Rothschild and Rockefeller families join forces for some extra added wealth and power

The transatlantic alliance cements a five-decade acquaintance between the now ennobled Jacob Rothschild (R), 76, and David Rockefeller (L), 96, the grandson of the ruthlessly acquisitive American oilman and philanthropist John D Rockefeller.

Telegraph | May 31, 2012

By Alistair Osborne

RIT Capital Partners, which is chaired by Lord Rothschild, has taken a 37pc stake in Rockefeller Financial Services, the family’s wealth advisory and asset management wing. It has snapped up the holding from French bank Société Générale for less than £100m.

The transatlantic alliance cements a five-decade acquaintance between the now ennobled Jacob Rothschild, 76, and David Rockefeller, 96, the grandson of the ruthlessly acquisitive American oilman and philanthropist John D Rockefeller.

The two patricians now plan to capitalise on their family names to buy other asset managers or their portfolios, using their networks of top-notch contacts to ensure they get a seat at the table for any deal.

“We’ve known each other for a long time, they have a good business,” said Lord Rothschild yesterday. “We haven’t got a presence in the US and this brings together two formidable names in finance.”

He said the two firms planned to capitalise on current market conditions where banks, like SocGen in this instance, are selling non-core assets to rebuild capital ratios. “At a time when big banks are destabilised, there may well be opportunities,” he said. “We could buy an asset management company or grow one. Rockefeller already has $34bn (£21.9bn) assets under administration.”

Rothschild and Rockefellers in joint venture

Rockefeller and Rothschild Dynasties Join Forces

The Rockefellers and the Rothschilds Make a Deal

The Rockefellers and Rothschilds Hook Up

Old money alliance will attract new wealth

Rothschild buys into Rockefeller wealth business

RIT Capital Partners, Chaired By Lord Rothschild, And Rockefeller & Co. Announce Strategic Partnership

He said David Rockefeller was still “very involved” in the business, though it is run day to day by chief executive Reuben Jeffery.

The Rockefeller group goes back to 1882, set up to invest the family money made by John D Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, the forerunner for today’s Exxon Corporation, which he built with a Darwinian aggression. “Do you know the only thing that gives me pleasure? It’s to see my dividends coming in,” he once said.

The Rothschild banking dynasty has its roots in the 18th century when Mayer Amschel Rothschild set up a business in Frankfurt.

Lord Rothschild fell out three decades ago with his cousin Sir Evelyn de Rothschild, who then ran the UK branch of the family bank NM Rothschild. That sprang to fame in 1815 when it bought government bonds in anticipation of Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo.

Lord Rothschild’s relations with the French side of the family have been better though and he likened the Rockefeller deal to RIT’s tie-up earlier this year with the Edmond de Rothschild Group, which has €150bn (£120bn) under management.

“We think that having that span of interests in Europe and America – as well as China – will give us a better chance of finding exceptional investment opportunities,” he said.

RIT, which has net assets £1.9bn, has had a tricky few months with the shares down about 14pc in the past year. They fell 6 today to £11.25.

Lord Rothschild said: “Everyone has been marked down. We didn’t have a brilliant year on the quoted side but we did do very well on the private side,” realising investments in North Sea operator Agora Oil and Gas and credit manager Harbourmaster.

 

Scandal-plagued Rupert Murdoch to appear before British Parliament for grilling on the “dark arts” of hacking

Rupert Murdoch is at the center of a scandal surrounding his reporters’ illegal methods. Elisa Miller for News

Rupert Murdoch asked to appear at Parliament to be grilled on hacking scandal

DAILY NEWS | Jul 13, 2011

BY Lukas I. Alpert AND Helen Kennedy

Rupert Murdoch was asked to appear in front of the British Parliament next week to be grilled about the illegal “dark arts” employed by some of his journalists.

House of Commons’ Culture Committee chairman John Whittingdale initially said Murdoch, his son James and top executive Rebekah Brooks had agreed to appear next Tuesday, calling it “the first sensible thing they’ve done.”

Later, however, he said it was “not clear” after all if the Murdochs would actually show up.

He said they cannot be compelled, as both are naturalized American citizens. Brooks, a Brit, can be ordered to appear.

Murdoch’s bad week got worse Tuesday as the Conservative government decided to back the Labour Party’s push to kill NewsCorp’s $14 billion takeover bid for British Sky Broadcasting, which would have vastly increased his ownership of the European airwaves.

The House of Commons is expected to pass a motion Wednesday opposing the deal, with all political parties in agreement.

The scandal engulfing Murdoch’s British newspaper empire – the kind of maelstrom that his papers routinely whip up around other public figures – has put the media mogul on the defensive and emboldened his critics.

After reeling for nearly a week as daily revelations of wrongdoing mounted, Murdoch began to fight back Tuesday.

He announced he would use funds earmarked for the BSkyB deal to buy back $5 billion worth of shares of News Corp – a strong show of confidence for jittery investors. The share price, which had slid 14% in a week, stabilized.
NewsCorp also began to issue denials of the accusations against it.

On Monday, former Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown added to the widespread outrage by accusing Murdoch’s Sun newspaper of illegally obtaining and publishing his infant son’s 2006 medical diagnosis of cystic fibrosis, a private issue Brown and his wife were still coming to grips with.

On Tuesday, the company denied breaking any laws to get the information.

“We are able to assure the Brown family that we did not access the medical records of their son, nor did we commission anyone to do so,” a News International statement said.

The Sun said the story came from “a member of the public whose family has also experienced cystic fibrosis” who “wanted to highlight the cause of those afflicted by the disease.”

“The individual has provided a written affidavit this afternoon to a lawyer confirming this,” the statement said.

The paper said the article “was written sensitively and appropriately” and noted that Brown made no complaint at the time.

Brown was certainly complaining Tuesday.

“Sarah and I were incredibly upset about it,” Brown told the BBC, saying he was “in tears” when Sun editor Rebekah Brooks told him the paper was going to publish information he said was known only to the family and the boy’s doctor.

“Your son is now going to be broadcast across the media,” Brown said. “But there’s nothing that you can do about it. You’re in public life.”

Brown said Murdoch journalists used “disgusting” and “criminal” methods to dig up dirt on him for years, including illegally gaining access to his personal banking records and legal files.

Earlier disclosures had revealed that reporters working for Murdoch’s News of the World had hacked into the voicemails of celebrities and politicians.

The floodgates of outrage opened when it was revealed that reporters listened to the voicemails of missing 13-year-old murder victim Milly Dowler, dead soldiers and terrorism victims.

Of the 4,000 likely victims of the longterm hacking campaign, only 170 have been notified, police said.

Murdoch shuttered the News of the World last week, but the sacrifice failed to cool the scandal.

Newer allegations of wrongdoing involve the Sun and Sunday Times of London, also Murdoch publications.

The former editor of the News of the World who was later hired as press secretary by Prime Minister David Cameron was arrested last week.

Technocracy Endgame: Global Smart Grid

The GENI project is gathering momentum and is endorsed by the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Sen. James Jeffords (I-VT) and Noel Brown (North American Director, United Nations Environmental Program), the United Nations and by the governments of Canada New Zealand, Switzerland, and China, among others.

“There is a new world wide web emerging right before our eyes. It is a global energy network and, like the internet, it will change our culture, society and how we do business. More importantly, it will alter how we use, transform and exchange energy.”

- Terrawatts.com home page

augustreview.com | Jun 23, 2011

By Patrick Wood

The dark horse of the New World Order is not Communism, Socialism or Fascism: It is Technocracy.

The development and implementation of Smart Grid technology in the U.S. – reinventing the electrical grid with Wifi-enabled digital power meters – is proceeding at breakneck speed. Although Smart Grid is the result of years of government planning, the recent kickoff was made possible through massive “green” grants that were quietly included in President Obama’s economic stimulus package starting in 2009.

These lucrative grants have drawn in a host of corporate players, from utility companies to digital meter manufacturers to control software vendors. Global companies like IBM, GE and Siemens are putting their full effort behind the “build-out” that will consolidate all of America into a single, integrated, communication-enabled electric delivery and monitoring system, collectively called Smart Grid.

Proponents of Smart Grid claim that it will empower the consumer to better manage his or her power consumption and hence, costs. The utility companies will therefore be more efficient in balancing power loads and requirements across diverse markets.

However, like carnival barkers, these Smart Grid hocksters never reveal where or how SmartGrid came into being, nor what the ultimate endgame aims to achieve; perhaps most of them have no idea either, but simply repeat the mantra as if they know what they are talking about.

In SmartGrid: The Implementation of Technocracy?, I revealed the background of both Technocracy and Smart Grid, and most importantly, the links between them. Smart Grid is born out of Technocracy and not the other way around.

Technocracy is a totalitarian system of government where scientists, engineers and technicians monitor and control all facets of personal and civic life – economic, social and political. Herein lies the real danger: Who are these unelected controllers and why should anyone believe that they would be benevolent dictators instead of tyrants? Americans are a freedom-loving people who would certainly reject Technocracy’s stealth takeover, if only they were aware of it. Indeed, Americans did pointedly reject Technocracy in the 1930′s!

Thirty years ago, a researcher’s mantra was “Follow the money, follow the power.” This must now be restated: “Follow the energy, follow the power.”

Full Story

Zbigniew Brzezinski: ‘Globalization is a grand idea’

Global Security Forum 2011: Discussing Geostrategic Trajectories Mid-Day Sessions

“Globalization is a grand idea in an age in which we’re becoming globally interactive and interdependent.“

csis.org | Jun 8, 2011

MR. BRZEZINSKI: Yeah. (Laughter.) So in that setting, I think it’s not surprising that people in this country, to some extent, are concerned. And then, beyond that, there are some serious problems to which there are no easy answers. How do we get out of the debt issue, into which we have slid, kind of almost by indirection, as a kind of – at one point, it was the conventional wisdom that this can go on forever because of the enormous confidence the world community has in us. But the world community has much less of a confidence in us today. And so that, I think, is a serious problem that is complicating our ability to act on the global scene.

Discussing Geostrategic Trajectories

And, as a consequence, I think some Chinese have begun to taste their sense of historic triumph prematurely because they aren’t there yet. And while they’re headed in that direction, they could encounter enormous difficulties at home – probably more at home than abroad because they’re being very prudent, very careful abroad.

And at the same time, we’re a little bit uneasy about our prospects, with all of that complicated by an Asia to which I don’t have any real answer, but which I think perhaps has been oversimplified by one grand slogan, namely, globalization. Globalization is a grand idea in an age in which we’re becoming globally interactive and interdependent. But it does raise the question, well, if you plunge too rapidly into globalization, perhaps the distribution of benefits will be asymmetrical. And that, certainly, is a question that pertains to our industry and our ability to compete effectively in the manufacturing area on the global scene, in which certain advantages accrue to those who are coming up rather than pioneering. And I’m not sure that we can find a solution to that problem by emphasis on high tech because high tech, by definition, is not labor-intensive.

Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
Global Security Forum 2011
Subject: Discussing Geostrategic Trajectories:
An Interview With Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Former National Security Advisor

Complete PDF Transcript

Secret Weather Weapons can kill millions, warns top Russian politician

nation.com.pk | May 18, 2011

A top Duma political leader caused shock waves in a recent television interview when he warned that Russia could deploy an arsenal of new technology to “destroy any part of the planet” and kill over a hundred million people using secret weather weapons if the United States, the UN or Georgia tried to stop Russia’s entry into the WTO.

Vladimir Zhirinovsky is Vice-Chairman of the Russian State Duma and leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR), the first officially sanctioned opposition party after the fall of communism. The LDPR has deep links with the former KGB and Communist Party and has become a significant force in Russian politics, despite Zhirinovsky himself being branded as a militant neo-fascist.

According to a translation provided by a Russian speaker, during the interview Zhirinovsky went off on a bizarre tangent after he was asked how Russia should treat countries like Georgia and the United States who try and block Russia’s entry into the World Trade Organization.

Saying that the American government in Washington DC had “no future” and would “collapse,” Zhirinovsky cited Russia’s supremacy in space and stated that the country had, “Lots of money, resources, and new weapons that no one knows about.”

“With them we will destroy any part of the planet within 15 minutes,” he sensationally warned.

“Not an explosion, not a ray burst, not some kind of laser, not lightning, but a quiet and peaceful weapon,” added Zhirinovsky, warning that “whole continents will be put to sleep forever” and that “120 million will die” if anyone interfered with Russia’s claim on the Kuril Islands, which are the subject of a territorial dispute with Japan.

The female presenter of the news program smirked as he made the comments, but Zhirinovsky’s manner was far from jovial.

Zhirinovsky made reference to the recent tsunami in Japan, suggesting that the “new weapons” to which he refers are related to weather control technology, which has been intensely studied by both the U.S. and Russia since the 1950′s and is commonly used today.

Air Force Wants to Track You Forever With a Single Camera Click

wired.com | May 19, 2011

By Noah Shachtman

Don’t bother with the iris scanner or the fingerprinting machine. Leave the satellite-enabled locators and tell-tale scents back on the base, military manhunters. If an Air Force plan works out as planned, all you’ll need to track your prey is a single camera, snapping a few seconds of footage from far, far away.

Huntsville, Alabama’s Photon-X, Inc. recently received an Air Force contract to develop such a camera. With one snap, the company claims, its sensor can build a three-dimensional image of a person’s face: the cornerstone of a distinctive “bio-signature” that can be used to track that person anywhere. With a few frames more, the device can capture that face’s unique facial muscle motions, and turn those movements into a “behaviormetric” profile that’s even more accurate.

“The proposed work will help identify non-cooperative dismounts using remote sensors, from standoff distances that were previously impossible,” reports Toyon Research Corporation, which also got an Air Force grant for bio-signature development. “This identity information can help intelligence analysts connect specific people to events and locations, and learn about insurgent operations.”

But the combo won’t just help flesh-and-blood airmen keep tabs on their fellow humans, Photon-X adds. It “can help Humanoid Robots navigate and find objects in a cluttered room.”

And it could be used to monitor suspicious behavior practically anywhere. “A brief list of potential industries includes law enforcement, banking, private corporations, schools and universities, casinos, theme parks, retail, and hospitality.”

So the next time you’re at the Bellagio, and a real-life android walks up to you, calls you by name, and asks about what you thought was an extremely private evening — you can thank the Air Force and its tech-enabled manhunters for the experience.

‘Somebody did something bad to me’: What IMF boss ‘sex attack’ victim told horrified brother about ‘assault’ at New York hotel

Denied bail: Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the International Monetary Fund, waits to be arraigned today

Strauss-Kahn ‘will claim consent, say defence lawyers’

Victim called her brother an hour after alleged assault

Claimed IMF chief ‘twice forced himself on her’

Police reportedly found blood on sheets in suite

Fresh claim he victimised other maids at same hotel

Daily Mail | May 17, 2011

By Daniel Bates

The alleged rape victim of Dominique Strauss-Kahn told a relative in her first phone call after the attack: ‘Somebody did something really bad to me’, he revealed tonight.

The woman phoned her older brother an hour after the alleged assault took place and gave him a horrifying account what the head of the IMF allegedly did to her.

Crying uncontrollably, she said that she had been trapped inside the hotel bedroom while the Frenchman twice tried to force himself on her.

She told him he was the first member of family to whom she had revealed the alleged attack He said he told her not to talk to anybody and immediately contacted a lawyer to represent her.

The alleged victim’s brother spoke out as Strauss-Kahn, 62, spent his first night in Rikers Island prison after being refused $1million bail.

His lawyers have indicated that the IMF chief will claim the sexual encounter was consensual, according to the New York Post.

Speaking exclusively to Mail Online, the alleged victim’s brother said: ‘No family should have to go through this.

‘She is a hard-working woman who is just a victim. She is a wonderful west African immigrant who just wants to work hard.

‘I love her, she is my little sister and she is doing better now she has had a chance to talk to a lawyer. She is somewhere very, very safe and will stay that way’.

The brother, 43, a restaurant manager from Harlem in New York, said his sister, 32, called him on Saturday in the afternoon, a mere hour or so after she claimed the attack took place.

He recalled: ‘She rang me and she said: “Somebody has done something really bad to me. I’ve been attacked”.

‘She was crying all the time.’

The brother, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said that he wanted to see Strauss-Kahn face a trial if he pleaded not guilty.

‘I trust the American justice system and will let it do what it has to do,’ he said.

‘I want him to see justice. Justice will be served’.

Meanwhile Strauss-Kahn was spending his first night in an isolation cell at New York’s notorious Rikers Island jail after he was denied $1m bail on charges that he raped the hotel maid.

Today prosecutors revealed graphic details of Strauss-Kahn’s alleged brutal sex attack on the maid at a bail hearing in front of a female judge at Manhattan’s criminal court.

Police also reportedly found blood on bed sheets in the hotel suite where the assault allegedly took place and DNA samples on carpet and fabric that they removed for testing.

A rape kit is also said to have found DNA on the victim after she reported the attack.

Looking haggard and wearing the previous day’s clothes, Strauss-Kahn, who should have been meeting European finance ministers in Brussels, stood at the bench next to his lawyer Benjamin Brafman as prosecutors outlined the severity of the charges against him.

These include two counts of a first degree criminal sexual act, two counts of sexual abuse, attempted rape, unlawful imprisonment and forcible touching. He faces up to 25 years in prison if convicted.

A one-page indictment provided further lurid claims, accusing Strauss-Kahn of forcing the maid to take part in both oral and anal sex.

The court papers claim he forcibly touched the woman’s breasts, twice ‘forcibly made contact with his penis and the informant’s mouth’ and ‘engaged in oral sexual conduct and anal sexual conduct with another person by forcible compulsion’.

It took 20 minutes for Judge Melissa Jackson to refuse Strauss-Kahn’s bail offer of $1million at the hearing this morning.

He had also offered that all his travel documents  be confiscated in the potential deal, his lawyer Mr Brafman said.

Judge Jackson said she was a ‘fair judge’ but added: ‘When I hear your client was at JFK airport about to board a flight that raises concern.’ Strauss-Kahn was on an Air France flight minutes from take-off when he was arrested.

Assistant District Attorney John A McConnell had earlier called Strauss-Kahn an ‘incurable flight risk’ and voiced concerns that if he managed to flee to France the U.S. would not be able to extradite him.

He called the charges severe and said that ‘the victim provided a very powerful and detailed account’ of the alleged attack and had had a full sexual assault examination in hospital.

The maid, a Guinean immigrant, told authorities that when she entered Strauss-Kahn’s suite to clean it on Saturday afternoon, he emerged naked from the bathroom and chased her down a hallway before pulling her back inside.

The maid claims she then briefly fought him off before he dragged her into the bathroom and forced her to perform oral sex on him.

The woman said she was able to break free again as he tried to remove her underwear and ran downstairs to tell hotel staff what had happened.

After Strauss-Kahn rang to recover his mobile phone, which he had left in his room, detectives were able to find him at John F Kennedy airport.

Indicating that there ‘may be’ forensic evidence in the suite supporting the maid’s claims, Mr McConnell added that he had seen CCTV video footage of Strauss-Kahn leaving the hotel.

He appeared to be ‘a man who was in a hurry’, he said.

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Brzezinski: Libya Action Isn’t War, But “Necessary Intervention”

Newsmax | Mar 24, 2011

By Hiram Reisner

Former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski calls U.S. action in Libya something between war and military intervention, because America and its allies are not trying to conquer the country. But Libyan tyrant Moammar Gadhafi would the “top political leader in the Middle East” if nobody had stepped in — regardless of how the intervention is labeled, Brzezinski also said Thursday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

“Well, it really isn’t war,” Brzezinski said. “It’s something between war and military intervention, to stop something that is going on, but without really trying to conquer the country. But I have to tell you frankly . . . I cannot think of another instance in recent times in which I myself was so uncertain in thinking about the problem, about how we should act. Because there are so many downsides and so many uncertainties.

“But in the end, I concluded that, if we didn’t act it would be worse,” Brzezinski said, adding that he has some misgivings about the way it is being handled.

“Two things would be terrible: first, the mass slaughter of the people in Benghazi and the symbolic significance of that in the Middle East,” he continued. “And secondly, who would stand tall in the Middle East, astride the Middle East — Gadhafi. The person who blew up an American airliner, incidentally. He would be the top Arab political leader in the Middle East.

“What would be the consequences of that for the Middle East and for us?” Brzezinski said. “We are there to save lives, but the necessary component of that is that he has to go. Because if he stays, he’s going to be a source of conflict, a competitor to al-Qaida in his hostility to the West — specifically to us — it will be viewed as a massive defeat for the United States.”

Brzezinski said he believes it would be appropriate if continued Libyan military action ended up being European-led, but “the heavy punching needs to be done by us.”

“The objective has to be to prevail as quickly as possible, induce the Libyan armed leadership to rebel against Gadhafi, if we can . . . and in any case, in the process, asserting our domination.”

Soros: Chinese Communist Police State Could Become “The Envy Of The World”

“Perfect order and global governance are not realistic expectations. However, it is a sad fact that Western democracies provide less successful leadership than China.”

‘World Does Need Order,’ Soros Says

dealbook.nytimes.com | Mar 9, 2011

By CHRIS V. NICHOLSON

The last time George Soros gave a talk at the Traveller’s Club in Paris, it was just days after Lehman Brothers had collapsed into bankruptcy.

“It was one of the most tense days of my life,” Mr. Soros said on Wednesday while at the club for a talk on global financial regulation sponsored by the French-American Foundation. “The market was on the verge of collapsing. It was touch and go.”

Mr. Soros said he drew several lessons from those turbulent months.

“The world does need order,” he said, “and that order needs maintenance. The idea that markets can correct their excesses turned out to be false.”

He continued: “Perfect order and global governance are not realistic expectations. However, it is a sad fact that Western democracies provide less successful leadership than China.”

Mr. Soros warned that China’s model of state capitalism, in which the interests of the individual are subordinated to those of the government, posed a danger if its example became “the envy of the world.”

Worries about China aside, when Mr. Soros came to Paris this time he was noticeably at ease.

Soros: China Must Be Part Of The New World Order and Needs to “own it”

“I’m more relaxed, now that I’m retired,” he said. Mr. Soros stepped down from daily management of his funds in 2000, re-emerging briefly in 2008 to steer them through the financial crisis.

For a man of Mr. Soros’s varied interests, his so-called retirement doesn’t mean rest.

On his present grand tour, he is busy urging the European Union to clean up its financial house. And he is promoting a research group he co-founded, the European Council on Foreign Relations, which advocates a more coordinated foreign policy for the European Union.

“The authors of the euro knew that it was an incomplete construction,” he said. “They could be confident that when deficiencies became apparent, the political will would be there to overcome them. Now, political will is difficult to summon.”

Related

Soros: The Chinese Model Of Suppressing Individuals Could Become The Envy Of The World

Mr. Soros described an explosive situation in Europe, where a two-speed economy could increase tensions and xenophobia.

Germany and the Scandinavian countries are moving ahead even as fellow members of the euro zone, including Greece and Ireland, slip further behind, crushed by debt and crippled by budget cuts.

That divided Europe, he said, is due to policies “dictated by creditors like Germany.” These creditors have made every effort to avert bank failures and postpone financial restructuring, he said, because they fear a domino effect throughout Europe.

“They are pushing out restructuring for fear of another Lehman,” Mr. Soros said, “by insisting that outstanding debt is sacrosanct.”

Bad private sector debt — for example, that held by Irish banks — was guaranteed by Dublin in 2008 and became a sovereign debt problem. In other words, the Irish taxpayer has been asked to pay bondholders who bet on reckless financial institutions.

“The bondholders are protected because the authorities are worried that the banks can’t take the loss,” Mr. Soros said, but he noted it was “unfair that the taxpayer should be absorbing those losses.”

Instead, he said, Europe should reorganize its rescue mechanism to supervise and protect the banking system across borders. “It should be available also to guarantee banks that become insolvent,” he said.

European leaders are negotiating this month over a euro zone pact that could touch everything from corporate taxes to the legal retirement age. Concessions from debtor nations may be needed if Germany is to back a larger European rescue fund.

Mr. Soros criticized the constraints of the agreement, the details of which are still emerging, but he acknowledged that Germany had its own domestic political situation to consider.

“This is what the German authorities have found possible, and they have found very strong political resistance even to this arrangement,” he said. “I’m very worried about it. It’s going to get worse as time goes on.”

He warned of a lost decade, like that experienced in Latin America after its debt debacle in the early 1980s.

The budgetary crisis unfurling in the United States on a state and municipal level has parallels to the European situation, Mr. Soros said, but is worse in some ways.

“It is exaggerated by political infighting, because the Republicans are engaged in a maneuver of starving the beast for political purposes,” he said, explaining that the G.O.P. was trying to shrink the government by blocking tax hikes, while attacking public employee unions, a major source of funding for the Democrats.

Mr. Soros was also asked about Carl C. Icahn, who sent a letter on Tuesday informing investors that his funds would return all outside capital.

“Given the rapid market run-up over the past two years and our ongoing concerns about economic outlook, and recent political tensions in the Middle East, I do not wish to be responsible to limited partners through another possible market crisis,” Mr. Icahn wrote.

Asked whether he thought Mr. Icahn was right to think that the current market environment posed threats for hedge funds, Mr. Soros said simply: “Carl Icahn has his own problems.”

Mr. Icahn’s former right-hand man, Keith Meister, was reported in December to be planning his own event-driven fund, seeded with $250 million from Soros Funds. The new firm is called Corvex Capital, and it also has attracted Mr. Icahn’s former chief operating officer, Rupal Doshi, Hedge Fund Alert has reported.

Vaccine Safety Advocates Demand an Apology from Bill Gates

ageofautism.com | Feb 24, 2011

Three weeks ago Microsoft chief Bill Gates labeled those who question vaccine safety as “anti-vaccine” and that claimed that “they kill children” during an interview with CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

On Tuesday of this week, the United States Supreme Court told parents we have no recourse to a court of law for compensation when “unavoidably unsafe” vaccines harm our children (or ourselves).

February had more than its fair share of grim news concerning autism, vaccine safety and vaccination choice.

On Thursday, vaccine safety advocates responded passionately but respectfully to these events.  Advocates from the tri-state area gathered in front of Microsoft’s executive offices in New York City for a press conference. The advocates demanded an apology from Gates and decried the majority opinion in the Supreme Court’s Bruesewitz v. Wyeth decision.  Media filming the event included CNN, local CBS and ABC affiliates, and LNS.

Related

• Critics Say Gates’s Anti-Polio Push Is Misdirected
• Gates describes “magic of vaccines” to improve humanity
• Court Protects Vaccine Manufacturers, Not Injured Children
• Parents: You Can Say No to Vaccinations, Right? Maybe Not for Much Longer
• Vaccinated vs. Unvaccinated Children: Some Data are In and They are Disturbing

Led by Vaccine Epidemic co-editors Louise Kuo Habakus and Mary Holland, the advocates demanded a reasoned dialogue on vaccine safety issues to further our common goal of protecting children’s health, rather than name-calling and rhetoric designed to squelch debate and silence dissent.

Habakus demanded an apology from Gates for his “egregious and irresponsible statement.”  She admonished Sanjay Gupta and others who have the public ear for allowing Gates’s statement of intolerance to go unchecked.  As she said, it is, in the end, Gates and others who demand blind adherence to public health dogma who are damaging the very program they seek to guard: “In truth, the people who deny the reality of vaccine injury are the ones who undermine the nation’s vaccine program.  When those in power tell half-truths about vaccines, people reluctantly conclude that their trust was misplaced.”

Mary Holland addressed the Bruesewitz decision.  She explained that the Supreme Court removed any remaining incentive vaccine manufacturers had to make vaccines safer by shielding them from legal liability when their vaccines damage those who are required to receive them.  The Court sent a clear message to parents that we are on our own when it comes to vaccine injury.  Holland read powerful remarks from the Bruesewitz family, as well as from the Cedillo and Hazlehurst families, whose claims of vaccine injury were denied in administrative proceedings – the only recourse now left to those injured by vaccines.  The statements can be read in full at www.vaccineepidemic.com.

They were followed by an impressive lineup of advocates. First, John Gilmore, Director of the Autism Action Network, spoke about the “no-choice choice” and vaccine mandates in New York state.  He was followed by Lisa Rudley, an advocate who has helped hundreds of families find the right treatments to help their children.  Rudley spoke about chronically ill children and asked why it is “anti-vaccine” to ask questions about vaccine safety.  Next, Mary Coyle, an advocate and healthcare practitioner, spoke about our children’s stolen future and the legacy of injury and damage. Katie Wright, an Age of Autism contributing editor who frequently writes about federal autism policy, was the final speaker.  Holding up a picture of her own injured child, she spoke about government double-speak and the politics of autism causation.

Holland  brought together these themes when she said:

Mr. Gates, these families, and those of us assembled here today, invite you to take a penetrating look at the “miracle of vaccines.”  Vaccines may indeed protect some, but they have ravaged others.  We are not anti-vaccine –we are pro-safety and pro-justice.  We demand an apology for your words of intolerance, and we demand that you, the medical profession, and our government respect the hallmark of ethical medicine — free and informed consent.

At the conclusion of the press conference, Habakus attempted to deliver a copy of Vaccine Epidemic to the Microsoft offices, asking that it be given to Bill Gates.  Her gesture was rebuffed.

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Bill Gates Admits Vaccines Are Used for Human Depopulation