Truth In Our Time

Ron Paul Brings His Campaign To Idaho

2012-02-19T00:17:00.001-05:00

Rachel Madcow On Maine Election Fraud 2/16/12

2012-02-18T21:25:00.002-05:00

Is Ron Paul Dangerous?

2012-02-18T20:43:00.002-05:00

Daniel Hannan on Cavuto: Europeanization of America

2012-02-18T18:42:00.001-05:00

Paul Craig Roberts: China Isn't To Blame For Weak US Economy

2012-02-18T15:42:00.000-05:00

Teen Model Excommunicated For "Racism"

2012-02-18T15:40:00.003-05:00

SOURCE

A Darwin teen model who has been disqualified from a 'Grid Girls' competition over a racist post on her Facebook page says she did not realise her comments would be such a big deal.

Ellen Musk, 19, was an entrant in the Finke Desert Race Grid Girls contest and was hoping to be selected as one of 10 winners who would go on to become voluntary ambassadors for the race.

But a status update on her Facebook profile last Thursday morning has led to her disqualification.

"All I can hear is very absurd c--ns yelling angrily from downstairs and I'm on level 22 WTF?" she posted.

The comment prompted many angry responses from friends, to which Ms Musk replied: "Ok, is n--ga a better word?"

Ms Musk insists she meant no harm.

"I posted a status on Facebook… just thinking it's Facebook, it's just my friends, it's nothing that’s going to end up in the news, nothing that anybody's going to have a big crack about," she told ninemsn.

"I don't have anything against indigenous people whatsoever. I didn't mean to offend anybody but obviously I have."

She had not heard from the organisers of the Grid Girl competition but believed they had jumped to conclusions.

"I just want them to hear my side of the story so they can understand I don't have a problem with Aboriginal people whatsoever," she said.

But it was too late for the Finke Desert Race coordinators, who released a statement earlier today confirming Ms Musk's entry had been dismissed.

"The Finke Desert Race and the Finke Grid Girls do not condone or tolerate any 'racist' comments or attitudes. Being a Grid Girl is essentially being an ambassador of our great race, and any such comments are unrepresentative of our values," the statement read.

The race is an off-road, two-day contest for bikes, cars, buggies and quads which starts in Alice Springs and ends 420km away in the Finke community of Aputula.

Rachel Madcow On Maine Election Fraud 2/15/12

2012-02-18T15:23:00.001-05:00

6 Trillion In "Fake" US Bonds Seized In Zurich

2012-02-18T15:16:00.001-05:00

SOURCE

Back in the summer of 2009, a peculiar story circulated when two Japanese individuals were arrested trying to smuggle $134 billion in US bonds into Switzerland from Italy. The story quickly died down after it was subsequently reported that the bonds were merely fake bearer bonds. Nobody heard much about it since then. Until today, when out of the blue we get a new story which blows that one out of the water. According to Bloomberg, "Italian anti-mafia prosecutors said they seized a record $6 trillion of allegedly fake U.S. Treasury bonds, an amount that’s almost half of the U.S.’s public debt." From here the story just gets weirder: "The bonds were found hidden in makeshift compartments of three safety deposit boxes in Zurich, the prosecutors from the southern city of Potenza said in an e-mailed statement. The Italian authorities arrested eight people in connection with the probe, dubbed “Operation Vulcanica,” the prosecutors said. The U.S. embassy in Rome has examined the securities dated 1934, which had a nominal value of $1 billion apiece, they said in the statement. Officials for the embassy didn’t have an immediate comment." ...And weirder: "The individuals involved were planning to buy plutonium from Nigerian sources, according to phone conversations monitored by the police." ...And really, really weird: "The fraud posed “severe threats” to international financial stability, the prosecutors said in the statement." Ok great, however one thing we don't get is just how can $6 trillion in glaringly fake bombs be a "threat to international financial stability."
More from Bloomberg:

The financial fraud uncovered by the Italian prosecutors in Potenza includes two checks issued through HSBC Holdings Plc in London for 205,000 pounds ($325,000), checks that weren’t backed by available funds, the prosecutors said. As part of the probe, fake bonds for $2 billion were also seized in Rome.

HSBC spokesman Patrick Humphris in London declined to comment when contacted by telephone.

Phony U.S. securities have been seized in Italy before and there were at least three cases in 2009. Italian police seized phony U.S. Treasury bonds with a face value of $116 billion in August of 2009 and $134 billion of similar securities in June of that year.

The U.S. Secret Service averages about 100 cases a year related to bonds and other fictitious instruments.

As a reminder, total US debt in circulation is just over $10 trillion. So if the allegedly "fake" bonds were sufficiently threatening to put international financial stability at risk, just what is going on here?
Some more from the BBC:

US officials confirmed that the bonds were counterfeit.

Fake US securities have been seized in Italy before and there were at least three cases in 2009.

But this case is on a different scale to previous investigations as the fake bonds have a value equivalent to almost half of the entire US debt pile.

"Everything began with an investigation into mafia clans in the Vulture-Melfese area in the southern Basilicata region," said Giovanni Colangelo, the head of the prosecutor's office in Potenza.

Jewish Owned Univision Pushes US Towards War With Iran

2012-02-18T15:15:00.001-05:00

SOURCE

Washington, DC - It's not often that Univision, the leading Spanish-language television network in the United States, releases its content in languages other than Spanish. It is, after all, a Spanish-language television network. But earlier this month the broadcaster did something out of the ordinary, screening an English version of a recent report on Iran that's received a rapturous reception from neoconservatives in Washington. And it at least appears to have done so at the behest of its hawkish new fan club.
Why would a network best known for sappy telenovelas shift to producing sloppy war propaganda - and English-language propaganda at that?

Perhaps, as is usually the case with the corporate press, Univision's bias and peculiar programming choices are best explained by simply noting who owns it: Israeli-American businessman Haim Saban, a self-described “one-issue guy” - that issue being Israel - who has been up front about purchasing media outlets to promote his own political views.

While those views are well-known if you look for them - hint: his public statements on Iran have invoked the Holocaust - they're also not hard to gather from the right-wing-infused investigative reports Univision has been airing since he took over.

Originally broadcast in Spanish late last year, the ever-so-subtly titled report that's driving the neoconservative community wild - “La Amenaza Iraní”, or “The Iranian Threat” - received an unusual February 8 screening, in English, at the neoconservative Hudson Institute, a Washington think tank that counts former Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, convicted felon

Lewis “Scooter” Libby, as one of its top scholars. Focussed on Iran's relations with Latin America, the hour-long piece regurgitates all the pro-war right's by now familiar talking points about nefarious Islamists acting in concert with leftist Bolivarians to bring Terror to the US' doorstep, complete with all the ominous music and images of swarthy foreigners one would expect from a Hollywood movie or a corporate news report.

“Iran is looking for all the support that it can get to fight back against its fiercest enemies, Israel and the United States,” declares reporter Vytenis Didziulis in the opening minute of the piece. “Latin America, because of its geographical and cultural proximity, may present the most direct way for Iran to challenge - or even attack - the US.”

What follows is a string of allegations about Iran's dealings with Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and other Latin American countries notable mostly for how little there is to them. A former Ecuadorian intelligence official, for instance, fired by President Rafael Correa for insubordination amid charges that he was a CIA asset, is given time to claim - without so much as an incriminating Word file - that his former boss is “sending intelligence agents to secret Iranian training facilities” in South America. Viewers are also presented with the information that the Venezuelan military, as part of efforts to prepare for a feared US invasion back in 2005, reportedly distributed a manual on asymmetric warfare written based on the tactics employed by the Lebanese group Hezbollah - tactics the US military has itself studied.

The “exclusive!” meat of the report is video footage from 2007 purporting to show the Iranian ambassador to Mexico at the time, Mohammad Hassan Ghadiri, discussing a plot to launch cyber-attacks against the US government with a group of Mexican college students who were posing as hackers. Nowhere in the footage, though, is there any evidence to dispute Ghadiri's claim he was merely entertaining a group of kids he suspected, not without cause, were actually CIA agents.

During a panel discussion following the screening, Didziulis - seemingly unconcerned with what an appearance at a far-right think tank would say about the objectivity of his reporting - acknowledged that his network was the only one to run with the story; every other media outlet that received the footage declined to run it. Such are Univision's standards.

False assertions

And such are the network's standards that, beyond the idle speculation, assertions capable of being debunked with no more than 30 spare seconds and an Internet connection are presented as fact. Univision news anchor María Elena Salinas, for instance, states in the programme that, “In November of 2011, the International Atomic Energy Agency indicated that Iran is in fact developing a nuclear weapon as part of a covert military operation.”

The agency's actual report, of course, declares no such thing, instead noting “concerns” about “possible” military dimensions to Iran's declared, civilian nuclear energy programme while nevertheless unambiguously stating that it “continues to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material” in the country.

But the report is not without its moments. Those who appreciate dark, funny-if-these-people-didn't-have-power comedy will appreciate the segment where Salinas presents the head of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, far-right Florida Republican Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, as an authoritative expert on Latin America. And they'll laugh out loud when the congresswoman's efforts to stir the American public into a jingoistic rage ends with her suggesting, amazingly, that Iran just may well bomb the very countries she regularly accuses of being in Tehran's pocket.

“Are we going to wait for a bomb to explode in Buenos Aires again? Or in Managua? Or in La Paz?” Ros-Lehtinen says in Spanish, the last two cities being the capitals of Nicaragua and Bolivia, which Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadenijad just visited on a diplomatic trip she herself dubbed a “tour of tyrants” during a recent congressional hearing.

But consistency, facts - they are silly, tiresome things. And they are of little import in Washington, where scary portrayals of messianic Muslims armed with WMDs have long trumped boringly rational assessments of the world. And those attending the Hudson Institute screener, certainly, were clearly ecstatic to hear their own factually challenged rhetoric rebroadcast under the auspices of objective journalism.

“If there are still scholars, journalists and policymakers who remain skeptical, Univision's extraordinary documentary should erase all doubt,” declared Hudson's Jaime Daremblum, the US ambassador to Costa Rica under George W Bush who is on record declaring Iran's dealings with the likes of Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua stem from a “messianic” desire to attack the United States and its interests. The report, Daremblum said, “persuasively shows that Iranian activities represent a major threat to hemispheric security”.

Douglas Farah, a terrorism “expert” who once claimed that the Muslim Brotherhood had “made tremendous strides in occupying positions of influence within the Obama administration”, was equally gushing in his praise for the report, to which he and a host of other usual suspects on the right contributed. During the panel discussion following the screening, he explained he was so impressed with the original Spanish-language report that he lobbied for an English version to present to Washington's policymakers.

“When I saw the final product, I thought it was important to bring that to a broader audience,” said Farah. “The Univision audience is largely the Latin American community, and in Spanish, and it was not as broadly circulated in Washington policy circles as I felt it should be. And so I approached Jaime about the possibility of hosting something here.”

Neither Farah, the Hudson Institute nor Univision responded to several requests for comment. But then, you don't really need a comment from a spokesperson to understand what's going on here.

Saban's role

In 2006, Univision was purchased for $1.1bn by a group of investors led by Saban, who now serves as its chairman. One of the wealthiest men in the US, Saban is a major donor to the Democratic Party who, according to a Fortune magazine profile, regularly “gossips with Rupert Murdoch, vacations with Bill Clinton ... and confers with former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres.”
As journalist Belén Fernández notes, Saban's political views tend to mirror those of his hawkish establishment friends. And when it comes to perceived threats to Israel, he's about as subtle as the reports his media properties produce.

“When I see Ahmadinejad, I see Hitler,” Saban said of the Iranian president the same year he purchased Univision. “His motivation is also clear: the return of the Mahdi is a supreme goal ... [and] worth the liquidation of five and a half million Jews. We cannot allow ourselves that.”

This past December, meanwhile, Saban hosted a “Friends of the Israel Defence Forces” fundraiser that, according to the Jewish Journal, was “teeming with Los Angeles' most hawkish, hard-line lovers of Israel”. And, lest anyone think he separates his personal views from his businesses, at a 2009 conference in Israel he outlined “three ways to be influential in American politics,” which according to New Yorker magazine consist of “mak[ing] donations to political parties, establish[ing] think tanks, and control[ing] media outlets.”

And in “targeting media properties”, the New Yorker noted, "Saban frankly concedes his political agenda, as evidenced by his repeated efforts to purchase the Los Angeles Times."

“I thought it was time that it turn from a pro-Palestinian paper into a balanced paper,” Saban said when asked to explain his interest in the paper.

But as the fifth-largest television network in the US, with a rapidly growing audience among 18-49 year olds, Univision reaches a much bigger audience than the Times. And it provides a much larger platform from which to promote a hawkish line on Israel's perceived foes, particularly to the under-propagandised and rapidly growing Hispanic market - a market of roughly 50 million that one Zionist organization, The Israel Project, recently labelled the world's “most hostile towards Israel.”

With the network reportedly in talks with the Walt Disney Company to launch an English-language cable news channel, Univision's dishonest - and strangely English - documentary on the “Iranian threat” may just be an example of what's to come. At a minimum, it suggests yet again that when it comes to corporate news, objective facts and evidence are less important than who's paying to keep the lights on.

Politico: Maine Objections Getting Serious?

2012-02-18T15:11:00.002-05:00

SOURCE

As far as national political types are concerned, the Maine presidential caucus has been over and done with since Saturday; Ron Paul supporters' objections to the outcome have been treated more or less as sore-loser griping.

The Bangor Daily News reports, however, that local complaints about the Maine process have been building, as communities that held their caucuses before Feb. 11 learn that their votes didn't necessarily factor into the statewide count:

All along, state GOP officials said communities knew that their votes would not be included in the final results if they did not hold their caucus by Feb. 11.

However, a review of the town-by-town results released Saturday by the Maine GOP suggests that some communities that had caucused prior to Feb. 11 were not counted. Nearly all Waldo County towns held caucuses on Feb. 4 but those towns were blank in the results released by the state party. Additionally, Waterville held its caucuses ahead of time but their results were not included.

Waldo County GOP Chairman Raymond St. Onge said the results were sent to the state party on Tues., Feb. 7. He said those results probably would not have changed the outcome but was disheartened the votes were not included. …

Some big names already are urging the party to reconsider.

“I spoke with Chairman Webster [Saturday night] to express my strong view that our votes must count and to make the point that they certainly will count in the court of public opinion and in the media,” Senate President Kevin Raye of Perry said Sunday in a post on the Facebook page of Dean McGuire, president of Machias Bay Area Chamber of Commerce.

Regardless of how it affects the Romney-Paul count, Maine's cleanup operation can't be good for the already beaten-down caucus tradition itself.

Fatass Chris Matthews Censors Ron Paul

2012-02-18T15:07:00.002-05:00

Gold: 1980 Vs. Today

2012-02-18T15:05:00.001-05:00

Quote Of The Week

2012-02-18T15:04:00.000-05:00

“Whoever controls the volume of money in our country is absolute master of all industry and commerce…and when you realize that the entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by few powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and depression originate.” – President James Garfield, 2 weeks before his assassination.

Ron Paul In Vancouver WA 2/16/12

2012-02-17T19:50:00.002-05:00

I love videos like this, it reminds me that there are still good people in this world, good people who want to live free. The Spirit of the Founders is alive and well in the Ron Paul Revolution!

Chicago Tribune On Maine Voter Fraud

2012-02-17T19:40:00.005-05:00

SOURCE

Mitt Romney has already had a caucus victory in Iowa undone. Could his win in Maine be next?

On Saturday, the Maine Republican Party released the results of a presidential preference straw poll that had been conducted over several weeks at municipal caucuses. The party declared Romney the winner by 194 votes over Ron Paul.

The result was immediately called into question by supporters of the Texas congressman, and for good reason -- not all the votes were counted. The tally was made public even though most towns in Washington County had yet to caucus -- their meetings were postponed because of snow -- and will instead be held this weekend.

Furthermore, the results published by the Maine GOP had no votes recorded from another 200 cities and towns. Some of the smaller locales were not scheduled to hold caucuses, though many others did.

Pressure has been building on the state GOP leadership to recount the votes. Chairman Charles Webster had told the Portland Press Herald on Wednesday that he did not want to do so until the state committee met next month.

That stance may be changing. Politico reported Thursday that Maine Republican Party leaders have contacted local party officials to ask them to "reconfirm" the vote totals. A spokesman for the party could not be reached Thursday, but a statement on the caucuses will be released Friday.

Though it criticized how the state party conducted the vote, Paul's campaign has said it would not seek a recount on its own. Spokesman Jesse Benton told USA Today the campaign wasn't interested in having the party review the "meaningless, partial" vote.

Maine's caucuses were the most poorly attended of any of the GOP contests to date, with only a few thousand people turning out. The straw poll conducted at the local meetings has no impact on how the state will ultimately award its 24 delegates. Most will be selected at district and state conventions in May.

Still, the Romney victory was cheered by his campaign, especially after a trio of losses earlier in the week -- in Missouri, Minnesota and Colorado -- to Rick Santorum. On his Twitter feed, Romney wrote Saturday: "I thank the voters of Maine. I’m committed to turning around America & am heartened to have the support of so many."

It was Santorum who defeated Romney in Iowa's caucus on Jan. 3, declared the victor by 34 votes two weeks after initial tallies had declared Romney the winner.

Judge Napolitano Fired After This Episode Of Freedom Watch

2012-02-17T19:27:00.000-05:00

Very Dangerous Amounts Of Lead Found In Lipstick

2012-02-17T19:24:00.001-05:00

The maximum amount of lead allowed by the EPA in public drinking water is .015 parts per million. Some of the lipsticks on this extensive list is over 7! I would seriously rethink any use of these products.

FULL LIST OF LEAD IN LIPSTICK

TSA Forces Woman To Use Naked Body Scanner Three Times Because of "Cute" Figure

2012-02-17T19:20:00.000-05:00

Reality Check: GOP Scrambles Under Rampant Election Fraud

2012-02-17T19:13:00.000-05:00

SOURCE

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is back on track after winning the Maine caucuses.

What the headlines haven't told you is that what happened in Maine is the messiest caucus Republicans have had so far, and it may not be over yet.

Maine, is not a major state during national primaries. Only 24 delegates come out of Maine to the national convention. But what happened there over the weekend does more than raise eyebrows. It is enough to make you question, was the caucus fixed?

Saturday night, February 11, the head of the Maine GOP, Charlie Webster, announced that Governor Mitt Romney won the Maine caucus by a slim margin.

Official totals read Romney barely winning the caucus by less than 200 votes.

The only problem, the governor was declared the winner with only 84 percent of precincts counted.

Two counties, Washington County and Hancock County had not yet held their caucuses. In Hancock, County Republicans had decided to hold their caucus this Saturday on February 18. In Washington County, the state GOP canceled the caucus because of snow concerns. Turns out, the area only got a light dusting.

The big problem here, Mr. Webster says even when those caucuses are held this Saturday, the votes won't count. And that is just the beginning of the problems in Maine.

Ben has the Reality Check you won't see anywhere else.

Gerald Celente Top Trends For 2012

2012-02-17T18:57:00.001-05:00

Unarmed Man Shot By Police While Holding 9 Month Old Baby

2012-02-17T11:02:00.005-05:00

An Arizona man was shot to death by police Tuesday while holding his grandson.

"There were at least three officers in position to engage the suspect. At least one of the officers thought he saw something in the suspect's hands," said Sgt. Mark Clark.

Loxas was standing outside of his home with his grandchild still in his arms when Officer James Peters fired one shot to the head, killing the suspect.

Police say the 9-month-old boy was not injured during the shooting.

Officers also escaped unharmed.

Some neighbors are now questioning the officers actions.

Investigators say the officers on the scene thought Loxas was holding a gun.

Detectives did not find a weapon on Loxas following the shooting, but did locate several firearms inside the home.

Officer Peters, who fired the fatal shot, has been involved in seven shootings over the past decade.

Six of those have been fatal, and all have been ruled justified.

Increasingly Doctors Refusing Service To People Who Refuse Vaccines

2012-02-17T11:01:00.000-05:00

Pediatricians fed up with parents who refuse to vaccinate their children out of concern it can cause autism or other problems increasingly are "firing" such families from their practices, raising questions about a doctor's responsibility to these patients.

Medical associations don't recommend such patient bans, but the practice appears to be growing, according to vaccine researchers.

In a study of Connecticut pediatricians published last year, some 30% of 133 doctors said they had asked a family to leave their practice for vaccine refusal, and a recent survey of 909 Midwestern pediatricians found that 21% reported discharging families for the same reason.

By comparison, in 2001 and 2006 about 6% of physicians said they "routinely" stopped working with families due to parents' continued vaccine refusal and 16% "sometimes" dismissed them, according to surveys conducted then by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

FULL STORY

pRick Santorum: No Friend Of Limited Government

2012-02-14T22:53:00.000-05:00

Police Kill Unarmed Marine In Front Of Daughters

2012-02-14T19:28:00.004-05:00

Judge Napolitano: Final Word on the Last Episode of Freedom Watch

2012-02-14T19:28:00.001-05:00