Is the U.S. Military Manufacturing Ebola Vaccines to Be Tested on its Soldiers to Advance US Ability to Wage War?
By Julie L�vesque
Global Research, September 20, 2014
Region: sub-Saharan Africa, USA
Theme: Science and Medicine
The Obesity Vaccine
At the beginning of August 2014 Bloomberg published an article about the promising hopestobacco plants offer for developing an effective treatment for the deadly Ebola virus:

Tobacco plant-derived medicines, which are also being developed by a company whose investors include Philip Morris International Inc., are part of a handful of cutting edge plant-based treatments that are in the works for everything from pandemic flu to rabies using plants such as lettuce, carrots and even duckweed�
Another tobacco giant-backed company working on biotech drugs grown in tobacco plants is Medicago Inc. in Quebec City, which is owned by Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Corp. and Philip Morris.
Medicago is working on testing a vaccine for pandemic influenza and has a production greenhouse facility in North Carolina, said Jean-Luc Martre, senior director for government affairs at Medicago. Medicago is planning a final stage trial of the pandemic flu vaccine for next year, he said in a telephone interview…
Medicago is currently closely working with partners for the production of an Ebola antibody as well as other antibodies that are of interest for bio-defense, he said in an e-mail. He would not disclose who the partners were. (Ebola Tobacco Drug Joins Duckweed in Plant War on Disease, Bloomberg, August 6, 2014)



Ebola Tobacco Drug Joins Duckweed in Plant War on Dise...
On a small plot of land incongruously tucked amid a Kentucky industrial park sit five weather-beaten greenhouses. At the site, tobacco plants contain one of the mos...
View on www.bloomberg.com





Could one of these partners be the Pentagon?
In 2009, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), part of the U.S. Department of Defense, launches program called Blue Angel, which some have described as DARPAs vaccine manufacturing challenges.
DARPA issued a press release in late July 2012 announcing they had produced 10 million doses of an influenza vaccine in only one months time.


In a press release out of the agencys office this week, scientists with DARPA say they reach an important step in being able to combat a flu pandemic that might someday decimate the Earths population. By working with the Medicago Inc. vaccine company, the Pentagons cutting edge research lab says that they've used a massive harvest of tobacco plants to help produce a plethora of flu-fighting vaccines.

Testing confirmed that a single dose of the H1N1 VLP influenza vaccine candidate induced protective levels of hemagglutinin antibodies in an animal model when combined with a standard aluminum adjuvant, the agency writes, while still noting, though, that The equivalent dose required to protect humans from natural disease can only be determined by future, prospective clinical trials.

Vaccinating susceptible populations during the initial stage of a pandemic is critical to containment,Dr. Alan Magill, DARPA program manager, says in an official statement. They are looking at plant-based solutions to vaccine production as a more rapid and efficient alternative to the standard egg-based technologies, and the research is very promising.(DARPAs Blue Angel Pentagon Prepares Millions of Vaccines Against Future Global Flu, RT, July 28, 2012)

This link between the U.S. military and pharmaceutical companies in the production of flu vaccines raises serious questions, especially since the H1N1 pandemic has been exposed as a multibillion dollar fraud instigated by BigPharma and the World Health Organization (WHO).

A stunning new report reveals that top scientists who convinced the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare H1N1 a global pandemic held close financial ties to the drug companies that profited from the sale of those vaccines. This report, published in the British Medical Journal, exposes the hidden ties that drove WHO to declare a pandemic, resulting in billions of dollars in profits for vaccine manufacturers. (Mike Adams: WHO Scandal Exposed: Advisors Received Kickbacks From H1N1 Vaccine Manufacturers, Natural News, June 7, 2010)

In 2012, it was reported that Medicago was funded through a $21 million Technology Investment Agreement with DARPA. (RT, op. cit.)
After investing in medical research to manufacture vaccines, the U.S Department of Defense is now sending troops to deal with a pandemic in Africa. Is the military slowly replacing health authorities? If so, we can ask ourselves why. What is the real goal of this humanitarian intervention? Maybe the answer lies in the goal of DARPA's Blue Angel program?
In an interview last February, Blue Angels programme manager Dr. John Julias said:

The Blue Angel programme was launched by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in 2009 as a direct response to the swine flu pandemic. The project’s goal is to improve the US’s response to pandemic influenza through accelerated vaccine production…
The Blue Angel programme was built around the concept that the Department of Defense requires a capability to rapidly respond to any pandemic or biological threat that jeopardises warfighter readiness. (Chris Lo, Blue Angel: DARPA’s vaccine manufacturing challenge, pharmaceutical-technology.com, February 10, 2014)

So the goal is “to improve the US’s response to pandemic influenza” but it is built on a concept which aims to protect “warfighters” from “any pandemic or biological threat”, not the population in general.
Is this concept in any way related to the fact that “warfighters” instead of “health workers” are now being sent into areas affected by the Ebola pandemic? To test a vaccine against a “biological threat that jeopardises warfighter readiness”? Are these 3000 troops Obama is sending to Liberia being used as guinea pigs? There are precedent in this regard. This would not be the first time.
Last February RT reported:

A federal judge has ruled the United States Army must quickly inform veterans of any potentially harmful health effects stemming from the secret medical and drug experiments conducted on them during the Cold War.
According to a report by Courthouse News wire service, the ruling comes in favor of 7,800 soldiers claiming to have been involved in the experiments. After recruiting Nazi scientists to help through a program called “Project Paperclip,” the Army and CIA administered between 250 and 400 kinds of drugs to the soldiers in an attempt to advance US ability to wage war. (Judge sides with US servicemen used as guinea pigs in terrifying Cold War experiment, RT, Frebruary 7, 2014)

During the Persian Gulf War (1990-1991) experimental vaccines were also given to soldiers and several studies have concluded that the Gulf-War Syndrome was linked to vaccinations:

Gulf-War Syndrome (GWS) refers to a collection of symptoms in soldiers who served in the Persian Gulf War (1990-1991), or Gulf War 1. These symptoms include rash, severe fatigue, muscle and joint pain, headache, irritability, depression, unrefreshing sleep, gastrointestinal and respiratory disorders and neurological cognitive defects.

Apart from being exposed to a wide range of environmental hazards and toxic chemicals, US and UK Gulf War I veterans (GW1Vs) were also given large numbers of vaccines. In total, the US GW1Vs received, at least, 17 different vaccines [1] including live vaccines (polio and yellow fever as well as experimental vaccines that had not been approved (anthrax, botulinum toxoid) and were of doubtful efficacy [2]. In the UK, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has declared only 10 vaccines given, but records exist to show that some troops received a greater number [3]. Among them were two experimental vaccines, anthrax with pertussis as an adjuvant (shown in 1990 to cause serious deconditioning in mice) [4], and plague, given to UK but not USA troops [1]. The manufacturers of pertussis were not advised of the unlicensed use on GW1Vs [1,4].
Vaccine overload was identified as a significant factor in GWS…
These findings are consistent with those from other studies. A link between vaccinations and illness has been found among GW1Vs from UK and Canada [6]. (Dr. Mae-Wan Ho and Prof. Malcolm Hooper Vaccines, Gulf-War Syndrome & Bio-defence)

The stated goal enunciated by Obama of the U.S. soldiers’ mission in Liberia is to build medical centers and train health workers to operate them.
The National Institutes of Health, an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, has already developed an Ebola vaccine. In early September GlaxoSmithKline said it planned to begin manufacturing up to 10,000 doses of it, even though scientists had not yet decided if “the initial vaccine was promising enough” and ”safety studies cannot guarantee that experimental vaccines really work in an outbreak.” (Associated Press, Ebola vaccine research moving fast, CBSNews, September 8, 2014)
It is worth noting in this regard that several health hazards were in fact caused by the H1N1 vaccine. GlaxoSmithKline also recently pleaded guilty and paid “$3 billion to resolve fraud allegations and failure to report safety data”. (GlaxoSmithKline to Plead Guilty and Pay $3 Billion to Resolve Fraud Allegations and Failure to Report Safety Data, Department of Justice, July 2, 2014)
Terrorists Get Paid From Iraqi Banks: Gulf Capital Bought Iraqi Banks to Use the Dirty Money Laundering
August 18, 2011 Filled under Iraq Daily News
No Comments
Baghdad / Iraq’s Future-

Banking expert Iraq back from more countries in the ease of money laundering operations, revealing that the armed groups backed by neighboring countries receive paid easily from Iraqi banks and away from state control. The expert is the director of a Commissioner for a private Iraqi banks, declined to be named, in an interview (the future of Iraq): that these countries have played an important role in the revitalization of money laundering in Iraq through private banks and government and in coordination with Iraqi political figures prominent and powerful government.

The expert added: that the armed groups financed by regional countries and Iraq’s neighbors have made great achievements in this area by expanding its influence financial pointing out that these groups receive each month millions of dollars in salaries and benefits by Iraqi banks under the cover of bank transfers or investment projects or grants to civil society organizations.

He banking that among the most important private banks that deal is the modern banks, which often have a small capital as there are well-known private banks such as Bank of (…) banks are well known and active in Baghdad in particular, as these banks have been sold to the Gulf states, which operates according to the interests of Gulf banks and raised by a lot of suspicions, especially in their own countries and the United States on the grounds that the global banking system and major companies, financial transfer is U.S. origin, recalling what happened in the case of Bank of Basra, and how to arrest the manager Commissioner convicted in the case of embezzlement of funds from one of the government banks millions of dollars.

However, expert: that these armed groups backed by neighboring countries, located in southern, central and northern Iraq to deal with the banks identified in these areas and receive their salaries through collusion with the points of the window and easily.

For the first time reveals the Iraqi Central Bank for that financial institutions has become one of the most liquid and washing laundering and the financing of armed operations in Iraq, calling for expanding the powers of the Anti-Money Laundering and its supply of material financial, human and technical with the Iraqi private banks recognize that they lack the possibility of anti-money laundering due to their lack of expertise in this area.
Apologize Then Call it a Day
Big Banks and Drug Money
by HELEN REDMOND
The illicit drug trade relies heavily on money laundering because it is almost exclusively a cash business. Drug interdiction, while an essential component of attacking the illicit drug trade cannot, standing alone, reverse the tide of illicit drugs. Combating money laundering, combined with strong interdiction efforts, offers a more effective law enforcement response. - Money Laundering in Florida: Report of the Legislative Task Force, 1999
Stuart Gulliver, the Chief Executive of the London-based international banking giant HSBC said: “We accept responsibility for our past mistakes. We have said we are profoundly sorry for them and we do so again… What happened in Mexico and the US is shameful, it’s embarrassing, it’s very painful for all of us in the firm…The HSBC of today is a fundamentally different organization from the one that made those mistakes.”
What was Mr. Gulliver apologizing for and was he sincere? His bank got caught laundering tons of cash for drug cartels and alleged terrorists. That is a crime.
Lanny Breuer, the Assistant Attorney General for the Department of Justice (DOJ) explained at a press conference, “HSBC is being held accountable for stunning failures of oversight – and worse – that led the bank to permit narcotics traffickers and others to launder hundreds of millions of dollars through HSBC subsidiaries… The record of dysfunction that prevailed at HSBC for many years was astonishing.”
U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch added, “HSBC’s blatant failure to implement proper anti-money laundering controls facilitated the laundering of at least $881 million in drug proceeds through the U.S. financial system…”
As punishment, HSBC was assessed a fine of 1.9 billion — about four weeks’ worth of its pre-tax profits. No bank officials who were caught red-handed will be prosecuted or imprisoned.
Take responsibility, apologize, pay a fine for your drug crimes and then call it a day. Go home to family who will forgive you for doing business with so-called “narco-terrorists.” Prison time? Felony record? Asset forfeiture? No. Not for drug trafficking executives of laundromat/banks that are “too big to fail” or jail.
It is not so for those individuals and organizations that provide other, equally vital services to the $400 billion illicit drug trade. From the heads of Afghan drug cartels, to drug couriers like the Panamanian woman who had cocaine implanted in her breasts, to injection drug users in America’s needle parks, they will be demonized as purveyors of poison and death then punished severely. They won’t go home for a very long time, if ever.
The U.S. justice system will mete out life sentences without the possibility of parole or mandatory minimum sentences of decades to drug kingpins, mules and the drug addicted. Drug law offender’s lives behind bars will become a dystopia that the profits of the privatized correctional industries depend on.
The convicted will be disappeared in to twenty-first century concentration camps in remote, rural towns. Some prisoners will end up in solitary confinement and be driven mad. Their children will be orphaned and their families destroyed by shame, lack of visitation and communication.
Everything will be legally stolen from drug law violators. Cars, jewelry, family heirlooms, clothes, cash, homes and property will be seized and put up for sale to benefit various branches of law enforcement.
Check out the Asset Forfeiture Program at the DOJ website. You can bid on Rita A. Crundwell’s farmland in Dixon, Illinois. If you prefer a warmer climate, there is beachfront property for sale in the Dominican Republic.
Admitting guilt, apologizing, promising “fundamental” change and paying a financial penalty will not suffice for the poor, low hanging fruit convicted of drug crimes. They have to be taught a “tough love” lesson in zero tolerance, and this: “You do the crime, you do the time.”
This stripping the person of everything that connects them to society and to other human beings and locking them up in spaces smaller than a bathroom has to happen because as the Mission Statement of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) asserts, those involved in the drug trade are criminals who “…perpetrate violence in our communities and terrorize citizens through fear and intimidation.” The DEA and the DOJ’s unapologetic modus operandi in the forty-year long War on Drugs is, Lock ‘em up and throw away the key!
Except when the criminals are rich, well-connected bankers who wash drug trafficker’s dirty Benjamin Franklin’s clean. Tough on crime and the rule of law doesn’t apply to them.
DOJ attorneys argued that aggressively prosecuting HSBC could destabilize the entire international banking system. Breuer said in an interview with the Washington Post, “If you prosecute one of the largest banks in the world, do you risk that people will lose jobs, other financial institutions and other parties will leave the bank, and there will be some kind of event in the world economy?” In other words, banks that break the law by laundering money for drug cartels and rogue states are immune from criminal prosecution because a global financial meltdown could be triggered.
But that didn’t happen twenty-five years ago when the Bank of Credit and Commerce International Bank (BCCI) was prosecuted for laundering drug profits. Like HSBC, BCCI did business with an international cast of unsavory drug dealers and dictators. BCCI helped former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega and the Columbian Medellin cocaine cartel convert millions of dollars into pesos. An aggressive investigation led by Senator John Kerry and New York District Attorney Robert Morgenthau concluded that BCCI was “one of the biggest criminal enterprises in world history.”
BCCI was indicted for money laundering, grand larceny and bribery. Bank branches were shut down in seven countries and restricted in dozens more. The criminals at BCCI were punished and effectively put out of business. They got drug war tough love and the world banking system didn’t crash.
The convictions almost didn’t happen. The Bush Administration only wanted a slap on the wrist for BCCI, but Kerry was apoplectic. He went on national television slamming the hypocrisy: “We send drug people to jail for the rest of their life, and these guys who are bankers in the corporate world seem to just walk away, and it’s business as usual…When banks engage knowingly in the laundering of money, they should be shut down. It’s that simple, it really is.”
That was in 1999. Where is Senator Kerry and the rest of Congress’s outrage for the career drug criminals at HSBC that facilitated the illegal deposit of millions of dollars packed into specially designed boxes that would fit through the bank’s teller windows in Mexico?
Why isn’t the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations that accused HSBC of exposing the United States “financial system to money laundering and terrorist financing risks” and for violating the Trading With the Enemy Act screaming hysterically that those who fund “narco-terrorism” must be punished to keep America safe?
The most Congress could muster was a letter written by Rep. Barney Frank to Attorney General Eric Holder asking him to reconsider the agreement with HSBC. A letter. Wow! That’s tough on crime?
How come the nation’s top drug warrior Michelle Leonhart, Administrator of the DEA, isn’t demanding that HSBC officials pay for their crimes? According to an investigation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), from 2006 to 2010 the bank laundered millions in profits for the Sinaloa drug cartel in Mexico and the Norte Del Valle cartel in Columbia through the Black Market Peso Exchange (BMPE.)
And why isn’t Leonhart extraditing Gulliver and other senior bank executives to the United States to face drug trafficking and narco-terrorism charges?
The DEA and the DOJ gloat in their ability to extradite or simply seize alleged drug kingpins from all over the world and bring them to the United States to stand trial – especially suspects from Afghanistan and Latin America. They’re not concerned about the impact that these extraditions will have on the international drug trade. The consequence is often an uptick in violence and murder as internecine fighting erupts to reconfigure drug markets.
The case of Haji Bagcho, a 70-year-old Afghan man convicted of drug trafficking and narco-terrorism reveals the double standard of the DEA and the DOJ when it comes to who they chose to criminally prosecute for drug crimes. Afghan drug traffickers are shown no leniency, are never offered sweetheart deals and are prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
Both Breuer and Leonhart expressed outrage and contempt for Bagcho’s alleged crimes. Breuer said, “Haji Bagcho led a massive drug production and trafficking operation that supplied heroin in more than 20 countries, including the United States. In 2006 alone, he conducted heroin transactions worth more than $250 million. Today’s life sentence is an appropriate punishment for one of the most notorious heroin traffickers in the world.”
Leonhart added with her usual bravado, “This is DEA at its finest, working in close collaboration with our Afghan partners to end the long reign of this Afghan drug lord whose drug proceeds financed terror. One of the world’s most prolific drug traffickers who helped fund the Taliban will spend his remaining days behind bars in a U.S. prison…”
Now imagine those words being hurled at Mr. Gulliver and his “massive” operation (HSBC has branches in 85 countries) “whose drug proceeds financed terror.” Imagine “notorious,” high-level HSBC officials spending their “remaining days behind bars in a U.S. prison.” Hard to imagine isn’t it?
But not for Afghans like Haji Bagcho or Haji Bashar who was also given a life sentence even though he cooperated with the DEA and the DOJ. And there’s Haji Juma Khan. He’s been held in solitary confinement awaiting trial since he was extradited to the United States in 2008. Incarcerating Bagcho, Bashar and Khan hasn’t weakened the Taliban or made a dent in the Afghan drug trade. Afghanistan retains its premier position as the number one grower of poppy and exporter of heroin to Central Asia and Europe. Moreover, Afghans are involved in the illicit drug trade out of economic necessity as are Mexicans, because the legal economies in both countries are in shambles. British bankers have no such reason – their motive is pure greed.
It is a mathematical certainty that as long as drugs are illegal, banks will continue to launder drug trafficker’s money. Superprofits are guaranteed and the financial penalties aren’t a deterrent.
The HSBC scandal shows how the illicit drug trade is completely integrated into the world financial system. I In the face of the enormous economic power of the global banking industry to circumvent anti-laundering regulations, winning the war on drugs is utterly futile.
The only solution is to legalize and regulate the sale of all drugs. It is an inescapable reality that heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana are global commodities that cross all borders. Millions of people buy drugs and making them illegal has never stopped the use or abuse of them.
Ending the war on drugs would not only save human lives and billions of dollars, it would free up law enforcement agencies to investigate and prosecute banks whose real crimes are far worse than laundering drug money.
A Theft Bigger Than Madoff
Iraq Reconstruction: the Greatest Fraud in US History?
by PATRICK COCKBURN
Arbil
In what could turn out to be the greatest fraud in US history, American authorities have started to investigate the alleged role of senior military officers in the misuse of $125bn (£88bn) in a US -directed effort to reconstruct Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein. The exact sum missing may never be clear, but a report by the US Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) suggests it may exceed $50bn, making it an even bigger theft than Bernard Madoff’s notorious Ponzi scheme.
"I believe the real looting of Iraq after the invasion was by US officials and contractors, and not by people from the slums of Baghdad," said one US businessman active in Iraq since 2003.
In one case, auditors working for SIGIR discovered that $57.8m was sent in "pallet upon pallet of hundred-dollar bills" to the US comptroller for south-central Iraq, Robert J Stein Jr, who had himself photographed standing with the mound of money. He is among the few US officials who were in Iraq to be convicted of fraud and money-laundering.
Despite the vast sums expended on rebuilding by the US since 2003, there have been no cranes visible on the Baghdad skyline except those at work building a new US embassy and others rusting beside a half-built giant mosque that Saddam was constructing when he was overthrown. One of the few visible signs of government work on Baghdad’s infrastructure is a tireless attention to planting palm trees and flowers in the centre strip between main roads. Those are then dug up and replanted a few months later.
Iraqi leaders are convinced that the theft or waste of huge sums of US and Iraqi government money could have happened only if senior US officials were themselves involved in the corruption. In 2004-05, the entire Iraq military procurement budget of $1.3bn was siphoned off from the Iraqi Defense Ministry in return for 28-year-old Soviet helicopters too obsolete to fly and armored cars easily penetrated by rifle bullets. Iraqi officials were blamed for the theft, but US military officials were largely in control of the Defense Ministry at the time and must have been either highly negligent or participants in the fraud.
American federal investigators are now starting an inquiry into the actions of senior US officers involved in the program to rebuild Iraq, according to The New York Times, which cites interviews with senior government officials and court documents. Court records reveal that, in January, investigators subpoenaed the bank records of Colonel Anthony B Bell, now retired from the US Army, but who was previously responsible for contracting for the reconstruction effort in 2003 and 2004. Two federal officials are cited by the paper as saying that investigators are also looking at the activities of Lieutenant-Colonel Ronald W Hirtle of the US Air Force, who was senior contracting officer in Baghdad in 2004. It is not clear what specific evidence exists against the two men, who have both said they have nothing to hide.
The end of the Bush administration which launched the war may give fresh impetus to investigations into frauds in which tens of billions of dollars were spent on reconstruction with little being built that could be used. In the early days of the occupation, well-connected Republicans were awarded jobs in Iraq, regardless of experience. A 24-year-old from a Republican family was put in charge of the Baghdad stock exchange which had to close down because he allegedly forgot to renew the lease on its building.
In the expanded inquiry by federal agencies, the evidence of a small-time US businessman called Dale C. Stoffel who was murdered after leaving the US base at Taiji north of Baghdad in 2004 is being re-examined. Before he was killed, Mr Stoffel, an arms dealer and contractor, was granted limited immunity from prosecution after he had provided information that a network of bribery – linking companies and US officials awarding contracts – existed within the US-run Green Zone in Baghdad. He said bribes of tens of thousands of dollars were regularly delivered in pizza boxes sent to US contracting officers.
So far, US officers who have been successfully prosecuted or unmasked have mostly been involved in small-scale corruption. Often sums paid out in cash were never recorded. In one case, an American soldier put in charge of reviving Iraqi boxing gambled away all the money but he could not be prosecuted because, although the money was certainly gone, nobody had recorded if it was $20,000 or $60,000.
Iraqi ministers admit the wholesale corruption of their government. Ali Allawi, the former finance minister, said Iraq was "becoming like Nigeria in the past when all the oil revenues were stolen". But there has also been a strong suspicion among senior Iraqis that US officials must have been complicit or using Iraqi appointees as front-men in corrupt deals. Several Iraqi officials given important jobs at the urging of the US administration in Baghdad were inexperienced. For instance, the arms procurement chief at the centre of the Defence Ministry scandal, was a Polish-Iraqi, 27 years out of Iraq, who had run a pizza restaurant on the outskirts of Bonn in the 1990s.
In many cases, contractors never started or finished facilities they were supposedly building. As security deteriorated in Iraq from the summer of 2003 it was difficult to check if a contract had been completed. But the failure to provide electricity, water and sewage disposal during the US occupation was crucial in alienating Iraqis from the post-Saddam regime.
Female suicide bomber kills 39 Shia on pilgrimage
A woman suicide bomber blew herself up in the middle of a crowd of Shia pilgrims who were celebrating a religious festival south of Baghdad yesterday, killing 39 and wounding 69 others. The explosion was the latest in a series of attacks in different parts of Iraq which undermine hopes that the country would become less violent as the government re-establishes its authority.
The bombing took place at Iskandariya, 25 miles south of Baghdad, as hundreds of thousands of Shia marched to the holy city of Kerbala to celebrate the festival of Arbain. Female bombers are increasingly used by al-Qa’ida in Iraq because their long black robes make it easier for them to conceal explosives and because male soldiers and police, 40,000 of whom are protecting the pilgrims, are inhibited from searching women.
"We came here for the pilgrimage," said Sadia Ali, who was walking to Kerbala from the Sadr City slum. "We aren’t afraid. We’ve been through worse events in the past." A day earlier another bomber killed eight pilgrims and injured 15 in Kerbala, showing al-Qa’ida still has a network capable of launching sectarian attacks.
The success of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki – running on a non-religious platform – in coming first in the polls in Baghdad and Basra in the provincial elections on January 31 kindled hopes that secularism and nationalism were beginning to overcome sectarian differences. Recent bombings and shootings show that the Sunni-Shia conflict remains very much alive though casualties are much lower than in the 2005-07 civil war.
In northern Iraq, tension between Arabs and Kurds is increasing in the wake of the election that saw Kurdish control of Nineveh province and its capital Mosul eroded. The Kurds previously had a majority on the local council thanks to a boycott by the Sunni majority in the previous election in 2005. But in the latest poll the Kurds won 31 per cent, about their proportion of the three million population of Nineveh, and al-Hadba, a Sunni Arab coalition dedicated to rolling back Kurdish influence, won 48 per cent.
In the days since the election, there has been a surge of violence. On Monday, four American soldiers and an interpreter were killed by a roadside bomb. Two important local politicians have been assassinated. The latest was Ahmed Fathi al-Jabouri who was walking out of a mosque after evening prayers when a car drew up and a gunman shot him in the head. Elsewhere in the city there have been repeated bomb attacks on police and government installations with heavy loss of life. Some of this violence is a battle for power within the Sunni community but overall friction between Arabs and Kurds has been growing across northern Iraq in the past six months. The government of Mr Maliki has been sending units of the Iraqi army which are Arab to replace those that are Kurdish in both Kirkuk and Nineveh provinces. This is highly sensitive since the Kurds claim all of Kirkuk and Kurdish parts of Nineveh outside Mosul.
Kurdish leaders do not conceal their anger at Mr Maliki’s actions in disputed areas. "There is an effort to move away Kurdish officers above a certain rank," says Safeen Dizayee, a senior official of the Kurdistan Democratic Party led by the Kurdish President Masoud Barzani. He says that last year the Iraqi army’s Twelfth Division was moved close to Kirkuk without prior consultation with the Kurds. He adds that Mr Maliki’s government is "becoming a one-man show", taking important decisions, such as appointing commanders of the 16 Iraqi army divisions, without consultation with his Kurdish coalition partners.
Mr Maliki’s confrontational attitude to the Kurds did him nothing but good with Arab Iraqis in the election. But the Kurds are highly sensitive to any move by non-Kurdish troops into disputed areas which they hope will join their autonomous area, the Kurdish Regional Government, through a referendum as they have long demanded.
U.S.: Iraqi audit points to huge money laundering
AP 12:38 p.m. EDT October 30, 2012 from usatoday.com
Story Highlights

Iraq's top auditor disclosed the findings to American officials last month
Auditors believe as much as $800M in U.S. currency is being sent out of Iraq illegally each week
Finding follows a recent probe by Iraq's Board of Supreme Audit into the country's central bank

BAGHDAD (AP) — American investigators say Iraqi auditors believe as much as $800 million in U.S. currency is being sent out of the country illegally each week.
A report by the U.S. Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction released on Tuesday says Iraq's top auditor, Abdul-Basit Turki, disclosed the findings about the extent of the alleged money laundering to American officials last month.
The finding follows a recent probe by Iraq's Board of Supreme Audit into the country's central bank and daily auctions it holds to exchange Iraqi dinars for dollars.
BSA president Turki was recently named interim head of the central bank after authorities removed the bank's longtime governor amid an investigation into alleged financial wrongdoing.
BSA spokesman Imad Ismail had no immediate details about the audit.
CBI Auctions Accused of Encouraging Money Laundering
April 29, 2013 by Amir Abdallah No Comments
dinar 25000 note e1321208625166 CBI Auctions Accused of Encouraging Money Laundering
Man inspects 25,000 Iraqi dinars
Hard currency auctions held daily by the Central Bank of Iraq are facing allegations of making money laundering more widespread, and potentially allowing dollars to be funneled into Iran.
For nearly ten years, the CBI has held auctions each day, in which hard currency is sold to banks, companies and trading entities. Individuals are not permitted to participate, and any organisation that does want to be involved must have a $400,000 capital. Showing transaction and import receipts are the primary methods of exchange. Currently, $1 is sold for 1,118 Iraqi dinars, and all applications must go through three separate bodies: the money laundering division of the central bank, the economic crime unit, and the criminal division of the MOI.
The issue however, is that these measures have become so stringent, that purchases declined rapidly, and the CBI allowed a select few banks to directly sell dollars to Iraqi citizens. In theory, this would be for travel purposes, and the cap has been set at $5000 per month, but the demand has led to fraud.
With the exchange rate on the black market around $1 to 1,225 dinars, the purchase of dollars from the permitted private banks is in high demand. So much so, that there have been instances in which traders are renting out passports to allow people to buy more than their allocation.
Furthermore, there have been claims that the private banks are not always dealing directly with individuals. While the CBI won’t confirm evidence, it is suggested that some intermediaries are working with these banks for commission, and it is becoming increasingly lucrative.
The Central Bank themselves have admitted that their own strict measures have led to a fall in transactions, and therefore a lower exchange rate, but they have refused to comment on the possibility that they have instigated illegal activity and money laundering.
It’s certainly true that they are concerned about the black markets for currency trading, and the leaking of hard currency into Iran is another issue. Allowing these private banks to deal with individuals has decreased security, and when 3rd party intermediaries are introduced, there is a real risk that dollars are leaving Iraq for Iran.
To conclude, it seems essential that the CBI reins in these problems quickly. They unquestionably need to feed US dollars into the economy, but also need to maintain a balance of security. Experts have asserted that the strict initial measures have restricted the market, and the subsequent lax selling has gone too far. If the currency is ever to reach a level where it is a candidate for global FX trading, forensic monitoring of an exchange within Iraq and beyond its borders is essential.

yep,leave it to GlobalResearch!

cut & paste is pretty easy.......however, reading all of this junk is a different matter altogether.....thanks, but i'll pass on this tome...

like I said,

you have to have skin the game... l

love you too

Just like the CIA created AIDS and Crack Cocaine to kill off the African American community?

Besides, we probably don't need to create it. We probably have samples stored at Fort Detrick to develop vaccines. One of the reasons we were probably able to save the American's life who contracted it.

yeah... ain't that the same ole stuff... and WE pay for this nonsense..our money,,, but you know its been going on forever... time to wake up though...

ya think

Boy I am glad I own Shares in ALCOA!
They have to increase in value,judging from the increased use of Aluminum!

I remember... they call them alloy wheels rims etc... it cost a fortune if your vehicle does not come with these as standard equipment... pricey
to say the least

dont get me started

not to mention the Texas dept of weather modification we dont use alluminum any more

Actually it is the same stuff. Do some research on Fort Detrick. A bunch of Ebola infected monkeys were shipped to the United States back in the 90's and they were taken there, euthanized and we have been working on and studying the virus there for years. That was one of the primary focuses of the base for many years, and it's a damn good thing to because we are the ONLY country as far as I know who has successfully cured people who have come down with it.

Point is, we don't have to make it. We have it. We also don't use chemical weapons BTW so we have no use for it.

Hmmmmmm......

Tell that to the Iraqis, the Afghans and our soldiers suffering from the ill effects of depleted uranium munitions.....

You might also recall your history and remember the US is the only nation to ever use a nuclear device against another......TWICE!

That's not to say it wasn't what was needed being wrapped up in 2 wars at the time, or that it saved many thousands of lives, but the USA has a history of "Victory by whatever means!".....even including mercenaries like Blackwater, overthrowing elected govts, assassination, false flags like the Gulf of Tonkin, Operation North Woods, and the attack on the USS Liberty, and many opthers.

So before you whitewash with a word like "doesn't"..... remember your history!

I love my country but its leadership can't be trusted since 1913, the enactment of the Federal Reserve, and money in politics making it a "desired and profitable" career!

Is it any wonder the nations of the East have a "grudge" against us as a nation?

Trust me..... it's NOT because we are free!

yeah, I was kinda shaking my head at that too there.

Only takes 5 generations to forget your ancestors history.

hummm, must be accelerating lately?