Inside Story - The fate of the Roma in Europe

Deciding the fate of the Roma population in Europe EU immigration ministers meet in Paris on Monday. Ministers from the European countries where the 'problem' originates were not invited, but can they be ignored? After the French crackdown on the Roma, is the EU facing deep divisions? Is it even legal for EU countries to expel other EU citizens?

Nazi Gold and the U-Boat Sunk off Cape Cod

Edward Michaud discovers German Type XIB U-Boat off Cape Cod - Project CA35 (1998)

Apologies for the somewhat sloppy interview technique here but I think you'll agree the historic content makes it all worthwhile.

Nazis fleeing Germany in 1944 used this unique submarine with a massive cargo hold (to carry gold?) in an attempt to secretly escape to the United States and thence to Argentina. They never made it past Cape Cod where the sub was sunk with depth charges dropped by a US Navy blimp. The sub was jamming radio frequencies which was unfortunate, if the blimp's radio had been working it would have almost cretainly been told NOT to sink the sub.
Recorded by Tony Gosling in Framingham Mass. December 1998. See also http://www.combatsim.com/htm/feb99/typexi-2.htm

Very little is known about the Type XI-B U-Boat. All official histories state that the vessel type was never built and numerous publications indicate that the Type XI-B submarine design went only as far as a preliminary 'keel laying' at the building yards of Deschimag - A.G. Weser in Bremen, Germany. However, there is a subtle hint that at least one vessel of this type was indeed launched from the Deschimag yards.

Contained within the records of the Military archive at Freiburgim-Breisgau, Germany is a brief mention of the "actual" yard trials in the Weser River of the Type XI U-Cruiser having attained a surface speed of 26 knots. This is supported to some degree by Eberhard Roessler's impressive publication "The U-Boat", in which this trial record is partly quoted. Amplified reports obtained from interviewed veterans of both the Allied and Axis intelligence services indicate very strongly that at some point during its existence, most probably in early 1944, the Type XI was berthed at the supposedly neutral ports of Vigo, Spain and Lisbon, Portugal on the Iberian Peninsula.

These same sources have stated that the unofficial reference to the Type XI was "Die Schwarz Ritter", ("The Black Knight"). There is no "official" documentation of this but the sources seem reliable. Of primary importance in connection with this area are the German series of Special Operations known as "JOLLE", (translated as "Happy Boat") and "AKTION FEUERLAND", (meaning "Action Land-of-Fire", referring to the southern geographical area of Argentina). These two operations were intended to pave the way for German post-war survival. Noted Nazi leaders and war criminals were in the process of laying the financial foundation for a "Fourth Reich" within the borders of such countries as Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay and, most importantly for reasons of easy access, Argentina.

CONTROLLED PANIC

As previously outlined within the 'Overview', the German Opposition groups associated with German Industrial concerns were increasingly bold in their contacts with the west, and possessed all the right connections to persue negotiations for an acceptable armistice. The sole motive for the German Industrialists was to maintain their corporate identity AND their financial assets for the post-war period. There were also many American Industrial concerns who wished to see this as well since a large percentage of ownership in these German companies were held by large American corporations - a blatant violation of the 'Trading With The Enemy Act'. Research documents show that by June of 1944 there were eight separate meetings between German Industrialists and agents of the Office of Strategic Services, including Allen W. Dulles, the OSS Chief of Station head quartered in the neutral city of Berne, Switzerland. Allen and his brother, John Foster Dulles, were heavily involved in pre-war dealings between American and German Corporations through their law firm of 'Sullivan & Cromwell' in New York City. Official documentation points attests that these men were motivated by personal reasons to help in creating an acceptable form of armistice which would benefit the German Industrialists directly. This also involved the safe guarding of certain negotiable German securities. Both John Foster and Allen Dulles actively assisted in the process - regardless of its direct violation of accepted U.S. Treasury and Presidential administration policy.

While all of these manipulations were going on within the Allied camp, Germany was desperately trying to protect what she had left of her industrial and monetary systems. It is well documented that major German corporations began making plans for the safeguarding of its resources in supposedly "neutral" countries while continuing to pursue diplomatic agendas. There has been some very interesting revelations in the Project's follow-up of research data. Due to the efforts of contributing researcher Mr. Eric Brothers, U.S. State Department Protocol documents are now available to confirm one of this investigation's long-standing curiosities - the visit of members of the Dutch Royal Family to Chatham, Cape Cod during the exact time-frame in which the German Type XI-B U-Boat was known to have been operational off Cape Cod. Some of these facts include: The Royal Consort, Prince Bernhardt, Husband of Juliana since 1937, was previous to their marriage an active card-carrying member of Hitler's black-shirted SS. Prince Consort Bernhardt was employed prior to, during, and after the war by I.G.Farben's Industrial Espionage Unit "NW-7" which, needless to say, placed him under great suspicions by both the British and American intelligence communities. The mere fact of his employment as an "industrial spy" for Farben places him squarely within the sphere of the German Industrial community, links for which have already been established with the Type XI-B U-Boat. (Click HERE to view a related document). Suffice it to say that there is the very strong possibility that Prince Consort Bernhardt, through his wife Princess Juliana, may very well have been acting as a sort of liaison or facilitator in connections for Armistice Negotiations between German Industrialists and certain members of the American Department of State and Intelligence Community. The final proof for this is as yet not confirmed, but the stage is certainly set for such endeavors.

Perhaps the amplified documentation for such a situation is contained within the hull of the Type XI off Cape Cod. In response to a recent email enquiry, the President of Trident Research commented: We have a great deal of data and site observations. The vessel on the ocean floor is "Werke Nr. 977 - Deschimag", as noted on a copper label on the bronze expansion ring at main conning tower hatch. This is the builder's yard number for the Type XI-B, which would have been the U-112 - had it been commissioned into the Kriegsmarine, which it was not of course. Instead, the vessel was handed over to the Abwehr Bremen sub-branch and eventually operated out of both Vigo, Sp. and Lisbon, Portugal until ultimately being transferred to Gdynia just prior to her last voyage.

Indeed, there are many details we have not released publicly. However, all of our site operations and discoveries are recorded in minute detail with the Federal Court in Boston, (Civil Action No. 95-11374RCL). These records are public record, although we do not go out of our way to broadcast this as we have already had site problems with security. Even now, the Navy has positioned 4 sono-buoys around the wreck, without our consent, which is playing havoc with our magnetic surveys and side-scan sonar! As you probably know, we have had a great deal of diplomatic problems with both the State Dept. and Navy Depts. - not surprising considering the content of the vessel, (which I cannot talk about at this time unfortunately).

Busted: Stories of the Financial Crisis

For all the fame surrounding Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand and Alan Greenspan, their contributions to a political economy of modern capitalism are minor in relation to those of Friedrich von Hayek, a founder of the Mont Pelerin Society and prophet of the "price signal." A striking and original intellect, Hayek argued that something's market price is not simply what it would cost you but a kind of information used to allocate goods and services most efficiently within the social matrix. Because centrally planned economies lack a mechanism to price commodities correctly, they are unable to put things where they need to go. Individuals wouldn't get what they desired; the larger economy would be unable to balance production and consumption, supply and demand. Shortages would appear cheek by jowl with surpluses. This would have disastrous and eventually fatal consequences, not only for the market but for the lives of its subjects.

The free market, contrarily, able to revalue every object with supple velocity according not to some ideological program but the aggregate will of the people—not just the invisible hand but the invisible spirit, as it were—was more suited not simply to survival but to individual freedom. Hayek's case, best known from The Road to Serfdom (1944), remains the most rigorously persuasive brief for twentieth-century capitalism in its long, acrimonious and cordite-scented war against every other form of life. At the time, the 1989 collapse of the Soviet bloc, and the discrediting of its economic hypotheses, seemed to confer on Hayek's insight the aura of truth.

And yet, having triumphed more or less absolutely, the American model of capitalism has proved itself to be catastrophically lacking in the very balance that Hayek suggested was its singular virtue. The boom-bubble-bust cycle grows ever swifter and more calamitous. The latest crisis bests Black Monday of 1987, the Asian contagion that threatened the globe in 1997–98 and the bonfire of capital that was the tech collapse. It is already well remarked as the worst in eight decades. Each day (and especially each employment report) affirms that it is not at all over; that hopes for a swift recovery are somewhere between optimistic and delusional; and that it may yet surpass the Great Depression, possibly bringing to an end the century-long global domination of the United States.

In the big picture, this imperial denouement is the money shot; we have not yet reached that climax. Nonetheless, it is to be expected that reams of paper and no small amount of server space have already been devoted to parsing the events and partial outcomes. These accounts arrive from several professional strata: journalists, historians, economists, policy wonks, even philosophers (see, for example, Slavoj Zizek's cheerfully messy and ineluctably provocative pocket book First as Tragedy, Then as Farce).

Exemplary among the journalistic is John Lanchester's awkwardly titled I.O.U.: Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay.

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David Kelly: the rise of a conspiracy theory

If the results of opinion polls are to be trusted, the proportion of people in the United Kingdom who believe that the biological warfare expert David Kelly committed suicide declined significantly between February 2007 and August 2010.

Dr Kelly was 59 when he was found dead in woods near his Oxfordshire home in July 2003. Three days earlier he had been questioned by MPs at a hearing of the Foreign Affairs select committee, after he was revealed as the source behind a BBC report claiming that the government had 'sexed up' its dossier on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. When his body was found many believed that he driven to suicide by the manner in which his name had been leaked to the press and by the pressure he had subsequently been put under. Others, however, believed he had been murdered by government agents or by persons unknown.

One of the reasons the Hutton Inquiry was set up in 2003 was to settle this question once and for all. Indeed the government ruled that the inquiry would actually take the place of full inquest. If government's purpose was to put a stop to conspiracy theories, however, it failed.

In February 2007, when BBC2 broadcast a programme about Dr Kelly in their series The Conspiracy Files, the programme commissioned an opinion poll to establish how the public viewed his death. Even at this stage only 40% of those questioned believed that he had killed himself. When, in August 2010, the Daily Mail commissioned a similar poll the percentage who believed Kelly committed suicide has fallen from 40% to 20%. On Monday 16 August the Mail carried a banner headline on its front page in which this finding was loudly proclaimed: ' Dr Kelly: Just one in five believes it was suicide as medical report calls official verdict “impossible”.'

Dark actors

The apparent decline in the numbers of those who accept the official verdict on Dr Kelly's death should not be surprising. This is because, over the past seven years, propagating the belief that Dr Kelly was murdered, or might have been murdered, has become for some people the equivalent of a religious crusade. The Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker held this belief so fervently that he that he resigned from his post of shadow environment secretary in order to research a book. This was serialised in the Daily Mail in October 2007 under the headline 'Why I know weapons expert Dr David Kelly was murdered, by the MP who spent a year investigating his death.'

Rowena Thursby, a former publishing executive and lucid internet campaigner, has also suggested that 'dark actors' were involved in Dr Kelly's death and that this 'may have been murder made to look like suicide'. For a number of years now, as the leading figure in something she calls 'The Kelly Investigation Group', she appears to have dedicated her life to persuading others that a full inquest into Dr Kelly's death should be held. She helped to co-ordinate a group of six doctors who put their names to letters which have been published prominently in reputable newspapers (including the Guardian). These letters, signed by physicians who may not themselves be conspiracy theorists, but whose views have fed the folly of those who are, have persuaded many to doubt the conclusion of the Hutton inquiry that Dr Kelly committed suicide.

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Iris Scanners Create the Most Secure City in the World. Welcome, Big Brother

We've all seen and obsessively referenced Minority Report, Steven Spielberg's adaptation of Philip K. Dick's dystopian future, where the public is tracked everywhere they go, from shopping malls to work to mass transit to the privacy of their own homes. The technology is here. I've seen it myself. It's seen me, too, and scanned my irises.

Biometrics R&D firm Global Rainmakers Inc. (GRI) announced today that it is rolling out its iris scanning technology to create what it calls "the most secure city in the world." In a partnership with Leon -- one of the largest cities in Mexico, with a population of more than a million -- GRI will fill the city with eye-scanners. That will help law enforcement revolutionize the way we live -- not to mention marketers.

"In the future, whether it's entering your home, opening your car, entering your workspace, getting a pharmacy prescription refilled, or having your medical records pulled up, everything will come off that unique key that is your iris," says Jeff Carter, CDO of Global Rainmakers. Before coming to GRI, Carter headed a think tank partnership between Bank of America, Harvard, and MIT. "Every person, place, and thing on this planet will be connected [to the iris system] within the next 10 years," he says.

Leon is the first step. To implement the system, the city is creating a database of irises. Criminals will automatically be enrolled, their irises scanned once convicted. Law-abiding citizens will have the option to opt-in.

When these residents catch a train or bus, or take out money from an ATM, they will scan their irises, rather than swiping a metro or bank card. Police officers will monitor these scans and track the movements of watch-listed individuals. "Fraud, which is a $50 billion problem, will be completely eradicated," says Carter. Not even the "dead eyeballs" seen in Minority Report could trick the system, he says. "If you've been convicted of a crime, in essence, this will act as a digital scarlet letter. If you're a known shoplifter, for example, you won't be able to go into a store without being flagged. For others, boarding a plane will be impossible."

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'They use gorillas'...

From What Is The Cure For Fundamentalism? by Shah N. Khan:

Since they don't have missiles, artillery brigades, tanks and air force, they use gorillas and suicide bombers. William Blum in his book defines a Terrorist as: "A person who has the bomb but does not have the air force."

The secret to working in Tampa? Get clearance

Howard Altman reports for The Tampa Tribune:

The ads for these Tampa-based jobs read like source material for a Robert Ludlum spy novel.

"Are you looking for a rewarding and challenging career as an Intelligence Analyst with one of the nation's leading Defense Contractors?" the Northrop Grumman Corp. asks.

"The Intelligence Analyst should have experience in (counterterrorism, counterinsurgency), Southwest Asia regional issues, HUMINT, or political/military analyses, and Iraqi or Afghan cultural awareness and political/social environments," reads another, from a company called GTEC.

Calhoun International is looking for someone whose job responsibilities "may include but are not limited to counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, political and military leadership and decision-making of threat areas; nuclear strategy and regional ambitions of target countries; military capabilities, strategy, doctrine and operational concepts."

Every day, the military relies on contractors from the private sector to do everything from translating Urdu, Farsi and Pashto to installing computer networks and gathering intelligence in the field.

Because of the nature of the jobs, applicants usually are required to have at least a secret clearance or the ability to get one. Often - as in the case of the job ads from Northrop Grumman, GTEC and Calhoun International - the applicant is required to have a higher, or top secret, level of clearance.

The need for those with such clearance is particularly acute in Tampa.

With the war in Afghanistan and follow-up operations in Iraq being run by U.S. Central Command, and with special operations forces in play globally under U.S. Special Operations Command - both with their headquarters at MacDill Air Force Base - the Tampa Bay area is one of the nation's leading markets for jobs requiring secret or top secret clearance.

Overall, military contracting is big business. Companies in Tampa were awarded contracts valued at more than $6 billion from 2000 through 2009, according to GovernmentContractsWon.com, a website that tracks contracts using data compiled from the federal government.

Last year alone, the military awarded more than 1,000 contracts worth more than $1.3 billion to companies doing business in Tampa, according to the website.

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