Border crackdown fuels smugglers’ boom

Yahoo | Dec 30, 2006

Toughened U.S. border enforcement has prompted substantially more illegal immigrants to hire smugglers to help them cross over from Mexico — and competition among sophisticated criminal networks for customers has spawned violence and sometimes death.

The evidence is abundant in border boomtowns, where human traffickers rustle together flocks of immigrants for the journey north. Further evidence comes from tens of thousands of interviews of illegal border crossers in surveys by a Mexican government-funded research institution, which were analyzed by The Associated Press.

“What was once a discretionary expense has now become a necessity,” said Jorge Santibanez, who oversaw the surveys while president of Tijuana-based El Colegio de la Frontera Norte.

AP’s examination of the sweeping data found the use of smugglers on the rise among those surveyed. The interviewees were border crossers who returned to Mexico within three years or were caught and kicked out by the Border Patrol.

Nature, not humans, blamed for Australia drought

AFP | Dec 28, 2006 

Australia’s devastating drought is far more likely to be part of a natural cycle than a result of the man-made greenhouse effect, an Australian climate scientist has said.

Barrie Hunt, a researcher with government science agency CSIRO, dismissed suggestions that global warming, believed to be caused by carbon emissions, is responsible for the “Big Dry” gripping much of south-eastern Australia.

“It is very, very highly likely that what we are seeing at the moment is natural climatic variability,” Hunt told the Australian newspaper.

After studying a CSIRO model of Australia’s natural climate patterns over the past 10,000 years, Hunt said the current drought, whose severity has led some scientists to label it a once in a millennium event, was by no means unique.

He said historical data — which used air pressure, temperature, wind and rainfall information — put current conditions into perspective, revealing 30 periods of drought lasting longer than eight years in the past ten millenia.

“The longest sequence was 14 years in Queensland-New South Wales, 11 in the south-east and 10 in the south-west.”

He said that each of those significant dry spells occurred at random times and had an unpredictable duration.

Brother Gerald Ford, 33rd degree Mason of the Shrine

John Ratcliff | Dec 28, 2006 

 

So, Ford was a top level Mason. Surpise, surprise. But there’s nothing to worry about. Even though you don’t know what a Mason is (90% of people on the street have not a single clue), and even though secretive Masons run the government, it isn’t any of your business, so move along, there’s nothing to see here, everything is going according to plan. Allow the criminal elite aristocracy to run the affairs of the world and keep paying your debts and taxes to the globalist banksters who are funding your demise. Everything will be perfect when you are living in the “freedom camps”, sedated, submissive and begging for a drink of water and a crumb of bread. So take your happy-pills and have a Happy New World Order.

PW

“A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.” President Gerald Ford

President Gerald R. Ford was Initiated in Malta Lodge No. 465 in Grand Rapids, Michigan on September 30, 1949. Columbia Lodge No. 3, District of Columbia, conferred the degrees of Fellowcraft and Master Mason on Brother Ford as a courtesy to Malta Lodge on May 18, 1951. Brother Ford’s father, Gerald R. Sr., a 33rd degree Mason presented the lambskin apron.

He received the Scottish Rite degrees in the Valley of Grand Rapids in 1957 and created a Sovereign Grand Inspector General Honorary 33rd degrees, Northern Masonic Jurisdiction, in 1962. This is the highest honor that can come to an honorary member of the Northern Supreme Council of the A.A.S.R.

Joined Saladin Shrine Temple, A.A.O.N.M.A.S. in 1959.

Member of Court No. 11, Royal Order of Jesters.

Honorary Member, DeMolay Legion of Honor.

But his first services to Freemasonry came way before this when he was selected for the Eastern Team on the Shriner’s East West Crippled Children game at San Francisco. This was on January 1, 1935. He was a member of the University of Michigan’s undefeated national championship football teams and in 1934, played in the Shriner’s East-West Crippled Children’s benefit classic in San Francisco.

Brother Ford is also …

A member of Saladin Temple, A.A.O.N.M.S., Grand Rapids, Michigan
American Legion
Veterans of foreign Wars
AMVETS

MASONIC RECORD

Initiated: September 30, 1949, Malta Lodge No. 465, Grand Rapids, Michigan, along with his half-brothers Thomas Gardner Ford (1918-1995), Richard Addison Ford (1924-) and James Francis Ford (1927- ).

The Fellowcraft and Master Mason Degrees were Conferred by Columbia Lodge = No. 3, Washington, D.C., on April 20 and May 18, 1951, as a courtesy to Malta Lodge.

Brother Ford was made a Sovereign Grand Inspector General, 33°, and Honorary Member, Supreme Council A.A.S.R. Northern Jurisdiction at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia, on September 26, 1962, for which he served as Exemplar (Representative) for his Class.

Brother and President Ford was unanimously elected an Active Member of the International Supreme Council, Order of DeMolay and its Honorary Grand Master, at its Annual Session held at Orlando, Florida, April 6-9, 1975; Brother Ford held this post until January 1977, at which time he became a Past Honorary Grand Master, receiving his Collar and Jewel on October 24, 1978 in Topeka, Kansas, from the Hon. Thomas C. Raum, Jr., Grand Master, Order of DeMolay.

Parents of dead kids blame police

CNN | Dec 30, 2006

One by one 38 children went missing in Nithari village of Noida, and the villagers say a slow and inept Uttar Pradesh police kept them, and the investigation, at bay all this time.

And on Friday, the satellite township witnessed a shocking recovery of skeletons of children. Anxious parents thronged the site as news spread.

As Sonya recognised her five-year-old son Sheikh Raja’s clothes, she burst out in anger at the police.

“Just because we’re poor, and we’re not from this village?” asked Sonya, parent of a missing child.

Most of the residents of Nithari village in Noida happen to be illegal immigrants from across the border. They live in constant fear of the police and that’s why they say, when their children went missing, the police was slow in investigating their case.

“Had the police shown any interest earlier, things would not have come to this, and the numbers would have not been so high,” said Urmila, relative of a missing child.

But still there are hopeful parents like Ashok, who’s hoping against hope that his son Max missing since April this year, is not amongst the bodies recovered.

“I just want to clear my doubts. I still hope his body is not found here,” said Ashok, parent of another missing child.

And as the recovered articles are matched, there is one more confirmation that a child is no more. But that’s news no parent here would want to hear.

A dictator dies – but tyranny of violence goes on and on

Independent | Dec 31, 2006  

Scores of Iraqis are dying every day. It was revealed yesterday that the death toll for US troops since the invasion is just short of 3,000, with 108 killed in December, and pro-Saddam factions swore yesterday that the violence would continue. By last night, the day’s death toll stood at more than 70.

A divided country marked the death of its former dictator with a mixture of carnage and celebration. Around the world, condemnation of the hastily carried-out execution grows. Andrew Malone reports

As the body of Saddam Hussein was displayed on Iraqi television wrapped in a white shroud, the dawn execution of the Iraqi dictator did little to lift the darkness engulfing the country ­ and provoked a bitter worldwide debate over his punishment.

While America hailed the “act of justice” and exiled Iraqis danced in the streets, celebrating from Sydney to San Francisco, the first bombs of the post-Saddam world exploded on a minibus south of Baghdad, killing 25 people and injuring 62. The morgue was hastily filled with bodies, and the suspected bomber was cornered in the street and murdered by a mob.

While the Vatican and Islamic leaders condemned the execution, life in Iraq continued much as it had throughout Saddam’s rule and the subsequent US-led occupation: with bloodshed, vengeance and death.

Scores of Iraqis are dying every day. It was revealed yesterday that the death toll for US troops since the invasion is just short of 3,000, with 108 killed in December, and pro-Saddam factions swore yesterday that the violence would continue. By last night, the day’s death toll stood at more than 70.

Neoliberal One Worlder Officially Kicks Off Presidential Selection Campaign

Kurt Nimmo | Dec 29, 2006 

John Edwards, behind his boyish smile fully supports “the utopian submergence of the United States as a subsidiary administrative unit of a global government,” as Admiral Chester Ward, who served as Judge Advocate General for the Navy and was a member of the CFR for 16 years, described the ultimate plan of the elitists

Get ready for more of the same. Get ready for repackaged rigmarole. Get ready, Democrats and “progressives,” to be fooled again.

John Edwards, reborn and packaged afresh, has announced his intention to run for president in 2008. In addition to “a more progressive campaign of eliminating poverty, reducing global warming and providing universal health care for all Americans,” warm and fuzzy catch phrases targeted at easily duped “progressives,” Edwards is “apologizing for his vote to send troops to Iraq which he stood by steadfastly in the 2004 campaign and is calling for 40,000-50,000 troops to come home immediately,” according to ABC News.

Notice he is not calling for an immediate end to the “war,” as he is dressed up this time around as a “moderate,” as opposed to an insipid version of neocon lite, as he was in 2004 as Kerry’s sidekick.

Edwards talks the talk about feeling the pain of average Americans and their increasing slide out of the middle class. And yet he spends a lot of time hanging out with the “triumvirate of elite organizations,” in particular the Council on Foreign Relations (as an example of his habitual haunting of the CFR, see this page).

No doubt Edwards fully embraces the neoliberalism of the CFR and its desire for a one world government, a plan that envisions all of us working down on the slave plantation, as millions are currently in China, the neoliberal dream society.

Of course, John Edwards, as a CFR confrere, would never admit as much, even though it is common knowledge the organization works behind the scenes for the realization of a “globalist concept,” as the CFRite Joseph Kraft told the congressional Reece Committee back in 1953.

Gerald Ford’s Role in the JFK Assassination Cover-Up

Information Liberation | Dec, 28 2006 

 

The co-conspirators celebrate: Members of the Warren Commission present their report on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. L-R: John McCloy, J. Lee Rankin (General Counsel), Senator Richard Russell, Representative Gerald Ford, Chief Justice Earl Warren, President Lyndon B. Johnson, Allen Dulles, Senator John Sherman Cooper, and Representative Hale Boggs. Credit: LBJ Library photo by Cecil Stoughton

Newly released documents show that Warren Commission member Congressman Gerald Ford pressed the panel to change its description of the wound and place it higher in Kennedy’s body. Ford wanted the wording changed to: “A bullet had entered the back of his neck slightly to the right of the spine.” The panel’s final version was: “A bullet had entered the base of the back of his neck slightly to the right of the spine.”

This crucial change only came to light in 1997, when the Assassination Record Review Board released handwritten notes made by Ford that had been kept by J. Lee Rankin, the Warren Commission’s chief counsel. Ford’s change is even at odds with his own declaration in the Oct. 2, 1964 issue of Life: “I personally believe that one of these three shots missed entirely – but which of the three may never be known. I believe that another bullet struck the president in the back and emerged from his throat (and went on to strike Connally.)”

When the alteration was brought to Ford’s attention in 1997, he said it “had nothing to do with (thwarting) a conspiracy theory” and was made “only in an attempt to be more precise.” Assassination researcher Robert Morningstar, however, called the change “the most significant lie in the whole Warren Commission report.” He pointed out that if the bullet had hit Kennedy in the back, it could not have gone on to strike Connally the way the commission said it did. Morningstar contended that the effect of Ford’s editing suggested that a bullet hit the president in the neck – “raising the wound two or three inches. Without that alteration, they could never have hoodwinked the public as to the true number of assassins.”

Ford’s alteration supports the single-bullet theory by making a specific point that the bullet entered Kennedy’s body ”at the back of his neck” rather than in his uppermost back, as the commission staff originally wrote.

Harold Weisberg, a longtime critic of the Warren Commission’s work, said: “What Ford is doing is trying to make the single bullet theory more tenable.”

David Ray Griffin Uses 9/11 to Call for a New World Order

Alexconstantine.blogspot.com  | Dec 29, 2006

Ray Griffin writes:

“At the same time as the case is being made for the necessity and possibility of global government, people in various religious and philosophical traditions need to be interpreting those traditions, probably through a combination of retrieval and reformation, so as to reveal and emphasize their support for this transition to world unity … My major project at present is, in fact, to develop a theology for a new world order … “

Safety project focuses on eyes of children, the elderly and everyone else

Houston Chronicle | Dec 29, 2006 

Technology can identify missing children, elderly

Technology developed to keep track of prisoners by scanning their irises became available Thursday to identify missing children or elderly people afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease in Galveston County.

The Galveston County Sheriff’s Department is the first sheriff’s department in Texas and the 47th nationwide to join the Children’s Identification Database, or CHILD Project.

The addition of Galveston County is part of an effort to image the irises of 5 million children into a nationwide database over the next few years, said Robert Melley, vice president and CEO of Biometric Intelligence & Identification.

“We have 1,800 sheriff’s departments representing 46 states who have committed to participating,” Melley said.

So far, the CHILD Project is in 26 states after more than 18 months, said Biometric President Sean Mullin. Children with an iris scan in the national database cannot be identified unless they are in a county that has the CHILD Project equipment, he said.

The system can scan an eye and match an iris in 3 to 5 seconds after comparing it with stored images in a national database, Mullin said.

Mullin and Galveston County Sheriff Gean Leonard appeared together at a news conference at the Galveston County Justice Center to explain how the technology will assist in identifying missing children.

“We hope others will follow our lead in Texas,” Leonard said in announcing the department’s participation.

THE DEATH OF CASH

The Mirror | Dec 27, 2006 

RIP MONEY: BORN 640BC DIED 2007 AD

Payment by phone is here

MONEY talks – and in the very near future it will be talking through your mobile phone.

Fumbling for coins in your pocket will be a thing of the past as the latest technology lets you load up your phone with credit and pay by simply pointing it at the till.

It’s further proof that new technology is killing off hard cash.

In the coming year, even the smallest purchases will be paid for electronically after credit card giants Visa and Barclaycard struck a deal to create the next generation of “wave and pay” cards for purchases of less than £10.

Users will simply wave the card across a scanner to pay for small items for which they would normally use coins, such as their Daily Mirror or a pint of beer.

But the Baja Beach Club in Barcelona has taken the technology one step further by having tiny data chips implanted surgically under customers’ skin.

The VeriChip then allows clubbers to pay for drinks by waving their arm across the counter.

Already more purchases are made on plastic than in cash, and a study by retail analyst Datamonitor suggests that cards could replace cash altogether within 10 years.