DNA Collection Bill Runs Into Opposition!

Editor's Note: Anyone can be accused of a crime! Let's contact the Maryland Attorney General or the Governor of Maryland and let them know that unreasonable seizure of our DNA will not be tolerated!

Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley's bid to expand collection of DNA samples from criminal suspects is sparking intense debate in Annapolis, with black lawmakers so upset they walked out of a Democratic caucus meeting in protest.

With objections from both ends of the political spectrum, the House of Delegates postponed debate on the bill until Thursday.

"This issue is very emotional with many people," said Del. Kumar P. Barve, House majority leader, a Montgomery County Democrat. He declined to discuss what took place at the closed-door caucus, but added: "There's hardly anything more personal than your genetic information."

The House Judiciary Committee approved the administration's DNA bill late Friday, but with significant amendments that would delay the collection and analysis of the samples taken from suspects. It also provided for automatic expungement of the information in some cases if charges are dropped.

But critics in both parties say they remain concerned about the measure, fearing it could infringe on people's constitutional rights and might wind up costing far more than the administration has predicted.

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The Collapse Of American Power

By Paul Craig Roberts

In his famous book, The Collapse of British Power (1972), Correlli Barnett reports that in the opening days of World War II Great Britain only had enough gold and foreign exchange to finance war expenditures for a few months. The British turned to the Americans to finance their ability to wage war.

Barnett writes that this dependency signaled the end of British power. From their inception, America's 21st century wars against Afghanistan and Iraq have been red ink wars financed by foreigners, principally the Chinese and Japanese, who purchase the US Treasury bonds that the US government issues to finance its red ink budgets.

The Bush administration forecasts a $410 billion federal budget deficit for this year, an indication that, as the US saving rate is approximately zero, the US is not only dependent on foreigners to finance its wars but also dependent on foreigners to finance part of the US government's domestic expenditures. 

Foreign borrowing is paying US government salaries--perhaps that of the President himself--or funding the expenditures of the various cabinet departments. Financially, the US is not an independent country.

The Bush administration's $410 billion deficit forecast is based on the unrealistic assumption of 2.7% GDP growth in 2008, whereas in actual fact the US economy has fallen into a recession that could be severe.

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Robert Fisk: The only lesson we ever learn is that we never learn

Five years on, and still we have not learnt. With each anniversary, the steps crumble beneath our feet, the stones ever more cracked, the sand ever finer. Five years of catastrophe in Iraq and I think of Churchill, who in the end called Palestine a "hell-disaster".

But we have used these parallels before and they have drifted away in the Tigris breeze. Iraq is swamped in blood. Yet what is the state of our remorse? Why, we will have a public inquiry – but not yet! If only inadequacy was our only sin.

Today, we are engaged in a fruitless debate. What went wrong? How did the people – the senatus populusque Romanus of our modern world – not rise up in rebellion when told the lies about weapons of mass destruction, about Saddam's links with Osama bin Laden and 11 September? How did we let it happen? And how come we didn't plan for the aftermath of war?

Oh, the British tried to get the Americans to listen, Downing Street now tells us. We really, honestly did try, before we absolutely and completely knew it was right to embark on this illegal war. There is now a vast literature on the Iraq debacle and there are precedents for post-war planning – of which more later – but this is not the point. Our predicament in Iraq is on an infinitely more terrible scale.

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Cheney Says He Doesn't Care What Americans Think About Iraq War!

Editor's Note: Obviously, the VP doesn't know the definition of the word "fluctuation". The American people have not fluctuated at all about the Iraq war! There has been a steady increase in dissatisfaction since the war began!

By Mike Nizza / NY Times

The Vice President Cheney, already a lightning rod for critics of the Iraq war, seemed likely to ruffle more feathers today with remarks he made to a TV interviewer as the nation marked five years of war in Iraq.

Martha Raddatz, chief White House correspondent for ABC News, sat down with Mr. Cheney in Amman, Jordan, one of several stops on a Middle East tour that includes Iraq, Israel, the West Bank, Oman, Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

After Ms. Raddatz asked about the economy — which he said was in “a rough patch,” not a recession — the subject turned to the deep unpopularity of the Iraq war. Here’s a transcript of the exchange, released by the network:

Raddatz: Two-third of Americans say it’s not worth fighting.

Cheney: So?

Raddatz: So? You don’t care what the American people think?

Cheney: No. I think you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls.

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Five Years After the Invasion of Iraq: A Debacle for U.S. Imperialism

Five years after Washington inaugurated its "shock and awe" campaign, striking Baghdad with cruise missiles and precision-guided bombs, it has become abundantly clear that the war of aggression against Iraq has produced the greatest geo-political disaster in American history.

The war’s costs, in terms of both US imperialism’s global position and sheer dollar amounts, have eclipsed the immense damage wrought by the protracted intervention in Vietnam nearly four decades ago. It has already lasted longer than the American Civil War, World War I, World War II and the Korean War. Even in Vietnam, after five years of major troop deployments, the withdrawal of American forces had already begun.

A "war of choice" that was launched as a demonstration of the overwhelming and irresistible force of American militarism has turned into an operational debacle that has strained the US armed forces to the breaking point and eroded the strategic position of the United States in every corner of the world.

For the Iraqi people, the war has produced a catastrophe. For the American people, as well, it has yielded nothing but suffering and tragedy. It unquestionably constitutes the single greatest war crime of the twenty-first century. In both its motivation and execution, it embodies the essential characteristics of similar crimes carried out in the last century.

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25 Intolerable Contradictions: The Final Undoing of the Official 9/11 Story

by Elizabeth Woodworth

A review of "9/11 Contradictions: An Open Letter to Congress and the Press," by Dr. David Ray Griffin.

At last there is a book about 9/11 that politicians and journalists can openly discuss without fear of being labeled "conspiracy theorists".

9/11 Contradictions advances no theories. It simply exposes 25 astonishing internal contradictions that will haunt the public story of this unparalleled event for all time.

Until now, the persistent and disturbing questions about the day that changed the world have confused and alienated journalists and politicians, because:

1. The technical issues regarding the collapse of the towers, the failure of the military to intercept the flights, and the relatively minor damage to the Pentagon have been considered too complex for analysis in the media.

   However, Griffin’s new book requires no technical expertise from the reader, because each readable chapter revolves around one simple internal contradiction inherent in the public story. "If Jones says ‘P’ and Smith says ‘Not P’, we can all recognize that something must be wrong, because both statements cannot be true."

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U.S. Infrastructure: I-95 Shut in Philadelphia After `Severe Damage' Found

A section of Interstate 95, the busiest highway on the East Coast, was closed in Philadelphia because of ``severe damage'' to a steel-reinforced concrete supporting column, state officials said.

The 3-mile (4.8-kilometer) stretch was shut shortly before midnight local time yesterday. An engineer inspecting the 15- foot-high column saw that a half-inch crack discovered in October had widened to as much as 5 inches, Pennsylvania Transportation Department spokesman Gene Blaum said.

Cities and states throughout the U.S. have been rushing to inspect and repair elevated highways and bridges since a span of I-35 across the Mississippi River in Minneapolis collapsed in August, killing 13 people.

New York Democratic senator and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, speaking today in Philadelphia, said I-95 was ``closed because of our failure to deal with our infrastructure, something that is long overdue.''

``This is yet another wake-up call following the collapse of levees in New Orleans and the bridge in Minneapolis,'' Clinton said in a televised news conference.

I-95 will be shut between the Allegheny Avenue and Girard Avenue exits while four steel support towers are built. They will allow the damaged column to be repaired while the road is open, Blaum said in a telephone interview.

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Opponents of Iraq War Plan Series of Protests in D.C.

Antiwar protesters said yesterday that they plan a series of demonstrations starting this evening and lasting through tomorrow that could disrupt traffic, hamper commuters and block access to some buildings in downtown Washington.

The actions, aimed to draw attention to the fifth anniversary of the start of the Iraq war, are directed at business, government, political and media centers that demonstrators blame for the continuation of the war, according to members of the United For Peace and Justice coalition, which is heading the protest.

Activists plan tomorrow morning to target the headquarters of the Internal Revenue Service, at 12th Street and Constitution Avenue NW, which they said they hope to shut down. They said they will also protest at various corporations in the vicinity of K Street between 13th and 18th streets NW.

Antiwar military veterans plan a 9 a.m. march tomorrow on the Mall from the National Museum of the American Indian to the Capitol.

Other events -- including a die-in, a knit-in and a torture simulation -- are planned at the Department of Veterans Affairs, McPherson Square, Lafayette Square, the American Petroleum Institute and the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee on Capitol Hill.

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Social Insecurity, Sooner Than You Think!

By Allan Sloan / Washington Post

One of Washington's rites of spring is almost upon us. It's the wonks' version of the Cherry Blossom Festival: the release of the annual Social Security trustees' report showing the health of our nation's biggest social program. Each year, the report touches off a debate, mostly misguided, about Social Security's financial status. Given the political environment this year, you can expect more heat than usual when the report comes out. But you're unlikely to see much light.

So let me try to illuminate things for you. Forget all the talk you'll hear about how Social Security is okay until 2040 or thereabouts. That is, as we'll soon see, utter nonsense. The real problem starts only a decade or so from now, when Social Security begins to take in less cash than it spends.

How can I say that, given Social Security's $2.3 trillion (and growing) trust fund? It's because the fund owns nothing but Treasury securities. Normally, of course, Treasury securities are the safest thing you can hold in a retirement account. But Social Security's Treasurys won't help cover the program's cash shortfall because Social Security is part of the federal government. Having one arm of the government (Social Security) own IOUs from another arm (the Treasury) doesn't help the government as a whole cover its bills.

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High Street Banks Hold Out Their Begging Bowls

High street banks went with begging bowls to the Bank of England yesterday, seeking more than £23 billion in emergency loans as fears over the global credit crunch deepened.

Shares in the banks lost more than £14 billion in a brutal day’s trading that pushed the FTSE 100 index to its lowest close in two and half years.

The sell-off was sparked by the emergency rescue of Bear Stearns, America’s fifth-biggest bank, which was snapped up by rival JPMorgan for only $240 million – 3 per cent of what it was worth last week.

But the rescue, an attempt to quell the panic, only heightened fears that a threatened US recession would wreak havoc on the global economy and could even bring down a British bank.

The worst hit of Britain’s banks was HBOS, which lost more than 12 per cent of its value. Barclays lost 9.3 per cent while Royal Bank of Scotland was down 8.7 per cent.

As the markets opened for trading yesterday, the Bank of England said immediately that it would make a further £5 billion available as panic caused interbank lending virtually to dry up.

But as soon as the offer was announced, the bank was deluged with requests for almost five times that amount, with demands totalling £23.6 billion.

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Fed Abandons Dollar in New Round of Rate Cuts

By Jerome Corsi

Wall Street opened Monday nearly 200 points down after a weekend in which Bear Stearns, the 85 year-old securities firm, and Carlyle Capital Corp., an investment fund run by one of the country's largest private equity firms, each went bankrupt..

Over the frantic weekend, the Fed took unprecedented steps to provide almost unlimited lending to prop up anticipated widespread losses in bank asset portfolios.

Yesterday, J.P. Morgan agreed to acquire Bear Stearns for $2 a share, a deal that values Bear Stearns at a mere $236 million, compared to a market capitalization of $3.54 billion only last Friday. By midafternoon trading, the Dow was in positive territory, bolstered in part by J.P. Morgan, the biggest gainer among the index's 30 component stocks.

Bear Stearns continues to face a crisis in an asset portfolio of mortgage-backed securities that was leveraged as high as 30-1 by borrowing, with the borrowed funds also invested in mortgage-backed securities.

Carlyle Capital Corp. has faced much the same problem as its highly leveraged portfolio of $21.7 billion in mortgage-backed securities also faces enormous losses.

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British in All-Out Drive for Global Chaos

by Jeffrey Steinberg

British intelligence is behind a fast-moving global insurgency against the nation-state system, with two major foci.

First, London is at the center of a drive in the U.S.A. and Europe, for a trans-Atlantic fascist-corporatist consolidation by early 2009, with the U.S. Presidential inauguration, and the launching of the new European Presidency, under the terms of the Lisbon Treaty, abolishing sovereign nations in the European Union. The last time that London sponsored a continental fascist dictatorship over Europe, with the Hitler-Nazi coup d'état of early 1933, the United States went the other way, under the new President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who revived the American System of political economy, led a global campaign to defeat fascism, and had every intention of abolishing European colonialism, had he survived the war.

Today, London is promoting New York City's corporatist mayor, Michael Bloomberg, as its new Mussolini, and is moving aggressively to assure his inclusion in either the Republican or Democratic ticket in November. The London-hatched Bloomberg operation is intended to guarantee that the United States, this time, goes with Hitler and Mussolini, not FDR. To achieve this goal within the framework of the ongoing U.S. Presidential race, London must first destroy both Democratic frontrunners, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Obama is the designated instrument to bring down the Clintons, and he is now targeted for his own rapid demise, once that mission has been accomplished, through the London-orchestrated Rezko-Auchi scandal.

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Chinese Troops Parade Handcuffed Tibetan Prisoners in Trucks

The Chinese Army drove through the streets of Lhasa today parading dozens of Tibetan prisoners in handcuffs, their heads bowed, as troops stepped up their hunt for the rioters in house-to-house searches.

As the midnight deadline approached for rioters to surrender, four trucks in convoy made a slow progress along main roads, with about 40 people, mostly young Tibetan men and women, standing with their wrists handcuffed behind their backs, witnesses said.

A soldier stood behind each prisoner, hands on the back of their necks to ensure their heads were bowed.

Loudspeakers on the trucks broadcast calls to anyone who had taken part in the violent riots on Friday — in which Han Chinese and Hui Muslims were stabbed and beaten and shops and business set on fire — to turn themselves in. Those who gave themselves up might be treated with leniency, the rest would face severe punishment, the broadcasts said.

The worst violence in 20 years in the deeply Buddhist Himalayan region has drawn a tough response from the Government, facing severe embarrassment as the riots threaten to tarnish its image of unity and stability only five months before it plays host to the Olympic Games in Beijing.

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Beyond the Border of War

 In from the cold they come, gangly young men and graying grandfathers alike, filling a downtown church with the kind of polite anticipation more befitting an afternoon wedding than an antiwar rally. Banners dangle from the choir loft, bearing the same appeal as the T-shirts for sale in the foyer: "Let Them Stay."

Lee Zaslofsky bustles from pew to pew, an anxious organizer making sure everyone is in place on a recent Saturday -- the politicians and academics, the musicians, the pacifists, and a handful of runaway American soldiers seeking refuge in Canada.

Zaslofsky, 63, knows each of the latter by both name and need. There is Jeremy Hinzman, the first one to seek asylum here, in limbo for four years now. And Phil McDowell, the computer geek whose patriotism was put to the test in Baghdad. And Patrick Hart, the veteran worried about lost medical benefits for his sick son. All found their way to Zaslofsky and the quasi-underground network he runs for AWOL Americans crossing the border with little more than what they can fit in a duffel bag.

"You should know, I do love you," he assures each one. "I'm a Vietnam resister."

Across Canada, the remnants of a lost counterculture are rising up again as hundreds of aging draft dodgers reluctantly leave the quiet comforts of their anonymous lives to help an estimated 200 Iraq war deserters who fled north with no promise of asylum.

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Despite U.S. Efforts At Concealment, More Torture Stories Leaking Out

By Sherwood Ross

"A guard held a shotgun to my head. 'You are a terrorist!'' he screamed. 'What kind of dumb stuff did you write about your treatment here?'' My hands and feet were bound, and someone kicked me from behind."

That's just a sliver of the testimony of Murat Kurnaz, a 19-year-old Muslim from Bremen, Germany, abducted while traveling in Pakistan in the company of missionaries a few months after 9/11. Kurnaz was sold as a terror suspect to the U.S. military for $3,000, imprisoned and tortured over a five-year period.

While jailed in Kandahar, Afghanistan, a Red Cross official wrote a letter home for Kurnaz and it was the "dumb stuff" in the letter that infuriated the Americans, according to the cover story in the Spring issue of "Amnesty International" (AI)magazine. The guards' response illustrates the pains the Bush regime is taking to conceal from the world its horrific crimes against Muslim prisoners in dungeons around the world. There have been numerous other cases now where the Red Cross has not been informed of the existence of "ghost prisoners", such as in the CIA prison in Kabul, or even told of the existence of a prison itself. Not surprisingly, the Red Cross has found U.S. methods are, at the least, "tantamount to torture."

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JPMorgan to Buy Bear for $2 a Share

Also see: Stocks Tumble Around the World!

Just four days after Bear Stearns Chief Executive Alan Schwartz assured Wall Street that his company was not in trouble, he was forced on Sunday to sell the investment bank to competitor JPMorgan Chase for a bargain-basement price of $2 a share, or $236.2 million.

The stunning last-minute buyout was aimed at averting a Bear Stearns bankruptcy and a spreading crisis of confidence in the global financial system sparked by the collapse in the subprime mortgage market. Bear Stearns was the most exposed to risky bets on the loans; it is now the first major bank to be undone by that market's collapse.

The Federal Reserve and the U.S. government swiftly approved the all-stock buyout, showing the urgency of completing the deal before world markets opened. The Fed also essentially made the takeover risk-free by saying it would guarantee up to $30 billion of the troubled mortgage and other assets that got the nation's fifth-largest investment bank into trouble.

"This is going to go down in very historic terms," said Peter Dunay, chief investment strategist for New York-based Meridian Equity Partners. "This is about credit being overextended, and how bad it is for major financial institutions and for individuals. This is why we're probably heading into a recession."

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Tyranny on the U.S. Border

By Manuel Roig-Franzia / Washington Post

The killers prowled through Loma Bonita in the pre-dawn chill.

In silence, they navigated a labyrinth of wood shacks at the crest of a dirt lane in the blighted Tijuana neighborhood, police say. They were looking for Margarito Saldaña, an easygoing 43-year-old district police commander. They found a house full of sleeping people.

Neighbors quivered at the crack of AK-47 assault rifles blasting inside Saldaña's tiny home. Rafael García, an unemployed laborer who lives nearby, recalled thinking it was "a fireworks show," then sliding under his bed in fear.

In murdering not only Saldaña, but also his wife, Sandra, and their 12-year-old daughter, Valeria, the Loma Bonita killers violated a rarely broken rule of Mexico's drug cartel underworld: Family should remain free from harm. The slayings capped five harrowing hours during which the assassins methodically hunted down and murdered two other police officers and mistakenly killed a 3-year-old boy and his mother.

The brutality of what unfolded here in the overnight hours of Jan. 14 and early Jan. 15 is a grim hallmark of a crisis that has cast a pall over the United States' southern neighbor. Events in three border cities over the past three months illustrate the military and financial power of Mexico's cartels and the extent of their reach into a society shaken by fear.

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Protect Yourself Against the Weak Dollar

Howard Gartenhaus
Wealth Manager at Gartenhaus Financial in Rockville, Md.

You could consider purchasing mutual funds that invest in international stocks and/or foreign bonds. When you make such purchases, you are converting dollars into the foreign currencies through the holdings of the mutual fund. Make sure the fund does not hedge for currency fluctuations.

There are many exchange-traded funds linked to commodities such as precious metals, oil and agriculture. Mutual funds that invest in companies that mine for precious metals, produce natural resources, or explore for and sell energy are also available.

Another option is to purchase ETFs that are linked to foreign currencies. For instance, it is now very easy to invest in the euro, yen, or the Swiss franc in this manner.

An important caveat: Many of the these ideas are volatile, and investors can lose money due to substantial price fluctuations.

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Goldman Sachs to Reveal $3bn Hit

Goldman, which has largely thrived amid the turmoil elsewhere on Wall Street, is expected to report a fall in first-quarter earnings of about 50 per cent. The writedown will underline how the financial turbulence is now affecting even the most stellar performers.

The bank's $3bn write­down will be based partly on the declining value of its 4.9 per cent stake in Industrial & Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), which is held separately on Goldman's balance sheet. The share price of ICBC, which conducted the world's biggest ever initial public offering in 2006, has fallen by about 14 per cent in recent months.

Goldman invested $2.3bn for its minority shareholding in ICBC, which is listed on the Hong Kong and Shanghai stock exchanges.

Goldman will also take a hit of about $1.6bn in its leveraged loans business, which has seen a marked decline in recent months amid a dearth in demand for trading bank debt. A further $1.1bn will be written down in connection with assets owned by Goldman's principal investment area, the bank's private equity arm.

Despite the multi-billion dollar hit, Goldman will point to the fact that its exposure to the deteriorating mortgage market remains minimal, according to people close to the bank.

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Dollar Falls to Record on Speculation Subprime Losses Widening

The dollar fell to record lows against the euro and the Swiss franc on speculation more banks will report credit-market losses after JPMorgan Chase & Co. and the New York Federal Reserve bailed out Bear Stearns Cos.

The dollar declined to a 12-year low against the yen after the Daily Telegraph said yesterday Goldman Sachs Group Inc. will reveal $3 billion in writedowns when it releases quarterly earnings tomorrow. Traders have increased bets the Fed will slash interest rates one percentage point tomorrow.

``The U.S. dollar will remain under pressure,'' Benedikt Germanier and Alina Anishchanka, strategists at UBS AG, the world's second-biggest foreign-exchange trader, wrote in a March 14 report. ``Easing monetary policy, ongoing uncertainties in the financial sector and rising fears of capital outflows are chief reasons for our short-term bearish outlook.''

The dollar declined $1.5748 per euro, the lowest since the common European currency's debut in 1999, before trading at $1.5727 at 7:44 a.m. in Tokyo from $1.5674 late in New York on March 14. The dollar fell to a record low of 0.9863 Swiss francs. The U.S. currency declined to a 12-year low of 98.11 yen, before trading at 98.34 from 99.09.

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