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Goldman Sachs accused of trying to destroy China

EU Times — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 12:15:42 +0000

Goldman Sachs & Co., reviled in the U.S. for its role in the financial crisis, is now getting hammered in the world’s No. 2 economy with a sensationalist new book accusing the investment bank of trying to destroy China.

The “Goldman Sachs Conspiracy,” which has sold over 100,000 copies since it was released in June, reaching popular website Sina.com’s top-10 list, follows another by author Li Delin, “Eliminate All Competitors — How Goldman Sachs Wins Over the World,” published last year.

Li, a financial journalist, appears to have hit pay dirt among Chinese readers with an appetite for the would-be exposes that get prominent display in downtown bookstores, such as “Who Killed Toyota: the Truth of America’s Attack” and “Currency War.”

The nearly 300-page, highly dramatized account covers much of the same ground as a widely cited piece by Matt Taibbi last year in the Rolling Stone magazine that portrayed the Wall Street institution as a “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.”

Li’s book takes ample license in its attacks on Goldman Sachs. The company’s ultimate goal, he says in the first chapter, is to “kill China.”

“Like a fox chewing a bone, Goldman Sachs knows the rules of the game and when to go for your neck,” it says.

With the “cruel character of a Manchurian tiger, the group creeps around the world, like a veteran hunter stalking its prey, when it smells blood it pounces!” the chapter says.

Goldman Sachs’ office in Beijing refused to comment on the book and on others of its ilk.

The financial cataclysm of 2008 and ensuing global recession has resulted in a profusion of books dissecting the role of global investment banks including Goldman Sachs.

“It reads like a novel, rather than a real story,” said Peng Yunliang, a securities analyst.

“Goldman Sachs has been at the eye of the storm and is seen as the culprit behind the mess. That’s clearly the most popular topic on the market,” he said.

Goldman was sharply criticized, especially in the U.S., for its high executive pay after it accepted a $10 billion government bailout during the financial crisis. It also received $13 billion from insurer American International Group Inc. after the government bailed that company out. The bank recently agreed to a record settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission over civil fraud charges.

In China, the company’s business appears to have weathered well the market chaos elsewhere. The investment bank was an underwriter in the recent record-breaking $22.1 billion initial public offering by the Agricultural Bank of China, among other big deals.

Goldman also saw handsome gains from a $4.9 million investment in 2007 in a 12.5 percent stake in drug maker Shenzhen Hepalink, which later raised about $864 million in an IPO that catapulted the company’s little-known founders to become, at least on paper, the richest couple in China.

Li, in an online chat, said the book was no exaggeration.

“The real financial battle is even more dramatic than my book, according to my knowledge of the markets,” he said. “Goldman Sachs is the hand behind the financial crisis, maybe even its cause.” He soon plans to publish a third book about the company.

The conspiracy genre and dramatized accounts of scandals are popular in China, as in many markets. China’s government exerts strong control over the news media and broadcasters, but the book publishing industry has a bit freer leeway for commentary, particularly when the targets are not Communist Party officials.

The Chinese-language book also accuses Goldman Sachs of involvement in the recent Dubai and Greek debt debacles and the wider European financial and fiscal crises.

To buttress its myriad allegations, the book notes well-known links between former top Goldman Sachs executives, such as former U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, and government officials in America and other countries.

It also includes copies of what appear to be U.S. court documents. They include a complaint against Goldman Sachs and Fabrice Tourre, a Goldman vice president accused of shepherding a deal at the center of SEC charges that the company sold mortgage securities without telling buyers that they had been created with input from a client that was betting on them to fail.

Last month, a U.S. federal judge approved a settlement calling for Goldman Sachs & Co. to pay $550 million to settle civil fraud charges that the Wall Street giant misled buyers of mortgage-related investments. In the settlement, Goldman acknowledged that its marketing materials for the deal omitted important information for buyers.

The penalty was the largest against a Wall Street firm in SEC history. But the settlement amounts to less than 5 percent of Goldman’s 2009 net income of $12.2 billion after payment of dividends to preferred shareholders — or a little more than two weeks of net income.

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Italy inspired by France to expel citizens from other EU states by September

EU Times — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 07:42:48 +0000

A beggar on the streets of Venice. The Italian remarks come hot on the heels of Roma expulsions in France

Italy has said it intends to expel citizens from other EU states if they are not able to support themselves, in a move apparently inspired by France’s current crackdown on Roma.

Interior Minister Roberto Maroni told daily newspaper Corriere della Sera on Saturday (21 August) that French president Nicolas Sarkozy – whose recent actions include closing down Roma camps and deporting around 200 Roma to date – is “right.”

The minister, from the anti-immigrant Northern League Party, said that “if anything, it’s time to go a step further” and referred to the mandatory expulsion of EU citizens who do not meet certain criteria.

“Yes, expulsions just like those for illegal immigrants, not assisted or voluntary repatriations. Of course only for those who violate rules on requirements for living in another member state: a minimum level of income, adequate housing and not being a burden on the social welfare system of the country hosting them.”

“Many Roma are EU citizens but do not respect any of these requirements,” he said. But added, when asked if this would be discriminatory, that the policy should apply to all EU citizens and not just Roma.

“If anything, the problem is something else: unlike in France, many Roma and Sinti here have Italian citizenship. They have the right to remain here. Nothing can be done.”

Mr Maroni admitted that previous attempt by Rome to go in this direction were shot down by the European Commission but said he intends to re-raise the issue of automatic expulsions at a meeting of EU interior ministers in Paris on 6 September.

In 2008, the commission threatened Italy with legal action if it went ahead with a decree allowing the expulsion of other EU citizens facing two years of jail. It gave its blessing to a controversial proposal by Italy to fingerprint Roma, however.

Some in Italy have suggested there is a discrepancy between the relatively strong reaction by Brussels to Italy two years ago compared with its muted response to Mr Sarkozy’s policy towards the Roma community.

According to Mr Maroni this is due to an old “prejudice” whereby a policy carried out by a minister from the Northern League, a junior coalition partner in Rome’s right-wing government, is assumed to “violate human rights.”

France

Mr Sarkozy’s government deported around 10,000 Roma to Romania and Bulgaria last year but the current raids against against a planned total of 300 Roma camps come after the French president for the first time expressly linked immigration and crime.

The European Commission, for its part, has said it is monitoring the situation in France noting that any deportation decisions must be proportionate and carried out on a case-by-case basis, with human rights watchdogs already questioning whether these criteria are being fulfilled.

Meanwhile, critics of Mr Sarkozy’s policy have suggested that the Roma will simply return as soon as they are able.

They also suggest that Paris is contributing to a vicious circle due to its decision to maintain until 2014 rules restricting access to the labour market to nationals from Bulgaria and Romania – where the majority of Roma come from – and with it a means of supporting themselves.

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Chilean miners found alive after being trapped but rescue will be months

EU Times — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 07:37:07 +0000

We’re alive! TV images of Chilean miners 18 DAYS after being trapped… but it could be Christmas before they are rescued

* Miners’ message from 2,300ft below: ‘All 33 of us are fine in the shelter’
* It will take months to get them out, say experts
* Men are in a mine shaft shelter the size of a small apartment

A team of 33 miners trapped underground have been told it could be Christmas before they are rescued.

The men have been found alive after 17 days without contact but will have to wait months until a big enough shaft can be dug to pull them out.

Experts fear the group could become insane before then because they are holed up in an area no larger than a one-bedroom flat. The men had travelled 4.5 miles into the winding shafts of the San Jose copper and gold mine in Chile when they were trapped by a cave-in on August 5.

Rescuers tried and failed to reach them, but worked out they were 2,300ft below ground in an emergency refuge.

Seven narrow boreholes were drilled vertically down from the surface in an attempt to break through to them, all to no avail.

Finally, after weeks of mistakes and new cave-ins – and when families and friends had almost given them up for dead – the eighth attempt succeeded on Sunday.

The men quickly tied two notes to the end of a probe that rescuers pulled up, announcing in big red letters: ‘All 33 of us are fine in the shelter.’

A video camera sent down showed some of the miners waving happily and President Sebastian Pinera said: ‘Today all of Chile is crying with excitement and joy.’

Anxiety remains, however. Small capsules of food, water and supplies of oxygen can be passed down the 6in-wide borehole – but it could take four months to drill a 26inwide shaft big enough for the men to be brought out one by one, because the equipment used works very slowly.

The first capsules – which take about an hour to descend from the surface – will include water and food in the form of a high-energy glucose gel to miners who have almost certainly lost significant weight since they were trapped with limited food supplies.

The miners’ survival after 17 days is very unusual, but since they have made it this far, they should emerge physically fine, said Davitt McAteer, a former U.S. mine safety minister.

It is their mental state that will be a cause for concern.

‘The health risks in a copper and gold mine are pretty small if you have air, food and water,’ he said. ‘But the stress of being trapped underground for a long period of time can be significant.’

A team of doctors and psychiatrists arrived last night to maintain the miners’ sanity.

The men have already been trapped underground longer than all but a few miners rescued in recent history.

All 33 miners at San Jose are crammed into a space the size of a flat and it is so hot underground that they are stripped to the waist. It was unclear last night how they had survived. Rations in the refuge were thought to be enough for only 48 hours.

The miners seemed to be aware that their rescue may take a long time. One of them, Mario Gomez, 63, wrote a note to his wife Liliana, saying: ‘Even if we have to wait months to communicate … I want to tell everyone that I’m good and we’ll surely come out OK. Patience and faith.’

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RT Declassified: Massive Israeli manipulation of US media exposed

EU Times — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 17:38:01 +0000

Russia Today (RT) – Files declassified in America have revealed covert public relations and lobbying activities of Israel in the U.S. The National Archive made the documents public following a Senate investigation. They suggest Israel has been trying to shape media coverage of issues it regards as important. You can download the files from the web-site of the Institute for Research on Middle Eastern policy. And we can cross to Washington now and talk to Grant F. Smith who is a director at that Institute.

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Fidel Castro speaks out against the Bilderberg Group

EU Times — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 09:49:42 +0000

Former Cuban President Fidel Castro continues to taunt the West, this time with an article that accuses the ultra-secretive Bilderberg Group of conspiring to create a one-world government.

Despite his advanced age and periodic bouts with an intestinal disorder, 84-year-old Castro continues to warn on the West, this time by dedicating three pages in the Communist Party newspaper Granma that quotes excerpts from a 2006 book by investigative journalist Daniel Estulin entitled “The Secrets of the Bilderberg Club”.

In a nutshell, Estulin’s book makes the tempting case that an elite group of political, academic and economic leaders are, as quoted by Castro, “ushering in a world government that knows no borders and is not accountable to anyone but its own self.”

Castro went on to call the book a “fantastic story” that draws public attention to “sinister cliques and the Bilderberg lobbyists” that are making a mockery of Western democratic traditions.

The Bilderberg Group, which holds annual closed-door meetings that are rarely covered by the mainstream media, got its name from a hotel in Holland where it commenced its first meeting in 1954. This year’s meeting was held in Spain, at the luxury Dolce Hotel in Sitges from June 3-6, and was opened by Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. Thanks to growing interest in the group, which has become something of an Internet sensation, there was no shortage of protesters outside of this year’s venue.
Is Castro on to something?

Although international meetings that bring together the world’s movers and shakers occur on a regular basis, Bilderberg Group functions are different in that they convene behind closed doors, while the mainstream corporate media, despite having numerous representatives at these annual events, never reveals the content of what is discussed.

The Bilderberg Group website, which consists of just one page, defends its activities by tersely stating between nibbles of a caviar-coated cracker: “Bilderberg is a small, flexible, informal and off-the-record international forum in which different viewpoints can be expressed and mutual understanding enhanced. Bilderberg’s only activity is its annual Conference. At the meetings, no resolutions are proposed, no votes taken, and no policy statements issued.”

The website failed to explain, however, the coincidence of prominent guests who have gone on to be elected as political leaders of their respective countries, including Bill Clinton who first attended in 1991.

The rare photographs taken of public figures whisked into these insanely secret events behind an iron phalanx of security have naturally fed numerous conspiracy theories over the motivation behind these meetings. Meanwhile, the guest list to these events is a veritable who’s who of the most influential people of our times.

Here is a brief peek at some of the big-name attendees of this year’s power pow-wow that were leaked to the media: Bill Gates, Microsoft chairman; Richard Holbrooke, Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan; Henry Kissinger, former US Secretary of State; Moisès Naìm, Editor-in-Chief, Foreign Policy; Her Majesty the Queen of the Netherlands; Her Majesty the Queen of Spain; Robert Rubin, Co-chairman, Council on Foreign Relations; Eric Schmidt, CEO, Google; Paul Volcker, US Economic Recovery Advisory Board; Peter Vosel, CEO, Royal Dutch Shell plc; Robert Zoellick, President, World Bank.

And the list goes on, but unfortunately any sort of mainstream reporting on these meetings does not.

Although Castro’s personal endorsement of Estulin’s book will draw attention to the mystery that surrounds Bilderberg, the diehard Cuban leader was not the first person to pull the lid off of this story.
Europe is also puzzled

On the initiative of Mario Borghezio, Italian Member of the European Parliament (Lega Nord, Europe of Freedom and Democracy Group), Daniel Estulin addressed the European Parliament in a press conference entitled “Bilderberg Group – Towards the Creation of a One World Company Ltd.?”

During the conference, Estulin accused North American and European elites of conspiring to create a so-called “aristocracy of purpose” in order to “control the necessities of life for the rest of the planet.”

Seemingly unpredictable events, Estulin argues, like the recent financial implosion that had powerful aftershocks around the planet, are actually nothing more than planned catastrophes designed to bring about the “One World Company, Ltd.”

At the same press conference, Borghezio used the opportunity to criticize the “selection” of Herman van Rompuy as the first president of the European Union, whose nomination was allegedly sealed after he was seen rubbing elbows at a recent Bilderberg event alongside the likes of Henry Kissinger, former prime minister of Sweden Carl Bildt and David Rockefeller, one of the great granddads of the annual get-together.

Here is the British media’s take on van Rompuy’s rise to power:

“The man tipped to be Europe’s first president is already considering new EU taxes to fund the rising cost of Brussels and the welfare state.”

Herman Van Rompuy, the Belgian Prime Minister, broke his silence before Thursday’s summit to choose the president – but only at a meeting of the secretive Bilderberg group of top politicians, bankers and businessmen.”

Mr. Van Rompuy’s contentious remarks were aired privately amid the grand surroundings of the Castle of the Valley of the Duchess near Brussels. The château hosted the talks on the Treaty of Rome in 1957 that launched the European Union.”

Clearly, the selection of van Rompuy by an elite minority of champagne-sipping individuals flies in the face of democratic theory and hurls Europe back into the Dark Ages when the voice of the people was considered bothersome at best.

“For me,” Borghezio told the conference, the selection of van Rompuy “relates to events that take place in absolute confidentiality, without public control, and had I not exposed it myself, we probably would still not have known about van Rompuy’s affiliations.”

Castro, who has been in power through 11 US presidencies (he has predicted that he will not survive Obama’s first term in office), has frequently harbored suspicions of conspiratorial plots. The former president has gone on the record as saying the events of September 11, for example, was an inside job by the US government to promote military expenditures and global reach.

Castro, who underwent emergency intestinal surgery in July 2006, handed over presidential powers to his brother Raul in February 2008. Yet this has not stopped the Communist from speaking his mind on matters of international urgency.

On August 8, Castro convened a special session of the Cuban parliament to discuss the threat of a “nuclear holocaust” over the Middle East crisis involving Israel, Iran and the United States. He even made a personal plea to US President Barack Obama to “avoid the worst possible outcome,” which would spell “disaster for humanity.”

Webster G. Tarpley, a frequent commentator on RT, noted that the US media largely ignored Castro’s warnings.

“Not surprisingly,” Tarpley was quoted by Global Research as saying, “the controlled Wall Street news media in the United States did everything possible to trivialize, denigrate and ridicule this dramatic warning. Frivolity and inanity rule US news coverage this summer.”

It is no surprise that the same media “frivolity and inanity” that is able to ignore warnings by a veteran global leader on the perils of a potential nuclear holocaust, is also able to ignore accusations that an ultra-secret organization is trampling recklessly on democratic terrain.

The question, however, is not whether the accusations against the Bilderberg Group are true or false, but rather why the international corporate media, despite having front row seats at these elite meetings, continually fail to report the content of these events to the public. Given the high-profile guest lists year after year, which regularly include the leaders of practically every Western power, this seems to be part of the public’s “right to know.”

Although Fidel Castro will never be elected as democracy’s poster boy, he seems to have a very valid argument in questioning the existence of a secretive group such as Bilderberg, which seems to have next to nothing in common with the West’s democratic traditions.

Secrecy regardless of the justifications has absolutely no place in a modern democracy.

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Russian Scholar Warns Of ‘Secret’ U.S. Climate Change Weapon

EU Times — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 23:24:33 +0000

The heatwave has caused forest and peat fires across Russia

As Muscovites suffer record high temperatures this summer, a Russian political scientist has claimed the United States may be using climate-change weapons to alter the temperatures and crop yields of Russia and other Central Asian countries.

In a recent article, Andrei Areshev, deputy director of the Strategic Culture Foundation, wrote, “At the moment, climate weapons may be reaching their target capacity and may be used to provoke droughts, erase crops, and induce various anomalous phenomena in certain countries.”

The article has been carried by publications throughout Russia, including “International Affairs,” a journal published by the Foreign Ministry and by the state-owned news agency RIA Novosti.

In an telephone interview with RFE/RL, Areshev appeared to back off from claims he made in the article, saying that he was merely positing a theory.

“First of all, I would like to say that what I wrote in that article, even the citations, does not in any way claim to a be final truth. It is, if you will, speculation, in other words, the definition of an hypothesis,” Areshev said.

Moscow is currently sweltering under record temperatures. On July 29 Moscow suffered its hottest day ever, with temperatures hitting 39 degrees.

But Russia isn’t the only country suffering form a heat wave this summer. Indeed, the United States is also experiencing record temperatures. On July 24, temperatures in Washington, D.C., hit 37.7 degrees, and local weather services issued heat warnings for the first time this summer.

Areshev agrees that it is also hot in the United States, but notes that the United States is significantly farther south than Russia, meaning that such high temperatures are not so surprising there.

The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, however, announced in July that land and ocean temperatures throughout the world were the highest ever, since they began tracking global temperatures in 1880.

Conspiracy Theories

In the article, Areshev voiced suspicions about the High-Frequency Active Aural Research Program (HAARP), funded by the U.S. Defense Department and the University of Alaska.

HAARP, which has long been the target of conspiracy theorists, analyzes the ionosphere and seeks to develop technologies to improve radio communications, surveillance, and missile detection.

Areshev writes, however, that its true aim is to create new weapons of mass destruction “in order to destabilize environmental and agricultural systems in local countries.”

Areshev’s article also references an unmanned spacecraft X-37B, an orbital test vehicle the Pentagon launched in April 2010. The Pentagon calls X-37B a prototype for a new “space plane” that could take people and equipment to and from space stations. Areshev, however, alleges that the X-378 carries “laser weaponry” and could be a key component in the Pentagon’s climate-change arsenal.

The Pentagon was not immediately reachable for comment.

Areshev also cites the U.S. government’s effort to use rain and cloud coverage to block the Vietnam Army’s supply routes during the Vietnam War. He insisted, however, that he was not a conspiracy theorist.

“My comments were not made in order to accuse the U.S., or any other country, of consciously influencing Russia,” Areshev said. “That would be quite ridiculous.”

Asked whether or not Russia was also experimenting with climate-control methods, Areshev said since he was not a member of the government, he did not have information about such projects.

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France to deport 700 Roma gypsies

EU Times — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 07:54:22 +0000

700 Roma gypsies living in France face deportation by the end of August.

The French government has announced plans to deport 700 Roma gypsies as Romania warns about the possibility of a xenophobic backlash.

“I am worried about the risks of populism and xenophobic reactions in a context of economic crisis,” Romanian Foreign Minister Teodor Baconschi said in an interview with Radio France International on Wednesday.

The court in the southern city of Bordeaux also dismissed a request filed by about 140 Roma families asking for a place to station their caravans.

Bordeaux Deputy Mayor Hugues Martin said he was satisfied with the court’s decision but wanted to “move towards appeasement,” AFP reported.

France plans to fly 132 Roma to western Romania on Friday and another 160 to Bucharest on August 26, Romanian state secretary Valentin Mocanu told AFP.

Each deportee will be given US $385 for adults and US $129 for minors.

Around 10,000 Roma from Bulgaria and Romania used the “voluntary return” procedure to go back to their native countries, but the upcoming deportation procedure is the first in Nicolas Sarkozy’s presidential term.

EU representatives said on Wednesday that France must obey immigration laws which allow freedom of movement within the European bloc.

The majority of Roma who were expelled to Romania one year ago returned afterwards as European Union citizens at liberty to travel within the EU.

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British SIS Hit Team Kills Top US Oil Expert For Breaking Gulf Oil Spill News Blackout

EU Times — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 12:28:59 +0000

A grim Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) report prepared for Prime Minister Putin states that a British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, also known as MI6) ‘hit team’ was behind the assassination Matthew Simmons [photo top right] who was one of the United States top oil experts and the most outspoken critic of the US and BP’s handling of the Gulf of Mexico oil leak catastrophe.

According to this report, Simmons assassination was ordered by SIS Chief John Sawers after he met with Britain’s top business leaders who warned that the continued sinking of BP’s stock price because of the Gulf oil disaster posed a danger to their entire economy as the oil giants economic health was deemed “vital to the British Government’s plans to cut budget deficits and balance its books.”

What made Simmons particular dangerous to BP, this report continues, was the authority from which he warned that the United States and BP were covering up the true extent of this disaster and were keeping the American people’s attention diverted from the true site of the massive underwater oil leak which he said was located nearly 5-6 miles from the wellhead said responsible for this catastrophe.

Simmons authority to be heard as an expert on this disaster rested on his being one of the United States top oil insiders as a former adviser to President Bush and his being a member of the influential National Petroleum Council and the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

Simmons had also earned the ire of both US and European oil giants, and the governments backing them, after the 2005 publication of his book “Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy” wherein he used 200 technical papers published over the last 20 years to unmask the truth about the wars being fought around the World for oil that our Planet is fast running out of.

Important to note is that Simmons is not the only “high level target” assassinated by SIS hit teams as they had previously been implicated in the “suiciding” of the former British UN weapons inspector Dr. David Kelly who was killed after his leaking to the BBC that prior to the invasion of Iraq no weapons of mass destruction were found, but were being used as the “excuse” for the US and its allies to capture all of Iraq’s oil and natural gas reserves.

Also interesting to note was that the former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, halted the inquest into Dr. Kelly’s death and set up what was called the Hutton Inquiry which ruled his death a “suicide” and then secretly classified all the evidence in the case for 70 years, in spite of the testimony of a leading American UN weapons inspector, Dr Richard Spertzel, that Dr. Kelly was on a US-British “hitlist” during the final years of his life.

In continuing, this FSB report states that “the most likely cause” of Simmons having to be killed a fortnight ago (August 8^th) was due to his preparing to release a report detailing how the US and BP were using massive amounts of toxic chemical dispersants to hide the continued leaking of the “fractured beyond repair” Gulf of Mexico seafloor in what he claimed was the “largest and most dangerous manmade ecological disaster in human history”.

Even worse, this FSB report states that Simmons was prepared to release “independent data” showing that toxic chemical dispersants being used to hide the oil in the Gulf of Mexico from the American people was now entering the North Atlantic Gyre [a Gyre is a large system of rotating ocean currents of which our Planet has 5] and had “stalled” what is called the Loop Current in this body of water and could lead to massive fish kills all along the Eastern coastlines of North America.

Interesting to note, and as Simmons had predicted, several US States along their Eastern seaboard began reporting thousands of dead fish washing up on their beaches a few days after his death, and which his commenting on in any American TV interview this FSB report was deemed “unacceptable” by the SIS.

Though not being reported to the American people after President Obama’s “publicity stunt” this past weekend during his barely 24-hour visit to the Gulf Coast region is that approximately 672 miles of the US Gulf Coast shoreline remain covered in oil: 108 miles in Florida, 375 miles in Louisiana, 117 miles in Mississippi and 72 miles in Alabama.

Even worse are new reports warning that the damage being done to what is called the Gulf of Mexico’s deep scattering layer (DSL) is leading to a catastrophic kill off of nearly every marine species in this vital ecological water system and leading to a massive starvation event of truly apocalyptic proportions.

To what is happening to those few US scientists attempting to warn the American people as to the true extent of this catastrophe (as opposed to those who BP has bought off) we can read, in part, as reported by the Zero Hedge Report in their article titled “When University Scientists Found Underwater Oil Plumes, the Government Said Shut Up, Don’t Tell Anyone … and Then Tried to Discredit Them”:

“The reaction that [the University of South Florida] announcement [of the discovery of huge underwater plumes] received from the Coast Guard and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the federal agencies that sponsored their research:

Shut up.

“I got lambasted by the Coast Guard and NOAA when we said there was undersea oil,” USF marine sciences dean William Hogarth said. Some officials even told him to retract USF’s public announcement, he said, comparing it to being “beat up” by federal officials.

The USF scientists weren’t alone. Vernon Asper, an oceanographer at the University of Southern Mississippi, was part of a similar effort that met with a similar reaction. “We expected that NOAA would be pleased because we found something very, very interesting,” Asper said. “NOAA instead responded by trying to discredit us. It was just a shock to us.”

Not just scientists are being intimidated and threatened by BP and the US government either, as new reports are stating that it is not only a criminal felony offense for Americans to take or possess photographs of this oil catastrophe, but a veteran American news reporter named Doug McKelway of WJLA-TV, a Washington, D.C. ABC affiliate, was recently suspended from his job for daring to tell his television viewers that President Obama was the recipient of more BP political donations than any other US politician.

Most unfortunately in all of these events is that another great voice for freedom has been silenced in America with the killing of Matthew Simmons; a sad fact made even more intolerable as the majority of the American people continue to remain complacent while the appetite of the US elite classes to steal all they can is warned is pushing them all towards a new Revolutionary War.

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Washington Post admits to censoring stories

EU Times — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 06:25:35 +0000

CofCC.org is constantly pointing out race-based censorship in the media, and now the Washington Post is actually fessing up to doing it. A while back, the LA Times made a similar confession stating that they routinely censor information about non-white crime perpetrators “so as not to unfairly stigmatize any one ethnic group.”

From Washington Post:

Pierre also worried about hyping a story that involved race. Although The Post’s coverage on and after Sunday did not specify the racial makeup of those involved, many readers assumed they were black and offered racially insensitive online comments…

The Post should always be sensitive to overplaying stories, especially if race is involved. But the problem here was that readers last weekend couldn’t get news they desperately wanted about what police said was a massive brawl on the public transit system used daily by hundreds of thousands of people…

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Russia Burns, China Drowns: US To Blame?

EU Times — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 19:52:01 +0000

Russia Burning

Russian research scientist Dr. Andrey Areshev writing for the Kremlin’s independent think tank Strategic Culture Foundation warns that the catastrophic fires raging throughout the Motherland may have been caused by American weather weapons and states that “the incidence of the current anomalously high temperatures exclusively in Russia and some adjacent territories invites alternative explanations.”

According to Dr. Areshev, the warnings of the United States using these most devastating of weapons were first noted by Russia in a book written by former US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski about America’s dual role as disseminator of the technetronic revolution and principal preserver of the International status quo titled “Between Two Ages” (1976) wherein he broached “the theme of weather control, which he regarded as a form of broader social regulation”.

To the reason behind the United States using weather weapons against the Eurasian Nations of Russia and China Brzezinski further outlined in his seminal book “The Grand Chessboard” (1998) by stating:

“In that context, how America ‘manages’ Eurasia is critical. A power that dominates Eurasia would control two of the world’s three most advanced and economically productive regions. A mere glance at the map also suggests that control over Eurasia would almost automatically entail Africa’s subordination, rendering the Western Hemisphere and Oceania (Australia) geopolitically peripheral to the world’s central continent.

About 75 per cent of the world’s people live in Eurasia, and most of the world’s physical wealth is there as well, both in its enterprises and underneath its soil. Eurasia accounts for about three-fourths of the world’s known energy resources.”

China Drowning

Following Brzezinski’s mentioning of US weather weapons and their “possible uses” against Eurasia, Canadian Professor Michel Chossudovsky, director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), wrote in 2000 “that in part the ongoing climate change could be triggered by the use of new-generation non-lethal weapons.”

The Kremlin’s official newspaper RIA Novosti in their report on Dr. Areshev’s findings further states:

“The US is certainly exploring the possibilities of controlling the climate in several regions of the world. The corresponding technology is being developed in the framework of the High-Frequency Active Aural Research Program» (HAARP), the objective being to build a potential to launch droughts, hurricanes, floods, and earthquakes. From the military standpoint, HAARP is supposed to create a novel type of weapons of mass destruction and an instrument of expansionist policy which can be used to selectively destabilize environmental and agricultural systems of target countries.

Technically, the system is known to be a set of sources of electromagnetic radiation affecting the ionosphere. It comprises 360 sources and 180 aerials having the height of 22 meters. Altogether the station emits 3,600 kW towards the ionosphere, being the world’s most powerful system of the kind. The program opened in 1990, is jointly funded by the US Office of Naval Research and the US Air Force Research Laboratory, and is implemented by several university laboratories.”

To the catastrophic weather events now occurring in Eurasia and the Sub-Continent it should be noted that we had previously warned of them coming in our January 6, 2010 report titled “Norway Time Hole “Leak” Plunges Northern Hemisphere Into Chaos” wherein we detailed the United States “testing” of their HAARP weather and atmospheric weapons in preparation for Total Global War.

Not just to weather weapons has the US been “testing”, but also earthquake ones too, and as we had detailed in our January 14, 2010 report titled “US Quake Test Goes “Horribly Wrong”, Leaves 500,000 Dead In Haiti” and February 28, 2010 report titled “US Puts South America “On Notice” With Catastrophic Chile Quake Test”.

For the reasons behind the United States unleashing their weather weapons upon Eurasia and the Sub-Continent one must first understand the catastrophic damage they have caused, and which includes:

Russia having to declare a State of Emergency as raging deadly wildfires (nearly 400 reported in past 24-hours alone) devastate their already drought stricken main crop growing regions.
Russia having to order an immediate halt to selling of their grain reserves due to their being cut by 26% due to the unprecedented drought hitting the Motherland.
Catastrophic floods hitting China killing nearly 1,000, leaving nearly 600 missing and causing tens of billions of dollars worth of property damage and putting into danger the World’s largest dam.
China having to cut its forecasts for rice and other food production due to their worst flooding in decades, and more heavy rains forecast to come.
Catastrophic flooding on the Sub-Continent that has killed nearly 40 in India’s richest grain producing region and nearly 3,000 in Pakistan.
Russia’s worst drought in at least half a century and China’s worst flooding in more than a decade causing Global food prices to skyrocket.

Now in your understanding of how devastating these US weather weapons have been upon Russia, China, India and Pakistan one must first understand that the United States fiscal year ends on the last day of September of every year, which this year, and without their receiving an estimated $350 Billion in returned US Dollars (debt) by the end of September, they could very well go bankrupt as they are already undertaking what is being called as a “monster printing” of worthless paper money they can no longer sustain.

In the past where the United States relied on the power of the US Dollar to buy their dept due to its being the World’s Reserve Currency, the same cannot be said anymore as America’s economic crisis has gone from bad to worse, and as we had detailed in our July 31, 2010 report titled “Revolution Warned Near As US Drug Shortage Points To War” and our July 23, 2010 report titled “Shock World Court Ruling Warned Will Destroy Obama, America”.

But, with the devastation being wrecked upon Eurasia’s and the Sub-Continents crops the United States will, beyond all doubt, have plenty of “willing buyers” for its grains they (coincidentally?) sell to the World only in US Dollars through their many debt instruments. Both Russia and China are able to by these US debt instruments in return for grain due to their massive reserve holdings.

Being lost upon the Americans in their use of these weather and earthquake weapons is the damage they may be doing to our planet, and which scientists are now reporting the discovery of “spacequakes” occurring in our planet’s upper atmosphere; since 2008 our Earth’s magnetic field was found to have a “massive breech”; the Earth’s troposphere is reported to be having its highest recorded temperatures ever from January-June, 2010, and, maybe most importantly the strange electric-blue “noctilucent clouds” scientists are unable to explain that are increasing all over the World and which began being seen around the World for the first time in 1885…the same year (coincidentally?) that the “Father of Earthquake and Weather Weapons”, Nikola Tesla (1856-1943), began his first “weather modification” experiments while working for the Continental Edison Company in Paris.

Even worse for our entire planet in the United States use of these catastrophic weapons, for whatever reason, is their failure to remember one of more most ancient warnings, “What man does on the Earth so shall it be done in the Heavens”, and which may very well be responsible for our Sun, for the first time in recorded history, this Sunday past (August 1^st) erupting upon its entire surface facing our Earth and unleashing at least two solar blasts due to hit us today.

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Sarkozy orders all Gypsies expelled from France

EU Times — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 01:52:50 +0000

French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Wednesday ordered authorities to expel Gypsy illegal immigrants and dismantle their camps, amid accusations that his government is acting racist in its treatment of the group known as Roma.

Sarkozy called a government meeting Wednesday after Gypsies clashed with police this month following the shooting death of a youth fleeing officers in the Loire Valley.

Sarkozy said those responsible for the clashes would be “severely punished” and ordered the government to expel all illegal Roma immigrants, almost all of whom have come from eastern Europe.

He pushed for a change in France’s immigration law to make such expulsion easier “for reasons of public order.” He said illegal Gypsy camps “will be systematically evacuated,” calling them sources of trafficking, exploitation of children and prostitution.

The language has chilling undertones in a country where authorities rounded up Gypsies and sent them to concentration camps during the Nazi occupation in World War II. Former President Jacques Chirac, the first French leader to acknowledge the state’s role in the Holocaust, condemned “the Nazi madness that wanted to eliminate the Gypsies.”

Around Europe, some 250,000 to 1.5 million Roma were killed during World War II. Accurate figures are difficult to find, because so many Roma were rounded up away from public view, executed and dumped into mass graves.

French Roma representatives were not invited to Wednesday’s presidential meeting, and said they are the only ethnic group that French authorities can openly target.

Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux insisted that Wednesday’s measures “are not meant to stigmatize any community, regardless of who they are, but at to punish illegal behavior.”

Romania and Bulgaria are members of the European Union, and their citizens can enter France without a visa, but they must get work permits to work here or residency permits to settle long term.

Community leaders contend the very principle of the meeting — which singled out an ethnic group in a country that is officially blind to ethnic origins — is racist and warn of grave consequences if their side isn’t heard. France’s government does not count how many of its citizens are of a certain ethnicity; everyone is simply considered French.

“Today … I am afraid we’re preparing to open a blighted page in the history of France, which could sadly lead to acts of reprisal in the days ahead,” said lawyer Henri Braun said at a Wednesday news conference by French Roma leaders. “There is a huge problem of racism in France towards this population, there is enormous discrimination.”

France’s relationship with what it calls Gypsies is complex and complicated by divisions among the disparate populations.

One, formally given the administrative label of “traveling folk,” includes several hundred thousand French citizens who have lived in France for centuries, and were traditionally nomadic but have become increasingly sedentary in recent years.

The other main Gypsy population is made up of recent immigrants who come mostly from Eastern European countries like Romania and Bulgaria, usually illegally, and are often seen begging on the streets of French cities.

Those in the more established communities say they are being unfairly lumped together with illegal new immigrants. Sarkozy’s orders Wednesday targeted Roma, though the violence in Saint-Aignan earlier this month was in a community of traveling folk established in the region for years.

Alice Januel, whose organization represents Catholics among French Gypsies, warned that “If Mr. Sarkozy thinks that by clamping down he is going to calm the youth, I don’t think that he will succeed. We have a youth that is rebellious.”

Sarkozy also proposed that France bring in about 20 Romanian and Bulgarian police to work in the Paris region and send French police to Romania and Bulgaria, to help fight trafficking and other crime by Roma.

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Why was an IDF helicopter training so far away from home?

EU Times — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 16:08:46 +0000

CH-53 helicopter

The IAF has begun to understand it must pay a certain price for two very important dividends: experience in challenging situations and building possible future alliances.

The veteran NCO at Tel Nof air base in Israel displays parentlike pride when showing off the Israel Air Force’s Yasur helicopters with their upgraded capabilities, and sometimes even slips in a sly hint or two at previous ops. He and his comrades – two of whom were involved in the crash during a drill over the mountains of Romania on Monday – are nothing less than loyal emissaries for the IAF.

But why was an IAF unit training foreign troops on a different continent?

Israel Air Force operations abroad really picked up pace in the mid-1990s. Until then, the IAF had essentially closed itself off, trying to keep its battle strategies clandestine, out of fear that such accessibility would diminish its edge in a world increasingly dependent on the same American equipment.

But the IAF began to understand that it had to pay a certain price to gain two very important dividends: experience in challenging situations (the kind it will need if it is ever sent to fight far from home) and building possible future alliances. Today, there is no air force in the world – not even America’s – fighting a solo war. A solid acquaintance of organizations, personnel and procedures can provide the right infrastructure for future joint operations.

Precarious balance

This has been a bad month for the Israel Air Force, which places so much emphasis on safety and striking a balance between cautionary measures and effective operations. The crash on Monday occurred during a training exercise named “Blue Skies” – a moniker so utterly misrepresentative of the weather conditions at the time of the disaster.

Given the circumstances, one must resist the natural inclination to add the crash to the long list of helicopter accidents in general, and those involving the Yasur in particular.

On helicopters such as the Yasur (as well as on transport airplanes), a flight crew comprises not just pilots and navigators, but also flight mechanics and loading inspectors from the standing army and reserve units. This was the case on the helicopter that crashed.

These airmen are intimately familiar with their helicopters, flying them across the Mideast (by day and more often by night), across long distances for endless hours, in hazy and cloudy weather, in sandstorms, in thunder and lightning. They fly in secret with the IDF’s elite Sayeret Matkal unit, and with the IAF’s Shaldag unit. They visit battlefields of potential future wars, some of which – thanks to them – may have been prevented; they take part in flight exercises in foreign lands. And one must always remember that the risk in a helicopter is the same in the cockpit as it is in the back.

It is unlikely that those taking part in the flight in Romania – where the territory is unfamiliar, mountainous and forested – were able to follow IAF guidelines with the same precision as they do in Israel. The rules of transportation and training are different there; it lends to a certain reliance on external support and supervision.

But the lessons of past accidents have been learned and internalized in the IAF, which has also taken into account procedures for dangerous situations and an organizational change in appraising the helicopters.

Although combat flights are considered the most dangerous, as the planes are exposed to direct threats from the air and the ground en route to missions, helicopter flights are often even more perilous, in particular when there are additional soldiers and passengers on board.

By poor chance, this peril was realized on Monday, but this is all part of a long and expensive process to prepare for the possibility of combat in different theaters around the world.

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Dorothy Rabinowitz: The Alien in the White House

EU Times — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 07:36:45 +0000

The deepening notes of disenchantment with Barack Obama now issuing from commentators across the political spectrum were predictable. So, too, were the charges from some of the president’s earliest enthusiasts about his failure to reflect a powerful sense of urgency about the oil spill.

There should have been nothing puzzling about his response to anyone who has paid even modest critical attention to Mr. Obama’s pronouncements. For it was clear from the first that this president—single-minded, ever-visible, confident in his program for a reformed America saved from darkness by his arrival—was wanting in certain qualities citizens have until now taken for granted in their presidents. Namely, a tone and presence that said: This is the Americans’ leader, a man of them, for them, the nation’s voice and champion. Mr. Obama wasn’t lacking in concern about the oil spill. What he lacked was that voice—and for good reason.

Those qualities to be expected in a president were never about rhetoric; Mr. Obama had proved himself a dab hand at that on the campaign trail. They were a matter of identification with the nation and to all that binds its people together in pride and allegiance. These are feelings held deep in American hearts, unvoiced mostly, but unmistakably there and not only on the Fourth of July.

A great part of America now understands that this president’s sense of identification lies elsewhere, and is in profound ways unlike theirs. He is hard put to sound convincingly like the leader of the nation, because he is, at heart and by instinct, the voice mainly of his ideological class. He is the alien in the White House, a matter having nothing to do with delusions about his birthplace cherished by the demented fringe.

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The Demographic Decline of the Czech Republic

EU Times — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 11:14:38 +0000

The Czech Republic’s picturesque capital city of Prague showcases hundreds of years of European history through its well-preserved architecture. The Czech Republic also serves as a bellwether for Europe’s demographic future. Diversity is spreading across the continent from immigrant hubs in Western Europe and arriving in the land of the Czechs.

Shocking new report details growing US police state

EU Times — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 21:22:26 +0000

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in an interview that getting precise data from the security system can be difficult.

The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy, and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it, or exactly how many agencies do the same work.

These are some of the findings of a two-year investigation by The Washington Post that discovered what amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight. After nine years of unprecedented spending and growth, the result is that the system put in place to keep the United States safe is so massive that its effectiveness is impossible to determine.

Other findings include:

■ Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security, and intelligence in some 10,000 locations across the United States.

■ An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1 1/2 times as many people as live in Washington, hold top-secret security clearances.

■ In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. They occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 Capitol buildings — about 17 million square feet of space.

■Many security and intelligence agencies do the same work, creating redundancy and waste. For example, 51 federal organizations and military commands, operating in 15 US cities, track the flow of money to and from terrorist networks.

■ Analysts who make sense of documents and conversations obtained by foreign and domestic spying share their judgment by publishing 50,000 intelligence reports each year — a volume so large that many are routinely ignored.

These are not academic issues; lack of focus, not lack of resources, was at the heart of the Fort Hood, Texas, shooting that left 13 dead, as well as the Christmas Day bomb attempt thwarted not by the thousands of analysts employed to find lone terrorists but by an alert airline passenger who saw smoke coming from his seatmate.

They are also issues that greatly concern some of the people in charge of the nation’s security.

“There has been so much growth since 9/11 that getting your arms around that — not just for the DNI [Director of National Intelligence], but for any individual, for the director of the CIA, for the secretary of defense — is a challenge,’’ Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in an interview with the Post last week.

In the Department of Defense, where more than two-thirds of the intelligence programs reside, only a handful of senior officials — called Super Users — have the ability to even know about all the department’s activities. But as two of the Super Users indicated in interviews, there is simply no way they can keep up with the nation’s most sensitive work.

“I’m not going to live long enough to be briefed on everything’’ was how one Super User put it. The other recounted that for his initial briefing, he was escorted into a tiny, dark room, seated at a small table, and told he couldn’t take notes. Program after program began flashing on a screen, he said, until he yelled “Stop!’’ in frustration.

“I wasn’t remembering any of it,’’ he said.

Underscoring the seriousness of these issues are the conclusions of retired Army Lieutenant General John Vines, who was asked last year to review the method for tracking the Defense Department’s most sensitive programs. Vines, who once commanded 145,000 troops in Iraq and is familiar with complex problems, was stunned by what he discovered.

“I’m not aware of any agency with the authority, responsibility, or a process in place to coordinate all these interagency and commercial activities,’’ he said in an interview. “The complexity of this system defies description.’’

The result, he added, is that it’s impossible to tell whether the country is safer because of all this spending and all these activities. “Because it lacks a synchronizing process, it inevitably results in message dissonance, reduced effectiveness and waste,’’ Vines said. “We consequently can’t effectively assess whether it is making us more safe.’’

The Post’s investigation is based on government documents and contracts, job descriptions, property records, corporate and social networking websites, additional records, and hundreds of interviews with intelligence, military and corporate officials, and former officials. Most requested anonymity either because they are prohibited from speaking publicly or because, they said, they feared retaliation at work for describing their concerns.

The Post’s online database of government organizations and private companies was built entirely on public records. The investigation focused on top-secret work because the amount classified at the secret level is too large to accurately track. An extensive database built by The Post about Top Secret America is available at topsecretamerica.com.

Gates, in his interview with The Post, said that he does not believe the system has become too big to manage but that getting precise data is sometimes difficult. Singling out the growth of intelligence units in the Defense Department, he said he intends to review those programs for waste. “Nine years after 9/11, it makes a lot of sense to sort of take a look at this and say, `OK, we’ve built tremendous capability, but do we have more than we need?’ ’’ he said.

CIA Director Leon Panetta, who was also interviewed by The Post last week, said he has begun mapping out a five-year plan for his agency because the levels of spending since 9/11 are not sustainable. “Particularly with these deficits, we’re going to hit the wall. I want to be prepared for that,’’ he said. “Frankly, I think everyone in intelligence ought to be doing that.’’

In an interview before he resigned as the director of national intelligence in May, retired Admiral Dennis Blair said he did not believe there was overlap and redundancy in the intelligence world. “Much of what appears to be redundancy is, in fact, providing tailored intelligence for many different customers,’’ he said.

Blair also expressed confidence that subordinates told him what he needed to know. “I have visibility on all the important intelligence programs across the community, and there are processes in place to ensure the different intelligence capabilities are working together where they need to,’’ he said.

Weeks later, as he sat in the corner of a ballroom at the Willard Hotel in Washington waiting to give a speech, he mused about The Post’s findings. “After 9/11, when we decided to attack violent extremism, we did as we so often do in this country,’’ he said. “The attitude was, if it’s worth doing, it’s probably worth overdoing.’’

Outside a gated subdivision of mansions in suburban McLean, Va., a line of cars idles every weekday morning as a new day in Top Secret America gets underway. The drivers wait patiently to turn left, then crawl up a hill and around a bend to a destination that is not on any public map and has no street sign.

Liberty Crossing tries hard to hide from view. But in the winter, leafless trees can’t conceal a mountain of cement and windows the size of five Wal-Mart stores stacked on top of one another rising behind a grassy berm. One step too close without the right badge, and armed men in black jump out of nowhere.

Past the armed guards and the hydraulic steel barriers, at least 1,700 federal employees and 1,200 private contractors work at Liberty Crossing, the nickname for the two headquarters of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and its National Counterterrorism Center. The two share a police force, a canine unit, and thousands of parking spaces.

Liberty Crossing is at the center of the collection of government agencies and corporate contractors that mushroomed after the 2001 attacks. But it is not nearly the biggest, the most costly or even the most secretive part of the 9/11 enterprise.

Every day across the United States, 854,000 civil servants, military personnel, and private contractors with top-secret security clearances are scanned into offices protected by electromagnetic locks, retinal cameras, and fortified walls that eavesdropping equipment cannot penetrate.

Much of the information about this mission is classified. And that lack of specifics is one reason it is so difficult to gauge the success and identify the problems of Top Secret America, including whether money is being spent wisely.

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