Facts
Thanksgiving Day is celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November in the United States.

By the fall of 1621 only half of the pilgrims, who had sailed on the Mayflower, survived. The survivors, thankful to be alive, decided to give a thanksgiving feast.

Thanksgiving Day is celebrated on the second Monday in October in Canada.

The Plymouth Pilgrims were the first to celebrate the Thanksgiving.

The pilgrims arrived in North America in December 1620.

The Pilgrims sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to reach North America.

The pilgrims sailed on the ship, which was known by the name of ‘Mayflower’.

They celebrated the first Thanksgiving Day in the fall of 1621.

They celebrated the first Thanksgiving Day at Plymouth, Massachusetts.

The drink that the Puritans brought with them in the Mayflower was the beer.

The Wampanoag Indians were the people who taught the Pilgrims how to cultivate the land.

The Pilgrim leader, Governor William Bradford, had organized the first Thanksgiving feast in the year 1621 and invited the neighboring Wampanoag Indians also to the feast.

The first Thanksgiving feast was held in the presence of around ninety Wampanoag Indians and the Wampanoag chief, Massasoit, was also invited there.

The first Thanksgiving celebration lasted three days.

President George Washington issued the first national Thanksgiving Day Proclamation in the year 1789 and again in 1795.

The state of New York officially made Thanksgiving Day an annual custom in 1817.

Sarah Josepha Hale, an editor with a magazine, started a Thanksgiving campaign in 1827 and it was result of her efforts that in 1863 Thanksgiving was observed as a day for national thanksgiving and prayer.

Abraham Lincoln issued a ‘Thanksgiving Proclamation’ on third October 1863 and officially set aside the last Thursday of November as the national day for Thanksgiving. Whereas earlier the presidents used to make an annual proclamation to specify the day when Thanksgiving was to be held.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt restored Thursday before last of November as Thanksgiving Day in the year 1939. He did so to make the Christmas shopping season longer and hus stimulate the economy of the state.

Congress passed an official proclamation in 1941 and declared that now onwards Thanksgiving will be observed as a legal holiday on the fourth Thursday of November every year.

        http://www.akidsheart.com/holidays/thanks/turkswap.htm

Turkey/Pig Swap Game VERY FRUSTRATING!

Over 30 years ago– I had read a small leather-bound book about the Shroud. I enjoyed the starting point that the researcher used . Art. It was amazing and thought provoking. Anyway– since then I have always found the research facinating. Of course I am lost when it comes to why no DNA research– but thats just me. lol
Sun, Nov. 22, 2009

Researcher says faint text proves shroud’s authenticity
By Ariel David
Associated Press
ROME – A Vatican researcher asserts that nearly invisible text on the Shroud of Turin proves that the artifact revered as Jesus’ burial cloth is authentic.
The assertion made by Barbara Frale in a book drew immediate skepticism from some scientists, who maintain the shroud is a medieval forgery.
Frale, a researcher at the Vatican archives, said Friday that she used computers to enhance images of faintly written words in Greek, Latin, and Aramaic scattered across the shroud.
She asserted that the words include the name “Jesus Nazarene” in Greek, proving that the text could not be of medieval origin because no Christian at the time, even a forger, would have labeled Jesus a Nazarene without referring to his divinity.
The shroud bears the figure of a crucified man, complete with blood seeping out of nailed hands and feet, and believers say Christ’s image was recorded on the linen fibers at the time of his resurrection.
The fragile artifact, owned by the Vatican, is kept locked in a special protective chamber in Turin’s cathedral and is rarely shown.
Skeptics point out that radiocarbon dating conducted in 1988 determined it was made in the 13th or 14th century.
While faint letters scattered around the face on the shroud were seen decades ago, serious researchers dismissed them because of the test’s results, Frale said in an interview.
But when she cut out the words from photos of the shroud and showed them to experts, they concurred the writing style was typical of the Middle East in the first century A.D. – Jesus’ time.
She believes the text was written on a document by a clerk and glued to the shroud over the face so the body could be identified by relatives and buried properly. Metals in the ink used at the time may have allowed the writing to transfer to the linen, Frale said.
“I tried to be objective and leave religious issues aside,” Frale said. “What I studied was an ancient document that certifies the execution of a man, in a specific time and place.”
Frale is noted in Italy for her research on the medieval order of the Knights Templar and her discovery of unpublished documents on the group in the Vatican’s archives.
Earlier this year she published a study contending the Templars at one time had the shroud in their possession. That raised eyebrows because the order was abolished in the early 14th century and the shroud is first recorded in history about 1360 in the hands of a French knight.
But her latest book, The Shroud of Jesus Nazarene, in Italian, raised doubts even among experts.
“People work on grainy photos and think they see things,” said Antonio Lombatti, a church historian who has written books about the shroud. “It’s all the result of imagination and computer software.”
Lombatti also rejected the idea that authorities in the time of Jesus would officially return the body of a crucified man to relatives after filling out some paperwork. Victims of the most cruel punishment used by the Romans would usually be left on the cross or were disposed of in a dump to add to the execution’s deterring effect.

[embed]http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/p0053drb[/embed]

People are people everywhere we go aren’t they. I had prior looked into a company called ‘PLUG’ and it actually has stock– it is wave energy. Now listening to this I kept answering outloud… ” Hell we can’t get people to stop killing people and you want to change people into tree planters. Well and good but in a world gone mad… well, really… what are we doing??? and for heavens sake… Carbon Credits exchanged globally– and Carbon swopping??? Geeeeeeeeece

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/p0053drb

I know facts aren’t going to matter to many people buying Sarah Palin’s, Going Rogue.  Facts certainly didn’t matter to folks who voted for her.

According to the “fact checkers”:

PALIN: Welcomes last year’s Supreme Court decision deciding punitive damages for victims of the nation’s largest oil spill tragedy, the Exxon Valdez disaster, stating it had taken 20 years to achieve victory. As governor, she says, she’d had the state argue in favor of the victims, and she says the court’s ruling went “in favor of the people.” Finally, she writes, Alaskans could recover some of their losses.

THE FACTS: That response is at odds with her reaction at the time to the ruling, which resolved the long-running case by reducing punitive damages for victims to $500 million from $2.5 billion. Environmentalists and plaintiffs’ lawyers decried the ruling as a slap at the victims and Palin herself said she was “extremely disappointed.” She said the justices had gutted a jury decision favoring higher damage awards, the Anchorage Daily News reported. “It’s tragic that so many Alaska fishermen and their families have had their lives put on hold waiting for this decision,” she said, noting many had died “while waiting for justice.”

When Sarah Palin was asked by Katie Couric what Supreme Court decisions other than Roe v Wade she disagreed with, she couldn’t think of one. NOT ONE!  Sarah squandered an opportunity-the perfect chance to tell America our story…an Alaskan story…dozens of suicides…thousands sick from clean up…tens of thousands bankrupt from a dead fishery.

Oiled birds from the Exxon Valdez

Sarah Palin is to Alaska what Velveeta is to cheese; sadly unsatisfying and empty of nutrition. She had the national stage to plead Alaska’s case to citizens who had long forgotten the images of a once pristine Prince William Sound turned into a thick, black, rolling sea; the oiled sea otters and birds; unrecognizable seals and whales; an initially deformed and diseased herring run that became extinct-costing Cordova $100 million a year. Exxon exploited Alaska and turned pain into profit.

AND NOW, Palin is claiming to be part of a victory for the people of Alaska? Reality Deficit Disorder…now in book form.

The Exxon Shipping Co. v. Baker Supreme Court decision in June 2008 all but pardoned Exxon’s negligence. The highest court in the land condoned the half-assed cleanup. (audio interview on the day of the ruling with Greg Palast). Exxon, the company that set and broke planet earth’s quarterly profit record three quarters in a row, was let off the hook. Because of this unprecedented landmark decision, future corporate punitive damages are now forever minimally capped at literally pennies on the dollar!

The Roberts Court based its activist ruling on 19th century maritime law.  Really! 21st century corporations can now view punitive damages as the small cost of doing business. Due to Exxon’s negligence and the corporate sympathy of the Supreme Court, one the largest acts of environmental terrorism in history was treated like an accidental littering.  The RATS-Roberts, Alito, Thomas and Scalia, (Alito recused himself, confident that Souter and Kennedy would fill the business-friendly void) winked at their corporate masters as the Judas Court betrayed Justice.

Exxon doesn’t have marked offices in Alaska. There are some pretty hard feelings even 20 years later…for some pretty good reasons.  When Palin was pointing fingers at Letterman in July of this year, she did it from Houston, Texas.  She was there to sign a deal with Exxon on behalf of Alaska. The state’s willingness to do business with Exxon was like having your parents rent the basement to the guy who date raped you on prom night. Am I clear?

So Sarah was against the decision before she couldn’t remember it before she was for it.  And now, courtesy of Going Rogue, Sarah Palin manages to insult and injure Alaskans who will never be made whole with yet another one of her documented lies.

The jury originally punished Exxon with $5 billion in punitive damages-a year’s profit at the time.  In 2008, nearly 20 years later, Exxon reported the largest annual profit in US history at $45.22 billion.  The company shattered its own record set the previous year.  Would the original $5 billion in punitive damages been punishment enough?  The answer is now slowly dripping onto victims at 10 cents on the dollar.  Opening your mailbox to an Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Settlement check is like getting a royalty payment for the snuff film your kid brother was in. Hey, you’re getting paid…but he’s still dead and you got to watch.

(above) Then Governor Palin’s appropriate reaction to the Exxon v. Baker decision June, 2008

Candidate Palin’s stunning memory lapse of Exxon v. Baker just 3 months later…

Look for Going Rogue in the revisionist history section of your local bookstore on Tuesday…

By Greg Palast (for ZEEK.net)

______________________

Note from Bill: I received this article by Greg Palast in today’s e-mail… It came not from ZEEK, which is a progressive Jewish Magazine of Thought and Culture), but directly from Greg, so I am more than certain that republishing the whole thing here is well within Greg’s wishes to get this read.

As we are now getting ready to pull the kind of crap in Afghanistan that we spent the last eight years doing in Iraq, I think this SHOULD be read. It may convince you that we are about to do the wrong thing again.

______________________

On September 11, 2001, my office building, the World Trade Center, was attacked by al Qaeda, a murder cult of Saudi Arabians, funded by Saudi Arabians. And so, in response to the Saudis’ attack, America invaded … Afghanistan.

And here we go again. The New York Times (print edition) headline last Friday was: “Pakistani Army, In Its Campaign In Taliban Stronghold, Finds A Hint Of 9/11.”

Google it and you’ll find the Times report repeated and amplified 5,785 times more.

Taliban = 9/11. Taliban = 9/11. Taliban = 9/11.

Your eyelids are getting heavy. Taliban = 9/11. Taliban = 9/11.

It’s the latest hit from the same crew that brought you Saddam = 9/11 and its twin chant, Saddam = WMD, Dick Cheney’s chimerical tropes which the New York Times’ Judith Miller happily channeled to the paper’s front page.

And they’re at it again.

Every war begins with a lie. In addition to Saddam = WMD, I’m old enough to remember the Gulf of Tonkin resolution authorizing the war in Vietnam, based on a fictional Vietnamese gunboat attack on our Navy. (White House recordings have Lyndon Johnson gloating privately, “Hell, those damn stupid [US] sailors were just shooting at flying fish.”)

In the Glorious War against the Taliban in Afghanistan, the lie is thus: al Qaeda is “based” in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. If we don’t fight the wily Taliban, as the British once fought the wily Pathan, al Qaeda will attack America again from Talibanistan.

The latest Taliban=9/11 fantasy is a yarn spun wildly outward from the finding of a passport of an al Qaeda flunky who worked with suicide pilot Mohammed Atta in the same mountain area where, years later, a Taliban group operated. It’s a stretch, but when you want to sell a war, it will do.

But selling the re-invasion of Afghanistan requires a repetition of Lie #1: that the original attack on the World Trade towers and the Pentagon were planned from Afghanistan’s and Pakistan’s mountains with the connivance of the Taliban.

It’s not true, of course. The September 11 attack was neither organized nor directed from Afghanistan by the Taliban. In fact, as our BBC Report found, it was clear that the attack on my friends and co-workers was planned and carried out from Falls Church, Virginia; Paris, France; Sarasota, Florida; Hamburg, Germany;— and, I repeat, funded and manned from Saudi Arabia. Neither the Sunshine State nor the Aryan namesake of the original beef patty sandwich were, nor are they now, convenient targets for a revenge attack by the 101st Airborne.

And revenge was what it was and remains: on September 11 the skunks hit us and we, goddamnit, were going to HIT BACK. ANYONE. SOMEONE. So we hit the odious, and conveniently weak, Taliban, who’d, undeniably, given refuge to killer Osama bin Laden. Though let us not forget that Osama’s safe passage from the Sudan to Afghanistan was initially encouraged by the US government.

Today, we continue to throw our soldiers’ bodies into Afghanistan, and our drones’ rockets into Pakistan, to deny al Qaeda the supposed base from which to strike us again.

The media is eating it up and swallowing it whole. For example, CNN quotes a Pakistani from the Afghan border area, “Probably your next 9/11 is going to be from Swat.”

That’s not true either, of course: In the extraordinarily unlikely event Osama remains in the “caves of Tora Bora” (not where multi-millionaires with kidney disease tend to linger), any conceivable attack will be planned, funded and organized from comfy hotel rooms in Paris, Germany and Dubai as is the habit of these well-heeled hellions.

The truth is, we’re not in Afghanistan to stop al Qaeda’s US attackers, because they weren’t “based” there in the first place, and their leaders are not there now.

So, why are we now re-invading Afghanistan? Beats me. I just hope our President will give us a hint that doesn’t involve some cockamamie fairytale about 9/11 and al Qaeda.

Now, please don’t get me wrong: the Taliban are monsters. If you have any doubt, I suggest you read progressive journalist Michael Griffin’s masterful history of the Taliban, Reaping the Whirlwind. (Published in early 2001, Griffin presciently warned against the US policy of placating the Taliban.)

Undeniably, the Taliban gave sanctuary to the killer Osama, but that does not make the Taliban guilty of planning and participating in the 9/11 attack. However, the Taliban’s innocence in the 9/11 massacre does not wash their hands of the blood of Afghans, particularly Shia and Sufi Muslims, whom the Taliban have tortured, raped and murdered.

I can’t say I shed tears for the Taliban when, after my office towers fell, US troops ended their sharia dictatorship. And, honestly, there’s a case to be made that rocketing more Taliban, really nasty cutthroats that they are, is a laudable exercise. But let’s not pretend it has anything to do with preventing another 9/11.

And that’s the danger. As the poet T.S. Eliot warned,

"The last temptation is the greatest treason
    To do the right thing for the wrong reason."

Taliban = 9/11? Innocents, by the thousands and thousands, will pay in blood for this treasonous falsehood.

For BBC Television, Greg Palast reported on the US intelligence failures leading to the 9/11attack. Watch the BBC Newsnight episode. For the full story obtain a copy of the now classic BBC documentary, Bush Family Fortunes available on DVD or the now newly available download version. The author is donating all proceeds of the sale of the film, *Bush Family Fortunes, expanded from the BBC broadcast, to the Palast Investigative Fund, a not-for-profit foundation supporting investigative reporting. 100% of your donations for the film disc or download go to the fund and are tax-deductible.*

Linke stellen ihre Politik oft als Kampf gegen böse Lobbys dar. Dass es für jede Lobby auch eine Gegenlobby gibt kommt ihnen nicht in den Sinn, weil sie nie daran denken würden z.B. die Interessenvertreter der Solarindustrie oder Umweltorganisationen wie Greenpeace als Lobby zu bezeichnen. Lobbys haben nur die Atomindustrie, die Ölindustrie und natürlich die Pharmaindustrie (die mit dem Leid anderer Menschen Geld macht).

Eines der Hauptmerkmale des amerikanischen Gesundheitssystems ist, dass es etwas dreimal so teuer ist wie andere Gesundheitssysteme in den Industriestaaten. Medikamente kosten in den USA ca. doppelt so viel wie in Kanada oder Europa.

In diesem Fall ist die Besorgnis vor der Pharmalobby aber vollkommen unberechtigt. Diese (PhRMA – Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America) hat sich nämlich mit Obama bereits in geheimen Verhandlungen geeinigt (siehe hier und hier). Kernpunkt der Einigung ist, dass die Pharmaindustrie die Preise für Medikamente um $80 Milliarden senkt. Dafür darf Medicare (die staatliche Gesundheitsvorsorge für Rentner) bei den Medikamentenpreisen nicht verhandeln, darf keine Medikamente importieren und die Pharmaindustrie schaltet Werbespots für 150 Millionen, die Obamas Gesundheitsreform preisen.

Da $80 Milliarden zwar viel klingt, aber eigentlich nur 2,2% der gesamten Medikamentenkosten sind fühlen sich viele Linke von Obama betrogen. Um so mehr, als diese Einigung praktische alle Wahlversprechen in Bezug auf die Pharmaindustrie bricht. Auf der linken Talk Radio Station Air America wird Obama deswegen von Greg Palast (siehe auch seine Webseite für mehr Details) sogar als Faschist bezeichnet:

done

Eine ähnliche Einigung gab es angeblich mit der Krankenhauslobby, durch diese Einigung wird 0.5% eingespart.

What is up with this crazy, mixed-up world? I’m moving to the country (which is the exact opposite of something I would normally do, but the rent is unbeatable and there are horses nearby), and Air America is saying nasty things about our Commander and Chief.

How dare they!

From the beautiful, intelligent, witty, beautiful, smart, funny, beautiful Tara Lynn Thompson has the video on her website. She had the following comments:

Interesting to hear lefties say Obama makes them want to “puke”. Me too! Hey, we’re simpatico. Let’s be BFF’s!

This video is amazing. And despite the fact I know ideologically I wouldn’t agree with Investigative Reporter Greg Palast, I am always impressed with journalists who do their job, seek the truth, even against the grain of their own political leanings. It’s called journalistic integrity. It is rare. And it should be acknowledged and thanked.

What Mr. Palast found is disturbing. And he thinks so, too.

In fact, the more he learns, Mr. Palast is beginning to think these town hall protesters might actually be telling the truth. And eyes were opened. Tara Lynn Thompson: O in bed with Big Pharma; Air America losing hopenchange

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• Mr. President, quit playing the nice guy. It doesn’t work. You should realize that by now! PUT SINGLE PAYER ON THE TABLE FOR SEPTEMBER. (iflizwerequeen.com)
• ‘Arbitrary’ health care policies? (medicineandtechnology.com)

The drug industry was secretly promised that negotiations to lower drug prices would be off the table as long as the drug company lobbyists would agree to arrange for an $80 billion future shaving off from the approximate total 3.6 TRILLION dollars  (all of 2.2 percent) in revenue over the next ten years, according to the projections issued by the Obama Administration itself, and as investigated by Journalist Greg Palast.

It’s interesting to note that, subsequent to the train of secret White House meetings, a newly-formed coalition of the American Medical Association, FamiliesUSA, the Federation of American Hospitals, the SEIU and Big Pharma, came out in support of Obama’s government-run healthcare plan, as Mike Allen reports on August 13th, 2009 in Politico.com:

A new coalition on Thursday launched $12 million in television ads to support President Barack Obama’s health reform plan, in the opening wave of a planned tens of millions of dollars this fall.

The new group, funded largely by the pharmaceutical industry, is called Americans for Stable Quality Care. It includes some odd bedfellows: the American Medical Association, FamiliesUSA, the Federation of American Hospitals, PhRMA and SEIU, the service employees’ union.

PhRMA’s participation is key, because the group has promised to kick in as much as $150 million for advertising and grass-roots activity to help pass the president’s plan.

Funny how Obama issued a public complaint a few days ago alleging that the protestors in opposition to his healthcare plan who converge on town meetings across the nation are being paid by Healthcare insurers.   Hmmm.

Maybe he thought that was happening during the short interim of discord with Big Pharma when it had appeared that he had backed away from his promises to the drug industry lobbyists while under pressure from House Democrats to keep price negotiations on the table.

“What if the people out there screaming and breaking up the discussion at town meetings are correct?”,  Mr. Palast said, during an “Air America” radio interview on August 11th by Christiane Brown.  ”What if we have a situation in which you have secret meetings being held by the President, the absolute Fascist nightmare, as Fascism is defined as Government combining with Corporate powers to impose their profit-making regime on us?”

http://www.breitbart.tv/charming-liar-progressives-turn-on-obama-as-air-america-exposes-fascist-drug-deal/

.

Fooled Again?

Greg Palast:

What else went down in Obama’s drug deal? To find out, I called C-SPAN to get a copy of the videotape of the meeting with the drug companies. I was surprised to find they didn’t have such a tape despite the President’s campaign promise, right there on CNN in January 2008, “These negotiations will be on C-SPAN.”

This puzzled me. When Dick Cheney was caught having secret meetings with oil companies to discuss Bush’s Energy Bill, we denounced the hugger-muggers as a case of foxes in the henhouse.

Cheney’s secret meetings with lobbyists and industry bigshots were creepy and nasty and evil.

But the Obama crew’s secret meetings with lobbyists and industry bigshots were, the President assures us, in the public interest.

We know Cheney’s secret confabs were shady and corrupt because Cheney scowled out the side of his mouth.

Obama grins in your face.

See the difference?

The difference is 2%.

http://urlet.com/promotion.discontinue

http://www.gregpalast.com/obama-on-drugs-98-cheney/

Brian Wood – Comics + Graphic Novels

brianwood

Film "Fraude Mexico 2006" Documents Mexico's Presidential Election Fraud

With all this talk about Iran’s election fraud and twittering requests to paint your profile picture to “green”, I can’t help but feel like I have been down this path before with Mexico. Non-Mexicans might not be aware that there were charges of election fraud back in that country’s 2006 election. This would not be surprising being that it was pretty much passed over or blacked out by the in-English media here in the U.S. Granted, back in 2006 there was no twitter craze like we got right now and so we didn’t have Mexicans twittering away up-to-the-minute updates like their Iranian counterparts are doing right now. However, even then, I wonder if the election fraud in Mexico would be covered by the news media like it is being covered with Iran right now. I mean, God forbid that the news media in this country would actually portray the Mexican people as actual human beings, fighting back against the oppressive powers-that-be.

Speaking of, last September at the Los Angeles Latino Film Festival, I was fortunate enough to catch a film that documented the election fraud that took place in the 2006 Mexican elections. The movie was VERY well attended and the people that watched it were definitely, like me, passionate about this subject. I believe that for many Mexicans both living abroad and IN Mexico, this fraud will never be forgotten. Prior to the movie, there was an older couple that came with a banner chanting “es un honor estar con Obrador!” (it IS an honor to stand with Obrador!”) [the Presidential candidate of the progressive coalition]. Then during the film there was a lot of applause for Obrador and a lot of booing for Mexico’s “traitors”: Vicente Fox (former Mexican President), Calderon (current Mexican President), and Salinas de Gortari (also former Mexican President). At the end of the film, the film’s director answered some questions from the audience and he was thanked many times for putting this film together. It was truly emotional.

What was more touching, perhaps, was Obrador’s words during the film. He is, for the first time, seen without the filters of the Mexican mainstream media that manipulated his words to make him look like a crazy left-wing radical. Obrador explains his reasoning for protesting, along with admissions of his mistakes, and declarations of ultimately being a pacifist. What was most inspiring was his refusal to accept the fraud travesty. He himself explains that to become an opposition party and accept the false results would be to tacitly support the fraud itself. He declares that in order to do something about it, everyone needed to change their mindsets: hence the protests, hence his current grassroots organizing efforts, hence his ongoing claims to the Presidency. For those of us that are U.S. citizens, one can’t help but admire his courage because that could not, unfortunately, be said for how Gore and Kerry reacted. Gore and Kerry both accepted the arguably fraudulent results at the culmination of their electoral campaigns. One wonders what could’ve been if Gore and Kerry had been more forceful in their challenges or lack-thereof to the electoral results.

For a recap of what happened in the 2006 Mexican elections, I encourage to check out the following piece that I was able to pull out from my personal 2006 archives over at Project Economic Refugee from:

Wednesday, July 12th, 2006

Florida Con Salsa: Investigative Reporter Greg Palast Reports on Voter Fraud in Mexico’s Presidential Election

I remember being so excited about the Mexican elections because it looked like Mexico was going to get a President that was going to truly work for the people (something that had not happened in decades) rather than by just the corporatist elite. Then I watched with amazement something that was all-too familiar to me: the series of events that almost exactly mirrored what happened here in the U.S. in 2000 and 2004. It was eerily too much of a coincedence: people being kicked off voting rolls, demonizing the non-right wing condidate as some sort of leftist radical, the media declaring that the people had “voted their values” (yes I actually heard this in the Spanish speaking media), numbers being flipped in the ballots and in the digital vote count to favor the right-wing candidate, the supreme court ruling for a partial vote count but not the entire one, finding evidence of fraud and yet still deciding in favor of the right-wing candidate, etc. Truly and utterly disgusting.

Yet, I’ve seen time and again how the non-Latino population of the U.S. will, in a very ignorant manner, ask angrily something similar to this: “well if the Mexican people are so damn desperate that they have to flee their own country, why in the hell do they NOT do something to fix their own government instead of coming here?” Obviously, they are not aware of the myriad of things that many millions of courageous Mexicans have tried to do throughout history to improve their own conditions. Point in case, is the uprising of protests that took place in 2006 when election fraud was apparently perpetuated to install a right-wing President to continue the NAFTA-like economic policies that can very much be argued have contributed to the ever-increasing explosion of Economic Refugees coming over to the U.S.

All in all, Fraude Mexico 2006 is a superb film that is a MUST-see that documents what happened in the Mexican elections in 2006.

Here’s a story on when the film was preparing to open:

“Luis Mandoki’s Controversial FRAUDE MEXICO 2006 Will Be Distributed in U.S. by Maya…”

Also, check out the following review of the film; it appeared back when this film was already released in Mexico:

Fraude: México 2006 (2007) Director: Luis Mandoki Writers: María Benia & Yoame Escamilla (writer)

In addition, this film should serve as a reminder here in the U.S. of the chilling prospect of, once again, election fraud and voter suppression tactics in past and future Presidential elections. For an article on what has been going on already here in the U.S., check this out:

“2008 Season of Voting Meltdowns Begins”

By Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet.

Posted September 11, 2008.

“How the GOP Wired Ohio’s 2004 Vote Count for Bush to Win”

By Steven Rosenfeld .

Posted September 18, 2008.

Finally, you may ask yourself “this is terrible, but what can I do about it?!!!” Well, for starters, you could join the “Steal Back Your Vote” project:

Steal Back Your Vote lays out the Six Ways They’re Stealing the Election – and the Seven Ways you can Steal It Back.

 It’s a 24-page downloadable graphic guide -an investigative comic book.

by Greg Palast
Friday, June 12, 2009

For Air America Radio’s Ring of Fire

There’s an easy way to find oil.  Go to some remote and gorgeous natural sanctuary, say Alaska or the Amazon, find some Indians, then drill down under them.

If the indigenous folk complain, well, just shoo-them away.  Shoo-ing methods include:  bulldozers, bullets, crooked politicians and fake land sales.

But be aware.  Lately the Natives are shoo-ing back.  Last week, indigenous Peruvians seized an oil pumping station, grabbed the nine policemen guarding it and, say reports, executed them.  This followed the government’s murder of more than a dozen rainforest residents who had protested the seizure of their property for oil drilling.

Again and again I see it in my line of work of investigating fraud.  Here are a few pit-stops on the oily trail of tears:

In the 1980s, Charles Koch was found to have pilfered about $3 worth of crude from Stanlee Ann Mattingly’s oil tank in Oklahoma.  Here’s the weird part.  Koch was (and remains) the 14^th richest man on the planet, worth about $14 billion. Stanlee Ann was a dirt-poor Osage Indian.

Stanlee Ann wasn’t Koch’s only victim.  According to secret tape recordings of a former top executive of his company, Koch Industries, the billionaire demanded that oil tanker drivers secretly siphon a few bucks worth of oil from every tank attached to a stripper well on the Osage Reservation where Koch had a contract to retrieve crude.

Koch, according to the tape, would, “giggle” with joy over the records of the theft.  Koch’s own younger brother Bill ratted him out, complaining that, in effect, brothers Charles and David cheated him out of his fair share of the looting which totaled over three-quarters of a billion dollars from the Native lands.

The FBI filmed the siphoning with hidden cameras, but criminal charges were quashed after quiet objections from Republican senators.

Then there are the Chugach Natives of Alaska.  The Port of Valdez, Alaska, is arguably one of the most valuable pieces of real estate on Earth, the only earthquake-safe ice-free port in Alaska that could load oil from the giant North Slope field.  In 1969, Exxon and British Petroleum companies took the land from the Chugach paid them one dollar.  I kid you not.

Wally Hickel, the former Governor of Alaska, dismissed my suggestion that the Chugach deserved a bit more respect (and cash) for their property. “Land ownership comes in two ways, Mr. Palast.” explained the governor and pipeline magnate, “Purchase or conquest.  The fact that your granddaddy chased a caribou across the land doesn’t make it yours.”  The Chugach had lived there for 3,000 years.

No oil company would dream of digging on the Bush family properties in Midland, Texas, without paying a royalty.  Or drilling near Malibu without the latest in environmental protections.  But when Natives are on top of Exxon’s or BP’s glory hole, suddenly, the great defenders of private property rights turn quite Bolshevik:  lands can be seized for The Public’s Need for Oil.

Some Natives are “re-located” through legal flim-flam, some at gunpoint.  The less lucky are left to wallow, literally, in the gunk left by the drilling process.

Take a look at this photo here, taken in the Amazon rainforest in Ecuador.  It’s from an investigation that I conducted for BBC TV, now in the film “Palast Investigates.”  I’m holding up a stinking, black glop of crude oil residue pulled from an abandoned Chevron-Texaco waste pit.  A pipe runs from the toxic pit right into the water supply of Cofan Indians.

Chief Emergildo Criollo told me how oil company executives helicoptered into his remote village and, speaking in Spanish – which the Cofan didn’t understand – “purchased” drilling rights with trinkets and cheese.  The Natives had never seen cheese.  (“The cheese smelled funny, so we threw it in the jungle.”)

After drilling began, Criollo’s son went swimming in his usual watering hole, came up vomiting blood, and died.

I asked Chevron about the wave of poisonings and deaths.  According to an independent report, 1,401 deaths, mostly of children, mostly from cancers, can be traced to Chevron’s toxic dumping.

Chevron’s lawyer told me, “And it’s the only case of cancer in the world?  How many cases of children with cancer do you have in the States?  … They have to prove that it is our crude,” which, he noted with glee, “is absolutely impossible.”

Big Oil treats indigenous blood like a cheap gasoline additive.   That’s why the Peruvians are up in arms. The Cofan of Ecuador, unlike their brothers in Peru, have taken no hostages. Rather, they have heavily armed themselves with lawyers.

But Chevron and its Big Oil brethren remain dismissive of the law.  This week, Shell Oil, to get rid of a nasty PR problem by paying $15 million to the Ogoni people and the family of Ken Saro-Wiwa for the oil giant’s alleged role in the killing of Wiwa and his associates, activists who had defended these Nigeria Delta people against drilling contamination.  Shell pocketed $31 billion last year in profits and hopes the payoff will clear the way for a drilling partnership with Nigeria’s government.

Congratulations, Shell.  $15 million:  For a license to kill and drill, that’s a quite a bargain.

Monday 01 June 2009

by: Greg Palast  |  Visit article original @ GregPalast.com

Screw the autoworkers. They may be crying about General Motors’ bankruptcy today. But dumping 40,000 of the last 60,000 union jobs into a mass grave won’t spoil Jamie Dimon’s day.

    Dimon is the CEO of JP Morgan Chase bank. While GM workers are losing their retirement health benefits, their jobs, their life savings; while shareholders are getting zilch and many creditors getting hosed, a few privileged GM lenders – led by Morgan and Citibank – expect to get back 100% of their loans to GM, a stunning $6 billion.

    The way these banks are getting their $6 billion bonanza is stone cold illegal.

    I smell a rat.

    Stevie the Rat, to be precise. Steven Rattner, Barack Obama’s “Car Czar” – the man who essentially ordered GM into bankruptcy this morning.

    When a company goes bankrupt, everyone takes a hit: fair or not, workers lose some contract wages, stockholders get wiped out and creditors get fragments of what’s left. That’s the law. What workers don’t lose are their pensions (including old-age health funds) already taken from their wages and held in their name.

    But not this time. Stevie the Rat has a different plan for GM: grab the pension funds to pay off Morgan and Citi.

    Here’s the scheme: Rattner is demanding the bankruptcy court simply wipe away the money GM owes workers for their retirement health insurance. Cash in the insurance fund would be replaced by GM stock. The percentage may be 17% of GM’s stock – or 25%. Whatever, 17% or 25% is worth, well … just try paying for your dialysis with 50 shares of bankrupt auto stock.

    Yet Citibank and Morgan, says Rattner, should get their whole enchilada – $6 billion right now and in cash – from a company that can’t pay for auto parts or worker eye exams.

    Preventive Detention for Pensions

    So what’s wrong with seizing workers’ pension fund money in a bankruptcy? The answer, Mr. Obama, Mr. Law Professor, is that it’s illegal.

    In 1974, after a series of scandalous take-downs of pension and retirement funds during the Nixon era, Congress passed the Employee Retirement Income Security Act. ERISA says you can’t seize workers’ pension funds (whether monthly payments or health insurance) any more than you can seize their private bank accounts. And that’s because they are the same thing: workers give up wages in return for retirement benefits.

    The law is darn explicit that grabbing pension money is a no-no. Company executives must hold these retirement funds as “fiduciaries.” Here’s the law, Professor Obama, as described on the government’s own web site under the heading, “Health Plans and Benefits.”

“The primary responsibility of fiduciaries is to run the plan solely in the interest of participants and beneficiaries and for the exclusive purpose of providing benefits.”

    Every business in America that runs short of cash would love to dip into retirement kitties, but it’s not their money any more than a banker can seize your account when the bank’s a little short. A plan’s assets are for the plan’s members only, not for Mr. Dimon nor Mr. Rubin.

    Yet, in effect, the Obama Administration is demanding that money for an elderly auto worker’s spleen should be siphoned off to feed the TARP babies. Workers go without lung transplants so Dimon and Rubin can pimp out their ride. This is another “Guantanamo” moment for the Obama Administration – channeling Nixon to endorse the preventive detention of retiree health insurance.

    Filching GM’s pension assets doesn’t become legal because the cash due the fund is replaced with GM stock. Congress saw through that switch-a-roo by requiring that companies, as fiduciaries, must

“… act prudently and must diversify the plan’s investments in order to minimize the risk of large losses.”

    By “diversify” for safety, the law does not mean put 100% of worker funds into a single busted company’s stock.

    This is dangerous business: The Rattner plan opens the floodgate to every politically-connected or down-on-their-luck company seeking to drain health care retirement funds.

    House of Rubin

    Pensions are wiped away and two connected banks don’t even get a haircut? How come Citi and Morgan aren’t asked, like workers and other creditors, to take stock in GM?

    As Butch said to Sundance, who ARE these guys? You remember Morgan and Citi. These are the corporate Welfare Queens who’ve already sucked up over a third of a trillion dollars in aid from the US Treasury and Federal Reserve. Not coincidentally, Citi, the big winner, has paid over $100 million to Robert Rubin, the former US Treasury Secretary. Rubin was Obama’s point-man in winning banks’ endorsement and campaign donations (by far, his largest source of his corporate funding).

    With GM’s last dying dimes about to fall into one pocket, and the Obama Treasury in his other pocket, Morgan’s Jamie Dimon is correct in saying that the last twelve months will prove to be the bank’s “finest year ever.”

    Which leaves us to ask the question: is the forced bankruptcy of GM, the elimination of tens of thousands of jobs, just a collection action for favored financiers?

    And it’s been a good year for Senor Rattner. While the Obama Administration made a big deal out of Rattner’s youth spent working for the Steelworkers Union, they tried to sweep under the chassis that Rattner was one of the privileged, select group of investors in Cerberus Capital, the owners of Chrysler. “Owning” is a loose term. Cerberus “owned” Chrysler the way a cannibal “hosts” you for dinner. Cerberus paid nothing for Chrysler – indeed, they were paid billions by Germany’s Daimler Corporation to haul it away. Cerberus kept the cash, then dumped Chrysler’s bankrupt corpse on the US taxpayer.

    (“Cerberus,” by the way, named itself after the Roman’s mythical three-headed dog guarding the gates of Hell. Subtle these guys are not.)

    While Stevie the Rat sold his interest in the Dog from Hell when he became Car Czar, he never relinquished his post at the shop of vultures called Quadrangle Hedge Fund. Rattner’s personal net worth stands at roughly half a billion dollars. This is Obama’s working class hero.

    If you ran a business and played fast and loose with your workers’ funds, you could land in prison. Stevie the Rat’s plan is nothing less than Grand Theft Auto Pension.

    It doesn’t make it any less of a crime if the President drives the getaway car.

    ——-

    Economist and journalist Greg Palast, a former trade union contract negotiator, is author of the New York Times bestsellers “The Best Democracy Money Can Buy” and “Armed Madhouse.” He is a GM bondholder and card-carrying member of United Automobile Workers Local 1981. Palast’s latest reports for BBC Television and Democracy Now! are collected on the newly released DVD, “Palast Investigates: From 8-Mile to the Amazon – on the trail of the financial marauders.” Watch the trailer here.

Screw the autoworkers.

They may be crying about General Motors’ bankruptcy today.  But dumping 40,000 of the last 60,000 union jobs into a mass grave won’t spoil Jamie Dimon’s day.

	Financier, private equity investor, and “Car Czar” at the Treasury Department, Steven Rattner.

Dimon is the CEO of JP Morgan Chase bank.  While GM workers are losing their retirement health benefits, their jobs, their life savings; while shareholders are getting zilch and many creditors getting hosed, a few privileged GM lenders – led by  Morgan and Citibank – expect to get back 100% of their loans to GM, a stunning $6 billion.

The way these banks are getting their $6 billion bonanza is stone cold illegal.

I smell a rat.

Stevie the Rat, to be precise.  Steven Rattner, Barack  Obama’s ‘Car Czar’ – the man who essentially ordered GM into bankruptcy this morning.

When a company goes bankrupt, everyone takes a hit:  fair or not, workers lose some contract wages, stockholders get wiped out and creditors get fragments of what’s left.  That’s the law.  What workers don’t lose are their pensions (including old-age health funds) already taken from their wages and held in their name.

But not this time.  Stevie the Rat has a different plan for GM: grab the pension funds to pay off Morgan and Citi.

Here’s the scheme:  Rattner is demanding the bankruptcy court simply wipe away the money GM owes workers for their retirement health insurance.  Cash in the insurance fund would be replaced by GM stock. The percentage may be 17% of GM’s stock – or 25%.  Whatever, 17% or 25% is worth, well … just try paying for your dialysis with 50 shares of bankrupt auto stock.

Yet Citibank and Morgan, says Rattner, should get their whole enchilada – $6 billion right now and in cash – from a company that can’t pay for auto parts or worker eye exams.

Preventive Detention for Pensions

So what’s wrong with seizing workers’ pension fund money in a bankruptcy?  The answer, Mr. Obama, Mr. Law Professor, is that it’s illegal.

In 1974, after a series of scandalous take-downs of pension and retirement funds during the Nixon era, Congress passed the Employee Retirement Income Security Act.  ERISA says you can’t seize workers’ pension funds (whether monthly payments or health insurance) any more than you can seize their private bank accounts.  And that’s because they are the same thing:  workers give up wages in return for retirement benefits.

The law is darn explicit that grabbing pension money is a no-no.  Company executives must hold these retirement funds as “fiduciaries.”  Here’s the law, Professor Obama, as described on the government’s own web site under the heading, “Health Plans and Benefits.”

“The primary responsibility of fiduciaries  is to run the plan solely in the interest of participants and beneficiaries  and for the exclusive purpose of providing benefits.”

• A d v e r t i s e m e n t
• 

Every business in America that runs short of cash would love to dip into retirement kitties, but it’s not their money any more than a banker can seize your account when the bank’s a little short.  A plan’s assets are for the plan’s members only, not for Mr. Dimon nor Mr. Rubin.

Yet, in effect, the Obama Administration is demanding that money for an elderly auto worker’s spleen should be siphoned off to feed the TARP babies. Workers go without lung transplants so Dimon and Rubin can pimp out their ride. This is another “Guantanamo” moment for the Obama Administration – channeling Nixon to endorse the preventive detention of retiree health insurance.

Filching GM’s pension assets doesn’t become legal because the cash due the fund is replaced with GM stock.  Congress saw through that switch-a-roo by requiring that companies, as fiduciaries, must

“…act prudently and must diversify the plan’s investments in order to minimize the risk of large losses.”

By “diversify” for safety, the law does not mean put 100% of worker funds into a single busted company’s stock.

This is dangerous business:  The Rattner plan opens the floodgate to every politically-connected or down-on-their-luck company seeking to drain health care retirement funds.

House of Rubin

Pensions are wiped away and two connected banks don’t even get a haircut? How come Citi and Morgan aren’t asked, like workers and other creditors, to take stock in GM?

As Butch said to Sundance, who ARE these guys? You remember Morgan and Citi.  These are the corporate Welfare Queens who’ve already sucked up over a third of a trillion dollars in aid from the US Treasury and Federal Reserve.  Not coincidentally, Citi, the big winner, has paid over $100 million to Robert Rubin, the former US Treasury Secretary.  Rubin was Obama’s point-man in winning banks’ endorsement and campaign donations (by far, his largest source of his corporate funding).

With GM’s last dying dimes about to fall into one pocket, and the Obama Treasury in his other pocket, Morgan’s Jamie Dimon is correct in saying that the last twelve months will prove to be the bank’s “finest year ever.”

Which leaves us to ask the question:  is the forced bankruptcy of GM, the elimination of tens of thousands of jobs, just a collection action for favored financiers?

And it’s been a good year for Señor Rattner. While the Obama Administration made a big deal out of Rattner’s youth spent working for the Steelworkers Union, they tried to sweep under the chassis that Rattner was one of the privileged, select group of investors in Cerberus Capital, the owners of Chrysler.  “Owning” is a loose term.  Cerberus “owned” Chrysler the way a cannibal “hosts” you for dinner. Cerberus paid nothing for Chrysler – indeed, they were paid billions by Germany’s Daimler Corporation to haul it away.  Cerberus kept the cash, then dumped Chrysler’s bankrupt corpse on the US taxpayer.

(”Cerberus,” by the way, named itself after the Roman’s mythical three-headed dog guarding the gates Hell.  Subtle these guys are not.)

While Stevie the Rat sold his interest in the Dog from Hell when he became Car Czar, he never relinquished his post at the shop of vultures called Quadrangle Hedge Fund. Rattner’s personal net worth stands at roughly half a billion dollars.  This is Obama’s working class hero.

If you ran a business and played fast and loose with your workers’ funds, you could land in prison. Stevie the Rat’s plan is nothing less than Grand Theft Auto Pension.

It doesn’t make it any less of a crime if the President drives the getaway car.

URL to article: http://www.infowars.com/grand-theft-auto-how-stevie-the-rat-bankrupted-gm/

Grand Theft Auto: How Stevie the Rat bankrupted GM

by Greg Palast
Monday, June 1, 2009

Screw the autoworkers.

They may be crying about General Motors’ bankruptcy today. But dumping 40,000 of the last 60,000 union jobs into a mass grave won’t spoil Jamie Dimon’s day.

Dimon is the CEO of JP Morgan Chase bank. While GM workers are losing their retirement health benefits, their jobs, their life savings; while shareholders are getting zilch and many creditors getting hosed, a few privileged GM lenders – led by Morgan and Citibank – expect to get back 100% of their loans to GM, a stunning $6 billion.

The way these banks are getting their $6 billion bonanza is stone cold illegal.

I smell a rat.

Stevie the Rat, to be precise. Steven Rattner, Barack Obama’s ‘Car Czar’ – the man who essentially ordered GM into bankruptcy this morning.

When a company goes bankrupt, everyone takes a hit: fair or not, workers lose some contract wages, stockholders get wiped out and creditors get fragments of what’s left. That’s the law. What workers don’t lose are their pensions (including old-age health funds) already taken from their wages and held in their name.

But not this time. Stevie the Rat has a different plan for GM: grab the pension funds to pay off Morgan and Citi.

Here’s the scheme: Rattner is demanding the bankruptcy court simply wipe away the money GM owes workers for their retirement health insurance. Cash in the insurance fund would be replace by GM stock. The percentage may be 17% of GM’s stock – or 25%. Whatever, 17% or 25% is worth, well … just try paying for your dialysis with 50 shares of bankrupt auto stock.

Yet Citibank and Morgan, says Rattner, should get their whole enchilada – $6 billion right now and in cash – from a company that can’t pay for auto parts or worker eye exams.

Preventive Detention for Pensions

So what’s wrong with seizing workers’ pension fund money in a bankruptcy? The answer, Mr. Obama, Mr. Law Professor, is that it’s illegal.

In 1974, after a series of scandalous take-downs of pension and retirement funds during the Nixon era, Congress passed the Employee Retirement Income Security Act. ERISA says you can’t seize workers’ pension funds (whether monthly payments or health insurance) any more than you can seize their private bank accounts. And that’s because they are the same thing: workers give up wages in return for retirement benefits.

The law is darn explicit that grabbing pension money is a no-no. Company executives must hold these retirement funds as “fiduciaries.” Here’s the law, Professor Obama, as described on the government’s own web site under the heading, “Health Plans and Benefits.”

“The primary responsibility of fiduciaries is to run the plan solely in the interest of participants and beneficiaries and for the exclusive purpose of providing benefits.”

Every business in America that runs short of cash would love to dip into retirement kitties, but it’s not their money any more than a banker can seize your account when the bank’s a little short. A plan’s assets are for the plan’s members only, not for Mr. Dimon nor Mr. Rubin.

Yet, in effect, the Obama Administration is demanding that money for an elderly auto worker’s spleen should be siphoned off to feed the TARP babies. Workers go without lung transplants so Dimon and Rubin can pimp out their ride. This is another “Guantanamo” moment for the Obama Administration – channeling Nixon to endorse the preventive detention of retiree health insurance.

Filching GM’s pension assets doesn’t become legal because the cash due the fund is replaced with GM stock. Congress saw through that switch-a-roo by requiring that companies, as fiduciaries, must

“…act prudently and must diversify the plan’s investments in order to minimize the risk of large losses.”

By “diversify” for safety, the law does not mean put 100% of worker funds into a single busted company’s stock.

This is dangerous business: The Rattner plan opens the floodgate to every politically-connected or down-on-their-luck company seeking to drain health care retirement funds.

House of Rubin

Pensions are wiped away and two connected banks don’t even get a haircut? How come Citi and Morgan aren’t asked, like workers and other creditors, to take stock in GM?

As Butch said to Sundance, who ARE these guys? You remember Morgan and Citi. These are the corporate Welfare Queens who’ve already sucked up over a third of a trillion dollars in aid from the US Treasury and Federal Reserve. Not coincidentally, Citi, the big winner, has paid over $100 million to Robert Rubin, the former US Treasury Secretary. Rubin was Obama’s point-man in winning banks’ endorsement and campaign donations (by far, his largest source of his corporate funding).

With GM’s last dying dimes about to fall into one pocket, and the Obama Treasury in his other pocket, Morgan’s Jamie Dimon is correct in saying that the last twelve months will prove to be the bank’s “finest year ever.”

Which leaves us to ask the question: is the forced bankruptcy of GM, the elimination of tens of thousands of jobs, just a collection action for favored financiers?

And it’s been a good year for Señor Rattner. While the Obama Administration made a big deal out of Rattner’s youth spent working for the Steelworkers Union, they tried to sweep under the chassis that Rattner was one of the privileged, select group of investors in Cerberus Capital, the owners of Chrysler. “Owning” is a loose term. Cerberus “owned” Chrysler the way a cannibal “hosts” you for dinner. Cerberus paid nothing for Chrysler – indeed, they were paid billions by Germany’s Daimler Corporation to haul it away. Cerberus kept the cash, then dumped Chrysler’s bankrupt corpse on the US taxpayer.

(“Cerberus,” by the way, named itself after the Roman’s mythical three-headed dog guarding the gates Hell. Subtle these guys are not.)

While Stevie the Rat sold his interest in the Dog from Hell when he became Car Czar, he never relinquished his post at the shop of vultures called Quadrangle Hedge Fund. Rattner’s personal net worth stands at roughly half a billion dollars. This is Obama’s working class hero.

If you ran a business and played fast and loose with your workers’ funds, you could land in prison. Stevie the Rat’s plan is nothing less than Grand Theft Auto Pension.

It doesn’t make it any less of a crime if the President drives the getaway car.

******

Economist and journalist Greg Palast, a former trade union contract negotiator, is author of the New York Times bestsellers The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Armed Madhouse. He is a GM bondholder and card-carrying member of United Automobile Workers Local 1981.

Palast’s latest reports for BBC Television and Democracy Now! are collected on the newly released DVD, “Palast Investigates: from 8-Mile to the Amazon – on the trail of the financial marauders.” Watch the trailer here.