Maybe They Should Get Better Lawyers?

One of the inviolable rules of conspiracy theories is that anything which contradicts it, is only proof of the depth of the coverup. Greg Szymanski has another Wanta update, in which he complains about the fact that Wanta has not come up with his mythical $4.5 trillion has he has long promised he would. This is of course, not an indication of Wanta's dishonesty, but proof that the Illuminati are sneaky little bastards who will do anything to avoid paying up. It is quite convenient logic, you can't lose. Quite hilarious to read too.

The holidays have come on gone and the American people never received their $4.5 trillion Christmas present, as promised by former Treasury agent Leo Wanta.

"There is a lot more going on behind the scenes of this story than meets the eye," said one avid Arctic Beacon reader who has closely followed the story. "You must ask: Who really is controlling the trillions of dollars, will the money ever be released fore the betterment of the economy and, of course, what are the real intentions of all the parties involved?"

The reader is referring to the complex financial scenario surrounding the Wanta trillions and the hold-up of the $4.5 trillion settlement agreed upon in May between Wanta and certain high-level U.S. officials regarding off-shore and off-the-books money amassed at the end of the Cold War.

This story, which they constantly complain has been ignored by the military, has still managed to create ripples throughout the financial community, despite being completely ignored by everyone. Whoever knew that the Arctic Beacon was so heavily trafficked by the Wall Street set.

For the last several months Wanta has remained out of the public eye as he works behind the scenes trying to gain release of the money.

"He'd like to talk but he just can't at this time," said Cottrell who also promised to keep the American people abreast of the status and whereabouts of the $4.5 trillion."

For the last six months, the Wanta story has generated tremendous interest around the world in terms of human interest and, more importantly, creating shockwaves in international financial circles as the U.S. has been accused of not being able to honor its commitments.

For example, one reader interested in the story said: "I was thinking perhaps you should add something like "trillions??" since so many people still don't know who Leo Wanta is, even though this is the most important story of the decade."

Interestingly enough, this is all being controlled by the Vatican.

And for those who back Wanta, they call him the "ultimate patriot" trying to "buck the system" while stopping the global elite and Vatican-led Illuminati, trying to destroy America on all fronts.

But for those more skeptical readers, they claim Wanta is not telling the whole story, adding the powers that be never will release such a large sum of money or do anything to benefit the economy. They further claim Wanta could be used as a smokescreen to cover the real thievery of trillions going on behind the scenes, including involvement by high level Vatican officials and their minions working in the U.S. government.

I just have one question. Do the Jews know about this? Get me Mr. Rothchilds on the phone...

Leo Wanta Update: Who is Christopher Story?

As I mentioned before, there are 3 people involved in the Leo Wanta story, Wanta himself, Michael C. Cottrell, and Christopher Story, an editor for a journal titled the International Currency Review. While I am pretty convinced this whole thing is a hoax, I am still not sure what the objective is, so I have been trying to figure out who these people are. I even e-mailed Cottrell, asking how I could get a copy of his thesis, but received no response.

Story, much like Cottrell, has been on Greg Szymanski's radio program several times, making the some ridiculous claims and accusing the same international powers of involvement in this conspiracy. One of his biggest themes is that the mainstream media refuses to pick up the story. He is correct in this, I can still find no references to either Story or the Wanta story, by any mainstream souce. The fact that there is no substantiation for this tale, however, appears the mostly likely explanation.

The International Currency Review, oddly enough, doesn't have its own website, but shares one called World Reports with other periodicals run by Story such as Soviet Analyst and Economic Intelligence Review. This publication is presented as a serious financial journal, with a rather steep pricetag of $525 a year, but it has been rather difficult to find out much about it.

I am a graduate business student, so I looked it up at our library, the University of Washington library has one of the largest collections in the world, and was actually able to find the ICR in the stacks. They only carry it from the early 70s to 1995 unfortunately. Looking through the articles, it appeared to start out as a legitimate financial journal, with mundane articles on currency exchange and monetary policy, but starting in the early 90s began focusing on paranoid Cold War/Illuminati/Vatican conspiracy theories, many of which are reflected on Story's website.

Soviet Analyst remains the only reliable intelligence publication in the world that is devoted exclusively to the Soviet Leninist dimension of the continuing dialectical World Revolution (the Thesis) and to the systematic exposure of the continuum of Soviet strategic deception and revolutionary antagonism towards the international community. The Antithesis to this state of affairs is the proactive World Revolution stance of the United States — a revolutionary power by definition — the agenda of which is inscribed upon the Great Seal of the United States, a fact of which almost everyone is ignorant. The year 1776, inscribed upon the bottom of the incomplete geomasonic pyramid on the Great Seal, which is replicated on the familiar $1.0 note, is the date not of the foundation of the United States, but of the publication by the lapsed Catholic priest-promoter of the Illuminati, Professor Weishaupt of Ingolstadt University, of a dark treatise on the ‘New World Order’. Soviet Analyst positions the essentially self-standing Soviet ingredient of today’s World Revolution within the context of this evil revolutionary dialectic. Successive issues of Soviet Analyst have exposed dimensions of continuing covert Soviet strategic deception operations — which the United States is at last having to face, having woken up, for instance, to the fact that the insurgency in Iraq is being directed by Soviet Military Intelligence (GRU). We have exposed the true identity of Mikhail Gorbachëv, too.

This probably explains why the library stopped carrying the journal. Why waste $525 a year of the taxpayer's money?

A check of all the databases, academic, news, and financial comes up with a complete blank. Google Scholar show similar results, a few citations in the early 1970s, dwindling down to nothing.

So who exactly is Christopher Story? Well unfortunately I could not find out more, but he doesn't appear to have any more credibility than the other characters.

Shouldn't This Be in the Clearance Section?

I was perusing my local Barnes & Noble today and I came across this book titled, The Coming Economic Collapse of 2006. Heh. Somehow it doesn't seem like they are moving very many copies.

Don't these people know the first rule of predictions is never to fence yourself in?

Leo Wanta Update: Who is Michael C. Cottrell, MS?

In my last post on the strange story of Leo Wanta, I mentioned one of his co-conspirators, a man named Michael C. Cottrell, who is represented as some sort of financial expert, who is treasurer of Wanta's corporation AmeriTrade Group. Apparently, in search of a $4.5 trillion fortune, Wanta decided to gather the best finance minds in the world to aid him, but rather than obtaining investment bankers from New York, London, or San Francisco, he went to the fianance Mecca of Erie, Pennsylvania, where Cottrell runs a small investment firm named Pennsylvania Investments. His resume is available online here. I looked it up on Hoover's, and apparently it is a real firm, run out of his house, with a total of 3 employees and $300,000 a year in sales. Which would make him a rather low paid investment banker.

After listening to an interview with Cottrell on Greg Szymanski's radio show I finally figured the connection out. Cottrell claims that he found out about Wanta's money while writing his master's thesis in Administration of Justice at Mercyhurst College, a small university in Erie. Cottrell is quite proud of his thesis, titled "Elite Power & Capital Markets", and mentions it often. The letters "MS" also follow his name on just about every mention on-line, like some type of professional designation. One of the conspiracy websites even gives this hilarious endorsement:

That Bush Sr. was 'out of the loop' in respect of Wanta's operations has been specifically reconfirmed by Michael C. Cottrell, M.S., the Executive Vice President and Treasurer of AmeriTrust Groupe, Inc. on page 74 of his classic study 'Elite Power and Capital Markets',13th February 2002, Administration of Justice Department, Mercyhurst College, citing Peter Kornbluh and Malcolm Byrne, 'The Iran-Contra Scandal: The Declassified History', The New Press, New York, 1993, page 410.

I am not sure how a master's thesis written four years ago at an obscure university quite counts as "classic"...

Anyway, now Cottrell is the treasurer of AmeriTrade Group, which according to the Virginia State Corporation Commission was actually incorporated for a filing fee of $50 on May 20th, 2004 with 5,000 shares. Their office is given as that of Stephen D. Goodwin, also listed as a Vice President, who is a lawyer in Richmond. I think they need to do a better job of maintaining the corporation, as they owe $110 in fees and penalties, which as far as I can tell was for being 3 months late filing their annual report.

In the Szymanski interview Cottrell seems to be rather taken by Wanta, and honestly believes he has all this money. He is rather on the paranoid side though. He believes the NSA is intercepting his e-mails and used that to steal a $300 billion deal he had going with DeutscheBank. How a $300,000 a year firm gets that kind of deal, is beyond me.

A similiar story popped up on-line.

US intelligence operatives admitted on 6th December that the National Security Agency (NSA) has been systematically attacking and shutting down the computers
of Ambassador Leo Wanta and Michael C. Cottrell, M.S.. In fact the Editor is aware that the NSA has been attacking Mr Cottrell’s computers non-stop since April, this year, if not much earlier. The way this is done, and the use of NSA computer-targeting ops to steal business, are described in the recently published double issue of International Currency Review, which has exposed a great deal of the illegal activity which is now on its last legs. It’s too bad these criminals didn’t clean up their act sooner.

Cottrell, although he does actually appear to have an investment background of some type, still seems to have little idea of what he is talking about. When asked by Szymanski how Wanta's money was able to go from a few billion to $70 trillion in a little over a decade, Cottrell replied that "Interest rates were high in the late 70s and 80s, as much as 14%." Interest rates were in fact, not that high anytime after the mid-80s, and even if he had managed to get this rate, anyone with the most basic understanding of finance would realize it does not compound this quickly. For instance if he started in 1991, even at the extremely high compounding rate of 14%, in order to have $70 trillion in 2006 he still would have had to start with the ridiculous sum of $9.8 trillion, which in 1991 was far more than the US GDP.

I still am not sure what type of scam they are up to, but I will keep my eyes open.

The Wild and Wacky World of Wanta

The more I read about this guy, the more bizarre it gets. Greg Szymanski, a radio host on RBN, a fringe radio network popular with paranoid suvivalist nuts and 9/11 conspiracy theorists, has run numerous shows on the subject, including interviewing Wanta himself. I have not had a chance, or the desire, to listen to every one of them, but I listened to an interview with Wanta, with Christopher Story, a writer for the International Currency Review, and one with Michael C. Cottrell, who supposedly is the treasurer for Wanta's corporation AmeriTrust Groupe.

In his July 21st interview, Wanta explains how he made these trillions of dollars, and now after listening to it carefully, it makes even less sense than it did before. As best as I can tell he claims that he was assigned by President Reagan to destabilize the Soviet ruble, which he did by forming a corporation and buying up rubles at a discount rate. For those of you who are not familiar with Soviet economics, the ruble was not a freely convertible currency. The only way to exchange rubles for hard currency, was to go through the Soviet government, and pay the rate that they set. Through much of the 1980s it was around $1.20. This did not represent its real value though, as its black market value was only a fraction of that, but other than small back alley deals, that is what you were stuck with.

Anyway, Wanta claims his firm went around Europe and bought up all the rubles at discount rates, 20 cents on the dollar. He then bizarrely claims that because of this the Soviets ran out of rubles, and were then forced to turn around, and pay over a dollar a ruble for his stash. This unfortunately makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. The Soviet government controlled the value of the ruble, they could print as many as they wanted. Hard currency on the other hand, was very precious to them, the only way they could get that was to sell their natural resources, such as oil and gold to the west. The idea that Wanta would profit by forcing them to trade something precious, for something that they could just create at no cost, is just silly. Wanta then goes on to explain some other nonsensical plot where he managed to wipe out the Soviet gold reserves and pay back third world debt. I still don't get that part.

Wanta spends much of his time talking about the benefit to the US economy when he returns his mythical $4.5 trillion. Personally, I see no benefit other than massive inflation, but I will humor him. He doesn't bother to do his math though. He claims he will bring back the money, pay a federal 35% tax rate or $1.575 trillion on the money, plus corporate tax to the state of Virigina. On the remaining funds he then claims he will make $96 billion a day after taxes, with an equivilent amount paid in taxes. I thought that perhaps he mispoke, but he said it more than once, and one of the websites supporting him repeats the claim:

By specifically impeding the payment of tax by Ambassador Leo Wanta (an initial $1.6 trillion to the Treasury, followed by amounts estimated at $96 billion per banking day thereafter, and an estimated $270 billion to the State of Virginia), the President of the United States and the Treasury Secretary have signalled to taxpayers throughout the United States that the US tax system is grossly unfair.

Let's do the math though, $4,500 billion - $1,575 - $270 billion = $2,655 billion

And on that capital he claims to be able to make a pre-tax profit of $192 billion a day. There are 254 trading days a year, so 254 x $192 billion a day = $48,768 billion a year! Wow, that is return on investment! An astronomical 1,567% a year. And I thought I cleaned up making a 40% return on oil stocks last year. Never mind that the GDP for the entire United States last year was a piddly $11, 750 billion.

Yeah, this guy is credible.

Oddly enough, Wanta stutters badly through most of the interview. I only bring this up, because of the Insight Magazine article I posted earlier.

New Republic's letterhead features a fashionable address in Vienna, but Wanta's phone rings in Appleton, Wis. In a two-hour conversation, he attributes his start in politics and finance to the kindness of the late Sen. Alexander Wiley, a Wisconsin Republican, who sent him to Dale Carnegie to cure a stuttering problem. He mentions various careers as a high-tech defense engineer, deputy in the Waukesha County sheriff's office, a Milwaukee policeman, stints in the Nixon and Reagan campaigns, adviser to the Drug Enforcement Administration and as a perennial candidate for various Cabinet and sub-Cabinet posts.

More on the other two characters later.

The Strange Saga of Leo Wanta

I belong to a mailing list for 9/11 conspiracy theorists. Needless to say I am not very popular there, I am surprised they haven't banned me yet. In any case, they brought this story to my attention, if only because it was so bizarre. Looking into it, not coincidently, came up with the same list of conspiracy theorist paranoid anti-globalists familiar to followers of 9/11 conspiracies, Rense, RBN, the American Free Press, and Karl Schwarz. So I decided to do a piece on it.

THE WORLD'S BIGGEST-EVER BANKING HEIST

2.7% OF $27.5 TRILLION CREAMED OFF THE GIGA-FUNDING OPERATION

The following is summary of receipts identified in handwritten analytical notes performed by the distinguished US Secret Service Treasury agent, Leo Wanta, on some of the transactions involved in the giga-financing operation involving a colossal loan to the Illuminati from 200+ international banks worth $27.5 trillion, to finance the 'Global Security Environment', a.k.a. the New Underworld Order, which is to be enforced by the United States as the enforcement arm for the project. Sufficient funds were raised to bribe every policymaker, intelligence officer, ruler, Prime Minister, President and senior official for the whole of the 21st century. This fund is now worth $60-$70 trillion at a minimum – and with collateral leverage, probably far more. [List extracted from International Currency Review, Volume 30, Numbers 2/3, January 2005]:

This article is a rather long and incoherently rambling, it evens repeats the same items over and over again, as if they were never mentioned previously, but I will try and summarize it. Supposedly Leo Wanta claims that acting as a Secret Service/Treasury agent he made $27.5 trillion trying to crash the Soviet ruble under Reagan, but that this money (now grown to $60-70$ trillion) was stolen by the Illuminati. He was thrown in to a "Swiss dungeon" then extradicted back to Wisconsin, where he was put under house arrest, and jailed under trumped up tax evasion charges. I think that is what he is saying, it is rather hard to follow.

Anyway, Wanta, or Ambassador Wanta, he is now claiming to be an ambassador from the non-existent government of Somalia to both Canada and Switzerland, now says that he is trying to return this money, or at least $4.7 trillion of it, to its rightful owners, the US taxpayers. The global elite are of course trying to prevent this, because well... they are really mean. Needless to say this is attracting attention among the paranoid conspiracy theorists and the economic illiterate.

Even without doing any research, these claims are pretty silly. For starters, the Soviet Ruble, was a nonconvertible currency, with a limited market. Trying to profit off of manipulating it would be a futile exercise. Even George Soros only made $2 billion of off his famous attempt to crash the Bank of England. A considerable amount of money no doubt, but less than 1/100 of 1% of what Wanta is claiming. For comparison, this would also be more than 10 times the entire Soviet GDP at the time.

So what is the history of this man, how did he come up with this? I was curious, so I looked up some articles in Factiva. A Google search, unfortunately will only come up with the same self-referential conspiracy sites. It turns out, that in fact he does have a history.

The AP printed an article on April 8, 1998, indicating he was trying to sell pistols to Manuel Noriega:

(AP) _ A secret memo outlining a plan by Panamanian strongman Manuel Antonio Noriega to acquire thousands of semi-automatic pistols has been leaked to an opposition leader by a rebel member of Panama's military.

The proposed acquisition of the Browning 9mm pistols is part of a sizable weapons buildup by Panama's Defense Forces that got under way shortly after Panama's crisis began six weeks ago with Noriega's ouster of President Eric Arturo Delvalle.

The memo was sent to Noriega on April 1 by Leo Wanta, president of AmeriChina Global Management Group Inc., an arms exporting firm based in Appleton, Wis.

Covert operative, or enterprising businessman? You decide.

It does not stop here though, apparently he was involved in manipulating the Ruble. Well at least trying to scam people. From Insight Magazine 17 June 1991:

Enter Leo Wanta: One of the names most frequently cited by those who got caught up in ruble mania is that of Leo Emil Wanta, director general of the New Republic/USA Financial Group. Though few claim to have met him face-to-face, a lot of people heard his story over the telephone. What he told them, they say, is that his business was acquiring rubles on behalf of the U.S. government in order to provide an infusion of hard currency to the Soviet economy.

It might be too much to say that Wanta single-handedly created the myth that rubles were in demand, but he did more than his share. He has floated dozens of pieces of paper relating the sale or purchase of rubles in amounts of up to 105 billion rubles (worth roughly $6 billion at the black market rate). There is no evidence that any of these deals ever closed, but he has shown a rare gift for getting other folks to trot hither and yon.

Almost every banker contacted for this story recalls at least one telephone conversation with him. It was on his behalf that officials at Natwest and Volksbank went fishing for a high-profit deal on their own banks' stationery.

A Midwestern banker encountered Wanta last summer and tells a story that stands for many. "No sooner had we begun talking about the possibility of opening an account than I began to get inquiries from traders here and abroad and in tiny Pacific islands asking whether his company was good for a $10 million spot transaction. I said, `I'm sorry, but we're still checking it out ourselves,' and they'd say, `That's all I wanted to know, click.' "

New Republic's letterhead features a fashionable address in Vienna, but Wanta's phone rings in Appleton, Wis. In a two-hour conversation, he attributes his start in politics and finance to the kindness of the late Sen. Alexander Wiley, a Wisconsin Republican, who sent him to Dale Carnegie to cure a stuttering problem. He mentions various careers as a high-tech defense engineer, a deputy in the Waukesha County sheriff's office, a Milwaukee policeman, stints in the Nixon and Reagan campaigns, adviser to the Drug Enforcement Administration and as a perennial candidate for various Cabinet and sub-Cabinet posts.

"My background is in intelligence," Wanta says, while denying that he has posed as an agent of the U.S. government in ruble deals. Instead, he calls himself a "task force member," adding cryptically: "Do your homework. You'll find out we are who we are. We're the good guys."

The public record is somewhat less than definitive. It shows that Wanta is the owner of a failed vending machine company in Menomonee Falls, Wis., against which a number of legal judgments remain outstanding.

Marquette University, which he offers as one of his educational credentials, says he once registered for a continuing education course in 1963, only to cancel two days later.

A letter that appeared to have been signed by an employee of the First Wisconsin Bank of Appleton , dated last summer and addressed to a Swiss bank, attests that Wanta is a corporate client in good standing and has been since the 1960s. The employee, Jill Campbell , denies ever signing such a document. Wanta claims to have recently had $1.4 billion on deposit at National Westminster, but a bank spokesman says no account was ever opened. And so on.

As for rubles, Wanta claims to have signed trade agreements worth $50 billion with Moscow, covering everything from exporting oil and vodka to rebuilding gas pipelines, to the importation and distribution of food. He was floating offers to buy rubles in order to fulfill these contracts. Profit, or even completing the deal, was not
the primary objective, however: "All we say is that we are Big Brother monitoring what the hell is going on out there."

Most bankers have another explanation: "The whole thing stinks from A to Zed," says Frederick Gevers of PaineWebber Inc.'s office in Geneva, Switzerland.

The story is backed up by other accounts. From the Capital Times on 21 November 1995, in an article titled, rather tellingly, "DELUSIONAL' CON MAN GETS EIGHT-YEAR TERM":

Leo Wanta, the Appleton man who claimed to be an international businessman with connections to government agencies but was portrayed by prosecutors as an international con artist, will be spending the next few years in Wisconsin prisons.

Wanta, 55, who was convicted in May of tax evasion, was given an eight-year prison term Monday by Dane County Circuit Judge Michael Torphy, who also ordered a six-year probation to follow.

For his part, Wanta -- described as delusional by his own attorney -- continued his scam to the end, claiming the court had no jurisdiction over him, that he was a victim of a vicious Department of Revenue and state Justice Department.

"I know there is a conspiracy and subterfuge here," Wanta said when given a chance to speak.

At various times he has claimed to be a CIA agent, an ambassador from Somalia, a close friend of former Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush, and an international businessman.

It continues later with:

"Mr. Wanta is in fact a con man, nothing more and nothing less," he said. "He is a con man who cons con men."

Haag said Wanta was arrested in Switzerland in 1993 for attempting an $81 million bank fraud. Wanta claimed diplomatic immunity in that case, contending he was the Somalian ambassador to Canada. The Swiss deported him to the United States, where he was arrested in New York on the Wisconsin tax fraud charge.

Wanta is also described in the book, "A Thieve's World," as being involved in an attempted scam involving Russian rubles.

"He is a world class con man," said Haag. "A snake oil salesman. But he was unable to sell that snake oil to the jury."

Haag asked for a sentence of 13 years in prison and another 12 on probation.

Epstein, on the other hand, said Wanta clearly is delusional. He called Haag's allegations "a lot of shadows and smoke and allegations of wrong doing around the world," but pointed out Wanta has never before been convicted of a crime.

"The portrait that has been painted by Doug Haag is not the real Leo Wanta," said Epstein. "He exists in a different world," Epstein said of his client. "The fact of the
matter is he is in a different orbit," Epstein said, adding that Wanta actually believes the stories he tells.

So once again, the paranoids turn a fake into a conspiracy. A delusional vending machine salesman becomes an international banker for the covert elite.

Chief on the Radio

I don't get around to posting here (for my few loyal readers) as I have been busy on Screw Loose Change, but I am also on the radio, discussing conspiracy theories for SETI Radio.

Heh

After the recent death of Milton Friedman, I read his Capitalism and Freedom, an excellent book. I found this letter to the editor of the WSJ humorous and approriate:

In regard to the several stories written in the Journal about Milton Friedman, including "Capitalism and Friedman," Review & Outlook, Nov. 17:

Nearly 30 years ago, my husband and I were guests at a dinner party in the elegant Palo Alto home of Stanford professor Ezra Solomon, who had been my colleague on President Richard Nixon's Council of Economic Advisers. Among the other guests were Milton Friedman and his wife, Rose. Milton was having a fine time baiting the wife of the dean of the Business School, a feminist whose conviction was unleavened by any sense of humor, by proclaiming the foolishness of affirmative action.

"If businesses are forced to hire and train young women, many of whom will leave for marriage and family," he proclaimed, "they should at least be allowed to discriminate in favor of homely women, whose opportunities for marriage are below average." As the dean's wife reddened with fury, I leaned over and said softly, 'Thank you, Milton. I've always wondered what accounted for my professional success. Now I know." Milton, always the courtly gentleman where women were concerned, was speechless.

Marina v.N. Whitman

Professor of Business Administration and Public PolicyUniversity of MichiganAnn Arbor, Mich.

No Wonder They Hate the Jews

This says much more about the Arab world than the Nobel Prize.

Samir 'Ubeid: I don’t call it the Nobel prize – I call it the "Hubal" [idol] prize.

Interviewer: Hubal?

Samir 'Ubeid: Yes, because it often encourages heresy. It encourages attacks against the heritage, and encourages those who scorn their people and their culture. The proof is that it was awarded recently to Pamuk, who had encouraged civil strife, which might preoccupy Turkey and the Muslims in general. He held Turkey responsible for what the Ottoman state did, when he referred to the massacre of the Armenians.

[...]

Interviewer: In other words, if you are a traitor to your country, you deserve this prize.

Samir 'Ubeid: If you are a traitor to your country, and a heretic, who curses his Prophet, you deserve a Nobel Prize.
[...]
Why has the prize been awarded to 167 Jews, and to only four Arabs out of 380 million Arabs – and all four are considered traitors? For example, Al-Sadat got the prize during the normalization process, and as a price for Camp David, together with Begin, who carried out the Deir Yassin massacre, and who was in the "Hagana" gangs. Later, the prize was awarded to [Ahmad] Al-Zewail, in order to buy his invention, and Al-Zewail has disappeared since.

Interviewer: You mean the Egyptian Ahmad Al-Zewail?

Samir 'Ubeid: Yes, the Egyptian chemist. The prize was also awarded to Mohamed ElBaradei, and in this case, it is soaked in the blood of the Iraqi children and people.

Milton Friedman 1912-2006

He was the greatest 20th Century economist and philosopher. What more can be said?

SAN FRANCISCO — Milton Friedman was the rare public intellectual whose ideas extended from the ivory tower to seats of power around the world.

So when the economist, a tireless proponent of free enterprise, died Thursday at 94, it was fitting that he was lauded by former heads of state as well as his academic peers. President Bush said that "America has lost one of its greatest citizens."

"Milton Friedman was a revolutionary thinker and extraordinary economist whose work helped advance human dignity and human freedom," Bush said of the 1976 Nobel Prize winner.

Mr. Friedman, a longtime professor at the University of Chicago, died in San Francisco, said Robert Fanger, a spokesman for the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation in Indianapolis. His cause of death wasn't released.

Tributes quickly followed from universities, boardrooms and politicians.

Arrogance

The story now on the infamous Kerry quote, is not so much what he said, it is possible, although a bit of a stretch that this was just a lame attempt at a joke about Bush, but the arrogance he has shown in his response. When I first read his response on his website, I thought it was a parody on Scrappleface, or an invective from the Daily Kos:

Washington – Senator John Kerry issued the following statement in response to White House Press Secretary Tony Snow, assorted right wing nut-jobs, and right wing talk show hosts desperately distorting Kerry’s comments about President Bush to divert attention from their disastrous record:

“If anyone thinks a veteran would criticize the more than 140,000 heroes serving in Iraq and not the president who got us stuck there, they're crazy. This is the classic G.O.P. playbook. I’m sick and tired of these despicable Republican attacks that always seem to come from those who never can be found to serve in war, but love to attack those who did.

I’m not going to be lectured by a stuffed suit White House mouthpiece standing behind a podium, or doughy Rush Limbaugh, who no doubt today will take a break from belittling Michael J. Fox’s Parkinson’s disease to start lying about me just as they have lied about Iraq. It disgusts me that these Republican hacks, who have never worn the uniform of our country lie and distort so blatantly and carelessly about those who have.

So, Kerry may not have intended to say what he did. I seriously doubt he decided to insult US troops as a campaign strategy, but the fact is, he did. I also doubt that Trent Lott intended to endorse 50' segregationist policy during his tribute to Strom Thurmond, but that was how it was interpreted, so he apologized and moved on. Kerry can't do that, he is too arrogant and cannot understand how anyone could criticize him.

A little humility will go a long ways.

Hey John, "Bite Me"

I think this idiot's time has passed.

“You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”

FOB Falcon

A couple of weeks ago a lucky mortar round hit an ammo depot at Forward Operating Base Falcon in Iraq (covered at the time on Hot Air). It caused a dramatic explosion, but no casualties were reported. Now though, this incident has caused some conspiracy theories, promulgated by many of the same people we cover over at Screw Loose Change, that over 300 soldiers died, including a detailed list, supposedly of the casualties.

Official Casualty List from U.S. military hospital at al-Habbaniyah located some 70km west of Baghdad. U.S. medical personnel at al-Habbaniyah initially stated that the US military hospital at the massive American-occupied air base there had begun to receive dead and wounded personnel. The military hospital in al-Habbaniyah, the largest in occupied Iraq, was opened on 12 May this year in response to sharply rising (and redacted) US casualties.

A quick check of the list though, shows it is laughable. For starters this was a FOB, a smaller operational base, yet this list shows casualties from just about every unit in the military, including the Marine Corp, and an Army hospital. What they are doing hanging out in an ammo dump is beyond me. It even lists several casualties from the CIA, based on the number, what must be their entire Iraqi office. Including this entry:

Pfc Darrell Morgan, Central Intelligence Agency

I didn't know the CIA had privates...

Racism?

I heard about this on the radio this morning. I don't get it. How is it racism to invite a respected author, who is a minority, to talk about international issues. Especially considering he didn't even end up speaking!

Among the plaintiffs' complaints was Lakeside's invitation to conservative commentator Dinesh D'Souza to speak as part of a distinguished lecture series.

After Sims and other faculty members and parents complained, the school in January rescinded the invitation to D'Souza, who has argued that the underachievement of African Americans has more to do with cultural attitudes and behaviors than with white racism.

Discover Islam

Now I am all for educating yourself on different religions, I have lived in Islamic countries, and always make it a point to find out about different cultures, religions, and languages. But in this day when Christmas trees are being banned from public places because it is supposedly a violation of church and state, does anyone think that the King County library would hold a seminar titled "Discover Christianity". Heck in Federal Way last year the school district spent nearly $500 reprinting the lunch menus because they contained the offensive words, "Merry Christmas" on them. Do you think they would invite in a priest to educate people on Catholicism?





















Am I the only one who senses a double standard?

Creations of an Economic Hit Man

I have been curious about a book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins, for some time. It has been on the best seller lists for quite some time, and after reading this post by my blogging pal Brainster, I was a bit suspicious of the claims made by the author.

To sum up the book, which at just over 200 pages and very little actual content, is amazingly easy to do, John Perkins tells his life story. After graduating from Boston University in the late 60s, he interviews with the NSA. Despite never actually working for them, he uses this fact throughout the rest of the book to imply that his later economic work had some connection with the NSA, which conducts signal intelligence and not economic espionage, but anyway... After not being hired by the NSA he decides to join the Peace Corps, by his own admission mostly to avoid the draft. After 3 years helping poor people in South America, he is approached by a consulting company, called MAIN, and goes to work for them trying to sell large World Bank funded projects in the third world.

Perkins then explains how he becomes an "Economic Hit Man", which he often abbreviates E. H. M. I guess because it makes it sound more official. He travels around the world trying to get poor countries to take out really large loans to fund projects such as dams and powerplants, which are intended solely to help the rich, exploit the poor, and make the country forever indebted to the United States. It is the policy of the "corporatocracy" he argues, to get countries to take on more debt then they can handle, so that the will go into default and can be controlled by the US. There is also the added benefit in that corporations then can exploit the impoverished labor force at low wages. Despite the fact that he repeats this argument several times, I still don't get it. What exactly is the purpose of loaning people our money with the intent that they don't ever pay us back? Wouldn't a stable and economically powerful ally be much more valuable than a poor impoverished one? Compare the value of being allied with Japan, with that of, say, Bangladesh or Uganda.

In every country Perkins travels to he ends up meeting some wise noble native, who lectures him on the evils of globalization and American empire. In his world, there is no such thing as communists or terrorists, they are all just noble revolutionaries looking out for their people against the exploitive corporatocracy. Perkins wrings his hands with guilt, praises the poor noble local, and then continues with his nefarious, although mostly unspecified, deeds.

I would believe his argument much more, if he actually had some proof. Amazingly, even though he claims to have worked as an "E. H. M." for over 20 years, he has very little tales to tell, much of what he does tell is third hand information. His sole proof of being an E. H. M is based of a mysterious woman named Claudine that he met when he first started working. Other than that, he can't quote a single board meeting or memo that backs up his claims of an evil world system. He does list a couple of examples where he was pressed to exaggerate economic growth to justify large projects, but he never does explain why this is not just a result of, for example, the fact that it is much more profitable to sell a large project than a small one.

Because this book is so vague then, it is really hard to tell if any of it is true or not. The few facts and events he does recall though, appear quite suspicious, and tell us more about the author's personal angst over globalization than anything else. One example is when he travels to Saudi Arabia in 1974. Not only does this undermine his whole "impoverishing poor third worlders" argument, the Saudis hardly being impoverished, he then uses this throughout the rest of the book as an example of how he and the US helped support "Osama bin Laden's war against the Soviets". Nevermind that Osama was just a teenager in 1974, and would not become involved in the war in Afghanistan (which didn't start until 1979) for another decade. Even after he became a mujahaden in Afghanistan, he was a minor figure. It could hardly be characterized as his war, as opposed to Masood's or Hekmatyar's war.

Another example is when he tries to (vaguely) tie then son of the Vice President George W. Bush with the "fastest growing organization in the business" Enron, which he described as being the frequent subject of chatter. This seems a bit of a stretch though. Enron was not even formed until 1985, when two natural gas pipeline companies merged, and they didn't really begin to take off until the early 90s, when they expanded into other arenas such as energy trading.

All in all, there is no there there. This book is full of much handwringing and guilt, it brings up the fact that Americans are much richer than the rest of the world more times than I can count, but it lends absolutely nothing to the argument. Perkins never even suggests a solution to any of the problems he discusses, nothing more than the fact that we are evil and exploitive. A anti-globalists dream, but otherwise not one worthy of reading.

This Is Why People Hate Lawyers

This is just ridiculous.

A King County Superior Court judge set a hearing for Monday on a motion to dismiss arson and four aggravated-murder charges against Conner Schierman.

Schierman appeared in court Thursday on the motion filed by his defense attorney, James Conroy, but Judge Gregory Canova postponed any decision until after another hearing Monday.

Conroy has argued that a fair trial would be impossible because Kirkland police inadvertently released investigation notes to Seattle's KING-TV. He also asked the court to seal the documents, but Canova refused to do that until the Monday hearing.

An Interview With Milton and Rose Friedman

My blogging pal Brainster is discussing the most influential people of the last millenium. Well, I am not sure who to put for that, but the WSJ has an interesting interview with one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century.

PALO ALTO, Calif. -- One doesn't interview a man like Milton Friedman -- the Nobel laureate in economics in 1976 and among the five or six most consequential thinkers of the 20th century -- without doing some assiduous homework.

So I gathered his books -- reading some, re-reading others -- and made pages and pages of notes. I also emailed several intellectual heavyweights, asking them what they might enquire of Mr. Friedman -- now 94 years of age -- if they had him cornered at a cocktail party. Replies flooded back. "Inflation targeting," wrote a (marginally) younger Nobel economist. "Education," said another Nobel laureate. "Does the recent record of spending with a Republican president and Congress make him reconsider his support for the party?" wrote a man who, until a while ago, worked on economic policy in the White House. "Is there something distinctly difficult for capitalism in the Islamic world?" wondered a Middle East scholar. "What music does he listen to?" a Democratic political economist mused, unpredictably. More predictably, a big-cheese blogger was "dying" to know whether "Milton reads blogs -- and will he ever write one?"

A Tragedy Has Hit

I have debating how to post on this for a couple of days. But now Michelle Malkin has posted on it, and I feel compelled to say something. Some scumbag (the nicest thing I can think of to call him) has committed the most heinous attack against the family of one of my fellow Guardsmen:

The remains of 28-year-old Olga Milkin and her sister, Lyubov Botvina, 24, were found in an upstairs bedroom of the heavily damaged home. The fire, which was reported just before 11:30 a.m. Monday, was considered suspicious from the outset. There was no 911 call from the home and no evidence that the victims had tried to escape the flames.

Autopsies showed both women suffered multiple stab wounds to "the upper body, neck and head," according to court documents. The remains of the two children, Justin Milkin, 5, and his 3-year-old brother, Andrew, were found in an adjacent hallway.

Justin's wounds were similar to those suffered by his mother, according to the documents. Andrew Milkin's throat was cut.

So far, detectives have no motive for the crime and have uncovered nothing to link the suspect to the victims.

"It is going to be extremely difficult to determine motive," said O'Toole, the prosecutor. "The damage to the victims is pretty horrendous and pretty complete."

Olga Milkin's husband, Sgt. Leonid Milkin of the Army National Guard, returned from duty in Iraq to his burned-out home Thursday. Wearing Army fatigues, Milkin was brought in a black SUV to the home, where detectives gave him a brief tour. He spent a few moments at the makeshift memorial near the house where visitors had placed flowers and the family had posted photos of the victims.

I know SGT Milkin. He is a good man and a good soldier, and my heart and prayers goes out to him and his family. The Guard has been in contact with us, and I know people are working to help him as much as possible, but he will still need financial help to get him through this tragedy. A fund has been set up for those who wish to help.

A memorial fund has been set by the family at US Bank under the name "Kirkland House Fire Victims." Also, the Washington National Guard set up a financial assistance fund in Leonid Milkin's name at the American Lake Credit Union in Camp Murray. The account number is 13743:

Camp Murray Branch
Camp Murray, Bldg. 16
Tacoma, WA 98430
Voice: 253-582-3831
Voice: 800-228-2377
Fax: 253-582-1320
Email: amlakecu-at-aol.com

The Right Angle also reports that there are people making fun of his tragedy for their political cause. All I can say, is there is no place in hell hot enough for people like that.

Jamba Juice

Michelle Malkin has a hilarious take on Hot Air on the Cindy Sheehan diet plan that I have been talking about. Yumm, I feel like a smoothie...