Washington - It's something any bank would demand to know before handing out a loan: Where's the money going?
But after receiving billions in aid from U.S. taxpayers, the nation's largest banks say they can't track exactly how they're spending the money or they simply refuse to discuss it.
"We've lent some of it. We've not lent some of it. We've not given any accounting of, 'Here's how we're doing it,'" said Thomas Kelly, a spokesman for JPMorgan Chase, which received $25 billion in emergency bailout money. "We have not disclosed that to the public. We're declining to."
Puppet Masters
Millions of people across the Middle East and Asia have lost access to the internet after two undersea cables in the Mediterranean suffered severe damage.
Huge numbers in Egypt and India were left struggling to get online as a result of the outage, when the major internet pipeline between Egypt and Italy was cut.
Internet Service Providers (ISPs) throughout the region, including those in United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, also reported problems. International telephone calls, which have also been affected, are being rerouted to work around the problem.
Huge numbers in Egypt and India were left struggling to get online as a result of the outage, when the major internet pipeline between Egypt and Italy was cut.
Internet Service Providers (ISPs) throughout the region, including those in United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, also reported problems. International telephone calls, which have also been affected, are being rerouted to work around the problem.
"So Guantanamo has been very, very valuable. And I think they'll discover that trying to close it is a very hard proposition."
The Chinese government has quietly begun preventing access again to Web sites that it had stopped blocking during the Olympic Games in China in August, Internet experts said on Tuesday.
Liu Jianchao, a spokesman for China's Foreign Ministry, said at his semi-weekly news conference on Tuesday in Beijing that the Chinese government had a right to censor Web sites that violate the country's laws. He added that "some Web sites," which he did not identify, had violated China's law against secession by suggesting that there are two Chinas - a reference to the Beijing government's longstanding position that mainland China and Taiwan form a single China.
Comment: It is obviously against China law to have an opinion that differs from the Chinese government. Hmmmm, sounds like what is happening in the West. They must have been taking notes while at the Beijing Olympics!
Liu Jianchao, a spokesman for China's Foreign Ministry, said at his semi-weekly news conference on Tuesday in Beijing that the Chinese government had a right to censor Web sites that violate the country's laws. He added that "some Web sites," which he did not identify, had violated China's law against secession by suggesting that there are two Chinas - a reference to the Beijing government's longstanding position that mainland China and Taiwan form a single China.
Comment: It is obviously against China law to have an opinion that differs from the Chinese government. Hmmmm, sounds like what is happening in the West. They must have been taking notes while at the Beijing Olympics!
China defended Tuesday the blocking of websites it said violated Chinese law and urged Internet companies to respect its legal system.
"The Chinese government conducts necessary management over the Internet. It is the same with other nations," foreign ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao told journalists.
"You cannot deny, some websites actually contain content that violates China's laws."
Liu cited websites that maintain that Taiwan is an independent nation separate from China, a view that violates China's anti-secession law, he said.
"I hope that websites can practise self-restraint and not do things that violate China's law," he said.
"The Chinese government conducts necessary management over the Internet. It is the same with other nations," foreign ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao told journalists.
"You cannot deny, some websites actually contain content that violates China's laws."
Liu cited websites that maintain that Taiwan is an independent nation separate from China, a view that violates China's anti-secession law, he said.
"I hope that websites can practise self-restraint and not do things that violate China's law," he said.
The big news this week was the sudden exposure of a massive $50 billion Ponzi Scheme run it seems singlehandedly by Bernard Madoff a prominent New York Zionist, financier and philanthropist. The exposure is somewhat surreal while the resulting financial waves seem likely to hit, so we are told, many of the leading names in banking together with many of the most wealthy individuals in the US. There is certainly ample reason to believe that there is much more to the story than meets the eye.
In the same week the surreal dominated the news with US Treasuries briefly touching negative interest rates, the US automaker bailout descending into political farce, Marc Dreier the highly successful New York lawyer is caught trying to con hedge funds out of $380 million and Obama's team talk of which nations the US will leave to collapse in 2009. Of course silence echoes through the corridors of power in relation to the Israeli perpetrated holocaust in Palestine.
In the same week the surreal dominated the news with US Treasuries briefly touching negative interest rates, the US automaker bailout descending into political farce, Marc Dreier the highly successful New York lawyer is caught trying to con hedge funds out of $380 million and Obama's team talk of which nations the US will leave to collapse in 2009. Of course silence echoes through the corridors of power in relation to the Israeli perpetrated holocaust in Palestine.
President George W. Bush has launched "Operation Legacy," which he placed in the hands of his ultimate advisor, indeed his "brain," Karl Rove. Remember Rove? He's the man who refused to testify under oath when summoned by Congress to do so and was recently identified in a Congressional report as the plotter behind the U.S. Attorneys scandal, among other trainwrecks. The Rove effort features a 2-page set of talking points which have been circulated to members of the administration's team highlighting the supposedly major Bush accomplishments which have begun to fill the American media. They start with the contention that "Bush kept us safe" by preventing any further attack on American soil after 9/11. Really?
President Obama is the latest manager of an ideological machine that transcends electoral power. Asked what his supporters would do when reality intruded, Stephen Walt, an Obama adviser, said: "They have nowhere else to go."
Dawood Ibrahim, a prominent drug dealer, is behind the recent attack on hotels in the Indian city of Mumbai, which makes it a good example of how illegal drug schemes are used to finance terrorism, Russian Federal Drug Control Service chief Viktor Ivanov said.
Comment: And since Dawood Ibrahim is a CIA asset, the US is not only behind the terrorism it uses to justify the "War on Terror" it is also behind the illicit drug trade it uses to justify the "War on Drugs."
Recent press reports on developments with regard to last month's attacks in Mumbai, India indicate the role of Dawood Ibrahim, a wanted crime boss, terrorist, and drug trafficker, is being downplayed, possibly the result of a deal taking place behind the scenes between the governments of the US, Pakistan, and India, to have others involved in the Mumbai attacks turned over while quietly diverting attention from a man who some say could reveal embarrassing secrets about the CIA's involvement in criminal enterprises.
Comment: It is only a matter of time before the Western nations will also be censoring the internet. They are doing it in the media right now. Are the Western media trying to deflect our gaze elsewhere as they bring the rest of the world's internet under their thumbs?
After all, psychopaths rise to the top in all countries - if we let them.