Ex-priest jailed over exorcism death

BUCHAREST, Romania - A former priest began a seven-year jail term Wednesday for murdering a young nun during an exorcism ritual when she was bound, chained to a cross and denied food and water for days. ADVERTISEMENT



Irina Cornici, 23, died from dehydration, exhaustion and suffocation during an ordeal that stunned Romania and prompted the Orthodox Church to promise reforms and psychological tests to screen potential clergy.

The former priest, Daniel Corogeanu, and four nuns were all convicted and sentenced in September but Corogeanu was freed pending an appeal, which he lost Tuesday. He was picked up by police in the remote northeast Wednesday and sent to jail.

Cornici, who had previously been treated for schizophrenia, had believed she heard the devil talking to her. Corogeanu and the four nuns decided to try an exorcism ritual in June 2005 using techniques that the Romanian Orthodox Church condemned as "abominable".

The church, which has benefited from a religious revival in recent years, defrocked Corogeanu and excommunicated the four nuns, who in September were handed five- and six-year jail terms.

When arrested Wednesday, Corogeanu said he would serve his term if that was God's will, the national news agency Rompres reported.

Corogeanu, a Romanian, dropped out halfway through training for the priesthood, but still served as a priest for the secluded Holy Trinity convent in northeast Romania because of a shortage of suitable candidates for convents and monasteries.

Repatriation of capital from Mongolia

How could I get the proceeds of the rental and sale out of Mongolia back to Europe or the US?

Mongolia is a free market economy and there is no restriction on the repatriation of capital either as a foreign individual or a foreign entity.

Foreign entities can sometimes find themselves required to pay dividend taxes, however this does not apply to the repatriation of foreign capital by individuals. Wire transfer is the best means to take money out of the country and that can be done through any of the internationally minded Mongolian banks.

In Haiti the poor are eating mud "cookies"

Poor Haitians Resort to Eating Dirt

By JONATHAN M. KATZ – 18 hours ago

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — It was lunchtime in one of Haiti's worst slums, and Charlene Dumas was eating mud. With food prices rising, Haiti's poorest can't afford even a daily plate of rice, and some take desperate measures to fill their bellies. Charlene, 16 with a 1-month-old son, has come to rely on a traditional Haitian remedy for hunger pangs: cookies made of dried yellow dirt from the country's central plateau.

The mud has long been prized by pregnant women and children here as an antacid and source of calcium. But in places like Cite Soleil, the oceanside slum where Charlene shares a two-room house with her baby, five siblings and two unemployed parents, cookies made of dirt, salt and vegetable shortening have become a regular meal.

"When my mother does not cook anything, I have to eat them three times a day," Charlene said. Her baby, named Woodson, lay still across her lap, looking even thinner than the slim 6 pounds 3 ounces he weighed at birth.

Though she likes their buttery, salty taste, Charlene said the cookies also give her stomach pains. "When I nurse, the baby sometimes seems colicky too," she said.

Food prices around the world have spiked because of higher oil prices, needed for fertilizer, irrigation and transportation. Prices for basic ingredients such as corn and wheat are also up sharply, and the increasing global demand for biofuels is pressuring food markets as well.

The problem is particularly dire in the Caribbean, where island nations depend on imports and food prices are up 40 percent in places.

The global price hikes, together with floods and crop damage from the 2007 hurricane season, prompted the U.N. Food and Agriculture Agency to declare states of emergency in Haiti and several other Caribbean countries. Caribbean leaders held an emergency summit in December to discuss cutting food taxes and creating large regional farms to reduce dependence on imports.

At the market in the La Saline slum, two cups of rice now sell for 60 cents, up 10 cents from December and 50 percent from a year ago. Beans, condensed milk and fruit have gone up at a similar rate, and even the price of the edible clay has risen over the past year by almost $1.50. Dirt to make 100 cookies now costs $5, the cookie makers say.

Still, at about 5 cents apiece, the cookies are a bargain compared to food staples. About 80 percent of people in Haiti live on less than $2 a day and a tiny elite controls the economy.

Merchants truck the dirt from the central town of Hinche to the La Saline market, a maze of tables of vegetables and meat swarming with flies. Women buy the dirt, then process it into mud cookies in places such as Fort Dimanche, a nearby shanty town.

Carrying buckets of dirt and water up ladders to the roof of the former prison for which the slum is named, they strain out rocks and clumps on a sheet, and stir in shortening and salt. Then they pat the mixture into mud cookies and leave them to dry under the scorching sun.

The finished cookies are carried in buckets to markets or sold on the streets.

A reporter sampling a cookie found that it had a smooth consistency and sucked all the moisture out of the mouth as soon as it touched the tongue. For hours, an unpleasant taste of dirt lingered.

Assessments of the health effects are mixed. Dirt can contain deadly parasites or toxins, but can also strengthen the immunity of fetuses in the womb to certain diseases, said Gerald N. Callahan, an immunology professor at Colorado State University who has studied geophagy, the scientific name for dirt-eating.

Haitian doctors say depending on the cookies for sustenance risks malnutrition.

"Trust me, if I see someone eating those cookies, I will discourage it," said Dr. Gabriel Thimothee, executive director of Haiti's health ministry.

Marie Noel, 40, sells the cookies in a market to provide for her seven children. Her family also eats them.

"I'm hoping one day I'll have enough food to eat, so I can stop eating these," she said. "I know it's not good for me."

USA constitution

The Constitution doesn't give rights to anybody or anything.

We already have those rights. The Constitution explicitly limits the power of the government so as to protect those already existing rights.

To Restore Democracy: First Abolish Corporate Personhood

Thomas Paine said it best.

“It has been thought,” he wrote in The Rights of Man in 1791, “…that government is a compact between those who govern and those who are governed; but this cannot be true, because it is putting the effect before the cause; for as man must have existed before governments existed, there necessarily was a time when governments did not exist, and consequently there could originally exist no governors to form such a compact with. The fact therefore must be, that the individuals themselves, each in his own personal and sovereign right, entered into a compact with each other to produce a government: and this is the only mode in which governments have a right to arise, and the only principle on which they have a right to exist.”

Thus, Paine and others of the Revolutionary Era reasoned, any institution made up by and of humans - from governments to churches to corporations - must be subordinate to individual living people in terms of the rights and powers held by the institution.

Because of the unique frailties and depths of passion unique to humans, just after the United States Constitution was ratified Thomas Jefferson and James Madison began a campaign to amend it with a 12-point explicit statement that would clearly and unambiguously place humans - who had created government - above their creation. This was the birth of what would become the Bill of Rights, and it originally had twelve - not ten - protections for citizens’ rights.

On December 20th, 1787, Jefferson wrote to James Madison about his concerns regarding the Constitution. He said, bluntly, that it was deficient in several areas. “I will now tell you what I do not like,” he wrote. “First, the omission of a bill of rights, providing clearly, and without the aid of sophism, for freedom of religion, freedom of the press, protection against standing armies, restriction of monopolies, the eternal and unremitting force of the habeas corpus laws, and trials by jury in all matters of fact triable by the laws of the land, and not by the laws of nations.”

Such a bill protecting natural persons from out-of-control governments or commercial monopolies shouldn’t just be limited to America, Jefferson believed. “Let me add,” he summarized, “that a bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular; and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.”

The following year, Jefferson wrote about his concerns to several people. In a letter to Mr. A. Donald, on February 7th, 1788, he defined the items that should be in a bill of rights: “By a declaration of rights, I mean one which shall stipulate freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of commerce against monopolies, trial by juries in all cases, no suspensions of the habeas corpus, no standing armies. These are fetters against doing evil, which no honest government should decline.”

Jefferson kept pushing for a law, written into the constitution as an amendment, which would guarantee liberties for citizens, prevent companies from growing so large they could dominate entire industries or have the power to influence the people’s government, and reduce the possibility of the nation being taken over by a military coup.

On February 12th, 1788, he wrote to Mr. Dumas about his pleasure that the US Constitution was about to be ratified, but also expressed his concerns about what was missing from the Constitution. He was pushing hard for his own state to reject the Constitution if it didn’t protect people from the dangers he foresaw.

“With respect to the new Government,” he wrote, “nine or ten States will probably have accepted by the end of this month. The others may oppose it. Virginia, I think, will be of this number. Besides other objections of less moment, she [Virginia] will insist on annexing a bill of rights to the new Constitution, i.e. a bill wherein the Government shall declare that, 1. Religion shall be free; 2. Printing presses free; 3. Trials by jury preserved in all cases; 4. No monopolies in commerce; 5. No standing army. Upon receiving this bill of rights, she will probably depart from her other objections; and this bill is so much to the interest of all the States, that I presume they will offer it, and thus our Constitution be amended, and our Union closed by the end of the present year.”

By mid-summer of 1788, things were moving along and Jefferson was helping his close friend James Madison to write the Bill of Rights. On the last day of July, he wrote to Madison: “I sincerely rejoice at the acceptance of our new constitution by nine States. It is a good canvass, on which some strokes only want retouching. What these are, I think are sufficiently manifested by the general voice from north to south, which calls for a bill of rights. It seems pretty generally understood, that this should go to juries, habeas corpus, standing armies, printing, religion, and monopolies.”

But on the issues of banning a standing army and blocking corporations from gaining monopolistic control over industries, Jefferson was getting resistance. The nation had just fought a bloody war against England, and there was little sentiment for completely dismantling the army. And the Federalists who were in power - a party largely made up of what Jefferson called “the rich and the well born” - were opposed to government constraints on business activities.

Thus only ten of his twelve visions for a Bill of Rights - all except “freedom from monopolies in commerce” and his concern about a permanent army - were incorporated into the actual Bill of Rights, which James Madison shepherded through Congress and was ratified as the first ten amendments to the constitution on December 15, 1791.

Monopolies as persons

As the new country grew, so did its institutions. Trading companies, banks, and eventually railroads all used the corporate form to conduct business, reduce shareholder liability, and accumulate profits. America boomed through the early 19th Century, then experienced a severe economic depression in the decade just before the Civil War, then boomed again, starting in the post-war years of the late 1860s.

And then a curious thing happened.

The stage was set when, just after the Civil War on July 9, 1868, three-quarters of the states ratified the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution as part of a set of laws to end slavery.

The intent of Congress and the states was clear: to provide full constitutional protections and due process of law to the now-emancipated former slaves in the United States. The Fourteenth Amendment’s first article says, in its entirety:

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Along with the Thirteenth Amendment (“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude … shall exist within the United States”) and the Fifteenth Amendment (“The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude”), the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed that freed slaves would have full access to legal due process: “equal protection of the laws.”

Corporations aspire to personhood

During this same period, because everybody understood Paine and Jefferson’s argument that human-made institutions must be subordinate to humans themselves; virtually every state had laws on the books that regulated the behavior of corporations.

The corporate form is, after all, just a legal structure to facilitate the conversion of products or services into cash for stockholders. As Buckminster Fuller wrote in his brilliant essay The Grunch of Giants, “Corporations are neither physical nor metaphysical phenomena. They are socioeconomic ploys-legally enacted game-playing-agreed upon only between overwhelmingly powerful socioeconomic individuals and by them imposed upon human society and its all unwitting members.”

Thus, states made it illegal for corporations to participate in the political process: politicians were doing the voters’ business, and corporations couldn’t vote, so it didn’t make sense they should be allowed to try to influence votes. States made it illegal for corporations to lie about their products, and required that their books and processes always be open and available to government regulators. States and the Federal government claimed the right to inspect companies and investigate them when they caused pollution, harmed workers, or created hazards for human communities, even if in the early years that right was unevenly used.

These constraints and oversights had been a thorn in the side of the barons of trade and industry from the earliest days of the new American republic. But what to do about it?

With the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, the owners of the what were then America’s largest and most powerful corporations - the railroads - figured they’d finally found a way to reverse Paine’s logic and no longer have to answer to “we, the people.” They would claim that the corporation is a person. They would claim that for legal purposes, the certificate of incorporation declares the legal birth of a new person, who should therefore have the full protections the voters have under the Bill of Rights.

It was an amazing irony, given that one of Jefferson’s original proposed Amendments was an explicit ban on corporations becoming so large as to gain monopoly power and be able to easily crush or stifle small, local entrepreneurs. But, setting the irony aside, the railroads threw massive resources into their new campaign to be given full human rights.

Acting on behalf of the railroad barons, attorneys for the railroads repeatedly filed suits against local and state governments that had passed laws regulating railroad corporations. They rebelled against restrictions, and most of all they rebelled against being taxed....

But the first step, as always, is awakening people to the root cause of the problems we face - the use of corporate personhood by a handful of the world’s largest enterprises to insinuate themselves into governments and seize control of legislative and regulatory agendas. As enough voters learn the history and realize the consequences of this, the solution - ending corporate personhood - will become more and more possible, and Paine’s and Jefferson’s original idea of democracy representing “we, the people” will come back to life.

Number of listing in Foreclosures in California.

House Of Cards: The USA Mortgage Mess

"60 Minutes" Reports On How The Subprime Loan Crisis Is Shaking Markets Worldwide

Transcript:
(CBS) It was another nervous week for the world's financial markets and for Wall Street. In the last six months, Americans have seen their investments shrink, their property values plummet, and the country edge closer towards a recession. At the heart of the problem is something called the subprime mortgage crisis, which began last summer and continues to ricochet through the economy.

It sounds complicated, but it's really fairly simple. Banks lent hundreds of billions of dollars to homebuyers who can't pay them back. Wall Street took the risky debt, dressed it up as fancy securities, and sold it around the world as safe investments. It sounds like a shell game or Ponzi scheme; in some ways, it was a house of cards rife with corruption, greed, and negligence.

And as correspondent Steve Kroft reports, it started in places like Stockton, Calif.


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Stockton is a city of 280,000 people in the Central Valley; 80 miles east of San Francisco and 80 miles north of San Jose. In many ways, this is ground zero for the current financial crisis and a microcosm of everything that went wrong.

A few years ago, it was one of the hottest real estate markets in the country; today it is the foreclosure capital of America.

Real estate agent Kevin Moran represents 102 properties and says all of them are in foreclosure.

Moran gave Kroft a tour of the wreckage in one subdivision called "Weston Ranch," with block after block of vacant and abandoned houses.

"If you see a 'for sale' sign in this neighborhood, that probably is a sign of distress, right?" Kroft asks.

"I would say that, yeah. Two out of three of all the sales are probably foreclosed properties, and/or people who are in distress," Moran explains.

The "for sale" signs and the overgrown lawns in Weston Ranch only show part of the picture. To get a real overview, you need to look at a map from Sean O’Toole's Web site, foreclosureradar.com, which tracks distressed properties in Stockton and other California communities.

"The light blue circles are folks that have gone into default. And that means that's the first step of the foreclosure process," O'Toole says, explaining how his maps color-code properties. "The dark blue is auction properties. And the red icons are properties that were sold at auction, had no bid, and therefore went back to the lender."

As of last week, there were 4,200 Stockton homes either in default or foreclosure; $1.4 billion in bad loans in just one California community, and it is far from over.

"Two months from now, what's this map gonna look like? How many of those light blues are gonna be red?" Kroft asks O'Toole.

"We'll probably see at least 60, 70 percent of these light blues turn red. And we'll see at least this many light blues again," O'Toole predicts.

Banks are auctioning off houses all over California and in South Florida, in Nevada, and in parts of Ohio and Texas, the result of a huge real estate bubble that began forming in Stockton back in 2003, when people priced out of the Bay Area and Silicon Valley discovered that you could buy a four-bedroom home there for just $230,000.

Developers started turning asparagus fields into subdivisions, and lenders handed out free money to anyone who wanted to buy.

"What do you mean by free money?" Kroft asks Jim Grant, the editor of "Grant's Interest Rate Observer" and one the country's foremost experts on credit markets.

"I mean free money. I mean you had to apply not to get a loan, almost. Sometimes you have to apply to get a loan, you almost had to apply not to get one," Grant says.

"When you opened your mailbox in 2004, 2005, you could barely -- people were pressing on you, if you were not institutionalized, all matters of schemes in which to expand your personal debt and mortgage debt. You could, and people did, borrow more than 100 percent of the price of a house with the most fragile of financial bonafides," Grant explains.

Most of the mortgages issued in Stockton, and half of those now in default or foreclosure, were something called subprime loans, meaning less than prime quality. The borrowers often had sketchy credit, were financially strapped or lacked sufficient income to qualify for a standard mortgage. After a year of artificially low payments, the interest rates on subprime loans jumped all the way to ten or 11 percent.

But Jerry Abbott, who runs the Coldwell Banker office in Stockton, says it didn’t concern the borrowers, many of whom were getting mortgages for more than their houses were actually worth.

"They were getting loans in excess of 100 percent of the value of the property," Abbott says. "That type of thing. So, most of 'em were actually putting a little bit of money in their pocket at close of escrow."

"So, they were getting paid to buy a house?" Kroft asks.

"They were getting paid to buy a house. Yes. Yeah," Abbott says.

And strangely enough, it didn't seem to bother the lenders either, who were collecting huge fees just for landing the loans.

"Whatever they wanted to state for their income. The bank accepted that at face value and made the loan based on that income," Abbott says.

Abbott says borrowers got the money, without a down payment.

Jim Grant calls it an invitation to fraud. "You apply to a bank, or a mortgage broker for a loan. And you would fill out a form. And you would say, 'I have an income of, oh, $400,000 a year.' They say, 'You do? Fine. Just sign right there.' And they would nod, and because they were being paid, not by the veracity of the information, but by the consummation of the deal. The lending office would say, 'Ah. You have verified this?' 'Why, yes, we have.' And the lending officer would say, 'Great. So do I,'" Grant says.

"And he got a cut, too?" Kroft asks.

"Yes, oh, yes. Everyone gets a cut," Grant says.

Almost all of the people involved in the transactions made huge amounts of money, then passed the risk onto someone else. Instead of keeping the dicey loans in their own portfolios, the big banks and giant mortgage companies that originally underwrote them, resold the mortgages to big New York investment houses.

Firms like Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch sliced the loans into little pieces and packaged them up with other investments, then sold them to their best customers around the world as high-yield mortgage-backed securities, turning sows' ears into silk purses, all with the blessing of rating agencies like Standard & Poor’s.

"At every step in the way, somebody has his or her hand out, getting paid. And everyone, for the time, is happy. The broker got paid. He or she was happy. The lending officer, ditto. The rating agencies got paid for passing judgment on these securities. They, too, were pleased, and their stockholders were happy. And on and on. And it would never end, except that it did," Grant says.

It was all predicated on the idea that real estate prices would keep going up, and up and up, and for a long time they did. But by the summer of 2005, speculators flipping houses in Stockton had helped drive the price of that four-bedroom house to more than $400,000 and the market began to soften, then to tumble.

All of a sudden those subprime borrowers who had taken the free money found themselves upside down, owing more on their new house than it was worth.

It’s not exactly clear how a mortgage broker was able to qualify Phil Fontenot and his wife Kim Monroe for their $436,000 house, from which they run a small day care center. They say they wanted to move to a better neighborhood. A mortgage broker approached the Fontenots and offered to get them a loan. They told her the most they could afford, at most, was $2,500 a month. But the monthly payment on the adjustable rate mortgage she gave them quickly jumped to $4,200.

"Did you understand any of this?" Kroft asks.

"No, not really. Not much of it," says Phil Fontentot, who also says he didn't have a lawyer look over the paperwork.

"But you knew this was a big decision, right? You were borrowing hundreds of thousands of dollars," Kroft remarks.

"I didn't really look at it like that," Fontenot says.

"How did you look at it?" Kroft asks.

"I looked at it as far as my family. I can get my family off of this block," he replies.

"And that we could pay the payments that she said that we could pay," Fontenot's wife Kim adds. "But after it was all said and done, and the paperwork was drawn up, it was something different."

But Matt and Stephanie Valdez say they knew exactly what they were doing when they bought a small two-bedroom for $355,000. They could afford the initial payments and planned to refinance the mortgage before the interest rate jumped to 11 percent. But they couldn't do it because the value of the house had fallen below what they owed on the mortgage. They say they can afford the higher payments, but see no point in making them.

"The house keeps going down, payments keep going up. Where's the logic in that? And how can we fix it? I mean, that's what this whole thing's about for us is how can we fix this? And if we can't fix it, then what do we do?" Matt Valdez asks.

"Why pay a $3,200 payment on a 1200-square-foot home? It makes no sense," Stephanie Valdez adds.

"That's what you agreed to do when you bought the house," Kroft points out.

"Fine. If the value is going up. But we're not going anywhere. The price or the value is going down. It makes no sense because we will never be able to refinance and get a lower payment. There's no way," Stephanie Valdez replies.

"You're saying, essentially, that you're going to stop making payments on it? You're just gonna let it go into foreclosure?" Kroft asks.

"You know, that's the only advice we've gotten so far is walk away from the home. We don't want to do that to our credit. Why can't our mortgage company work with us?" she says.

There is a certain cold logic to just walking away.

Kevin Moran, the real estate agent who gave Kroft the tour of foreclosed houses in the Weston Ranch subdivision, says it is happening every day. They were never really invested. Most of the people who lost the houses didn’t lose any money because they never put any money down. Though their credit is damaged, and they could face legal action in some circumstances, they got to live in a new house for a couple of years, and some of them even managed to get some money with home equity loans or by refinancing.

"Nobody seems to be saying, 'Look, I made a contract with you. I borrowed money from you. I'm gonna do everything I can to pay off that obligation.' People just seem to be saying, 'Look, take the house. Good-bye. I'm leaving,'" Kroft says. "There was a time, I think, when people felt really bad about not paying off a debt."

"Yeah, I think in those days, loans were made by your local banker or building and loan associations or savings and loan. They were guys you saw in the grocery store. They were on the little league team with you, the PTA, the school. And I think as mortgages became securitized and Wall Street became involved, they became very transactional and there was no relationship built with the borrower and the lender. And I think that makes it easier for someone to see it as an anonymous party at the other end of the transaction and just walk away from it," Moran says.

"Just a business decision," Kroft says.

"A business decision that has to be made," Moran agrees.

"It turns out that if you give people free money, they will take it without really worrying too much about giving it back. Because after all, it was free," Jim Grant says.

Asked if it's a case of greed, Grant says, "Greed, sure. Greed on both sides of the table."

"What do you mean?" Kroft asks.

"Lenders and borrowers," Grant says. "Everyone was gaming the system."

That is not to suggest that there aren’t huge losers in all this and much suffering and particularly hard-working people who have lost their dream. Home values are plummeting, and the housing sector - one of the largest and most vital parts of the American economy - has ground to a standstill, pushing the country towards recession.

The Wall Street and foreign investors are now stuck with the millions of distressed properties on Sean O’Toole's map, the unsold condos in Miami, the unfinished apartments on the Vegas Strip, the developments in Atlanta that are sitting idle and the thousand stucco houses in Stockton. Not even Kevin Moran, who has copies of the foreclosed mortgages, can figure out who exactly owns them.

"That’s the fascinating part of this whole debacle we’re in. Mortgages are sold in mortgage backed securities, so they’re pooled. I’ve seen everything from some of the largest financial institutions in the country, and you see 'Deutsche Bank' in a series and a series of numbers and letters to a mortgage pool," he says.

The pools are part and parcel of those high-yield mortgage backed securities everyone gobbled up a few years ago, and are now stuck in the windpipe of the world's financial system. No one wants to buy them, so no one can sell them.

"Bonds marked triple-A are now quoted at 50 cents to the dollar, 40 cents on the dollar. Some of them, much less," Grant says.

"How much on the dollar, do ya think?" Kroft asks.

"Some of them are worth nothing on the dollar. Nothing on the dollar. This is the worst thing that has happened to Wall Street in a long time," Grant says.

Asked how many of these securities are out there, Grant says, "A trillion with a T-plus."

Asked who bought them and owns them, Grant says, "You know, state pension funds, the hedge funds bought them. Foreign central banks own some of these things, if you please. So the ownership is very widely dispersed, which accounts for the general anxiety, and the persistence of anxiety."

It’s that anxiety that spooked the world’s stock markets last week, that and the knowledge that things are likely to get worse, at least for a while.

"Still houses going into foreclosure?" Kroft asks Kevin Moran.

"Yeah. I don't think we're 40 percent into this. I think we've got a long way to go," he predicts.

There’s already a two-year supply of properties on the market in Stockton and so many foreclosures that real estate agent Cesar Diaz decided to start the "Repo Bus" to take bargain hunters and bottom feeders on a weekly tour to see some of them. He got the idea from the Hollywood tour of the stars' homes.

The day Kroft went along, there were two busloads checking out houses that are now 70 percent cheaper than they were when the crisis began. The consensus seemed to be prices are going to drop still further. Not particularly encouraging news for the past two chairmen of the Federal Reserve Board.

"Alan Greenspan and his successor, Ben Bernanke, would say over and over that it's contained. The problem's contained. It turns out, it is contained only on planet Earth," Grant says, laughing. "That's it."

"It's still spreading?" Kroft asks.

"Yeah," Grant says.


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In the past few months, Wall Street's top investment banks have written off more than $120 billion in losses related mortgage backed securities, and some are now under new management.

Two of the fired CEO's responsible for the biggest losses rode off into the sunset with some free money of their own. Charles Prince of Citigroup collected $29 million on his way out the door; Stan O'Neal of Merrill Lynch left with $161 million.

How Bush Destroyed the Dollar - The Profile of a Third World Country

The Profile of a Third World Country
How Bush Destroyed the Dollar

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

It is difficult to know where Bush has accomplished the most destruction, the Iraqi economy or the US economy.

In the current issue of Manufacturing & Technology News, Washington economist Charles McMillion observes that seven years of Bush has seen the federal debt increase by two-thirds while US household debt doubled.

This massive Keynesian stimulus produced pitiful economic results. Median real income has declined. The labor force participation rate has declined. Job growth has been pathetic, with 28% of the new jobs being in the government sector. All the new private sector jobs are accounted for by private education and health care bureaucracies, bars and restaurants. Three and a quarter million manufacturing jobs and a half million supervisory jobs were lost. The number of manufacturing jobs has fallen to the level of 65 years ago.

This is the profile of a third world economy.

The "new economy" has been running a trade deficit in advanced technology products since 2002. The US trade deficit in manufactured goods dwarfs the US trade deficit in oil. The US does not earn enough to pay its import bill, and it doesn't save enough to finance the government's budget deficit.

To finance its deficits, America looks to the kindness of foreigners to continue to accept the outpouring of dollars and dollar-denominated debt.

The dollars are accepted, because the dollar is the world's reserve currency.

At the meeting of the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, this week, billionaire currency trader George Soros warned that the dollar's reserve currency role was drawing to an end: "The current crisis is not only the bust that follows the housing boom, it's basically the end of a 60-year period of continuing credit expansion based on the dollar as the reserve currency. Now the rest of the world is increasingly unwilling to accumulate dollars."

If the world is unwilling to continue to accumulate dollars, the US will not be able to finance its trade deficit or its budget deficit. As both are seriously out of balance, the implication is for yet more decline in the dollar's exchange value and a sharp rise in prices.

Economists have romanticized globalism, taking delight in the myriad of foreign components in US brand name products. This is fine for a country whose trade is in balance or whose currency has the reserve currency role. It is a terrible dependency for a country such as the US that has been busy at work offshoring its economy while destroying the exchange value of its currency.

As the dollar sheds value and loses its privileged position as reserve currency, US living standards will take a serious knock.

If the US government cannot balance its budget by cutting its spending or by raising taxes, the day when it can no longer borrow will see the government paying its bills by printing money like a third world banana republic. Inflation and more exchange rate depreciation will be the order of the day.

home ownership illusion

If you think that deed entitles you to ownership of that property then you're delusional. If you pay property taxes which are a form of rent then if you default on that rent/tax, the government will evict you just as any other landlord would. Do you have to get the governments permission and pay them a fee for modifying the property? Can government agents come on the property without your consent? Police, fire, code enforcement...etc.? No one owns property in this country. We and everything we supposedly own including our children are in fact owned by the state.

USA Home Prices Fell in ’07 for First Time in Decades

Zimbabwe releases $10 million bill

As the US economy inches ever closer to a recession, it might provide a little perspective to look at what a real economic crisis looks like. Plagued by hyperinflation of over 50,000% a year, Zimbabwe's central bank recently decided to issue $10 million notes-- believed to be the highest denomination of currency in the world today. The bill, worth less than US$4, is barely enough to purchase a hamburger.

Rudy Guiliani thinks you should have REAL ID to get onlin (video)

U.S. PASSPORT CARD APPLICATIONS ACCEPTED BEGINNING FEBRUARY 1

Bush orders NSA to snoop on US agencies.

Cyber attack fear used to expand spy grid

By Ashlee Vance in Mountain View → More by this author
Published Sunday 27th January 2008 21:25 GMT


Not content with spying on other countries, the NSA (National Security Agency) will now turn on the US's own government agencies thanks to a fresh directive from president George Bush.

Under the new guidelines, the NSA and other intelligence agencies can bore into the internet networks of all their peers. The Bush administration pulled off this spy expansion by pointing to an increase in the number of cyber attacks directed against the US, possibly from foreign nations. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) will spearhead the effort around identifying the source of these attacks, while the Department of Homeland Security and Pentagon will concentrate on retaliation.

The Washington Post appears to have broken the news about the new Bush-led joint directive, which remains classified. The paper reported that the directive - National Security Presidential Directive 54/Homeland Security Presidential Directive 23 - was signed on Jan. 8. Earlier reports from the Baltimore Sun documented the NSA's plans to add US spying to its international snooping duties.

The new program will - of course - drains billions of dollars out of US coffers and be part of Bush's 2009 budget.

During Bush's presidency, US citizens have come under an unprecedented spying regime. In addition to upping its focus on suspected criminals, the administration permitted a system for wiretapping the phone calls of Average Joes and Janes. The government is also funding specialized computers from companies such as Cray that can search through enormous databases at incredible speed. Ah, if only Stalin could see us now.

The government points to cyber attacks against the State, Commerce, Defense and Homeland Security departments as the impetus for expanding the NSA's powers. "U.S. officials and cyber-security experts have said Chinese Web sites were involved in several of the biggest attacks back to 2005, including some at the country's nuclear-energy labs and large defense contractors," the Post reported.

Critics of the new directive will point to the NSA's ability to operate in total secrecy as cause for concern.

More troubling, however, may be the Pentagon and Homeland Security's aspirations to hit attackers with counter-strikes.

Proving that a nation rather than a rogue set of attackers are behind a cyber attack will likely be very difficult. In addition, the international community has yet to address the rules of cyber war in any meaningful way.

Free video documentaries online.

"Bowling for Columbine" etc.

Bond insurance

Bond insurance, like its larger credit derivatives sibling, is actually an accounting trick designed to help the financial markets portray all the worthless securities they are buying, selling and holding as having value. When you think about it, the whole concept of such insurance goes out the door in a systemic crisis, since both the instruments being insured and the institutions providing the insurance are part of the same system, and when the system goes, it all goes down together.

Age of riches: Elite prep schools with college size endowments

Average expenditures per student for public schools, not adjusted for inflation, rose 28 percent, to $8,809, between the 1999 and 2004 fiscal years, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

That compares with a 40 percent increase, to $20,233, for independent secondary day schools, and a 42.8 percent increase, to $14,300, for each elementary student at day schools. Spending by boarding schools rose 24 percent, to $37,566, in the five years that ended June 30, 2005.

Gandhi's grandson removed as president of peace center: For remarks about Israel and Jews being "the biggest players" in a global culture of violence.

ROCHESTER, N.Y. (AP) -- Arun Gandhi said he learned at his grandfather's feet that the world's major conflicts can only be tackled by first solving the little problems.

"It's the little problems that accumulate and become big problems," the fifth grandson of revered pacifist Mahatma Gandhi said when he moved his M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence to the University of Rochester last June.

Now, intemperate remarks about Israel and Jews being "the biggest players" in a global culture of violence have gotten Gandhi removed as president of the peace center he launched in 1991.

"My intention was to generate a healthy discussion on the proliferation of violence," Gandhi said Friday, a day after the institute's board accepted his resignation. "Instead, unintentionally, my words have resulted in pain, anger, confusion and embarrassment. I deeply regret these consequences."

The institute offers courses, workshops and seminars on nonviolence and will "continue its mission" at the University of Rochester, which provides office space and staff support, said the school's president, Joel Seligman.

Gandhi co-founded the center with his wife, Sunanda, at Christian Brothers University in Memphis, Tenn., and relocated it to the Rochester campus a few months after her death last February.

Gandhi's resignation "was appropriate" because his remarks "did not reflect the core values" of either the university or the institute, Seligman said in a statement. But a forum will be held later this year to allow Gandhi to discuss issues he raised with Jewish community leaders and other speakers, Seligman said.

"I think it's shameful that a peace institute would be headed up by a bigot," said Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, an international group that opposes anti-Semitism. "One would hope that the grandson of such an illustrious human being would be more sensitive to Jewish history."

Gandhi was on a panel of scholars, writers and clergy who discuss a new topic weekly on the Washington Post's "On Faith" page and his comments, posted Jan. 7, drew a torrent of criticism, much of it unfavorable.

Gandhi wrote that Jewish identity "has been locked into the holocaust experience - a German burden that the Jews have not been able to shed. It is a very good example of (how) a community can overplay a historic experience to the point that it begins to repulse friends.

"The holocaust was the result of the warped mind of an individual who was able to influence his followers into doing something dreadful. ... The world did feel sorry for the episode but when an individual or a nation refuses to forgive and move on, the regret turns into anger."

Describing Israel as "a nation that believes its survival can only be ensured by weapons and bombs," Gandhi asked whether it would "not be better to befriend those who hate you?"

"Apparently, in the modern world so determined to live by the bomb, this is an alien concept," he wrote. "You don't befriend anyone, you dominate them. We have created a culture of violence (Israel and the Jews are the biggest players) and that Culture of Violence is eventually going to destroy humanity."

Gandhi later apologized "for my poorly worded post," saying he shouldn't have implied that Israeli government policies reflected the views of all Jewish people.

How schools stifle our sons

By MARTY NEMKO



January 24, 2008 -- CONTINUED

The media now take inordinate care to ensure that women and minorities are not unfairly portrayed negatively. Equal care must now be devoted to boys and men.

Schools claim to celebrate diversity yet insist on providing one-size-fits-all, girl-centric education. Whether in co-ed or single-sex classes, boys need boy-friendly instruction: more non-feminized male teachers, more competition, praise for boldness, more active learning (for example, simulation and drama) and less seatwork, less relationship-centric fiction and more how-to books.

Importantly, teachers must accept that boys will, on average, wiggle more than girls - and that it doesn't require ongoing criticism - which, not surprisingly, leads to more oppositional behavior, to the school psychologist, to Ritalin or to special education.

Ironically, educated parents often do especially badly by boys. The college curriculum and the media consumed by the intelligentsia stress women's' accomplishments and men's evils. So these parents too often feel justified in squeezing the maleness out of boys.

Of course, I'm not advocating that parents or teachers allow junior to become a savage. But we must realize that aggressiveness, bravery and competitiveness, channeled wisely, can be the stuff of which greatness is made.

We can refine but rarely remold, so we must honor males' ways of being, just as we've been urged now for decades to honor females'. Apart from the effect on society, so many unnecessarily unhappy and underperforming children is, in itself, most sad. Over the past 20 years, I've noticed a dramatic shift in the boys I've counseled.

Twenty years ago, most were confident and ambitious. Now, disproportionately, they're despondent or angry. The girls, by contrast, more often feel the world is their oyster. And they're right - but it should be both genders' oyster.

Boys advocate Joe Manthey reminds us that "when girls were behind in math and science, we said there's something wrong with the schools. But now, when boys don't do well in school, we say there's something wrong with the boy."

Let's stop blaming the boy and start fixing our media, parenting and schools.

UN rights body passes a motion calling Israel to end Gaza blockade, but Canada(public servants) votes against it.

Canada supports Israel's Gaza blockade
Fri, 01/25/2008 - 13:57 - Wire Services


Canada became the only member country to vote against a United Nations Human Rights Council motion calling for immediate international action to force Israel to allow fuel, food, medicine and other essential items to be sent to the Gaza Strip, to reopen the border crossings and to end its “grave violations” in the occupied Palestinian territory, as the motion passed with a majority of 29 votes with 15 nations abstaining.

The Council expressed its deep concern about “the series of incessant and repeated Israeli military attacks and incursions,” which it said had killed and injured many Palestinian civilians.

The resolution demanded “that the occupying Power, Israel, lift immediately the siege it has imposed on the occupied Gaza Strip, restore continued supply of fuel, food and medicine and reopen the border crossings.”

It called for the immediate protection of civilians in the occupied Palestinian territory in line with human rights law and international humanitarian law, and urged all parties to refrain from violence against civilians.

The text, which was introduced by Syria in the name of the League of Arab States and the Organization of the Islamic Conference, also called on the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), Louise Arbour, to report to the Council at its next session on the progress made towards implementing the resolution.

Ms. Arbour told the Council’s special session yesterday that the situation for both Palestinians and Israelis will continue to deteriorate unless both parties to the conflict and the international community take broader steps to action.

“All parties concerned should put an end to the vicious spiral of violence before it becomes unstoppable,” she said. “To this end, they must ensure accountability for breaches of international humanitarian law and violations of international human rights law through credible, independent, and transparent investigations.”

Ms. Arbour added that the Israeli practice of collective punishment, disproportionate use of force and targeted killings continued, as did the Palestinian militants’ practice of indiscriminate firing of mortars and rockets into Israel.

Aid agencies are describing the situation in Gaza as a "humanitarian catastrophe", with essential items such as clean water, food and medicines running out in the territory.

UN staff say a shortage remains of benzene for hospital workers’ vehicles, with the World Food Programme (WFP) able to access some from the local commercial market but unsure of whether there is enough to last beyond the middle of next week.

The seven-month ongoing Israeli blockade is taking an ever-more severe toll on the health system in the Gaza Strip, the aid agency Oxfam International said.

According to the Word Health Organization, 105 of a list of 460 essential medications are no longer in stock in Gazan pharmacies.

"Under international humanitarian law, Israel remains the occupying power and therefore holds the responsibility to secure and provide the basic needs of the occupied population," Jeremy Hobbs, director of Oxfam International, said today. "Failing to do so constitutes a grave violation of their basic human rights."

Hundreds of thousands of Gazans desperate to stock up on basic supplies crossed into Egypt through a breach in the border fence, which according ICRC's Head of Operations for the Middle East, Béatrice Megevand-Roggo, is a "dramatic illustration of their deprivation" over the last seven months.

USA Home Prices Fell in ’07 for First Time in Decades

non-recourse mortgage

In the states most affected by the subprime mess (California, Arizona, Florida, etc.), a first mortgage is a non-recourse mortgage, meaning that the bank cannot go after you for any deficiency. That's why people are just mailing in the keys. It used to be that you'd have to pay tax on the difference as "loan forgiveness", but Congress did away with that at the end of 2007, so the only downside is having a foreclosure on your credit report. Plus one gets to live rent and mortgage-free for the 6-12 months it typically takes to go through the foreclosure process.

This doesn't apply to refis and HELOCs, which are typically recourse loans.

Two British girls detained and strip searched in New York orphanage after mother fell ill on holiday in US

Holiday girls held in orphanage after mother fell ill


Martin Hodgson
Thursday January 24, 2008
The Guardian

A mother whose two teenage daughters were placed in an orphanage when she fell ill during a post-Christmas shopping trip to New York has been told she is under investigation because her children were taken into care.

Yvonne Bray, took her daughters Gemma, 15, and Katie, 13, to New York shortly after Christmas for a shopping trip but was taken into hospital when she fell ill with pneumonia during their visit.

The girls were then told they could not wait at the hospital and as minors would have to be taken into care.

Social workers took them to a municipal orphanage in downtown Manhattan, where they were separated, strip-searched and questioned before being kept under lock and key for the next 30 hours.

The two sisters were made to shower in front of security staff and told to fill out a two-page form with questions including: "Have you ever been the victim of rape?" and "Do you have homicidal tendencies?"

One question asked "are you in a street gang?" to which Gemma replied: "I'm a member of Appledore library."

Their clothes, money and belongings were taken and they were issued with regulation white T-shirt and jeans. Katie said: "It was like being in a little cage. I tried to go to sleep, but every time I opened my eyes, someone was looking right at me."

Eventually Bray discharged herself, and - still dressed in hospital pyjamas - tracked down the girls.

She said: "It is absolutely horrendous that two young girls were put through an ordeal like that. They were made to answer traumatic questions about things they don't really understand and spend over 24 hours under surveillance."

Since returning home, Bray has received a letter from the US Administration for Children and Families, notifying her that, because the children were admitted to the orphanage, she is now "under investigation."

Tests find hazardous levels of mercury in tuna sushi in New York

Soros - The worst market crisis in 60 years

"By George Soros

Published: January 22 2008 19:57 | Last updated: January 22 2008 19:57

The current financial crisis was precipitated by a bubble in the US housing market. In some ways it resembles other crises that have occurred since the end of the second world war at intervals ranging from four to 10 years.

However, there is a profound difference: the current crisis marks the end of an era of credit expansion based on the dollar as the international reserve currency. The periodic crises were part of a larger boom-bust process. The current crisis is the culmination of a super-boom that has lasted for more than 60 years.

Boom-bust processes usually revolve around credit and always involve a bias or misconception. This is usually a failure to recognise a reflexive, circular connection between the willingness to lend and the value of the collateral. Ease of credit generates demand that pushes up the value of property, which in turn increases the amount of credit available. A bubble starts when people buy houses in the expectation that they can refinance their mortgages at a profit. The recent US housing boom is a case in point. The 60-year super-boom is a more complicated case.

Every time the credit expansion ran into trouble the financial authorities intervened, injecting liquidity and finding other ways to stimulate the economy. That created a system of asymmetric incentives also known as moral hazard, which encouraged ever greater credit expansion. The system was so successful that people came to believe in what former US president Ronald Reagan called the magic of the marketplace and I call market fundamentalism. Fundamentalists believe that markets tend towards equilibrium and the common interest is best served by allowing participants to pursue their self-interest. It is an obvious misconception, because it was the intervention of the authorities that prevented financial markets from breaking down, not the markets themselves. Nevertheless, market fundamentalism emerged as the dominant ideology in the 1980s, when financial markets started to become globalised and the US started to run a current account deficit.

Globalisation allowed the US to suck up the savings of the rest of the world and consume more than it produced. The US current account deficit reached 6.2 per cent of gross national product in 2006. The financial markets encouraged consumers to borrow by introducing ever more sophisticated instruments and more generous terms. The authorities aided and abetted the process by intervening whenever the global financial system was at risk. Since 1980, regulations have been progressively relaxed until they have practically disappeared.

The super-boom got out of hand when the new products became so complicated that the authorities could no longer calculate the risks and started relying on the risk management methods of the banks themselves. Similarly, the rating agencies relied on the information provided by the originators of synthetic products. It was a shocking abdication of responsibility.

Everything that could go wrong did. What started with subprime mortgages spread to all collateralised debt obligations, endangered municipal and mortgage insurance and reinsurance companies and threatened to unravel the multi-trillion-dollar credit default swap market. Investment banks’ commitments to leveraged buyouts became liabilities. Market-neutral hedge funds turned out not to be market-neutral and had to be unwound. The asset-backed commercial paper market came to a standstill and the special investment vehicles set up by banks to get mortgages off their balance sheets could no longer get outside financing. The final blow came when interbank lending, which is at the heart of the financial system, was disrupted because banks had to husband their resources and could not trust their counterparties. The central banks had to inject an unprecedented amount of money and extend credit on an unprecedented range of securities to a broader range of institutions than ever before. That made the crisis more severe than any since the second world war.

Credit expansion must now be followed by a period of contraction, because some of the new credit instruments and practices are unsound and unsustainable. The ability of the financial authorities to stimulate the economy is constrained by the unwillingness of the rest of the world to accumulate additional dollar reserves. Until recently, investors were hoping that the US Federal Reserve would do whatever it takes to avoid a recession, because that is what it did on previous occasions. Now they will have to realise that the Fed may no longer be in a position to do so. With oil, food and other commodities firm, and the renminbi appreciating somewhat faster, the Fed also has to worry about inflation. If federal funds were lowered beyond a certain point, the dollar would come under renewed pressure and long-term bonds would actually go up in yield. Where that point is, is impossible to determine. When it is reached, the ability of the Fed to stimulate the economy comes to an end.

Although a recession in the developed world is now more or less inevitable, China, India and some of the oil-producing countries are in a very strong countertrend. So, the current financial crisis is less likely to cause a global recession than a radical realignment of the global economy, with a relative decline of the US and the rise of China and other countries in the developing world.

The danger is that the resulting political tensions, including US protectionism, may disrupt the global economy and plunge the world into recession or worse."

USA inhabitants are squeezed to death, financially (The 'Federal' 'reserve' system)

Angry And Afraid
by xysea
Wed Jan 23, 2008 at 07:21:29 AM PST

Yes, I am angry. And afraid. And sick that people will be getting rebate checks when I am struggling so hard just to make ends meet.

I am nauseous because even though we all pay taxes, only some of us will be getting help (no matter how misguided). The rest of us will be left to twist in the wind, and hopefully not have our ships completely unmoored.

I don't know what to do, and it scares me.
xysea's diary :: ::

I used to have a savings account. Honest. It had some money in it; but as things got more expensive, I tried a lot of different tactics to keep from having to touch the money in there. (Hint: None of them worked.)

We cut a lot of meat out of our diet, because meat is expensive. No chips, junk food or convenience foods. Our grocery bill is the same as what it used to be, only we're getting a lot less for our money.

Our gas bill is higher; where we moved to is a better, less crime ridden neighborhood, but it is further out of town.

We have tried keeping socks and hoodies on at home, so we can reduce the energy bill. They've raised our rates three years in a row; we are paying more and getting less heat and energy for it.

We had our healthcare deductible and premium raised, and our benefits drop. Again, more expense with less actual product.

We moved to a place that's better, more affordable overall. That's the only ray of sunshine in an otherwise bleak picture.

We are being squeezed to death, financially. I don't know how much more I can take.

And I've watched my retirement and educational savings dwindle (457, 529 plans respectively), and I have no one to rely on, no one to help me.
I've watched my cash savings dwindle, because of necessary expenses; car repairs, moving expenses, healthcare costs. We are reaching critical mass.

I can't afford a new car payment. I can't afford the loan.

No wage increase for me last review. They're freezing all hiring now at work. I am thankful I have a job, but feel like one problem - a car repair, a health problem, will put me under for the last time. Wages are stagnant; I don't get child support I am entitled to, nor any subsidies. I make too much for assistance, but not enough for Bush's $800.

I am terrified to even take out a credit card, because I'm unsure I'd have the resources to pay it back and don't want a default. Payday loan places cause more trouble than the price of their 'help'.

So, what does someone like me do? I wake up at night, usually around 2am or 3am, and just pray that we'll be okay this month, next 6 months, next year. I see shows like 'Cribs', and hear stories of elaborate Hollywood and CEO parties, and wonder about the disconnect.

It feels so unfair. I am responsible. I try to work hard; I hold a job, have for years. I pay taxes, too, like everyone else: Payroll tax, Medicare tax, FICA, Federal taxes of all kinds.

I get a good bit of it back, sure, those years when I don't claim it in my check each payday. I'm a single head of household. But people I know who pay just a little bit more in tax than me are going to get their $800 and I'm going to get squat. Not only that, but I will have delayed filing due to the Congress/AMT screwup, so I'll be keeping my fingers crossed that I can keep the car running and keep working until then.

Maybe I can, maybe I can't. I don't know. The fact that my savings has taken such a hard hit is alarming; I can't continue this way forever. I looked into getting a second job, but the cost of child care is exorbitant on the weekends. It would take most of my salary at a Wal-Mart or a Target to pay for it so I could work. That, plus gas cost, makes a second job completely pointless; there would be nothing left. No OT available on the job, right now, because they are trying to keep wage expenses down.

I want to enjoy my life. I worked hard to get out of the ghetto, but I seem to watch my dreams evaporate each day. No matter how much I earn, I am still always the last to be considered by politicians in Washington, DC. To them, the reality of me is inconvenient - it's easier to believe I just don't exist. They do a very good job of it, too.

Today is not a great day for me. The only thing that helps is that I know I'm not alone in my suffering.

Major World Indices - quotes for Asia/Pacific

World map with countries approximately sized to reflect oil reserves(2004 data)

Mortgage Company Exec Jumps to Death, his wife's body found home.

MARLTON, N.J. (AP) — An executive of a collapsed subprime mortgage lender jumped to his death from a bridge Friday, shortly after his wife's body was found inside their New Jersey home, authorities said.

The deaths of Walter Buczynski, 59, and his wife, Marci, 37 — the parents of two boys — were being investigated as a murder-suicide, according to the Burlington County Prosecutor's Office.

Prosecutor Robert Bernardi said Evesham Township police went to the couple's home in the Marlton section of the township around noon after a male caller asked them to check on Marci Buczynski. Her body was found in a bedroom.

Authorities would not provide further details on her death, saying only that she was pronounced dead at the scene and that the county medical examiner's office would perform an autopsy Saturday.

About 20 minutes after her body was found, officers from the Delaware River and Bay Authority Police Department received reports that a man — later identified as Walter Buczynski — had parked his car on Delaware Memorial Bridge and jumped from the span.

Crews were searching for his body Friday night.

Bernardi said a motive for the apparent murder-suicide was not immediately clear. The couple's children were being cared for by family members, Bernardi said.

Walter Buczynski was a vice president of Columbia, Md.-based Fieldstone Mortgage Co., a high-flying subprime mortgage lender that made $5.5 billion in mortgage loans and employed about 1,000 people as late as 2006.

However, it has since filed for bankruptcy and now has fewer than 20 employees. The company had recently filed court papers seeking approval to pay about $1.1 million in bonuses that would be divided among Buczynski and other staffers so the company could wind down its lending operations and go out of business.

Ron Paul finished second in the Nevada Republican presidential caucuses today.

RENO, Nev.--(BUSINESS WIRE) ...
According to results reported on the Nevada GOP’s website, Congressman Paul placed second with 13 percent, topping John McCain, Mike Huckabee, Fred Thompson and Rudy Giuliani.

“Ron Paul has once again topped multiple media-anointed ‘frontrunners’ with his poll-defying second place showing in Nevada,” said Ron Paul campaign chairman Kent Snyder. “We’re in this race to win, and we’re going to battle for every delegate in this wide-open race for the Republican nomination.”

CNN LIES - Huckabee is said to come 2nd in Nevada, Ron Paul does not exist.

democracy 1

Democracy can be summed up as 51% of people having the ability to vote away the rights of the other 49%.

Suggested viewings on Google Video:
1. Money as Debt
2. The Money Masters
3. Zeitgeist.
4. Terrorstorm
5. Endgame: Blueprint for Global Enslavement
6. Loose Change: Final Cut

consent 1

my claim is simple: I cannot be governed without consent. If you do not agree with that than your position must be “It is lawful to govern another without their consent”. Do you see the immense chaos that must develop from your position?

The rule of law states we are all equal and as such we have the power to say no.

Additionally, are you claiming the right to govern me either directly or by way of an agent without my consent?

Know what the law calls someone who when seeking sex won’t take NO for an answer? A rapist. So what should we call those people in government who claim consent as justification for their actions and yet won’t allow us to say NO? Are they any less a rapist?

mutual consent

"Who are you to decide? Who are you to think someone should? How about we simply agree right off the bat that since we are all equal no one can govern another without mutual consent? That is the definition of a society after all. Additionally, you used the word society, what is wrong with mutual consent? And what is wrong with thinking that without my consent neither you, nor your representative or their agents can impose your or their will upon me, ok? And then all we have to do is recognize that the courts and the legislature is nothing more than a vehicle for you to impose your will and that the law says there are limits upon whom you can impose them. And that those who do not consent, you cant impose upon them, either directly or through your legislature or courts. Simple for those who do not thirst for power or are blinded by fear"

"if we truly live in a free society, then we have the right to leave that society"

"Before we go further, can you please tell me the legal name of the actual society to which we both belong? Recognizing the maxim “If you know not the name of a thing, all knowledge of that thing must perish’ will you tell me the completely legal name of this society you are so concerned about? If not will you simply recognize I am not a member of your society and that unless you can name your society you do not have one, you have been fooled and you are defending a completely nonexistent thing and that I still have a right to walk around this common law area in peace and without joining your society or risk facing an unprovoked assault?"

(Name your society please or accept you do not have one!)

Our names - intangible security interests

"Our names are actually recognized as intangible security interests and any time you ask for it, you are transacting for or attempting to transact for a security interest. All such transactions are covered under the Law and Equity Act and are rendered void by any coercion, fraud, force, duress, mistake or anything else that would invalidate a contract at Law. I can refuse to give you a security interest unless you have claim to it and if you insist on taking it the entire transaction is void ab initio. Do any of you have claim to my name? Can any of you claim I have an obligation to have a name or inform you of my date of birth? If not, don’t attempt to bring charges later for something silly like obstruction of justice simply because I exercise my right to choose to not transact with you."

violation tickets

Know those violation tickets you like to hand out? They are actually bills of exchange and if you refuse to present the white original and impose the copy you are committing a fraud. Furthermore, the copy can be “Protested for Lack of Presentment” and it is now on you to prove presentment. You will have three days and if you fail, then as the endorser of the bill, you become liable for it. Read the Bills of Exchange Act or have a lawyer do it for you and tell me I am wrong.

Claim of Right

Claim of Right and Section 39 of the Criminal Code of Canada. That section states:

39. (1) Every one who is in peaceable possession of personal property under a claim of right, and every one acting under his authority, is protected from criminal responsibility for defending that possession, even against a person entitled by law to possession of it, if he uses no more force than is necessary.

As we can see, by operating under a claim of right, one gains the right to use force to stop even peace officers from seizing property. How can this be however if peace officers have the right to use force to remove property? The simple fact is, with the inclusion of one, the exclusion of the other automatically develops. Two cannot both have the right to use force to claim a piece of property, unless the intent was to create a gladiator type of situation. Is combat now a spectator sport? Therefore, whenever someone is acting under a claim of right and you try to seize their property, you are not operating lawfully at all! You will not be seizing, or confiscating or removing. You will be committing THEFT and if you use force or a threat of violence you are committing ROBBERY. That’s what section 39 can do.

Statue , person, society , application, submission... definitions

Application: A request; to entreat, petition or beg. Also the paper that such an act evidences. The assumption this creates is that he who begs knows EXACTLY what they are begging for and what they are giving up for it, else why would he beg?

Arrest: To stop; to seize; to deprive one of his liberty by virtue of legal authority.

AGREEMENT, contract. The consent of two or more persons concurring, respecting the transmission of some property, right or benefit, with a view of contracting an obligation. Bac. Ab. h.t.; Com. Dig. h.t.; Vin. Ab. h.t.; Plowd. 17; 1 Com. Contr. 2; 5 East's R. 16. It will be proper to consider, 1, the requisites of an agreement; 2, the kinds of agreements; 3, how they are annulled.

2. - 1. To render an agreement complete six things must concur; there must be, 1, a person able to contract; 2, a person able to be contracted with; 3, a thing to be contracted for; 4, a lawful consideration, or quid pro quo; 5, words to express the agreement; 6, the assent of the contracting parties. Plowd. 161; Co. Litt. 35, b.

3. - 2. As to their form, agreements are of two kinds; 1, by parole, or, in writing, as contradistinguished from specialties; 2, by specialty, or under seal. In relation to their performance, agreements are executed or executory. An agreement is said to be executed when two or more persons make over their respective rights in a thing to one another, and thereby change the property therein, either presently and at once, or at a future time, upon some event that shall give it full effect, without either party trusting to the other; as where things are bought, paid for and delivered. Executory agreements, in the ordinary acceptation of the term, are such contracts as rest on articles, memorandums, parole promises, or undertakings, and the like, to be performed in future, or which are entered into preparatory to more solemn and formal alienations of property. Powel on Cont. Agreements are also conditional and unconditional. They are conditional when some condition must be fulfilled before they can have full effect; they are unconditional when there is no condition attached;

4. - 3. Agreements are annulled or rendered of no effect, first, by the acts of the parties, as, by payment; release - accord and satisfaction; rescission, which is express or implied; 1 Watts & Serg. 442; defeasance; by novation: secondly, by the acts of the law, as, confusion; merger; lapse of time; death, as when a man who has bound himself to teach an apprentice, dies; extinction of the thing which is the subject of the contract, as, when the agreement is to deliver a certain horse and before the time of delivery he dies. See Discharge of a Contract.

5. The writing or instrument containing an agreement is also called an agreement, and sometimes articles of agreement .(q. V.)

6. It is proper, to remark that there is much difference between an agreement and articles of agreement which are only evidence of it. From the moment that the parties have given their consent, the agreement or contract is formed, and, whether it can be proved or not, it has not less the quality to bind both contracting parties. A want of proof does not make it null, because that proof may be supplied aliunde, and the moment it is obtained, the contract may be-enforced.

7. Again, the agreement may be mull, as when it was obtained by fraud, duress, and the like; and the articles of agreement may be good, as far as the form is concerned. Vide Contract. Deed; Guaranty; Parties to Contracts.

Consent. An agreement to something proposed, and differs from assent. Consent supposes, 1. a physical power to act; 2. a moral power of acting; 3. a serious, determined, and free use of these powers

2. Consent is either express or implied. Express, when it is given viva voce, or in writing; implied, when it is manifested by signs, actions, or facts, or by inaction or silence, which raise a presumption that the consent has been given

Constituent: He who gives authority to another to act for him. 1 Bouv. Inst. n. 893.

2. The constituent is bound with whatever his attorney does by virtue of his authority. The electors of a member of the legislature are his constituents, to whom he is responsible for his legislative acts.


Person: -A person is such, not because he is human, but because rights and duties are ascribed to him. The person is the legal subject or substance of which the rights and duties are attributes.

-But not every human being is a person, for a person is capable of rights and duties and there may well be human beings having no legal rights, as was the case with slaves in English Law.

Society: A number of people joined through mutual consent to determine, deliberate and act for a common goal.

Statute: A rule of society which has the force of law.

Submit: To bend to the will of another, to leave to another’s discretion.

DHS Established A New USA Domestic Spying Operation In 2007 : The NAO.

The National Applications Office (NAO)

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) established a new domestic spying operation in 2007 called the National Applications Office (NOA) and described it as "the executive agent to facilitate the use of intelligence community technological assets for civil, homeland security and law enforcement purposes within the United States." The office was to begin operating last fall to "build on the long-standing work of the Civil Applications Committee (CAC), which was created in 1974 to facilitate the use of the capabilities of the intelligence community for civil, non-defense uses in the United States....

NAO will also oversee classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA), the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and other US agencies involved in dealing with all aspects of national security, including "terrorism."

NSA was established in 1952, is super-secret, and for many years was never revealed to exist. Today, its capabilities are awesome and worrisome. It eavesdrops globally, mines a vast amount of data, and does it through a network of spy satellites, listening posts, and surveillance planes to monitor virtually all electronic communications from landline and cell phones, telegrams, emails, faxes, radio and television, data bases of all kinds and the internet.

NGA is new and began operating in 2003. It lets military and intelligence analysts monitor virtually anything or anyone from state-of-the-art spy satellites. Both NSA and NGA coordinate jointly with the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) that designs, builds and operates military spy satellites. It also analyzes military and CIA-collected aircraft and satellite reconnaissance information.

Combined with warrantless wiretapping, pervasive spying of all kinds, the abandonment of the law and checks and balances, intense secrecy, and an array of repressive post-9/11 legislation, Executive Orders and National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directives, NAO is another national security police state tool any despot would love. It's now established and may be operating without congressional approval.

Using spy satellites domestically "is largely uncharted territory," as the Wall Street Journal noted. Even its architects admit there's no clarity on this, and the ISG's report stated "There is little if any policy, guidance or procedures regarding the collection, exploitation and dissemination of domestic MASINT (Measurement and Signatures Intelligence)."

The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) is the main DOD spy agency. It manages MASINT that's ultra-secret and sophisticated. It uses state-of-the-art radar, lasers, infrared sensors, electromagnetic data and other technologies that can detect chemicals, electro-magnetic activity, whether a nuclear power plant produces plutonium, and the type vehicle from its exhaust. It can also see under bridges, through clouds, forest canopies and even concrete to create images and collect data. In addition, it can detect people, activity and weapons that satellites and photo-reconnaissance aircraft miss, so it's an invaluable spy tool but highly intrusive and up to now only for military and foreign intelligence work.

Further, military spy satellites are state-of-the-art and superior to civilian ones. They record in color as well as black and white, use different parts of the light spectrum to track human activities and ground movements and can detect chemical weapons traces and people-generated heat in buildings.

This much we know about them. Their full potential is top secret and available only to the military and intelligence community. The Journal quoted an alarmed Gregory Nojeim, senior counsel and director of the Project on Freedom, Security and Technology, that advocates for digital age privacy rights saying: "Not only is the surveillance they are contemplating intrusive and omnipresent, it's also invisible. And that's what makes this so dangerous.""

Congressional Record: The Bankruptcy of The United States.

The Bankruptcy of The United States

United States Congressional Record, March 17, 1993
Vol. 33, page H-1303

Speaker-Rep. James Traficant, Jr. (Ohio) addressing the House:

"Mr. Speaker, we are here now in chapter 11.. Members of Congress are official trustees presiding over the greatest reorganization of any Bankrupt entity in world history, the U.S. Government. We are setting forth hopefully, a blueprint for our future. There are some who say it is a coroner’s report that will lead to our demise.
It is an established fact that the United States Federal Government has been dissolved by the Emergency Banking Act, March 9, 1933, 48 Stat. 1, Public Law 89-719; declared by President Roosevelt, being bankrupt and insolvent. H.J.R. 192, 73rd Congress m session June 5, 1933 - Joint Resolution To Suspend The Gold Standard and Abrogate The Gold Clause dissolved the Sovereign Authority of the United States and the official capacities of all United States Governmental Offices, Officers, and Departments and is further evidence that the United States Federal Government exists today in name only.

The receivers of the United States Bankruptcy are the International Bankers, via the United Nations, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. All United States Offices, Officials, and Departments are now operating within a de facto status in name only under Emergency War Powers. With the Constitutional Republican form of Government now dissolved, the receivers of the Bankruptcy have adopted a new form of government for the United States. This new form of government is known as a Democracy, being an established Socialist/Communist order under a new governor for America. This act was instituted and established by transferring and/or placing the Office of the Secretary of Treasury to that of the Governor of the International Monetary Fund. Public Law 94-564, page 8, Section H.R. 13955 reads in part: "The U.S. Secretary of Treasury receives no compensation for representing the United States?’

Gold and silver were such a powerful money during the founding of the united states of America, that the founding fathers declared that only gold or silver coins can be "money" in America. Since gold and silver coinage were heavy and inconvenient for a lot of transactions, they were stored in banks and a claim check was issued as a money substitute. People traded their coupons as money, or "currency." Currency is not money, but a money substitute. Redeemable currency must promise to pay a dollar equivalent in gold or silver money. Federal Reserve Notes (FRNs) make no such promises, and are not "money." A Federal Reserve Note is a debt obligation of the federal United States government, not "money?’ The federal United States government and the U.S. Congress were not and have never been authorized by the Constitution for the united states of America to issue currency of any kind, but only lawful money, -gold and silver coin.

It is essential that we comprehend the distinction between real money and paper money substitute. One cannot get rich by accumulating money substitutes, one can only get deeper into debt. We the People no longer have any "money." Most Americans have not been paid any "money" for a very long time, perhaps not in their entire life. Now do you comprehend why you feel broke? Now, do you understand why you are "bankrupt," along with the rest of the country?

Federal Reserve Notes (FRNs) are unsigned checks written on a closed account. FRNs are an inflatable paper system designed to create debt through inflation (devaluation of currency). when ever there is an increase of the supply of a money substitute in the economy without a corresponding increase in the gold and silver backing, inflation occurs.

Inflation is an invisible form of taxation that irresponsible governments inflict on their citizens. The Federal Reserve Bank who controls the supply and movement of FRNs has everybody fooled. They have access to an unlimited supply of FRNs, paying only for the printing costs of what they need. FRNs are nothing more than promissory notes for U.S. Treasury securities (T-Bills) - a promise to pay the debt to the Federal Reserve Bank.

There is a fundamental difference between "paying" and "discharging" a debt. To pay a debt, you must pay with value or substance (i.e. gold, silver, barter or a commodity). With FRNs, you can only discharge a debt. You cannot pay a debt with a debt currency system. You cannot service a debt with a currency that has no backing in value or substance. No contract in Common law is valid unless it involves an exchange of "good & valuable consideration." Unpayable debt transfers power and control to the sovereign power structure that has no interest in money, law, equity or justice because they have so much wealth already.

Their lust is for power and control. Since the inception of central banking, they have controlled the fates of nations.

The Federal Reserve System is based on the Canon law and the principles of sovereignty protected in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. In fact, the international bankers used a "Canon Law Trust" as their model, adding stock and naming it a "Joint Stock Trust." The U.S. Congress had passed a law making it illegal for any legal "person" to duplicate a "Joint Stock Trust" in 1873. The Federal Reserve Act was legislated post-facto (to 1870), although post-facto laws are strictly forbidden by the Constitution. [1:9:3]

The Federal Reserve System is a sovereign power structure separate and distinct from the federal United States government. The Federal Reserve is a maritime lender, and/or maritime insurance underwriter to the federal United States operating exclusively under Admiralty/Maritime law. The lender or underwriter bears the risks, and the Maritime law compelling specific performance in paying the interest, or premiums are the same.

Assets of the debtor can also be hypothecated (to pledge something as a security without taking possession of it.) as security by the lender or underwriter. The Federal Reserve Act stipulated that the interest on the debt was to be paid in gold. There was no stipulation in the Federal Reserve Act for ever paying the principle.

Prior to 1913, most Americans owned clear, allodial title to property, free and clear of any liens or mortgages until the Federal Reserve Act (1913)

"Hypothecated" all property within the federal United States to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, -in which the Trustees (stockholders) held legal title. The U.S. citizen (tenant, franchisee) was registered as a "beneficiary" of the trust via his/her birth certificate. In 1933, the federal United States hypothecated all of the present and future properties, assets and labor of their "subjects," the 14th Amendment U.S. citizen, to the Federal Reserve System.

In return, the Federal Reserve System agreed to extend the federal United States corporation all the credit "money substitute" it needed. Like any other debtor, the federal United States government had to assign collateral and security to their creditors as a condition of the loan. Since the federal United States didn’t have any assets, they assigned the private property of their "economic slaves", the U.S. citizens as collateral against the unpayable federal debt. They also pledged the unincorporated federal territories, national parks forests, birth certificates, and nonprofit organizations, as collateral against the federal debt. All has already been transferred as payment to the international bankers.

Unwittingly, America has returned to its pre-American Revolution, feudal roots whereby all land is held by a sovereign and the common people had no rights to hold allodial title to property. Once again, We the People are the tenants and sharecroppers renting our own property from a Sovereign in the guise of the Federal Reserve Bank. We the people have exchanged one master for another.

This has been going on for over eighty years without the "informed knowledge" of the American people, without a voice protesting loud enough. Now it’s easy to grasp why America is fundamentally bankrupt.

Why don’t more people own their properties outright?

Why are 90% of Americans mortgaged to the hilt and have little or no assets after all debts and liabilities have been paid? Why does it feel like you are working harder and harder and getting less and less?

We are reaping what has been sown, and the results of our harvest is a painful bankruptcy, and a foreclosure on American property, precious liberties, and a way of life. Few of our elected representatives in Washington, D.C. have dared to tell the truth. The federal United States is bankrupt. Our children will inherit this unpayable debt, and the tyranny to enforce paying it.

America has become completely bankrupt in world leadership, financial credit and its reputation for courage, vision and human rights. This is an undeclared economic war, bankruptcy, and economic slavery of the most corrupt order! Wake up America! Take back your Country."

artificial person (definition)

artificial person.

A legal entity, not a human being, recognized as a person in law to whom certain legal rights and duties may attached - e.g. a body corporate.

[ exact definitions from Barron's Canadian Law Dictionary, fourth edition (ISBN 0-7641-0616-3)]

natural person (defined)

Here are the exact definitions from Barron's Canadian Law Dictionary, fourth edition (ISBN 0-7641-0616-3):

natural person.

A natural person is a human being that has the capacity for rights and duties.

You will observe that the natural-person has the "capacity" (i.e. ability) for rights and duties, but not necessarily the obligation. The artificial-person has rights and duties that may be attached (i.e. assigned) by laws.

Protecting your Rights by Signing Documents "WITHOUT PREJUDICE"

by Lynne Meredith

It is a maxim of American law that any statute contrary to the Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, is null and void and no Citizen is bound to obey an unconstitutional law.

"An unconstitutional statute, though having the form of law, is in reality, no law and imposes no duties, confers no rights, creates no office, bestows no power on anyone and justifies no actions performed under it..." (late Am Jur 2d Sec. 256).

It is also a maxim of the Common Law that no Sovereign American Citizen of the 50 Republic states can be compelled in any action against his or her will. The 50 Republic states currently have an admitted [Territorial] "Government de facto," which Black's 2nd Law Dictionary defines as, "a government not established according to the Constitution ... a government deemed unlawful, deemed wrongful or unjust, which nevertheless receives habitual obedience from the bulk of the community."

When the Citizen educated in the constitutional, lawful and just (de jure) American law decides he or she no longer wishes to join the herd of habitually obedient (enslaved) sheeple being led to slaughter by blind and unquestioned obedience to unconstitutional, unjust, and unlawful laws, he or she is sometimes faced with defacto employees and foreign agents, uneducated in law, oblivious to our Constitution and drunk with a false sense of power. Faced with guns, handcuffs and a potential night in jail while the law is debated, such a Citizen can be put in a position of "compromise" in order to "buy their peace." There is a remedy and recourse, out of "de facto" statutes and back to "de jure constitutional law."

Typically all it takes to "buy your peace" with the de facto government agent or official is a signature. In their mind, you have consented to waive your rights. However, if you write the words, "Without Prejudice" above your signature, you are declaring that you are not waiving any of your rights under the Constitution or Common Law and any document containing the words "Without Prejudice" cannot be used as evidence against you, in Court or otherwise.

"Where an offer or admission is made "without prejudice,"... it is meant as a declaration that no rights or privileges of the party concerned are to be considered as thereby waived or lost..." Black's Law Dictionary.

The following information comes from Bouvier's 1914 Law Encyclopedia, under "Compromise."

"It must be permitted of men to buy their peace without prejudice to them. It has been held that one may buy his peace by compromising a claim which he knows is without right (Daily v. King 70 Mich. 568, 44 N.W. 959) but the compromise of an illegal claim will not sustain a promise." Read v. Hitching. 71 ME 590.

Documents Signed "Without Prejudice" are Not Admissible as Evidence "It may, however, be considered settled that letters or admissions containing the expression in substance that they are to be 'without prejudice' will not be admitted in evidence...an arrangement stating the letter was without prejudice was held to be inadmissible as evidence ... not only will the letter bearing the words, "without prejudice" but also the answer thereto, which was not so guarded, was inadmissible ...". Ferry v. Taylor 33 Mo. 323, Durgin v. Somers, 117 Mass 55, Molyneaux v. Collier 13 Ga. 406.

"When correspondence had commenced "without prejudice" but afterwards those words were dropped, it was immaterial; 6 Ont 719.

When you do not want to be "presumed" to be waiving rights or acquiescing to de facto statutes, you should sign all documents, "without prejudice," above your signature. These documents cannot then be used as prima facia evidence against you. However if you are making claims that you may want to use as potential evidence in your favor, do not sign "without prejudice.".

Sending a notice via registered mail.

You don't seal the envelope right away. You put a line on the Notice / affidavit / document that says Reg Mail#__________________

You get the post office to print out the reg mail sticker and you write down the tracking number that is on the sticker on your legal document, then you put the document in the envelope and seal it up. You should have two witnesses there to witness the paper going into the envelope, then get them to sign a Certificate of Mailing that has a copy of your papers attached to it.

You can use two or three good men to witness your documents. That's as good as a notary.

re: Your Birth Certificate.

It is a miracle of a time, and when you are all excited about having your baby, the government social worker that works at the hospital will approach you with some registration forms, telling you 'you have to register your baby'. She will hand you a form and on the cover it says in bold language, 'Every Parent must register' and 'After a baby is born every parent must register
the birth and legal name of their child'. Inside it says:
This brochure contains an IMPORTANT form which parents must complete for
every baby born in British Columbia. The Registration of Live Birth form is the official
Provincial record of the birth and the registration of the child's legal name. Everything you need to
complete the form is provided including detailed instructions and a pre-addressed envelope.'
(It is designed to make you believe you have an obligation to register and if you don't the
law will get involved and you will be in big trouble.)
Next paragraph reads:
By law, you must register the birth and legal name of your child within 30 days of
the birth. Naming a child and registering the birth are your important responsibilities because
registration is the only way of creating a permanent legal record of a person's birth. There is no fee to register a baby's birth so long as it is registered within 30 days. Simply fill in the registration form and mail it in the envelope provided, or bring it to any BC Vital Statistics Agency office. See back cover of this brochure for our office locations and telephone numbers.
It then states:
At the same time as you complete the mandatory Registration of Live Birth form, you have the option of ordering a birth certificate for your newborn.

Now lets take a very close look at what they are actually saying.

This brochure contains an IMPORTANT form which parents must complete for
every baby born in British Columbia. – this tells us ONLY the parents can complete it. The government cannot do it on your behalf. They use the word 'must'. Notice they do not use the word 'obligated' or 'obliged'. Must is a very tricky legal word, and when you find out its true meaning in a later bubble is burst, you will see what I mean.
Here they use the word 'baby'. They are referring to the human being; blood, flesh and
bone vessel of the spirit.
The Registration of Live Birth form is the official Provincial record of the birth and
the registration of the child's legal name. - Here they tell you the form is the Provincial record. Not yours.
Theirs. They have
also now slipped in the word 'child' instead of 'baby'. The reason is, there is no doubt in
law what a baby is;
there is ambiguity when you start using words like 'child'. The 'child', legally is the
'person'. Notice how also they tell you that you will be creating a 'legal name'. Not a lawful name, but a legal one. There is a big difference between the two, and it is one bubble that will be burst in following chapters.
By law, you must register the birth and legal name of your child within 30 days of
the birth. Again the word 'must'. And why must you do it within 30 days? What exactly is the penalty for registering late? Notice also the use of the words 'child' and 'legal name'.
Naming a child and registering the birth are your important responsibilities because
registration is the only way of creating a permanent legal record of a person's birth. - Now the trap is almost shut.
'Responsibility' refers not to what one is obliged to do, but who is to blame after the fact.
Notice here also how they are using not the word 'baby' nor 'child' to describe your offspring, they are using the word
'person' and they may not be describing your offspring at all. They tell you straight out,
by using the word 'person', that you will be creating a permanent one.
There is no fee to register a baby's birth so long as it is registered within 30 days. –
Ah-Ha! Here is why you have to do it within 30 days! To avoid paying a filling fee! Wow so scary! That is why they can get away with using the word must when there are no actual obligations.
Next paragraph, we find this:
At the same time as you complete the mandatory Registration of Live Birth form, you have the option of ordering a birth certificate for your newborn. –They also use the term 'mandatory'.
Notice what it is referring to; it is referring to the noun not the verb. The action is not mandatory; the form is, if you choose to register. Now we also apparently have some sort of option about ordering a Birth Certificate. Ask yourself this, if you have an option now, what makes you think you didn't have one to begin with?
Do you think they have an obligation to tell you what all your options are?
Here is the biggest question of all:
If what they are selling is such a good thing, why do they use so
much obvious deception to get us to buy it?
So this is essentially what is happening. When you register your offspring, you are
creating a legal entity, or person, you are associating that person with your offspring and then you are abandoning that entity to the government, who appears to be seizing it under the laws of maritime commerce.
This 'person' is in fact chattel property and can and is used for collateral on loans. Your registered baby is in fact a form of pledge and is worth a lot of money. Also, if they ever come for your baby acting under some legislation, it is that chattel property they are acting upon, not your offspring. But because it was all done apparently lawfully and legally, and you maintain the association between that entity and your baby, they have the right to affect your offspring.
The Birth Certificate is not just evidence of the birth; it is evidence that you have
abandoned the king of documents: the Record of Live Birth. They will not accept a certified and notarized true copy of the original. Nope, they need the original itself.
Imagine creating a raincoat for your offspring, the record of creating that raincoat and
evidence of ownership you give to your neighbour. He then comes over and claims the right to
remove the coat, with your child still in it. That is exactly the legal mechanism they use to remove our offspring.

BIRTH. The act of being born or wholly brought into separate existence. Black's 1st
. See Note, and Note at birth record.
Note: A man or a woman is "born," straw men are "wholly brought into separate
existence." Each event qualifies as a "birth." The birth certificate documents a muddied mixture of the two events that allows the system to both claim that it is "your" birth certificate yet also claim to hold title to (not ownership of) the corporately colored straw man.

BIRTH CERTIFICATE. A formal document which certifies as to the date and place of
one's birth and a recitation of his or her parentage, as issued by an official in charge of such records. Furnishing of such is often required to prove one's age. Black's 6th
. See Note, birth, birth record, document
of title, field
warehouse receipt, bond.
Note: A birth certificate is a negotiable instrument, a registered security, a stock
certificate evidencing, or representing, the preferred stock of the corporation and against which you
are the surety; it is a pedigree chattel document establishing the existence of your straw man, a
distinct artificial person with a fictitious name; it is a document of title to a straw man; it is a
warehouse receipt for your body; delivery receipt; industrial bond between you (flesh-and-blood
man or woman) and the industrial society and corporate US Government (artificial person).
In Canada, the original birth certificate is generally created at the PROVINCIAL level
(in rare instances city level) via birth documents from the hospital (for which the hospital
receives $$$ from the PROVINCE for causing the registration of the birth) and passed to the Provincial and Federal levels, and likely elsewhere. Per the definition of "birth" above, the document references both the newborn and the straw man. Certified copies of the birth certificate may be obtained at the Vital Statistics Office. Your birth certificate is one of the kinds of security instruments used by the Government to obtain loans from its creditor, under which it is bankrupt.
According to a researcher who worked on a research project for one of the world's largest
brokerage houses he discovered that in the year 1936 each American birth certificate
was assigned a value of $630,000.00. The investigative journalist's report beginning on page xxiii
confirms that (new) birth certificates today carry a value of $1,000,000.00 and that upon notification of the receipt of a new birth certificate at the Ministry of Finance, it takes out a loan for $1-million and purchases a bond, then invests the funds in either the stock market or bond market. The collateral for the loan for the bond issued against the birth certificate is you; i.e. your body, labor, and property. A man in Santa Barbara, California who obtained his original birth certificate from the Department of Commerce some years ago via a Freedom of Information Act request reported the endorsements of 17 different foreign countries thereon. There may also be other types of birth documents used by the Government, or others, to obtain loans/credit.
BIRTH RECORD. Official statistical data concerning dates and places of persons'
birth, as well as parentage, kept by local government officials. Black's 1
st
. See Note, birth certificate.
Note: Under "birth certificate" the definition refers to "one's birth," and under "birth
record" the definition refers to "persons' birth." "One" means flesh-and-blood man or woman;
"person" means artificial or juristic person. See individual.
All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.
Galileo Galilei (1564 - 1642) Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.
Voltaire (1694 - 1778)
Maxims:
If you know not the name of a thing, all knowledge of that thing perishes.
The name is the note of a thing.