George Soros wants to Reorganize the Entire Global Economic System

Soros Pushes for New World Order on April 8^th

 http://www.mrc.org/bmi/commentary/2011/Unreported_Soros_Event_Aims_to_Remake_Entire_Global_Economy.html

 

Two years ago, George Soros said he wanted to reorganize the entire global economic system. In two short weeks, he is going to start - and no one seems to have noticed.

 

On April 8, a group he's funded with $50 million is holding a major economic conference and Soros's goal for such an event is to "establish new international rules" and "reform the currency system." It's all according to a plan laid out in a Nov. 4, 2009, Soros op-ed calling for "a grand bargain that rearranges the entire financial order."

 

The event is bringing together "more than 200 academic, business and government policy thought leaders' to repeat the famed 1944 Bretton Woods gathering that helped create the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Soros wants a new 'multilateral system," or an economic system where America isn't so dominant…

 

His 2009 commentary pushed for "a new Bretton Woods conference, like the one that established the post-WWII international financial architecture." And he had already set the wheels in motion…

 

INET is bringing together prominent people like former U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown, former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker and Soros, to produce "a lot of high-quality, breakthrough thinking."… Volcker is chairman of President Obama's Economic Advisory Board…

 

INET isn't subtle about its aims for the conference. Johnson interviewed fellow INET board member Robert Skidelsky about "The Need for a New Bretton Woods" in a recent video. The introductory slide to the video is subtitled: "How currency issues and tension between the US and China are renewing calls for a global financial overhaul."

 

Skidelsky called for a new agreement and said in the video that the conflict between the United States and China was "at the center of any monetary deal that may be struck, that needs to be struck."

 

Soros described in the 2009 op-ed that U.S.-China conflict as "another stark choice between two fundamentally different forms of organization: international capitalism and state capitalism." He concluded that "a new multilateral system based on sounder principles must be invented." As he explained it in 2010, "we need a global sheriff."

 

In the 2000 version of his book "Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism," Soros wrote how the Bretton Woods institutions "failed spectacularly" during the economic crisis of the late 1990s.

 

When he called for a new Bretton Woods in 2009, he wanted it to "reconstitute the International Monetary Fund," and while he's at it, restructure the United Nations, too, boosting China and other countries at our expense.

 

"Reorganizing the world order will need to extend beyond the financial system and involve the United Nations, especially membership of the Security Council,' he wrote. 'That process needs to be initiated by the US, but China and other developing countries ought to participate as equals."

 

Soros emphasized that point, that this needs to be a global solution, making America one among many. "The rising powers must be present at the creation of this new system in order to ensure that they will be active supporters."

 

And that's exactly the kind of event INET is delivering, with the event website emphasizing "today's reconstruction must engage the larger European Union, as well as the emerging economies of Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Asia."

 

China figures prominently, including a senior economist for the World Bank in Beijing, the director of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the chief adviser for the China Banking Regulatory Commission and the Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations.

What Did the Federal Reserve Do With All That Money?

The Federal Reserve Had Two Weeks to Comply with a Supreme Court order to turn over information about what it did with the bailout money.

This is from Bloomberg, who initiated the lawsuit to force this disclosure.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-22/fed-s-court-ordered-transparency-shows-americans-have-a-right-to-know-.html

 

A Supreme Court order that forces unprecedented disclosures from the Federal Reserve ended a two- year legal battle that helped shape the public’s perceptions of the U.S. central bank.

 

The high court yesterday let stand a lower-court ruling compelling the Fed to reveal the names of banks that borrowed money at the so-called discount window during the credit crisis. The records were requested by Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News. In July, Congress passed theDodd-Frank law, which mandated the release of other Fed bailout details.

 

Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke “now must finally understand that this money doesn’t belong to the Federal Reserve, it belongs to the American people and the American people have a right to know how their taxpayer dollars are being put at risk,” said Senator Bernard Sanders, a Vermont Independent who wrote Fed transparency provisions in Dodd-Frank.

 

The financial crisis, which began in August 2007 and peaked after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in September 2008, focused the public’s attention on the Fed and its $3.5 trillion effort to rescue the banking system, said U.S. Representative Ron Paul, who heads the House subcommittee that oversees the central bank.

 

“People wanted to know more about what the Fed was doing,” said Paul, a Texas Republican. “It’s been a significant change and the American people won’t ever be complacent about this.”

 

While Congress required the Fed in December to reveal details of assistance it provided through various emergency programs during the crisis, discount window loans were exempt. The central bank, which was created in 1913, has resisted transparency for the discount window, its oldest lending tool.

 

'Reluctant to Borrow'

 

“The presumption is that the borrowers were to be kept private,” said William Poole, former president of the St. Louis Fed. “Other loans are another matter but banks that borrow at the discount window are often presumed to be in financial trouble. That might create a run on those banks and will make banks in the future reluctant to borrow.”

 

The high court’s order means the Fed will have to reveal an unprecedented level of detail about its discount window lending during the financial crisis -- including borrowers’ names and amounts. Officials are preparing to comply, said David Skidmore, a spokesman for the central bank. He declined to elaborate.

 

Attorneys for the Fed have not yet decided how or precisely when they will provide the information, said Thomas Golden, a partner with Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP who represents Bloomberg LP in the case. Based on discussions with the Fed’s lawyers, Golden said he expects the central bank to comply within the next two weeks, though it’s not yet clear whether officials would post the information publicly on the Fed’s Web site…

 

Paul, who has called for abolishing the central bank, signed up more than 300 co-sponsors for a 2009 bill requiring a Fed audit. The measure passed the House before being dropped by the Senate. It was quite a difference from similar proposals in the 1970s that attracted little attention, he said.

 

“The Bloomberg lawsuit had a lot to do with the cultural change,” Paul said. “Bloomberg has credibility that politicians don’t have.”…

 

The Fed declined to appeal the case to the Supreme Court; the Clearing House Association LLC, a group of the largest U.S. commercial banks, asked the high court to intervene.

 

Under the trial judge’s order, which the Supreme Court refused to reconsider, the Fed must reveal 231 pages of documents related to discount window borrowers in April and May 2008, along with loan amounts. After Bloomberg filed suit, News Corp. (NWSA)’s Fox News Network LLC requested similar records over a longer period of time and also filed suit. It stands to receive 6,186 pages of documents on loans made from August 2007 to November 2008.

 

The Fed must be forced to divulge such information, said Mark Williams, executive-in-residence at the Boston University School of Management and a former Fed bank examiner.

 

“The Fed has to be held to higher accountability,” Williams said. “It takes lawsuits like this to do that.”

The Federal Reserve released the data on or around April Fool's Day. 

After its release, the news was again very quiet -- but here is what we did see from Bloomberg:

Foreign Banks Took Most of Fed Money

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-01/foreign-banks-tapped-fed-s-lifeline-most-as-bernanke-kept-borrowers-secret.html

 

The biggest borrowers from the 97-year-old discount window as the program reached its crisis-era peak were foreign banks, accounting for at least 70 percent of the $110.7 billion borrowed during the week in October 2008 when use of the program surged to a record. The disclosures may stoke a reexamination of the risks posed to U.S. taxpayers by the central bank’s role in global financial markets.

 

“The caricature of the Fed is that it was shoveling money to big New York banks and a bunch of foreigners, and that is not conducive to its long-run reputation,” said Vincent Reinhart, the Fed’s director of monetary affairs from 2001 to 2007.

 

Commercial Paper

 

Separate data disclosed in December on temporary emergency- lending programs set up by the Fed also showed big foreign banks as borrowers. Six European banks were among the top 11 companies that sold the most debt overall -- a combined $274.1 billion -- to the Commercial Paper Funding Facility.

 

Those programs also loaned hundreds of billions of dollars to the biggest U.S. banks, including JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), Bank of America Corp. (BAC), Citigroup Inc. and Morgan Stanley. (MS) …

 

“The American people are going to be outraged when they understand what has been going on,” U.S. Representative Ron Paul, a Texas Republican who is chairman of the House subcommittee that oversees the Fed, said in a Bloomberg Television interview.

 

“What in the world are we doing thinking we can pass out tens of billions of dollars to banks that are overseas?” said Paul, who has advocated abolishing the Fed. “We have problems here at home with people not being able to pay their mortgages, and they’re losing their homes.”

Ron Paul is one of the few who are doing anything about this.

 Rep. Paul Planning Hearing on Fed Foreign Lending in May

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/02/usa-fed-paul-idUSN0214517620110402?feedType=RSS&feedName=rbssFinancialServicesAndRealEstateNews&rpc=22&sp=true

 

(Reuters) - Persistent Federal Reserve critic Representative Ron Paul plans to hold a hearing on the U.S. central bank's emergency loans to the branches of non-U.S. banks, his spokeswoman said on Saturday.

 

"I was surprised and deeply disturbed ... to learn the staggering amount of money that went to foreign banks," Paul said in a statement.

 

"These lending activities provided no benefit to American taxpayers, the American economy, or even directly to American banks," he said.

 

Paul spokeswoman Rachel Mills said the Republican lawmaker, who advocates abolishing the Fed and returning to a currency backed by gold or silver, is planning a hearing on the discount windowlending in May. Details are still being worked out, she told Reuters.

 

Data the Fed was required by courts to disclose on Thursday showed the U.S. branches of foreign-headquartered financial firms had made extensive use of the central bank's emergency lending discount window during the severe financial crisis that froze financial markets in the fall of 2008.

 

During that period, the Fed actively encouraged financial firms to obtain funding from an array of unusual emergency funding vehicles to prevent markets from freezing up entirely.

 

While making emergency loans is at the discretion of the individual regional Fed banks, the discount window is open to any firms in sound condition able to post good collateral.

Seymour was my Friend

Seymour was my friend. 

I met him when I was 12 years old. He was given to my father by his police colleagues in 1968 as a joke. You see, my Dad was leaving his job as a detective on the Chicago Police Department to become a farmer in Wisconsin. So they gave him a white bull calf as a going-away present. I named him Seymour, and he was given to me. I rode up in the back of the van with Seymour from Chicago to Junction City, Wisconsin.

My memories of Seymour are a bit hazy now – over forty years have passed since those days. Everyday I would feed Seymour, at first out of a bucket with a teat at the bottom. I think we borrowed one from our neighbors. They were real farmers, with a huge dairy farm with dozens and dozens of milk cows, in addition to many head of beef cattle. Plus horses, chickens, ducks, and pigs as well, I believe. They had sold the farm where we were living to my parents – it had been the homestead of the parents of the husband. In those early days, we got lots of advice from these neighbors on anything to do with farming and animals. 

My brother Robert and I used to go over to help our friend Joe with his “chores.” It was a unique experience for us to feed the cows, clean the barn walks, shovel manure, bail hay – it was all new and fun. Joe must of thought that his ship had come in, as he had these two helpers that he didn't have to pay. We used to work over at their farm, and then sit down to a noon meal with them – everyone at the table for a big feed – there used to be about 12 people altogether.

So, every morning and every night I would go out to the barn and feed Seymour. We usually fed him mostly ground corn. He grew quite fast. And he was like my pet. He would come when I called him. He would jump up on my back and I would walk around hanging on to his front legs. It looked really funny. It is natural for bovines, both male and female, to jump up on each other. He wasn't that heavy on my back – either that or I had gradually gotten used to his weight over time.

When Seymour was about a year old, the eldest son of our neighbor, Lawrence, told my Mom and Dad that we needed to castrate Seymour. He said that if we didn't, then he would grow dangerous. He told them it was almost too late already, that he should have been castrated much earlier. He offered to do it, and my parents accepted. I was there when it happened.

Seymour at this stage was quite big – probably over 700 lbs. Lawrence asked me to pull his tail up over his back and tug on it hard – apparently this diminished the pain. Lawrence had these pincers – I believe they are called an “emasculatome” - and he positioned the jaws on the scrotum just above Seymour's testicles, which were quite big already, about the size of goose eggs. The device works by breaking the tubes that go down to the testicles, without breaking the skin. It must hurt a terrible amount. I believe Seymour bellowed when Lawrence closed the device. Afterwords, Seymour dropped his head about an inch from the ground, and stayed that way for quite a long time. He must have been in such pain and shock. I felt so bad for him.

Seymour recovered, and after a few days, he was pretty much back to normal. He would still jump up on my back, and I used to show this trick to my friends.

When Seymour was bit over 2 years old, I think the neighbors started talking to my parents that it was time to butcher him. Now, there really was no need to do this. We did not need the meat. And Seymour was like a big dog – he was my pet. There should not have been an issue – it would not have been a problem to just let him grow huge, like an ox, and let him live out his days like that. But my parents were still trying to look like farmers, I guess, and they didn't want to do anything to make themselves stand out or look stupid. So they allowed themselves to be convinced by the neighbors, and they called the local butcher to come and get Seymour. I can't remember the day that they came to get him – I might have been at school.

The next time I saw Seymour, he was wrapped up in white butcher paper in 2 lbs packages. 

My Mom thought that his meat would have been really tender as we had almost exclusively fed him on ground corn. However, she mentioned that she thought the butcher had kept the meat from Seymour and had given us some other meat that wasn't as high a grade.

I never thought that it was necessary to kill Seymour. 

It would have been great to have had a huge ox on the farm – we could have taught him to pull stumps or even plow. It would have been so cool to have had Seymour around for as long as possible – apparently oxen can live up to 20 years. But it seems that my parents were influenced by the neighbors and, despite my connection with Seymour, they decided it was more important to fit in with what was expected. So Seymour, my pet, was butchered.

Fred was a Son of a Bitch

Fred was a son-of-a-bitch.

Fred was self-centered, thoughtless and cruel.  He was single-minded as well.  And he was impossible to catch.

Fred was a big 2 year old Leghorn rooster that ruled the roost around our farm in the countryside in central Wisconsin in 1972.  Of course, there weren't many other chickens around at the time Fred was there.

I don't know when we bought Fred - he may have been the survivor of a science project, or he may have just been a survivor of a group of chicks, the rest of whom had succumbed to the unwanted attentions of our cats or dogs.

Anyway, however he got there, Fred was a survivor. Until that fateful day . . .

I believe it was in late May or early June 1972.  I was just about to turn 16.  Our family had moved from the Chicago suburbs up to an old farmstead in Junction City, Wisconsin in the summer of 1968.  My Dad had retired from being a detective on the Chicago Police Department and my mother had retired from being a teacher with the Chicago Board of Education.  We were making an attempt to be farmers, but we were only playing at it.  We had pigs and we had brought up a bull calf from Chicago - a joke gift from my Dad's former colleagues.  We had dogs and cats as well.  And we had Fred.

If you don't know anything about roosters, it may come as a revelation to find out that they can attack you and knock you down.  The way they do it is that they run at you from behind when you can't see them and then they fly up and hit you in the back of the knees, causing them to buckle and down you go.  Now, normally a rooster won't go after a full-grown adult, although there are stories.  However, Fred was choosy - he liked to knock down my little brother, James.

Fred had knocked down James, around 2 years old, at least once before.  What he would do is fly up and hit James in the back of the legs - Fred was about 14 pounds, a BIG rooster - and knock James down.  Then Fred would jump on James's chest and start pecking at this face.  You can see the problem, right?  We had caught Fred doing this before, and we could never catch him, although we would whip stones at him as he ran away.

Have you ever seen a rooster run?  It is a funny sight indeed.  If you can remember the movie "Papillon" with Steve McQueen, when he escapes into the jungle with another prisoner, and they take coca leaves and chew them for energy, and they start doing that funny running style with their hands straight down by their sides, head forward, making big strides - that is how roosters run.  Head forward, big strides, dodging and weaving.

Well, that day I came charging around the corner of the our big two-story brick house because I could hear James screaming. And there he was - Fred, that son-of-a-bitch, standing on poor James's chest, pecking away at his face, with little bloody marks here and there.  Luckily he hadn't gotten to his eyes.

I yelled, "Fred you dirty son-of-a-bitch" and he took off running.

Now, we used to try to catch Fred, but it was nigh approaching impossible.

So Fred was speeding away, starting to go around the house.  He was about 25 yards away, moving like the devil was after him. I grabbed a stone - not a rock, a stone - and whipped it at him.

Well, it was a "lucky" shot - one of those that you would never be able to replicate in a thousand years.  I caught that rooster just behind the head, and broke his neck.  All of a sudden he starts flapping his wings and flopping around, dragging his head down on the ground.

Fred was a goner.

I had never killed an animal before. I was shocked. I couldn't believe what was happening.  I mean, I didn't want to really hurt Fred - I just wanted to punish him for hurting my brother, and perhaps teach him not to do it again.  But, now we had a dying chicken.

After Fred had stopped moving, discussions took place and explanations were made.  We decided we were going to eat him - I mean, what else are you going to do with a dead chicken, bury him?

I got the hatchet and started chopping off his head.  Now, that was a big step - I had never chopped off a chicken's head, not even off a dead one, and it took me a few whacks before off it came.  I then had to pluck him.  Again, never had done it, so another new experience.  I think my Mom did the rest.

I believe Fred became "chicken cacciatore" and he was a bit of a tough old bird . . .

. . . in addition to having been a right son-of-a-bitch.

Self-Censorship in the National Security State

Do you “self-censor?”

It is always good to define your terms at the start of a discussion – as Samuel Johnson observed – it saves argument.  So, self-censoring is defined here as “limiting what one might otherwise freely say either out of respect for other people’s feelings or out of fear of repercussions.”

According to Glenn Greenwald, a climate of intimidation and fear has been created in the USA that is inhibiting Americans from exercising their rights. Not only Americans are self-censoring and relinquishing their rights, but Europeans as well – fearing that their governments might at some point in the future extradite them at US request if the US accuses them of harming US security.

Most of us self-censor everyday.  When someone asks, “How do I look?,” most of us will choose to self-censor and respond with a  “You look great!” and the person who asked the question beams and smiles.  Some won’t  be so kind - “You look terrible!” and the person who asked the question becomes offended and your reputation for being a nice person is forever damaged.  Most of us learn how to play this game at an early stage as part of our social conditioning.

The issue of self-censorship becomes a major problem for a free society when it affects the exercise of people's constitutionally-protected freedoms. 

In the USA, the First Amendment to the Constitution provides that:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” 

In the USA, the Constitution guarantees citizens the right to freedom of speech.  If we have this freedom, then why would people self-censor?

There are several examples that one can point to today as examples of where many people self-censor. Here is a very short list:

• Questioning the official 9/11 story
• Questioning what happened to the $2.3 Trillion missing from the Pentagon budget, announced by Rumsfeld on 9/10, the day before 9/11
• Questioning why nothing happened regarding the thousands of instances of illegal surveillance of US citizens, each instance a felony, by the Bush administration
• Questioning the whole “Al Qaeda” story which underlies the main excuse for the “war on terror” and the ever-increasing erosion of freedom in the USA
• Questioning the origins and legitimacy of the Federal Income Tax
• Questioning the origins and legitimacy of the Federal Reserve System
• Questioning why video evidence of Hillary Clinton’s admitting campaign fraud was never produced during the campaign fraud investigation of Hillary Clinton
• Questioning the reasons for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
• Questioning how and why the Patriot Act (all 352 pages of it, voted on mostly without being read, which eliminated many freedoms and brought on a regime of societal surveillance never before seen in US history) was all ready to go right after the events of 9/11
• Avoiding expressing support for Wiki Leaks out of fear of official reprisals

People avoid expressing themselves on these and other issues mainly because of fear of ridicule. 

However, sometimes people actually fear that if they openly express themselves on these and other issues, they will show up on a government list and be subjected to some kind of oppression (apparently the case with some supporters of Wiki Leaks, if Greenwald is to be believed).  So, out of fear, they stay quiet. They do not express themselves.  They do not speak out. They remain a quiet member of the herd. And, whether you consider this a paradox or not, these people who have relinquished their right to speak their minds then become willing persecutors of those who choose instead to speak out fearlessly.

The national security state's strategy is to escalate the level of intimidation and deterrent to scare people into silence.

Greenwald claims that Obama is now heading a war against whistleblowers.  The Justice Department is obsessed with prosecuting Wiki Leaks.  Look at what they are doing with Bernard Manning.  The climate of fear begun during the Bush years continues.

Some Americans really believe that the wars in which they are currently involved are being undertaken to "bring freedom and democracy" to other countries.  Without addressing the legitmacy of that premise, wouldn't it make sense to observe what is happening at home?

"Oranges and Sunshine" - Forced Child Migration in Britain

As someone once said, some of the most heinous crimes in history have been done for the best of intentions.


The forced child migration program is one of these crimes.


In a program that ran until 1970, individuals within the British Government were responsible for sending 130,000 poor children to Commonwealth countries, mostly to Australia. Allegedly children as young as 4 years old were told that their parents were dead, and they were then subjected to forced migration to children's homes on the other side of the world.  They were told a fairy story - that they would get oranges and sunshine. Most got instead hard labor, life in institutions, and many suffered physical, mental and sexual abuse.  And the parents whose children they were - what were they told?  Apparently, many weren't told what happened to their children.  Some were told that their children had died.

Margaret Humphreys, a social worker from Nottingham, uncovered the story in 1986, when a woman told her that she had been taken from a children's home in Nottingham and sent to Australia by boat when she was 4 years old.  Ms Humphreys began investigating this story.  She then decided to dedicate her time to uniting the families that had been separated. 

What happens when one makes such a discovery?

Unsurprisingly, she ran into denial - from everyone.  No one wanted to believe that their government could have done something like this.  Sound familiar?

Like many whistle-blowers, Ms Humphreys ran into intimidation and her life began to be turned upside down.  However, as she said, once one finds out something like this, one cannot turn one's back on it.  Therefore she soldiered on as she and her co-workers worked to reunite hundreds of families.


Ms Humphreys wrote a book about her work, called "Empty Cradles."  Jim Loach, a film maker and son of the famous film maker Ken Loach, read the book, interviewed Ms Humphreys, and decided that this story must be made into a film. He was able to convince Ms Humphreys, and "Oranges and Sunshine" is the result.  While it was being filmed, Prime Minister Rudd of Australia gave a moving apology on behalf of Australia to the victims in November 2009. This allegedly compelled British Prime Minister Gordon Brown into making a detailed public apology in February 2010 for what the British Government had done to those children and their families. The victims of this abuse finally had their circumstances officially acknowledged.

As Arthur Schopenhauer, the great German philosopher, stated: 


"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."

It appears that this process happened in this case.


Still trust your government to tell you the truth about what it is doing on your behalf?

Are You an Ugly American?

Are you an Ugly American? 

Ugly American is a term which refers to worldwide perceptions of arrogant, demeaning, unthoughtful behavior of Americans abroad. The term comes from the title of a 1958 book by authors William Lederer and Eugene Burdick, The Ugly American.

I recently read on Facebook where someone was obviously frustrated by the debacle in which the US is currently involved – Libya. He wrote:

Rep. West [referring to some Congressman that was speaking] said that the missiles we shot off in Libya the other day [some time in mid March 2011] cost $567,000 each. They fired 1,200 of these. That means it cost us $680,400,000 for that little display of power. F**k that. I say we drop 1 bomb, an atomic one, right in the center of every one of these middle Eastern Hellholes and call it a day.

Now, I understand the frustration. He was reacting to the terrible, horrendous waste that the illegal Libyan war represents - that one instance apparently cost the American taxpayer $680 million (not to mention the cost of others of our wars – Iraq [officially $751Bn as of September 2010] and Afghanistan – [officially $336 Bn as of September 2010] see Congressional Research Service http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL33110.pdf ).

However, what I cannot understand is the willfully blind insensitivity that such a statement reflects.

This is not some video game. 

These people are really having their houses destroyed. 

These people are really having their children killed. 

These people are really suffering. 

These people are really dying. 

How about a little empathy? How about a little “putting-yourself-in-their-place” for a bit?

Almost 100% of these people are just like you or me – they have families, they have jobs, they have homes, they have their hopes and dreams. They want their children to grow up strong and healthy and to do well. They have friends and fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters. Sure, they may live in a different culture and they may believe in a different religion. But who cares about that? Leave them alone and let them live their lives. If their government needs changing, let them do what they can to change it if they think it is worth the cost to do so.

The US has no business in Libya, and what is going on there amounts to war crimes.  

What are these scoundrels doing in our names?

Do some people justify this conflict because they say that the US needs oil?

If we need oil, we can buy it. No matter what it costs, it would still be a hell of a lot cheaper for everyone concerned than what it is costing us – both financially, materially, and in prestige – to carry on this unjustifiable and illegal war.

There is so much more going on in Libya that the Western media – the corporate-controlled propaganda mill – refuses to report. What about the 50,000 African mercenaries that the Israeli Mossad sent in to protect Ghaddafi's regime against the rebels? Is this true? Apparently it is open season on anyone in Libya who is black, and is thus suspected of being a mercenary. Is this true? If it is, why haven't we heard about it? I'll give you two guesses.

One thing for certain – truth is the first casualty of war. 

You can be sure that we are not being told the truth about what is going on. I think that what we are being told is calculated to have the precise effect that my friend experienced: frustration, anger and a descent into extremism.

As for the rest of us, let's remember that people are people, just like you or me. And we all deserve to be left alone to live our lives the way we choose. 

That's what we believe in America, isn't it?

Let's not be ugly Americans.