French radio boss "took arms cash to hide debts"

A French radio boss told a court on Monday he took money from an arms dealer in exchange for contacts to hide his gambling debts from his girlfriend at the time, the actress Charlotte Rampling.

The revelation was the latest colourful detail to emerge from the "Angolagate" trial, in which 42 people are on trial for selling weapons to Angola in defiance of a U.N. arms embargo, or for using their influence to facilitate the sales.

The accused include the son of former President Francois Mitterrand, a former interior minister and a bestselling thriller writer. The case has caused diplomatic tension between France and Angola, which would prefer the details of arms deals made in the 1990s during its civil war, to remain secret.

Jean-Noel Tassez, a journalist and former boss of the radio station RMC, is among those suspected of taking cash from Pierre Falcone, the arms dealer at the heart of the Angolagate affair.

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US to fund Afghan militias

The Wall Street Journal reports the United States is planning to start funding local Afghan militias to fight the Taliban in remote parts of Afghanistan. The first US-funded militias will be established in Wardak Province in eastern Afghanistan. The plan is based on a similar model used in Iraq. If the effort in Wardak is successful, US commanders hope to create more militias in other parts of Afghanistan in early 2009. The militia push is controversial. Afghan President Hamid Karzai vetoed an earlier American proposal to create local militias, because he feared they might one day fall under the sway of regional warlords. Canadian Defense Minister Peter MacKay has publicly opposed the initiative saying it would be counterproductive.

~ Democracy Now! ~

'History is stranger than fiction. Stranger than poetry, too.'

From: A naked Dr. Kissinger?

Consider a weird historical nugget unearthed during a search of transcripts of telephone conversations between former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and a host of dignitaries, journalists and celebrities.

In one of those phone calls, Dr. Kissinger casually chatted with poet Allen Ginsberg about setting up a meeting with anti-Vietnam War activists just before a major anti-war demonstration in Washington.

Allen Ginsberg?

The author of "Howl"? A banned-in-San Francisco poem that famously begins with these words, "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked. ..."

A meeting between Mr. Ginsberg, a founding father of the counterculture, and Dr. Kissinger, the ultimate establishment figure and a Dr. Strangelove-type villain to the 1960s antiwar movement, seems about as likely as an Oval Office discussion of the war on drugs featuring Richard Nixon and a pharmaceutically wired Elvis Presley.

Wait a minute. Richard Nixon did make Elvis an honorary drug agent.

In any event, Dr. Kissinger and Mr. Ginsberg didn't actually meet to talk about the war. But Henry the K did take the poet's phone call and they did talk about a having a meeting to discuss the war. Mr. Ginsberg suggested the meeting should include North Carolina's very conservative senator, Jesse Helms, and "maybe even (Richard) Nixon."

He also suggested some unusual conditions for this summit on the war. According to the transcript, Mr. Ginsberg said, "It would be even more useful if we could do it naked on television."

The transcript records this response from Dr. Kissinger: (Laughter).

Loaned, sold, gone - and doomed

Undaunted, I went on, "And at $800 an ounce, that 261 million ounces comes to a value of $209 billion! Hahaha! A lousy $209 billion! Hahahaha!"

At this, I stand up and address the other patrons of the bar, saying, "And already something like $8.5 trillion over the next years in new spending/guarantees have been proposed! Not to mention the original $700 billion in TARP scams and schemes already spent, and more hundreds of billions in bailouts of every kind every day!"

Really warming up to it, I bellow, "Hell, the projected federal budget deficit for next year alone is upwards of a trillion dollars, almost five times as much as the total value of all the gold we have as a nation! And this is just the budget deficit! Hahaha! We're freaking doomed!"

I took a long pull of my drink, and taking in the bar with one long baleful look, I ignored the bartender interrupting me with his insistent, "That's $6.50 for the drink, you moron!" but I continued, "And this assumes that all the gold is still there, but the work of GATA.org seems to indicate that up to half of it may actually be gone, as, for one thing, the fraudulent accounting practices of the central banks allow them to loan gold, so as to make a few bucks and manipulate the price of gold down and thus keep it from rising so much that people scream in fear at the inflation that the rise in gold's price is proclaiming, and yet they can still keep it on the books as being 100% owned! Loaned, sold, gone, but still owned! Hahaha!"

I realize, too late, that accounting was not the long suit of the audience, so I say, "The guy to whom you loaned your car turned around and sold your car, kept the money, and you still think that you have the car? Hahahaha!"

Again, there was no response from the crowd as, apparently, fraudulent accounting and outright theft of their cars is not going to get these people riled up. So I try a different tack, and I say, "The inflation that is eating you alive is going to get worse and worse, and the money and credit is already being prepared with the creation of more Federal Reserve Credit, otherwise know as Total Fed Credit, which leapt up a whopping $123.7 billion last week - in one week! - taking it to a record $2.241 trillion! And even this staggering amount can be multiplied by the banks at insane multiples with literally zero reserves!"

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Musical Innerlube: Scott Huckabay

@ Mystic Hot Springs