Trick or Treat?: Cholera Spreads in Haiti, Sanity Rally, 18 Billion Unaccounted for in Afghan War

October 28th, 2010 - by: danny

News Dissector Radio Today Friday ProgressiveRadioNetwork.com 12-1 PM Guests: Journalist Greg Palast, Financial blogger Aaron Krowne (Ml-implode.com and disssectrix Cherie Welch. Tune in and call in.

New review of my 2008 Book PLUNDER:Investigating Our Economic Calamity

DRAGON WLL BE AT SANITY RALLY

Eddie Becker: If you are in DC this Weekend for the Stewart/Cobert rally -you won’t want to miss this. Behind the scenes look – Direct from Burning Man it’s ABRAXAS the 50 foot dragon that seats 70 – will lead feeder march from Columbia Heights Metro – Gather Saturday, October 30, 2010 – 9:00am

HAPPY HALLOWEEN:

UTICA, New York – For a sizeable number of U.S. adults, ghosts are more than just pranksters in costume for Halloween.

A Zogby Interactive poll found that 37% say they believe in human or animal ghosts, 23% believe they have been visited by a dead relative or friend, and 20% say they have seen or heard a ghost. Another 22% say that while they have not experienced a ghost, they know someone who says they have. It is a topic which seems to capture the imagination of respondents, as three in ten say they are interested in the supernatural.

The poll also asked about participation in Halloween activities, with 87% of people with children saying their kids dress up in costume and 71% trick-or-treat from house to house. Serial killers (such as Freddy, Jason and Michael Myers) costumes were chosen most scary by 35%, with the walking dead and zombies next at 22%.

Cholera Menaces Port Au Prince

Al Jazeera reports; “here are increasing fears that a cholera outbreak in Haiti, which has already killed more than 300 people, could take hold in the capital, Port-au-Prince.

“We have been monitoring very closely the spread of this disease and it has been seen to get closer and closer to the capital,” Al Jazeera’s Seb Walker, reporting from Port-au-Prince, said.

“Just about 24 hours ago, the UN announced that there were 174 suspected cases in that town [Cite Soleil]” in the metropolitan Port-au-Prince area.

Health officials have been concerned that the disease, which causes diarrhoea, vomiting and severe dehydration, could reach the capital where hundreds of thousands of people are living in makeshift camps following an earthquake in January.

Our correspondent said neighbourhoods such as Cite Soleil, with “appalling sanitation levels”, had been a concern ever since the first cholera cases were reported last week.

“Officials say they still haven’t found confirmed cases of cholera in the metropolitan area, but some doctors say that may not be the case.”

http://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Billions-lost-in-tangled-records-730120.php”>
$18 BILLION IN US RECONSTRUCTION IN AFGHANISTAN UNACCOUNTED FOR–AUDIT

The U.S. government knows it’s awarded nearly $18 billion in contracts for rebuilding Afghanistan over the past three years, but it can’t account for spending before 2007.

Thousands of firms received wartime contracts, but according to a report released Wednesday the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction (SIGAR) found it too difficult to untangle how billions of additional dollars had been spent because of the U.S. agencies’ poor record keeping.
The finding raises doubts about whether the U.S. government ever will determine whether taxpayers’ money was spent wisely in Afghanistan.

“Data got better from 2007 on,” said Susan Phalen, a spokeswoman with SIGAR, “but it remains to be seen whether we’ll ever know how much U.S. agencies spent overall.”

Overall, the U.S. has set aside about $55 billion for rebuilding Afghanistan, but that includes agencies’ budget for staff salaries, operations and security. SIGAR couldn’t parse how much was spent on contractors alone.

RAPE, MURDER IN UN CAMBODIAN DETENTION CAMP

Cambodians beaten, raped and killed at illegal detention camp funded by UN
‘Undesirables’ are swept from the streets before being detained without trial, say human rights groups

Foreign Policy: BLOOD ON OUR HANDS?:

Newly released war documents show how the U.S. military, in cable after grimcable, painstakingly chronicled Iraq’s descent into bloody Shiite-on-Sunniviolence. So why did top officials deny the obvious? By Ellen Knickmeyer

Is It Wrong to Kill U.S. Soldiers on Your Xbox?

Our Disaster

Nouriel Roubini Predicting a Fiscal Train Wreck

Post Election GOP War on Financial Reform

Quote of the Day From Naked Capitalism.com

Make no mistake folks, there’s a criminal element atop our financial industry, who operate with both the complicity and culpability of much of our political class. Until we reform our politics and the financial industry, we will not have economic vitality. And we will not have reform, until it is demanded and undertaken by the American people. That is where we are.

Joe Costello, who ran communications for Jerry Brown and, Later, Howard Dean:

David Leonhardt has a piece in the New York Times on how the economy is hurting Obama and the Dems. It’s one of those articles that illustrates that when you’re reading the NYTimes, sometimes you need to check to see if you accidentally clicked over to The Onion.

Here’s what The Onion is reporting in one first page headline:

Democrats: ‘If We’re Gonna Lose, Let’s Go Down Running Away From Every Legislative Accomplishment We’ve Made’

MULTI CULTURAL NEWS: Juan Williams Signs New Deal With Fox News

One day after getting fired from NPR, Juan Williams signed a new multi-year deal for an expanded role on Fox News. More »

AFL CIO BLASTS THE BANKS ON VALUATIONS

The Daily Bail by DylanRatigan

William Black: “There Is Bank Fraud Everywhere And BERNANKE Leads The Cover-Up,” -

Peter White, TruthOut :Foreclosuregate Explained: Big Banks on the Brink

Scandal is spreading across Wall St. like a very bad case of
poison ivy. A rash of fraudulent home foreclosures has
exposed some of the nation’s biggest banks to an even worse
condition … bankruptcy.

Until late 2007, the money boys on Wall St. made a bundle in
the housing market. After the bubble burst, they were just
itching to cash in on the down side, calling in all those
bad loans they made and selling off millions of repossessed
homes. According to RealtyTrac, Inc., which compiles such
data, lenders foreclosed on 3.2 million properties in the
last three years, 288,000 in the last quarter, the highest
number on record.

THE BOOT

Michael Moore boots it:

There she was, thrown to the pavement by a Republican in a checkered shirt. Another Republican thrusts his foot in between her legs and presses down with all his weight to pin her to the curb. Then a Republican leader comes over and viciously stomps on her head with his foot. You hear her glasses crunch under the pressure. Holding her head down with his foot, he applies more force so she can’t move. Her skull and brain are now suffering a concussion.

The young woman’s name is Lauren Valle, but she is really all of us. For come this Tuesday, the right wing — and the wealthy who back them — plan to take their collective boot and bring it down hard on not just the head of Barack Obama but on the heads of everyone they simply don’t like.

Teachers union? The boot!

Muslim-looking people? The boot!

Thinking of retiring soon? The boot!

Living in a house you can no longer afford? The boot!

Doing a bit better with your minimum wage? The boot!

Stem cell research, the bullet train, reversing global warming? Ha! The boot for all of you!

What is the uprising in France about? Read this important piece in LeMonde Diplomatique.

Stephen Leahy: IPS’ Runaway Global Economy Decimating Nature

NAGOYA, Japan, Oct 28, 2010 (IPS) – One-fifth of all birds, fish and animals are threatened with extinction – as many as six million unique and irreplaceable forms of life – an authoritative new assessment warned Wednesday.

Deforestation, agricultural expansion, overfishing, invasive alien species and climate change are the specific causes, but the main engine of destruction is an economic system that is blind to the reality that there is no economy or human well-being without nature, experts here say.

“Without global conservation efforts the situation would be massively worse,” noted Simon Stuart, chair of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Species Survival Commission, which launched the study at the 10th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Nagoya, Japan.

Published in the peer-reviewed journal Science, it is the most comprehensive assessment ever done of the world’s vertebrates – mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fishes – Stuart said.

In Memorium: Nestor Kirchner, Former President of Argentina

Kirchner Rescued Argentina’s Economy, Helped Unite South America
By Mark Weisbrot The Guardian Unlimited (UK)

The sudden death of Nestor Kirchner is a great loss
not only to Argentina but to the region and the world.
Kirchner took office as president in May 2003, when
Argentina was in the initial stages of its recovery from a
terrible recession. His role in rescuing Argentina’s economy
is comparable to that of Franklin D. Roosevelt in the Great
Depression of the United States. Like Roosevelt, Kirchner
had to stand up not only to powerful moneyed interests but
also to most of the economics profession, which was
insisting that his policies would lead to disaster. They
proved wrong, and Kirchner was right.

Tax The Sunset Strip?

Billboard Tax Initiative going on LA ballot

Come March, West Hollywood residents will decide whether to tax the companies responsible for the many billboards that litter the Sunset Strip. The West Hollywood City Council has certified the Billboard Tax Initiative, which will be placed on the March 2011 ballot, a controversial plan that’s drawn both support from area residents and outrage from local developers and, surprise, billboard companies. The 7 percent tax on ad revenue received from the leasing of billboards, tall walls and video signs would be deposited into a general fund for city services. It’s separate from another initiative being put in front of the general Los Angeles City Council for a 12 percent tax; that, too, could end up on the March ballot. Analysts expect that if the tax initiative is passed, it will be challenged in court.

http://www.medialifemagazine.com/artman2/publish/Hereandthere/Huge-stink-over-Marie-Claire-fatties-blog.asp

Letter From Deborah Davis:

Dear Mr. Schechter,

You seem to get what’s going on in the corrupt financial world Americans’ live within, but it’s still much worse than you realize. Would you like a face on it?

No one wants to talk or write about what has happened to me or I’m sure many more Americans whom have since just died in the streets from starvation because of the same reason.

My situation is worse than the Bernie Madoff issue if you can believe it. I say this because as a sixty-one year old single woman with no family, who has had eighty million dollars embezzled from my named Trust by a combination of Trustees, financial elite, my attorney and a couple of national banks, I am silenced. Right where they want me.

My story is like Doris Duke and if Dominick Dunne were still alive, I’m confident there would be a lifetime movie made about my life. A life full of love, laughter, children and accomplishments. But behind my back, all these financial elite were laundering my money into their pockets while tampering with the account statements and lying to me at annual meetings about investments, taxes and how to make my portfolio grow.

When I was about twenty-one years old, (1969) my parents both died the same year and by 1979 I was worth close to six million dollars. Of course my assets were being cared for by the elite of the elite. Justice Kennedy, my attorney, also a relative of mine advised that I create a trust to protect my assets, which I did.

In 1997 my husband of twenty-four years tried to kill me, when I survived, he comendeered my family to have me committed to a mental hospital. I was proven to be sane. By 2000 my whole family abandoned me. In 2004, I found all the answers I was deperately seeking….I learned that my named Trust assets had been, skimmed and embezzled, the funds laundred into my husbands business. I understood why my family dumped me from their lives. I was really worth eighty million dollars but it was all gone except for seven hundred thousand dollars which had been frozen during my devorice, which by the way I found out later was just another ploy to force me to take out a loan, so the bank could continue to destroy me. There was no reason to freeze my funds.

My divorce attorney advised that I take out a small loan so I’d have money to live on and manage by new business.

I still had two multi-million dollar homes owned outright by my Trust, so I put them on the market. I created and built a business with my business partner, Larry. Things were going well while I hired a California attorney to file a lawsuit to retrieve my assets and by this time another suit against KeyBank who was committing federal crimes and felonies against me.

I reported all these federal crimes to three Attorney Generals, the US Attorney General, the FBI and all the financial watchdogs in the country starting in 2004. They ignored me.

Meanwhile the attorney I hired to file my suits wasn’t showing up in court; withholding evidence from the Judge and allowing discovery time to pass. Plus, he was busy committing more federal crimes and felonies as well as ethical violations against me. Soon he evicted me from my two million dollar home… stealing half of my belongings. The bank foreclosed on my other home while breaking almost every federal banking law there is. One of these crimes was foreclosing on a home in a trust using a personal loan which I was paid up on a year in advance and my home still had a million and a half dollars of equity in it.

All this cost me fifteen million dollars.

By this time I was penniless, while Larry and I lost our business because of this legal mess which was no fault of my own, other than trusting the people I loved and my attorney whom I was expecting were still behind the scenes colluding to finish me off financially.

Now both Larry and my credit is destroyed unlawfully because of my mess and the loss of our business

I wrote all the authorities again adding now the California State Bar concerning the California attorney. Attorney General Brown sent me to the Orange County District Attorney who sent me to the Anaheim Police Economic Crime Unit. Months and months later I receive from the California State Bar in writing, “We don’t have the resources to charge this man.”

Mind you this California attorney, who committed all these crimes against me has also been found to be practicing law under thirteen counts of advertising fraud for thirty years. Not to mention he destroyed my Trust case because he didn’t show up in court so the Judge dismissed it.

The Anaheim Police wrote me in July 2010, (I’ll paraphrase) “This isn’t serious enough for the APD to investigate but we’ll keep your file in case someone else complains.” Come on, come on, come on. This is outrageous and I believe no one will do anything because I’m a single woman with no family whom they expect will just die in the streets.

Today, Larry and I are together, each others greatest support and if I’ve learned anything I know what real love is finally. But because none of the authorities, which our taxes pay to protect us, will investigate this outrageous heist of my assets and the crimes of KeyBank and others, Larry and I have had to sell everything we ever owned. We can’t retain employment, have bank accounts or cash a check. We live in a tent now and have been homeless for two years. The other culprits to this are Paine Webber, the National Bank of Detroit, (Chase), McDonald Investments and Trustees.

I’ve learned to accept how greedy and ugly this world can be and even can accept the loss of my family. However, the federal crimes and felonies being committed by banks, brokerage companies and the financial elite against the consumer leaves me speechless. Then the authorities will do nothing. No wonder this Country is such a mess.

There is no way our economy will improve amidst the foundation of financial and government committing crimes against the public. Dah!

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