This is an account of the Allied treatment of Nazi war criminals and the failure to de-Nazify Germany. Despite the growing avalanche of evidence after 1939 about Nazi Germany's deliberate extermination policies, the British Foreign Office refused to implement Churchill's orders to organize an effective post-war programme to hunt down and prosecute the perpetrators. That disinterest was matched by the State Department in Washington. Both governments even seemed disinterested when their own POWs were victims. In the early 1960s, the truth was discovered - that, of approximately 150,000 known mass murderers, only about 30,000 had been prosecuted, the vast majority in Eastern Europe. The three Western Allies were to blame. They had deliberately turned a blind eye to murder.
Klaus Barbie was born in Godesberg, later renamed Bad Godesberg, which is today part of Bonn. The Barbie family came from Merzig, in the Saar near the French border. His patrilineal ancestors were likely a French Catholic family named Barbier who had left France at the time of the French Revolution.[citation needed]
In 1914, his father Nickolaus Barbie was drafted to fight in World War I. He returned an angry, bitter man. Wounded in the neck at Verdun and captured by the French, whom he hated, he never recovered his health. He became an alcoholic and abused his children. He was later diagnosed with cancer of blood, spine and prostate.[1]
Until 1923 when he was 10, Barbie, a shy and quiet youth, went to the local school where his father taught. Afterward, he attended a boarding school in Trier and was relieved to be away from his abusive father. In 1925, the entire Barbie family moved to Trier.
In June 1933, Barbie's younger brother Kurt died at the age of eighteen of chronic illness. Later that year, their father died. The death of his father derailed plans for the 20-year-old Barbie to study theology or otherwise become an academic, as his peers had expected. He was passably intelligent without being brilliant, and reasonably popular without being considered a leader. While unemployed, Barbie was drafted into the Nazi labour service, theReichsarbeitsdienst.[citation needed]
On 26 September 1935 at the age of 22, Barbie joined the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), the special security branch service of the SS {Nr. 272 284}, which acted as the intelligence-gathering arm of the National Socialist Party. On 1 May 1937 he joined the Nazi Party {Nr. 4 583 085}. In April 1939, Barbie became engaged to Regina Margaretta Willms, a 23-year-old daughter of a postal clerk.
fter the National Socialist conquest and occupation of the Netherlands, Barbie was assigned to Amsterdam. In 1942, after the fall of France, he was sent to Dijon in the Occupied Zone. In November of the same year, at the age of 29, he was assigned to Lyon as the head of the local Gestapo.
He established his headquarters at the Hôtel Terminus in Lyon. Evidence suggests that he personally tortured prisoners: men, women, and children alike,[2] by breaking extremities, using electroshock, and sexually abusing them, including with dogs, among other methods. He became known as the "Butcher of Lyon".[3]
Historians estimate that Barbie was directly responsible for the deaths of up to 14,000 people.[4][5] He arrested Jean Moulin, one of the highest-ranking members of the French Resistance and his most prominent enemy figure.
In April 1944, Barbie ordered the deportation to Auschwitz of a group of 44 Jewish children from an orphanage at Izieu. After his operations in Lyon, he rejoined the SIPO-SD of Lyon in Bruyeres-in-Vosges, where he led an anti-partisan attack in Rehaupal in September 1944.
After the war had ended, he was recruited by the Western Allies and worked for the British until 1947. After that, in 1947, Barbie was recruited as an agent for the 66th Detachment of the U.S. Army Counter Intelligence Corps(CIC).[6] In 1951, he fled to Juan Peron's Argentina with the help of a ratline organized by U.S. intelligence services[7] and the Croatian Roman Catholic priest Krunoslav Draganović. When asked by Barbie why he helped such escapes, Draganović said, "We have to maintain a sort of moral reserve on which we can draw in the future."[8]
Barbie emigrated to Bolivia, where he lived under the alias Klaus Altmann. Testimony of the Italian insurgent Stefano Delle Chiaie before the Italian Parliamentary Commission on Terrorism suggests that Barbie took part in the "Cocaine Coup" of Luis García Meza Tejada, when the regime forced its way to power in Bolivia in 1980.[9]
In 1965 Barbie was recruited by the West German foreign intelligence agency Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) under the codename "Adler" (Eagle) and the registration number V-43118. He had excellent relations with high-ranking Bolivian officials and was known for his nationalist and anti-communist stance.[10] His initial monthly salary of 500 Deutsche Mark was transferred in May 1966 to an account of the Chartered Bank of London in San Francisco. During his stint with the BND, Barbie made at least 35 reports to the BND headquarters in Pullach.[11]
Reviews of the 2007 documentary My Enemy's Enemy, directed by the British director Kevin Macdonald, note that it suggests Barbie helped the United States' CIA orchestrate the 1967 capture and execution in Bolivia of Che Guevara, a Marxist revolutionary who was active in Cuba and South America.[12] In 1966 a disguised Guevara had arrived in Bolivia to organize the overthrow of its military dictatorship. According to the film, the CIA used Barbie for his knowledge of counter-guerrilla warfare.[12]
Alvaro de Castro, a longtime confidant of Barbie, was interviewed for the film. He reportedly said:
"He (Barbie) met Major Shelton, the commander of the unit from the US. (Barbie) no doubt gave him advice on how to fight this guerrilla war. He used the expertise gained doing this kind of work in World War Two. They made the most of the fact that he had this experience."[12]
De Castro adds that Barbie "had little respect for Che Guevara."[12] In the film, the journalist Kai Hermann says, "He (Barbie) always boasted – though I cannot prove it – that it was he who devised the strategy for murdering Che Guevara."[12][13]
Barbie was identified as living in Bolivia in 1971 by the Klarsfelds (Nazi hunters from France). On 19 January 1983, the newly elected government of Hernán Siles Zuazo arrested Barbie and extradited him to France to stand trial.
In 1984, Barbie was indicted for crimes committed while he directed the Gestapo in Lyon between 1942 and 1944. The jury trial started on 11 May 1987, in Lyon, before the Rhône Cour d'assises. Unusually, the court allowed the trial to be filmed because of its historical value. A special court room with seating for an audience of about 700 was constructed.[14] The head prosecutor was Pierre Truche.
At the trial Barbie was supported by financier François Genoud, and defended by the lawyer Jacques Vergès. Barbie was tried on 41 separate counts of crimes against humanity, based on the depositions of 730 Jews andresistance figures, who cited his torture practices and murders.[15] The father of the then-French Minister for Justice, Robert Badinter, had died in Auschwitz after being deported from Lyon during Barbie's tenure.[16]
Barbie gave his name as Klaus Altmann (the name he had used while in Bolivia). Claiming that his extradition was technically illegal, he asked to be excused from the trial and returned to his cell at St Paul prison. This was granted. He was brought back to court on 26 May to face some of his accusers, during which he stated that he had "nothing to say".
Vergès had a reputation for attacking the French political system, particularly in the historic French colonial empire. His strategy was to use the trial to expose war crimes committed by France since 1945. The prosecution dropped some of the charges against Barbie due to French legislation that had protected people accused of crimes under the Vichy regime and in French Algeria. Vergès argued that Barbie's actions were no worse than the ordinary actions of colonialists worldwide, and that his trial was selective prosecution. During his trial, Barbie said, "When I stand before the throne of God I shall be judged innocent".[citation needed]
On 4 July 1987, Barbie was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. He died in prison in Lyon of leukemia four years later, at the age of 77.
Klaus Barbie was born in Bad Godesberg, near Bonn, on October 25, 1913. Barbie was born to a Roman Catholic family. His parents were both teachers. Until 1923 he went to the school where his father taught. Afterward, he attended a boarding school in Trier. In 1925, his whole family moved to Trier. In 1933, Barbie’s father and brother both died. The death of his abusive, alcoholic father derailed plans for young Barbie to study theology or otherwise become an academic, as his peers had expected. While unemployed, Barbie was drafted into the Nazi labor service (Reichsarbeitsdienst); membership was compulsory for all young German men and women.
In September 1935, he joined the SD or Sicherheitsdienst (security service), a special branch of the SS and the intelligence gathering arm of the NSDAP (Nazi party). In 1940, he was sent to The Hague (Den Haag), where his main task was to arrest Jews and German political refugees who fled to the Netherlands. In 1942, he was sent to Dijon and in November of the same year (after November 11, when German forces took over the unoccupied part of France, the so called “zone libre” or free zone) he was sent to Lyon, where he became the head of the local Gestapo, which included 25 officers who covered an area comprising Lyon as well as the Jura and Hautes-Alpes police departments and Grenoble.
While in France, his duty was to fight Communists, prevent sabotages and persecutre Jews. He was to penetrate and destroy the resistance in Lyon, and he indeed carried out his task with unmatched brutality.
Simone Lagrange, a soft-spoken Holocaust survivor whose family was exterminated, later recalled the arrest of her father, mother and herself on June 6, 1944. Denounced by a French neighbor as Jews, Simone and her parents were taken to Gestapo headquarters where a man, dressed in gray and caressing a kitten, said Simone was pretty.
“He was caressing the cat. And me, a kid 13 years old, I could not imagine that he could be evil because he loved animals. I was tortured by him for eight days.”
During the following week, the man hauled her out of a prison cell each day, he yanked her by her hair, beating and punching at her open wounds in an effort to obtain information.
Another survivor, Lise Lesevre, recalled how Klaus Barbie tortured her for nine days in 1944, beating her, nearly drowning her in a bathtub. She told how she was hung up by hand cuffs with spikes inside them and beaten with a rubber bar. She was ordered to strip naked and get into a tub filled with freezing water. Her legs were tied to a bar across the tub and Barbie yanked a chain attached to the bar to pull her underwater.
During her last interrogation, Barbie ordered her to lie flat on a chair and struck her on the back with a spiked ball attached to a chain. It broke a vertebrae, and she suffered the rest of her life.
Another survivor, Ennat Leger, said Klaus Barbie “had the eyes of a monster. He was savage. My God, he was savage! It was unimaginable. He broke my teeth, he pulled my hair back. He put a bottle in my mouth and pushed it until the lips split from the pressure.”
He personally tortured prisoners and is blamed for the deaths of 4,000 people. A dedicated sadist, responsible for many individual atrocities, including the capture and deportation to Auschwitz of forty-four Jewish children hidden in the village of Izieu, Klaus Barbie owed his postwar notoriety primarily to one of his “cases”, the arrest and torture unto death of Jean Moulin, one of the highest ranking member of the French Resistance.
Jean Moulin was mercilessly tortured by Klaus Barbie and his men. Hot needles where shoved under his fingernails. His fingers were forced through the narrow space between the hinges of a door and a wall and then the door was repeatedly slammed until the knuckles broke.
Screw-levered handcuffs were placed on Moulin and tightened until they bit through his flesh and broke through the bones of his wrists. He would not talk. He was whipped. He was beaten until his face was an unrecognizable pulp. A fellow prisoner, Christian Pineau, later described the resistance leader as “unconscious, his eyes dug in as though they had been punched through his head. An ugly blue wound scarred his temple. A mute rattle came out of his swollen lips.”
Jean Moulin remained in this coma when he was shown to other resistance leaders who were being interrogated at Gestapo headquarters. Barbie had ordered Moulin put on display in an office. His unconscious form sprawled on a chaise lounge. His face was yellow, his breathing heavy, his head swathed in bandages. It was the last time Moulin was seen alive.
On behalf of his cruel crimes and specially for the Moulin case, Barbie was awarded, by Hitler himself, the “First Class Iron Cross with Swords.”
After the war, Klaus Barbie was recruited by the Western Allies and worked for the British until 1947, then he switched his allegiance to the Americans. He was protected and employed by American intelligence agents because of his “police skills” and anti-Communist zeal - he penetrated communist cells in the German Communist Party.
With the aid of the Americans, he fled from prosecution in France in 1950 and relocated to South America together with his wife and children.
He lived in Bolivia as a businessman under the name Klaus Altmann from 1951 onward. Though he was identified in Bolivia at least as early as 1971 by the Nazi hunters Beate and Serge Klarsfeld, it was only in February 1983 that the Bolivian government, after long negotiations, extradited him to France to stand trial. This caused the U.S. to offer a formal apology to France in August 1983.
Klaus Barbie, nicknamed the “Butcher of Lyon,” responsible for the torture and death of thousands of people. On January 19, 1983, that the newly elected government of Hernán Siles Zuazo arrested and extradited him to France.
In 1984, Barbie was put on trial for crimes committed while he was in charge of the Gestapo in Lyon between 1942 and 1944. At the trial Barbie received support not only from Nazi apologists like François Genoud, but also from leftist lawyer Jacques Vergès. He had a reputation for attacking the French political system, particularly in French colonial territories. Vergès’ strategy at the trial was to use the trial to expose war crimes committed by France since 1945. Indeed, many of the charges against Barbie were dropped, thanks to legislation that had protected people accused of crimes under the Vichy regime and in French Algeria.
His trial started on May 11, 1987, in Lyon — a jury trial before the Rhône Cour d'assises. In a rare move, the court allowed the trial to be filmed because of its historical value. The lead defense attorney was Jacques Vergès, who argued that Barbie’s actions were no worse than the ordinary actions of colonialists worldwide, and that his trial was selective prosecution. The head prosecutor was Pierre Truche. During his trial, Barbie famously stated that: “When I stand before the throne of God I shall be judged innocent”.
On July 4, 1987, Barbie was sentenced to life imprisonment for crimes against humanity, and died in prison of leukemia four years later, at the age of 77.
http://www.marketgarden.com/2010/UK/figures/burquhart.htm
Key Fiqures - Sir Brian Urquhart
In 1944, Major Brian Urquhart was chief intelligence officer of 1st Airborne Division.
Because of a jump accident, for which he spent months in hospital, he could not jump anymore. For this reason he was attached to Brownings Staff. During the preparations Brian Urquhart was collating all intelligence reports about the German strength in the Market Garden area. During the preparation, information from various sources reported the presence of armored cars in the Arnhem area. These reports came from various sources like; prisoners captured in ground fighting, Dutch resistance, Ultra deciphering of German radio signals. But non of them could be verified at that time, however he constantly warns Browning about this reports.
It was only two days before the planned start of OMG that B.Urquhart received alarming reports about the presence of German panzer from Montgommery's 21st Army Group and Brereton's First Allied Airborne Army, the presumed presence of 9th and 10th in the Arnhem area. Now B. Urquhart was convinced that the Arnhem part was in great danger. His attempts to warn Browning were fruitless. He then immediately asks for special oblique (sort of 3d) photographs to be taken of the wooden area's in which tanks might be sheltering.
The evidence arrives the next day: modern Mark III and Mark IV tanks, hiding north and east of Arnhem. Brian Urquhart is shocked, immediately showing this alarming new evidence to Browning. General Browning acts decisive, he orders Colonel Austin Eagger (senior medical officer) to send Brian Urquhart on sick leave.......
In 1945, B. Urquhart was transferred and took over an armored car squadron which was supposed to move slightly ahead of the Allied advance and pick up German scientists and industrialists and secret formulas and papers and things like that; it was an intelligence operation. While doing this work, Urquhart was one of the first to enter Bergen Belsen and see the unexpected horror of 20.000 unburied corpses. He personally arrested 'the beast of Belsen' Krämer.
Sir Brian Urquhart has led an extraordinary life, much of which has been spent in and around the United Nations system -- experience which accounts for his international stature and visibility in current debates over the future of the United Nations and the role of UN security forces in the post-Cold War era. It is fair to say that he has become the central figure in the dialogue over renewing the United Nations system. He is currently a scholar in residence at the Ford Foundation.
Born in England in 1919, Brian Urquhart was educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford. After serving in the British army and military intelligence during World War II in North Africa and Europe, he served as a personal assistant to Gladwyn Jebb, who established the preparatory commission of the United Nations in London. Since 1946, Sir Brian's professional life has been, in many respects, a history of the UN itself. He was personal assistant to the first Secretary-General (Trygve Lie) and subsequently served in various capacities under Ralph Bunche between 1954 and 1971. Over this period, Sir Brian was centrally involved in the conferences on peaceful uses of atomic energy, the Congo crisis in the early 1960s, and peacekeeping in Cyprus, Kashmir, and the Middle East. In the period after 1972, Brian Urquhart was one of the principal political advisors of the Secretary-General, and served as the Under-Secretary-General for Special Political Affairs, working on Lebanon, Israel and Palestine, and Namibia, among others. He retired from the United Nations Secretariat in 1986.
Across this extraordinary career, Sir Brian has written several books, including brilliant biographies of Dag Hammarskjöld and Ralph Bunche. He has also written an autobiography, A Life in Peace and War, published by W.W. Norton and Company. His books on decolonization, and more recently on reforming the United Nations system, have projected him into the international limelight of transnational politics. A tireless speaker and activist, Sir Brian is deeply involved in the events surrounding the fiftieth UN anniversary. His pieces on the UN volunteer force and the responsibilities of the UN system published in The New York Review of Books in 1993 and 1994 have set the terms of the debate for all future discussions of rethinking the UN system.
related stuff: Interview with Sir Brian Urquhart (March 1996, Harry Kreisler) part1 (movie file 4MB) |
http://untreaty.un.org/cod/avl/ls/Urquhart_UN_1.html
United Nations
Reflections on the United Nations
Interviews of Sir Brian Urquhart
by Ms. Virginia Morris, Principal Legal Officer
Codification Division, United Nations Office of Legal Affairs
Part I. The Role of the United Nations
in a Changing World
Sir Brian Urquhart discusses the role of the United Nations in a changing world, including the end of the wartime alliance, the Cold War, the introduction of nuclear weapons as well as the increase in the membership of the Organization following decolonization. He also discusses the Charter of the United Nations as the blueprint for achieving the goals of the Organization more than a half century after its adoption.
Video (30 minutes)
Homage to Brian Urquhart (with up-date 5 Jan 09)
The 6 Marc
The 6 March 2008 issue of the New York Review of Books includes a magnificent demolition job in a review of the memoirs of that rascal of the far right, John Bolton, by the veteran retired international public servant, Sir Brian Urquhart. (Hat-tip: to Dr Lorna Lloyd at Keele, who alerted me to this review in the NYRB.) Earlier this year, Sir Brian recorded an interview lasting nearly an hour for a University of California at Berkeley series of Conversations on International Affairs, all eight parts of which are available on the Berkeley website. Both the book review and the extended interview are compulsory reading and viewing. You would never guess from the vigour and forthrightness of both that Brian Urquhart will be 90 next year (2009).
Brian Urquhart is by any reckoning the most distinguished and accomplished British national or international public servant of his generation, perhaps of any generation. He served in the British army and military intelligence throughout World War II in North Africa and Europe. In the words
Brian Urquhart is by any reckoning the most distinguished and accomplished British national or international public servant of his generation, perhaps of any generation. He served in the British army and military intelligence throughout World War II in North Africa and Europe. In the words of his Wikipedia entry, –
Urquhart is well-known for his attempts to persuade the planners of Operation Market Garden to modify or abort their plans, in light of crucial information obtained from aerial reconnaissance and the Dutch resistance. The episode was described by Cornelius Ryan in his book on “Market Garden”, A Bridge Too Far. In the film version, directed by Richard Attenborough, Urquhart’s character was renamed “Major Fuller”, to avoid confusion with a similarly named British General.
Urquhart was a member of the staff involved in the setting-up of the United Nations in 1945, and has advised every Secretary-General of the United Nations since its inception. His main fields of interest and operation at the UN have been conflict resolution and peacekeeping. Urquhart organized the first peacekeeping force (in Egypt after the Suez crisis). To differentiate the peacekeepers from other soldiers, the UN wanted to have the soldiers wear blue berets. When that turned out to take six weeks to make, Urquhart proposed the characteristic blue helmets, which could be made in a day by painting over regular ones.
As Undersecretary-General, Urquhart’s main functions were the direction of peace-keeping forces in the Middle East and Cyprus, and negotiations in these two areas; amongst others, his contributions also included work on the negotiations relating to a Namibia peace settlement, negotiations in Kashmir, Lebanon and work on peaceful uses for nuclear energy.
Brian Urquhart retired from the United Nations Secretariat in 1986 (22 years ago!) and since then he has been an indefatigable advocate for liberal international causes, writing books and articles, lecturing and giving countless interviews about all the subjects on which he has absolutely unrivalled expertise: the UN, the role of international law in general and the UN Charter in particular, peace-making and peace-keeping, the role of the super-powers, non-proliferation and disarmament. His output of authoritative, meticulously documented book reviews and other articles for, especially, the New York Review of Books (listed here) is phenomenal and, happily, continuing. In the words of one potted biography:
Sir Brian has written several books, including brilliant biographies of Dag Hammarskjöld and Ralph Bunche. He has also written an autobiography, A Life in Peace and War, published by W.W. Norton and Company. His books on decolonization, and more recently on reforming the United Nations system, have projected him into the international limelight of transnational politics. A tireless speaker and activist, Sir Brian [was] deeply involved in the events surrounding the fiftieth UN anniversary. His pieces on the UN volunteer force and the responsibilities of the UN system published in The New York Review of Books in 1993 and 1994 have set the terms of the debate for all future discussions of rethinking the UN system.
Knighted in 1986, Sir Brian has another, rarer distinction: his portrait, by Philip Pearlstein, hangs in the National Portrait Gallery (room 35).
During my time in the late 1970s and early 80s as head of a Foreign & Commonwealth Office department, heavily engaged for several years in the seemingly endless and tortuous negotiations leading eventually to the independence of Namibia under processes arising directly from a UN Security Council resolution, I periodically had some contacts with Brian Urquhart, then UN Under-Secretary-General and one of the two or three most senior members of the UN secretariat. He was, and no doubt still is, an extraordinarily good listener, ready to consider seriously any ideas and proposals emanating from any quarter without regard to its rank in the hierarchy. He was incredibly flexible and innovative, not the qualities most commonly found (in those days, anyway) in UN secretariat officials. He was strikingly courteous, calm and patient. If he had any defects as an international diplomat, you’d have had a job picking them out.
One more snippet about this many-sided, many-talented man. As his Wikipedia entry quoted earlier relates, during the second world war Brian Urquhart was an officer in the British Airborne Corps of parachute and glider troops. On one of his parachute drops — his last, as it turned out — his chute failed to open and he was very badly injured, not surprisingly. After six months in hospital he was sufficiently recovered to resume his military duties but not to make any more parachute jumps. As the Airborne Corps’s chief intelligence officer it was his job to give advice on possible dangers and risks to the planners of the ill-fated plan for a mass parachute drop to capture three key bridges over the Rhine (one of them at Arnhem) in advance of the Allied armies as they pushed across the Netherlands towards Germany. Urquhart assessed the risks of failure as so high that he felt bound to advise that the project should be abandoned or at least redesigned to reduce the 8 mile distance from the dropping zones to the objective, the bridge. This was not the advice that General Montgomery and the other generals wanted to hear and Urquhart was unceremoniously moved to other duties. He was subsequently proved to have been right and the Arnhem and other landings were a costly failure. In one of his Berkeley interviews conducted a few years ago, Urquhart reflected on the lessons he learned from this traumatic experience:
Well, the thing went very seriously wrong and I then realized what I hadn’t realized before, that these generals and great commanders and politicians who were so admired during the war were actually just like everyone else. They were vain, they were ambitious, they very often made extremely faulty judgments. I had not thought of that before; I had always thought that they were kind of super-people and I must say that the feeling has remained with me for the rest of my life. I never again trusted famous, glamorous leaders to resist vanity and ambition and make the right, mature decision, and get it right.
Recent British and American history alas provides ample confirmation of the rightness of that penetrating conclusion. Historians may not always give enough weight to the role of glamour, vanity and ambition on the part of political and military leaders in driving them on to fatal misjudgements and consequent disasters.
British people should be proud of Sir Brian Urquhart: those who know about him undoubtedly are. It’s a pity that he isn’t more widely known and his exceptional record more widely appreciated, although he’s not the kind of person who seeks or would enjoy celebrity status. It’s not perhaps too late for a Nobel Peace Prize, which would make him better known. That would be one in the eye for the appalling John Bolton, although several decades too late for the Arnhem generals.
Update (5 January 2009): This post has prompted Alan James, Emeritus Professor of International Relations at Keele University, to send me the following reminiscence, which he has authorised me to quote attributably here:
In the mid 1960s I was commissioned by Alastair Buchan, Director of the Institute for Strategic Studies (as it then was), to write a book on peacekeeping. He and Brian Urquhart were friends, which doubtless helped with introductions when I travelled to the Middle East and Cyprus to see the sort of thing on which the UN was engaged. I also visited North America and there met Brian, he being Under Secretary-General for Special Political Affairs in the UN Secretariat, responsible for special assignments and negotiations and much else. As I maintained my interest in peacekeeping, this was followed over the years by many other meetings. Most of those which took place prior to his retirement were when he was Under Secretary-General for Special Political Affairs, but despite his considerable responsibilities he was invariably ready to see me. Even more valuable – and remarkable – was the fact that he was always exceedingly helpful. He would comment in an acute, frank, unstuffy, and often amusing way on my questions, put me in touch with others who could help, and smooth my way on visits to UN peacekeeping operations. I could not have asked for more.
I might just underline your point that his books and articles are no run-of-the-mill memoirs and analyses. When in 1987 I presented him for an honorary degree, I referred to him not just as a ‘soldier and very distinguished servant of the UN’, but also as a ‘scholar’ – a standing he had achieved alongside his work as an international official.
Born and raised in Dorset, Urquhart was educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford. After his parents moved to Meopham, Kent, he would visit them regularly there from New York where he now lives.
When World War II broke out, Urquhart joined the Army and, after a brief training period, was commissioned as an officer in The Dorset Regiment.[1] The Battle of France ended before his unit could deploy to the Continent, and he and his men were part of the coastal defence forces in and around Dover during the Battle of Britain. He later transferred to the Airborne Division as an Intelligence Officer. In August 1942, he was severely injured in a training drop, damaging three vertebrae in his lower spine and breaking several bones.[2] He spent months in the hospital, recovering and regaining his strength.
After his recovery, Urquhart served in North Africa and the Mediterranean, before returning to England to participate in the planning of airborne operations associated with Operation Overlord. In the autumn, as the 1st Airborne Corps Intelligence Officer, he assisted with the planning for Operation Market Garden, an ambitious airborne operation designed to seize the Dutch bridges over the rivers barring the Allied advance into northern Germany. He became convinced that the plan was critically flawed, and attempted to persuade his superiors to modify or abort their plans in light of crucial information obtained from aerial reconnaissance and the Dutch resistance. The episode was described by Cornelius Ryan in his book on "Market Garden", A Bridge Too Far. (In the film version, directed by Richard Attenborough, Urquhart's character was renamed "Major Fuller", to avoid confusion with asimilarly named British General.) The subsequent failure of the operation and the heavy casualties that resulted vindicated Urquhart's judgment, but he became deeply depressed by his failure to persuade his superiors to halt the operation and requested a transfer out of the airborne forces.[3]
After leaving the Airborne Division, he was transferred to T-Force, a unit responsible for searching for Nazi scientists and enemy military technology. Urquhart captured the German nuclear scientist Wilhelm Groth.[4]
Urquhart was a member of the British diplomatic staff involved in the setting-up of the United Nations in 1945, assisting the Executive Committee of the Preparatory Commission of the United Nations in establishing the administrative framework of the organization that had been created by the U.N. Charter. He subsequently became an aide to Trygve Lie, the first Secretary-General of the United Nations. Urquhart helped handle the administrative and logistical challenges involved in getting the U.N. established in New York City. Not particularly well liked by Lie, Urquhart was subsequently moved to a minor U.N. administrative post.
However, when Dag Hammarskjöld became the second Secretary-General in 1953, he appointed Urquhart as one of his main advisors.[5] He loyally served by Hammarskjold's side until the latter's death in 1961, admiring him greatly in spite of admittedly never getting to know him very well on a personal level.
During the Suez Crisis of 1956, Urquhart played a critical role in creating what turned out to be the first major U.N. effort towards conflict resolution and peacekeeping. Urquhart, as the only major advisor of Hammarskjold's with military experience, took the lead in organizing the first U.N. peacekeeping force, which was designed to separate the Egyptian and Israeli forces then fighting one another in the Sinai Peninsula. To differentiate the peacekeepers from other soldiers, the U.N. wanted to have the soldiers wear blue berets. When that turned out to take six weeks to make, Urquhart proposed the characteristic blue helmets, which could be converted in a day by painting over regular ones.[6]
In the early 1960s, Urquhart served as the main U.N. representative in the Congo, succeeding his friend Ralph Bunche. His efforts to stabilize the war-torn country were hampered by the chaos created by innumerable warring factions. At one point, Urquhart was abducted, brutally beaten, and threatened with death by undisciplined Katangese troops. He only survived after persuading his captors that his death would bring retribution by U.N. Gurkhatroops, whom the Katangans greatly feared.[7]
As Undersecretary-General, Urquhart's main functions were the direction of peacekeeping forces in the Middle East and Cyprus, and negotiations in these two areas; amongst others, his contributions also included work on the negotiations relating to a Namibia peace settlement, negotiations in Kashmir, Lebanon and work on peaceful uses for nuclear energy.
Alongside his autobiography, A Life in Peace and War, his work with Erskine B Childers includes several books of methods which he believes would make the United Nations more effective. In Renewing the United Nations System, he recommended the establishment of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly through Article 22 of the United Nations Charter.[8][9] His book Decolonization and World Peace[10] is based on his 1988 Tom Slick world peace lectures that he gave at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin. The appendices offer further insight into his views on the peacekeeping potential of the United Nations. Included are his remarks at the Nobel Prize banquet in Norway on the occasion of the award of the 1988 Nobel Peace Prize to the United Nations Peace-Keeping Forces. He also wrote biographies of Dag Hammarskjöld and Ralph Bunche.
Reflections on the United Nations: Interviews of Sir Brian Urquhart by Ms. Virginia Morris, Principal Legal Officer Codification Division, United Nations Office of Legal Affairs in the Lecture Series of the United Nations Audiovisual Library of International Law
The Codex Alimentarius (Latin for "Book of Food") is a collection of internationally recognized standards, codes of practice, guidelines and other recommendations relating to foods, food production and food safety.
Its name is derived from the Codex Alimentarius Austriacus.[1] Its texts are developed and maintained by the Codex Alimentarius Commission, a body that was established in early November 1961 by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), was joined by the World Health Organization (WHO) in June 1962, and held its first session in Rome in October 1963.[2] The Commission's main goals are to protect the health of consumers and ensure fair practices in the international food trade. The Codex Alimentarius is recognized by the World Trade Organization as an international reference point for the resolution of disputesconcerning food safety and consumer protection.[3][4]
Currently (2012) the Codex Alimentarius Commission has: 186 Codex Members - 185 Member Countries and 1 Member Organization (EU) 215 Codex Observers - 49 IGOs, 150 NGOs, 16 UN.
The Codex Alimentarius covers all foods, whether processed, semi-processed or raw. In addition to standards for specific foods, the Codex Alimentarius contains general standards covering matters such as food labeling, food hygiene, food additives and pesticide residues, and procedures for assessing the safety of foods derived from modern biotechnology. It also contains guidelines for the management of official i.e. governmental import and export inspection and certification systems for foods.
The Codex Alimentarius is published in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Spanish and Russian.[5] Not all texts are available in all languages.
The controversy over the Codex Alimentarius relates to a perception that it is a mandatory standard for the safety of food, including vitamin and mineral supplements. Supporters of the Codex Alimentarius say that it is a voluntary reference standard for food and that there is no obligation on countries to adopt Codex standards as a member of either Codex or any other international trade organization. From the point of view of its opponents, however, one of the main causes of concern is that the Codex Alimentarius is recognized by the World Trade Organization as an international reference standard for the resolution of disputes concerning food safety and consumer protection.[3][4] Proponents argue that the use of Codex Alimentarius during international disputes does not exclude the use of other references or scientific studies as evidence of food safety and consumer protection.[citation needed]
It is reported that in 1996 the German delegation put forward a proposal that no herb, vitamin or mineral should be sold for preventive or therapeutic reasons, and that supplements should be reclassified as drugs.[6] The proposal was agreed, but protests halted its implementation.[6] The 28th Session of the Codex Alimentarius Commission was subsequently held July 4–9, 2005.[7] Among the many issues discussed were the Guidelines for Vitamin and Mineral Food Supplements,[8] which were adopted during the meeting as new global safety guidelines: "The guidelines say people should be encouraged to select a balanced diet to get the sufficient amount of vitamins and minerals. Only in cases where food does not provide sufficient vitamins and minerals should supplements be used."[9] This text has been the subject of considerable controversy among proponents of dietary supplements. Many countries regulate such substances as therapeutic goods or pharmaceuticals or by some other category, without requiring them to be shown to be medically useful.[citation needed] The text does not seek to ban supplements, but subjects them to labeling and packaging requirements, sets criteria for the setting of maximum and minimum dosage levels, and requires that safety and efficacy are considered when determining ingredient sources. The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and World Health Organization (WHO) will implement these criteria with "labelling to stop consumers overdosing on vitamin and mineral food supplements." The Codex Alimentarius Commission (CAC) has said that the Guidelines call "for labelling that contains information on maximum consumption levels of vitamin and mineral food supplements." The WHO has also said that the Guidelines "ensure that consumers receive beneficial health effects from vitamins and minerals."[9]
In 2004, similarities were noted between the EU's Food Supplements Directive and the Codex Alimentarius draft guidelines for vitamin and mineral supplements'.[10] Additional controversy has been expressed by proponents of ecologically and socially sustainable agriculture and food systems, such as the Slow Food movement,[11] although the Slow Food movement has become more closely aligned with the EU.[12] In addition, the Manifesto on the Future of Food stated that "bureaucracies like the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the Codex Alimentarius have codified policies designed to serve the interests of global agribusiness above all others, while actively undermining the rights of farmers and consumers".[13]
“Man’s mind, once stretched by a new idea,
never regains its original dimensions.”
- Oliver Wendell Holmes
19th Century U.S. author and physician
These 14 points provide you with understanding about Codex Alimentarius – health freedom threat number one. It also explains what to do about it. Codex Alimentarius (Codex for short) means “Food Code.” This world food code is a United Nations agency, jointly sponsored by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). It has existed for nearly 50 years and its International Statute gives it a joint mission: protecting food safety and promoting world food trade. It is supposed to do so by adopting voluntary Guidelines and Standards (defining foods in international trade) and its decisions are enforced through the World Trade Organization (WTO) which considers its Guidelines and Standards as presumptive evidence in WTO trade disputes. It has become a creature of the Bigs – Big Govt, Big Agra, Big Pharma… etc.
Counsel Fucetola explains the “Codex Two Step” – how countries can opt-out:
//www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QNg3MD6BxM
Ready to take action now? Click here.
Ready to learn more? Click here.
DID YOU KNOW:
The Natural Solutions Foundation created numerous strong and productive links with activists in India, Thailand, South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Ethiopia and elsewhere.
If the U.S. has its way, and it usually does when it comes to Codex Alimentarius, GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms) will be promoted by making their labeling unnecessary, even though there is significant scientific evidence to warrant a moratorium on the widespread use of GMOs. Severe health problems are already evident with the use of GMOs. Incidentally, the U.S. is the only country in the world where unlabeled use of GMOs is permitted.
See Dr. Laibow’s recent hard-hitting video expose of Codex pretensions:
//www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hyo_VjJSVFo
Consider this alarming statement:
“Some genetically-manipulated crops are changed so that they produce their own high levels of pesticides. For example, genetically-manipulated ‘Bt’ crops have been shown to emit very high levels of toxins.”
This statement is from a study about plants that have been genetically manipulated to produce Bt toxin, a bacterial toxin used as pesticide in GMO crops. Such genetically modified plants result in at least 1000 times more Bt toxin per acre than a heavy application of Bt sprayed directly on the plants does. Consumption of plants with the “Bt gene” (such as non-organic corn and corn-based sweeteners) may lead to serious health problems after long-term ingestion. High concentrations of Bt are also toxic to beneficial insects and, through them, birds and the rest of the ecosystem suffer.
Other hazards related to crops manipulated to produce their own pesticides are discussed in more detail by Dr. Joseph Cummins, Professor of Genetics, in “Plant-Pesticides in GE-food: A Potential Health Risk”. Even if the genetically-manipulated plant does not produce its own pesticides, it has been shown conclusively in scientific research that the herbicides used on some of these non-organic, genetically-manipulated plants (e.g., soy, canola, corn) are extremely toxic and can cause birth defects. The genetic manipulations themselves produce toxins and lead to serious health hazards when consumed over time, including birth defects, intestinal lesions and other major health challenges.
American food exports are viewed with suspicion by countries leery of GMO foods. In order to overcome this, the U.S. is demanding global unlabeled use of GMOs such as the current unlabeled use of GMOs in the U.S. If Codex yeilds to U.S. pressure, as it usually does, dangerous GMO food will make its way around the world. Currently, many nations are resisting the U.S. on this and rejecting U.S. exports for that reason. Even countries in the midst of famine like Nigeria have rejected U.S. GMO food.
The official line of the biotechnical industry is that GMOs “reduce reliance on pesticides”, either because they make their own pesicides (e.g., Bt toxins) or because they are resistant to pests. The reality is far different, however. Plants which are resistant to the highly toxic herbicide glyphosate(Roundup®) give farmers permission to saturate their fields with it, because the crop itself (now being genetically modified) is not impacted, while competing weeds are.
This may sound like a good idea (get the weeds instead of the crop).
But it simply means that more pesticides will be used, as the farmer doesn’t have to be careful about spraying too much lest the crop be killed. Hence, plants which produce their own pesticide would actually lead farmers to making heavier use of pesticides and herbicides!
For example, as Charles Benbook of the “Northwest Science and Environmental Policy Center”notes:
“In Alabama, another high Bt-cotton adoption state (62% acres planted), BBW insecticide applications almost doubled from 1997 to 2000. Moreover, there was a clear shift in Alabama toward very toxic, broad-spectrum materials. Similar dramatic changes have occurred in Mississippi cotton insect pest management. In the first half of the 1990s, cotton farmers made eight to nine applications per acre targeting the BBW complex, with the highly-toxic OP methyl parathion accounting for over 40% of acre-treatments and pounds applied.”
Farmers in Iraq, as an example of what a Codex-food future would look like in America, must purchase their seeds from Monsanto® and are forbidden from retaining seed crops under the new Iraqi patent laws. If farmers retain seeds from their own farm, they face heavy fines. And they are forced to use pesticide products sold to them by American corporations (such as Roundup® by Monsanto®).
Many GMOs have been genetically engineered so that seeds will not germinate without the use of specific pesticides and herbicides. This means that specific pesticides and herbicides must be bought before the seeds will germinate. Mounting scientific evidence makes it clear that birth defects, chemical sensitivity, chronic fatigue syndrome, asthma, severe allergies and a host of other conditions may be either enhanced or caused by increased pesticide exposure (which these crops and the surrounding fields require).
GMOs themselves are far from scientifically established as safe for either the planet or its people by objective, non-industry scientists.
Genetic drift, the wind-borne spread of GMO genetic material, is recognized as a major threat to the biological integrity of the entire earth. In fact, the creation of “superweeds” as a result of cross-pollination with GMO crops has now been confirmed in the UK, Canada and elsewhere.
Because of its support for unlabelled GMO products, Codex Alimentarius would make it more lucrative to use GMOs in foods, and thus, increase the spread of GMOs through uncontrolled genetic drift of altered DNA via pollen and wind.
Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) are quickly and easily released into the food supply.
Biotechnology manufacturers work in voluntary consultation with the FDA, USDA, or EPA, depending on the type of product being developed, to test the safety of new genetically modified products (Cockburn, 2002).
The concept of “Substantial Equivalence” is used to determine if there are any apparent differences between the genetically modified crop and its traditional counterpart, which is generally regarded as safe. Any differences identified are then tested by the developer using a variety of in vitro (test tube) and in vivo (animal) studies to evaluate their safety. Once the manufacturer has completed the consultation process with the government agency the product is considered safe for consumption and approved for the market. Although regulators do monitor for GMOs that are not approved for human consumption, no exposure limits are set by regulators and no attempts are made to monitor post market consumer exposures.
No clinical testing is required before GMOs are released for human use.
Codex Alimentarius says “let’s make the world even more GMO friendly”.
If unlabeled use of GMOs is ratified by Codex Alimentarius, the entire world will have the same unsafe food conditions that we do here in the U.S.. Since GMOs don’t have to be labeled in the U.S. you might be eating rice with a human liver gene stuck in it, or perhaps a medication with your food (“Medical Milk” or vaccine gene). These are some of the grizzly things genetic engineering is doing to our food.
Who wants to eat a drug or a human liver enzyme with their rice?
Genetically Modified Organisms are sometimes called “Frankenfoods”. Eating them exposes people to long and short term health hazards like allergic reactions (including death) and auto-immune diseases . There have also been reports of gradual organ damage and immune system damagewhile the highly virulent virus used in the genetic manipulation “may recombine with latent or infecting viruses within the host or beyond and give rise to new super-viruses”.
One of the industries that has close ties to Codex Alimentarius is the biotechnology industry. This sheds light on why Codex Alimentarius is poised to allow GMOs to be added to our foods without labelling, with disregard for the overwhelming scientific evidence pointing to the dangers of unleashing this immature technology upon the world.
DID YOU KNOW:
The Natural Solutions Foundation established and continues to maintain an extensive Health Freedom web site and the largest email list in the health freedom movement, with several hundred thousand "Mouse Warriors" ready to send messages to Congress, the FDA and other agencies, "at the drop of a mouse..." - we communicate with this list with regular, informative eblasts and personal responses from Dr. Rima's assistant Kathy.
THIS IS NOT A JOKE!!! IT IS 100% REAL AND IT IS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW
World Health Organization (WHO) and Food Agricultural Organization (FAO) have decided to "control" the world's population by conspiring together to establish the CODEX ALIMENTARIUS... which is shockingly backed and funded by
United Nation (UN).
According to the projections of the WHO and the FAO, a minimum of 3 billion people will die from the Codex mandated vitamin and mineral guideline alone...
This page will reveal you what the EVIL minds have planned...
The official definition outlined on their site states that the main purposes of the program are"protecting health of the consumers and ensuring fair trade practices in the food trade, and promoting coordination of all food standards work undertaken by international overnmental and non-governmental organizations."
Here are some shocking facts about the biggest conspiracy that have ever existed:
Back in 1962 some evil and very powerful people at that moment came to the conclusion that population should be ruduced dramatically. They needed an action plan... an action plan that came from guess who??... it came from the "father" of Auschwitz. ( the biggest nazist concentration camp in the World War 2)
...While serving his prison term, Schmitz - the "father" of Auschwitz (his company was the largest chemical manufacturing enterprise in the world during the war) looked for an alternative to brute force for controlling people and realized that people could be controlled through their food supply. When he got out of prison, he went to his friends at the United Nations (UN) and laid out a plan to take over the control of food worldwide.
...98% of Western Europe has rejected water fluoridation and yet their children's teeth are just as healthy as children's teeth in the US.
If you go in any store and you look to any rat poisoning product you'll only find one ingredient: sodium floride. Which means we are being poisoned bit by bit...day by day...of course without noticing it. Water companies have begun fluoridating bottle water.... and the fact that it is used in many drugs prescription shows that it eliminates aggression and ambition in people.
...Russians conducted many tests during the second world war with fluoridated water over people and noticed the same effects. Is this a coincidence? No.
Because the strategy was so thought-out that it's almost impossible to realise our food is being used against us. But when you dig deeper you will see that everything is set up to kill us slowly over time... without one factor being the main cause, because there are many. Basically, for those who die... it will be made out as their own fault…
Another thing that it should scare you to death..
The reintroduction of deadly and carcinogenic organic pesticides that in 1991, 176 countries (including the U.S.) have banned worldwide including 7 of the 12 worst at the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pesticides (e.g., Hexachlorobenzene, Toxaphene, and Aldrin) will be allowed back into food at elevated levels. All together, Codex allows over 3,275 different pesticides, including those that are suspected carcinogens or endocrine disrupters. There is no consideration of the long-term effects of exposure to mixtures of pesticide residues in food.
There are 180 member countries, including such notables as Canada, the USA, every member state of the EU, Switzerland, Israel, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, China, Japan and Australia which have already signed agreements pledging total harmonization of their laws including food and drug laws to these international standards in the future.
My name is Nick Archer and I'm regular guy just like you. I've discovered this threat a few years ago but I wanted to be sure if the implementation will be finalized. If you pay close attention and search about this on the internet you'll find some pretty good information ...supporting my claims...
But this is not the point...The point is that no one has decided to do something about this... I think I read thousands of comments on the videos I found regarding this topic. The majority of people are very angry and now they are aware that something is actually happenning. They want to join forces with people ... to write petitions...to stay informed...but until now there's been no place to vent there thoughts and stay informed.
When I first discovered all this...naturally I was scared...just as you probably are right now. More than that, I wasn't able to find anything to help me fully understand this problem from A to Z... to give me directions on what should I do ...what to avoid...and what alternative are possible.
Therefore, since I'm a Do-It-Yourself guy I decided to create a book that covers everything related to this subject...from the history of the malicious "Codex Alimentarius" to how to get your family out of their death list...because people I'm telling you...you don't want to let these calculated people toy with your family's life, do you?
Allow me to tell you a few words about this book which I called "Codex Alimentarius Survival Guide"...
It took me 15 months to gather all the information and I can honestly say that I spent thousands of hours in front of my computer to come with the best solutions to this problem.
I strongly recommend you to read it...because I honestly believe it could make a difference between life and death. Their death doesn't come in a day or two... it will come over the years...making you and your family sick...then it will cause you to spend your money on drugs and pills...and at the end they want massive population control. Which means people will die.
Codex Alimentarius exposed from A to Z (so you can understand even better how big this treath really is for your family and what you can do to get you and the family from the "death list")
Who are the 5 groups that are making massive revenue from the codex while 3 billion people are condemned to death (sad thing is that you probably know these groups..). The book will present you how to gain an advantage in this survival battle...
Everything that media doesn't want you to know (because some of their owners are involved, too). Find out the naked truth and do what is best for your family's health...
How to escape: what alternatives do you have, what should you eat, what to avoid, and how to protect your family step by step ( you'll be so relieved once you realise there are option)
5 instant solutions for a healthy eating...that anyone can apply starting today. (no need to accept their contaminated food anymore). Once you'll know all these, definitely you'll sleep better...knowing that the family is safe)
Discover the DEATH table ( it took me 2 months to complete it) which contains the commonly used ingredients by today's producers...fully explained on how these affect your body...and the alternatives you have for each of these toxins). This table can literally save your life because you'll spot the bad foods only by reading the labels )
The naked truth behind UMAMI (the taste scam behind 90% of the foods today...which is so toxic and makes the foods taste so good and irresistible). What you don't know is that UMAMI has a terrible effect over your health. Here's how to avoid it...
The danger behing water...what "traps" you may encounter...and how to find a perfect alternative for it. Discover how you can drink great quality water without paying a fortune on it.
The truth behind supplements, drugs and pills... (which can be considered the Trojan Horse in my opinion)...how they affect you ...and what alternatives you have and how you can keep away your kids from getting sick... A must know!!!
Be aware also of additional conspiracies: financial and educational (discover practical advice any simple man or woman can follow for taking care of their future).
The 50 things you an do right now to get your name off the death list. Moreover, these great tips will set you on the right track for being healthier, happier ...and why not...INDEPENDENT.
How you can do more to help spread awarness for friends, family and loved ones...by joining our movement and help spread the truth. It's in your power to change things...so don't hesitate.
...and many others. I'm sure that if you spare 5 minutes from your time and think about it you'll find a lot of clues.
Our mission is to make all of you aware that a great danger is stocking us. My mission should be your mission to spread the news for everyone to truly understand what is happening.
This site isn't about selling something ... it's about what you can do for your family...it's about our future.
We might be just a few at first...but I'm positive that we can create a snowball effect. Why? Because this threat concerns 3 billion people out there. If their plan works...we're doomed. From 2 people, 1 will die from a terrible disease invented just to take our money and reduce the population.
Now You Probably Expect To Ask You An Arm and Leg For This Info...
But definitely not! In fact, I don't need money. I have a steady job, I'm making like $130,000 a year...my family and I are doing fine... so this is not a big money maker for me. If I can responsible for opening peoples eyes, as mine have been opened...That's my biggest possible reward... If I've made you to realize that we're talking about you and your family's health here....and arm you with ways to prevent this conspiracy then I'm thrilled!
Let me ask you this...
Is it $10,000 ? Is it $100,000? Is it $100? ....We all know that it is priceless... So if you have read to this point my goal has been accomplished. I have made you aware that this is a very real danger.
Getting back to the book, as I said, I spent thousands of hours of work to create this book. It's 78 pages long... I tried to give it away to some of my friends but they didn't open it. You know how it is...when something is free ...you say that is not valuable.
Therefore I decided to put a symbolic price: $37. It is less than the price of a pizza night out for two...This way I'll know for sure that it will get read... I'm not doing it for money...I'm already working to create a fundation "Stop The CODEX Foundation" ...and all the money will go there. It will be like you'll be donating to it yourself.
Protect Your Family Ordering the Book Here
Frankly, I don't know for how long the website will be up...I expect to have all kind of troubles from the big companies involved in the conspiracy. There is no doubt in my mind that when this page hits 1 million + visitors ...they will come after me...and they will want to close me down. So I strongly suggest you to take the book while you can.
Not to mention, that if you don't like the book you can have the money back. YOu have 60 days to read it ...if you are not happy...just send me an email and I'll send you the money back. No question asked whatsoever. I'll be the happy one because I made you aware of the danger...and that was my initial purpose. So, once again:
Protect Yourself Against The Codex Alimentarius Ordering The Book Here
Probably the rich people who will afford to trick their system and get only natural food. You see... they are so good in what they are doing that it's almost impossible to believe that such a thing exists. Everything happens over years ...and you cannot put your finger on any one thing they are doing...
Together we can do something to change this... Together we are a force. Maybe no one will listen to us when we are just a few thousands...but let's be millions. It's our lives, it's our planet...
Ignoring my website and my message will be a very bad move. We need to be strong and help each other. As I said..it's not my website...IT's OUR COMMUNITY.
I don't want to freak you out with my words...but YOU JUST NEED TO BE AWARE. If you think I'm exagerating ...please accept my apology ..but I really think that this is REAL.
For any other question you can contact me anytime at:
nick@nextarmageddon.net
Nick Archer
#1 -Get the book so you know what to do to protect your family.
Click Here To Protect Yourself and Your Family and Thrive Despite of the "Codex Alimentarius"
#2 - Forward this page to all your friends, relatives, colleagues ... Everyone should be aware of this. This isn't a game...
- CODEX ALIMENTARIUS concerns every person on this planet. Everyone should be aware. Don't hesitate to spread the news..
- time is ticking away and we need to act fast. The "extermination" begun in Dec 31, 2009
- do yourself a favor and PLEASEE ..don't ignore this message. I have nothing to gain from your presence here... the only one who's gaining is YOU. We can only win if we take action:
God Help Us All...
At the risk of scary a lot of people, I want to open and honest with you about everything I am revealing unlike the before-mentioned world organisations. I also want to assure you that I'm not a crazy guy who believes everything he hears... but what I am talking about is REAL
Fact is the implementation has already started and there’s a big chance that you, your family and your loved ones have already, or will be affected by this. They say that knowledge is power, so being aware of this could be the most important information you will ever learn… and from this information it is up to you whether you take further action or not.
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Klaus Barbie |
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Klaus Barbie |
The global drug trade is controlled and run by the intelligence agencies CIA Mosaad MI5- MI6
James Casbolt has worked for MI6 'black ops' cocaine trafficking IRA Mossad – London & Brighton
http://iraqwar.mirror-world. ru/article/126995
MI6 (w. Mossad,CIA) Are The Lords Of The Global Drug Trade
By: Crack_Smoke_Republican on: 05.05.2007 [21:31 ] (718 reads)
Always treat the International Drug Trade and Drug Money Laundering as actual Terrorist Acts. |
MI6 Are The Lords Of The Global Drug Trade
International Politics
Commentary by James Casbolt, Former MI6 Agent
2 May 2007
It may be a revelation to many people that the global drug trade is controlled and run by the intelligence agencies. In this global drug trade British intelligence reigns supreme. As intelligence insiders know MI5 and MI6 control many of the other intelligence agencies in the world (CIA, MOSSAD etc) in a vast web of intrigue and corruption that has its global power base in the city of London, the square mile.
My name is James Casbolt and I worked for MI6 in 'black ops' cocaine trafficking with the IRA and MOSSAD in London and Brighton between 1995 and 1999. My father Peter Casbolt was also MI6 and worked with the CIA and mafia in Rome, trafficking cocaine into Britain.
My experience was that the distinctions of all these groups became blurred until in the end we were all one international group working together for the same goals. We were puppets who had our strings pulled by global puppet masters based in the city of London. Most levels of the intelligence agencies are not loyal to the people of the country they are based in and see themselves as 'super national'. It had been proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the CIA has been bringing in most of the drugs into America for the last fifty years (see ex LAPD officer Michael Rupert's 'From the wilderness' website for proof).
The CIA operates under orders from British intelligence and was created by British intelligence in 1947. The CIA today is still loyal to the international bankers based in the city of London and the global elite aristocratic families like the Rothchilds and the Windsor's. Since it was first started, MI6 has always brought drugs into Britain. They do not bring 'some' of the drugs into Britain but I would estimate MI6 bring in around ninety percent of the drugs in. They do this by pulling the strings of many organised crime and terrorist groups and these groups like the IRA are full of MI6 agents.
MI6 bring in heroin from the middle east, cocaine from south America and cannabis from morocco as well as other places. British intelligence also designed and created the drug LSD in the 1950's through places like the Tavistock Institute in London. By the 1960's MI5, MI6 and the CIA were using LSD as a weapon against the angry protestors of the sixties and turned them into 'flower children' who were too tripped out to organise a revolution. Dr Timothy Leary the LSD guru of the sixties was a CIA puppet. Funds and drugs for Leary's research came from the CIA and Leary says that Cord Meyer, the CIA agent in charge of funding the sixties LSD counter culture has "helped me to understand my political cultural role more clearly".
In 1998, I was sent 3000 LSD doses on blotting paper by MI5 with pictures of the European union flag on them. The MI5 man who sent them told my father this was a government 'signature' and this LSD was called 'Europa'.
This global drugs trade controlled by British intelligence is worth at least 500 billion a year. This is more than the global oil trade and the economy in Britain and America is totally dependent on this drug money.
Mafia crime boss John Gotti exposed the situation when asked in court if he was involved in drug trafficking. He replied"No we can't compete with the government".
I believe this was only a half truth because the mafia and the CIA are the same group at the upper levels.
In Britain, the MI6 drug money is laundered through the Bank of England, Barclays Bank and other household name companies.
The drug money is passed from account to account until its origins are lost in a huge web of transactions. The drug money comes out 'cleaner' but not totally clean.
Diamonds are then bought with this money from the corrupt diamond business families like the Oppenheimers. These diamonds are then sold and the drug money is clean. MI6 and the CIA are also responsible for the crack cocaine epidemic in Britain and America. In 1978, MI6 and the CIA were in south America researching the effects of the natives smoking 'basuco' cocaine paste. This has the same effect as crack cocaine. They saw that the strength and addiction potential was far greater than ordinary cocaine and created crack cocaine from the basuco formula. MI6 and the CIA then flooded Britain and America with crack. Two years later, in 1980, Britain and America were starting to see the first signs of the crack cocaine epidemic on the streets.
On August 23, 1987, in a rural community south of Little Rock in America, two teenage boys named Kevin Ives and Don Henry were murdered and dismembered after witnessing a CIA cocaine drop that was part of a CIA drug trafficking operation based at a small airport in Mena, Arkansas. Bill Clinton was the governor of Arkansas at the time. Bill Clinton was involved with the CIA at this time and $100 million worth of cocaine was coming through the Mena, Arkansas airport each month. For proof see the books 'Compromise' and 'Dope Inc'.
On my father's international MI6 drug runs, whatever fell off the back of the lorry so to speak he would keep and we would sell it in Britain. As long as my father was meeting the speedboats from Morocco in the Costa del Sol and then moving the lorry loads of cannabis through their MI6, IRA lorry business into Britain every month, British intelligence were happy. As long as my father was moving shipments of cocaine out of Rome every month, MI5 and MI6 were happy. If my father kept a bit to sell himself no one cared because there was enough drugs and money to go round in this 500 billion a year global drugs trade.
The ones who were really paying were the people addicted. Who were paying with suffering. But karma always catches up and both myself and my father became addicted to heroin in later years and my father died addicted, and poor in prison under very strange circumstances. Today, I am clean and drug-free and wish to help stop the untold suffering this global drugs trade causes.
The intelligence agencies have always used addictive drugs as a weapon against the masses to bring in their long term plan for a one world government, a one world police force designed to be NATO and a micro chipped population known as the New World Order. As the population is in a drug or alcohol-induced trance watching 'Coronation Street', the new world order is being crept in behind them. To properly expose this global intelligence run drugs trade we need to expose the key players in this area:...
Continue reading for "the names" below...
1. Tibor Rosenbaum — a MOSSAD agent and head of the Geneva based Banque du Credit international. This bank was the forerunner to the notorious Bank of Credit and Commerce international (BCCI) which is a major intelligence drug money laundering bank. 'Life' magazine exposed Rosenbaum's bank as a money launderer for the Meyer Lansky American organised crime family and Tibor Rosenbaum funded and supported 'Permindex' the MI6 assassination unit which was at the heart of the John F. Kennedy assassination.
2. Robert Vesco — sponsored by the Swiss branch of the Rothchilds and part of the American connection to the Medellin drug cartel in Columbia.
3. Sir Francis de Guingand — former head of British intelligence, now living in south Africa (and every head of MI5 and MI6 has been involved in the drug world before and after him).
4. Henry Keswick — chairman of Jardine Matheson which is one of the biggest drug trafficking operations in the world. His brother John Keswick is chairman of the bank of England.
5. Sir Martin Wakefield Jacomb — Bank of England director from 1987 to 1995, Barclays Bank Deputy Chairman in 1985, Telegraph newspapers director in 1986 (This is the reason why this can of worms doesn't get out in the mainstream media. The people who are perpetrating these crimes control most of the mainstream media. In America former director of the CIA William Casey is head of the council of the media network ABC. Many insiders refer to ABC as 'The CIA network.)
6. George Bush, Snr. — former President and former head of the CIA and America's leading drug baron who has fronted more wars on drugs than any other president, which in reality is just a method to eliminate competition. A whole book could be written on George Bush's involvement in the global drug trade but it is well-covered in the book 'Dark Alliance' by investigative journalist Gary Webb. Gary Webb was found dead with two gunshot wounds to the back of his head with a revolver. The case was declared a 'suicide'. You figure that out. Gary Webb as well as myself and other investigators, found that much of this 'black ops' drug money is being used to fund projects classified above top secret. These projects include the building and maintaining of deep level underground bases in Dulce in New Mexico, Pine gap in Australia, Snowy mountains in Australia, The Nyala range in Africa, west of Kindu in Africa, next to the Libyan border in Egypt, Mount Blanc in Switzerland, Narvik in Scandinavia, Gottland island in Sweden and many other places around the world (more about these underground bases in my next issue).
The information on this global drugs trade run by the intelligence agencies desperately needs to get out on a large scale. Any information, comments or feedback to help me with my work would be greatly welcomed.
James Casbolt- St Ives, Cornwall-02/5/07
E-mail jamescasbolt@hotmail.co.uk
http://www.friendsofliberty. com/modules.php?name=News& file=article&sid=3117
This is an old news, but yeah... GWB was snorting the very same coke his daddy
was murdering people in South/Central America to harverst and ship to the US.
But again, my amazement is not with the degree of crimes of these NWO, part II
folks, but rather with the idiocy of the US dweller. THat's where one's brain
just stops. 911, 3000 murdered by own gov't. They don't fucking care. Oaklahoma.
Kids bombed by gov't, torn to shreds. They don't care. FBI stands down cops
and lets some nutter kill 30 kids in some school. They don't care. The animal
just doesn't care. I mean zebras and wildebeast care more about one another
in the herd than yanks. This NWO monster keeps offing them for fun, on TV,
make jokes about it, and they keep grazing like nothing's happening. Grazing
on their diseased burger madcow swill and guzzling aspertame tainted cokes.
There can't be a dumber animal in the whole of the jungle than that.
...London and it's vast finance industry is the world largest money laundry machine.
Imagine a state becomes a criminal institutions and pretends to be justified by it's voters.
We need to introduce the fourth power the people, otherwise we have no stake.
The MI6, Mosad and CIA are just the mules that do the work BUT THE MONEY GOES TO ROYAL CEFFERS and to the Bush clan.
The problem with USA people now IS THAT THEY LOST 100% THEIR FREEDOM TO THE POINT THAT THEY ARE SLAVES TO THEIR DEBT AND PAY CHEQUE!
They have no voice, no say, no thinking, no intelligent conversations or discussions. Because if they do THEY WILL LOSE THEIR JOB and therefore they will be in the black list of FBI. Their career will be over.
Long time ago I posted the concept of SLAVERY INDEX related to freedom of thinking. If you have deep pockets, you are at your own and can care less about conforming. Rothschild said if he can control the money he can care less about the law.
On the other hand, if you have nothing, then there is nothing more than you can lose. In fact biggest changes in human thinking seem to always come from clean-pocket people like Christ, Gandhi, and many others.
The other interesting group is the gypsies; they are no where in the tax radar and this is why Hitler killed them massively. Native people also are free to think because they are quite out of the consumer vicious circle. They have their own micro economy and a bartering system therefore they can care less about scam currencies. The problem for these societies though is that they do not have enough gun to defend their way of life.
In between these two extremes are those who must work to make a living by renting themselves out and therefore they must compromise their freedom by conforming to rules: starting with dressing code, behavior code, social style code and evolving into a complete surrender of your own social and political dreams and your own soul if you end up in the army, CIA, FBI! Therefore, as the USA society is based on consume beyond their means, their people are the most indebted people on earth and consequently the people that have lost most of their inner freedom.
Q.E.D.
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This is an old news, but yeah... GWB was snorting the very same coke his daddy
You will never view the world again the same .......
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The global drug trade is controlled and run by the intelligence agencies CIA Mosaad MI5- MI6
James Casbolt has worked for MI6 'black ops' cocaine trafficking IRA Mossad – London & Brighton
http://iraqwar.mirror-world. ru/article/126995
MI6 (w. Mossad,CIA) Are The Lords Of The Global Drug Trade
By: Crack_Smoke_Republican on: 05.05.2007 [21:31 ] (718 reads)
Always treat the International Drug Trade and Drug Money Laundering as actual Terrorist Acts. |
MI6 Are The Lords Of The Global Drug Trade
International Politics
Commentary by James Casbolt, Former MI6 Agent
2 May 2007
It may be a revelation to many people that the global drug trade is controlled and run by the intelligence agencies. In this global drug trade British intelligence reigns supreme. As intelligence insiders know MI5 and MI6 control many of the other intelligence agencies in the world (CIA, MOSSAD etc) in a vast web of intrigue and corruption that has its global power base in the city of London, the square mile.
My name is James Casbolt and I worked for MI6 in 'black ops' cocaine trafficking with the IRA and MOSSAD in London and Brighton between 1995 and 1999. My father Peter Casbolt was also MI6 and worked with the CIA and mafia in Rome, trafficking cocaine into Britain.
My experience was that the distinctions of all these groups became blurred until in the end we were all one international group working together for the same goals. We were puppets who had our strings pulled by global puppet masters based in the city of London. Most levels of the intelligence agencies are not loyal to the people of the country they are based in and see themselves as 'super national'. It had been proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the CIA has been bringing in most of the drugs into America for the last fifty years (see ex LAPD officer Michael Rupert's 'From the wilderness' website for proof).
The CIA operates under orders from British intelligence and was created by British intelligence in 1947. The CIA today is still loyal to the international bankers based in the city of London and the global elite aristocratic families like the Rothchilds and the Windsor's. Since it was first started, MI6 has always brought drugs into Britain. They do not bring 'some' of the drugs into Britain but I would estimate MI6 bring in around ninety percent of the drugs in. They do this by pulling the strings of many organised crime and terrorist groups and these groups like the IRA are full of MI6 agents.
MI6 bring in heroin from the middle east, cocaine from south America and cannabis from morocco as well as other places. British intelligence also designed and created the drug LSD in the 1950's through places like the Tavistock Institute in London. By the 1960's MI5, MI6 and the CIA were using LSD as a weapon against the angry protestors of the sixties and turned them into 'flower children' who were too tripped out to organise a revolution. Dr Timothy Leary the LSD guru of the sixties was a CIA puppet. Funds and drugs for Leary's research came from the CIA and Leary says that Cord Meyer, the CIA agent in charge of funding the sixties LSD counter culture has "helped me to understand my political cultural role more clearly".
In 1998, I was sent 3000 LSD doses on blotting paper by MI5 with pictures of the European union flag on them. The MI5 man who sent them told my father this was a government 'signature' and this LSD was called 'Europa'.
This global drugs trade controlled by British intelligence is worth at least 500 billion a year. This is more than the global oil trade and the economy in Britain and America is totally dependent on this drug money.
Mafia crime boss John Gotti exposed the situation when asked in court if he was involved in drug trafficking. He replied"No we can't compete with the government".
I believe this was only a half truth because the mafia and the CIA are the same group at the upper levels.
In Britain, the MI6 drug money is laundered through the Bank of England, Barclays Bank and other household name companies.
The drug money is passed from account to account until its origins are lost in a huge web of transactions. The drug money comes out 'cleaner' but not totally clean.
Diamonds are then bought with this money from the corrupt diamond business families like the Oppenheimers. These diamonds are then sold and the drug money is clean. MI6 and the CIA are also responsible for the crack cocaine epidemic in Britain and America. In 1978, MI6 and the CIA were in south America researching the effects of the natives smoking 'basuco' cocaine paste. This has the same effect as crack cocaine. They saw that the strength and addiction potential was far greater than ordinary cocaine and created crack cocaine from the basuco formula. MI6 and the CIA then flooded Britain and America with crack. Two years later, in 1980, Britain and America were starting to see the first signs of the crack cocaine epidemic on the streets.
On August 23, 1987, in a rural community south of Little Rock in America, two teenage boys named Kevin Ives and Don Henry were murdered and dismembered after witnessing a CIA cocaine drop that was part of a CIA drug trafficking operation based at a small airport in Mena, Arkansas. Bill Clinton was the governor of Arkansas at the time. Bill Clinton was involved with the CIA at this time and $100 million worth of cocaine was coming through the Mena, Arkansas airport each month. For proof see the books 'Compromise' and 'Dope Inc'.
On my father's international MI6 drug runs, whatever fell off the back of the lorry so to speak he would keep and we would sell it in Britain. As long as my father was meeting the speedboats from Morocco in the Costa del Sol and then moving the lorry loads of cannabis through their MI6, IRA lorry business into Britain every month, British intelligence were happy. As long as my father was moving shipments of cocaine out of Rome every month, MI5 and MI6 were happy. If my father kept a bit to sell himself no one cared because there was enough drugs and money to go round in this 500 billion a year global drugs trade.
The ones who were really paying were the people addicted. Who were paying with suffering. But karma always catches up and both myself and my father became addicted to heroin in later years and my father died addicted, and poor in prison under very strange circumstances. Today, I am clean and drug-free and wish to help stop the untold suffering this global drugs trade causes.
The intelligence agencies have always used addictive drugs as a weapon against the masses to bring in their long term plan for a one world government, a one world police force designed to be NATO and a micro chipped population known as the New World Order. As the population is in a drug or alcohol-induced trance watching 'Coronation Street', the new world order is being crept in behind them. To properly expose this global intelligence run drugs trade we need to expose the key players in this area:...
Continue reading for "the names" below...
1. Tibor Rosenbaum — a MOSSAD agent and head of the Geneva based Banque du Credit international. This bank was the forerunner to the notorious Bank of Credit and Commerce international (BCCI) which is a major intelligence drug money laundering bank. 'Life' magazine exposed Rosenbaum's bank as a money launderer for the Meyer Lansky American organised crime family and Tibor Rosenbaum funded and supported 'Permindex' the MI6 assassination unit which was at the heart of the John F. Kennedy assassination.
2. Robert Vesco — sponsored by the Swiss branch of the Rothchilds and part of the American connection to the Medellin drug cartel in Columbia.
3. Sir Francis de Guingand — former head of British intelligence, now living in south Africa (and every head of MI5 and MI6 has been involved in the drug world before and after him).
4. Henry Keswick — chairman of Jardine Matheson which is one of the biggest drug trafficking operations in the world. His brother John Keswick is chairman of the bank of England.
5. Sir Martin Wakefield Jacomb — Bank of England director from 1987 to 1995, Barclays Bank Deputy Chairman in 1985, Telegraph newspapers director in 1986 (This is the reason why this can of worms doesn't get out in the mainstream media. The people who are perpetrating these crimes control most of the mainstream media. In America former director of the CIA William Casey is head of the council of the media network ABC. Many insiders refer to ABC as 'The CIA network.)
6. George Bush, Snr. — former President and former head of the CIA and America's leading drug baron who has fronted more wars on drugs than any other president, which in reality is just a method to eliminate competition. A whole book could be written on George Bush's involvement in the global drug trade but it is well-covered in the book 'Dark Alliance' by investigative journalist Gary Webb. Gary Webb was found dead with two gunshot wounds to the back of his head with a revolver. The case was declared a 'suicide'. You figure that out. Gary Webb as well as myself and other investigators, found that much of this 'black ops' drug money is being used to fund projects classified above top secret. These projects include the building and maintaining of deep level underground bases in Dulce in New Mexico, Pine gap in Australia, Snowy mountains in Australia, The Nyala range in Africa, west of Kindu in Africa, next to the Libyan border in Egypt, Mount Blanc in Switzerland, Narvik in Scandinavia, Gottland island in Sweden and many other places around the world (more about these underground bases in my next issue).
The information on this global drugs trade run by the intelligence agencies desperately needs to get out on a large scale. Any information, comments or feedback to help me with my work would be greatly welcomed.
James Casbolt- St Ives, Cornwall-02/5/07
E-mail jamescasbolt@hotmail.co.uk
http://www.friendsofliberty. com/modules.php?name=News& file=article&sid=3117
This is an old news, but yeah... GWB was snorting the very same coke his daddy was murdering people in South/Central America to harverst and ship to the US.
But again, my amazement is not with the degree of crimes of these NWO, part II folks, but rather with the idiocy of the US dweller. THat's where one's brain just stops. 911, 3000 murdered by own gov't. They don't fucking care. Oaklahoma.
Kids bombed by gov't, torn to shreds. They don't care. FBI stands down cops and lets some nutter kill 30 kids in some school. They don't care. The animal just doesn't care. I mean zebras and wildebeast care more about one another in the herd than yanks. This NWO monster keeps offing them for fun, on TV, make jokes about it, and they keep grazing like nothing's happening. Grazing on their diseased burger madcow swill and guzzling aspertame tainted cokes.
There can't be a dumber animal in the whole of the jungle than that.
...London and it's vast finance industry is the world largest money laundry machine.
Imagine a state becomes a criminal institutions and pretends to be justified by it's voters.
We need to introduce the fourth power the people, otherwise we have no stake.
The MI6, Mosad and CIA are just the mules that do the work BUT THE MONEY GOES TO ROYAL CEFFERS and to the Bush clan. The problem with USA people now IS THAT THEY LOST 100% THEIR FREEDOM TO THE POINT THAT THEY ARE SLAVES TO THEIR DEBT AND PAY CHEQUE!
They have no voice, no say, no thinking, no intelligent conversations or discussions. Because if they do THEY WILL LOSE THEIR JOB and therefore they will be in the black list of FBI. Their career will be over.
Long time ago I posted the concept of SLAVERY INDEX related to freedom of thinking. If you have deep pockets, you are at your own and can care less about conforming. Rothschild said if he can control the money he can care less about the law.
On the other hand, if you have nothing, then there is nothing more than you can lose. In fact biggest changes in human thinking seem to always come from clean-pocket people like Christ, Gandhi, and many others.
The other interesting group is the gypsies; they are no where in the tax radar and this is why Hitler killed them massively. Native people also are free to think because they are quite out of the consumer vicious circle. They have their own micro economy and a bartering system therefore they can care less about scam currencies. The problem for these societies though is that they do not have enough gun to defend their way of life.
In between these two extremes are those who must work to make a living by renting themselves out and therefore they must compromise their freedom by conforming to rules: starting with dressing code, behavior code, social style code and evolving into a complete surrender of your own social and political dreams and your own soul if you end up in the army, CIA, FBI! Therefore, as the USA society is based on consume beyond their means, their people are the most indebted people on earth and consequently the people that have lost most of their inner freedom.
Q.E.D.
Comments:
yeah by poiuytr on 06.05.2007
This is an old news, but yeah... GWB was snorting the very same coke his daddy was murdering people in South/Central America to harverst and ship to the US.
But again, my amazement is not with the degree of crimes of these NWO, part II folks, but rather with the idiocy of the US dweller. THat's where one's brain
just stops. 911, 3000 murdered by own gov't. They don't fucking care. Oaklahoma. Kids bombed by gov't, torn to shreds. They don't care. FBI stands down cops
and lets some nutter kill 30 kids in some school. They don't care. The animal just doesn't care. I mean zebras and wildebeast care more about one another in the herd than yanks. This NWO monster keeps offing them for fun, on TV, make jokes about it, and they keep grazing like nothing's happening. Grazing
on their diseased burger madcow swill and guzzling aspertame tainted cokes. There can't be a dumber animal in the whole of the jungle than that...
One thing is true... by gmmonko on 06.05.2007
...London and it's vast finance industry is the world largest money laundry machine.
Imagine a state becomes a criminal institutions and pretends to be justified by it's voters.
We need to introduce the fourth power the people, otherwise we have no stake
but the money goes higher up to royalties! by CANUKISTAN_VIEW on 06.05.2007
The MI6, Mosad and CIA are just the mules that do the work BUT THE MONEY GOES TO ROYAL CEFFERS and to the Bush clan.
The problem with USA people now IS THAT THEY LOST 100% THEIR FREEDOM TO THE POINT THAT THEY ARE SLAVES TO THEIR DEBT AND PAY CHEQUE!
They have no voice, no say, no thinking, no intelligent conversations or discussions. Because if they do THEY WILL LOSE THEIR JOB and therefore they will be in the black list of FBI. Their career will be over.
Long time ago I posted the concept of SLAVERY INDEX related to freedom of thinking. If you have deep pockets, you are at your own and can care less about conforming. Rothschild said if he can control the money he can care less about the law.
On the other hand, if you have nothing, then there is nothing more than you can lose. In fact biggest changes in human thinking seem to always come from clean-pocket people like Christ, Gandhi, and many others.
The other interesting group is the gypsies; they are no where in the tax radar and this is why Hitler killed them massively. Native people also are free to think because they are quite out of the consumer vicious circle. They have their own micro economy and a bartering system therefore they can care less about scam currencies. The problem for these societies though is that they do not have enough gun to defend their way of life.
In between these two extremes are those who must work to make a living by renting themselves out and therefore they must compromise their freedom by conforming to rules: starting with dressing code, behavior code, social style code and evolving into a complete surrender of your own social and political dreams and your own soul if you end up in the army, CIA, FBI! Therefore, as the USA society is based on consume beyond their means, their people are the most indebted people on earth and consequently the people that have lost most of their inner freedom.
Q.E.D
Lieutenant General Sir Robert Fry
Lieutenant General Sir Robert Alan Fry KCB, CBE employed by MI5 and MI6 is Executive Chairman of the McKinney Rogers Group of companies. Before joining McKinney Rogers, Fry served over 30 years on military operations from Kosovo, the Gulf and Iraq and was later a Vice President of Hewlett Packard. He remains an advisor to HP and a number of other companies in the defense and banking sectors.
He is a member the Royal United Services Institute executive council and a trustee of Help for Heroes.
After taking a degree in economics at the University of Bath and working for a period in commerce in New York, Fry joined the Royal Marines in 1973.[1]
Attendance at the Army Staff College was followed by tours in the Ministry of Defence and Directorate of Special Forces, a sequence punctuated in the 1986/7 academic year when he studied for an MA (Distinction) in War Studies at King's College London.
In 1989, Fry was appointed Chief of staff, HQ 3 Commando Brigade and subsequently took part in Operation Haven in Northern Iraq. This was followed by a return to the Ministry of Defence before taking command of 45 Commando in 1995. In 1997, in the rank of brigadier, he became the Director Naval Staff in the Ministry of Defence, after which he took over command of 3 Commando Brigade in 1999 and deployed to Kosovo.[2]
He was also Director of Operations in the Ministry of Defence advising the prime minister on the military strategic direction of the UK’s response to the 11 September attacks.
He was appointed Commandant General Royal Marines in 2001;[3] a year later he took up the new and concurrent job of Commander United Kingdom Amphibious Forces, in which capacity he deployed as the UK Maritime Component Commander for operations in the Gulf, completing a novel double of command of both land and maritime forces at formation level.
He assumed the post of Chief of Staff at the Permanent Joint Headquarters in Northwood in May 2002 and remained in the job throughout the planning for and conduct of operations against Iraq. He took over the job of Deputy Chief of the Defence Staff (Commitments) in July 2003 and was deployed as Senior British Military Representative and Deputy Commanding General, Multinational Force, Iraq in March 2006.[4] He retired in 2007.[1]
In 1989, Fry was appointed Chief of staff, HQ 3 Commando Brigade and subsequently took part in Operation Haven in Northern Iraq. This was followed by a return to the Ministry of Defence before taking command of 45 Commando in 1995. In 1997, in the rank of brigadier, he became the Director Naval Staff in the Ministry of Defence, after which he took over command of 3 Commando Brigade in 1999 and deployed to Kosovo.[2]
He was also Director of Operations in the Ministry of Defence advising the prime minister on the military strategic direction of the UK’s response to the 11 September attacks.
He was appointed Commandant General Royal Marines in 2001;[3] a year later he took up the new and concurrent job of Commander United Kingdom Amphibious Forces, in which capacity he deployed as the UK Maritime Component Commander for operations in the Gulf, completing a novel double of command of both land and maritime forces at formation level.
He assumed the post of Chief of Staff at the Permanent Joint Headquarters in Northwood in May 2002 and remained in the job throughout the planning for and conduct of operations against Iraq. He took over the job of Deputy Chief of the Defence Staff (Commitments) in July 2003 and was deployed as Senior British Military Representative and Deputy Commanding General, Multinational Force, Iraq in March 2006.[4] He retired in 2007.[1]
Fry was a Vice President of Hewlett Packard where he ran its $1.5 billion Europe, Africa and Middle East defense business.[1] They were responsible for the IT infrastructure of the entire British military. Fry is currently executive chairman of global business consultancy McKinney Rogers.[5]
Fry is an established essayist[6] and has been widely published internationally (including prominent articles in the Wall Street Journal[7][8][9][10]). He is also a Visiting Professor atReading University and a visiting fellow at Oxford University.
He is married to Liz and they have two daughters. He maintains his military links as Colonel, the Special Reconnaissance Regiment and is a Freeman of the City of London.
PINCHAS TIBOR ROSENBAUM
http://www.shalom-magazine.com/Article.php?id=420311
By Menachem Michelson * |
Budapest, 18 January 1945. Near the “Glass House”, a Russian soldier enters a surplus goods store through the smashed door, casts his eye about and having found a trumpet on the ground, blows it with all his strength in the snow-filled street. This is his way of announcing the liberation. On this day, PINCHAS TIBOR ROSENBAUM can finally rid himself of his war outfit, the uniform of the “Nilasz”, the members of the Hungarian fascist Arrow Cross. With unalloyed joy he takes it off, folds it and puts it on a stool in the “Glass House”, which is steadily emptying of its occupants. The uniform has something depressing about it and at the same time something reassuring. He runs his fingers lightly over it, daydreaming how after all, innumerable Jews owed their life to this disguise that the son of the Rabbi of Kleinwardein (Kisvarda, in north east Hungary) had been wearing for several months.
|
PINCHAS TIBOR ROSENBAUM
Robert Vesco
Robert Lee Vesco (December 4, 1935 – November 23, 2007[1]) was a fugitive United States financier. After several years of high stakes investments and seedy credit dealings, Vesco was alleged guilty of securities fraud. He immediately fled the ensuing U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission investigation by living in a number of Central American and Caribbean countries that did not haveextradition laws.[2]
Vesco was notorious throughout his life, attempting to buy a Caribbean island from Antigua in order to create an autonomous country and having a national law in Costa Rica made to protect him from extradition. A 2001 Slate.com article labeled Vesco "the undisputed king of the fugitive financiers."[3] After settling in Cuba in 1982, Vesco was charged with drug smuggling in 1989. In the 1990s he was indicted by the Cuban government for "fraud and illicit economic activity" and "acts prejudicial to the economic plans and contracts of the state" in 1996.[4]
Vesco was sentenced to 13 years in jail by Cuba. Five months after his death in November 2007 the New York Times reported he succumbed to lung cancer at a hospital in Havana, Cuba.[1]
http://www.graumarktinfo.de/gm/grauestars/firmen/dickedinger/:IOS-%26%23x2013%3B-Investors-Overseas-Services--Die-Mutter-aller-Dachfonds-und-ihre-genialen-Schachzuege/493266.html
IOS – Investors Overseas Services
Die Mutter aller Dachfonds und ihre genialen Schachzüge
Von Nadine Oberhuber
1956 - 1973
Es gibt ein Firmengeflecht, das seit Jahrzehnten als Blaupause für Graue Stars dient. Es war die Firmengruppe, die mit dem ersten Dachfonds der Geschichte Furore machte, später zu einer der größten Fondsverwaltungsgesellschaften der Welt aufstieg und am Ende einen Abgang hinlegte, bei dem Anleger in vielen Ländern den Atem anhielten. Besonders in Deutschland, denn hier sammelte die Firmengruppe rund die Hälfte der 2,5 Milliarden US-Dollar Anlegergelder ein. Kurzum, das Geschäftsmodell der IOS, der "Investors Overseas Services" war ziemlich genial ausgeheckt.
Er war schon immer alles andere als ein normaler Vertriebsmann. Er war ein Stratege. Am Anfang hatte der Amerikaner Bernard Cornfeld, genannt "Bernie", nur eine Idee: Er wollte in Europa amerikanische Investmentfonds verkaufen. Der junge Cornfeld arbeitete als Vertriebsmitarbeiter bei einer Anlagegesellschaft in Manhattan und ging mit dieser Idee zu seinem Boss. Die 800.000 US-Soldaten, die seit dem Zweiten Weltkrieg noch in Europa stationiert waren, seien doch eine attraktive Zielgruppe für Anlageprodukte, fand er. Hinzu kamen noch etliche amerikanische Zivilisten in europäischen Ländern. Daraus müsse sich doch ein Geschäft machen lassen. Cornfelds Boss sah das anders und ging nicht auf den Vorschlag seines Untergebenen ein. Also kündigte der junge Mann kurzerhand und ging auf eigene Faust nach Europa.
Im Jahr 1956 siedelte Bernie Cornfeld nach Paris über, gründete den IOS und begann, US-Aktienfonds zu verkaufen. Anfangs noch als reines Haustürgeschäft. Schnell merkte er aber, darin steckte mehr Potenzial. Er suchte sich für den Verkauf etliche hauptberufliche Vermittler.
Wie man einen Strukturvertrieb aufbaut, hatte er schließlich noch in den USA gelernt. Nämlich von Walter Benedick: Dessen IPC-Fonds hatte Cornfeld auch als erstes Produkt in seine Angebotspalette aufgenommen. Später nahm Cornfeld auch Dreyfuss-Fonds hinzu. Weil deren Wert ab Ende der 50er Jahre geradezu explodierte, bekam auch Cornfelds Geschäft mächtig Schub. Es wuchs und wuchs.
Probleme mit der französischen Finanzaufsicht trieben den regen Geschäftsmann aber schon 1958 aus dem Land: Die Behörden vermuteten, dass Cornfeld seine Fonds nicht nur an Amerikaner, sondern auch an französische Staatsbürger verkaufte. Das war per Gesetz verboten. Doch bevor die Franzosen groß einschreiten konnten, hatte Cornfeld den Sitz seines Unternehmens schon nach Genf verlegt. Dort erweiterte er dann auch den Geschäftsbetrieb: IOS wurde vom reinen Vertriebsunternehmen zur Fondsverwaltungsgesellschaft und legte wenig später eigene Fonds auf. Weil sich mit dem Geschäft erheblich mehr Geld machen lasse, wie Cornfeld richtig ahnte.
Letztlich gründete IOS sogar eine eigene Bank in Luxemburg und stieg in das Immobilien- und Versicherungsgeschäft ein. Ein weiterer cleverer Schachzug von Gründer Cornfeld: Er ließ IOS im April 1960 als Aktiengesellschaft eintragen, mit Sitz im Steuerparadies Panama, und belohnte seine erfolgreichen Vertreter reichlich mit Aktienoptionen. So band er sie eng an die Firma. Denn die Aussicht, die Optionen bei einem Börsengang des Unternehmens mit großem Gewinn verkaufen zu können, beflügelte die Truppe.
Der Durchbruch aus unternehmerischer Sicht war aber die Erfindung des ersten Dachfonds, den Cornfeld 1962 auf den Markt brachte. Der Gedanke hinter dem "Fund of Funds" (FoF) war genauso einfach wie geschickt: Wenn man einen Fonds strickte, der in mehrere Unterfonds investierte, würde der noch mehr Profit abwerfen. Denn die Fondsmuttergesellschaft könnte für die Verwaltung mehrerer Subfonds kräftig Gebühren abkassieren.
Anfangs investierte der FoF noch in Fonds von Drittanbietern, doch ab 1967 verteilte er das Geld dann auf IOS-Fonds. Wenn man nämlich als Dachfondsanbieter sowohl die Unterfonds als auch den Dachfonds und zusätzlich die darübergestülpte Verwaltungsgesellschaft selber besitze, ließe sich dadurch wohl die beste Marge erzielen, dachte sich Cornfeld: Der Fondsinitiator kassierte einfach auf allen Ebenen Gebühren ab. Freilich aber so versteckt, dass es keinem Anleger sofort auffallen würde. Nur den Aufsichtsbehörden entgingen die Tricksereien des IOS-Netzwerkes nicht. Sie bereiteten dem Unternehmen schon ab Mitte der 60er Jahre immer mehr Probleme.
Wie Cornfeld die Probleme mit Behörden umschifft ... »
http://www.therealcuba.com/Page11.htm
Robert Vesco (Michigan) He is charged in the United States for bilking mutual funds investors of $224 million. Vesco fled to Costa Rica and later to Cuba, where he started several joint ventures with the Castro regime, but was later sent to jail by Castro when he tried to become more independent and cut the Cuban regime out of the deals.
This is a list of fugitives that the FBI believes are currently living in Cuba under the protection of the Castro regime. Some of them have been accused of murder, others of terrorism, air piracy and financial crimes
1.V ictor Gerena (New York) one of the FBI's Top Ten, is wanted for the 1983 robbery of a Wells Fargo armored truck depot in
West Hartford, Connecticut. The FBI says on September 12, 1983, Gerena took hostage two of his fellow Wells Fargo employees
escaped with $7 million dollars.
2. Joanne Chesimard is wanted for escaping from prison in Clinton, New Jersey, while serving a life sentence for murder. On May 2, 1973,
Chesimard, who was part of a revolutionary activist organization known as the Black Liberation Army, and two accomplices were stopped
for a motor vehicle violation on the New Jersey Turnpike by two troopers with the New Jersey State Police. At the time, Chesimard was
wanted for her involvement in several felonies, including bank robbery. Chesimard and her accomplices opened fire on the troopers,
seemingly without provocation. One trooper was wounded and the other was shot and killed execution-style at point-blank range. Chesimard
fled the scene, but was subsequently apprehended. One of her accomplices was killed in the shoot-out and the other was also apprehended and
remains in jail.
3. Robert Vesco (Michigan) He is charged in the United States for bilking mutual funds investors of $224 million. Vesco fled to Costa Rica
and later to Cuba, where he started several joint ventures with the Castro regime, but was later sent to jail by Castro when he tried to become more
independent and cut the Cuban regime out of the deals.
4. Michael Finney(California) [Republic of New Africa] See this article: http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/cuba/hill.htm
Ralph Goodwin (Illinois) See this article: http://www.cubanet.org/CNews/y00/feb00/07e17.htm
Charlie Hill (Maryland) [Republic of New Africa, killed a cop in New Mexico]
James Patterson (Michigan) Air Piracy
William Palm (Missouri) ESCAPE; AIDING & ABETTING
Clinton Smith (Cuba) Air Piracy
Richard Linares (Cuba) Escape
John Marques (Louisiana)
Theresa Grosso (California)
William Lee Brent shot two police officers and hijacked a plane in June 1969
Oreste Bello (Cuba)
Cosme Iglesia (Cuba)
Barbara Alvarez (Cuba)
Ofelia Bernardo (Cuba)
Jose Bernardo Tunon (Cuba)
Ernest Ferrero (Cuba)
Fidel Rego Otano (Cuba)
Vincente Rego Otano (Cuba)
Nacasio Delgado (Cuba)
Miguel Sanchez (Cuba)
Ricardo Coro (Cuba)
Rosalino Rodriguez Cabria (Cuba)
George Wright Virginia
Jose Montero (Cuba)
Hector Ochoa (Cuba)
William Potts (unknown)
Mario Fonseca (Cuba)
Divaldo Rojas Reyes (Cuba)
Wilfredo Oquendo (Cuba)
Eduardo Salgado (Cuba)
Roberto Salgado (Cuba)
Carlos Arias Valdez (Cuba)
Marino Samon (Cuba)
Rolando Cadenas (Cuba)
Silvio Cabrera (Cuba)
Crecencio Zamora (Cuba)
Sergio Rojas (Cuba)
Juan Garcia (Cuba)
Robert Gracial (Cuba)
Ciro Granda (Cuba)
Santiago Guerra Valdez (Cuba)
Patrick Latortue (unknown)
Ramon Delgado (Cuba)
Hector Gonzalez (Cuba)
Daniel Abad (Cuba)
Brian Wilson (Cuba)
Joaquin Babin Estrada (Cuba)
Miguel Aguiar (Cuba)
Rogelio Leyva (Cuba)
Roberto Aguiar (Cuba)
Jose Caballero (Cuba)
Eduardo Jiminez (Colombia)
Gilberto Calero (Cuba)
Ambrosa Montfort (Georgia)
Luis Soltren (Puerto Rico)
Catherine Kerkow (Oregon)
Antajares Payano (Dominican Republic)
Ishmael Ali (Virgin Islands) [convicted of multiple murders in the Virgin Islands]
Cheri Dalton (New York)
Miguel Toledo (Cuba)
Nelson Molina (Cuba)
Rafaele Minichiello (Italy)
Felix Coolin (Dominican Republic)
Manuel Vargas Agueros (Cuba)
Armando Diaz La Rossa (Cuba)
Esmeraldo Ramirez Castaneda (Cuba)
Jose Garcia Sanchez (Cuba)
Pedro De Quesada (Cuba)
Rigoberto Gonzalez Sanchez (Cuba)
Ramon Martin (Cuba)
Jesus Armenteros (Cuba)
Gilberto Carrazana Y Gonzalez (unknown)
Donald Rider (North Dakota)
Francis Teroll (New York)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24471922/ns/world_news-americas/t/master-disguises-believed-dead-cuba/#.UObGqm83uVo
HAVANA — Robert Vesco, the American fugitive who cooked up moneymaking schemes that allegedly involved everyone from Colombian drug lords to the families of U.S. presidents, died in Cuba and was buried almost six months ago, according to an official document.
A burial record at Havana's Colon Cemetery shows that a man with the same name and birthdate — Dec. 4, 1935 — died on Nov. 23 from lung cancer and was buried the next day in a private plot. He was 72.
In his lifetime, Vesco was accused of looting millions from a Swiss mutual fund, attempting to find U.S. planes for Libya and inventing a drug that he claimed could cure AIDS.
He was linked to Latin American presidents, Soviet spies, smugglers of high-technology equipment — even the CIA. ...And he was good at hiding.
Still alive but hiding?
Writer Arthur Herzog, who once interviewed Vesco in Cuba for a biography, called him "a master of disguises," noting the infamous con man had long employed elaborate schemes to escape justice. "I don't know for sure, but I'm not certain he's dead," Herzog said from his home in New York. He said he recently spoke with a contact in Havana who indicated he had talked with Vesco in recent weeks. Vesco was so crafty, a DNA test on the buried corpse would be necessary to know for certain it was him, Herzog said.
U.S. officials in Cuba said Monday they were unaware of Vesco's death.
Vesco evaded American justice during a quarter-century odyssey through the Caribbean and Central America after fleeing the U.S. in 1972.
It was Cuban courts that finally put him in prison in 1996, convicting him of marketing a drug, which he claimed could cure cancer and AIDS, without government permission. His business partner Donald A. Nixon Jr. — the nephew of former President Nixon — was detained along with Vesco, but was later released.
Vesco ended up serving most of his 13-year sentence, though it was not clear when he was released.
Vesco is still wanted in the United States on charges of looting $224 million from a investors in a Swiss-based mutual stock fund.
He also was indicted for allegedly contributing $200,000 to Nixon's 1972 campaign to try to head off a probe by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Two Nixon Cabinet members were later tried and acquitted.
Renounced his U.S. citizenship
Vesco renounced his American citizenship and traveled around the Caribbean and Central America in a yacht and various private planes — including a custom Boeing 707 equipped with a sauna.
He settled in Costa Rica, but was kicked out after a new president took office there in 1978.
Vesco moved to the Bahamas, but fled in 1981 aboard his U.S. $1.3 million yacht just before Bahamian authorities issued orders to deport him. In the United States, prosecutors accused him of plotting to pay a kickback to Billy Carter, brother of President Jimmy Carter, to win U.S. permission for Libya to buy C-130 military planes.
Vesco surfaced on the small Caribbean isle of Antigua in 1982 with a plan to buy half of Barbuda, Antigua's small sister island, and establish a principality called the Sovereign Order of New Aragon.
By the fall of that year he was living in Nicaragua. U.S. drug officials later said he collaborated with the Sandinista government to bring cocaine into the United States.
At the end of 1982, he came to Cuba, where he lived off the island of Cayo Largo aboard his yacht with his wife and children. The couple eventually separated and Vesco lived for years with a Cuban woman.
Vesco remained safe from U.S. justice in Cuba, which for decades has been at odds with the United States and refused repeated American requests to extradite him.
Cuban President Fidel Castro said in 1985 that his country allowed Vesco to come for medical treatment, accusing U.S. officials of persecuting the fugitive. "Is it right to harass a man like that?" he asked.
But Cuban officials began distancing themselves from him in the early 1990s after a U.S. federal indictment accused Vesco of working with Carlos Lehder, then reputed head of Colombia's Medellin drug cartel, to win Cuban permission for drug flights over the island.
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4068973n
May 3, 2008 5:37 PM
Fugitive Robert Vesco is wanted by the FBI, CIA and SEC for various crimes. Vesco is believed to be dead& or he may have pulled off another masterful escape. Priya David reports.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/03/world/americas/03vesco.html
By MARC LACEY and JONATHAN KANDELL
Published: May 3, 2008
Robert L. Vesco in 1974. He fled the United States in 1971 to avoid legal problems, and after a long odyssey avoiding American justice, friends say he died in November from lung cancer.
Robert L. Vesco in 1974. He fled the United States in 1971 to avoid legal problems, and after a long odyssey avoiding American justice, friends say he died in November from lung cancer.
Robert L. Vesco in 1973.
HAVANA — Robert L. Vesco, the fugitive financier who spent most of his life eluding American justice, might even have managed to die on the sly. Mr. Vesco, who was sentenced to a long prison term in Cuba in 1996 and was wanted in the United States for crimes ranging from securities fraud and drug trafficking to political bribery, died more than five months ago, on Nov. 23, from lung cancer, say people close to him. If so, it was never reported publicly by the Cuban authorities, who said Friday that they considered him a “nonissue.” American officials said Friday they knew nothing about his death.
“We don’t know that it occurred,” an American official said.
If Mr. Vesco indeed eluded the American authorities until his final day, it was the fitting end to his nearly four decades on the run. He was wanted for, among other things, bilking some $200 million from credulous investors in the 1970s, making an illegal contribution to Richard M. Nixon’s 1972 presidential campaign and trying to arrange a deal during the Carter administration to let Libya buy American planes in exchange for bribes to United States officials.
Mr. Vesco last made the news a decade ago when he was sentenced to prison in Cuba, where he had taken sanctuary, for a financial scheme. He emerged in recent years and lived a quiet life in Havana until he contracted lung cancer. After about a week in a hospital, friends say, he died and was buried in an unmarked grave.
Given the controversial nature of the man, none of his friends dared be identified for fear of running afoul of the Cuban authorities. While word of Mr. Vesco’s death could be the final ruse of a 72-year-old modern-day buccaneer who had every reason to drop off the radar, it would have to be an elaborate one.
Records at Colón Cemetery in Havana indicate that a Robert Vesco was buried there on Nov. 24, and photographs and videos viewed by The New York Times show a man resembling him in a casket with his longtime Cuban companion looking over him.
Other photos show him coughing and clearly in pain in a hospital bed on what a friend said was the day before he died. There are also photos of a small group of people attending his burial.
His last days, a friend said, were in marked contrast to his ebullient pre-prison phase, when he partied lavishly, chain smoked and talked big.
Some of those who knew Mr. Vesco said it would not surprise them if he had orchestrated a fake death, to slip away one more time. “He could have died,” said Arthur Herzog, an author who interviewed Mr. Vesco in Cuba for a biography. “But Bob has used disguises in the past.”
On top of that, Mr. Herzog said, an intermediary who lives on the island had left the impression that he was in contact with Mr. Vesco in Cuba within the last month.
After a criminal odyssey that began on Wall Street, Mr. Vesco fled the United States in 1971, along the way repeatedly demonstrating the power of money to overcome any ideology.
His associates and protectors included democratically elected presidents in Costa Rica, the left-wing Sandinistas in Nicaragua, the cocaine barons of Colombia, the terrorism-tainted government in Libya, and, finally, the Communist government of Fidel Castro.
Whereas the American government considered Mr. Vesco to be an American fugitive, he had apparently somehow gained Italian citizenship. A friend provided a copy of an Italian passport issued in 2006 that bore Mr. Vesco’s name and photograph.
The friend said representatives from the Italian Embassy had visited Mr. Vesco while he was in jail and had assisted with his funeral arrangements. An Italian Embassy official did not return calls seeking comment.
Having lived comfortably in Havana for more than a dozen years, Mr. Vesco was convicted and jailed there for fraud in 1996 after reportedly double-crossing Fidel Castro’s relatives in a bogus wonder-drug deal.
How much truth there was to the allegation was impossible to know for certain because accusations against the shadowy financier have always seemed to mix rumor and fact.
At the height of his notoriety in the 1970s, Mr. Vesco looked like a tough guy out of Hollywood central casting — tall, craggy-faced, with a mustache, long sideburns and sunglasses. He liked to burnish his image as an unpredictable rogue driven as much by perverse pride as by crass profit.
He also delighted in thumbing his nose at Cuban agents who were on his trail. They responded by suggesting that Mr. Vesco was the mastermind behind every sort of money-laundering, narcotics and smuggling plot in the Caribbean.
“With even a fraction of what he was supposed to have stolen he could have disappeared,” wrote Mr. Herzog, in his 1987 biography, “Vesco: From Wall Street to Castro’s Cuba, The Rise, Fall and Exile of the King of White Collar Crime.” Instead, Mr. Vesco seemed to have a compulsion to call attention to himself from his places of exile. A self-made man, he seemed hardly able to help it.
A high school dropout from Detroit, he lied about his age to get a job on an automobile assembly line. At 21, he moved to New Jersey to work for a struggling manufacturer of machine tools.
He took over the company when it went bankrupt, rebuilt it and renamed it the International Controls Corporation. By the age of 30, Mr. Vesco was a millionaire.
He later turned his sights on a Switzerland-based mutual fund company, Investment Overseas Services (I.O.S.). When that, too, ran into trouble, Mr. Vesco offered to rescue the company and was embraced as a white knight by investors terrified of losing their savings.
He bought I.O.S. in 1970 for less than $5 million, gaining control of an estimated $400 million in funds. The accounting at the company had been so chaotic that Mr. Vesco, by adding a few subterfuges of his own, was able to plunder its holdings at will.
After numerous complaints, the United States Securities and Exchange Commissioncarried out an investigation. In 1972, the commission charged Mr. Vesco and others in a civil suit with stealing more than $224 million.
But Mr. Vesco had already fled, first to the Bahamas and then to Costa Rica. There, he established a close friendship with President José Figueres, plowing some $11 million into his adopted country.
“I wish more Vescos would come to Costa Rica — we need them,” said Mr. Figueres on television in response to criticism that he was harboring a criminal.
Mr. Vesco also befriended Donald A. Nixon Jr., a nephew of President Richard M. Nixon, and gave $200,000 to the Nixon campaign, apparently hoping the president would help quash the investigation against him.
It was to no avail. But to the frustration of the F.B.I. Mr. Vesco remained tantalizingly out of reach in Costa Rica, where he passed himself off as a progressive dairy and cattle rancher, and an investor in high-tech projects.
Eventually, one of his high-tech brainstorms — a factory to make machine guns, which included President Figueres’s son as a partner — became his undoing.
A public and political outcry ensued, and by 1978 he was forced to leave for the Bahamas, the beginning of years of hopscotching that included stops in Antigua and Nicaragua, before Cuba finally accepted him for “humanitarian” reasons.
“We don’t care what he did in the United States,” Fidel Castro said. “We’re not interested in the money he has.”
In Cuba, Mr. Vesco grew a beard, donned a white guayabera shirt and passed himself off as a Canadian citizen named Tom Adams. He and his family lived in a suburban Havana house that was modest by United States standards but lavish for Cubans. Within a few years, allegations began to circulate about Mr. Vesco’s involvement in narcotics trafficking, and he was named as a co-conspirator in the trial in Florida of Carlos Lehder Rivas, a reputed leader of Colombia’s biggest drug cartel.
Mr. Vesco eventually ran afoul of the Castro government with a scheme to produce a wonder drug that supposedly cured cancer, AIDS, arthritis and even the common cold. He was accused of defrauding a state-run biotechnology laboratory run by Fidel Castro’s nephew, Antonio Fraga Castro, and sentenced to 13 years. After serving most of his time in a private cell in a large prison in eastern Cuba, Mr. Vesco was quietly released in 2005 and lived so simply in recent years in Havana that a friend said he did not know what had happened to his fortune.
Marc Lacey reported from Havana, and Jonathan Kandell from New York.
http://anticorrupcioncr.wordpress.com/2011/02/17/don-pepe-vesco-y-los-confites/
Posted on febrero 17, 2011
Políticos, gobernantes, empresarios de cualquier ralea: todos han encontrado en su camino el sutil y penetrante hedor de la corrupción. Desde la antigua civilización mesopotámica, donde la reciprocidad regalo-favor era una costumbre consolidada, hasta las irresueltas cuestiones morales de nuestros días.
Para hacer una recopilación histórica sobre la corrupción en Costa Rica (en tiempos modernos), es necesario retroceder y hablar de una gran figura de la política costarricense como fue Jose Maria Figueres Ferrer (don Pepe).
No se trata de en éste caso de querer ensuciar su nombre, ni restarle méritos a lo que fue su obra en éste país, porque los hechos y la historia están ahí, y es a él a quien debemos gran parte de los logros de nuestra sociedad, pero también fue él, quien pudo iniciar (a nuestro parecer) con la corrupción estatal. Es importante tener claro que no todo los actos de corrupción se llegan a conocer, pero resulta fácil suponer que si se descubrieron algunos, existía una tendencia a cometer ese tipo de actos y quizá efectivamente sí existieron otros que nunca se conocieron.
A continuación, lo que exponemos es tomado de Wikipedia :
Una grabación entre el expresidente de Estados Unidos Richard Nixon y John Ehrlichman, uno de sus más cercanos asesores en la Casa Blanca, reveló en el año 1999, que el cuestionado hombre de negocios Robert Vesco fue protegido por el gobierno de José Figueres Ferrer. Ver diario La Nación, marzo 1999
Esta revelación estaba contenida en la conversación que Nixon tuvo con Ehrlichiman. La Fundación Nixon hizo pública la transcripción completa de aquella conversación en el año 1999. La conversación se produjo entre el expresidente Nixon y Ehrlichman, entre las 3 p. m. y 5 p. m. del 16 de marzo de 1973. Según la grabación, Ehrlichman explica a Nixon que Vesco se refugiaría en Costa Rica, ya que “había comprado al Presidente.” El expresidente estadounidense, preguntó después si se refería al entonces presidente Figueres, a lo que su asesor se lo confirma. Ver diario La Nación, marzo 1999
Robert Vesco llegó a Costa Rica en el año 1972 como inversionista y planeaba crear un distrito financiero. El 10 de junio de 1972, el Instituto Costarricense de Turismo (ICT) le concedió la condición de residente. Y cinco meses más tarde, surgió en Estados Unidos la primera acusación formal contra él. La presunta defraudación era de $224 millones en perjuicio de la conmpañia Investors Overseas Services (IOS). Vesco solicitó la nacionalidad costarricense, pero el Tribunal Supremo de Elecciones se la denegó. El 7 de junio de 1973, la Embajada de los Estados Unidos solicitó la extradición del fugitivo, pero nunca se extraditó en los gobiernos de Figueres Ferrer (1970-1974) ni de Daniel Oduber Quirós. (1974-1978) Ver diario La Nación, marzo 1999. Don Pepe dijo en una ocasión : “Ojalá vinieran más Vescos a Costa Rica”.
Fue durante la administración de Rodrigo Carazo Odio que después de uno de sus viajes, no se le permitió ingresar más a Costa Rica, aunque durante la administración de Luis Alberto Monge que volvió a hacer un nuevo intento por regresar, pero tampoco se le permitió.
En 1973 mientras ejercía su tercer mandato presidencial, José Figueres Ferrer compra tres fincas y las pone a nombre de una asociación. Las fincas pasarían a manos de la Orquesta Sínfónica Juvenil, una vez que la asociación las traspasara. La historia de dichas fincas empezó con una donación depositada en 1973 en una cuenta personal del entonces presidente José Figueres Ferrer durante su tercera administración. En declaraciones al diario costarricense La Nación, Figueres declaró que era para crear el patrimonio de la orquesta nacional y que los donantes fueron dos señores “muy musicales” del Banco de Bahamas, donde tenía inversiones el fugitivo Robert Vesco. En 1974, el mismo diario le preguntó por el dinero y él respondió: “Digan que gasté los $60.000 en confites”. Ver diario La Nación, septiembre 2007 Las tres fincas las puso a nombre de una asociación que al extinguirse las entregaría a la Orquesta. Pero la asociación se extinguió en 1986 y las fincas se traspasaron a una segunda asociación presidida por él. Al extinguirse ésta, se traspasaron a otra asociación, presidida en el año 2008 por su hija Kirsten Figueres.Ver diario La Nación, diciembre 2008
http://www.tributes.com/obituary/photos/Robert-Vesco-83731306
Robert Vesco...Rogue on the Run....
supported by influential respectable powerful people and networks around the world..doing their dirty work so Robert Vesco gets all the bad publicity and they can all hide behind people like Robert Vesco ... in return people like Robert Vesco life a grand lifestyle being able to buy anything he wants that other rich and famous people can live...
Respected researches believe that there is every chance Robert Vesco did not die and has again able to live on in hiding with everyone believing he is dead...these people like Robert Vesco use these sorts of ruses by paying a lot of money in countries like Cuba and Columbia to fake their death..... and simply carry on under another name and a new identity until they eventually die on naterual causes and everyone eventually does...
December 4, 1935 - November 22, 2007
| Age 71
http://upstart.bizjournals.com/multimedia/slideshows/2008/01/Robert-Vesco.html
January 14, 2008
New York Post
A.P. Photo
Bettmann/Corbis
Bernard Cornfeld and friends, 1974. Cornfeld, the original jet-setting investment scammer, bitterly derided Vesco as "that hoodlum."
Dave Gerrard
Bob Strong
Bettmann/Corbis
Lynn Pelham
Bettmann/Corbis
Sven Creutzmann
http://gawker.com/5002530/why-joanne-lipman-should-go
The February issue of Portfolio, which just hit newsstands, has a superficially fascinating account of fugitive fraudster Robert Vesco, who ran Bernie Cornfeld's bogus mutual fund in the early 1970s, and then escaped to Cuba. Except the profile, based on a poorly-sourced book by a Fox News correspondent called James Rosen, is as hollow as the investment empire Vesco ran. For Conde Nast's embattled business magazine, which staffers jokingly call Fort Polio, the article is an embarrassment; for the title's wobbly editor, Joanne Lipman, who forced through the piece against the objections of her colleagues, the publication is an indictment. How flawed is the piece? Here's how.
First of all, we're used to magazines rehashing old stories, and presenting them as new. But this isn't just dusty, it's ancient. Here's Portfolio's intro: "The Watergate era's second-most memorable crook, Robert Vesco, started out with nothing, enjoyed his brief moment as a low-life financial genius, and ended up imprisoned at home. In Cuba. We think." Now here's another feature, in Fortune: "Stalking Robert Vesco: Once America's most famous rascal, the fugitive embezzler now lives in Havana in modest seclusion, surrounded by armed guards." Sound familiar? That profile, by Arthur Herzog, was from 1986, twenty years ago.
At least Herzog managed to track down Cornfeld's notorious henchman. Fox reporter James Rosen, who adds very little to the earlier story, had to rely on second-hand sources. At least Portfolio's head of research came from the prissy New Yorker, and the fact checkers must have checked out the notes and documentation. But we hear that the author said that he'd lost the material "in a flood". (I'll have to remember that excuse.)
So why would Joanne Lipman publish an old story which didn't even check out? Before being picked by S.I. Newhouse's Conde Nast to launch its $100m business magazine, ran the soft, weekend section of the Wall Street Journal. The brittle editrix is famously, almost proudly ignorant of business journalism, preferring fiction. The Vesco story was news to her. That's fine. Portfolio is lifestyle pap for rich men, not an investigations unit. Sure, Rosen's rehash gets no play on the front cover; and the intro is extremely tentative ("In Cuba. We think.") — as it should be. The magazine is a team: even if Lipman doesn't have much judgment when it comes to business journalism, her colleagues do. Too bad, then, that she went ahead against universal opposition. The result is a fiasco for a magazine that, with lagging newsstand sales and poor buzz, really can't really afford one — and one for which Portfolio's vulnerable editor carries sole responsibility.
http://wvw.nacion.com/ln_ee/2008/mayo/03/pais1523107.html
NOTICIA DIVULGADA AYER POR ‘THE NEW YORK TIMES’
Fugitivo Robert Vesco habría muerto de cáncer en Cuba
Periódico dice que fallecimiento ocurrió por tumor pulmonar hace cuatro meses
Vesco se refugió en Costa Rica entre 1972-1978 por fraude en EE. UU.
MARCELA CANTERO Y VANESSA LOAIZA | mcantero@nacion.com
Imagen de Robert Vesco cuando se promocionaba como un inversionista en Costa Rica, donde vivió en la década de los setentas. Archivo.
UN PROTEGIDO
En el país: Robert Lee Vesco llegó a Costa Rica en 1972 para establecer un distrito financiero internacional.
Apadrinado: Pese a las críticas de la prensa costarricense y la posición política, los gobiernos de José Figueres Ferrer (1970-1974) y Daniel Oduber Quirós (1974-1978) lo protegieron en sus años acá.
Buscado: En 1972, Estados Unidos lo acusó por el fraude de $224 millones en contra de la firma Investors Overseas Services. Entonces, se suponía que Vesco había diluido los fondos en una compleja red de empresas falsas, 88 de las cuales estaban inscritas acá.
Salida: En 1978, bajo el gobierno de Rodrigo Carazo, Vesco viajó a Bahamas. Luego, Carazo le impidió su reingreso.
El fugitivo estadounidense, Robert Lee Vesco, quien vivió en Costa Rica entre 1972 y 1978, habría muerto hace cuatro meses por un cáncer de pulmón en Cuba, informó anoche el periódico The New York Times .
Sin identificar la fuente de su información, el diario sostiene que Vesco, nacido en 1935, habría fallecido el 23 de noviembre.
“Murió hace más de cuatro meses, el 23 de noviembre, después de una lucha contra el cáncer de pulmón, dijeron personas cercanas a él”, dijo el rotativo.
The New York Times intentó confirmar su información con autoridades cubanas, que dijeron que el caso no es “relevante”.
Por su parte, fuentes estadounidenses negaron conocer algún detalle sobre la supuesta muerte.
“Nosotros no sabemos si eso ocurrió”, dijo un oficial estadounidenses, quien no estaba autorizado a discutir el asunto.
Vesco llegó a Costa Rica en 1972 huyendo de Estados Unidos, donde se le acusó por un fraude de $224 millones contra inversionistas.
Aquí, contó con la ayuda de los gobiernos de José María Figueres Ferrer y Daniel Oduber.
El fugitivo incluso pretendió crear acá un “distrito financiero internacional” para darle “estatuto jurídico de excepción” a los capitales sin nacionalidad. El 5 de diciembre de 1972, en cadena nacional de televisión, Figueres Ferrer dijo que el financista ya había invertido en Costa Rica $13 millones y que planeaba inyectar otros $42 millones.
En 1978, el gobierno de Rodrigo Carazo lo expulsó del país y, en 1982, el estadounidense se atrincheró en Cuba gracias a su relación con el dictador Fidel Castro.
En 1996, sin embargo, fue detenido en La Habana y encarcelado bajo sospecha de ser “un provocador y un agente de servicios especiales extranjeros”. Se le condenó a 13 años de prisión.
Otras informaciones citan que, en realidad, Vesco intentó un fraude contra Raúl Castro.
Ahora, archivos del cementerio Colón, en La Habana, consultados por el diario The New York Times , indican que Vesco fue incinerado el 24 de noviembre.
“Fotografías y videos vistos por The New York Times muestran a un hombre parecido a él en un cofre”, dice el diario.
“Otras fotos lo muestran tosiendo y claramente con color en una cama de hospital donde un amigo dice que estuvo un día antes de que el muriera. También hay fotos de un pequeño grupo que acudió a su incineración”.
http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/people/v/robert_l_vesco/index.html
Robert L. Vesco
Robert L. Vesco, who was sentenced to a long prison term in Cuba in 1996 and was wanted in the United States for crimes ranging from securities fraud and drug trafficking to political bribery, died in November 2007 from lung cancer.
Mr. Vesco, shown here arriving at a Havana court in 1996, eluded the American authorities until his final day, a fitting end to his nearly four decades on the run. He was wanted for, among other things, bilking some $200 million from credulous investors in the 1970s, making an illegal contribution to Richard M. Nixon’s 1972 presidential campaign and trying to arrange a deal during the Carter administration to let Libya buy American planes in exchange for bribes to United States officials.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/09/world/americas/09vesco.html?_r=0
By MARC LACEY Published: May 9, 2008
MEXICO CITY — The death of the financier Robert L. Vesco, confirmed by documents and interviews, has closed the books on one of Washington’s longest and most prominent fugitive hunts.
A death certificate filed in Cubaconfirms reports in recent days that he died in November. His wife, Lidia Alfonso Llaguer, also confirmed the death to the Spanish news agency EFE.
She said she did not know the whereabouts of the fortune that Mr. Vesco is said to have bilked from investors in the United States before fleeing in 1972. “I met him without money,” Ms. Alfonso told EFE from Havana.
Mr. Vesco was accused of swindling investors out of $200 million in the 1970s, illegally contributing to Richard M. Nixon’s 1972 presidential campaign and trying to induce the Carter administration to let Libya buy planes in exchange for bribes to United States officials. He also was charged with drug trafficking.
American officials said Thursday that they had not dropped the charges. “We’ve heard the reports of his death, and we’re gathering information on it,” a Justice Department official said.
After time in Costa Rica and the Bahamas, Mr. Vesco went to Cuba, where he was given sanctuary, then ran afoul of the authorities. He spent a decade behind bars for his role in a scam to market a supposed miracle drug, then lived quietly in recent years.
“We tried to get him out of Costa Rica, but he escaped,” said Robert A. Pastor, a professor of international relations at American University who worked in the Carter administration.
Mr. Vesco’s death on Nov. 23 was not reported by Cuban authorities and surprised American officials who had long sought his extradition. He was just shy of his 72nd birthday and died from lung cancer, people close to him said.
The New York Times viewed photographs and videotapes of Mr. Vesco coughing in his hospital bed on Nov. 22 and in a coffin at his funeral. Cemetery records show a Robert Vesco, with the same birth date, buried at Colón Cemetery in Havana.
Vesco was born in Detroit, Michigan, where he grew up and attended, and then dropped out of, Cass Technical High School. Vesco was the son of a Detroit autoworker. He dropped out of engineering school while he was in his early twenties to go to work for an investment firm. After a short period he struck out independently with an $800 stake matching buyers and sellers in the aluminum market, until he eventually acquired a portion of the profits of a floundering aluminum plant. By 1965, he was in a position to borrow enough money to acquire International Controls Corporation. Through aggressively hostile expansions and debt-financed takeovers of other businesses he grew ICC quickly. By 1968 the company owned an airline and several manufacturing plants, and Vesco held shares totaling US$50 million.[5]
In 1970, Vesco began a successful takeover bid for Investors Overseas Service, Ltd., a mutual fund investment firm with holdings of $1.5 billion run by financier Bernard Cornfeld, who had run into trouble with the SEC. When his firm ran into financial difficulty, no "white knight" was willing to get involved. Vesco saw his chance and began a protracted battle to assume control of the company, opposed by Cornfeld and others. The battle quickly turned nasty; Cornfeld was thrown into jail in Switzerland and Vesco was accused of looting the company of hundreds of millions of dollars. Many prominent figures in global business, finance, and royalty were tied to the mess, receiving money from one party or the other for support. Among the accusations against Vesco were that he parked funds belonging to IOS investors in a series of dummy corporations, one of which had an Amsterdam address that was later linked to Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, and that he broke into a Swiss bank vault to obtain shares. These allegations are unproven, as Vesco fled the country and spent the next fifteen years hopping between countries that lacked extradition treaties with the United States.[2][6][7]
In February 1973, with criminal charges against him imminent, Vesco took the corporate jet and fled to Costa Rica along with about $200 million worth of IOS's investments, according to SEC allegations. Vesco would continue to wage a legal battle from Costa Rica and the Bahamas to try to maintain control over his 26 percent of ICC stock, but, with five outstanding indictments for securities fraud against him, he could not return to the United States. It was not until 1981 that ICC had completely become free of Vesco's control, after paying out almost $12 million to him and his family.[8]
Among the charges that emerged in the years after Watergate, the SEC accused Vesco of embezzling $220 million from four different IOS funds. In 1973, Vesco fled to Costa Rica. Shortly before his departure, hoping to shut off the SEC investigation into his activities, Vesco routed substantial contributions to Richard Nixon through his nephew, Donald A. Nixon.
Vesco was also investigated for a secret $200,000 contribution made to the 1972 campaign to re-elect Nixon. As counsel to International Controls Corporation, New Jersey lawyerHarry L. Sears delivered the contribution to Maurice Stans, finance chairman for the Committee to Re-elect the President. Vesco had wanted Attorney General John N. Mitchell to intercede on his behalf with SEC chairman William J. Casey. While Vesco fled the country, Stans, Mitchell, and Sears were indicted for obstruction of justice, though charges against all three were dismissed.[9]
In Costa Rica, Vesco donated $2.1 million to Sociedad Agricola Industrial San Cristobal, S.A., a company founded by President José Figueres. Figueres passed a law to guarantee that Vesco would not be extradited. Figueres' constitutional term ended in 1974. Vesco remained in Costa Rica until 1978, when President Rodrigo Carazo (1978–1982) repealed what was popularly referred to as the "Vesco Law."[10]
In 1978 Vesco moved first to Nassau and then to Antigua. While in Antigua he tried unsuccessfully to buy the sister island Barbuda and establish it as a sovereign state.[3] The Costa Rican government blocked his attempt to return in 1978, under President Rodrigo Carazo's administration. In 1982 Vesco tried again to return to Costa Rica, but PresidentLuis A. Monge denied his entry.[11]
He lived in Nicaragua for a while, while the Sandinista government was in power. Each of these countries accepted him, hoping that his great wealth would finance local development projects. However, this worked poorly for everybody involved, although Vesco was reputed to have stolen over $200 million, and appeared several times on the Forbes list of the wealthiest people in the world.[12]
In 1982 he moved to Cuba, a country that could provide him with treatment for his painful urinary tract infections, and which would not extradite him to the U.S. Cuban authorities accepted him on the condition that he would not get involved in any financial deals. He married Lidia Alfonso Llauger.[4]
Vesco was indicted in 1989 on drug smuggling charges.[3]
In the 1990s, Vesco became involved once again with Donald A. Nixon after Nixon went to Cuba seeking to partner with the government in conducting clinical trials on a substance he claimed to boost immunity, called trixolan or TX.[citation needed] Vesco introduced Nixon to Fidel Castro and his brother, Raúl Castro, and the Cuban government agreed to provide laboratory facilities and doctors to conduct the trials. Results from the studies were claimed to be positive, however on or about May 31, 1995, Vesco attempted to defraud Nixon and Raúl Castro, and Cuban authorities seized control of the project and arrested Vesco and his wife. Nixon was detained for questioning and was released thirty days later.
At the time of Vesco's arrest the Cuban Foreign Ministry said he had been taken into custody "under suspicion of being a provocateur and an agent of foreign special services," or intelligence agencies. However, he was formally charged with "fraud and illicit economic activity" and "acts prejudicial to the economic plans and contracts of the state."[4] In 1996 the Cuban government sentenced Vesco to thirteen years in jail on charges stemming from the scandal. He was scheduled for release in 2009, when he would have been 74. Vesco's wife Lidia was convicted on lesser charges and got out in 2005.[3][4]
Vesco reportedly died of lung cancer in November 2007 and was buried at Colon Cemetery in Havana. However, these reports of his death have been disputed.[1]
A similar figure who combined political and financial shenanigans, Allen Stanford, developed extensive ties in Antigua. In 2012 a Texas court sentenced Stanford to 110 years for fraud.
CEDAR LAKE, Ind. (AP) — A northern Indiana man who allegedly threatened to "kill as many people as he could" at an elementary school near his home was arrested by officers who later found 47 guns and ammunition hidden throughout his home.
Von. I. Meyer, 60, of Cedar Lake, was arrested Saturday after prosecutors filed formal charges of felony intimidation, domestic battery and resisting law enforcement against him. He was being held Sunday without bond at the Lake County Jail, pending an initial hearing on the charges, police said in a statement.
Cedar Lake Police officers were called to Meyer's home early Friday after he allegedly threatened to set his wife on fire once she fell asleep, the statement said.
Meyer also threatened to enter nearby Jane Ball Elementary School "and kill as many people as he could before police could stop him," the statement said. Meyer's home is less than 1,000 feet from the school and linked to it by trails and paths through a wooded area, police said.
Police said in the statement that they notified school officials and boosted security at all area schools Friday — the same day 26 people, including 20 students, were shot and killed at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn.
On Saturday, officers served warrants at Meyer's home and arrested him. The statement said police had learned that Meyer kept many weapons in his older, two-story home and "is a known member of the Invaders Motorcycle Gang."
Officers searched the home, finding 47 guns and ammunition worth more than $100,000 hidden throughout the home. Many of the weapons were collector's guns.
Cedar Lake is about 45 miles southeast of Chicago.
A dispatcher with Cedar Lake Police said that the police chief was not available for interviews until Monday.
Lake County police spokeswoman Patti Van Til said Sunday that a SWAT team from the department assisted in serving Saturday's warrants.
Jacintha Saldanha's Death: Australian DJs Behind Royal Prank May Face Police Probe
The two Australian DJs who pulled the prank call on the U.K. hospital where Kate Middleton was staying are now in hiding and may soon have to face police after the death of a nurse caught in the hoax.
Kate Middleton and Indian-born mother-of-two Jacintha Saldanha, 46, is thought to have taken her own life.
2Day FM hosts, Michael Christian and Mel Greig.
Questions have been raised by members of the Australian public whether MI5, MI6 and/or their well known murder partners Mossad where involved somehow in the death of Indian-born mother-of-two Jacintha Saldanha, 46, who the UK media are claiming that she took her own life...
and it is noted that all media reports coming from the United Kingdom only ever call it a suspected suicide... but was it a murder by MI5, MI6 and/or their well known murder partners Mossad
to make and example of the nurse who gave out the private information about Kate Middleton who was in a U.K. hospital...
Australian readers of INLNews.com and awn.bz who have read all about the murder of Thomas Allwood,
INL News Under-Cover Investigative Journalist and co producer with Stephen Carew-Reid and the INL News Group of Fringe Shows Have Talent TV Shows Have, on the 21st June, 2012 in Broxburn Scotland which is about an hour's drive from Edinburgh... and how the Scottish Lothian Borders Police and the Scottish Prosecution known in Scotland as the Procurator Fiscal's Office and the world's media are clearly not looking closely enough the evidence brought out at the recent trial of Kyle Montgomery heard from the 19th November to the 26th November 2012 in Scotland's High Court in Livingston, who had been charged by the Scottish Lothian Borders Police for the murder of Thomas Allwood ..the evidence clearly indicates strongly that Thomas Allwood was not murdered by Kyle Montgomery who locals in Broxburn say is a well known local mentally depressed Scitzophrenic at around 2.20am on the 21st July, 2012 ... as implied by his father John Montgomery in his sworn evidence at by Kyle Montgomery's trial... when the much more believable independent evidence from two next door neighbours who have a common wall with John Montgomery's house in Galloway Cresent, Broxburn was produced at the trial that say they both heard and felt an enormous bang on their bedroom wall that felt like their bedroom wall was about to cave in...coming from John Montgomery's house at about 3.15 am on the 21st June, 2012.... which was the loudest bang that they had ever heard coming from John Montgomery's house which they stated was like living next door to a pub with drinking, shouting, arguing and fighting went on all the time all hours of the day and night... they said in evidence that before the enormous bang there was loud shouting, screaming, arguing and fighting coming from John Montgomery's house... however as soon as the enormous bang happened that felt like their bedroom wall was about to cave in... there was complete silence coming from John Montgomery's house... and then they heard the back door quietly open and close ... which was first time that that door was ever opened and close without being slammed for the last couple of years since they lived next door to John Montgomery's house..... John Montgomery had given sworn evidence at his sons trial that after his son grabbed a bread knife from his kitchen draw and ran out the back door after Thomas Allwood, who was unarmed when he left the house a few minutes before, and that his son Kyle Montgomery came back into the house a few minutes later with blood on the bread knife admitting to his Dad, John Montgomery, that he had just done something bad... John Montgomery then said he took to bread knife with blood on it from his Son, Kyle Montgomery and calmly placed it back into the draw still with the blook on it... then Kyle Montgomery left the house and John Montgomery calmly had another drink and then fell asleep on the lounge and did not wake up until the police turned up and arrested him at about 5 am on the 21st June, 2012... another person who was at John Montgomery's house that early morning on the 21st June, 2012 was a lady known as Maggie whose name is Margaret Shedden (Galloway being her birth name- a very well connected and influential family in Scotland with a famous politician George Galloway and a Freemason Scottish Police Officer Hugh Galloway of 7 Tower Place Johnstone Renfrewshire Renfrewshire 791 being member of the family)...John Montgomery's family also are well connnected and respected in Scotland with war heros in the family and a Freemason Police Officer Alexander Montgomery 51 Parkhead Rd Glen Village by Falkirk Stirlingshire 484
also a member of the Montgomery Family.... so it does not seem believable that John Montgomery would not have been awake and/or woken up with the enormous bang coming from his house at about 3.15 that the next door neighbours say was the loudest bang they had ever heard from John Montgomery's house and felt like their bedroom wall was going to cave in... so this clearly indicates along with other evidence that John Montgomery had lied on the witness stand and in doing so has implicated his Kyle Montgomery as the person who was likely to have made a fatal six inch stab wound in the right chest of Thomas Allwood through cloths with a bread knife that would have cerated edge and no sharp point for stabbing anyone through clothing which is only suitable for a sawing acting rather that a stabbing action...however at the same time implicating Kyle Montgomery as the likely person who made the fatal six inch stab wound in Thomas Allwood's right chest that cut through a main archery causing the death of Thomas Allwood... John Montgomery gave evidence which is believed by the jury could get his son off the murder charge his Son Kyle Montgomery was facing and to try and convince the jury that his son
Kyle Montgomery was only guilty of culperable homicide... which is like an accident homicide crime that resulted in the death of a person without intent in a drunken fight that got out of hand ... even though the bar maid gave evidence at the trial that Thomas Allwood was only drinking soft drinks that night... and Kyle Montgomery had been alcohol drinking heavily since about 1pm on the 20th June, 2012.....and so was his father John Montgomery drinking alcohol heavily since at least 8pm and likely most of the day since he received his government benefit cheque that day... in fact the jury based mainly on his father's evidence... very conveniently for all those Scottish Government officials involved in the investigation into the murder of Thomas Allwood.... and others... found Kyle Montgomery not guilty of the murder of Thomas Allwood and found Kyle Montgomery guilty of the lesser charge of Culperable homicide (accidental death) of Thomas Allwood....now the evidence that came out at the trial of Kyle Montgomery seems to clearly indicate that there were at least four people... maybe more in the house of Kyle Montgomery from 10pm on the 2oth June, 2012 and about 3.30 am on the 21st June, 2012... and in fact at least voices coming from John Montgomery's house that night and early morning were heard by the next door neighbours ....these seem to include...Thomas Allwood, John Montgomery, Kyle Montgomery and Margaret Shedden (Galloway being her birth name) and maybe others who did not want to make themselves known and kept reasonable quiet while at John Montgomery's house... the evidence seems to clearly indicate that at 2am to 2.30 am on the 21st June, 2012 when John Montgomery states was the time frame when his son Kyle Montgomery was meant to have gone out the back door and meant to have stabbed Thomas Allwood with a bread knife and came back with blood on the knife admitting he has just done something bad...making it fairly obvious to the at least three people left at the house which at the least included John Montgomery, Kyle Montgomery and Margaret Shedden (Galloway being her birth name)... that Kyle Montgomery had just stabbed Tomas Allwood outside in the back yard and/or a nearby street .. and that Thomas Allwood would be likely have been badly hurt from a stab wound and would have needed urgent medical attention.... regardless if was considered that stabbing of Thomas Allwood by Kyle Montgomery deliberate and/or in self defense... either way it would have been clear to these three people and anyone else that may have been at John Montgomery's house at that time, that they should call an ambulance and the police immediately to make sure that Thomas Allwood obtained urgent medical attention which if had been done then could well have saved the life of Thomas Allwood... sure the fact that neither of these people bothered to ring the police and/or an ambulance to try and get urgent help for Thomas Allwood at around 2.20-2.30 am...if what John Montgomery says id true.... they all should be charged with being responsible for the murder and/or death of Thomas Allwood as they seemed to just let him die on the street or the back yard.. and under Australian law could well be charged as accessories after the fact and at least charged with some serious charge that resulted in the death of Thomas Allwood... very similar to walking away from a serious car accident where it is clear someone had been seriously hurt and not calling the police and/or an ambulance....
Now... when one looks at the evidence of the two next door neighbours that say they both heard and felt an enormous bang on their bedroom wall that felt like their bedroom wall was about to cave in...coming from John Montgomery's house at about 3.15 am on the 21st June, 2012.... which was the loudest bang that they had ever heard coming from John Montgomery's house... then the more believable truth is that at about 3.15 am Thomas Allwood was king hit by someone and/or some people with either a fist or fists and/or a hard object that was enough to knock out Thomas Allwood.. then the body of Thomas Allwood was carried outside while Thomas Allwood was still unconscious ...then someone stabbed Thomas Allwood... not with a bread knife but a sharp pen knife which made the deep six inch stab wound into the right chest of Thomas Allwood that cut a main archery so that Thomas Allwood was never wake up and would bleed to death... and then quietly they carried Thomas Allwood body to the next streets Clarkson and Pyothall Roads and quietly left the body there at about 3.30 am where the body was found at about 4.45 am by three boys walking past at that time...the neighbour that had a window open looking right over where Thomas Allwood's body was found says you can hear a pin drop in her street and there was not one sound or noise in her street that early morning... and the only noise that was heard was the sound of the police at about 5am looking at the body and the murder scene... so it is clear that there was not fighting in her street that morning at 2.00-4.00 am where the body was found that morning and so screaming or cries for help from Thomas Allwood in her street that morning at 2.00-4.00 am where the body was found that morning.. why?... because Thomas Allwood was obviously carried and left there and was already unconscious having been knocked out before he was stabbed with the six inch stab wound and then stabbed and then carried to to the next streets Clarkson and Pyothall Roads and quietly left there... private investigators employed by friends and family of Thomas Allwood have a strong belief that the evidence clearly suggests that Thomas Allwood was not murdered and/or even killed by Kyle Montgomery with a bread knife but was murdered by a contract killer well trained to know where and how to stab a person with one six inch stab wound with a very sharp and pointed pen knife which is designed to be able to kill some with just one stab wound.... the people in the world that are well known to be able to know how to murder someone with just one stab wound are agents and/or assets of MI5, MI6 and Mossad... and it is well known they work as agents for the state of the United Kingdom and the UK Prime Minister's Office to carry out murders of people like Thomas Allwood who was an undercover INL News Investigative Journalist who was working on a story to expose state of the United Kingdom and the UK Prime Minister, David Cameron and their Treasury Solicitors and Barristers for knowing being involved with having a false and fraudulent UK Border Agency document and having that false and fraudulent document presented to the High Court of Justice to stop Thomas Allwood from successfully claiming £500 million in damages claim for the wrongful arrest of USA Comedian Ronnie Prouty by the UK Border Agency on the 27th April, 2011 as a favour for the powerful Rupert and James Murdoch and their all powerful media group News Corporation as a way of commercially sabotaging the planned filming of the pilot fo the Fringe Shows Have Talent TV Show in Edinburgh in April- May 2011 being co-produced by Thomas Allwood, Stephen Carew-Reid (the author of the well known bboks The Triumph of Truth -Who Is Watching the Watchers? and the original founder of the INL News Group-formerly known as the Australian Weekend News Publishing Group) and the INL News Group to create an international showcase of talented entertainers that perform at the 60 year old Edinburgh Fringe Festival each year... which has become the biggest arts festival in the world with over 3,000 Fringe shows being performed during August each year in Edinburgh....
Below is some the transcripts of what was said at a court hearing in London's High Court of Justice heard on the 24th July, 2012 where applications were originally listed to be heard by Thomas Allwood prior to his murder on the 21st June, 2012 in Broxburn, Scotland for criminal contempt applications to be heard against David Cameron the UK Prime Minister, George Osborne, the UK Chancellor, the UK Government, the UK Border Agency and their treasury solicitors for knowingly having prepared a false and fraudulent UK Border Agency document and presenting such false and fraudulent UK Border Agency document to the High Court of Justice to try to stop Thomas Allwood from suing David Cameron the UK Prime Minister, George Osborne, the UK Chancellor, the UK Government, the UK Border Agency for £500 million in damages caused to the filming of the Fringe Shows Have Talent TV Show by the wrongful arrest of USA Comedian Ronnie Prouty on the 27th April, 2012 at Heathrow Airport as favour David Cameron and George Osborne's good friends at the time...Rupert and James Murdoch and their all powerful multi- billion media group known as News Corporation..the murder of Thomas Allwood on the 21st June, 2012 meant that would stop Thomas Allwood continuing with his criminl contempt applications against suing David Cameron the UK Prime Minister, George Osborne, the UK Chancellor, the UK Government, the UK Border Agency and their treasury solicitors and well as other criminal contempt applications taken out against barristers and solicitors involving another legal fight Thomas Allwood and his de-facto partner Valerie Butler where involved with at the High Court of Justice in their fight over their 25 acre family farm known as Haywicks Farm, Haywicks Lane, Hardwicke, Gloucester in the UK... where Thomas Allwood alleged that powerful and well connected s Freemason solicitors and barrister in Gloucester that Thomas Allwood called the Gloucestershire Legal Mafia (GLM) were involved with the preparing a false will in the name of Valerie Butler's father Herbert Butler and presenting that false will for a wrongful grant of probate so that partners of the Gloucestershire Legal Mafia (GLM) could wrongly obtain the title deed of their 25 acre family farm known as Haywicks Farm, Haywicks Lane, Hardwicke, Gloucester in the UK which they had planned to turn into a multi-million luxury real estate development ... Thomas Allwood also had a firm belief and was not scared to openly say...that Valerie Butler's father Herbert Butler was also murdered as part of the conspiracy he alleged to defraud his de-facto partner Valerie Butler of her rightful ownership of Haywicks Farm..
Some of the reasons why the Private Investigation Team employed by friends and family of the late Thomas Allwood to investigate who and why Thomas Allwood was murdered on the 21st June. 2012 in Broxburn, Scotland strongly believe that the powerful agents of the State of the United Kingdom such as MI5, MI6 and/or Mossad and/or some other professional contract murdered was and/or were involved in the murder of Thomas Allwood on the 21st June, 2012 include:
1. The Scottish Lothian Borders Police and the Scottish Prosecution known in Scotland as the Procurator Fiscal's Office and the world's media are clearly not looking closely enough the evidence brought out at the recent trial of Kyle Montgomery heard from the 19th November to the 26th November 2012 in Scotland's High Court in Livingston, who had been charged by the Scottish Lothian Borders Police for the murder of Thomas Allwood ... seem to be risking their worldwide good reputation by quite openly protecting those at the house of John Montgomery on the evening of the 20th June, 2012 and the early morning of the 21st June, 2012 who according to the evidence of John Montgomery, and including John Montgomery knew that Thomas Allwood was likely badly wounded from a stab wound at about 2.20 am and did niot ring the police of an ambulance and simply went to sleep and left Thomas Allwood to die on the road just a street away from John Montgomery's house
2. Why is there a complete worldwide media block out.. except for one lone Scottish Journalist Vic Roderick who was the only journalist to cover the trial... who has now been silenced by the world mainstream media with what is called a "D Notice" on the reporting of the murder/death of Thomas Allwood who was an undercover INL News Investigative Journalist, Poet and TV Shows producer of the Fringe Shows have Talent TV Show...
3. Why is the a mentally sick person such as Kyle Montgomery whom the locals say is a well known Scitzophrenic which is capable to believing and/or repeating any story he is told is the truth.. being made a patsy for the death of Thomas Allwood.. .at about 2.20 am when the evidence clearly indicates that Thomas Allwood was knocked unconscious in the house of John Montghomery at about 3.15 am on the 21st June, 2012 and then carried out of the house and then stabbed with a six inch wound in the right chest cutting a main archery nd then carried to be let to die on Clarkson and Pyothall Road, Broxburn
With the more believable truth is that at about 3.15 am Thomas Allwood was king hit by someone and/or some people with either a fist or fists and/or a hard object that was enough to knock out Thomas Allwood.. then the body of Thomas Allwood was carried outside while Thomas Allwood was still unconscious ...then someone stabbed Thomas Allwood... not with a bread knife but a sharp pen knife which made the deep six inch stab wound into the right chest of Thomas Allwood that cut a main archery so that Thomas Allwood was never wake up and would bleed to death... and then quietly they carried Thomas Allwood body to the next streets Clarkson and Pyothall Roads and quietly left the body there at about 3.30 am where the body was found at about 4.45 am by three boys walking past at that time...the neighbour that had a window open looking right over where Thomas Allwood's body was found says you can hear a pin drop in her street and there was not one sound or noise in her street that early morning... and the only noise that was heard was the sound of the police at about 5am looking at the body and the murder scene...
so it is clear that there was not fighting in her street that morning at 2.00-4.00 am where the body was found that morning and so screaming or cries for help from Thomas Allwood in her street that morning at 2.00-4.00 am where the body was found that morning.. why?... because Thomas Allwood was obviously carried and left there and was already unconscious having been knocked out before he was stabbed with the six inch stab wound and then stabbed and then carried to to the next streets Clarkson and Pyothall Roads and quietly left there... private investigators employed by friends and family of Thomas Allwood have a strong belief that the evidence clearly suggests that Thomas Allwood was not murdered and/or even killed by Kyle Montgomery with a bread knife but was murdered by a contract killer well trained to know where and how to stab a person with one six inch stab wound with a very sharp and pointed pen knife which is designed to be able to kill some with just one stab wound.... the people in the world that are well known to be able to know how to murder someone with just one stab wound are agents and/or assets of MI5, MI6 and Mossad...
Part of the transcripts of hearing before Justice Vos at High Court of Justice in London on the 24th July, 2012
Miss Love: The Border Agency matter.
Mr Justice Vos: I know, but I do not have any of the core papers in the Border Agency matter. What is the action no?
Miss Love: My Lord, it is HC11C04395
Mr Justice Vos: You see that is why, I have been through all the cases, and I do not have any papers in that except your letter and the correspondence.
Miss Love: Right
Mr Justice Vos: If I just pick it up. I have this much stuff on the UKBA, but it really is just your letter and a lot of historical material, and material concerning the famous INL News Group.
Miss Love: Mr Lord, we can remedy that situation _ I am sure your Lordship does not particularily want further copies of the correspondence, but certainly of the original claim form_
Mr Justice Vos: That is what I would like. So there was an application, was there, in that matter that was returnable today?
Miss Love: There was....
Mr Justice Vos: To do what?
Miss Love: If I could just start the procedural history, the claim by Mr Carew-Reid, which in essense was apparently a claim for damages in respect of treatment by the UK Border Agency of an individual known as Mr Prouty was issued on 9th December, 2011...
Page 6:
Miss Love: as you will see, it appears to be some hybrid of striking out and appealing the order of Master Bowles, an application for the cross-examination of myself and Mr Spanton, who was acting Treasury Solicitor and a generalised, if I might respectfully say so, rather difficult to grasp criminal contempt application..
Mr Justice Vos: It is another criminal contempt
Page 8:
Mr Geis: But the point was that Mr Prouty was refused entry into the UK and I've seen the forms that Mr Carew-Reid had, and there was one form which did not have a signature on. Now, I think this does cause for a bit of alarm and I think you should carefully consider this point and. if necessary, make an adjournment.
Mr Justice Vos: Thank you, Mr Gies...
Miss Lean: My Lord may have seen in the more recent correspondence from Mr Reid and INL that clearly they have concerns that this was a murder effected by MI5 or Mossad and/or other agents of the State, but as far as we are aware it is being dealt with as a criminal murder charge (murder of Thomas Allwood)
Mr Justice Voss: Yes, and who was Mr Allwood- apart from being a party to litigation, did he occupy some important position?....
Miss Lean: My Lord, for completeness, I should mention I am afraid among the many letters and emails from members of the INL News Group I do not have that one. I think I have seen some reference in the correspondence to Mr Allwood being involved with the INL News Group in some capacity so that may be the...
Mr Justice Voss: Right, but he was a associate and friend of Mr Carew-Reid, that is what it comes to?.... Right, thank you. Well Mr Carew-Reid himself says he was a friend of Mr Carew-Reid's side, I do not think we need to go further than that.....
Jacintha Saldanha's Death: Australian DJs Behind Royal Prank May Face Police Probe
The two Australian DJs who pulled the prank call on the U.K. hospital where Kate Middleton was staying are now in hiding and may soon have to face police after the death of a nurse caught in the hoax.
This morning, there are also new questions about whether DJs Mel Greig and Michael Christian, radio shock jocks at Sydney's 2Day FM broke laws after they recorded the private conversation when they pretended to be Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles.
British police have also contacted Australian police about a possible probe into the prank call, The Associated Press reported Sunday.
Rhys Holleran, CEO of Southern Cross Austereo, the parent company of Sydney's 2Day FM radio station said no laws were broken. The prank had been cleared by the Australian radio station's lawyers. Holleran said the DJs followed the company's procedures before broadcasting the call. "I think the more important question here is that we're very confident that we haven't done anything illegal. Our main concern at this point in time is what has happened is incredibly tragic and we're deeply saddened and we're incredibly affected by that," Holleran said Saturday. The hoax has caused public outcry after the death of a nurse, Jacintha Saldanha, who connected the pair to the Duchess' room.
Saldanha was found dead Friday morning after police were called to an address near the hospital to "reports of a woman found unconscious," according to a statement from Scotland Yard. Circumstances of her death are still being investigated, but are not suspicious at this stage, authorities said earlier. Lord Glenarthur, the chairman of King Edward VII's Hospital, the U.K. hospital where the Duchess of Cambridge was receiving treatment, condemned the prank Saturday in a letter to the Max Moore-Wilton, chairman of Southern Cross Austereo, the Australian radio station's parent company.
Glenarthur said the prank humiliated "two dedicated and caring nurses," and the consequences were "tragic beyond words," The Associated Press reported. Max Moore-Wilton, the chairman of Southern Cross Austereo, said in a letter to Lord Glenarthur Sunday that the company is reviewing the station's broadcast policies, the AP reported. "I can assure you we are taking immediate action and reviewing the broadcast and processes involved," Moore-Wilton said in the letter. "As we have said in our own statements on the matter, the outcome was unforeseeable and very regrettable." Saldanha came to England from India nine years ago, with her husband and two children. On Facebook, her 14-year-old daughter wrote this weekend, simply: "I miss you, I loveeee you."
Saldanha worked as a nurse at King Edward VII private hospital for four years. Her family lives 100 miles away in Bristol, but while on shift she slept in a residence for nurses. With no receptionist on duty overnight she answered the prank call and put it through. The hospital called her a "first-class nurse" and "a well-respected and popular member of the staff" and extended "deepest sympathies" to family and friends, saying that "everyone is shocked" at this "tragic event."
The duchess spent three days at the hospital undergoing treatment for hyperemesis gravidarum, severe or debilitating nausea and vomiting. She was released from the hospital Thursday morning. The hospital apologized for the mistake.
A man who stabbed a photographer to death in a drunken street brawl was caught after police found a blood-stained knife in a cutlery drawer.
http://local.stv.tv/edinburgh/203156-killer-who-stabbed-man-to-death-had-bloody-knife-in-cutlery-drawer/
A man who stabbed a photographer to death in a drunken street brawl was caught after police found a blood-stained knife in a cutlery drawer.
Kyle Montgomery, 24, denied murdering Thomas Allwood after a late-night drinking session but was found guilty of culpable homicide by a jury on Wednesday.
Jurors at the High Court in Livingston took four and a half hours to return a guilty verdict on the lesser charge.
Sentence on the first-time offender, of Winchburgh, West Lothian, was deferred until December 20 for background reports.
Mr Allwood, a 56-year-old photographer who worked for the Australian-based INL News Group, was stabbed in the chest during an incident on June 21.
Giving evidence in his own defence, Montgomery claimed he grabbed the knife to frighten Mr Allwood after being attacked by him at a house in Broxburn, West Lothian.
He said the killing was an accident and that he did not know the blade had sliced through the victim's chest and severed a major artery as he struggled with the victim.
Police who were called to the scene followed a trail of blood from Mr Allwood's body to Montgomery's father’s home. They found the knife, still stained with blood, in a cutlery drawer.
Montgomery was detained as he returned to the house from a nearby shop.
Mr Allwood was a photographer with the Australian-based INL News Group. Although he was born in Scotland, his family emigrated when he was a child and he spent most of his live in Australia.
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/murder-trial-told-dna-of-victim-1453803
Murder trial told DNA of victim and alleged killer found on kitchen knife
THE knife was found in the kitchen of the dad of Kyle Montgomery, who denies murdering Thomas Allwood.
THE DNA of a murder victim and his alleged killer were found on a kitchen knife, a court heard yesterday.
The High Court in Livingston was told the odds of the DNA matching anyone other than the deceased, Thomas Allwood, were 28,600,000-1.
Blood samples lifted from the blade were a billion-to-one match for 24-year-old Kyle Montgomery, who denies murdering Thomas in Broxburn on June 21.
The knife was found in Montgomery’s dad’s kitchen.
Forensic scientist Kirsty McTurk told the jury: “The findings are consistent with Kyle Montgomery having assaulted Thomas Allwood.”
The trial was adjourned until Monday.
http://www.scotsman.com/news/scottish-news/top-stories/man-caused-stab-death-by-accident-1-2664172
Man ‘caused stab death by accident’
Published on Wednesday 28 November 2012
A MAN accused of murdering an Australian journalist has claimed he must have stabbed the victim to death by accident.
Kyle Montgomery admitted that he armed himself with a kitchen knife and squared up to 56-year-old Thomas Graham Allwood.
He claimed in evidence at the High Court in Livingston that the blade was for his own “protection” and he had no intention of using it.
After being attacked twice by the victim, he said he just wanted to “scare him off” with the knife.
He struggled with Mr Allwood, who was armed with a metal pole or iron bar, but said he was unaware of inflicting the fatal blow which severed the main artery above his heart.
Montgomery, 24, from Winchburgh, West Lothian, denies murdering Mr Allwood in Broxburn on June 21.
In his closing speech yesterday, advocate depute Martin Macari asked the jury to convict Montgomery of murder. He said: “Whatever happened between those men, Kyle Montgomery had returned to the house to get a weapon.”
Derek Ogg QC, defending, said: “If he didn’t realise he’d caused that injury, he could not and did not have any criminal intent towards Mr Allwood.”
Judge Lord Doherty was due to deliver his charge to the jury this morning.
Comment from INL News Reader: Mary Gleeson
I have read all the published stories on the trial of Kyle Montgomery who was charged with the murder of INL Journalist Thomas Allwood, and all other previous media reports I could find on the web since Thomas Allwood was first reported on the BBC website on the 22nd June 2012 that he had been murdered in Broxburn, Scotland and that Kyle Montgomery was charged with Willfull murder of Thomas Allwood... and I have come to the conclusion that the way the evidence has presented at the trial of Kyle Montgomery and what evidence has been given by the witnesses the dots simply do not add up... and the trial has created more questions than answers..... when it seems clear that this Maggie lady, described as a female friend of Thomas Allwood and tJohn Montgomery, the father of the accused ..according to John Montgomery's evidence were in the house when Kyle Montgomery deliberately went outside to chase after Thomas Allwood with a bread knife... rather than jut locking lall the doors and windows of his father's house t make sure Thomas Allwood can not get back into their house....because they were meant to be in fear of him... then ring the police and say that Thomas Allwood was threatening Kyle Montgomery and had attacked Kyle Montgomery in John Montgomery's house ( all according the John Montgomery) and was continuing to bang on their door ... then the police would have come around immediately and arrested Thomas Allwood... who would then have spent the night in the police lock up.... where he would have woken up the next morning alive and be able to explain to a magistrate and/or the police what happened that night... no it all did not happen that way... John and Kyle Montgomery both claim that having removed Thomas Allwood from John Montgomery's house.... and expecting Thomas Allwood to have been unarmed....deliberately ran out of the back door of the house to the back garden for the purpose to chase Thomas Allwood with a bread knife in his hand.... instead of staying safe in his dads house and ringing the police.... now I read in the above article the unbelievable claim by Kyle Montgomery that Thomas Allwood "was armed with a metal pole or iron bar" and thus was acting in self defence after delieberately going outside to look for Thomas Allwood to attack him with a knife... other purpose would he have grabbed the knife and run outside with it for... it can only be to stab Thomas Allwood who he thought was unarmed... now Kyle Montgomery seems on the evidence had been drinking heavily since bout 1pm at his dads house and would have been very drunk by 2am the next morning and Thomas Allwood looks like a big man and Kyle Montgomery looks like a small thin boy... and thus could easily be over powered by Thomas Allwood even without Thomas Allwood have a metal pole or an iron bar to defend himself with from a vicious knife attack... we also heard from John Montgomery who said that Thomas Allwood had his son Kyle Montgomery pinned on the floor with his foot on his chest... which shows that Thomas Allwood had no problem in over powering Kyle Montgomery without any weapon of any sort.... then se have the unbelievable story of John Montgomery that at the same time the Thomas Allwood had his son Kyle Montgomery pinned to the floor by having his foot on his chest... Thomas Allwood was meant to have his hands around Kyle Montgomery's throat trying to strangle Kyle Montgomery... this is simply physically impossible for a tall big man to do at the same time as standing up with his foot on the person's chest....it is simply also unbelievable that that Thomas Allwood was armed outside with a metal pole or iron bar because if that was the case having already being told by John Montgomery that Thomas Allwood had no problem about being able to overpower Kyle Montgomery without any weapon, the how the hell is Kyle Montgomery going to be able fatally stab Thomas Allwood with just one six inch stab wound with a bread knife ( bread knife do not have pointy tips and just a cerated edge for a sawing action for bread or meat but not a stapping action) through clothing knowing the exact place to stab (single handed) a big man to kil him with one stab wound in the front chest ( not in the back) who is well aware that of the identity of the attacked and that the attcked is likely to attack because of a previous disagreement in the house.... and Thomas Allwood is also now armed with a metal pole or an iron bar.... which in one swing would have knocked small frail drunk Kyle Montgomery for six ... there is no way Kyle Montgomery is going to have any chance of being able to make that one fatal stab wound all by himself.... no normal jury is going to beleive this story.. so there seems no doubt what ever happened that morning Thomas Allwood must have been unarmed and Kyle Montgomery would have have to hav had some helpers... if it was really Kyle Montgomery that handed the fatal stab wound on Thomas Allwood...at about 2.15 according to the timing given by his father John Montgomery... then John and Kyle Montgomery and the lasy Maggie have to explain what the enmormous bang against the wall of the next door neighbours bedroom that cam from John Montgomery's house at about 3.5 to 3.15 am that felt to them that their bedroom wall was abourt to cave in... then after there being constant arguing, shouting and fighting etc before this enormous bang at about 3.05 to 3.15 am on the 21st June 2012.. everything from John Montgomery's house suddenly went quiet and for the first tikme ever... the back door was opened and wht and the door was not slammed which indicated clearly that someone or some people went out the door of John Montgomery's very silently and quietly... and the only logical deduction as to what the enormous bang against the wall was just before that nearly push the wall in from John Montgomery's side... was someone king hitting Thomas Allwood with a fist or a heavy object.. making him unconscious....then carrying Thomas Allwood out the door while he was unconscious... then may be making soem more bruses on his boy and then the one fatal stab wound ... all while he was unconscious.... and then carrying the body of Thomas Allwood quietly to where he was found on Clarkson/Pyothall Roads... at about 4.45 am by passers by...
However if one is to discount that theory and ignore the enormosu bang at 3.05 to 3.15 am coming from John Montgomery's house... and just still to what John Montgomery sated on the witness stand under oath.. that his sone Kyle Montgomery grabbed a bread knife from the kitchen draw and ran out the back door( obviously to go to try and stab Thomas Allwood or at least chase after himw ith the knife) then coming back ten minutes later with blod on the knife and admitting he had done something bad... and John Montgomery not asking any more questions and calmly oputting the knife woth the blood on it back into the draw... having one more drink,,, the son leave the house and he falls asleep on the lounge...and is woken uop at about 5am by the police arresting him... so why didn't John Montgomery, Kyle Montgomery and/or Maggie ring the police and/or an ambulance at about 2.20 am which would haved saved the life of Thomas Allwood..
http://www.lbp.police.uk/information/latest_news/news_archives/2012/november_2012/man_convicted_of_thomas_allwoo.aspx
Man convicted of Thomas Allwood death
28 November 2012 15:59
A man who stabbed his victim in the chest, resulting in his death has today been convicted.
At the High Court in Livingston today, Kyle Montgomery was found guilty of culpable homicide after killing 56-year-old Thomas Graham Allwood during a disturbance in Broxburn in the early hours of Thursday 21st June.
Members of the public found Mr Allwood's body in Clarkson Road and alerted police who launched a major investigation to identify his killer.
Detectives quickly traced and arrested Montgomery and charged him in connection Mr Allwood's death.
The 24-year-old is due to be sentenced on Thursday 20th December at Edinburgh High Court.
Detective Inspector Stuart Houston, who led the investigation said: "It is my sincere hope, that following today's verdict Mr Allwood's family can begin to move on with their lives and put this horrendous ordeal behind them.
"I would also like to thank the members of the community who came forward and assisted with this investigation.
"Lothian and Borders Police are committed to tackling violent crime and by working closely with our partners at the Crown Office, ensure that offences of this nature are investigated thoroughly and those responsible are removed from our communities."
Thomas Allwood was born in Scotland but spent most of his life in Australia
First offender Kyle Montgomery will be sentenced next month for the killing
http://www.s1broxburn.com/news/broxburn-killer-montgomery-convicted--1.html
Broxburn killer Montgomery convicted
by Rebecca GarrettWednesday, 28 November 2012
The monster who stabbed Thomas Graham Allwood in the chest in Broxburn, which resulted in his death, has been convicted.
Kyle Montgomery was found guilty of culpable homicide the High Court in Livingston. He killed 56-year-old Allwood during a disturbance in the early hours of Thursday, June 21.
Members of the public found Mr Allwood's body in the Clarkson Road/Pyothall Road area and alerted police. A major investigation to identify his killer was launched.
Detectives quickly traced and arrested Montgomery and charged him in connection Mr Allwood's death.
The 24-year-old is due to be sentenced on Thursday, December 20 at Edinburgh High Court.
Detective Inspector Stuart Houston, who led the investigation, said: "It is my sincere hope, that following today's verdict Mr Allwood's family can begin to move on with their lives and put this horrendous ordeal behind them.
"I would also like to thank the members of the community who came forward and assisted with this investigation.
"Lothian and Borders Police are committed to tackling violent crime and by working closely with our partners at the Crown Office, ensure that offences of this nature are investigated thoroughly and those responsible are removed from our communities."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-20526345
28 November 2012
Kyle Montgomery found guilty of killing journalist Thomas Allwood
A man who stabbed a journalist to death in West Lothian has been convicted of culpable homicide.
Kyle Montgomery, from Winchburgh, denied murdering 56-year-old Thomas Allwood in Broxburn in June.
A jury at the High Court in Livingston took four-and-a-half hours to find the 24-year-old guilty of the lesser charge.
Sentence was deferred until 20 December at the High Court in Edinburgh for background reports.
Montgomery had said he grabbed a knife to scare off Mr Allwood after claiming he was attacked by him at a house in Broxburn.
He said the killing was an accident and that he did not know the blade had sliced through the victim's chest and severed a major artery during the struggle.
After the attack, Mr Allwood, who was a journalist with the Australian-based INL News Group, was found on Clarkson Road by members of the public.
Police who were called to the scene followed a trail of blood from his body to Montgomery's father house.
They found the knife, still bloodstained, in a cutlery drawer. Montgomery was detained as he returned to the house from a nearby shop.
Mr Allwood was born in Scotland but his family emigrated to Australia when he was a baby and he spent most of his life there.
He was involved in producing a TV show called Fringe Shows Have Talent, to showcase entertainers performing at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
Det Insp Stuart Houston, who led the Lothian and Borders Police investigation, said: "It is my sincere hope, that following today's verdict Mr Allwood's family can begin to move on with their lives and put this horrendous ordeal behind them.
"I would also like to thank the members of the community who came forward and assisted with this investigation.
"Lothian and Borders Police are committed to tackling violent crime and by working closely with our partners at the Crown Office, ensure that offences of this nature are investigated thoroughly and those responsible are removed from our communities."
http://local.stv.tv/edinburgh/203156-killer-who-stabbed-man-to-death-had-bloody-knife-in-cutlery-drawer/
Killer who stabbed man to death had bloody knife in cutlery drawer
STV 28 November 2012 16:45 GMT
Associated Press/Carolyn Kaster, File - FILE - In this Nov. 16, 2012, file photo, President Barack Obama acknowledges House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio while speaking to reporters in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, as he hosted a meeting of the bipartisan, bicameral leadership of Congress to discuss the deficit and economy. Admnistration officials say President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner met Sunda, Dec. 9, 2012, at the White House to discuss the ongoing negotiations over the impeding "fiscal cliff." Spokesmen for both Obama and Boehner said the two men agreed to not release details of the conversation, but emphasized that the lines of communication remain open. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)
Stock market is a wild card in fiscal cliff talks
By By CHARLES BABINGTON | Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — Congress and the White House can significantly soften the initial impact of the "fiscal cliff" even if they fail to reach a compromise by Dec. 31. One thing they cannot control, however, is the financial markets' reaction, which possibly could be a panicky sell-off that triggers economic reversals worldwide.
The stock market's unpredictability is perhaps the biggest wild card in the political showdown over the fiscal cliff.
President Barack Obama's re-election gives him a strong negotiating hand, as Republicans are increasingly acknowledging. And some Democrats are willing to let the Dec. 31 deadline pass, because a rash of broad-based tax hikes would pressure Republicans to give more ground in renewed deficit-reduction negotiations.
A chief fear for Obama's supporters, however, is that Wall Street would be so disgusted or dismayed that stocks would plummet before lawmakers could prove their newfound willingness to mitigate the fiscal cliff's harshest measures, including deep, across-the-board spending cuts that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says could significantly damage the nation's military posture. SomeRepublicans believe that fear will temper the president's insistence on a hard bargain this month. Obama and GOP House Speaker John Boehner on Sunday held their first meeting between just the two of them since the election, and spokesmen for both emphasized afterward their lines of communication remain open.
The so-called cliff's recipe of major tax hikes and spending cuts can actually be a gentle slope, because the policy changes would be phased in over time. Washington insiders say Congress and the White House would move quickly in January or February to undo many, but not all, of the tax hikes and spending cuts.
Financial markets, however, respond to emotion as well as to research, reason and promises. If New Year's headlines scream "Negotiations Collapse," an emotional sell-off could threaten the president's hopes for continued economic recovery in his second term, even if Republicans receive most of the blame for the impasse.
"Nobody can predict the markets' reaction," said Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Tenn.
Some Republicans are surprised that the White House has not made clearer efforts to reassure Wall Street that if the Dec. 31 deadline is breached, the worrisome pile of tax increases and spending cuts would not hit all at once.
A few liberal commentators are making just that case.
"If we go past the so-called fiscal cliff deadlines and all the resulting budget cuts and tax increases come into force, the administration can minimize the damage," Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne wrote last week. "Obama can publicly announce he is delaying any cuts, on the theory thatCongress will eventually vitiate some of them. And he can make sure the bond markets know of his plans well in advance. ... Everyone (especially Wall Street) should calm down."
Some financial bloggers agree. "Although it would be bad to let the spending cuts and tax hikes fully go into effect, if this thing is addressed in early January, things will be okay," wrote Business Insider's Joe Weisenthal.
So far, the stock markets have stayed calm. The S&P 500 index is up 12 percent for the year.
That might be because investors agree that a temporary trip over the cliff wouldn't be too harmful. Chastened lawmakers, the thinking goes, would quickly minimize the economic damage with a deficit-reduction compromise that eluded them in December.
Or, it's possible that investors view the most pessimistic tones surrounding the fiscal cliff talks as posturing that will give way to a last-minute deal. If that is the thinking — and if the Dec. 31 deadline instead is breached — Obama's fear might come to pass: The expectation of a deal might produce a significant decline in stock prices if it doesn't occur.
As bad as that sounds, some liberals think it will be necessary to force many Republicans to drop their opposition to higher tax rates on the wealthy that Obama says are crucial to trimming the deficit.
Rep. Peter Welch, a Vermont Democrat who says temporarily going over the cliff wouldn't be so bad, noted what happened on Sept. 29, 2008. The House surprised investors by rejecting a proposed bailout of the crisis-stricken financial sector. Republicans strongly opposed the plan despite then-President George W. Bush's support. The Dow plunged 777 points, its largest one-day point drop ever. Four days later the House, shaken by the market reaction, passed a slightly modified bailout bill.
Welch said a similar market meltdown next month, in the event of a fiscal cliff impasse, "is what will force members of Congress eventually to act." Few lawmakers in either party are eager to predict how the stocks and bonds markets would react to a failure to reach a fiscal cliff accord by year's end. "Let's not pretend the markets fully understand the politicians, or the politicians fully understand the markets," said Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., who has served in Congress for 37 years.
Follow Charles Babington on Twitter: //twitter.com/cbabington
How the 'Mayan Apocalypse' came from a New Age magic mushroom trip
The 'prophecy' does not stem from the Mayans at all. Instead, the beliefs come from two New Age books in the Seventies and Eighties, says a British academic.
Jose Arguelles, author of The Mayan Factor (Image: Wikimedia)
The so-called 'Mayan' prophecy actually comes from New Age writers in the Seventies and Eighties (Image: Rex)
People who are expecting the world to end on December 21 - the so-called 'Mayan Apocalypse' - should be in for a pleasant disappointment.
The 'prophecy' does not stem from the Mayans at all - or date from thousands of years ago.
Instead, the beliefs come from two New Age books in the Seventies and Eighties.
The two books predict outcomes as surreal as a 'upgrade' to human consciousness predicted by a spirit from the seventh century. The date itself comes from a prophecy based on a magic mushroom trip.
“December 21st will be just another Friday morning,” said Andrew Wilson, Assistant Head of Social Studies at the University of Derby. “A hippy guru called Jose Arguelles associated the date with the Mayan calendar in a book called The Mayan Factor in 1987. But it's an obsolete form of the calendar, which had not been used since the year 1100AD.”
“He claimed to be channelling various spirits, including the spirit of a Mayan king from the seventh century. He predicted a ‘shift in human consciousness’ - mass enlightenment.”
The actual date of December 21 first appeared in an earlier work - a 1975 book by Terence McKenna, a writer known for his descriptions of “machine elves” seen while under the influence of drugs.
The date appeared in McKenna's ‘Timeline Zero’ prophecy, and was based on McKenna’s own mathematics, the Chinese I Ching and a magic mushroom trip.
McKenna later met Arguelles and the two became, Wilson says, part of a circle of New Age authors who cited each other’s work, lending the ‘prophecy’ an air of believability.
“The significance of December 21 2012 in ‘New Age’ circles emerged from the work of ‘ethnobotanist’ Terence McKenna as he travelled deep into the Amazon in the 1970s,” says Wilson. His calculations of a ‘zero time wave’ suggested the world would go through a large change on December 21.”
“Arguelles, who had a long-held interest in Native American spiritualties, was inspired by McKenna’s work. He popularised the date in connection with the ‘long count calendar’ of the Mayan people in his new-age circles.”
As the belief has evolved, it has become associated with other, wilder predictions - such as the idea that Earth will be hit by a ‘rogue planet’, Nibiru, or swallowed by a black hole.
“There is no central belief,” says Wilson, “It varies from the ideas that Earth’s magnetic poles might shift, to the idea of a ‘galactic council’ visiting Earth. There’s no one, definite idea - it mirrors the New Age beliefs from which it comes.”
“It’s become part of a lot of religious movements. For instance, ‘The Galactic Federation of Light’ believes that ‘Planet X’ will make a close pass by the earth in 2012 – causing a deep transformation of human life on Earth.
“What this and other apocalyptic dates have in common across new religious movements is that they are often predicted to occur within a believer’s lifetime - making their beliefs urgent and important,” said Wilson.
“However, most people who believe in the significance of December 21 2012 have tempered their predictions of an apocalypse to, instead, signifying some significant change in humanity. Whether that is a change in culture or a world-wide event - most believers in an apocalypse won't be preparing for an earthly end but looking forward to an imminent transformation."
“A lot of people look to this story for reassurance - about the financial climate, or even about fears of, for instance, the Large Hadron Collider.”
“What’s been popularised is the dramatic stuff - but I am definitely still doing my Christmas shopping as normal this year.”
Wilson’s paper, ‘From Mushrooms to the Stars’, will be published by Ashgate in 2013.
Georgia details nuke black market investigations
By By DESMOND BUTLER | Associated Press
This June 24, 2012 photo shows the Hotel L Bakuria in Batumo, Georgia, Black Sea coast near the Turkish Border. In April 2012, three men gathered in secret at the hotel to talk about a deal for radioactive material for sale. The Georgian seller offered cesium, a byproduct from nuclear reactors that terrorists can use to make a dirty bomb.But one of the Turkish men made it clear he was after something much more dangerous: Uranium, the material used to make a nuclear bomb. The two Turks and the seller businessman Soslan Oniani, were convicted in September, 2012 in a Georgian court, according to officials, and sentenced to six years in prison each. Despite years and hundreds of millions of dollars spent in the fight against illicit sale of nuclear contraband, the black market remain active in the countries around the former Soviet Union. (AP Photo by Desmond Butler)
This undated handout photo provided by the Georgia Interior Ministry shows components for four cylinders containing radioactive substances seized in Batumi, Georgia on April 10, 2012. Police, who have been tracking Georgian Businessman Soslan Oniani, for over year, monitored him in a hotel room meeting with two Turskish citizens, trying to sell to sell the cylinders with the materials which included cesium-137 and strontium-90. The two Turks and the seller, Oniani, were convicted were convicted in September, 2012 in a Georgian court, according to officials, and sentenced to six years in prison each.
Associated Press/Georgia Interior Ministry - This undated photo provided by the Georgia Interior Ministry shows part of a seizure of radioactive substances including iridium-192 and europium-152. Police in Kutaisi, Georgia arrested two people involved in the smuggling in February 2011. The investigation led police to track a third man, Soslan Oniani, who would be arrested in April 2012 trying to sell radioactive material to two Turkish men. Despite years of effort and hundreds of millions of dollars spent in the fight against the illicit sale of nuclear contraband, the black market remains active in the countries around the former Soviet Union. The radioactive materials, mostly left over from the Cold War, include nuclear bomb-grade uranium and plutonium, and dirty-bomb isotopes like cesium and iridium. (AP Photo/Georgia Interior Ministry)
BATUMI, Georgia (AP) — On the gritty side of this casino resort town near the Turkish border, three men in a hotel suite gathered in secret to talk about a deal for radioactive material.
The Georgian seller offered cesium, a byproduct of nuclear reactors that terrorists can use to arm a dirty bomb with the power to kill. But one of the Turkish men, wearing a suit and casually smoking a cigarette, made clear he was after something even more dangerous: uranium, the material for a nuclear bomb. The would-be buyers agreed to take a photo of the four cylinders and see if their boss in Turkey was interested. They did not know police were watching through a hidden camera. As they got up to leave, the police rushed in and arrested the men, according to Georgian officials, who were present.
The encounter, which took place in April, reflected a fear shared by U.S. and Georgian officials: Despite years of effort and hundreds of millions of dollars spent in the fight against the illicit sale of nuclear contraband, the black market remains active in the countries around the former Soviet Union. The radioactive materials, mostly left over from the Cold War, include nuclear bomb-grade uranium and plutonium, and dirty-bomb isotopes like cesium and iridium. The extent of the black market is unknown, but a steady stream of attempted sales of radioactive materials in recent years suggests smugglers have sometimes crossed borders undetected. Since the formation of a special nuclear police unit in 2005 with U.S. help and funding, 15 investigations have been launched in Georgia and dozens of people arrested. Six of the investigations were disclosed publicly for the first time to The Associated Press byGeorgian authorities. Officials with the U.S. government and the International Atomic Energy Agency declined to comment on the individual investigations, but President Barack Obama noted in a speech earlier this year that countries like Georgia and Moldova have seized highly enriched uraniumfrom smugglers. An IAEA official, who spoke anonymously because he was not authorized to comment, said the agency is concerned smuggling is still occurring in Georgia.
Four of the previously undisclosed cases, and a fifth — an arrest in neighboring Turkey announced by officials there — occurred this year. One from last year involved enough cesium-137 to make a deadly dirty bomb, officials said.
Also, Georgian officials see links between two older cases involving highly enriched uranium, which in sufficient quantity can be used to make a nuclear bomb. The AP's interviews with the two imprisoned smugglers in one case suggested that the porous borders and the poverty of the region contributed to the problem. The arrests in the casino resort of Batumi stand out for two reasons: They suggest there are real buyers — many of the other investigations involved stings with undercover police acting as buyers. And they suggest that buyers are interested in material that can be used to make a nuclear weapon. "Real buyers are rare in nuclear smuggling cases, and raise real risks," said nuclear nonproliferation specialist Matthew Bunn, who runs Harvard's Project on Managing the Atom. "They suggest someone is actively seeking to buy material for a clandestine bomb." The request for uranium raises a particularly troubling question. "There's no plausible reason for looking for black-market uranium other than for nuclear weapons— or profit, by selling to people who are looking to make nuclear weapons," Bunn said.
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Georgia's proximity to the large stockpiles of Cold War-era nuclear material, its position along trade routes to Asia and Europe, the roughly 225 miles (360 kilometers) of unsecured borders of its two breakaway republics, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and the poverty of the region may explain why the nation of 4.5 million has become a transit point for nuclear material. Georgian officials say the radioactive material in the five new cases this year all transited through Abkhazia, which borders on Russia and has Russian troops stationed on its territory. Abkhazia's foreign ministry said it has no information about the Georgian allegations and would not comment, but in the past it has denied Georgian allegations.
Russia maintains that it has secured its radioactive material — including bomb-grade uranium and plutonium — and that Georgia has exaggerated the risk because of political tension with Moscow. But while the vast majority of the former Soviet Union's nuclear arsenal and radioactive material has been secured, U.S. officials say that some material in the region remains loose. "Without a doubt, we are aware and have been over the last several years that not all nuclear material is accounted for," says Simon Limage, deputy assistant secretary for non-proliferation programs at the U.S. State Department. "It is true that a portion that we are concerned about continues to be outside of regulatory control."
U.S. efforts to prevent smuggling have prioritized bomb-grade material because of the potential that a nuclear bomb could flatten a U.S. city. But security officials say an attack with a dirty bomb — explosives packed with radioactive material — would be easier for a terrorist to pull off. And terrorist groups, including al-Qaida, have sought the material to do so. A study by the National Defense University found that the economic impact from a dirty bomb attack of a sufficient scale on a city center could exceed that of the September 11, 2011, attacks on New York and Washington.
The U.S. government has been assisting about a dozen countries believed to be vulnerable to nuclear smuggling, including Georgia, to set up teams that combine intelligence with police undercover work. Limage says Georgia's team is a model for the other countries the U.S. is supporting. On Jan. 6, police arrested a man in Georgia's capital, Tbilisi, and seized 36 vials with cesium-135, a radioactive isotope that is hard to use for a weapon. The man said he had obtained the material in Abkhazia. In April, Georgian authorities arrested a group of smugglers from Abkhazia bringing in three glass containers with about 2.2 pounds (1 kilogram) of yellowcake uranium, a lightly processed substance that can be enriched into bomb-grade material.
"At first we thought that this was coincidence," said Archil Pavlenishvili, chief investigator of Georgia's anti-smuggling team. "But since all of these cases were connected with Abkhazia, it suggests that the stuff was stolen recently from one particular place. But we have no idea where. " Days later, more evidence turned up when Turkish media reported the arrest of three Turkish men with a radioactive substance in the capital, Ankara. Police seized 2.2 pounds (1 kilogram) of cesium-135, the same material seized in January in Tbilisi.
Georgian officials said the suspects were residents of Germany and driving a car with German plates, but that the material had come from Abkhazia. Turkish authorities said the men had entered Turkey from Georgia. Information provided by German authorities led to the arrest in June of five suspects in Georgia with 9 vials of cesium-135 that looked very similar to the vials seized in January. The Batumi investigation started after the arrest of two men in the city of Kutaisi in February 2011 year with a small quantity of two radioactive materials stolen from an abandoned Soviet helicopter factory, according to Georgian officials. The men said that a businessman, Soslan Oniani, had encouraged them to sell the material. Police interviewed Oniani and searched his house, but found insufficient evidence to arrest him, according to officials. Still, they kept monitoring him through phone taps and an informant. Georgian officials say Oniani was a braggart, who played on his relationship with his cousin, Tariel Oniani, a well- known organized crime boss convicted in Russia of kidnapping.
Early this year, Soslan Oniani started talking about a new deal. Through surveillance and phone taps, police learned of the meeting in Batumi and monitored it. While no money passed hands, the men discussed an illegal deal, which is sufficient for prosecution in Georgia. Tests by Georgian authorities later revealed that one lead cylinder held cesium-137, two strontium-90, and the fourth spent material that was hard to identify. All are useful for making a dirty bomb, although the material in the cylinders alone was not enough to cause mass casualties, according to data provided by Georgian nuclear regulatory authorities. The arrested Turks denied knowing they were negotiating for radioactive substances. They claimed to be musical instrument experts, who had come to Batumi seeking to buy violins. A skeptical interrogator asked them if they were familiar with the famed instrument maker Stradivarius.
One man said he had never heard of him. The two Turks and the seller, Oniani, were convicted in September in a Georgian court, according to officials, and sentenced to six years in prison each.
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The Georgian smuggling cases suggest that the trade in radioactive materials is driven at least in part by poverty and the lingering legacy of Soviet corruption in a hardscrabble region. Georgian officials say that because of U.S. backed counter-smuggling efforts, organized crime groups seem to have concluded that the potential profit from trade in these materials doesn't justify the risk. But individuals sometimes conclude they can make a quick buck from radioactive material. For instance, in one newly disclosed case last year, authorities arrested two Georgian men with firearms, TNT and a lethal quantity of cesium-137. One was a former Soviet officer in an army logistics unit, who told police that at the end of his service in the early 90s, he had made a second career stealing from the military.
"He openly said: 'I was a logistics officer and my second duty was to steal everything possible," according to Pavlenishvili. The man kept the cesium for years before he and a relative tried to sell it last year to a Georgian undercover officer. He did not try to sell the weapons or explosives. Poverty and corruption also appear to have played into three smuggling incidents in 2003, 2006 and 2010 that involved bomb-grade highly enriched uranium.
In 2003, an Armenian man, Garik Dadaian, was arrested when he set off a radiation detector provided by an American program at a checkpoint on the Armenian-Georgian border. Days later, the man was released and returned to Armenia under murky circumstances.
Dadaian's name resurfaced in 2010 on a bank transfer slip in the pocket of the two smugglers arrested with highly enriched uranium. The men had obtained the material from Dadaian and were offering it as a sample of a larger quantity. Police say forensic analysis suggests the uranium may have come from the same batch seized in 2003. Russian investigators suspected Dadaian got the nuclear fuel from a manufacturing plant in Novosibirsk, Russia, where several disappearances of material have been documented. Pavlenishvili said Dadaian bribed prosecutors to win his release and take some of the uranium. The two smugglers in the 2010 case were Sumbat Tonoyan, a dairy farmer who went bankrupt, and Hrant Ohanian, a former physicist at a nuclear research facility in the Armenian capital of Yerevan. The AP interviewed both at a prison about 25 miles (40 kilometers) outside Tbilisi, where they are serving sentences of 13 and 14 years.
In separate interviews, each man blamed the other for the idea of smuggling uranium, and talked of financial hardship. Ohanian said his daughter needed urgent medical care that he couldn't afford, and Tonoyan said a bank had seized his house after his dairy factory collapsed. "I didn't have a job and I couldn't pay the bank," he said in Russian through an interpreter. The men also claimed they believed the material they were selling was to be used for scientific work, not nefarious purposes. Ohanian said a Georgian contact, who was also arrested, told him relations with Moscow were so bad that Georgian scientists could not get the uranium they needed from Russia on the open market. "I feel guilty because I behaved like an idiot," he said. "I should have known and I would never do something like this again."
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The family of nurse Jacintha Saldanha have thanked people for their support and messages of condolence.
Speaking on their behalf, Keith Vaz MP described Mrs Saldanha as a "loving mother and a loving wife".
"This is a close family, they are devastated by what has happened, they miss her every moment of every day," he said, as he stood beside Mrs Saldanha's husband Benedict Barboza and her two teenage children.
"They are really grateful for the support of the British public and the public overseas for the messages of support and kindness," he added.
The post-mortem for the nurse, who put through a hoax call made about the Duchess of Cambridge's medical condition, will take place on Tuesday.
Mrs Saldanha took the initial call from Australian DJs Mel Greig and Michael Christian who posed as the Queen and the Prince of Wales when they rang the hospital where Kate was being treated for acute morning sickness.
Believing it to be genuine, she put the call through to another colleague who was duped into describing the duchess' condition in detail.
Mrs Saldanha was found dead days later, having apparently taken her own life.
Her post-mortem will take place at Westminster Mortuary.
Prime Minister David Cameron spoke of his "shock" at Mrs Saldanha's death.
He said: "I thought it was completely shocking ... I heard about the suicide of this nurse, who worked incredibly hard and obviously was incredibly dedicated.
"I feel incredibly sorry for her and her family. It is an absolute tragedy that this has happened and I am sure everyone will want to reflect on how it was allowed to happen."
It comes after the boss of Sydney radio station 2Day FM said five attempts were made to contact London's King Edward VII's Hospital about the prank call before it aired.
"Following the hoax call, the radio station did not speak to anyone in the hospital's senior management or anyone at the company who handles our media enquiries," a hospital spokesman said.
Earlier, Rhys Holleran - head of the station's parent company Southern Cross Austereo - said he was satisfied that the appropriate checks were carried out before the pre-recorded segment was broadcast.
"It is absolutely true to say that we actually did attempt to contact those people on multiple occasions," he told Fairfax Radio, an Australian broadcaster.
"We rang them up to discuss what we had recorded ... we attempted to contact them on no less than five occasions ... we wanted to speak to them about it."
Britain's Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has told Sky News the nurse's response to the prank call does not point to a widespread breach of procedure.
Asked what lessons needed to be learned, he said: "I think we need to make sure that the right safeguards are in place, that the right training is in place, but I think it's too early for me to say whether this is something which is just an individual prank that went horribly wrong and it was an isolated breach or whether there are more widespread issues.
"My instinct is that this was an isolated incident with very exceptional circumstances."
Labour MP Mr Vaz, who visited Mrs Saldanha's family in Bristol on Sunday, has called on the hospital to hold an inquiry and provide more support to the relatives.
"What is needed, clearly, is an inquiry by the hospital into what has happened.
"The hospital has sent them a letter, which I have seen, but I'm surprised that nobody has made the journey to Bristol to sit with them and offer them the counselling that I think they need."
He said the family was in "terrible distress", adding: "More support in my view needs to be given."
A statement from King Edward VII Hospital said chief executive John Lofthouse had offered to meet Mrs Saldanha's husband.
It said it had also offered to establish a memorial fund in her name.
The statement read: "We hope that everyone will focus on doing all they can for the family of Jacintha Saldanha at this terrible time."
The two young 2Day FM hosts at the centre of the controversial Royal prank have broken their silence on the call that had such tragic repercussions.
Headlines and commentary in the UK have condemned the two young radio hosts at the centre of 2DayFM's tragic prank call.
The two young 2Day FM hosts at the centre of the controversial Royal prank have broken their silence on the call that had such tragic repercussions.
After the stunt received international coverage, the nurse who answered the call, 46-year-old Jacintha Saldanha, took her own life.
How much the prank had to do with the tragedy is open to conjecture, but what is certain is that Michael Christian and Mel Greig are two young people under unimaginable pressure.
Though they both say that they are emotionally stable in talking about the events, both Christian and Greig appear visibly distraught.
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When Greig describes hearing the dreadful results following the days after the prank she says "unfortunately I remember that moment very well because I haven't stopped thinking about it since it happened, and I remember my first question was 'was she a mother?'"
On hearing that Saldanha had indeed been the mother of two children, Greig says she was "very sorry and saddened for the family. I can't imagine what they'd be going through."
Christian says he is "gutted", "shattered", and "heartbroken".
He says "we're still trying to get our heads around everything. Trying to make sense of the situation."
According to Greig the whole tragedy doesn't even seem real. "It doesn't seem real because you just couldn't foresee something like that happening from a prank call. You know it was never meant to go that far. It was meant to be a silly little prank that so many people have done before. This wasn't meant to happen," she said.
When asked whether, in hindsight, they would they do something like that again, Christian says "I don't think that anyone could have predicted what could've happened. It was just a tragic set of circumstances. I don't think anyone could have thought that we'd be here."
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So how did the idea of the prank first come up? Both Christian and Greig are clear that the idea was the whole team's - that there is no single person that can or should be blamed. "Everything's done as a team," the said.
When asked whether there was legal advice or guidance from senior staff on how best to tackle the call, both Christian and Greig are clear on the fact that the call was never meant to be more than a silly joke.
"The call to begin with wasn't about speaking to Kate. It wasn't about trying to get a scoop or anything. The call was just – I mean we'd assumed that we'd be hung up on and that'd be that," Christian said.
Indian-born mother-of-two Jacintha Saldanha, 46, is thought to have taken her own life. Photo: Supplied
However when the two weren't hung up on during the call last week, the prank was certainly treated as a scoop. The hosts were both shocked and amused when they were put through and given information about Princess Kate's health.
According to Greig "the accents were terrible. You know it was designed to be stupid. We were never meant to get that far - from the little corgis barking in the background – we obviously wanted it to be a joke."
Christian echoes that "the joke was always on us, not anyone else. It wasn't about trying to fool someone. I mean we just assumed that with the voices that we put on, you know, we were going to get told off and that was the gag – in us."
More stories from reporter Clare Brady
Asked whether Austereo provides any coaching or training about the legal and ethical implications of what is put on air, Christian is clear that his role is as a presenter and that there are others who make the tough calls.
"This phonecall is the same with any phonecall, with any prerecorded segment that goes to air. There's processes in place and people that make those decisions," he said.
"There are people that make those decisions for us."
2Day FM hosts, Michael Christian and Mel Greig. Photo: Supplied
Greig echoes the sentiments, saying "it went through the processes of every other recorded bit that we do – from interviews to you know anything at all that gets recorded and passed on to the appropriate people, goes through the process, and we're told whether it's yes or no to play."
While the powers that be made the decisions about whether to air the segment, the two DJs were certainly giddy that they'd pulled off such an unlikely prank.
"We couldn't believe that it had worked, absolutely. You didn't expect it to. We thought a hundred people before us would've tried the same thing. We just did not see that actually working," Greig said.
Yahoo!7 News: Sydney station tried to contact nurses
Christian is careful to reiterate that the point of the prank "wasn't to get something that no one else had. It wasn't about getting (information)."
However they did try to get a medical condition update - and the medical condition of a Royal at that.
Greig explains that "we didn't actually want that. We just wanted to be hung up on. We wanted to be hung up on with our silly voices and wanted a twenty second segment to air of us doing stupid voices."
Police officers stand outside the King Edward VII's hospital following the death of a nurse who took a hoax call concerning the Duchess of Cambridge's treatment on December 7, 2012 in London, England. Photo: Getty
The two didn't identify themselves at the end of the call (though today station management said that they'd tried to contact the two nurses who were part of the call a number of times before the segment went to air).
"That's where the process comes in. We just record everything and pass it to the team. That's what we do," Greig said.
"And again the call itself is – there's no malice in the call. There was no digging. There was no trying to upset or get a reaction," Christian reiterated.
Yahoo!7 News: Royals close ranks as radio station defends conduct
The extreme vilification of the two DJs by the UK media looks like a witch hunt - there are those that want someone to pay. At the same time hackers here are threatening to shut down the radio station and hack into the whole system if the two young DJs aren't sacked.
In tears, Greig says "there's nothing that can make me feel worse than what I feel right now. And for what I feel for the family. We're so sorry that this has happened to them."
Though both DJs are being given counseling and support from Austereo, they say their priority is that the family of the nurse gets the support and care they need.
"I care more about the family. I want to know that they've got the support that they need and that the public are, you know, being respectful of their privacy," Greig said.
She has not made contact with the family, deciding that it was no appropriate at this time.
"I don't think it's an appropriate time to do that yet. But this is where we want to say that we are thinking of you and if we could call you we would want to reach out to you."
So if they could turn the clock back, would these two DJs make the same phonecall?
"If we played any involvement in her death, then we're very sorry for that. And time will only tell," Christian said.
However he does maintain that "these are prank calls. They've been around for as long as radio's existed, and they're done by every radio station."
And while that's certainly true, the results of this specific prank call are horific. Christian is clear that "no one could have predicted this result."
What does the future hold for the two DJs at the centre of this disaster?
"I don't want to think about that right now. There's bigger, more pressing issues and that's making sure that family gets through this tough time. You know our careers aren't important at the moment," Greig said.
With Scotland Yard now involved, there is eery chance that they two will be called to an inquest, which will probably be in London, where they'll meet the family face to face. Are they prepared for that?
Not ready to look at the future just yet, Christian says "right now we're trying to wrap our heads around what's happened."
Greig assures that "if that's going to make them feel better then I'll do what I need to do, absolutely. If that's something that they want to do, to get some closure, then I'll do that."
Both Greig and Christian have a lot of support. A poll out today of 11,000 people, had two thirds saying they feel the two DJs are not to blame for this horrible result. However the other side are horrible comments in mainstream media and on Twitter saying they've ruined many lives, 'shame on you', and 'you've got blood on your hands'.
Christian says that that's not what they are focusing on.
"What's important right now is you know, that the family of Jacintha are getting the support and the love that they deserve. And I mean that's what's important here. You know, it was, it is, nothing more than a tragic turn of events that no one could have predicted and, you know, for the part that we played, we're obviously incredibly sorry."
"If we had any idea that something like this could be even possible to happen, you know, we couldn't see this happening. It was meant to be a prank call," Greig said.
When the phonecall first aired, Greig said it was the 'highlight of her career' - incredibly excited to get the call through. But of course, as she keeps repeating "we couldn't foresee what was going to happen in the future."
"The call itself was not malicious and no harm was intended on Jacintha, or the other nurse, or Kate, or Prince William, or anyone. It wasn't – from start to finish – there was no harm intended. And obviously, you know, we're incredibly sorry for the harm that we may have helped contribute (to)," Christian concluded.
Readers seeking support and information about suicide prevention can contact Lifelineon 13 11 14 or Suicide Call Back Service on 1300 659 467.
Indian-born mother-of-two Jacintha Saldanha, 46, is thought to have taken her own life. Photo: Supplied
Police officers stand outside the King Edward VII's hospital following the death of a nurse who took a hoax call concerning the Duchess of Cambridge's treatment on December 7, 2012 in London, England. Photo: Getty
2Day FM hosts, Michael Christian and Mel Greig. Photo: Supplied
Readers seeking support and information about suicide prevention can contact Lifelineon 13 11 14 or Suicide Call Back Service on 1300 659 467.
Proud to Be One of the World's Worst Hotels
By DRAGANA JOVANOVIC Nov. 12, 2012
The good news? This hotel is a bargain, no room costs more 25 euros per night. The bad news: You get what you pay for. It may be the worst hotel in the world.
The people who own the Hans Brinker Budget Hostel in Amsterdam wrote the book on the subject with a simple idea in mind: If you were warned in advance, you can't complain after you arrive. Some of the Hans Brinker's advertising slogans include: "It can't get any worse. But we'll do our best" or "Improve your immune system – stay at Hans Brinker!" And this "honest" humorous approach works, if you judge by the high percentage of the hotel's 511 beds in 127 rooms that are occupied these days.
The hotel's target clientele are mostly students and backpackers, who can appreciate the sarcastic humor and the price. The Hans Brinker ads make extremely modest claims: "Now with beds in every room" or "Now more rooms without a window," to go with the modest rate. And cheapness isn't the only virtue on display at the Hans Brinker Budget Hostel, there's also so-called ecological correctness. So the hotel's broken elevators becomes an "eco-friendly elevator"-- the stairs. No hot water in the shower? It keeps water consumption environmentally sound. No towels? Drying yourself off with the curtains saves on washing and helps save the planet. "It's an experience," says Tijmen Receveur, a manager at Hans Brinker. "Most of our guests are pleasantly surprised when they arrive at the hotel. They love our humor and sarcasm and they have diminished their expectations to less than nothing." A "legal note" posted on the hotel's website states that guests book there "at their own risk and will not hold the hotel liable for food poisoning, mental breakdowns, terminal illness, lost limbs, radiation poisoning, certain diseases associated with the 18th century, plague, etcetera."
"I've stayed in a lot of crummy places, but I like to think the Hans Brinker is the best of the worst," says Eleonor, a Belgian student, who stayed there recently. "It's the perfect place for teenage travelers or people in their twenties, who are likely to fall asleep in one of the bars around the corner anyway." Still, wacky humor can only take you so far, and recent comments on TripAdvisor indicate some guests may have forgotten the basis of their bargain: you get what you pay for, even or especially, at "The Worst Hotel in the World." Recent comments range from "For the reputation of the world's worst hotel it wasn't as bad as I thought. Pretty scabby still, very basic. The bathroom was atrocious! The winner for it was the location though. I wouldn't say don't stay there, but I would never stay there ever again" to the more flattering "Hans Brinker is a fun filled hostel with great facilities, friendly staff and great location. You will not be disappointed!"
Either way, you've been warned.
Interactive: US inner circles of power |
Meet the top consultants, advisers, and pollsters behind Barack Obama and Mitt Romney's candidacies.
Mohammed Haddad and Hasan Salim Patel Last Modified: 31 Oct 2012 10:45
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US votes in tight presidential race |
Long lines reported in some states as millions of voters take to the polls after a grueling campaign.
Last Modified: 06 Nov 2012 20:20
After a seemingly endless presidential campaign, voters in the United States are going to the polls to decide whether to give president Barack Obama a second term or replace him with his Republican challenger, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.
Voters in dozens of states were lined up before dawn, with lengthy lines and hour-long waits reported in many places. In New York and New Jersey, eastern states battered last week by Hurricane Sandy, voters queued outside of tents and other makeshift polling places.
There were scattered reports of irregularities across the country, particularly from voters who said they were asked to show identification while waiting in line. In Pennsylvania, a judge ordered Republicans to stop demanding ID from voters outside a polling station.
Voting machines also broke down in a number of polling stations. One man in Pennsylvania posted a video of a machine which did not let him vote for Obama, apparently a malfunction.
Romney voted on Tuesday morning near his home in Belmont, Massachusetts. From there he planned to hit the campaign trail, a rarity for presidential candidates on Election Day; his campaign has scheduled events in Pennsylvania and the battleground state of Ohio.
Obama voted more than a week ago in his hometown of Chicago, part of a campaign to encourage his supporters to take advantage of early voting. Some 30 million Americans have already voted, a record number.
The president plans to spend the day at his headquarters in the city, and has no plans to hit the campaign trail, though he did make phone calls to volunteers.
"[I] want to say to Governor Romney, congratulations on a spirited campaign," he told reporters on Tuesday morning. "We feel confident we've got the votes to win, but it's going to depend ultimately on whether those votes turn out."
His vice president, Joe Biden, cast his ballot in the early morning hours in his home state of Delaware. He will travel to Chicago in the afternoon to watch the results with Obama.
Tuesday's vote caps off a grueling campaign that became the most expensive in history: Candidates and outside groups spent some $2.6bn on the presidential race alone.
Both candidates have spent the last few weeks barnstorming the handful of "swing states" which will decide the election. Obama made campaign stops on Monday in Wisconsin, Iowa and Ohio, while Romney visited New Hampshire, Florida, Ohio and Virginia.
Obama used his final campaign stop to remind voters of his accomplishments: the economy's slow recovery from recession, the rescue of the American auto industry, and the end of the war in Iraq, among other things.
He sought to sharpen the contrast between his policies and those of his opponent.
"It's not just a choice between two candidates and two parties, it's a choice between two different visions for America," he said.
Obama has not laid out a detailed agenda for his second term, and Romney has seized on that in his final speeches, warning voters that the president will simply repeat his policies from the past four years - which the Republican nominee described as a failure.
"His plan for the next four years is to take all the ideas from the first term - the stimulus, the borrowing, Obamacare, all the rest - and do them over again," Romney said, referring to the president's $787bn economic stimulus package and his health care reforms.
"He calls that ‘Forward.’ I call it ‘Forewarned,'" the former governor quipped.
Polls positive for Obama
The last round of national polls heading into the vote were good news for the president. A Pew Research Center poll showed him leading Romney by three points, 48 per cent to 45 per cent. The same poll had them tied last week.
Two other polls showed a closer race: A Washington Post-ABC News poll had Obama leading by one point, 49 per cent to 48 per cent; and a CNN poll had the candidates tied with 49 per cent of the vote.
All three of those results were within the polls' margins of error.
But the popular vote will not decide the outcome. States are apportioned a number of electoral votes based on their population, and the candidate who wins a majority - 270 - becomes president. And the final state polls showed the president leading in most of the crucial swing states.
Surveys in Ohio have had Obama leading by anywhere from three to five points. A victory there would mean Romney would have to win at least six of the remaining eight battleground states, which seems unlikely: Obama led every poll conducted in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, Virginia and Wisconsin; Romney's lone bright spot was North Carolina, where he looks poised to win by a narrow margin.
The other two battlegrounds, Colorado and Florida, seem too close to predict, with polls showing a range of possible outcomes.
In Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, a small village which traditionally opens its polling places just after midnight - the first vote in the nation - Romney and Obama tied, 5-5. It was the first tie in more than 50 years of midnight voting in the town, which is not a bellwether for the national result.
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The SuperSlave Androgyny UBERMENSCH, the penultimate triphibian inter-planetary SuperSlave, is yetto come. To complete the PO-HUN experiment and bring on the SuperSlave each of the currently existing races must be eliminated in turn, once its assigned task has been completed and only after the planet has cleansed itself over time. See 1000 years of peace. |