House Financial Services Committee approved Ron Paul “Audit the Fed” * House Attacks Fed * Call for Geithner to Quit *

Critical Vote on Audit the Fed!

Congressman Paul will offer an amendment in Committee restoring an audit of the Fed’s entire $2 trillion balance sheet, but we have received word that some of the Democrat members may be waffling on their support for his amendment.

For example, Watt’s amendment prevents the GAO from auditing or reviewing decisions to authorize, modify, extend, or terminate loans or liquidity facilities.

Fed balance sheet can be audited, panel says

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) – A key congressional committee approved legislation on Thursday that would allow for government audits of Federal Reserve monetary policy as well as how much the central bank has lent and will lend to specific banks in response to the financial crisis, despite major opposition from the central bank. The measure, introduced by Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, has the support of 309 members of Congress.

House Attacks Fed, Treasury

Panel Votes for Tighter Political Rein on Central Bank; Some Call for Geithner to Quit

WASHINGTON — Political frustration over the rescue of Wall Street and high unemployment erupted in Congress Thursday, with one committee threatening to impose tighter scrutiny on the Federal Reserve and another excoriating Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

The House Financial Services Committee voted, 43-26, to approve a measure sponsored by Texas Republican Ron Paul, vociferously opposed by the Fed, that would direct the congressional Government Accountability Office to expand its audits of the Fed to include decisions about interest rates and lending to individual banks. The Fed says the provision threatens its ability to make monetary policy without political interference.

Treasury chief Geithner faced a House Republican who told him, ‘The public has lost all confidence in your ability to do the job.’ He shot back: ‘What I can’t take responsibility is for the legacy of crises you’ve bequeathed this country.’

The vote was the latest blow to the central bank, which has been become a lightning rod for politicians responding to popular anger that Wall Street was bailed out while the public was not. The Fed faces a stinging backlash from legislators from both parties who argue that has too much power and too little oversight. On Thursday, the Senate Banking Committee began debating legislation that would largely remove the Fed from bank supervision over the objections of both the Fed and the Obama administration.

The Paul-Grayson Amendment
by Ron Paul and Alan Grayson

“It is encouraging to see the issue of Federal Reserve transparency receiving so much attention during this current markup. Today we plan to offer an amendment to the Financial Stability Improvement Act that expands on the many extant proposals to enhance Federal Reserve transparency. Our amendment is based on HR 1207, the Federal Reserve Transparency Act, which has broad bipartisan and grassroots support. The bill is cosponsored by 309 Members of Congress, including all Financial Services Committee Republicans and 13 Financial Services Committee Democrats.

The amendment removes restrictions on GAO audits of the Federal Reserve, as HR 1207 does, but makes a few changes to take into account some of the concerns that the Fed has made known in public testimony.

Unlike proposals that target the Fed’s 13(3) facilities, the Paul/Grayson amendment opens up the entire $2 trillion Federal Reserve balance sheet to a GAO audit.

Mr. bernanke, do THEY have OUR gold? or did THEY sell it to Europeans for $35/oz within years of being CONFISCATED from the American people at $25/oz after THEY bankrupted us in 1933?

Learn more about the corrupt “Federal Reserve System”:
http://americanbuilt.us/videos/federal-reserve-system.shtml

A US “bipartisan think-tank” has urged President Obama to prepare sanctions against Iran and announce publicly that a military strike is likely.

“If biting sanctions do not persuade the Islamic Republic to… give up its enrichment activities, the White House will have to begin serious consideration of the option of a US-led military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities,” said the ‘Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington’.

The report was put together by Charles Robb, a former Democratic senator from Virginia, Daniel Coats, a former Republican senator from Indiana, and retired General Charles Wald, the former deputy commander of US European command.

It is worthy to note that Charles Robb and Daniel Coats, were both well known recipients of financial support from powerful Israeli lobby groups when they served in congress. General Wald has been quite outspoken in acting as a cheerleader for unlimited American support of Israel. He regularly travels to Israel and has also served in the boards of several Zionist “think tanks” and lobby groups in the US.

The group released its assessment as the US, along with other permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany, prepares to participate in preliminary talks with Iran on October 1.

The reports claims that by 2010, Iran will have enough enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon, “leaving little time for the United States to prevent both a nuclear- weapons capable Islamic Republic and an Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear facilities.”

The authors, who support a bill that proposes sanctions against foreign companies that export gasoline to Iran, say the Obama administration should have put together a “sufficient financial, political and military pressure” before agreeing to negotiations.

They say a deadline of 60 days after the start of the negotiations should be set for Iran, adding that the US should adopt tougher sanctions and “prepare overtly for any military option” if it fails to persuade Tehran to bend in the talks.

The proposed preparations include deploying an additional aircraft carrier battle group to Iranian waters and carrying out joint exercises with US allies.

The group claims that in the absence of US military action Tel Aviv is more likely to carry out an attack against Iran, adding that an Israeli strike “entails more risks than a US strike.”

This is while Iran is entitled to continue its uranium enrichment activities based on international regulations as it is conducting the work under the supervision of the UN nuclear watchdog and for peaceful aims.

The ‘think thank’ is proposing the tough measures without considering a recent US spy report update which concluded that Iran has deliberately not taken the critical steps in making a bomb, despite having produced sufficient nuclear fuel for one.

The new information, collected by the Obama administration, once again confirmed the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate by asserting that there was no convincing evidence to prove Iran’s nuclear work had military implications.

Despite the deliberate use of classy, professional sounding terms for the name of the “bipartisan think tank,” it is quite evident that the members of the think tank, although from rival parties, have one basic interest in common and that is their unconditional support for Israel, which itself possesses nuclear warheads without being a signatory to any international atomic regulatory agency.

Press TV

ATLANTA–11Alive has learned Cynthia McKinney has entered Gaza.

A spokesperson for the former Georgia Congresswoman issued a release just after midnight indicating she entered Palestinian territory Wednesday.

11Alive has obtained photos from a Palestinian support website which appear to show her there. Mckinney and the group of activists she is traveling with are reportedly delivering aid.

This would make McKinney’s third attempt to enter Gaza. Twice before she tried entering Gaza by boat and was turned back or detained by Israeli officials. According to the release from a McKinney spokesperson, the group entered by caravan from Egypt.

11Alive’s Brenda Wood spoke exclusively with McKinney last week in Washington after the former Representative was released from Israeli custody.

“Why didn’t you go the accepted route and take the humanitarian aid by land?” Wood asked.

“The aid isn’t getting isn’t getting in,” McKinney said. “And the aid that does get in is certainly disproportionate to the need.”

Stay with 11Alive and 11Alive.com for the latest on this developing story.

By RHONDA COOK, LARRY HARTSTEIN
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sunday, July 05, 2009

Cynthia McKinney’s mom said she’s learned that her daughter is on the way home.

Leola McKinney said a friend who contacted the U.S. Embassy in Israel reported that the former congresswoman was released from Israeli custody and taken to Ben Gurion International Airport.

“We finally got word that she was released,” Leola McKinney said late Sunday afternoon. “We don’t know what time she is supposed to fly out. All we know is that they took her to the airport.

“I would be more relieved when I know she’s on the flight,” Leola McKinney added. “But I am relieved that she’s away from there.”

McKinney had been in custody since Tuesday, when she and 20 others were swept up by the Israeli Navy while allegedly trying to sail through a navy blockade. The group says it was attempting to deliver humanitarian supplies to Gaza.

McKinney and the rest of her group could have been released soon after they were taken into custody but they refused to sign a document admitting they violated Israel’s blockade, according to McKinney’s parents. The group was due to appear in an Israeli court Sunday.

Leola McKinney said she had no information about the court hearing.

Leola McKinney said she had not spoken with her daughter since shortly after she was taken into custody.

Cynthia McKinney and other members of the “Free Gaza Movement ” left Cyprus Tuesday on the Greek-registered ship Arion.

Their ship was stopped when they tried to pass through the Israeli Navy’s security blockade at Ashdod. The group was taken into custody and their ship was seized. Israel officials promised to deliver by ground all of the humanitarian supplies that were on the boat.

Family, friends and supporters say Cynthia McKinney believed she was in international waters and was free to pass.

“The Israelis hijacked us because we wanted to give crayons to the children of Gaza,” Cynthia McKinney said in a recorded statement delivered via telephone and posted on the internet site YouTube [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkPvzSZRuDo].

The office of the Consulate General of Israel in Atlanta said in a statement released Friday, “According to Israeli law Ms. McKinney and her fellow crew members were suggested to sign a form acknowledging their deportation… Since Ms. McKinney has refused to do so, she is expected to appear before an Israeli judge on Sunday, July 5, and afterwards be returned home as soon as possible.”

Civil rights leader the Rev. Joseph Lowery, head of the Atlanta-based Coalition for the People’s Agenda, said he and others have spoken by phone with the Consulate General of Israel.

“Whatever happened, there was no harm done,” Lowery said. “She was not carrying munitions, but medicine. We hope Israel will show compassion and release her and let her go on to deliver the much-needed medicine to the Gaza Strip. … If she were carrying guns, that would be a different thing. [But] she was carrying humanitarian aid.”

Israeli officials blame McKinney and her group for the controversy, saying they were looking for confrontation to attract publicity. The officials note that Palestinian Authority and the rest of the international community had agreed to the off-shore blockade to prevent arms smuggling into Gaza. Gaza is controlled by Hamas, which is classified by the U.S. and European Union as a terrorist organization.

Leola McKinney said the trip would have received no “publicity if they had been allowed to deliver supplies to Gaza. They [Israel] made an issue out of it by taking the boat and escorting them into Israel.”

Billy McKinney, Cynthia McKinney’s father and a former state legislator, said his daughter was only trying to show “the devastation in Gaza… Anybody who has a humanitarian spirit would not want to see those people live in those conditions.”

http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/dekalb/stories/2009/07/05/mckinney_israel.html

An outspoken critic of the US administration claims President Barack Obama had been handpicked by the current Wall Street moguls to safeguard the financial hub.

On Wednesday, author and journalist Webster Tarpley said people like former US national security adviser Zbignew Brzezinski, whom he claimed enjoyed considerable control over Wall Street, and others had chosen Obama among a ‘pliable’ group to step in should the financial watchdog face trouble.

“My finding in terms of Obama’s biography is that he was probably recruited by people like Zbignew Brzezinski or Samuel P. Huntington at Columbia University in 1981-1982, so Obama was groomed over a long period of time,” he said in an interview with Russia Today.

Tarpley, known for accusing military and intelligence apparatuses of orchestrating the September 11, 2001 attacks, said the president had effected ‘dictatorship of finance capital’ visible in his prioritizing financial concerns at a cost of other issues.

“About 13 trillion dollars of Federal Reserve money and US Treasury money have gone to Wall Street,” he claimed.

The alleged financial tsars like “Brzezinski, David Rockefeller and the trilateral commission,” which monitors the cooperation between the United States, Europe and Japan, “groom politicians so that when a crisis arrives, they have a number of politicians ready to go that they can put into action and Obama is one of these.”

Comparing the current authorities to their predecessors, Tarpley called the present administration a more ‘dangerous’ one which worked through ‘deception’ by pitting world nations against each other while keeping Washington uninvolved.

“Obama operates with deception, with trickery, with dissembling, with mass duping of the population.”

Obama’s inaugural committee received the chunkiest contributions from Wall Street which in 2008 survived its worst year since the Great Depression in the 1920s and 30s.

The committee, which refused money from corporations, registered lobbyists, unions or political action committees, welcomed the funds submitted by heavyweight financiers like George Soros, Ronald Perlman and David Shaw.

Codex Alimentarius – A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Codex Alimentarius – Translation: “Food Code” Originally envisioned and designed by what became the most ruthless and inhumane of 20th century Western European regimes, Codex Alimentarius (Codex) was later organized and officiated mainly by members of an emerging pharmaceutical industry spawned by that very same source.

Codex aims are already being closely followed by even the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) who has already sent “cease and desist” letters to vitamin manufacturers for their promotion of mental and physiological benefits of vitamin supplements on their web sites. Nearly 2/3rds of existing available vitamin substances have already been banned by the European Union through the European Food Supplements Directive which was passed into law in 2002 and upheld as law by the European court of Justice in 2005.

Note: These supplements are scheduled to be removed from online sites and store shelves in 2009.

Also of interest is another “environmental” link that ties the various Scaramella-Litvinenko players under the cover of an international environmental network. An SEC EDGAR search revealed a stockholders’ agreement between Harrison-Kroll Environmental Services, Inc. of Louisiana and Palumbo Partners, a Delaware corporation dated December 31, 1992. A Google search also revealed that former Secret Service Presidential Protective Division agent Jim Holt served as Training Director for Ackerman & Palumbo and was “one of the original directors and consultant partners with Palumbo Partners, Inc., Miami.” An office of Harrison-Kroll Environmental Services is listed at 300 S. Grand Avenue, Suite 1300, Los Angeles, CA 90071.

Kroll Associates is an enigmatic “security services” company which has close links to the CIA. Not only is Kroll active in private military contracting in Iraq but it has long been associated with dubious U.S. intelligence activities at home and abroad. According to a knowledgeable source, Jules Kroll, who founded Kroll Associates in 1972, obtained needed funding for his firm from Foothill Capital in the 1980s. Foothill was deeply enmeshed in the Savings & Loan collapses in the 1980s but salvaged itself to become a part of Wells Fargo Bank. Kroll, who helped Curtis Publishing (renamed Cadence Industries after a merger) cut waste in the 1970s (and pilfer the company’s pension fund in the process), got his first big break when he helped locate the stolen millions of Philippine ex-President Ferdinand Marcos (he would later go after the off-shore bank accounts of Haiti’s Jean-Claude Duvalier and Iraq’s Saddam Hussein).

According to our well-placed source, Ray Steffans (aka diStefano of New Jersey), Jewish mobster Gideon Chern, and Eddie Baker of Vanguard Petroleum met in Houston in September 1983 to discuss, among other items, funding for Kroll. In December 1977, Bernard Taubenfeld, Gideon Chern and Shalom Goldburd, officials of B’nai Torah Institute affiliate, Nutrition for Youth, were convicted of defrauding the government by submitting bills for food that was never served to poor children in the New York City summer lunch program. Chern’s other organized crime activity in the 1980s reportedly had an important protector — former US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Rudolph Giuliani. The former New York Mayor and prospective GOP presidential candidate reportedly suppressed a wealth of evidence against Chern.

Litvinenko-Scaramella case now linked to World Trade Center security firm.

Two days after the Houston meeting, a Jaguar supposedly with the body of Baker in it was found charred outside of Houston. A fire investigator later revealed that no body was found in the car at the time of the fire. Kroll, after Enron’s bankruptcy, purchased Zolfo-Cooper, and thus owned Zolfo-Cooper’s Steven Cooper, the attorney appointed by New York bankruptcy Judge Arthur Gonzalez to run Enron in bankruptcy. In July 2004, Marsh-McLennan bought Kroll and Associates. Marsh-McLennan is run by Jeffrey Greenberg, son of Maurice (Hank) Greenberg of AIG. Funny, since Chase and Citibank notes from Kenneth Lay/Enron were purchased in May 2001 by AIG and the MacArthur Foundation.

Kroll was responsible for the security of the World Trade Center on 9/11, The firm had hired FBI top counter-terrorism agent John O’Neill as Director of World Trade Center security upon his retirement from the FBI. O’Neill dies in the 9/11 attacks. Kroll also markets Identity Theft Shield, the first time Kroll has offered its services to individuals as opposed to governments and companies. As of June 30, 2006, Kroll had amassed over 560,000 customers for its Identity Theft Shield program.

http://www.european911citizensjury.com/07b.htm