The Repat Racket

The Repat Racket describes the gigantic boondoggle that is the Veterans’ Affairs Dept.

Anyone, however briefly or tenuously connected to war, gets public funds for whatever ailments he/she contracts, however many years after his service:

“Let me tell you about my uncle. He wouldn’t mind, even if he were alive. One day he signed a piece of paper, and received a free trip to a lot of exotic places, such as Greece, Crete, Egypt, and North Africa. He also got a free trip home which, he cheerfully used to add, had never been guaranteed.
Several decades later, when he was closer in age to eighty than seventy, he happened to muse to a friend at the R.S.L., “It’s a bit of a nuisance. My hearing’s getting worse, and I’ll have to get a new hearing aid. They’re so darned expensive.”
“Don’t worry!” said his friend. “Repat [that is, the Department of Veterans’ Affairs] will provide it” – and he got him to sign another piece of paper. Then, in no time at all, so it seemed, he found himself in receipt, not only of a new hearing aid, but also of a 40% disability pension.
All this rather puzzled him, so, knowing I was an employee of Veterans’ Affairs, he broached the subject on his next visit. “What I can’t understand,” he said, “was how I got that pension. I never applied for it.”
“Oh yes, you did,” I replied. “That form you filled out was headed: ‘Claim for Pension and Treatment for a War-Caused Condition’.”
“But it wasn’t war-caused,” he replied. “It was due to plain old age.”
“Well,” I explained, “the Department would have taken the view that if you hadn’t heard all those guns, you wouldn’t have reached the current level of hearing loss for perhaps another five years.”
He looked dumbfounded. “Well, that is quite amazing,” he said.
“And that,” said I, “is the difference between Social Security [now Centrelink] and Veterans’ Affairs. Social Security is designed so that any lying parasite can rip off the system. Veterans’ Affairs is designed so that even honest people can rip off the system.”

And that’s about it. I could tell you innumerable anecdotes about the claims I have processed. Take, for example, the old man who lodged a claim for “eyes” because he suffered from cataracts and glaucoma – which are major problems, I agree, but not obviously connected to any military service. It never occurred to him to ask how many men of his age group suffer from these diseases, or what sort of conditions cause them. Rather, he automatically assumed they may must have resulted from his service in the Pacific Islands forty years before. When I telephoned him for more details, the following conversation ensured:
“Well, there were the batteries.”
“The batteries?”
“Yes, I had to fill the batteries for the trucks, and the fumes from the acid made my eyes water.”
“I see.”
“Then there were the centipedes.”
“The centipedes?”
“Yes, you know what a centipede is? Well, in the Islands they were about a foot long. Sometimes you would lift a stone, and there they were. You couldn’t avoid them.”
By now my mind was starting to boggle, but I had to ask the obvious question: “So, how would they affect your eyes?”
“Well, they’d spray some sort of vapour at you, and it’d get in your eyes.”
Good grief! I thought. Where do people get these ideas?
All right, he probably left school at fourteen. The younger generation should be a bit better educated or more savvy. Or are they? A much younger soldier – I think he was even too young to have gone to Vietnam – lodged a claim for about a dozen non-specific symptoms – such as aches and pains, chronic constipation and diarrhoea (!), and general fatigue. In fact, they had caused him to give up his favourite recreation of marathon kayak racing. He could no longer do it without aching all over and feeling exhausted….”

Of course, this kind of  boon-doggle isn’t unique to the VA. It’s endemic in every walk of life. Patients file for multi-millions in damages, even when they suffered trivial losses.  Workers do stupid things on the job and then sue deep pockets.

Feds gun-grabbing across America

International gun-grabbing signed into place:

Secretary of State John F. Kerry said Monday the United States will sign on to a U.N. treaty on arms control, over the objections of many in Congress who say the global document would clamp down on America’s Second Amendment.

The U.S. “welcomes” the next step in treaty ratification, Mr. Kerry said in a statement reported by Fox News and issued the same day the United Nations held a formal signing ceremony on New York.

 

Meanwhile, on the domestic gun-grabbing front:

* Obama’s new Surgeon-General, Vivek Murthy, is a relatively young, British-born gun-control enthusiast,  rather than the established and distinguished senior professional usually chosen.

*A senior staff officer (Lt. Colonel Robert Bates) took to the pages of Esquire magazine to announce his six-point program to confiscate guns from gun-owners, including in his provisions a 400% tax on ammunition and confiscation at death (except for 3 specified types).

*New legal precedents are being set across the nation that enable the police to label people as “suspicious” or even a “domestic terrorist,”  and use that to unilaterally invade their homes, without warrant, and confiscate fire-arms and property.

From Freedom Outpost:

Last month, when a group of concerned citizens assembled at Bundy Ranch in Nevada to protest government overreach, Senator Harry Reid dubbed them “domestic terrorists.” Even paying with cash or complaining about chemicals in water can land an American on the terror watch list. Non-conformists who do not subscribe to the status quo can now be considered mentally insane according to psychiatrists’ Diagnostic and Statistics Manual of Mental Disorders.

Law enforcement has an almost unlimited amount of circumstances they can cite to justify threats to one’s self or others, and thus, to ignore Constitutional requirements when serving at the behest of the local, state or federal government.

Has the Federal Court’s latest decision made it possible for these vaguely defined suspicious activities to be molded into exigent circumstances that give police the right to enter homes without due process, confiscate legally owned personal belongings, and detain residents without charge?”

http://freedomoutpost.com/2014/05/fed-court-ruling-cops-can-kick-in-your-door-confiscate-guns-without-warrant-or-charges/#j3xdWL1V19k8Z6Xu.99

Cognitive dissonance in some libertarian circles

Negligent burning of baby in public sector:

NAZI POLICE STATE

Dear God

[Source: Will Grigg, Pro Libertate, republished at LRC blog]

Note: Grigg is  pro-life.  No criticism of his excellent piece is  intended.

Intentional baby-killing in private sector:

A WOMAN’S RIGHT TO CHOOSE 

Cell phone photos taken of late-term abortions at the abortion clinic of Dr. Douglas Karpen (Houston, Texas).

Criminal charges against Dr. Karpen were dismissed in December 2013, but under pressure from pro-life groups and accumulating testimony from former employees, investigation of the clinic has been re-opened.

Voice of the Martyrs: Fraud and Pedophilia?

Michael Wurmbrand is the son of the famous Jewish-born communist, Richard Wurmbrand, who converted to Christianity and suffered extraordinary persecution in communist Romania.

In February 2014, Michael Wurmbrand  wrote to Voice of the Martyrs, the prominent Christian organization founded by his deceased father, to drop their association with his name because of suspected fraud and pedophilia in its leadersip:

My parents died in 2000-2001 and I am now 74 years old.

Against my express request NOT TO DO SO, the mission Voice of the Martyrs of Bartlesville (VOM), Oklahoma, USA and its international affiliates, continue to use Richard Wurmbrand, Sabina Wurmbrand, my parents’ persona, pictures, writings and books, my persona also to obtain your donations!

Tom White, the past Voice of the Martyrs Chairman for more than 20-years, committed suicide in April, 2012, only two to three hours after an accusation of child sexual molestation (pedophilia) of a 10-years old girl was formally filed by her parents with the local police, and while the Bartlesville, OK. police were searching to arrest him. This terrible event made world news. At the time of his committing suicide, Tom White had a $140,000+, plus perks, yearly salary and very substantial travel and expense accounts used in his extensive and frequent international travel year after year. Since the suspected perpetrator was dead, the police closed any further investigation of the sexual molestation. The police chief and the former mayor of the town of Bartlesville, OK. were personally serving on the Board of Directors of Voice of the Martyrs. A few other directors are related to each other or get salaries from the organization.

I asked in writing of the Voice of the Martyrs Board of Directors for an independent investigation, to be undertaken from outside of VOM. The investigation in the famous legal action in England of Jimmy Saville, the BBC children program head while alive, started with only 2 cases BUT there were more than 600 pedophilia complaints after Saville died. In the last 4 years, the state of Arizona, for instance, failed to investigate 6,000 cases of children molestation. Being the son of Richard Wurmbrand, a person of my background and position could have more inside information, than I can discuss publicly. I asked therefore for an independent investigation!….”

This is one more instance of the highest levels of conservative anti-communist circles being associated, rightly or wrongly, with pedophilia.

Here are some other recent scandals in conservative Christian circles.

More here.

Some Protestant foes of the Roman Catholic Church derided Wurmbrand’s ecumenism as a false-front for a New World Order co-optation of Christianity.  (LINK DELETED)

[ADDED: I should clarify that I consider this accusation deluded and semi-litarate.]

It is important to consider that the allegation of pedophilia has not been followed by any public testimony from victims, which is usual in such cases.

There was a third-party statement by a Christian minister in the area to the effect that he had spoken to the father of the alleged victim and was sure that the abuse had taken place.

However, that isn’t evidence.

The minister in question was Wade Burleson,  pastor of the  Southern Baptist Emmanuel Enid church.  In a comment on his blog, defending his unsubstantiated statement, he described his past government affiliations.

Wade Burleson said…

Ken,
I have worked as a chaplain for the Tulsa Police Department (1987-1992), the Garfield County Sheriff’s Department (1992-2012), the Department of Justice (1995), the FBI and DEA special task forces (1995-2012), and have had training in hostage negotiation, criminal interrogation and the like. You can trust me when I say the man on the phone was who he says he is–though not one ounce of my training is even needed to immediately ascertain the truth. Of course, for me to tell you how I know would give too much information that I have pledged to keep confidential.

Tue May 01, 08:27:00 AM 2012

His blog post was addressed to the ten-year old girl and confirmed her abuse, but it didn’t produce any evidence.

The post was reproduced at Christianpost.com, where astute readers faulted it for its theatricality and lack of substance.

[I will add more on this as I research the story.]

The local police-chief who was in charge of the investigation  was  on the board of Voice of the Martyrs  at the time and shut the case down, without disclosing anything further.

The case was closed within a month of the charge, even before the coroner’s office issued a medical report.

That report, shared with the press, showed that VOM chief Tom White died from a mixture of alcohol and prescription drugs.

The quick cover-up of the case can be interpreted either in VOM’s favor (the charges were false and concocted to destroy the organization, so there was no evidence) or against it (the charges were true but hushed up to save VOM).

White took his life before a warrant had been issued, suggesting that he had been tipped off in advance, presumably by Tom Holland, the police-chief.

Holland himself  is facing two cases of discrimination.

He has been ranked 14 among America’s top 100 worst bosses.

Oddly, he was brought into the Bartlesville Police Dept. to clean it up. It had a bad reputation for corruption.

This is significant because city documents show that VOM was on the receiving end of a corrupt subsidy via tax-payers for  improvements that the city had asked it to perform.

There are other questions.

According to its 2008 income tax returns, VOM has gross receipts of over $44,000,000, but spent only around $9 million for services directed for persecuted Christians, which is its stated mission as a non-profit.

That mission is what earns it tax-exempt status from the government.

VOM’s director at the time of the 2008 returns earned a six-figure salary ($140000/year).

Total salaries at VOM in 2008 amounted to over $2,000,000.

One of  VOM’s principals in 2008 turns out to  have been convicted twice for embezzlement.

(I am not naming him or linking the article, since I haven’t researched this personally).

As the Bible says,

Put not your trust in princes nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help…

 

USG injected Guatemalans with syphilis & gonorrhea

From the National Security Archive:

Washington, April 25, 2011—Between 1946 and 1948, U.S. public health researchers infected hundreds of Guatemalan prisoners, soldiers and mentally ill patients with syphilis and gonorrhea, without their knowledge or consent, in order to test the effectiveness of penicillin. The experiments were carried out in Guatemala under the cloak of confidentiality, and the results were never published in the United States. But after a scholar discovered archives chronicling the program at the University of Pittsburgh and published her findings last year, the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) took custody of the documents and on March 29 made them publicly available.

In the press release issued by the National Archives, the collection is described as consisting of some 12,000 pages of reports, correspondence, patient records and graphic photographs of the effects of syphilis infection on Guatemalan subjects. The papers belonged to the late Dr. John C. Cutler, an expert in sexually transmitted diseases and a leading researcher at the U.S. Public Health Service, who designed and oversaw the syphilis experiments. Before his death in 2003, Cutler donated the records to the university. NARA has since posted the collection on-line for public access, and made the originals available through the National Archives in Atlanta.

According to Cutler’s main report on the syphilis study, the program began with an invitation to carry out human experiments in Guatemala from the head of the Venereal Disease Control Division of Guatemala’s Public Health Services, Dr. Juan Funes. With funding from the National Institute for Health, Cutler arrived in Guatemala in the fall of 1946 to lead the project, co-sponsored by the U.S. Public Health Service, the Pan American Sanitary Bureau and the Guatemalan government. The first experiments were carried out in Guatemala’s Central Penitentiary, where the U.S. researchers sought to transmit syphilis to prisoners by paying infected prostitutes to have sex with them. When this method proved inefficient, the team decided to inoculate subjects directly with the disease. Looking for a way to infect a large number of subjects and study the effects over a period of months, the team settled upon the country’s “insane asylum” as the ideal site for their work. There, they had hundreds of captive and vulnerable men and women patients with no understanding of the procedures being performed on them, and the freedom to experiment without constraint or consultation with families.

It is clear from the language of the report that the U.S. researchers understood the profoundly unethical nature of the study. In fact the Guatemalan syphilis study was being carried out just as the “Doctors’ Trial” was unfolding at Nuremberg (December 1946 – August 1947), when 23 German physicians stood trial for participating in Nazi programs to euthanize or medically experiment on concentration camp prisoners. (Sixteen of the doctors were found guilty and seven were executed: see the University of Missouri-Kansas City Web site on the Nuremberg Trials.)”

 

Knoxious Hypocrisy

You can do whatever you want sexually,  on camera, for money, and thrust it crudely and incessantly into the public eye….you can even enact rape, violence, humiliation, and sadism toward other human beings and call it a job.

But don’t you dare voice your opinions about such things freely in Mistress Belle Knox’s  America.

On Ms. Knox’s Twitter feed, she “nudges” the serfs not to use the English language in ways that offend Her Royal  Twitterness:

Photo: I love this campaign! http://www.buzzfeed.com/danielk74/17-duke-students-speak-out-against-homophobic-tra-o7hn?s=mobile

If you suspect, as I do, that Knox is an intelligence-created mind-control operation… here’s some evidence:

1. She’s regurgitating, word-for-word, the CIA’s whole gender agenda on her Twitter feed – Part of that is to eliminate any words that arise from real human experience and feeling and substitute for them politically correct language.

2. She’s staging “conflict” with Pakistan’s Twitter, an obvious piece of theater intended to reinforce the meme that Islam’s traditional sexual values are anathema to the West.

Rothschild ties to Western & Russian oligarchy

An extremely thorough article by Willam Jasper at the New American confirms what I’ve said about Putin, that he is simply another tool of the NWO, an instrument of “convergence”:

“One of the important ventures that Soros and Pinchuk are financing is the Ukrainian Crisis Media Center (CMC), a collaboration of Ukrainian public relations corporations and journalists that is headquartered in Kiev’s Hotel Ukraine. Ostensibly, it was created to counter the propaganda onslaught of Putin’s Russian media cartel. Much of the “independent news” we receive from Ukraine is produced by the CMC and stamped with the Pinchuk/Soros-approved brand of propaganda. That includes cheering on or papering over the fact that the “new” government in Kiev is simply the latest rotation of musical chairs, and it has ended with Pinchuk’s fellow oligarchs (virtually all of which are “former” communists) and their parliamentary blocs and political parties occupying the most important chairs (as we reported here).

Pinchuk is a member of the Board of the Peterson Institute for International Economics and sits on the International Advisory Council of the Brookings Institution, both of which Soros has long been associated with. Another very important Soros-Pinchuk tie is their mutual connection to the famous (or infamous, as you prefer) Rothschild banking dynasty. 

In 2011, George C. Karlweis, adviser to Baron Edmond de Rothschild and his Banque Privee, revealed that it was Rothschild who provided Soros with the startup money — and, undoubtedly much (illegal) insider trading intelligence — for Soros’ fabulously successful Quantum Fund. 

The full extent of Pinchuk’s connections to the Rothschild’s global private empire would require a similar revelation from an insider. That could be Jean-Pierre Saltiel, who sits on the board of Pinchuk’s Yalta European Strategy, as well as the oligarch’s global steel and metallurgy conglomerate, Interpipe, Inc. He is also a longtime adviser to the Rothschilds and the past president of Rothschild Conseil International, one of the fabled family’s major bank holding companies. Interestingly (but not so surprising), Rothschild agent Saltiel also sits on the board of PIK Group, Russia’s largest residential real estate developer, founded by Russian oligarchs Yuri Zhukov and Kirill Pisarev (and still run by Pisarev).

Like Soros and the Rothschilds, Ukrainian oligarch Pinchuk works with and partners with a number of Russian oligarchs. And his YES summits regularly feature Putin-allied Russian oligarchs, as well as Putin-appointed Russian politicians and apparatchiks. Alfa Bank, Russia’s largest private bank, for example, is a YES sponsor. And Alfa Bank chairman, Mikhail Fridman, a Putin ally and one of Russia’s richest billionaires, sits on the CFR’s International Advisory Board and provided the funds to create the CFR’s “Russia and Russian-American Relations Lecture” program. Similarly, Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine’s richest oligarch, a former Putin-Yanukovych supporter and ally, is now a member of the new government. He is also, along with Fridman and Soros, a YES sponsor and a business partner with Russian, EU and U.S. Insiders. What these and dozens of other similar examples indicate is that there is much more to all of the Sturm und Drang over the Ukraine-Russia-EU “crisis” than meets the eye.

Soros gave a strong clue as to what the scripted outcome of the scenario would likely be. His solution would see Russia as a “partner,” and Angela Merkel (the “former” Communist from East Germany who now runs the unified Germany) would be the broker.

“Germany should take the lead,” Soros said, in his February 26 Project Syndicate column cited above. “Chancellor Angela Merkel must reach out to President Vladimir Putin to ensure that Russia is a partner, not an opponent, in the Ukrainian renaissance.”

Putin as Prod for “Convergence”

Merkel appears to be doing just the opposite, threatening Putin with sanctions, including freezing of Russian bank accounts and restrictions on travel in the EU, unless Putin “deescalates” the situation and comes to the bargaining table. But, in reality, she is “reaching out” to Putin, and he, after providing what is deemed an appropriate level of drama, will likely come to the table and deescalate. Contrary to Russia’s current bellicose posturing, it is in the Kremlin’s interests to offload Ukraine onto the taxpayers of the EU and the United States, and it fits perfectly with their long-term strategy of “convergence” with the EU and the United States.

Anatoliy Golitsyn, arguably the most important KGB defector to escape to the West, exposed the top-secret Soviet convergence strategy in his books New Lies for Old and The Perestroika Deception. (See herehere, and here.) Mikhail Gorbachev was making oblique reference to the ongoing reality of the convergence process when he described the EU as “the new European Soviet.” As in the transmutation described in Orwell’s Animal Farm, when it became almost impossible to tell the pigs from the men, it is now becoming all but impossible to detect any substantive differences between the ruling elites of Russia, China, the EU, and the United States. And, as the EU and the United States adopt more socialist policies and police-state measures, there is less and less distinction between our societies and the one ruled over by Putin and his Kremlin cronies.”

Mark Ames: Ties between Soros, Snowden, Greenwald, Ukrainian Nazis

Mark Ames separates himself from the pack of craven journalists to point out that George Soros is aiding the Ukrainian neo-Nazi coup and he’s also behind Snowden’s treasure-trove of NSA secrets:

Some­how, the same bil­lion­aire who co-financed the “coup” in Ukraine with USAID, also has exclu­sive access to the NSA secrets—and very few in the inde­pen­dent media dare voice a skep­ti­cal word about it.

Lila: Actually, Mr. Ames, there are at least a few of us who have been skeptical of Snowden from the start and have pointed out the tell-tale connections between Julian Assange, Laura Poitras, Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald, George Soros and the world of “hacktivism” and  IP-socialism….. with few giving us credit for it.

I have questioned the Snowden story since June 2013 and Assange since 2009. Search this blog.

In the larger sense, this is a prob­lem of 21st cen­tury Amer­i­can inequal­ity, of life in a billionaire-dominated era.

Lila: Well go get a job and write on the side, beholden to no one.

It is a prob­lem we all have to con­tend with—PandoDaily’s 18-plus investors include a gag­gle of Sil­i­con Val­ley bil­lion­aires like Marc Andreessen (who serves on the board of eBay, chaired by Pierre Omid­yar) and Peter Thiel (whose pol­i­tics I’ve inves­ti­gated, and described as repug­nant.) But what is more imme­di­ately alarm­ing is what makes Omid­yar dif­fer­ent. Unlike other bil­lion­aires, Omid­yar has gar­nered noth­ing but uncrit­i­cal, fawn­ing press cov­er­age, par­tic­u­larly from those he has hired. By acquir­ing a “dream team” of what remains of inde­pen­dent media — Green­wald, Jeremy Scahill, Wheeler, my for­mer part­ner Matt Taibbi — not to men­tion press “crit­ics” like Jay Rosen — he buys both silence and fawn­ing press.

Lila: That tells you what Taibbi and the rest were all about…..which is what I said from the start. Check out my comments about Taibbi, plagiarism and revisionism.

.Both are incred­i­bly use­ful: Silence, an absence of jour­nal­is­tic curios­ity about Omidyar’s activ­i­ties over­seas and at home, has been pur­chased for the price of what­ever his cur­rent all-star indie cast cur­rently costs him. As an added bonus, that same invest­ment buys silence from expo­nen­tially larger num­bers of des­per­ately under­paid inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists hop­ing to some­day be on his pay­roll, and the under­funded media watch­dogs that sur­vive on Omid­yar Net­work grants. And it also buys laugh­able fluff from the likes of Scahill who also boasted to the Daily Beast of his boss’ close involve­ment in the day to day run­ning of First Look. “[Omid­yar] strikes me as always sort of polit­i­cal, but I think that the NSA story and the expand­ing wars put pol­i­tics for him into a much more promi­nent place in his exis­tence. This is not a side project that he is doing. Pierre writes more on our inter­nal mes­sag­ing than any­one else. And he is not micro­manag­ing. This guy has a vision. And his vision is to con­front what he sees as an assault on the pri­vacy of Americans.”

Preet Bharara: Super Self-Promoter

Preet Bharara - Publicity Hound or Super Prosecutor?

Source: SearchIndia.com

Notice that the total number of press releases by Cyrus Vance, the DA for the prestigious Manhattan region, was less than half the number Bharara put out during the same 16- month period.

This record adds further evidence to my contention from day one that Bharara, a publicity hound, beholden to Chuck Schumer and the whole caboodle of financiers behind the Democrat party machine and married into the establishment, was brought in as part of a corrupt “fix.”

While the post I linked above makes a big deal about the criminal wrong-doing of Bharara’s Indian targets ( Rajat Gupta et al.), I’ve argued extensively that what Gupta was convicted for (wrongly, in my opinion) was very minor, relative to the scale of wrong-doing of the people who testified against him, including the CEO of Goldman Sachs.

Bharara’s subsequent actions in the Khobragade “fake slave nanny” case confirm his bias.

Thus, research into Bharara’s family ties, his political motivations, and possible links to separatist Sikh elements or Pakistani/Israeli intelligence elements is fully warranted, no matter what the result.

Electronic Police States – Top Twenty Five

Cryptohippie, which seems to support Wikileaks and Assange, came out with its third and last global ranking for “electronic police-states” a few years ago.

I find Cryptohippie itself a bit “interesting.” Why did it issue only three rankings and why did the rankings stop in 2010?

There might be some innocuous reason for it, but these days it pays to subject everything to close scrutiny.

If the powers-that-be wanted to “warn” the population via a respected NGO, it would not be a “threat” but a public service, right?

In any case, Cryptohippie divides the world into black, red, orange, yellow, and green zones, in descending order of control.

Black indicates total control and only North Korea fell into that territory in 2010 .

The red zone (advanced police states) included the US, UK, Russia, China, and Europe.

India, Australia, and Canada fell into the orange zone (fast developing police states).

The yellow zone (laggards) included parts of Europe and Mexico. The green zone (relatively free but some control) included Brazil and parts of Europe and Asia.

India came in at 26 in 2010.

1. North Korea

2. China

3. Belarus

4. Russia

5. USA

6. UK

7. France

8. Israel

9. Singapore

10. Germany

11. Ireland

12. Malaysia

13. Netherlands

14. Italy

15. S. Korea

16. Australia

17. Belgium

18. Spain

19. Austria

20. Ukraine

21.Greece

22. Switzerland

23. Japan

24. Norway

25. Canada