. Bush and HIS!

Now that guy, the American shooter, he was not incompetent at all, pulling off that shot, right into that Italian guy's temple like that!

BANG!

No more negotiating with TAY-RISTS for that Italian boy, at least not with that head, anyway!

AND WHO WILL BE NEXT?

ONLY GOD and George W. Bush know that answer for sure!

And maybe Tony Blair, from time to time, of course, 'cause he is their buddy, and well, it's just not good for buddies to keep secrets from each other, now is it?

[quote=Livyjr,Mar 23 2005, 08:24 AM]
Last year, I had some similar kinds of problems, and so, I called Gateway, and their technicians are in India, too.

They were polite, and helpful, and thanks to them, I did get the computer up and running, again.

And I have to say, Mr. A.B., that I am of mixed emotions about all of this stuff, since money spent locally stays local, while money sent to another place is gone; what I call the Hoover vacuum cleaner effect!

Those tech centers in India are the Hoover vacuum cleaner, and the hose is over here, in OUR pockets.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yes, I agree, they are polite, very polite, and helpful.

Why should they not be.

They are gainfully employed, making decent money, and have steady jobs.

I have no quarrel whatsoever with the people in India.

My problem is with the people in the U.S.A.

Specifically, those who have shipped the jobs overseas.

To be honest, I do not even blame the companies that do this, nor do I point fingers at the CEO's or whoever makes the final decision to close up facilities here in OUR AMERICA and hand the jobs over to people in THEiR INDIA.

Or THEIR KOREA, or THEIR MEXICO, or THEIR HONDURAS, or THEIR CHINA

Or THEIR ANYWHERE!!

Each company that ship American jobs overseas now has a built in excuse.

" I was forced to do it because my competitor has already done it and if I don't, my costs will be higher than theirs and I'll be forced out of business. "

What is our future if we cannot compete with the rest of the world?

Are we destined to change places with them?

In that case we will be part of the 3rd world.

We will have COMPLETELY ELIMINATED THE MIDDLE CLASS.

Perhaps that is the plan.

To shift gears here and move on to a related but different subject.

Last night on the Lou Dobbs program, there were clips of a manager of a huge agricultural company.

He was complaining about some of our citizens who on their own have been patrolling the Mexican border in order to keep illegal immigrants from sneaking in.

He said we absolutely need that cheap labor to pick the crops.

He also said our government knows that Mexican illegal cheap labor sneaks across the border but looks the other way because thay are badly needed.

So, I wondered if it were not possible to use many of the people who are on welfare or compensation of some sort and who just say they cannot find any work and give them a choice.

Work in the fields or lose your welfare.

If they are physically able to do so.

One final thought.

If Bushco is so in favor of having " guest workers " take away American jobs, why was Walmart just fined $ 13 million for going along with that and hiring illegal immigrants ( I cannot use the term " guest workers twice in one day because it is too nauseating ) to do janitorial work?

Perhaps someone can enlighten me on this seemingly inconsistent action.

A.B.

Well, I do.

Actually, I blame OUR government for letting them.

If we had a REAL democracy, with REAL public servants instead of Corporate Toadies, OUR Congress and OUR President would say to the mega-corporations:

Look, America is a great country to have a business in, but it takes a lot of money to keep it going and to provide for those people in our community who can't quite make it, even though they work three jobs.

YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE TO PAY YOUR FAIR SHARE.

THAT WILL MEAN:

HIGHER CORPORATION TAXES (AND LOWER PROFITS)

HIGHER TAXES ON PAY OVER ONE MILLION DOLLARS.

IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT, LEAVE.

Does OUR Congress and OUR President say these things?

A few days ago, you were asking about the "center shot" to the temple of Dr. Nicola Calipari who was escorting the freed Italian hostage—Il Manifesto journalist Giuliana Sgrena—to Baghdad International Airport. And you were also ragging on Chuck Schumer as being just another corrupt politician.


I found this:


Italian agent Calipari: A target of opportunity for US assassins
Not the first Italian target of US covert 'silencers'

By Wayne Madsen
Online Journal Contributing Writer

http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Repor...2205madsen.html


March 22, 2005—High-level European intelligence sources report that the 51-year old slain Italian SISMI military intelligence agent, Dr. Nicola Calipari, killed by U.S. sharpshooters while accompanying the freed Italian hostage—Il Manifesto journalist Giuliana Sgrena—to Baghdad International Airport, was a prized target of opportunity for American assassins because of his knowledge about past Republican White House ties to Saddam Hussein's nuclear program.

Calipari was also reportedly privy to information about illegal U.S. covert operations in Iraq from his sources within the bloc of Iraqi resistance fighters led by former Republican Guards. Moreover, European intelligence sources report that Calipari was not the first Italian intelligence agent with expertise on Iraq to be killed by U.S. covert "wet affairs" operatives.

In 1989, the former Italian military attaché in Baghdad, Air Force Colonel Giuseppe Schiavo, was found shot to death in his home in Turin. Police ruled the death a suicide, however, Schiavo's diplomatic and military colleagues in Baghdad claim that Colonel Schiavo had stumbled across critical evidence of a complicated scheme by the George H. W. Bush administration, the CIA, Italian businessmen and government officials, U.S. auditors, Iraqi diplomats, spies, and central bankers, British and Italian intelligence agents, and Saudi bankrollers to finance Saddam Hussein's NBC (nuclear, biological, chemical) weapons program through U.S.-government-backed credits provided by Atlanta's Banca Nazionale del Lavoro (BNL). Schiavo was killed before Italian magistrates could question him about his knowledge of the Iraqi weapons affair. One colleague of Schiavo in Baghdad called him a professional and not someone who would kill himself. "He was taken out because of what he knew," claimed the colleague.

According to Money Laundering Alert, shortly after September 11, FBI agents visited the Drawing Center, a New York City art museum, to examine diagrams drawn by artist Mark Lombardi that visually represented the complex connections of BNL to the George H. W. Bush administration. In 2000, Lombardi, 48, allegedly committed suicide. The FBI's interest in Lombardi's drawings was part of its investigation of the September 11 "al Qaeda" terrorist attacks on the United States.

Schiavo and Calipari were both experienced Iraq intelligence assets. But they both knew that the George H. W. Bush administration was heavily involved in propping up Saddam Hussein's government with intelligence, components for poison gas such as that used by Saddam against Kurds in Halabja, anthrax and other bio-toxins, and nuclear weapons production components such as krytrons and centrifuges. U.S. government-backed BNL loans were also used by Iran to procure military weapons and nuclear components.

In addition, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Time, and the Sunday Times of London reported that Saudi Arabia funded nuclear weapons programs in Pakistan and Iraq in order to develop its own nuclear capability. Saudi funding involved Houston money tranches and accounts linked to banks and offshore entities controlled by George H. W. Bush and his closest business partners. Pakistan's nuclear bomb father, A. Q. Khan, maintained close relations with Saudi Arabia and Time reported that Khan sold nuclear weapons equipment, including uranium enrichment cylinders, to Saudi Arabia.

Part of BNL's loan guarantees for Iraq's nuclear program, some $720 million out of a total loan package of $2.6 billion, were backed by the U.S. Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) and laundered through the U.S. Department of Agriculture. According to congressional investigators, much of the remainder of BNL's loans to Saddam were backed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the US Export-Import Bank's Foreign Credit Insurance Association. The BNL credits were masked as being for generic "raw materials" and "heavy equipment."

Christopher Drogoul, the BNL Atlanta manager who was later jailed for bank fraud, claimed in congressional testimony that the U.S., British, and Italian financing and arming of Saddam Hussein involved companies like Matrix Churchill (UK), Bechtel (US). Kissinger Associates (US)—Henry Kissinger was also a member of BNL's international advisory board—Hewlett Packard (US), XYZ Options (owner of CarbiTech) (US), and Lummus Crest (US).

Additional congressional testimony indicated other U.S. companies involved in exporting "dual use" civilian/military goods to Iraq included Bell Helicopters, Lockheed, Dow Chemical, DuPont, Perkin Elmer, Rockwell International Collins, United Technologies, Scientific Atlanta, Swissco Management Group/Westfield Holdings of Miami Lakes, Florida; Tektronix, Teledyne Wah Chang, and Union Carbide,

The testimonies of Secretary of State James A. Baker III and Agriculture Secretary Clayton Yeutter were sought by Democratic congressional committees, including Rep. Henry Gonzalez's House Banking Committee. Attorney General Richard Thornburgh, as did his successor William Barr, constantly blocked Gonzalez's committee's investigation of the senior Bush's financing of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program.

In late 1989, after a State Department memo and a CIA report warned Baker that Saddam was using U.S. commodity credits to purchase nuclear, biological, and chemical materials, Baker urged Yeutter to approve additional loan guarantees for Iraq.

On October 27, 1992, Gonzalez reported that the Agriculture Department had spent the entire previous weekend shredding documents pertaining to the BNL-Iraq loans. When the Republicans took over the Congress in 1995, the investigations of BNL, the first Bush administration, and Saddam Hussein were quickly dropped.

However, Attorney General Janet Reno appointed John Hogan, a Miami prosecutor, to examine whether Bush administration officials and U.S. companies profited from arming Saddam with WMD and other arms. Hogan's report, issued in 1995, was nothing more than a whitewash of the Bush Sr. administration and "Iraqgate."

It was later reported by The American Spectator that from 1990 to 1992, Hillary Rodham Clinton served on the board of Lafarge Corporation, the U.S. subsidiary of French consortium Lafarge SA. Lafarge was reportedly involved in shipping arms components to Iraq via the BNL-financed conduit.

During 1992, Senator Al Gore, the then-Democratic vice presidential candidate, was warned off by senior Clinton campaign advisers, including George Stephanopoulos, from investigating BNL or bringing it up as a campaign issue.

In exasperation, Rep. Gonzalez, in an October 16, 1990 hearing on BNL, sharply criticized George Bush Sr. for his intransigence, "My contention is that the president is, and has continued to act, extra-unconstitutionally, and certainly in violation of the very statutes that the Congress has passed as early as 1974."

Then-Rep. Charles Schumer of New York, a member of Gonzalez's committee said of the BNL scandal, "From where we stand today, a nation with over 200,000 of its soldiers standing toe-to-toe with the bloodthirsty Iraqi war machine, and with thousands of its citizens held hostage by a ruthless dictator, these eight years of US largesse are shocking, almost incomprehensible. In effect, we've doled out billions of dollars of free money, which enabled Saddam Hussein to build the powerful nation that confronts us today. And all this could have been accomplished much more easily. The US government should simply have asked Saddam Hussein what weapons he wanted, ordered them from a manufacturer, paid the bill, and shipped them, postage paid, to Iraq. If the US is going to act stupidly, they at least ought to do it simply."


How many times is the name George H W Bush mentioned?

And maybe Schumer isn't as bad as you think. Or maybe he used to be better than he now is. I dunno.

And you are as thought provoking as ever, here, Mr. A.B., which is what this thread should always be all about - PROVOKING PEOPLE TO STOP AND CONSIDER, ON A DAILY BASIS, JUST WHAT ELSE MIGHT BE GOING ON HERE IN OUR AMERICA, BESIDES OUR OWN LIVES!

Responding to your first point, or what I will make your first point, anyway, that being the destruction of what is called a "MIDDLE CLASS" over here, I would say "YES", of course!

Some years ago, now, before I knew how to use the computer to communicate, I would scan the newspapers and clip articles of interest, and one of those from the business pages discussed and essentially confirmed that exact point, the need to reduce the economic standards and living conditions of the American people BEFORE it will ever be really economical again to do any real manufacturing business, OVER HERE, and it is a simple matter of mathematics!

We cost too much over here, and so, business is going to where labor is cheaper, simple as that!

THEN ....

What will happen is that poverty will set in over here, and a generation will arise that is hungry and so, this continent will see some business come back, BUT ....

By then, this place will be just as "MEXICO" as Mexico south of the Texas border is, with environmental regulations long since gone right out the window, along with all the "machinery of government" to enforce those regulations, or labor regulations, or fair wage regulations!

And by then, We'll be more "MEXICO" than Mexico ever thought of being, is my guess.

It'll be back to the textile mill days of my youth when women in the sewing shops and mills were exploited, and essentially were without representation and rights, and this fifty years OR MORE since Teddy Roosevelt became a Hero to the common folks of New York State by stepping in on behalf of those women killed in the Shirtwaist Fire in New York City!

And I would say it was exactly by plan, Mr. A.B.!

After all, with respect to organized business, when is anything ever not to plan?

And that point was made very clear to me at least right there in the business pages of the local newspaper!

And so, I have been watching it happen for several years now, and one local company up here simply folded up overnight and went to Mexico, putting a number of people in the area out of work, many of whom had worked for that company since getting out of high school more than twenty or thirty years earlier.

And these contacts with these tech people in India only serve to further confirm the exodus!

And so, Mr. A.B., we begin the backslide, is what I think, and for me, that actually began quite some time ago, with respect to my own living conditions, and so, at least I will be used to a low standard of living, when a low standard of living becomes a more universal "condition" than it is right now, here in OUR America!

Growth follows money after all, and recession is the other end of that process, where the money leaves from, which is HERE!

As for yourself, having experienced the deprivations of life during the Great Depression, you too know that a human being with a dry shelter can be quite happy with very little materially, and so, you will likely not see much change!

As for those in this "MIDDLE CLASS"?

Well, that will be interesting, won't it!

Will the experience of the Great Depression be any guide?

Stay tuned, as that is most definitely a question for OUR times, here in OUR America!

Point, jeffmoskin, and it is an important one, with me, since I am here in the EMPIRE STATE of New York, which state Chuck Schumer represents in the United States Senate: I DON'T THINK CHUCK SCHUMER IS JUST ANOTHER CORRUPT, HACK POLITICIAN!

What I DO THINK is that despite his being the United States Senator responsible for representing my interests as a disabled combat veteran in the United States Senate, IN POINT OF FACT, Charlie "Chuck" Schumer DOES NOT REPRESENT ME, nor does he represent my values, NOR DOES HE STAND UP FOR MY RIGHTS AS A DISABLED PERSON, HERE in OUR America!

In fact, he ignores me, so far as I can tell, anyway!

Moreover, I believe that Charlie "Chuck" Schumer, by his words, and mannerisms, projects an aura of great weakness which I think would give great heart to any enemies of mine, assuming I had any, IF they thought I was as weak and whiney as old Charlie "Chuck" is!

You listen to old Charlie "Chuck", you would think that five or maybe ten TAY-RISTS could come right on in, in BROAD DAYLIGHT, RIGHT OUT IN FRONT OF SOME TEN OR SO MILLION PEOPLE, and take over the whole of Manhatten and all the rest of the burroughs down there, in about five minutes, and apparently, in his scenario as I understand it, THE ENTIRE NEW YORK CITY POLICE DEPARTMENT WOULD CUT AND RUN!

Yeah, right, Charlie "Chuck"!

Talk about defeatism!

Old Charlie "Chuck" takes the cake!

No, Just the opposite.

OUR Congress and OUR President give tax breaks on the income those corporations make overseas.

They would pay more taxes on the same amount of income if the income was made in The U.S.

So, it's a double incentive to earn money overseas.

!. By paying less in wages, less in benefits to the workers, less stringent work rules.

2. Less taxes on the same income.

That is why I say, I do not blame the corporations for moving the operations out of OUR AMERICA and into THEIR ANYPLACE ELSE.

I blame OUR government for giving them the incentive to do so.

Appealing to the corporations on any basis, i.e. patriotism, moral reasons, etc. is absolutely useless.

The only line of appeal that means anything to them is the BOTTOM LINE.

Since OUR government has no morals in putting the shaft to the American workers and for that matter to all of the American people, why would we expect corporations to be more altruistic?

As Livyjr points out, the plan is to degrade the American middle class to the point where we do not expect a pot roast or a steak for dinner.

Just throw a bone our way.

Hopefully, there will be a scrap of meat on it.

A.B.

http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/congress/1991/h910425g.htm

BNL SUBPOENA RENEWAL

(House of Representatives - April 25, 1991)

[Page: H2547]

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Gonzalez] is recognized for 60 minutes.

Mr. GONZALEZ. Mr. Speaker, I take the floor today to deliver the third in a series of special orders related to the largest banking scandal in history--the events surrounding the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro scandal.

The BNL scandal is the sensational banking fraud in which the former employees of the BNL provided over $4 billion in loans to Iraq without reporting them to the appropriate State and Federal bank regulatory agencies or even to BNL's own U.S. management in New York or to their headquarters in Rome.

But the BNL scandal had implications far beyond the fact that the State and Federal bank regulatory agencies failed to properly supervise the operations of BNL.

The BNL scandal was a key factor in United States-Iraq relations in that it was eventually responsible for halting the extension of billions in United States Government credit to Iraq.

BNL KEY FACTOR IN UNITED STATES-IRAQ RELATIONS

The importance of BNL to United States-Iraq relations is best revealed in a Federal Reserve workpaper that states that Secretary of State James Baker actually talked to Saddam Hussein in September/October 1989 about the BNL scandal.

In addition, there are many BNL-related telexes between Ambassador April Glaspie and the State Department in Washington.

The importance of BNL to United States-Iraq relations is further illustrated by the fact that in late 1989, the White House Director of Cabinet Affairs, along with deputies from Treasury, State, OMB, Commerce, Agriculture, U.S. Trade Representative, Export-Import Bank and a Federal Reserve Board Governor held a meeting to discuss the implications of the BNL scandal.

We also know that a former employee of BNL was close to Saddam Hussein's son-in-law, Hussein Kamel, who headed the Iraqi military industrialization effort.

We also know that former BNL employees were close to several members of the Central Bank of Iraq including its Director.

BNL employees visited with Mr. Kamel and high ranking Central Bank employees while in Baghdad.

The involvement of such high level United States and Iraqi Government officials is quite revealing of the importance of the BNL scandal.

[Page: H2548]

BNL MAJOR SOURCE OF PRIVATE LOANS TO IRAQI

The reason the BNL scandal was so important to Iraq was money.

During 1987-89 BNL was the No. 1 source of private Western bank loans to Iraq.

Because of Iraq's poor financial condition, Western banks would not loan money to Iraq without a government guarantee of repayment.

BNL filled the void left by Iraq's inability to borrow by providing over $3 billion in loans that were not guaranteed by Western governments.

About a third of that amount went for food and freight charges while a little over $2 billion was earmarked for the ambitious Iraqi reconstruction program.

We have learned that a good portion of those funds were actually used to upgrade Iraqi military capability.

BNL also provided almost $1 billion in United States Government guaranteed loans to Iraq.

BNL was the largest single bank participant in the $5.5 billion United States Department of Agriculture's Commodity Credit Corporation [CCC] Program with Iraq.

Between $800 to $900 million in BNL loans to Iraq were guaranteed by the CCC.

BNL was also the second largest participant in the $267 million Export-Import Bank [Eximbank] program with Iraq.

Over $50 million in BNL loans to Iraq were guaranteed by the Eximbank.

Today I will talk about United States policy toward Iraq and several key people in the administration partly responsible for United States policy toward Iraq--Brent Scowcroft and Lawrence Eagleburger.

I will explore their backgrounds, their interlocking relationships and Henry Kissinger's and Mr. Eagleburger's relationship to BNL.

President Bush, as did his predecessor Ronald Reagan, placed a high value on improving United States-Iraq relations.

Both saw Iraq as an important United States ally in the region.

Iraq was considered an important player in the Middle East peace process, and a key to subduing the Islamic fundamentalist movement in Iran which was perceived as a threat to United States interests in the region.

United States policy makers also saw in Iraq a chance to snatch away a key Soviet ally in the gulf.

President Reagan and President Bush followed a similar course of action in pursuing improved United States-Iraq relations.

That course was increased trade.

Since the United States decided to give the appearance of neutrality in the Iraq-Iran war, it could not provide arms shipments to Iraq.

Given that decision, it was left little choice but to offer trade including U.S. high technology transfer as the cornerstone of its policy.

The majority of our Western allies followed our lead.

A foreign policy based on commercial trade had the advantage of providing Iraq with high quality food and United States technology to upgrade its military capability in order to defeat Iran.

It was also easy to sell back home because this policy benefited the American economy as well as some of the most powerful corporations in our country.

Remember, during the latter half of the 1980's the United States was frantically seeking to improve its trade deficit so a trade-based foreign policy with Iraq appeared to serve multiple objectives.

In order for this trade-based foreign policy to work, the United States had to ignore a few Iraqi bad habits including massive human rights abuses, the imprisonment, torture and execution of political prisoners, an almost complete lack of democracy, the use of poison gas against Iraq's own Kurds, the use of poison gas against the Iranians, state-sponsored terrorism, making refugees out of over 100,000 Kurds, the execution of a foreign journalist, continual debt servicing problems, rampant fraud in the CCC program, and the diversion of United States technology to improve Iraqi nuclear, chemical and biological weapons capability and for many months BNL scandal.

A key to keeping trade open with Iraq was the availability of United States, European, and Asian government-guaranteed credit.

Because of its costly war with Iran, by 1984 Iraq had exhausted its $35 billion in estimated reserves and plunged into the ranks of the Third World debtor nations.

Iraq was forced to ask all its creditors to reschedule their loans.

The Iraqi debt situation jeopardized the trade-based policy.

Banks and other private creditors would not touch Iraq without a government guarantee.

In order to make the trade-based policy work, Western creditors had to cough up government guarantees which they did in generous amounts.

For example, by 1988 the CCC Program with Iraq reached a billion dollars annually and between 1985 and 1990 the CCC Program provided roughly $4 billion in credit for Iraqi purchases of United States agricultural commodities.

The Eximbank helped provide $267 million in short-term credit to Iraq between 1985 and 1990.

That amount would have gone through the roof had it not been for responsible people at Eximbank who realized Iraq was not a fundamentally creditworthy nation given the way it was running its economy and prosecuting the war with Iran.

At this time I would like to introduce a couple of lists of projects United States companies wanted to build in Iraq with the help of Eximbank financing.

As you can see by 1988, U.S. companies were seeking to secure Eximbank financing for projects totalling nearly $13 billion.

As you can imagine, lobbying from the export community and their bankers, along with the urging of the State Department, which was trying to achieve the trade-based policy towards Iraq, was intense.

Had it not been for responsible people at Eximbank, I am convinced the taxpayer would have been struck with the tab for many of those projects.

As it is, BNL helped to finance many of the very projects on the list.

On the industrial side of the ledger the United States export licensing process was used by the State and Commerce Departments, with the backing of the President's National Security Council [NSC], to increase trade with Iraq.

Unfortunately, the export control process often failed to stop Iraq from obtaining militarily-useful technology even though some Defense Department officials warned that United States technology destined for Iraq was going directly into upgrading Iraqi military capabilty.

The following provides an example of the official United States policy toward technology transfer to Iraq.

Dr. Stephen D. Bryen, former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Trade Security Policy and Director of Trade Technology Security Administration [DTSA], testifying recently before the Banking Committee, stated:

"The Department of Defense objected to about 40 percent of the export licenses that came before it for Iraq."

"Generally speaking, the Defense Department's strongest objections for Iraq concerned the potential use of exported goods for Iraq's nuclear program, for missile testing and construction, and for chemical and biological weapons development."

"Examples include special computers for missile testing, analytical instruments best suited for chemical and biological weapons development, satellite and airborne surveillance equipment to accurately locate distant targets and furnaces for Iraq's nuclear weapons development program."

Officially $1.5 billion in United States technology was transferred to Iraq through the United States export control process.

Nobody knows for sure what additional United States technology reached Iraq.

On the private side, almost immediately after the United States normalized relations with Iraq in 1984, the United States-Iraq Business Forum was formed.

It was founded by Mr. Marshall Wiley, a former State Department official stationed in Baghdad prior to the normalization of United States-Iraq relations.

The chairman of the Business Forum was Mr. A. Robert Abboud, former chairman of First Chicago Bank, former president of Occidental Petroleum, and until recently, chairman of First City Bank in Houston, Texas.

In other words, he was well wired into the U.S. business community.

To say that the Business Forum was U.S. Government-sanctioned would be going too far.

But the Business Forum did play a key role in United States-Iraq commercial relations.

Many of the companies dealing with Iraq, industrial and agricultural alike, received loans from BNL.

Since the Eximbank would not provide loans to finance the Iraqi industrialization effort, the Iraqis turned to BNL as a source of loans for large and small projects alike.

During the remainder of my time I would like to talk about Kissinger Associates, Lawrence Eagleburger and Brent Scowcroft.

I will explore the relationship of Henry Kissinger and Lawrence Eagleburger to BNL which loaned $4 billion to Iraq.

I will also talk about several interesting links between Mr. Scowcroft and Mr. Eagleburger and companies involved with Iraq.

Again, I am merely exploring the interlocking relationship between these people and United States policy toward Iraq.

This special order will also offer the public a view of the role of Kissinger Associates.

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HENRY A. KISSINGER

Henry Kissinger, one of the best-known and most powerful Presidential advisors of the post-war era, began his political career in 1956 as a consultant on military affairs.

He advised many executive branch organizations including the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the National Security Council, and the Department of State.

In 1969, he became President Nixon's National Security Adviser, and in 1973 Nixon named him Secretary of State.

He held that post until 1977.

Kissinger remains active as a foreign policy analyst and consultant.

In 1989, Mr. Kissinger was a member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board [FIAB].

Members in this elite club are permitted access to highly classified information and members actually advise the President directly on intelligence issues.

In 1982, Mr. Kissinger founded Kissinger Associates with offices in New York and Washington.

It is said that the firm analyzes political risk and international economic trends to help clients make concrete business decisions.

Several of the Kissinger Associates clients are also members of the United States-Iraq Business Forum.

KISSINGER ON BNL INTERNATIONAL ADVISORY BOARD

Henry Kissinger was in fact a paid member of the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro Consulting Board for International Policy.

Mr. Kissinger held this position during the height of the biggest banking scandal of all time was--$4 billion in unreported loans to Iraq by the Atlanta branch office of BNL.

Other former or current employees of Kissinger Associates had links to Iraq.

ALAN STOGA

Alan Stoga is a former economist at First Chicago Bank and is currently a director of Kissinger Associates.

Mr. Stoga is said to be an expert in country risk analysis and international finance.

He has been interested in the Middle East for many years and has made numerous visits to the area.

Mr. Stoga worked as the chief economist of the international division at First Chicago Bank.

The chairman of the First Chicago at that time was A. Robert Abboud, the current chairman of the United States-Iraq Business Forum.

Mr. Stoga is a friend of Marshall Wiley, the Business Forum founder, and he spoke at Business Forum functions.

In June 1989, Mr. Stoga, Mr. Wiley and Mr. Abboud, visited Iraq with other members of the United States-Iraq Business Forum.

They met with Saddam Hussein who purportedly expressed an interest in expanding commercial relations with the United States.

Many Kissinger Associates clients received United States export licenses for exports to Iraq.

Several were also the beneficiaries of BNL loans to Iraq.

LAWRENCE S. EAGLEBURGER

Lawrence Eagleburger, Deputy Secretary of State, has held many positions of international influence, in both the public and private sectors.

Eagleburger started his political career in 1957 as a Foreign Service Officer.

In this capacity, he represented the United States in Honduras for 2 years, and in Yugoslavia for 4 years.

Then in 1969, Henry Kissinger became Nixon's national security advisor, and Eagleburger served as his executive assistant.

After working as a political advisor to NATO in Belgium, and as Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Department of Defense, Eagleburger rejoined Kissinger at the State Department, again as his executive assistant in 1973.

In 1975, he was named Deputy Under Secretary for Management at the State Department.

Eagleburger was appointed Ambassador to Yugoslavia during the Carter administration and served in that capacity from 1977 to 1981.

He has remained a close ally of Yugoslavia.

Under President Reagan, Eagleburger became Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, and held this position from 1981 to 1982.

Subsequently, he served for 2 years as Deputy Under Secretary for Political Affairs.

Before assuming his current position as Deputy Secretary of State in 1989, he served as President of Kissinger Associates Inc., a political consulting firm oganized by Henry Kissinger.

EAGLEBURGER CLIENTS

During his confirmation process Mr. Eagleburger identified a number of prominent clients of his at Kissinger Associates.

Mr. Eagleburger was a director of ITT, Alcatel, Bethlehem Rebar, Global Motors, Mutual of New York, Josephson International, and Best Mart.

Mr. Eagleburger was also a director of LBS Bank from 1986-1990.

LBS Bank is a wholly owned subsidiary of one of the largest banks in Yugoslavia.

Global Motors, Inc. was the corporation established in the United States to distribute the Yugoslavian-made small compact car called the `Yugo.'

Global Motors filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1989.

A creditor filing suit against the investment bank acting as financial advisor to Global listed Mr. Eagleburger as a defendant in that suit.

The Yugoslavian maker of the Yugo is a firm called Zavodi Crevna Zastava (ZCZ).

ZCZ is the backbone of the Yugoslavian arms industry and its main clients include Iraq, Libya, and other Eastern European nations.

As a longtime loyal supporter of Yugoslavian interests, Mr. Eagleburger was instrumental in helping both Global Motors and LBS establish their United States operations.

He was not alone.

As we shall see, BNL had a very substantial, and even incestuous relationship with LBS.

THE BNL-LBS NEXUS

After Iraq, BNL's largest foreign customer was Yugoslavia.

BNL had loans to various Yugoslavian entities as well as a very special relationship with LBS Bank--New York (LBS).

LBS is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Yugoslavian bank--Ljubljanska Banka.

Ljubljanksa Banka is the second largest bank in Yugoslavia with $7.1 billion in assets as of year-end 1990.

In 1986, with the help of Mr. Eagleburger, LBS opened a State-chartered bank in New York City called LBS Bank--New York.

BNL was responsible for a significant amount of the growth of LBS while Mr. Eagleburger was on its board.

During an examination of BNL in 1989, the Federal Reserve stated that between 1986 and August 1989:

BNL fueled a significant amount of LBS's growth in the U.S. with 20 percent to 25 percent of LBS's business from BNL.

The first transaction between LBS and BNL was a credit facility established in October 1986, 3 months after LBS opened in New York.

BNL also maintained a bank account at LBS.

The majority of the business between the two entities--totaling tens of millions of dollars--involved the LBS purchase of loans originated by BNL.

Some of those loans involved Iraq.

Other loans purchased by LBS included BNL loans to Cargill.

Cargill is now under investigation for violating the Trading with the Enemy Act involving the BNL-financed sale of Cuban sugar.

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FORMER BNL-NEW YORK OFFICER REPLACED EAGLEBURGER AS DIRECTOR OF LBS

Symbolic of the close relationship between BNL and LBS, the former regional manager of BNL became a director of LBS soon after Mr. Eagleburger left to take his current State Department post.

Mr. Renato Guadagnini, who worked for BNL for 39 years, was appointed a director of LBS in early 1989.

Mr. Guadagnini was the regional manager of BNL's U.S. operations while the Atlanta branch of BNL was illegally loaning $4 billion to Iraq apparently without his knowledge.

It is hard to fathom how the person responsible for supervising BNL during the time it illegally loaned $4 billion to Iraq is qualified to be a director of another bank.

ANOTHER LINK BETWEEN BNL AND LBS

Another link between BNL and LBS is the chief lending officer of LBS.

BNL's Christopher Drogoul, a main conspirator in the BNL loan scheme with Iraq, had a close business relationship with the chief lending officer of LBS while both were stationed in London.

On occasion that LBS lending officer, as well as the chief financial officer visited BNL's office in Atlanta.

BNL employees also visited LBS when they were in New York.

LBS NOT WELL RUN WHILE EAGLEBURGER A DIRECTOR

Apparently LBS was not a well run institution while Mr. Eagleburger was on its board.

Upon examining the relationship between BNL and LBS in 1989, the Federal Reserve concluded:

"LBS is conducting a very sloppy operation and supervision by the head office is extremely weak."

"Examiners have found a number of instances where there is a lack of documentation in loan participations with BNL."

"LBS does not have an internal auditor."

Sloppy management was not the only trouble LBS had during Mr. Eagleburger's tenure as director--LBS was also involved in money laundering.

LBS CONVICTED OF MONEY LAUNDERING

As we have seen, LBS and BNL had a significant relationship while the latter was perpetrating the largest banking scandal of all time.

LBS was also involved in criminal activity during that same time period.

In 1988, LBS and its chairman were indicted on charges of laundering almost $1.5 million.

The chairman of LBS was eventually cleared of the charges made against him, nevertheless, a jury convicted LBS of money laundering.

LBS PARENT IN YUGOSLAVIA INVOLVED IN CRIMINAL ACTIVITY

A literature search of the Yugoslavian parent of LBS revealed that it also has been involved in several criminal proceedings during the past several years.

Two such scandals took place in the cities of Pristina and Titograd in Yugoslavia.

The Yugoslavian parent of LBS was also at the center of Yugoslavia's largest ever financial scandal--the Agrokmerc affair.

Agrokmerc issued almost $1 billion worth of false promissory notes in local Yugoslavian currency.

The parent of LBS and many of its affiliates arranged to purchase most of the notes.

The scandal led to scores of arrests, the fall of Yugoslavia's vice president and shook the Yugoslavian banking system and economy.

LBS INVOLVED WITH ENTRADE WHILE EAGLEBURGER A DIRECTOR

LBS's association with criminal activity and criminals extended to the New York-based company called Entrade International, Ltd. and its chief financial officer, Yavuz Tezeller.

Entrade International, Ltd. is a Turkish-owned New York-based trading company specializing in the international trade of goods and commodities.

Here BNL shows up again, as the bank was indicted with Entrade and Mr. Tezeller for obtaining unauthorized financing for exports to Iraq often with CCC export guarantees or insurance.

The Justice Department indicted Entrade and Mr. Tezeller for providing cash, houses, jewelry, vacations, and other things of value for personal use and benefit of BNL employees in consideration for the unathorized loans made to finance Entrade's exports to Iraq and elsewhere.

Entrade faces a maximum fine of $54 million.

Mr. Tezeller, a Turkish national, is charged with directing Entrade's contracts with BNL and with other entities in Europe and the Middile East owned by Entrade's parent holding company, Enka.

Mr. Tezeller has fled to Turkey.

LBS also extended a $300,000 mortgage loan to Yavuz Tezeller.

The Federal Reserve stated that "this loan appears to have been the first and only mortgage loan made by LBS."

Given the level of criminal involvement of LBS and its parent in Yugoslavia, and its close relationship with organizations charged with criminal activity, I have written letters to the Federal Reserve and State of New York asking them to provide more information about LBS's operations in the U.S. as well as a more in-depth look at the relationship between LBS and BNL.

EXIMBANK AND YUGOSLAVIA: IS THERE AN EAGLEBURGER CONNECTION?

Mr. Eagleburger has had a long and prosperous relationship with Yugoslavia.

He was Ambassador to Yugoslavia and prior to holding that post he worked in the Embassy as a foreign service officer.

While at Kissinger Associates he helped set up Global Motors to distribute the Yugo and he helped LBS get started in New York.

It is fair to say that over the past couple of decades Mr. Eagleburger has been one of Yugoslavia's biggest backers in the U.S. Government.

These facts could possibly explain the Eximbank exposure to Yugoslavia which stood at a whopping $1.056 billion as of March 1991.

One longtime Eximbank employee stated that he "always considered Eximbank's large exposure to Yugoslavia unusual."

Upon closer examination, Yugoslavia may be receiving special treatment from the Eximbank at this very moment.

BANKING COMMITTEE DENIED ACCESS TO YUGOSLAVIA DATA

Yugoslavia is now on the brink of political and economic chaos.

It is being torn apart politically and the most recent Eximbank country risk analysis for Yugoslavia is not encouraging.

While the Committee was able to see the country risk analyses for Iraq, John Macomber, the President of Eximbank and a friend of Mr. Eagleburger, would not permit Committee investigators access to the country risk analysis for Yugoslavia.

YUGOSLAVIA ADMINISTRATIVELY SUSPENDED FROM EXIMBANK PROGRAMS

Mr. Macomber recently decided to place all Yugoslavian transactions on hold--effectively suspending Yugoslavia from Eximbank programs.

This was not done through the usual process which calls for Eximbank Board of Directors to make the call regarding the suspension of a country from Eximbank programs.

Instead, Mr. Macomber decided to give the order to place all Yugoslavian business at the Bank on hold without allowing the Board to formally vote on suspending Yugoslavia.

Without a formal board action, an American exporter has no way of knowing Eximbank will not process Yugoslavian transactions.

That is unless the exporter has the foresight to call the Eximbank before going to the expense of doing business with Yugoslavian concerns.

The mission of the Eximbank is to serve exporters.

By not formally suspending Yugoslavia, the Eximbank may be doing a disservice to American exporters.

LBS AND PARENT NOT SUSPENDED FROM EXIMBANK PROGRAMS

LBS and its parent bank in Yugoslavia both participate in Eximbank programs.

Both have been involved in serious criminal activity, one in the United States and the other in Yugoslavia, yet the Export-Import Bank has not suspended either bank from its programs.

IS EAGLEBURGER MEDDLING IN EXIMBANK AFFAIRS?

The question arises why Yugoslavia has received special treatment from the Eximbank.

Has Mr. Eagleburger influenced the actions of Eximbank?

Mr. Macomber has stated that Yugoslavia has not received special treatment, but that statement is hard to understand given the facts.

For example, longtime Eximbank staff stated that it was rare that an Eximbank President would take a unilateral action to place business with a nation on hold.

They also stated that it was unusual for the Eximbank to decide not to formally suspend a nation that is suffering from such severe economic and political problems and is in arrears on Eximbank programs.

Yugoslavia is evidently such a country.

Staff at the Bank stated that Mr. Macomber speaks to Mr. Eagleburger often, sometimes as often as two or three times a day.

They also indicated that the topic of discussion between the two is sometimes Yugoslavia.

Mr. Macomber has stated that although he has frequent chats with Mr. Eagleburger, the topic of Yugoslavia has never been broached.

This seems highly unlikely given Mr. Eagleburger's position, his obvious interest in Yugoslavia and the importance placed on the Eximbank program in Yugoslavia.

It would seem reasonable that Mr. Eagleburger would inquire about Yugoslavia's status at Eximbank, but according to Mr. Macomber this has not been the case.

What is clear is that Yugoslavia is receiving special treatment from Eximbank.

At this time the Committee does not know why.

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EXIMBANK PLAYING GREATER FOREIGN POLICY ROLE

Considering the Administration proposal to allow Eximbank to finance $1 billion in military sales, and to open up a $300 million Eximbank program with the Soviet Union, the trend toward using Eximbank as a foreign policy tool is clear.

This is a disturbing trend.

The Eximbank was created to assist U.S. exporters.

It was not created to be a major foreign policy tool.

Rest assured, in order to protect the taxpayer investment in the Eximbank, the Banking Committee will continue to fight to maintain the commercial export promotion function of the Eximbank.

BRENT SCOWCROFT

Another Kissinger Associates alumni is Brent Scowcroft, a career Air Force officer and a specialist in Slavic languages and history, who has held various positions in six administrations.

Early in his military career, Scowcroft served 1 year as the air attache at the United States embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia.

After earning a Ph.D. and working in academia from 1962 to 1968, he held a succession of national security posts in the Department of Defense.

In 1971, President Nixon appointed Scowcroft Military Aide to the President and in 1973, Kissinger chose him to be Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs.

Scowcroft often took charge of the National Security Council while Kissinger was fulfilling his duties as Secretary of State, and in 1975 succeeded Kissinger as National Security Adviser under President Ford.

Although he resigned the position during the Carter administration, Scowcroft stayed active as a member of the President's general Advisory Committee on Arms Control.

In 1982, Scowcroft joined Kissinger in setting up Kissinger Associates.

Scowcroft served as vice chairman until regaining his position as National Security Adviser to President Bush in January 1989.

During his tenure at Kissinger Associates, President Reagan appointed Scowcroft to various special commissions on defense issues and often sought his advice in national security matters.

SCOWCROFT OWNS STOCK IN 40 COMPANIES WHILE NSC DIRECTOR

Mr. Scowcroft's financial disclosure forms indicate that up until October 4, 1990, he owned stock in 40 companies.

Several of the companies, like Lockheed and General Electric, are among the Nation's largest defense contractors.

Other companies include multinationals like General Motors, ITT, Westinghouse, AT&T, Mobil Oil, Du Pont, Xerox, and Hewlett-Packard.

Some of these companies are also defense contractors, but all routinely must obtain export licenses as a part of their international business operations.

The NSC has considerable sway over the export licensing process.

To this day he still owns stock in many of those companies.

Mr. Scowcroft's stock holdings are most startling since the actions of the NSC, whether related to the export licensing process or U.S. security policy, could have an influence on those companies.

NSC HAS CONSIDERABLE SWAY OVER EXPORT LICENSING

As I stated earlier, when George Bush took over as President, he issued a national security directive ordering improved relations with Iraq.

The President, with the advice and consent of his senior advisers, including Mr. Eagleburger and Mr. Scowcroft, determined that the best way to improve relations with Iraq was through expanded trade.

This policy was little different from that pursued during the Reagan administration.

The NSC has direct responsibility carrying out the President's national security directives.

In the case of export licensing, the National Security Act of 1947, and subsequent legislation provided the President, through the National Security Council [NCS], with ample authority to establish policies on export controls.

To get a feel for the export licensing role of the NSC during the Reagan-Bush administrations, just look at the comments of Paul Freedenberg.

He was the chief export licensing official at the Commerce Department during the latter half of the Reagan years and the beginning of the Bush administration.

He recently testified that Iraqi use of poison gas against its own Kurds and the Iranians did not suppress the zeal of the NSC to approve technology transfer to Iraq.

In testimony before Congress, Freedenberg stated:

"In the summer of 1988, a number of licenses were pending with regard to technology transfer to Iraq."

"I asked for official guidance with regard to what the licensing policy would be toward Iraq since by that time there was credible evidence of the use of poison gas by the Iraqis against their own people and also against the Iranians."

"I suggested that the imposition of foreign policy controls be considered as a way of justifying the denial of export licenses to Iraq."

"I was told by the National Security Council that the licensing policy with regard to Iraq was that of normal trade and that under normal circumstances I should clear the licenses that were pending."

"I passed that information on to my licensing officers and the few dozen licenses that were pending at that time were approved and licenses were issued for exports to Iraq."

This provides clear insight into the power the NSC can exercise over the export licensing process.

I would also like to include in the Record an article from the February 25, 1991, issue of Legal Times.

This article gives the reader a good overview of Mr. Scowcroft's and Mr. Eagleburger's role in promoting military sales.

The article illustrates that an environment existed that could make it possible for Iraq to obtain sophisticated U.S. technology to upgrade its military capability.

The truth about the export licensing process is that the NSC and the State Department ignored or actually encouraged the transfer of militarily useful technology to Iraq in violation of its public oath to prohibit such uses.

Regarding the question of whether or not the companies that Mr. Scowcroft owned stock in benefited from the United States policy toward Iraq, I can reveal one fact:

Together, those companies received over 100 out of the total 800 U.S. export licenses for sales to Iraq.

NAMES CANNOT BE RELEASED

Unfortunately, the names of the companies cannot be released at this time.

The administration has stated that the list of export licenses for Iraq must be kept secret because of the supposed "proprietary" information it contains.

Maybe the real reason for the secrecy stance is that the administration is embarrassed by the list because it symbolizes the abysmal failure of the trade-based approach to foreign policy.

KISSINGER ASSOCIATES AND THE GENERAL MOTORS-VOLVO TRUCK PLANT IN IRAQ

The following is an interesting story involving General Motors and Volvo and their link to Mr. Eagleburger and Mr. Scowcroft and BNL, and illustrates the odd triangle linking foreign policy toward Iraq, and BNL's role in financing it--not to mention the role of Kissinger Associates.

Volvo was a client of Kissinger Associates and the chairman of Volvo, Pehr Gyllenhammar, was on the Kissinger Associates board of directors with Mr. Eagleburger and Mr. Scowcroft.

Mr. Scowcroft owned stock in General Motors until at least October 4, 1990.

Mr. Scowcroft's and Mr. Eagleburger's jobs placed them in a position of considerable influence over United States-Iraq trade.

Both were responsible for carrying out the President's directive calling for improved relations with Iraq.

Volvo and General Motors are partners in a company called Volvo GM Heavy Truck Corp.

In 1989, Volvo GM Heavy Truck proposed to build a 5,000-unit-per-year heavy truck factory in Iraq.

A copy of that proposal is in the record.

GM and Volvo had considerable dealings with Iraq.

In 1988, GM sold 5,125 Chevrolet Celebrities to Iraq.

During 1989, GM secured financing from BNL for 10,000 Cutlass Cieras to be sold to Iraq.

The BNL operation may have been shut down prior to actual disbursement of BNL moneys.

BNL money paid for Volvo exports of spare parts for dump trucks, water tank trucks and tanks, and units for Volvo diesel engines to Iraq.

GM frequently met with Eximbank officials to secure additional GM projects in Iraq totaling an estimated $800 million.

Hussein Kamel (or Kamil) is Saddam Hussein's son-in-law.

BNL employees met with Mr. Kamel when they traveled to Iraq.

Mr. Kamel is said to have been responsible for the secret Iraqi technology procurement network operating in Europe and the United States; Mr. Kamel was the head of the Ministry of Industry and Military Manufacturing in Iraq.

On June 20, 1989, Volvo GM Heavy Truck Corp. wrote to the Iraqi Minister of the Ministry of Industry, Hussein Kamel, proposing the construction of a 5,000-unit-per-year heavy truck factory in Iraq.

The Volvo GM letter failed to add the words "Military Manufacturing" to Mr. Kamel's title.

Two other U.S. automotive companies considered participating in the project.

They were Cummings Engine Co. and Eaton Corp., Cleveland OH.

In a memo describing their visit to Iraq, Volvo GM staff stated:

First, the delegation meeting them was headed by a Brigadier General.

Second, the ministry they met with is responsible for Industry and Armament.

Third, the delegation visited a number of top secret defense operations.

The Volvo GM memo goes on to state:

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U.S. authorities have been approached with the objective to obtain loans from the Eximbank.

The different government agencies have responded very positively and appointments are made for further talks with the government including the White House.

So far, no credit line is available from Eximbank.

Who at the White House was contacted remains a mystery.

But the White House was not alone in being sought out to support the project.

Eximbank received 15 letters from Congressmen, Senators, and one Governor interested in Eximbank financing for the truck factory.

Thankfully for the taxpayer, the Eximbank refused to fund the project because it did not think Iraq was creditworthy.

The project provides a good illustration of the sort of pressure the Eximbank was under to do business in Iraq.

EATON CORP IDENTIFIES MATRIX CHURCHILL AS IRAQI OWNED COMPANY

A startling revelation appears in the Eaton Corp. portion of the Volvo GM memo.

In that portion of the memo an Eaton employee states:

"It is interesting to note that Matrix Churchill in the U.K. is 75 percent owned by the Iraqi Government."

Matrix Churchill, Ltd., was the prime Iraqi front company operating in the United Kingdom.

Its Cleveland, OH affiliate, Matrix Churchill Corp., was the main Iraqi front company operating in the United States.

Matrix was responsible for procuring technology to be used in Iraqi weapons factories.

What is amazing is that the U.S. Government did not confiscate the Cleveland operation of Matrix until September 1990 and the British did not confiscate the London operation until October 1990, both after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and months after Iraqi assets were supposed to be frozen.

BNL was a main source of funds for Matrix Churchill and other members of the secret Iraqi technology procurement network.

SCOWCROFT-EAGLEBURGER AND EXIMBANK MILITARY SALES

The Legal Times article I referred to before mentions the Eagleburger-Scowcroft effort to get the Export-Import Bank to finance military sales.

I have two points to make regarding the Eximbank financing of military sales; the first regards Iraq.

I have evidence showing that Eximbank backed the sale of military articles to Iraq.

I would like to place in the Record several examples of Eximbank financed military sales to Iraq.

In 1986, the Eximbank approved the sale of 600,000 dollars' worth of portable radio communications equipment and in 1987 it approved the sale of "250 armored military truck ambulances" to Iraq.

I have also included a Mack Truck sale of 200 fifth wheel trucks to Iraq that the Eximbank refused to finance because of their military applications.

Mack Truck sold trucks, tractors, cranes, and dumpers worth $6.4 million to Iraq with the help of BNL loans.

Iraq also paid for 40 heavy duty Mack truck chassis worth over $2.5 million with BNL loans.

The sad part about the Exim-backed sales to Iraq is that only a small handful of the 187 transactions were checked for military use by the Eximbank engineers familiar with dual-use technology.

The vast majority of the Eximbank backed sales to Iraqi were checked only by a loan officer.

Nobody really knows the extent of Eximbank-backed militarily useful exports to Iraq.

It is imperative that the Banking Committee plug the loophole that allows Eximbank-backed exports to go to dangerous nations without being adequately checked by professional engineers.

The second point I have relates to the Eagleburger-Scowcroft proposal to finance $1 billion in military sales using Eximbank.

I have stated before and I will state again, Eximbank should not be used as a tool to augment declining military sales.

This program should be run out of the Defense Department using their resources.

Eximbank is poorly equipped to review the military implications of given sales.

CONCLUSION

One interesting question that remains unanswered is why United States law enforcement authorities have not arrested or charged many companies with violations of U.S. export control laws related to Iraq.

Other governments, such as Germany, have announced efforts to pursue dozens of companies, many very prominent, for criminal violations of export control laws.

I challenge you to name one United States company that has been indicted for violating the export control laws related to Iraq.

Clearly, it was official U.S. Government policy to provide Iraq with the credit necessary to purchase enormous amounts of United States agricultural products and sophisticated United States technology.

Warnings about the military uses of the technology, warnings about Iraq's creditworthiness, and warnings about Saddam's ruthlessness were routinely ignored.

It was in this climate that the BNL flourished, and close friends of those in key positions of power facilitated and profited from this shortsighted policy.

This official neglect may in large part account for BNL's disastrous conduct.

[TIME: 1230]

Mr. Speaker, let me conclude by saying that the worst of all is that this is just a small fragment of the huge, over 730 billion dollars' worth, of this type of money, foreign financing or banking money in our country, that is here, that can just--with a small proportion of that, as in BNL, propel huge financial packages, for God only knows what purpose, because nobody in our Government knows, neither the Federal Reserve Board nor the State banking regulators in the States where these foreign entities charter their agencies, know just what is being done in the United States.

Mr. Speaker, as chairman of the committee I have set forth the urgent need for the Congress to legislate with some priority in order to provide the American people with the sufficient assurance that their national interests and the very policies of their Government are in turn being protected, and at least being overseen.

Livyjr: you never commented on the "center shot."

And it's likely there won't even be the scrap of meat!

After all, why should we be given hope!

And not to be overly critical here, Mr. A.B., but I would substitute the word "COLLAPSE the American middle class" for your use of "DEGRADE" in the same sentence!

The MIDDLE CLASS needs to disappear!

In fact, it needs to be CRUSHED!

And this is really nothing new, and in fact, it really is something quite old in OUR America, which is the type of feudal society which existed in OUR America back in its colonial days, except the corporations have become the feudal masters, in the place of the familes who were the masters and LORDS of the MANOR back then!

To people living further west in OUR America, where this feudal history never existed, and where the company "MILL TOWNS" with the company housing and company store might never have existed, ALL OF THIS TALK of eliminating the middle class might not be readily comprehensible, or understandable, but to me, who has lived my life in one of the original colonies, where there was a feudal LORD of the Manor, and then almost complete control over the lives of the working class people by the MILL OWNERS, I can readily see where we are heading back to!

And I can understand why that is OUR intended direction!

What I cannot understand is the seeming complete and total apathy of the American people towards it happening, right before their eyes!

That is what I find so amazing, that the American people themselves seem to be the main ones who are welcoming the destruction, through economic means, of what we have known these last fifty years or so, since the end of WWII, as OUR America, so as to benefit these multi-national corporations that care no more for us than they do for a water buffalo out in a field pulling a plow, or an ox pulling a wagon-load of straw!

America started with people, and is ending with corporations!

Oh well, at least it is a different route to the fate of Rome's Republic than that which they traveled themselves, and that is something, isn't it?

jeffmoskin, first let me tell you, reading that gives me a chill, even though I know just how cold and impersonal that business can really be!

Since I made my original posts about that Calipari affair, I have spoken to a number of people about that "head shot", and each time, I would start the conversation by asking them where the Italian guy was hit, meaning in which part of his anatomy!

Each time, the person I was asking about this incident did not know where the Italian was actually hit, and when I would tell them, "in the temple", their demeanor would immediately change, as the implications of that shot became clear to them, BECAUSE everyone is very aware of where their own temple is, and so .....

And then, I became intrigued by the BNL scandal, and to be truthful, I got distracted by that, as the post above on BNL attests!

And so, like Dirty Harry trying to remember exactly how many shots he had fired that day, it slipped my mind to respond to that part of your post!

The consensus still remains that Calipari was shot and killed BECAUSE he was actually negotiating with enemies of George W. Bush, and so, he needed to be made an example of, and so he was, and graphically so!

And there is doodly-squat the Italians can do about it, is the further consensus!

However, that article you posted is well worth the read, as chilling as that read can be, as an alternate theory to mine as to why this Italian guy was popped right in the head, to put him away for good!

Whichever way, with that head of his the way it is now, he is not going to be saying very much about anything at all for quite some time to come, and so .....

And while we are on this subject of apparent government-sanctioned removal of people, such as this Italian agent Calipari, we have as follows from George W. Bush's CLIENT STATE of Iraq:

Middle East - AP

"AP: U.S. to Probe Iraq Scientist's Death"

1 hour, 57 minutes ago

By CHARLES J. HANLEY, AP Special Correspondent

NEW YORK - The U.S. Army says it has reopened an investigation into the suspected bludgeoning death of a key Iraqi scientist in American custody, a chemist who allegedly experimented with poisons on prisoners in the days of Saddam Hussein.

Mohammad Munim al-Izmerly, 65, is the only known weapons scientist among at least 96 detainees who have died in U.S. custody in Iraq.

Questions have surrounded the death ever since his body was dropped off at a Baghdad hospital in February 2004, two weeks after he died.

When it first came to light in press reports last May, the U.S. military, newly under fire for prisoner abuse in Iraq, refused to answer queries about the chemist's death.

Now, months later, the Army says an investigation has begun.

"The case was initially closed, but after further investigative review a determination was made to reopen the investigation," Army spokesman Christopher Grey told The Associated Press.

The Pentagon would say nothing about the timetable or thrust of the inquiry.

But Rod Barton, an Australian member of the CIA-led teams that questioned al-Izmerly and other weapons scientists, says such prisoners may have been beaten during the futile U.S. hunt for banned arms in Iraq.

When al-Izmerly's body was delivered to Al-Kharkh Hospital, the Americans enclosed a death certificate saying he died of "brainstem compression," without saying what caused it, Britain's Guardian newspaper reported after viewing the document last year.

A subsequent Iraqi autopsy determined he was killed by a blunt trauma injury, a blow to the head, Iraqi doctors told Baghdad reporters.

New details are emerging about the role al-Izmerly played in Iraq's weapons underworld.

In contrast to a "distinguished chemistry professor," the portrayal in one press report last May, U.S. weapons investigators now say al-Izmerly was an early leader of Iraq's effort to make chemical arms, and an assassination specialist who once devised a "poison pen."

The Egyptian-born scientist had been in U.S. detention since April 2003.

His family was allowed to visit him in January 2004 at the Baghdad airport, where he was believed held at Camp Cropper, a U.S. military detention center for "high-value detainees."

A month later they were notified by the Red Cross he was dead.

His son, Ashraf, 22, told reporters that when he went to the hospital morgue to claim the remains, zipped up in a U.S. body bag, he saw an injury to the head.

The dated death certificate indicated the Americans had held the body for 17 days.

The family commissioned an autopsy, which found the cause of death to be a blow to the head, the reports from Baghdad said.

"It was definitely a blunt trauma injury," the Los Angeles Times was told by Dr. Kais Hassan, who performed the autopsy at Iraq's Forensic Medical Institute.

Army spokesman Grey said the Pentagon lists al-Izmerly's death in an "undetermined cause" category because the body was released before Army investigators learned of the case, and no U.S. autopsy was performed.

Ashraf al-Izmerly, contacted this week by the AP, said he was aware of the reopened investigation, but couldn't immediately discuss the case further.

Because of apparently new Iraqi Health Ministry rules, an AP reporter was not allowed to speak with Dr. Hassan.

The scientist's family, who gave no indication they were aware of the nature of his work, said last year they believed the U.S. military was covering up the circumstances of al-Izmerly's death.

There have been other cases in which the U.S. military attributed to natural causes detainee deaths later found to have been caused by brutal American treatment.

One-quarter of the detainee deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan have been investigated as possible criminal homicides, according to U.S. government data reported by AP last week.

Charles A. Duelfer, the CIA special adviser who led the arms-hunting Iraq Survey Group, didn't respond to AP queries about what he knew of al-Izmerly's death.

But Barton, one of his former subordinates, has spoken out.

The Australian microbiologist says he was told in February 2004, while working with Duelfer's group in Baghdad, that al-Izmerly died of a brain tumor.

But "I had suspicions that this person had actually been beaten to death in the prison," Barton said in an Australian Broadcasting Corp. interview last month.

He said he saw two other detainees, also weapons hunters' interrogation subjects, with face injuries he thought were the result of beatings.

Contacted by the AP, Barton wouldn't elaborate on his suspicions, citing the sensitivity of testimony on the weapons hunt he is to give to the Australian Senate next week.

Al-Izmerly figures prominently in Duelfer's final report of Oct. 6, as a "mentor" to Iraqi chemists trying to make poison gas for military use in the 1970s, as leader of the effort to produce mustard gas, and in the 1980s as chief of an Iraq Intelligence Service chemical section.

In the intelligence role and earlier, ex-colleagues told interrogators, al-Izmerly was head of human experiments, testing substances for use on assassination targets by giving poisoned food or injections to some 100 political and other prisoners, the Iraq Survey Group reported.

The CIA account said al-Izmerly admitted administering poisons to 20 human subjects, but he said it was under orders from above.

How many may have died is not reported.

One informant cited in the U.S. report said al-Izmerly in the 1980s ordered the fashioning of a poison-tipped pen for use in assassinations, and personally filled it with snake venom.

It wasn't clear whether such pens were ever used.
___

Associated Press writers Bushra Juhi in Baghdad and John J. Lumpkin in Washington contributed to this report.

end quotes

A question, of course, is what kind of support America provided to this man for his work on behalf of Saddam Hussein, given the revelations in the BNL scandal, involving George H. W. Bush's desires to build up Iraq militarily, AS ONE OF HIS ALLIES!

Might this Iraqi fellow have been, shall we say, "REMOVED", because of what he knew?

Hhhhmmmmmm.

Sounds like a suicide case to me.

He beat himself to death.

Well, that certainly is one of the excuses, er, causes, probably!

Like a guy who commits suicide by shooting himself right in the temple from a distance of fifty feet!

What a shot!

And do you think this Iraqi guy here might have committed suicide by beating himself to death to keep himself from saying anything at all to George W. Bush about his pap, George H. W. Bush, that would have George W. thinking that George H. W. was really one of Saddam Hussein's biggest supporters on the face of the earth, despite Saddam's, ah, "mannerisms", let us say, or "foibles", or perhaps "shenanigans", or maybe "flaws of character", and thus, George H. W. was not quite the REAL AMERICAN HERO that George W. would have us all believe George H. W. should be considered as, BECAUSE SADDAM allegedly wanted to shoot George H. W. because of some little lover's spat that they had, or something like that?

Maybe the Iraqi guy really committed suicide by beating himself to death to protect the HONOR and CHASTITY of George H. W. Bush - "I know, but I won't tell anyone"!

Possible, anyway, that there are still some real gentlemen left on the face of the earth, however unlikely that really sounds, and if that is the case, well, we now have one less to count in those numbers because of this guy's loyalty to keeping intact the good name and reputation of George H. W. Bush, who was one of Saddam Hussein's greatest supporters on the face of this earth, and may even be the man who made him what he was over there in the Middle East!

1. Manuel Noriega helped Bush the First launder money for Iran/Contra. In 1989, Bush invaded Panama and captured Noriega. We have not heard a peep out of him since.

2. Bush the first, Kissinger, Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Reagan ARMED SADDAM. In 2003, Bush the Lesser captured Saddam. We have not heard a peep out of him since.

3. Italian SISMI military intelligence agent, Dr. Nicola Calipari, killed by U.S. sharpshooters because of his knowledge about George H W Bush's ties to Saddam Hussein's nuclear program.

4. Moral: Be verrrrryyy careful when doing business with the Bush Family: It could be hazardous to your health.

Stay tuned!

Developments as they happen!

And we do what we promise in here, since we are not politicians!

We have been following developments in Lebanon with respect to this Hariri case over there, and when last we looked, the United Nations was promising us an update into its own alleged investigation of what allegedly went down over there in Lebanon the day Mr. Hariri was scattered about the countryside by a massive explosion!

SO!

Without further ado, let us see what the U.N. boys and girls have to say about this matter today:

Middle East - AP

"U.N.: Hariri Assassination Probe Flawed"

24 minutes ago

By NICK WADHAMS, Associated Press Writer

UNITED NATIONS - A U.N. report on the killing of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri says Lebanese authorities bungled, if not outright manipulated, their probe of his death and demands a new international investigation.

The report does not directly blame Syria for the assassination of Hariri, an opponent of the Syrian presence in Lebanon, but says Damascus was behind the political tension and weak security that led to his death — and that of 17 other people — in a huge explosion on Feb. 14.

"Clearly, Mr. Hariri's assassination took place on the backdrop of his power struggle with Syria, regardless of who carried out the assassination and with what aim," the report released Thursday says.

The U.N.-backed investigation was led by deputy Irish police commissioner Peter Fitzgerald.

Opposition leaders and foreign officials fear Hariri was killed for opposing pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud, who was allowed to stay in office for another term after parliament rewrote the constitution with Syria's approval.

Hariri had also supported Security Council resolution 1559, which demanded Syria withdraw its forces from Lebanon.

It also said the council hoped Lebanon's upcoming elections would be free of foreign influence — a reference to Syria, which has held enormous political influence in Lebanon since its troops entered the country in 1976.

While Fitzgerald's report accuses Syria of creating the conditions for Hariri's death, it reserves withering criticism for Lebanese authorities who handled the case.

The report says there was a "distinct lack of commitment" by the authorities to investigate the crime, and the probe was not carried out "in accordance with acceptable international standards."

It detailed a host of flaws, including the disappearance of crucial evidence and tampering with the scene of the blast.

Parts of a pickup truck were brought to the scene, placed in the crater and photographed as evidence, it said.

The report alleged investigative judges had no control over the probe and even faulted police for not turning off a water main that flooded the blast crater and washed away vital evidence.

Studying the aftermath of the bombing, Fitzgerald's team also cast serious doubts on the legitimacy of a suspect, a Palestinian named Ahmed Abu Adas, and a group that claimed responsibility, the little-known Support and Jihad in Syria and Lebanon.

Fitzgerald also faulted Syria for interfering in the governing of Lebanon "in a heavy-handed and inflexible manner."

He said his investigators also received testimony that Syrian President Bashar Assad had threatened Hariri and leading opposition figure Walid Jumblatt with physical harm.

Syria's U.N. Ambassador Fayssal Mekdad rejected the report, saying it contained "too much rhetoric."

He denied his country had any role in Hariri's assassination.

Fayssal called Hariri a "great ally of Syria" and instead blamed the U.N. Security Council for passing resolution 1559.

"We think that things were going on well in Lebanon until a certain development that has taken place here in this building when one, two countries pushed the council to adopt a resolution that was not called for," Mekdad said from the United Nations in New York.

In Beirut, Lahoud said he had told U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to do "what is necessary" to learn who was behind Hariri's death.

In a letter accompanying the report, Annan expressed full support for the findings.

He backed its recommendation for an international independent commission with the authority to interrogate witnesses, conduct searches and other tasks.

Lebanon's opposition and Hariri's family have insisted on an international investigation, saying they have no trust in the Lebanese probe.

The report reflected that sentiment, saying the Lebanese investigation "lacks the confidence of the population necessary for its results to be accepted."

The U.N. Security Council is now expected to take up the issue.

It would have to approve a resolution seeking a new investigation, and would most likely ask Annan to appoint a new team.

Hariri's killing led to political turmoil in Lebanon, and subsequent mass demonstrations forced the resignation of the Lebanese government.

The protests and intensified the international campaign for Syria to withdraw its troops from the country.

Syria has now pulled back its troops and intelligence agents into eastern Lebanon toward the border and has been promising to work out their complete removal with Lahoud's pro-Syrian government in Beirut.

Boy, jeffmoskin, we ALL better watch out lest a whole bunch of us start "committing suicide" by that expedient of becoming sharpshooters, so that we can then whack ourselves right in the temple from a distance of 250 feet or more, just so we won't have to really see the gun that we are going to shoot ourselves with, when we pull the trigger!

I hear it hurts less that way!

And I will still register my "disagreement" with your premise no. 3, about why Calipari was really popped!

I thought about it somemore last night, and then again this morning, and my feelings on the matter, jeffmoskin, are these:

George H. W. Bush's involvement with Saddam was never really all that very secret, to begin with, especially if one were actually alive and over the age of eighteen back then when these events of the 1980's that we talk about in here were really happening, and so, all these years later, to kill Calipari for knowing what everyone on the block should already know doesn't sound like much of a motive!

And who would Calipari tell that would care?

Berlusconi?

The GREAT APPEASER, Anthony "Dapper Man" Blair?

Kofi Annan?

The American people?

In a lot of ways it's like knowing that Liz Taylor was married a lot and so ......

Think back on all of this for a moment, WHEN just before the HOLY WAR began in earnest, with the airborne assaults on the vital Iraqi oilfields, George W. Bush was doing his SHOCK AND AWE schtick, and George W. was going on and on and on about Saddam being this "BAD MAN, A BAD MAN, HE'S A REAL BAD MAN"!

Even then it was common knowledge here in OUR America that if Saddam Hussein was anything at all, at least Donald Rumsfeld had a hand in that making, and SO WHAT?

Who cares?

BIG DEAL!

And so, Calipari could have been given his own talk show to tell the world all he knew, and I don't think it would have made one bit of difference!

BUT NEGOTIATING WITH TAY-RISTS!

NOW, that is a KILLING OFFENCE, as I would see it through the eyes of George W. Bush, ESPECIALLY AFTER George W. Bush had made it very clear to ALL the candid world that unless and until you had express written clearance from him, YOU DO NOT SPEAK TO ANYONE AT ALL, because George might not like them that week, and so, if you speak to one of George W. Bush "ENEMIES", as Calipari clearly did, THEN YOU ARE A DEAD MAN!

And so Calipari became one!

Now, I'm not saying that I am right, or that you are not!

It just seems that the length of time passed since George H. W. Bush played "KINGMAKER" in the case of Saddam is too great, and the events themselves too far in the past to really make a difference anymore, since the American public only has an attention span of five or ten seconds anyway, and thus, the length of time passed would seem to mitigate against popping Calipari SOLELY for what he might have known about George H. W. Bush's involvement with Saddam Hussein, UNLESS .....

Unless George H. W. and the "GANG" were still playing footsie with Saddam past the 2000 elections, when young George became RAMPANT and ASCENDENT as president of everything, and IF that were to be the case, and if it is, I have clearly missed it, THEN, that would change things here, wouldn't it?

SO!

jeffmoskin, as always, when you are going out, or even when you are in the farthest, and what you consequently think are "safest" recesses of your own home, KEEP YOUR TEMPLES COVERED AT ALL TIME, for one just never knows, does one, when the urge to shoot yourself right in the temple with a sharpshooter's scoped rifle from 200 or 300 yards away just might overcome one with desires too great to resist, like what happened with this Calipari over there in Iraq the day he "suicided" himself and all he might have known about George H. W. Bush right on into oblivion, which is forever, I think, anyway!

A real permanent solution to what in objective reality might really have been just a very temporary problem!

And here I am, returning from over in Mr. A.B.'s "Religion and Politics" thread, where I have been discussing Cyrus the Great as an example of a leader who was held out to be a GOOD LEADER, by the people of his times, which predate the birth of Christ by some 500 years, and the rise of Islam by some 1100 years or so, but interestingly, are somewhat coterminous with Buddha in India, and Lao Tze in China.

The topic over there in Mr. A.B.'s "Religion and Politics" thread is "George W. Bush vs. The Holy Bible", and in my one post on Cyrus the Great, an Iranian Nobel Peace Prize Winner is quoting from Cyrus the Great, AND THE POINT IS that the people in the Middle East KNOW who Cyrus the Great is, and they, like me, would make an immediate comparison between George W. Bush and Cyrus the Great, IF OUR MINDS were drawn in that direction, AS THEY WERE THIS LAST ELECTION CYCLE, by Karl Rove's PROPAGANDA MACHINE!

And when that comparison is made, as it is being right now, the CONTRAST between George W. Bush and Cyrus the Great IS STARK!

IF Cyrus the Great was a GOOD RULER, and George W. Bush stands in stark contrast to Cyrus the Great, which he certainly does in my eyes, then what can be said for George W. Bush, BESIDES he is a very unpopular ruler?

Top Stories - USATODAY.com

"Bush approval slips to 45%, lowest of his presidency"

Fri Mar 25, 6:16 AM ET

By Bill Nichols, USA TODAY

President Bush's approval rating has fallen to 45%, the lowest point of his presidency, according to a new USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll.

The finding, in a poll of 1,001 adults Monday through Wednesday, is a dip from 52% in a poll taken last week.

Bush's previous lowest rating, 46%, was recorded last May.

The White House declined to comment.

Republican National Committee spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt said that Bush is taking on "tough issues, whether it's to reform Social Security, promoting the spread of democracy or making a renewed pitch to Congress to pass comprehensive energy reform."

Independent political analysts said the drop may reflect opposition to the White House and Congress intervening in the Terri Schiavo matter.

"You have to wonder if people didn't feel that the president and the Congress couldn't be spending their time working on Social Security and other problems," said Charlie Cook, editor of the non-partisan Cook Political Report.

On Monday, Bush signed a bill passed in an unusual weekend session of Congress allowing federal courts to take jurisdiction over a decision by Schiavo's husband, Michael, to have her feeding tube removed.

A USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll last weekend found that 61% would have a spouse's feeding tube removed under similar circumstances.

The new poll found the largest drop for Bush came among men, self-described conservatives and churchgoers.

The poll also found an increased number of Democrats.

In this survey, 37% said they were Democrats and 32% said they were Republicans.

Last week, 32% said they were Democrats and 35% said they were Republicans.

Bush's handling of the economy also appears to have contributed to the poll's findings.

Bush's economic ratings:

• 59% said economic conditions are getting worse, Bush's highest negative number on the economy in two years.

• 32% rated economic conditions good or excellent, the lowest rating in over a year.

• A Gallup Poll taken in the same period found rising concern about gas costs.

Fuel and oil prices tied with unemployment, jobs and wages for top economic concerns.

"Any politician pushing a Social Security privatization plan that cuts benefits and increases the national debt by $4.3 trillion would see his or her approval ratings tumble," said Josh Earnest, Democratic National Committe spokesman.

The margin of error for the USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll is +/- 3 percentage points.

end quotes

GEORGE, PLEASE RESIGN FOR THE GOOD OF AMERICA!

Thank you!

When I read QUOTES like this one above from this Tracey Schmitt of the REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE, wherein she implies that George W. Bush is an unpopular president BECAUSE he is alleged by her to be tackling "TOUGH ISSUES", LIKE PROMOTING THE SPREAD OF DEMOCRACY, I can only wonder at how STUPID the REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE really thinks we are!

George W. Bush is not "UNPOPULAR" with me because he is tackling any hard or tough issues that I can see, especially PROMOTING THE SPREAD OF REAL DEMOCRACY; RATHER, he is very unpopular with me because he seems totally devoid of integrity, and intelligence, and that is a very dangerous combination in a leader, is my thought, especially of a nation like America!

And as an older American, I don't like being talked to as though I were some kind of a DUNCE by this REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE spokesgirl, who by her words INSINUATES that I and people like me who do not consider George W. Bush very highly as a leader ARE SOMEHOW UN-AMERICAN, and against real DEMOCRACY, to boot!

To be truthful there, Ms. REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE, I personally had what can readily be called out here in the country, a "GUT FULL" of these "REPUBLICAN TACTICS OF DIVISION" during this last election cycle, where the REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE was INSINUATING that John Kerry supporters, of which I was one, WERE SOMEHOW SOFT ON TAY-RIZM, and crime in general, and so, this CHARGE that we are now AGAINST DEMOCRACY SPREADING IN THE WORLD GOES JUST A LITTLE BIT TOO FAR, especially for me who am a disabled combat veteran!

WHO IS THIS TRACEY SCHMITT, anyway, of this REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE to be making these kinds of scurrilous AND BASELESS charges about us being against the spread of real democracy in the world?

From WHENCE comes HER evidence to support any of these false and groundless ACCUSATIONS of hers, AGAINST US, the HEART AND SOUL of OUR America, that we are somehow AGAINST democracy?

This ALL goes to show just exactly how OUT OF TOUCH the REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE really is with the HEART AND SOUL of OUR America, which is us in here, and all that we cherish, OUT THERE, in the real world, AND NOT ONLY does it show how OUT OF TOUCH with the HEART AND SOUL of OUR America the REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE really is, BUT ....

How undeserving they really are to be HOLDING ANY POLITICAL OFFICES WHATSOEVER, here in OUR America!

After all, why should we VOTE for a party that INSULTS OUR INTELLIGENCE as the REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE does?

WHY?

Makes no sense at all, does it?

I didn't think so, either!

You're probably right about Pappy Bush. And I'll wear a hat with ear flaps for protection.

My comments were based on a funny scene from January 17th, the national AntiWar protest day which I attended with my wife and kids in San Francisco.

Along the march route, there were five men, all wearing suits, all wearing a big button on their jacket stating " I ARMED SADDAM," and all wearing rubber face masks.

One was Pappy Bush
one was Kissinger
one was Rumsfeld
one was Reagan
and the last one was Cheney.

If I were to name what I think are the THREE greatest threats to my health, safety and well-being as a human being, here in OUR America, I would say the REPUBLICAN-controlled government of my town, and especially its so-called "planning board", followed by the REPUBLICAN-controlled County Health Department, followed by the REPUBLICAN-controlled state Department of Environmental Conservation, and not necessarily in that order stated, although the greatest threats usually are those closest by, and that would be the town!

I list these as the greatest threats TO ME because they have CONTROL over the quality of my ENVIRONMENT, which to a person like me who is older and disabled, IS the most important thing TO my health, safety and well-being, WHICH IS THE QUALITY of my local environment!

The AIR I breathe, the WATER I drink, the ROOF which covers my head, OR NOT!

I consider the REPUBLICANS in MY area to be the greatest threats to MY health, safety and well-being because the REPUBLICANS in MY area have a CALLOUS DISREGARD for health, safety and human well-being in general, and so, for mine, as well, who has no money with which to BUY NOTICE of myself from the REPUBLICANS, who really are the "PARTY OF MONIED INTERESTS" in my area, and so, NOT OF ME!

And this is not new!

In fact, it is quite old now, and here, maybe, in this following article, are some of the "chickens" that are "coming home to roost" FOR ALL OF US, thanks to this alleged DEPRAVED INDIFFERENCE to ANYTHING BUT CASH FLOW ALL THESE LAST YEARS GONE BY, especially after the late-1980's

"Climate data hold grim forecast - Global warming models suggest damage to continue for centuries"

By ALEXANDRA WITZE, Dallas Morning News
First published: Friday, March 25, 2005

DALLAS -- The effects of global warming will be felt for several centuries even if the world's nations could somehow immediately stabilize the amount of heat-trapping "greenhouse" gases in the atmosphere, two new computer modeling studies suggest.

If gas levels held constant, worldwide temperatures would still rise about 1 Fahrenheit by 2100, while sea level would rise more than 4 inches, according to one of the studies.

The research is the most detailed look yet at how the world is irrevocably committed to climate change.

"The longer you wait, the worse it gets," said lead researcher Gerald Meehl, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.

"That may be kind of an obvious thing," he said, "but with each passing day and week and year, the more greenhouse gases we put into the atmosphere commits us to even more climate change in the future."

A second study, by climate expert Tom Wigley, used a simpler computer model than Meehl's, but reached similar conclusions.

Both studies appeared in a recent issue of the journal Science.

"No matter what we do, the climate is going to change pretty significantly in the future," said Wigley, also of the national atmospheric center.

His study showed that sea levels could rise 10 inches each century through 2400.

People affect climate by putting extra amounts of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane, into the atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels and other industrial activities.

Meehl's study used two sophisticated computer models to simulate both past and future climate.

Future studies were based on the assumption that greenhouse gas concentrations would stay at what they were in 2000.

Loaded with data points to simulate all aspects of the atmosphere, oceans and land, the models ran for months on some of the world's most powerful computers.

Both came up with similar results, with slightly more warming in the newer and more complex model.

The predicted 1 temperature rise is similar to the global warming observed during the latter half of the 20th century, Meehl said.

But the real surprise was the discovery that the oceans would continue rising until at least 2500.

"That was the thing that got my attention," he said.

Rising sea levels threaten not only to drown coastal communities but also to cause more damage inland during storms because of higher storm surges.

The study accounted only for how much the sea level would rise because of thermal expansion -- the expansion of water as it warms -- and did not include the extra water that would be added to the oceans by melting glaciers or ice sheets.

"They're really working at the lower end of the scale, so if these numbers give people pause for thought, then in the real world it's going to be a heck of a lot worse," said Tim Barnett of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

What a powerful statement, jeffmoskin, and still, many people in OUR America would not believe a word you or I have to say about this, and I know from my end that when I present people with evidence that we were IN BED with Saddam Hussein, which is right out of OUR own newspapers and Congressional Record, THEY WILL NOT CONSIDER IT, as it goes against THEIR BELIEF that Saddam ALWAYS was the ENEMY of America, and so, was somehow a THREAT to us, AND ONLY George W. Bush had the REAL GUTS to take on Saddam, TO PROTECT THEM, of course, who believe in George W. Bush as their LORD PROTECTOR!

WHAT A CROCK!

WE, AMERICA, especially under old pap Bush, WERE Saddam's SUGAR DADDY!

We were the GOLDEN GOOSE who GAVE Saddam his modern armaments and weaponry, and we helped him properly target the Iranians so that he could kill them as efficiently as possible, with poison gas we knew he was using on them, which is what we were allegedly giving him all the targeting data for, to kill Iranians with poison gas!

SO?

Why would SADDAM kill the GOLDEN GOOSE?

And here is an interesting follow-on in this sad story of Terry Schiavo!

It seems that Florida Governor Jebulon Bush, brother to President George W. Bush, was going to have HIS police kidnap Terry Schiavo and take her to one of Jebulon's hospitals, where the feeding tube would have been reconnected, despite a host of Court orders to the contrary, and of course, if Jebulon had pulled that off, a whole new series of medical bills for this poor family would have started up, thanks to Jebulon!

But apparently the integrity of the local police thwarted this effort by Mr. Jebulon Bush to interfere in this matter, and thank God for that!

It's good to see some integrity somewhere here in this nation of OURS, under these Bush's, who seem not to have been in line that day when integrity was handed out!

Maybe they were out doing oil deals or something like that!

"Florida agents fail to take Schiavo - Local cops defend order as state police sent by governor back off"

By CAROL MARBIN MILLER, Knight-Ridder
First published: Saturday, March 26, 2005

MIAMI -- Hours after a judge ordered that Terri Schiavo wasn't to be removed from her hospice, a team of Florida law enforcement agents were en route to seize her and have her feeding tube reinserted -- but they stopped short when local police told them they would enforce the judge's order, The Miami Herald has learned.

Agents of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement told police in Pinellas Park, the small town where Schiavo lies at Hospice Woodside, that they were on the way to take her to a hospital to resume her feeding.

For a brief period, local police, who have officers around the hospice to keep protesters out, prepared for what sources called a showdown.

In the end, the state agents and the Department of Children and Families backed down, apparently concerned about confronting local police outside the hospice.

"We told them that unless they had the judge with them when they came, they were not going to get in," said a source with the local police.

The incident shows that agencies answering directly to Florida Gov. Jeb Bush had planned to use a wrinkle in state law that would have allowed them to legally get around the judge's order.

The exception in the law allows public agencies to freeze a judge's order whenever an agency appeals it.

Participants in the high-stakes test of wills, who spoke with The Miami Herald on the condition of anonymity, said they believed the standoff could ultimately have led to a constitutional crisis -- and a confrontation between dueling lawmen.

"It was kind of a showdown on the part of the locals and the state police," said one official.

State officials on Friday vigorously denied the notion that any "showdown" occurred.

The Department of Children and Families "directed no such action," said agency spokeswoman Zoraya Suarez.

Said Bush spokesman Jacob DiPietre:

"There was no showdown."

"We were ready to go."

"We didn't want to break the law."

"There was a process in place and we were following the process."

"The judge had an order and we were following the order."

Tim Caddell, a spokesman for the city of Pinellas Park, declined to discuss the event.

The developments that set Thursday morning's events in motion began the previous afternoon, when the governor and DCF chief Lucy Hadi held an impromptu news conference to announce that they were considering sheltering Schiavo under the state's adult protection law.

The department has been besieged, officials say, by thousands of calls alleging Schiavo is the victim of abuse or neglect.

Alerted by the Bush administration that Schiavo might be on her way to their facility, officials at Morton Plant Hospital went to court Wednesday, asking Florida Circuit Judge George Greer, who ordered the removal of Schiavo's feeding tube last week, what to do.

Greer signed an order Wednesday afternoon forbidding the department from "taking possession of Theresa Marie Schiavo or removing her" from the hospice.

He directed "each and every and singular sheriff of the state of Florida" to enforce his order.

But Thursday, at 8:15 a.m., DCF lawyers appealed Greer's order to judges at the Second District Court of Appeal in Lakeland.

That created the window of time to seize Schiavo.

When DCF filed its appeal, it effectively froze the judge's Wednesday order.

It took nearly three hours before the judge found out and canceled the automatic stay, shortly before 11 a.m.

The legal battle, according to The Associated Press, continued Friday.

A three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals again refused to order the reinsertion of the feeding tube that was removed March 18.

"Terri is weakening."

"She's down to her last hours."

"Something has to be done and has to be done quick," said Schiavo's father, Bob Schindler.

Amid reports of threats of violence over the situation, another legal maneuver included a late afternoon filing asking Greer to order the reinsertion of the tube, claiming Terri Schiavo tried to say "I want to live" when her tube was removed.

The motion said Schiavo was asked to repeat that phrase and responded: "AHHHHH" and "WAAAAAAA."

As I said above, it is my usual practice in here to totally avoid stories of personal tragedy in here, unless it serves some greater purpose, and usually that is not the case, BUT ...

This business with the Bush boys getting involved in this Terry Schiavo has touched something within me, and so, makes me want to speak out and question WHAT IN THE HELL DO THEY THINK THEY ARE DOING HERE, and just who exactly do these Bush boys think they are - BESIDES A PAIR OF GODS, of course!

George's brother, JEBULON, was going to have his police come in and "sieze" this poor woman, Terry Schiavo, as though she were a piece of JEBULON's property?

AND SINCE WHEN?

How do these Bush boys get this POWER that they think they have to come into OUR personal lives, and move this here, and that over to there, as though OUR personal lives were nothing more than PLAYTOYS for this pair of GODS down here on this earth of OURS, these Bush boys RAMPANT and SUPREME in GLORY and AUTHORITY, over us!

HOW DO THE BUSH BOYS GET THE POWER TO DETERMINE AND THEN NUMBER AND ORDAIN THE DAYS OF OUR LIVES?

Now, obviously, I am one person here, and my views on this are strictly my own, but somehow, to me, there is something very obscene here when a state governor, any state governor anywhere in OUR America, THINKS that he or she has the POWER to just come and sieze one of us, for whatever reason, WITHOUT ANY DUE PROCESS OF LAW WHATSOEVER!

A LOOPHOLE!

OR A "WRINKLE", as they call it above!

If there are all these loopholes and wrinkles, THEN THERE IS NOT LAW!

Not even appearance, let alone substance, and so .....

In all of these years since OUR independence from the tyranny and oppression of Great Britain, WHERE HAVE WE REALLY GOTTEN TO, when some boy named Bush can just do as he pleases, WITH OUR LIVES, and with impunity, and immunity from any laws whatsoever?

A question for the moment, here in OUR America!

Over the years, for whatever reasons, I have had the opportunity to be around many people who ultimately died, some youngish, and some older, and I would sit and listen to these people talk about life, and death, and that period in between, especially AFTER a person found out, from a doctor, that they had what was alleged to be an "incurable" disease, or cancer.

And in each case, each person was thankful for "release", in the end, my own father several years ago included!

Time to go!

A point of diminshing returns reached and exceeded!

Because they said it was!

And to a one, their ends were all quite peaceful, actually!

One older woman with cancer had to hang around, her words, for quite a time, BECAUSE her daughters just couldn't let go of her, and so, in her words, she sucked down some more pain in order to try and get them to deal with theirs, and finally, she just could do it no longer, and so, she asked me to look in on them after she was gone, to see that they finally accepted the reality THAT NONE OF US CAN BE DOWN HERE ON EARTH FOREVER, despite the GRANDIOSE IDEAS of their own power that the JEBULON BUSH's of the world might think they have to keep us on feeding tubes and breathing machines FOREVER, or until the money runs out, anyway, at which point all human life down here on this earth of ours, or at least here in OUR America, becomes worthless.

My own mother was a trained nurse, and so she knew some of medicine, and she "caught" cancer at a fairly young age, and she struggled with that cancer from the time that I was but a boy, until I was grown, and she died, AT HOME and in her own bed!

She was in the hospital, of course, for awhile, and then in disgust, she checked herself out and came home.

In her words, she was going to live the rest of her life in what SHE considered dignity, WITHOUT doctors cutting off more and more pieces of her, her words, and when she could not live any longer, then oh well!

And she did!

I just lost an aunt, an uncle and a cousin, two more to cancer and one to Parkinson's, and they all died peacefully at home, in their beds, as well, with family around, and no one from the State Police hovering around outside to SIEZE them and make them live some longer, because some governor thought he had the ULTIMATE power over them, and the days of their lives!

Naturalness!

Acceptance of death as a part of life, as radical a concept as that may be, here in this land of eternal youth that has become OUR America, or somebody's, Scrushy's, probably, for the money that can be made off of keeping us alive forever, regardless of how much a vegetable we really might be in the interim!

The other day, I listened to some PUNDIT or GURU or whatever on the radio talking about Terry Schiavo, AND HOW IT WAS TABOO IN THIS COUNTRY TO THINK OR TALK ABOUT DEATH, and I thought to myself, ESPECIALLY as a combat veteran watching this nation embroiled in a war of agression in Iraq, where impersonal delivery of death to them by us is a daily occurrence, what a crock of crapola that is!

TABOO?

It is TABOO to think or talk about death?

Okay, so then, that must banish death then, if I have this straight, EXCEPT ....

It does not do anything at all, but blind and delude us, UNLESS, of course, there are people out there who will never die, THANKS TO MODERN SCIENCE, and so, will get to keep investing in the stock market forever, thus getting richer and richer and richer, down here on earth, and more power to them, I suppose, although I am not sure for what!

As for me?

Who knows?

And certainly not JEBULON or George W. Bush!

Well, Livyjr, it's really all very simple.

Most things work in small increments. As time goes by, these litle bits and pieces grow and get bigger and bigger.

First you have a president that was not good, not bad, just so so.

When his term was up - shock city - he did not get re elected.

So - since he had a couple of sons, a lot of money, and a following of people with lots of money, he made a decision which he was pretty sure he could pull off.

He decided to start a dynasty.

To make sure everything went according to plan, every possible angle was put into place to keep this succession going.

Especially key people in key places.

They followed the rule that Russia's Stalin articulated which was -

" It's not the people who vote who matter. It's the people who count the votes. "

Very simple, eh?

Guess what? It worked.

Now, the next small piece.

This newly elected leader puts like minded people in positions of power.

If an event should happen, everything is in place, waiting for the right moment.

That moment arrived on Sep't 11, 2001.

The people in the nation became anxious, fearful, unsure of themselves and/or what to do, they look for a leader.

They ask ---

How could that happen here?

Oh, it was so easy to grab more power.

Just use the right slogans. Wave the flag a lot. Talk about terrists. Use the words " FREEDOM, and DEMOCRACY, AND PATRIOTISM " a lot.

Most important, find a fall guy.

That was easy. There was one running a country called Iraq and he was not a nice person anyway.

So, let's have him take the fall, and we will now own an oil rich country.

The rest is history.

Little bits at a time.

A president with much more power than he ought to have.

Citizens bought off with " tax cuts ".

Corporations who had a willing ear in the power circles. They earned it with their financial support.

All of these elements part of an overall PLAN.

The president is now a KING.

People do not dare to disagree with a KING.

As time goes by, the King promotes himself.

NOW, he is a God. A president God.

Or is it a God president.

Well, semantics.

So you see, Livyjr - that's how the Bush boys get the power to determine and then number and ordain the days of our lives, as you mentioned.

I know you knew this all the time.

But it's good to get the facts out in the open.

The clue is to have everything in place and wait for ( or cause ) the right event to start the plan moving forward.

Oh yes, one more thing. Be part of a dynasty. The Bush dynasty.

Long live the King!

Or is it more apropos to declare " We have no God but Bush. "

Either way.

A.B.

SO?

Just what is going on in here these days, then, Livyjr?

Well, based on a lot of things that are going on, here in OUR America, and out there in the candid world as well, we're having a discussion that kind of centers on exactly what really did go on back there in 1776, when the Declaration of Independence was signed, and Mr. Thomas Paine uttered these words above here that start off the top of the page EVERY DAY in here, about "THE CAUSE OF AMERICA IS THE CAUSE OF ALL MANKIND!"

In this day and age of the ABSOLUTE POWER of George and JEBULON Bush over seemingly everything on this earth of OURS, and this REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE that takes it upon itself to divide us as a nation, and to further accuse and denounce half or more of us as being "UN-AMERICAN", because we too are not card-carrying, goose-stepping right-wingers, WHAT REALLY IS THE "CAUSE OF ALL MANKIND", anymore?

To be a REPUBLICAN?

Or aspire to be one anyway, IF WE HAVE THE MONEY?

And/or the seeming necessary lack of integrity to stomach being one, in my own personal experience of it, anyway!

Were those really just empty words that Mr. Thomas Paine was uttering back then, OR DID THEY REALLY HAVE MEANING?

IS THE CAUSE OF OUR AMERICA TODAY, RIGHT NOW IN OUR TIMES, REALLY THAT OF ALL MANKIND, AS TOM PAINE SAYS ABOVE, or is it just the CAUSE of KARL "THE ARCHITECT" ROVE and this REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE?

Stay tuned!

And these "gods" that are the BUSH BOYS trouble me, Mr. A.B. because I am in essence quite a simple person, who thinks that he has another GOD who said "DO NOT PUT FALSE GODS BEFORE ME", and so ......

A quandry, eh?

RENDER UNTO CAESAR, especially these two or three, OR ELSE A THUG WILL COME AND BUST YOUR HEAD!

It is interesting that when I first came into this FORUM, right after the election was over in November of 2004, my first posts were talking about James "Jemmy" Madison, and this "thing" of "destructive faction" here in OUR America, that he was talking about in FEDERALIST No. 10, all those long years ago, at the time of OUR nation's founding.

Almost as if he saw the BUSH BOYS coming, and so wanted to do all that he could way back then to avert the CONSTITUTIONAL crisis these BUSH BOYS would bring to OUR America today, BUT OF COURSE, he was really powerless to do anything of the sort, BECAUSE ...

OUR America is all of us, and not just a James "Jemmy" Madision, and when enough of us no longer desire LIBERTY, and the hardships that go along with it, BUT INSTEAD seek KIND MASTERS, for the apparent ease that they can SELL us, well, "AMERICA" as James Madison might have conceived it is simply gone, as if it never existed, which in many ways, it never did!

James Madison's words in FEDERALIST No. 10 are just like a tree falling in the woods when no one was around to see it fall, OR TO HEAR IT!

IT MADE NO NOISE!

Or rather, IF IT DID, that fact was never registered anywhere, and so, no record of that "noise" exists.

And so WE DO have the BUSH BOYS, and these questions which we can either confront in here, or ignore, OUT THERE, which, in my experience of people up here in the corrupt EMPIRE STATE of New York where I am, IS HOW many people make it through their own days up here.

The IMMENSITY of it all has just become too much for people to assimilate anymore, and so, they just shut down, almost totally and completely!

And then a state of seeming madness and chaos takes over.

GANG WARS at the local "HOT MALL" threaten a curfew.

A mother just arrested locally for having a party for her fifteen year old daughter where she served alcohol, including Schnappes, to children down to twelve years old.

Adults hosting parties for teenagers where the parents show pornographic films.

On and on and on.

In the case of this mother, her statement was that the kids were going to get the alcohol, anyway, so better at her house than outside somewhere!

MOD-RIN MURIKA, in all of its glory, and above us all, RESPLENDENT, and RAMPANT, the FABULOUS, GLORIOUS BUSH BOYS!

James Madison, what think you of what has been wrought here in OUR America since your days?

I for one am curious!

And maybe jeffmoskin and Mr. A.B. are as well!

And so .....

A pretty good summary of what in fact has befallen us.

But...

"When his term was up - shock city - he did not get re elected"
Let us not forget H Ross Perot, who siphoned off 20 percent of the vote, the greatest percentage of whom would have voted to re-elect Bush the Elder.

Bush the Elder tried his hardest NOT TO LET PEROT INTO THE DEBATES.

Remember?

And it was PEROT who asked all the "embarrassing questions" so that Clinton didn't have to.

And Clinton was elected president with 43 percent of the total votes cast.

"THE CAUSE OF AMERICA is in a great measure THE CAUSE OF ALL MANKIND?"

YEAH, RIGHT!

Go into God alone knows how many public establishments here in America AND MAKE THAT STATEMENT and see what happens TO YOU when the MILITARY CHANNEL is on cable TV, and what is purported to be OUR troops are barging into Iraqi homes, and scattering possessions after placing barbed wire all around the homes that they have entered BY FORCE, and you make a public comment about what are purported to be OUR troops humiliating and degrading Iraqi women, FOR OUR ENTERTAINMENT, of course, FOR WE ARE after all a nation that cannot stand BOREDOM, and being jaded, we do like the violence, especially when it is on TV and so cannot spill over INTO OUR OWN VERY SACRED LIVES!

WE ARE A DIVIDED NATION TODAY, in more ways that can now be counted, and what about Iraq?

Let's take a moment to look and see IF the GOD George W. Bush is succeeding in DIVIDING that nation as successfully as he has DIVIDED OUR America:

Top Stories - Knight Ridder Newspapers

"Latest casualties in Iraq: Ethnic jokes"

Wed Mar 23, 4:12 PM ET

By Hannah Allam, Knight Ridder Newspapers

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Nazar Joudi misses the days when laughter echoed through the musty alleyway where he and his friends - cobblers, goldsmiths and tailors - told vivid jokes to escape the war.

Their tales of dimwitted Shiite Muslims, unlucky Kurds and hapless Sunni Muslim tribesmen enlivened a dark corner of a Baghdad marketplace and nurtured an oral tradition found throughout the Arab world.

Puffing cheap cigarettes and slurping tiny cups of tea, the men would laugh until tears streamed down their haggard faces.

But after Iraq's Jan. 30 parliamentary elections, Joudi noticed that divisions were emerging among his old friends.

Shiites sided with Shiites, Kurdish barbs took on a sharper edge and everything offended the Sunnis.

Ethnic and religious jokes lost their humor, Joudi said with sadness, so the men stopped coming and the ritual died.

"Now if you tell a joke about a Sunni or a Kurd, you wonder whether you're hurting their feelings," said Joudi, 42, who's a Shiite.

"People are just not relaxed about that stuff anymore."

With ethnic and sectarian tensions coursing through Iraqi politics and seeping into the streets, poking fun at another Iraqi's ethnicity or beliefs is increasingly taboo.

One-liners that once were traded in public and broadcast on the radio now are whispered only among close friends or, safer still, text-messaged from cell phone to cell phone.

Few Iraqis are willing to risk starting a fight over a joke, and in a place where just about everyone is armed, offending the wrong person could be fatal.

"I don't want them to misunderstand me, thinking I'm a racist or something," said Ali Razak, 25, a Shiite college student who gave up ethnic jokes after bumping heads with classmates.

Under Saddam Hussein's regime, jokes about the Sunni dictator or his tribe were forbidden, but everyone else was fair game.

Cracking on Kurds became a national pastime.

Shiites, particularly those who come from southeastern cities, were derided as "shiroogi" - a word that means "eastern" but is used pejoratively as uneducated or backward.

Sunni jokes are almost always told through one prominent tribe, the Dulaimis of Ramadi, who're stereotyped as bumbling and provincial.

Each group had its own customs and suspicions of outsiders, but they all lived under a dictatorship, and there was nothing to do but laugh at one sect's claims of superiority, said Abdul Amir al Qassab, 60, a Sunni travel agent in Baghdad.

Then Saddam's ouster created a power vacuum:

The Shiite majority wanted representation, Kurds demanded equal rights and Sunnis feared revenge from both groups.

The January elections deepened the divide, forcing an uneasy strain among communities that had intermarried and lived as neighbors for centuries.

"All our old jokes were about the Kurds, and they were just as bad about the Arabs, but it was always OK," al Qassab said.

"But now who dares to tell a joke about the Kurds?"

"There are sensitivities now, and even when we don't talk about it, we can feel it."

Those who still tell ethnic or sectarian jokes have tailored them to the new circumstances.

The new Shiite stereotype is an Iran-loving, doctrinaire believer who wants to outlaw anything that's fun.

Kurds are portrayed as demanding, wily strangers who don't really want to be part of Iraq.

And with Sunnis the backbone of the insurgency, the proverbial Dulaimi tribesman is blamed for all of Iraq's ills.

One joke tells of a Dulaimi blowing himself up in an empty field because he'd heard that the grass was imported from America.

Another popular joke concerns two Dulaimi friends who visit a Shiite mosque and hear worshipers crying for men named Hussein and Ali.

The two Sunnis don't know that the mourning is for the two most important Shiite saints, who died centuries ago.

One Dulaimi turns to the other and says, "Hey, they're looking for the people who killed these Hussein and Ali guys."

"Let's get out of here before they blame us!"

"In the old days, there were mutual jokes between Kurds and Dulaimis," said Mahdi al Dulaimi, a 27-year-old college student and a member of the lampooned tribe.

"Now we Dulaimis are the stars."

The change is palpable to Omar Mohammed, a portly, proud Kurd who endured 25 years of Kurdish jokes from Arab customers who bought olives and feta cheese from his deli in Baghdad.

While some of the cracks were lighthearted, Mohammed said, others left him feeling humiliated and unable to respond.

"I would just talk to the man politely to make him feel ashamed of himself."

"Or I'd just ignore him," he said.

"They looked at us and laughed and pretended it was in a good way, but in their hearts they didn't mean it."

The jokes have stopped now, he said, though the occasional customer still makes fun of his Kurdish-accented Arabic.

When he was asked what he'd do if an Arab shopper cracked an ethnic joke in front of him these days, Mohammed made sure the deli was empty and shut the door.

He looked both ways, then lowered his voice.

"One day, two Dulaimis left Ramadi for Baghdad ...," he began, his eyes sparkling with mischief.

Knight Ridder Newspapers correspondents Shatha al Awsy and a reporter who isn't named for security reasons contributed to this report.

end quote

HATE!

It's just so good for business!

Ask CLEARCHANNELSWORLDWIDE!

And Rush Limbaugh!

And George W. Bush!

And Dick Cheney!

And the REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE!

They'll tell you it is just so, and has to be that way, for them!

Somebody has to succeed after all, and it might as well be them!

Which means of course, that somebody else just has to fall, to make it be so, and that would have to be us!

And them Dulamies, as well, apparently from what this story has to say anyway!

BUT ...

They are just Iraqis, and not at all like George W. Bush and HIS, so who cares?

However that all worked out, jeffmoskin, with respect to what role Ross Perot may or may not have played in that election back then, THE MOST IMPORTANT THING to me, as an American, was that BIG BUSH was held to being just a one-term president, and so, THEN, AT LEAST, OUR nation was spared FOUR MORE YEARS of RULE by the REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE!

BUT ...

Like any predatory ORGANIZATION, they "learn", and EVOLVE, and so ......

Here we are today!

WITH A DYNASTY of BUSH's, here in OUR REPUBLIC of America!

Or is it really "THE ONCE-REPUBLIC", and now no more?

In organizations, the LEADER's role is to help ALL members find their place and direct them together into progress and fulfillment.

Even though some people may be insufficient, or unrefined, Lao Tze asks, "WHY waste them?"

An Evolved Leader is certain to provide for the necessary education of EVERYONE in the organization.

In this way, ALL members become integrated in the organization, and the leader's position is established.

To MAINTAIN THAT POSITION, Evolved Leaders DO NOT put emphasis on the material advantages and the grand appearances of leadership, for these will only serve TO SEPARATE THE WORLD OF THE LEADER FROM THE WORLD OF THE PEOPLE!

THE PEOPLE'S NEEDS CANNOT BE MET BY SUCH A LEADER!

Instead, Evolved Leaders look within to sense the direction of social evolution.

In this way, they GUIDE the people ON THE APPROPRIATE path, and THEY MAKE NO MISTAKES!

Commentaries on Tao Te Ching by R.L. Wing

Democracy?

Or DE-MOCKERY?

What exactly is it that the fabulous Bush Co.'s are out there peddling in five, seven-and-a-half and ten lb. bags all over the world?

Was that Bush Co. DE-MOCKERY in action for all the candid world to see over there in South Korea, when Connie "CON JOB's" thugs wrestled that guy to the ground, and "muffled" him so that he could not enjoy freedom of speech in a country where Connie "CON JOB" has no authority, that being the sovereign nation of South Korea, OR ...

IS Connie "CON JOB" really the "BIG BOSS" over there in what is NOT really a sovereign nation at all, but just another satellite or client state of the Bush Co.'s?

And is this following another vivid example of Bush Co. DE-MOCKERY in action over there in the Bush Co. client state of Iraq?

Let's look and see:

Middle East - AP

"Iraq Police Fire on Protesters, Kill One"

27 minutes ago

By EDWARD HARRIS, Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Security officials opened fire on a crowd of protesters Sunday, killing one, and al-Qaida's arm in Iraq posted a video purportedly showing an Iraqi Interior Ministry official being killed.

Iraq's newly elected lawmakers, meanwhile, were expected to meet Tuesday to choose a speaker and two deputies, according to a National Assembly statement released Sunday.

The lawmakers met on March 16, but have repeatedly postponed a second meeting because of negotiations over Cabinet positions; it was unclear whether they would name the country's new president on Tuesday, expected to be Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani.

Violence persisted Sunday, with bodyguards for Science and Technology Minister Rashad Mandan Omar opening fire on a crowd of protesters who had gathered in front of the ministry's offices to demand their full wages, said Hamid Balasem, an engineer at the ministry.

Balasem said about 50 ministry guards were demonstrating because they said they were paid only part of their wages.

It was unclear why the guards opened fire.

Also Sunday, insurgents hit a police patrol with a roadside bomb in the southern oil city of Basra, injuring one nearby civilian, Lt. Col. Karim Ali Al-Zaydi said.

They also damaged an oil pipeline in northern Iraq, halting exports to Turkey.

The pipeline has been targeted in the past.

Late Saturday, assailants opened fire on a cafe popular with ethnic Kurds in Kirkuk, killing one and injuring three, said Sarhat Kadre of the police force in the ethnically mixed city 180 miles north of Baghdad.

The motive in the attack was not known.

Iraq's insurgency appears to be scaling back attacks on U.S. military forces while focusing its deadly efforts on government workers, primarily targeting Iraq's fledgling security forces.

A video posted Sunday on the Internet purportedly showed an Iraqi Interior Ministry official hostage being shot dead by militants from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's terror network.

There was no way to independently authenticate the video, which was posted on a militant Web site.

The video showed a man identifying himself as Col. Ryadh Gatie Olyway seated between two masked men wearing black.

He displayed his Interior Ministry identification card and said he was a liaison officer with the American forces.

Behind the men was the black banner of Al-Qaida in Iraq.

Olyway said he provided the U.S. military with the names "of officers of the former Iraqi army, who are Sunnis, and their addresses."

An Interior Ministry official, who spoke on condition of anonimity, said Olyway worked as a liaison officer between the Interior and Oil ministries and was kidnapped more than a month ago.

He had not seen the video, and could not confirm whether the hostage was Olyway.

The hostage, referring to alleged female Iraqi prisoners, said he had witnessed "different methods of torture and violation of their honor" at the hands of American troops.

Al-Qaida in Iraq has said many of its latest killings were in revenge for female Iraqi prisoners.

The American military has denied it is holding any Iraqi women.

Olyway was then shown blindfolded, and a third masked man appeared to shoot him once in the head.

Also Sunday, the top U.N. envoy in Iraq, Ashraf Qazi, met with top Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in Najaf, but details of the meeting were not immediately released.

Congregants gathered at the Virgin Mary Church in Baghdad to celebrate Easter.

"We wish Iraqis in general and Christians in particular a happy Easter and wish them a happy year," said one parishioner, Sabah Rasam, part of a Christian community that accounts for an estimated 3 percent of Iraq's 25 million people.

"We are brothers with all Iraqis and will remain so forever."

Within the last several weeks, I believe it was, I was at a friend's, and the Military Channel was on, and what I was watching were what were purported to be American troops going into an Iraqi village and tossing the place, after sealing it off with concertina wire.

What I saw involved Iraqi women being put into a position by these "troops" that brought back to me vivid memories of Viet Nam, and the "treatment" that women got over there at the hands of Americans.

And all the way back in the beginning, when the Bush Co.'s were touting their SHOCK AND AWE crap, it was made quite clear to me, BY THE RHETORIC of the Bush Co.'s, that they held human life, especially that of Afghanistanis and Iraqis, to be quite cheap!

And everything that they have done to date in those countries has not dispelled any of that impression!

SO!

From this above story, maybe some of the Bush Co. "chickens" are coming home to roost!

And the Bush Co. would have us believe that he is the MOST CHRISTIAN OF CHRISTIANS there ever was, is, or will be!

SO!

Go figure!

And when George W. Bush applies that word "Christian" to himself ......