Love for Life

First a comment by Don Pike

Dear All,
Amongst good information backed by good research, there is always room for the misinformation merchants to push their stuff.

Confusion and discreditation the name of the game. So when we read and hear people talking about "plenty of oil" for the world's needs, most of us, no doubt, can't be sure of what to believe. The following remarks from a speech by Iranian President Ahmadinejad, should be authoritive enough for anyone, as to the true situation. Have we ever heard anything like this in our Parliaments, or on the London Money's controlled local and international TV programming? Not likely!! Just another example why the internet is still so very important to the dissemination of truth.

Our politicians are aware of the OPEC scam. By their silence they are part of it. The following article is backed by many other authoritive reports. The truth of the matter is that the northern Alaskan slopes alone, have enough crude oil to last the USA for the next two hundred years.

Russia, after drilling down to 40,000 feet with a program of "super drills" have discovered incredibly huge amounts of crude which is plenty of oil to last the world for a long, long time. Meanwhile our "leaders" and oil "annalists" together with TV talking heads, are talking up marketing "problems", while OPEC and friends continue to rape the world with a scam only second in magnitude to "Climate Change". And tantamount to the lies that the world's food shortage is due to "over population", "climate change" and droughts!!! And we are warned that the effects are coming to a supermarket near you.

Don Pike

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----- Original Message -----
From: Governor
To: CQ FREESTATE ELECTORS, MEMBERS, BENEFACTOS, AND SUPPORTERS
Sent: Tuesday, June 24, 2008 7:40 AM
Subject: FW: Market Full Of Oil, Price Trend "Fake": Ahmadinejad

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Market Full Of Oil, Price Trend 'Fake': Ahmadinejad

By REUTERS Published: June 17, 2008

ISFAHAN, Iran (Reuters) - The market is full of oil and the rising price trend is 'fake and imposed,' Iran's president said on Tuesday, partly blaming a weak U.S. dollar which he said was being pushed lower on purpose.

'At a time when the growth of consumption is lower than the growth of production and the market is full of oil, prices are rising and this trend is completely fake and imposed,' President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in a televised speech.

'It is very clear that visible and invisible hands are controlling prices in a fake way with political and economic aims,' he said when opening a meeting of the OPEC Fund for International Development in the central Iranian city of Isfahan.

Iran, the world's fourth-largest oil exporter, has repeatedly said the market is well-supplied with crude and blames rising prices on speculation, a weak U.S. currency and geopolitical factors.

'As you know the decrease in the dollar's value and the increase in energy prices are two sides of the same coin which are being introduced as factors behind the recent instability,' Ahmadinejad said.

Oil steadied on Tuesday after touching a record near $140 the previous day, with traders caught between a weaker dollar and expectations that top exporter Saudi Arabia will ramp up output to its highest rate in decades.

Iran has often said it sees no need for the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to boost output.

'EVER-INCREASING DECREASE'

Ahmadinejad reiterated his view that oil should be sold in a basket of currencies rather than U.S. dollars, an idea which has failed to win over other OPEC members, except Venezuela.

'The ever-increasing decrease in the dollar's value is one of the world's major problems,' he said.

'A combination of the world's valid currencies should become a basis for oil transactions or (OPEC) member countries should determine a new currency for oil transactions,' he said.

Iran, embroiled in a standoff with the West over its nuclear program, has for more than two years been increasing its sales of oil for currencies other than the dollar, saying the weak U.S. currency is eroding its purchasing power.

Ahmadinejad, who in the past has called the dollar a 'worthless piece of paper,' suggested 'some big powers' were driving it lower on purpose:

'The planners for some big powers are acting to decrease the dollar's value,' he said. 'For years they imposed inflation and their own economic problems to other nations by injecting the dollar without any support to the global economy.'

Foes since Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution, Tehran and Washington are also at odds over Tehran's disputed nuclear activities as well as over policy in Iraq. Iran says its atomic work is peaceful.

http://www.uruknet.de/pic.php?f=image615909x.jpg

http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m45083&hd=&size=1&l=e

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Hundreds of Detainees Died under US Custody, at least 25 Murdered

– Ex-US State Department Official tells US Congress

Daya Gamage – US National Correspondent Asian Tribune

Washington, D.C. 22 June, (Asiantribune.com): On June 20, U.S. House Judiciary Subcommittee on Civil Rights hearing on torture, Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to President Bush’s first secretary of state Colin Powell, told Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) that over 100 detainees have died in U.S. custody, with up to 27 of these declared homicides.

Nadler: Your testimony said 100 detainees have died in detention; do you believe the 25 of those were in effect murdered?

Wilkerson: Mr. Chairman, I think the number’s actually higher than that now. Last time I checked it was 108.

A February 2006 America’s foremost rights organization Human Rights First report found that although hundreds of people in U.S. custody had died and eight people were tortured to death, only 12 deaths had 'resulted in punishment of any kind for any U.S. official.'

Asian Tribune presents here the full transcript of the testimony:

Nadler: Colonel Wilkerson, in your prepared testimony, you write that 'as I compiled my dossier for Secretary Powell, and as I did further research, and as my views grew firmer and firmer I had to reread that memo (of February 7, 2002), 'I needed to balance in my own mind the overwhelming evidence that my own government had sanctioned abuse and torture, which at its worse had led to the murder of 25 detainees and at least 100 detainee deaths. We have murder at least 25 people in detention. That was the clear low point [lower end of the range] of the evidence.' Your testimony said 100 detainees have died in detention; do you believe the 25 of those were in effect murdered?

Wilkerson: Mr. Chairman, I think the number’s actually higher than that now. Last time I checked it was 108, and the total number that were declared homicides by the military services, or by the CIA, or others doing investigations, CID, and so forth — was 25, 26, 27.

Nadler: Were declared homicides?

Wilkerson: Right, starting as early as December 2001 in Afghanistan.

Nadler: And these were homicides committed by people engaged in interrogations?

Wilkerson: Or in guarding prisoners, or something like that. People who were in detention.

Nadler: They were in detention, not trying to escape or anything, declared homicides by our own authorities.

- Asian Tribune -

http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m45080&hd=&size=1&l=e

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Israeli non-government organization accuses IOF of abusing Palestinian detainees

Palestinian Information Center

June 22, 2008

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)-- The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI), a non-government organization, has accused the Israeli occupation forces of regularly abusing Palestinian detainees including minors.

The PCATI, in its annual report published on Sunday, registered 90 cases of abuse in which violence was used against those detainees either on their arrest, on their way to detention or during incarceration.

It said that the abuse was also reported against minors who should enjoy special protection in accordance with the international law, and added, 'The soldiers do not treat the minors with care and often, as various reports show, they take advantage of their weakness'.

'Many reports state that the alleged abuse occurred while the Palestinians were bound and did not constitute a threat to the soldiers,' the organization said in its report that covered the period from June 2006 to October 2007.

PCATI also denounced the IOF troops' use of soldiers to terrorize and humiliate Palestinian prisoners.

The IOF command claimed that the army worked by and respected the international laws concerning detention of persons suspected of involvement in 'terrorist acts'.

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=61000&sectionid=351020206

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UN atomic inspectors head to Syria
Sun, 22 Jun 2008 18:24:11

Deputy Director General of International Atomic Energy Agency, Olli Heinonen
A UN atomic team has traveled to Syria to investigate US allegations that a site bombed by Israel last year was a nuclear facility.

The three-man team is headed by Deputy Director General of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Olli Heinonen.

'We are now traveling to Damascus, we will meet tonight our counterparts and then we start to gather facts,' said Heinonen before his three-day visit to Syria on Sunday.

The IAEA Deputy Director General expressed optimism over the trip, saying his group hopes to start to 'establish the facts this evening.'

The results of the UN team's inspection are to be submitted the UN watchdog body in September.

Syria, a member of the IAEA and a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), invited the UN nuclear watchdog team to probe allegations that the country was building a nuclear reactor in al-Kibar facility, located in the country's remote northeastern desert.

Seven month after the Israeli bombing of the al-Kibar, Washington said it had intelligence to prove the site was a nuclear facility. The US provided pictures that it said were taken inside the alleged reactor while it under construction.

Describing the US claims over the alleged nuclear facility as totally 'fabricated', President Bashar al-Assad said this month that we ' invited the IAEA and will cooperate with it' to prove the bombed site 'is a military facility...and it is not nuclear'.

Later, UN watchdog Chief Mohamed ElBaradei in an interview with the al-Arabiya television said the agency had no 'clear evidence' that Syria was running a covert nuclear program.

'We have no evidence that Syria has the human resources that would allow it to carry out a large nuclear program. We do not see Syria having nuclear fuel,' he said.

He added that the IAEA only had pictures of a site that 'resembles' a nuclear facility.

ElBaradei has also rebuked Tel Aviv for its unilateral action against Syria. Israel has failed to sign the NPT and its arsenal is widely believed to include more than 200 nuclear warheads.

DT/DT

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=61003&sectionid=351020104

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Mullen: US needs better understanding of Iran
Sun, 22 Jun 2008 19:06:31

Admiral Michael Mullen

The top US military official says he advocates engagement in 'healthy dialogue' with Iran to resolve the country's nuclear standoff.

In an interview with the National Journal published Saturday, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen said direct negotiations with Tehran would provide 'an opportunity' for the White House to develop a better understanding of Iran.

He added that the desire to hold talks should not only be expressed by Washington as Tehran has 'not shown much propensity for dialogue'.

President George W. Bush accuses Iran of running a covert nuclear weapons program and demands the Islamic Republic suspend its enrichment program as a precondition for US engagement in dialogue.

This is while Iran has announced that it welcomes talks with the West but will not suspend its nuclear activities, arguing that as a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, it is entitled to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes.

MD/AA

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9412

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Political Humor: 'Compared to Dick Cheney... George W. Bush is a Saint.'

Global Research http://www.globalresearch.ca/ , June 22, 2008
politicalhumor.about.com http://politicalhumor.about.com/

President George W. Bush was scheduled to visit the Episcopal Church outside Washington as part of his campaign to restore his pathetic poll standings.

His image handler made a visit to the Bishop and said, 'We've been getting a lot of bad publicity because of the president's position on stem cell research, the Iraq war, hurricane Katrina, and the Veterans Administration. We'll make a $100,000 contribution to your church if during your sermon you will say that the President is a Saint.'

The Bishop thought it over for a few moments and finally said, 'The Church is desperate for funding ~ I'll do it.'

Bush showed up for the sermon, and the Bishop began:

'I'd like to speak to you all this morning about our President who is a liar, a cheat, and a low-intelligence numb-nuts who can't put a compound sentence together.

He bugged out of combat service during the Vietnam war and went AWOL to avoid a drug test, then had all reports on the sordid event destroyed.

He is the spawn of a Nazi loving great grandfather who smuggled anti-Americans into this country on his shipping line.

He took the tragedy of September 11 and used it to frighten and manipulate the American people.

He lied about weapons of mass destruction and invaded Iraq for oil and money, causing the deaths of tens of thousands and making the United States the most hated country on earth. It is a three-trillion dollar folly. He appointed fund-raiser cronies to positions of power and influence, leading to widespread death and destruction due to government paralysis after Hurricane Katrina. He awarded no-bid cost-plus contracts and tax cuts to his rich friends so that we now have more poverty in this country and a greater gap between rich and poor than we've had since the Depression.

He has headed the most corrupt, bribe-inducing political party since Teapot Dome.

The national surplus has turned into a staggering national debt of 7.6 trillion Dollars.

Oil rose from $18 to over a hundred per barrel, leading to transportation costs which the people of America cannot afford, with low minimum wages, part time jobs, no health insurance, and outsourcing.

Vital research into global warming and stem cells is stifled because he's afraid to lose votes from religious kooks.

He is the worst example of a true Christian I've ever known, but compared to Dick Cheney...

George W. Bush is a Saint.'

http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m45079&hd=&size=1&l=e

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Entire Palestinian village threatened with expulsion
Saed Bannoura - IMEMC News

Sunday June 22, 2008

Israeli military forces have told the residents of the village of Arab ar-Ramadin that they will all be expelled from their homes in the coming weeks, as part of the Israeli project of expansion onto Palestinian land in the West Bank.

Since the Israeli government began construction of their Annexation Wall on the village's land in 2004, the residents of Arab ar-Ramadin have maintained an increasingly tenuous hold on their ancestral lands, which have been rendered inside 'Israeli' area, due to the placement of the Wall.

There has been a low-intensity siege warfare on the village since 2004, in which residents have been forced to show an ID card which has not been issued to them, harassed at checkpoints and refused entry to their homes under the force of the Israeli military.

On June 5, an Israeli military commander, accompanied by a force of 20 soldiers, arrived in the northern part of Arab ar-Ramadin. The commander informed the head of the community that the village needed to move to the other side of the Wall. Upon the villagers refusal to cooperate, Occupation forces threatened them, stating that they would be forced to leave.

If the eviction is carried out, 207 people will be expelled. 30 homes and animal pens will be destroyed and an estimated 1,500 sheep, the main source of income for the people, will be adversely affected. Since 2004 demolition orders have been issued to the village. The most recent demolition took place in March of this year, when residential structures housing 10 people were bulldozed.

Since the building of the Wall, daily life in Arab ar-Ramadin has become a constant struggle. The village, which is located in the same pocket as Ras Tireh, Wadi Rasha, and Daba, is isolated by the Wall and the Alfe Menashe settlement from the rest of the West Bank. People are consistently harassed or completely barred passage at the gates that close them off from the rest of the world. Furthermore, they are unable to bring in fodder for the sheep as the Occupation military prohibits both the crossing of vehicles and anyone without a permit.

Arab ar-Ramadin does not have schools within the village. As of 2003, 46 students were travelling daily to Habla and six high school and two university students were studying in Qalqiliya city. Habla was, prior to the Wall, a 2.5 km walk for the students, today they must walk 5 km and await the opening of one of the Wall’s gates.

At least 2,339 dunums of the village's land have been confiscated in the southern area for the Wall. Some of these lands are used for grain (839 dunums) and the rest (1500 dunums) are pasturelands used for grazing animals.

According to the Popular Committee Against the Wall, the case of Arab ar-Ramadin is symptomatic of the Occupation’s policy of ethnic cleansing. This project is paired with the creeping expansions of the Wall, settlements, settler-only roads, checkpoints and a complex of military orders and restrictions that creates permanent pressure on the Palestinian population centres. Villages like Arab ar-Ramadin, which are surrounded completely by the Wall and settlements, live with the most serious threat.

Currently, there are 14 villages with a total population of 6,314 inhabitants that face the imminent destruction of their homes and expulsion from their land.

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/weekend-edition-big-brokers-threatened/story.aspx?guid={FA23DF5A-918F-41DA-B794-7E553ADAFAA7}&dist=hplatest

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Brokers threatened by run on shadow bank system

Regulators eye $10 trillion market that boomed outside traditional banking

By Alistair Barr, MarketWatch June 20, 2008

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- A network of lenders, brokers and opaque financing vehicles outside traditional banking that ballooned during the bull market now is under siege as regulators threaten a crackdown on the so-called shadow banking system.

Big brokerage firms like Goldman Sachs (GS http://www.marketwatch.com/quotes//gs :

MER 35.90, -1.79, -4.7%) , which some say are the biggest players in this non-bank financial network, may have the most to lose from stricter regulation.

The shadow banking system grew rapidly during the past decade, accumulating more than $10 trillion in assets by early 2007. That made it roughly the same size as the traditional banking system, according to the Federal Reserve.

While this system became a huge and vital source of money to fuel the U.S. economy, the subprime mortgage crisis and ensuing credit crunch exposed a major flaw. Unlike regulated banks, which can borrow directly from the government and have federally insured customer deposits, the shadow system didn't have reliable access to short-term borrowing during times of stress.

Such vulnerability helped transform what may have been an uncomfortable correction in credit markets into the worst global credit crunch in more than a decade as monetary policymakers and regulators struggled to contain the damage.

Unless radical changes are made to bring this shadow network under an updated regulatory umbrella, the current crisis may be just a gust compared to the storm that would follow a collapse of the global financial system, experts warn.

'The shadow banking system model as practiced in recent years has been discredited,' Ramin Toloui, executive vice president at bond investment giant Pimco, said.

Toloui expects greater regulation of big brokerage firms which may face stricter capital requirements and requirements to hold more liquid, or easily sellable, assets.

'Clarion call'

'The bright new financial system -- for all its talented participants, for all its rich rewards -- has failed the test of the market place,' Paul Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, said during a speech in April. 'It all adds up to a clarion call for an effective response.'

Two months later, Timothy Geithner, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and others have begun to answer that call.

'The structure of the financial system changed fundamentally during the boom, with dramatic growth in the share of assets outside the traditional banking system,' he warned in a speech last week. That 'made the crisis more difficult to manage.'

On Thursday, Treasury Secretary and former Goldman Chief Executive Henry Paulson said the Fed should be given the authority to collect information from large complex financial institutions and intervene if necessary to stabilize future crises. Regulators should also have a clear way of taking over and closing a failed brokerage firm, he added. See full story. http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/paulson-turns-up-heat-congress/story.aspx?guid={B76B0A21-DFC9-4827-8676-2D2663E11A8F}

Banking bedrock

The bedrock of traditional banking is borrowing money over the short term from customers who deposit savings in accounts and then lending it back out as mortgages and other higher-yielding loans over longer periods.

The owners of banks are required by regulators to invest some of their own money and reinvest some of the profit to keep an extra level of money in reserve in case the business suffers losses on some of its loans. That ensures that there's still enough money to repay all depositors after such losses.
In recent decades, lots of new businesses and investment vehicles have evolved that do the same thing, but outside the purview of traditional banking regulation.

Instead of getting money from depositors, these financial intermediaries often borrow by selling commercial paper, which is a type of short-term loan that has to be re-financed over and over again. And rather than offering home loans, these entities buy mortgage-backed securities and other more complex securities.

A $10 trillion shadow

By early 2007, conduits, structured investment vehicles and similar entities that borrowed in the commercial paper market and bought longer-term asset-backed securities, held roughly $2.2 trillion in assets, according to the Fed's Geithner.

Another $2.5 trillion in assets were financed overnight in the so-called repo market, Geithner said.
Geithner also highlighted big brokerage firms, saying that their combined balance sheets held $4 trillion in assets in early 2007.

Hedge funds held another $1.8 trillion, bringing the total value of asset in the 'non-bank' financial system to $10.5 trillion, he added.

That dwarfed the total assets of the five largest banks in the U.S., which held just over $6 trillion at the time, Geithner noted. The traditional banking system as a whole held about $10 trillion, he said.

While acting like banks, these shadow banking entities weren't subject to the same supervision, so they didn't hold as much capital to cushion against potential losses. When subprime mortgage losses started last year, their sources of short-term financing dried up.

'These things act like banks, but they're not,' James Hamilton, professor of economics at the University of California, San Diego, said. 'The fundamental inadequacy of their own capital caused these problems.'

continued at: http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/weekend-edition-big-brokers-threatened/story.aspx?guid={FA23DF5A-918F-41DA-B794-7E553ADAFAA7}&dist=hplatest