Run for your lives....The propaganda war

[BradSTL]

Oi oi oi

   Jazzy... a frequent expression in America--- made me "chuckle" to see you have picked it up... and use it appropriately.  Well done.

[SANDRO43]

Jazzy ... a frequent expression in America

Isn't it from Yiddish (oy, oy) ? Anyway, I doubt JC will answer, as you can see she hasn't been around for a couple of months .

[steviej]

selling cookies?!!!

Funny!

selling cookies?!!!

Funny . I have to admit though, we Americans are simple minded and naive about our own culture. I've been married to my RW for over 5 years (very happy, thank you ) and she is culturally and politically more sophisticated than most AWs and AMs. I think most Europeans see Americans as limited in this way, rightfully so. We have so many short comings in our own culture and way of life, and we are oblivious to it all. Many of us continue to blow our horn about something about how good so much stuff in America is. Americans are tolerant, but they do not understand or accept critism, and we believe when we criticize others, we are doing them a benevelent (sp?) favor, so why would they be offended? I had to travel quite a bit around the world on business in the past, and spent a lot of time in Europe, and I came to truly love European people, their culture and their worldliness about politics and to see more clearly how limited and simple we are, unknowingly, here in America. And I'm sure some American here will give the standard, pathetic retort, "if you don't love it - leave it!" Not to get too controversial, but no one else in the world believes such preposterous things from their government such as, "Sadaam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction that he is IMMINENTLY

[steviej]

(accidentally hit the "send" key )

No one else in the world would believe someone like Bush with that attack story about Iraq. But at the time, something like 75% of Americans believed it all. We don't even think we get propagandized at all here. But, we are exposed to it non stop. But since our belief is we don't have it, we just don't see it. Ok, done.

[SANDRO43]

benevelent (sp?) ...

BenevOlent .

Not to get too controversial, but no one else in the world believes such preposterous things from their government such as, "Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction

Stevie, you are re-opening an old can of worms (http://www.russianwomendiscussion.com/index.php?topic=2356.0, among many others), some AM here are still quite convinced that there were countless WMD in Iraq   .

[BradSTL]

some AM here are still quite convinced that there were countless WMD in Iraq   .

SANDRO.... greetings!

Bumped this old thread because I am wondering if anyone has heard ANYTHING about this Israeli raid on a warehouse in Syria, it happened around March, 2008.

When the warehouse exploded from a missile attack, and plumes of gas billow out that kill a bunch of Syrians.

*** NOBODY TALKS ABOUT THIS *** !   Not a word from the Syrians, Isrealis, and not much out of the U-S State Dept/Pentagon.

Any websites that are offering firm proof this was the WMD material that Saddam was supposed to be spiriting out of Iraq just prior to the March, 2003 invasion?

[OlgaH]

I thought Pioneers would be like our Girl Scouts with weekly meetings and activities plus annual selling of cookies to raise money.

When I was a pioneer wearing a red scarf, we had a so called "Timur's squad"  (in honor of a main character of one of novels by Soviet writer Arkady Gaidar )

We helped old lonely people and especially veterans with household, we also organized our  pioneer-concerts dedicated to different celebration date for them, and when a lonely old veteran had his/her birthday we brought flowers with our birthday poems and wishes, so he or she did not feel lonely, and we visited them in hospitals. We planted trees and flowers in the streets of our town in spring. We went to libraries to help librarians to restore the books and file magazines and newspapers  and so on 

[SANDRO43]

Any websites that are offering firm proof this was the WMD material that Saddam was supposed to be spiriting out of Iraq just prior to the March, 2003 invasion?

Sorry Brad, no idea, maybe some staunch Iraq WMD believers know more about this .

[SANDRO43]

We went to libraries to help librarians to restore the books

Olga, is there were you were bitten by the book bug ? I think I already recounted how I must have got mine: my mom in labour was rushed to the nearest hospital but no beds were available in the obstetrical ward, so they settled her in the hospital library .

[msmoby_ru]

SANDRO.... greetings!

Bumped this old thread because I am wondering if anyone has heard ANYTHING about this Israeli raid on a warehouse in Syria, it happened around March, 2008.

When the warehouse exploded from a missile attack, and plumes of gas billow out that kill a bunch of Syrians.

*** NOBODY TALKS ABOUT THIS *** !   Not a word from the Syrians, Isrealis, and not much out of the U-S State Dept/Pentagon.

Any websites that are offering firm proof this was the WMD material that Saddam was supposed to be spiriting out of Iraq just prior to the March, 2003 invasion?

Dear Brad

are you referring to the IDF raid on Sept 2007 ? This was possibly some sort of nuclear facility - under contrction with N.Koren expertise

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=23202

[OlgaH]

Olga, is there were you were bitten by the book bug ?

I was bitten by the book bug much earlier, I started to read books myself when I was 4 y.o. The one of the most biggest book bugs in our family was my uncle, one of the brothers of my father, he could not work and did not have his own family, so he devoted his time to me to "bite" me educationally   

[KenC]

Olga, is there were you were bitten by the book bug ? I think I already recounted how I must have got mine: my mom in labour was rushed to the nearest hospital but no beds were available in the obstetrical ward, so they settled her in the hospital library .

Sandro,
Now that explains a lot about you! 
KenC

[Mishenka]

Sorry Brad, no idea, maybe some staunch Iraq WMD believers know more about this .

http://128.121.102.226/rnav.html
http://128.121.102.226/shipind.html
Actually there is a web site, "state of the Russian Navy" that speaks about Sadams shopping list from Russia about 18- 20 years back that included many of the MIGs and SCUDS that were used in Kuwait gulf war, 18 billion worth,that Saddam never paid for. Most of these SCUDS failed because they were obsolete, passed their use by date most likely START 1 reductions. Since Saddam still owed Russia this $18 Billion, Russian repossessed the remaining unused SCUDS or warheads, before the invasion. There was plenty of time to do this as Saddam was warned well in advance of the invasion. Bush had no reason to believe any WMD were left in Iraq,  Germ and chemical warfare is a different story, this we do have proof of and was going to become a threat if Saddam was left to continue his plans. The world is better off without him.  Although Saddam was a training ground for terrorist, the war in Iraq was a huge mistake. If USA had stayed in Afghanistan and concentrated the effort there, it is very possible we would not be at war today with any country.

[Sculpto]

During last nights debate McCain said he looked into Putin's eyes and saw three letters.. KGB

Don't get me wrong.. I am no big fan of Putin.. but, is anyone else scared that McCain might be a bit dangerous in this regard?

[wxman]

Palin scares me more. She makes Bush sound like a genius. 

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=40f_1222465239

[Mishenka]

During last nights debate McCain said he looked into Putin's eyes and saw three letters.. KGB

Don't get me wrong.. I am no big fan of Putin.. but, is anyone else scared that McCain might be a bit dangerous in this regard?

dangerous with a capitol "D"

[Mishenka]

Sunday, Feb. 19, 2006
 
A top Pentagon official who was responsible for tracking Saddam Hussein's weapons programs before and after the 2003 liberation of Iraq, has provided the first-ever account of how Saddam Hussein "cleaned up" his weapons of mass destruction stockpiles to prevent the United States from discovering them.

"The short answer to the question of where the WMD Saddam bought from the Russians went was that they went to Syria and Lebanon," former Deputy Undersecretary of Defense John A. Shaw told an audience Saturday at a privately sponsored "Intelligence Summit" in Alexandria, Va. (www.intelligencesummit.org).

"They were moved by Russian Spetsnaz (special forces) units out of uniform, that were specifically sent to Iraq to move the weaponry and eradicate any evidence of its existence," he said.

Shaw has dealt with weapons-related issues and export controls as a U.S. government official for 30 years, and was serving as deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security when the events he described today occurred.

He called the evacuation of Saddam's WMD stockpiles "a well-orchestrated campaign using two neighboring client states with which the Russian leadership had a long time security relationship."
Shaw was initially tapped to make an inventory of Saddam's conventional weapons stockpiles, based on intelligence estimates of arms deals he had concluded with the former Soviet Union, China and France.

He estimated that Saddam had amassed 100 million tons of munitions - roughly 60 percent of the entire U.S. arsenal. "The origins of these weapons were Russian, Chinese and French in declining order of magnitude, with the Russians holding the lion's share and the Chinese just edging out the French for second place."

But as Shaw's office increasingly got involved in ongoing intelligence to identify Iraqi weapons programs before the war, he also got "a flow of information from British contacts on the ground at the Syrian border and from London" via non-U.S. government contacts.

"The intelligence included multiple sightings of truck convoys, convoys going north to the Syrian border and returning empty," he said.

Shaw worked closely with Julian Walker, a former British ambassador who had decades of experience in Iraq, and an unnamed Ukranian-American who was directly plugged in to the head of Ukraine's intelligence service.


The Ukrainians were eager to provide the United States with documents from their own archives on Soviet arms transfers to Iraq and on ongoing Russian assistance to Saddam, to thank America for its help in securing Ukraine's independence from the Soviet Union, Shaw said.

In addition to the convoys heading to Syria, Shaw said his contacts "provided information about steel drums with painted warnings that had been moved to a cellar of a hospital in Beirut."

But when Shaw passed on his information to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and others within the U.S. intelligence community, he was stunned by their response.

"My report on the convoys was brushed off as ‘Israeli disinformation,'" he said.

One month later, Shaw learned that the DIA general counsel complained to his own superiors that Shaw had eaten from the DIA "rice bowl." It was a Washington euphemism that meant he had commited the unpardonable sin of violating another agency's turf.

The CIA responded in even more diabolical fashion. "They trashed one of my Brits and tried to declare him persona non grata to the intelligence community," Shaw said. "We got constant indicators that Langley was aggressively trying to discredit both my Ukranian-American and me in Kiev," in addition to his other sources.

But Shaw's information had not originated from a casual contact. His Ukranian-American aid was a personal friend of David Nicholas, a Western ambassador in Kiev, and of Igor Smesko, head of Ukrainian intelligence.

Smesko had been a military attaché in Washington in the early 1990s when Ukraine first became independent and Dick Cheney was secretary of defense. "Smesko had told Cheney that when Ukraine became free of Russia he wanted to show his friendship for the United States."

Helping out on Iraq provided him with that occasion.

"Smesko had gotten to know Gen. James Clapper, now director of the Geospacial Intelligence Agency, but then head of DIA," Shaw said.

But it was Shaw's own friendship to the head of Britain's MI6 that brought it all together during a two-day meeting in London that included Smeshko's people, the MI6 contingent, and Clapper, who had been deputized by George Tenet to help work the issue of what happened to Iraq's WMD stockpiles.

In the end, here is what Shaw learned:


In December 2002, former Russian intelligence chief Yevgeni Primakov, a KGB general with long-standing ties to Saddam, came to Iraq and stayed until just before the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.

Primakov supervised the execution of long-standing secret agreements, signed between Iraqi intelligence and the Russian GRU (military intelligence), that provided for clean-up operations to be conducted by Russian and Iraqi military personnel to remove WMDs, production materials and technical documentation from Iraq, so the regime could announce that Iraq was "WMD free."

Shaw said that this type GRU operation, known as "Sarandar," or "emergency exit," has long been familiar to U.S. intelligence officials from Soviet-bloc defectors as standard GRU practice.

In addition to the truck convoys, which carried Iraqi WMD to Syria and Lebanon in February and March 2003 "two Russian ships set sail from the (Iraqi) port of Umm Qasr headed for the Indian Ocean," where Shaw believes they "deep-sixed" additional stockpiles of Iraqi WMD from flooded bunkers in southern Iraq that were later discovered by U.S. military intelligence personnel.

The Russian "clean-up" operation was entrusted to a combination of GRU and Spetsnaz troops and Russian military and civilian personnel in Iraq "under the command of two experienced ex-Soviet generals, Colonel-General Vladislav Achatov and Colonel-General Igor Maltsev, both retired and posing as civilian commercial consultants."

Washington Times reporter Bill Gertz reported on Oct. 30, 2004, that Achatov and Maltsev had been photographed receiving medals from Iraqi Defense Minister Sultan Hashim Ahmed in a Baghdad building bombed by U.S. cruise missiles during the first U.S. air raids in early March 2003.

Shaw says he leaked the information about the two Russian generals and the clean-up operation to Gertz in October 2004 in an effort to "push back" against claims by Democrats that were orchestrated with CBS News to embarrass President Bush just one week before the November 2004 presidential election. The press sprang bogus claims that 377 tons of high explosives of use to Iraq's nuclear weapons program had "gone missing" after the U.S.-led liberation of Iraq, while ignoring intelligence of the Russian-orchestrated evacuation of Iraqi WMDs.

The two Russian generals "had visited Baghdad no fewer than 20 times in the preceding five to six years," Shaw revealed. U.S. intelligence knew "the identity and strength of the various Spetsnaz units, their dates of entry and exit in Iraq, and the fact that the effort (to clean up Iraq's WMD stockpiles) with a planning conference in Baku from which they flew to Baghdad."

The Baku conference, chaired by Russian Minister of Emergency Situations Sergei Shoigu, "laid out the plans for the Sarandar clean-up effort so that Shoigu could leave after the keynote speech for Baghdad to orchestrate the planning for the disposal of the WMD."

Subsequent intelligence reports showed that Russian Spetsnaz operatives "were now changing to civilian clothes from military/GRU garb," Shaw said. "The Russian denial of my revelations in late October 2004 included the statement that "only Russian civilians remained in Baghdad." That was the "only true statement" the Russians made, Shaw ironized.
The evacuation of Saddam's WMD to Syria and Lebanon "was an entirely controlled Russian GRU operation," Shaw said. "It was the brainchild of General Yevgenuy Primakov."

The goal of the clean-up was "to erase all trace of Russian involvement" in Saddam's WMD programs, and "was a masterpiece of military camouflage and deception."

Just as astonishing as the Russian clean-up operation were efforts by Bush administration appointees, including Defense Department spokesman Laurence DiRita, to smear Shaw and to cover up the intelligence information he brought to light.

"Larry DiRita made sure that this story would never grow legs," Shaw said. "He whispered sotto voce [quietly] to journalists that there was no substance to my information and that it was the product of an unbalanced mind."

Shaw suggested that the answer of why the Bush administration had systematically "ignored Russia's involvement" in evacuating Saddam's WMD stockpiles "could be much bigger than anyone has thought," but declined to speculate what exactly was involved.

Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney was less reticent. He thought the reason was Iran.

"With Iran moving faster than anyone thought in its nuclear programs," he told NewsMax, "the administration needed the Russians, the Chinese and the French, and was not interested in information that would make them look bad."

McInerney agreed that there was "clear evidence" that Saddam had WMD. "Jack Shaw showed when it left Iraq, and how."

Former Undersecretary of Defense Richard Perle, a strong supporter of the war against Saddam, blasted the CIA for orchestrating a smear campaign against the Bush White House and the war in Iraq.

"The CIA has been at war with the Bush administration almost from the beginning," he said in a keynote speech at the Intelligence Summit on Saturday.

He singled out recent comments by Paul Pillar, a former top CIA Middle East analyst, alleging that the Bush White House "cherry-picked" intelligence to make the case for war in Iraq.

"Mr. Pillar was in a very senior position and was able to make his views known, if that is indeed what he believed," Perle said.

"He (Pillar) briefed senior policy officials before the start of the Iraq war in 2003. If he had had reservations about the war, he could have voiced them at that time." But according to officials briefed by Pillar, Perle said, he never did.

Even more inexplicable, Perle said, were the millions of documents "that remain untranslated" among those seized from Saddam Hussein's intelligence services.

"I think the intelligence community does not want them to be exploited," he said.

Among those documents, presented Saturday at the conference by former FBI translator Bill Tierney, were transcripts of Saddam's palace conversations with top aides in which he discussed ongoing nuclear weapons plans in 2000, well after the U.N. arms inspectors believed he had ceased all nuclear weapons work.

"What was most disturbing in those tapes," Tierney said, "was the fact that the individuals briefing Saddam were totally unknown to the U.N. Special Commission."

In addition, Tierney said, the plasma uranium programs Saddam discussed with his aids as ongoing operations in 2000 had been dismissed as "old programs" disbanded years earlier, according to the final CIA report on Iraq's weapons programs, presented in 2004 by the Iraq Survey Group.

"When I first heard those tapes" about the uranium plasma program, "it completely floored me," Tierney said.

[OlgaH]

I wonder how many people believe Oleg Bogdanov's testimony that America is going through another Great Depression?

I think Oleg Bogdanov red and watched the foreign media 

Wall Street fears for next Great Depression

By Margareta Pagano, Business Editor
Sunday, 16 March 2008
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/wall-street-fears-for-next-great-depression-796428.html

A financial crisis unmatched since the Great Depression, say analysts
Larry Elliott, economics editor
Tuesday March 18 2008
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/mar/18/creditcrunch.marketturmoil1

Posted March 01, 2008

[youtube=425,350]dR7h8NBQU3E[/youtube]

USA 2008: The Great Depression
Food stamps are the symbol of poverty in the US. In the era of the credit crunch, a record 28 million Americans are now relying on them to survive – a sure sign the world's richest country faces economic crisis
By David Usborne in New York
Tuesday, 1 April 2008
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/usa-2008-the-great-depression-803095.html

[Maxx2]

Thank you Olga for posting this. These predictions made in April have come true with a vengeance. The hot topic on this forum should be on how to prepare for the coming economic storm.

Also I liked your description of the "Young Pioneers" and what they did for others. We should have something like that here. Well maybe we will with Obama and his youth briggads. But I fear their scarves will be eco-green and they will be trained to tattle on their parents and neighbors for not being environmentally compliant.


Maxx       

[BillyB]

I think Oleg Bogdanov red and watched the foreign media 

The foreign, American, media is still wrong. We are not in a depression which is a prolonged recession. We are not even in a recession as it's defined as two consecutive quarters of GDP declines. A few banks go out of business and a few people lose their jobs but GDP has not reversed course for 6 straight months. GDP is the best indicator for an economy and America's is still strong. People are still working and producing. During the years of the Great depression, farmers lost their crops, stocks took a dump and people lost jobs on a grand scale and jumping off of buildings. Back then there was real need to be worried yet even through that crisis and two World wars which cost money, America grew to a superpower. There will always be ups and downs with the economy. As far back as I can remember since the Carter years, there were always issues with the economy at the end of each Presidency. Maybe this just happens in cycles mixed in with a few bad decisions from government and private businesses? The funny thing is we'll probably be massively worried and talking about a slumping economy again in 4 to 8 years after 3 to 7 years of solid growth that will quietly go unnoticed.

Some smart people are playing to the many people's fears and panics and buying stock when it's way down. It'll go back up.

[Maxx2]

During the years of the Great depression, farmers lost their crops, stocks took a dump and people lost jobs on a grand scale and jumping off of buildings.

And now....


Extreme Evictions

In February, when a sheriff's deputy went to serve an eviction notice on a home owner in Greeley, Colorado, he found the man had slashed his wrists and was lying in a pool of blood. Rushed to a nearby hospital, the man survived, while the Sheriff's office tried to downplay economic reasons for the incident, saying, according to the Denver Post, that "it wasn't linking the suicide attempt to the eviction because the man had known for a week that he was to be kicked out."

In March, Ocala, Florida resident Roland Gore killed his dog and his wife, set fire to his home which was in foreclosure, and then killed himself.

In April, Robert McGuinness, a 24-year-old process server, arrived at the Marion County, Florida doorstep of Frank W. Conrad. According to an article in the local Star Banner, the 82-year-old Conrad was reportedly "cordial" at first. When McGuinness produced the foreclosure notice, however, Conrad got angry and left the room. He returned with a .38 caliber pistol and announced, "You have two seconds to get off my property or you will go to the hospital." Marion County sheriff's deputies later arrested Conrad.

On June 3rd, agents of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) set out to inform New Orleans resident Eric Minshew that he would be evicted from his "Katrina" trailer. After Minshew threatened them, the FEMA employees called the police. When they arrived, Minshew allegedly threatened them as well and "locked himself in his partially-gutted home, adjacent to his trailer." A SWAT team was called in and tear-gassed the man. Interviewed by the Times-Picayune, local resident Tiffany Flores said, "Some SWAT members told my husband they had never seen anyone withstand that much tear gas." The standoff went on for hours before "an assault team of tactical officers" invaded the home. Though Minshew opened fire, they eventually cornered him on the upper floor. When -- they claimed -- he refused to drop his weapon, they gunned him down.

That same day, in Multnomah County, Oregon, sheriff's deputies served an eviction notice on a desperate tenant. According to Deputy Travis Gullberg, the Multnomah County Sheriff's Public Information Officer, the evictee promptly pulled a gun from his pocket and pointed it at his head before being disarmed by the deputies.

Hard Times

Recently, according to the Los Angeles Times, Rich Paul, a vice president at ValueOptions Inc., which handles mental health referrals, said that over the last year stress-related calls arising from foreclosures or financial hardship had gone up 200% in California. Similarly, Dr. Mason Turner, chief of psychiatry at Kaiser Permanente's San Francisco Medical Center, reported "a fourfold increase in psychiatric admissions at his hospital during August, with roughly 60% of patients saying financial stress contributed to their problems."

Of course, many victims of the linked economic crises never receive treatment. In July, Sacramento County Sheriff's Deputy Mark Habecker told the Sacramento Bee that twice this year "homeowners about to be evicted have committed suicide as he approached to do a lockout." In another case, he said, "a fellow Sacramento deputy found a note in the home that told him where to find the foreclosed homeowner's body." The Bee reported that such cases "received no publicity when they happened," which raises the question of just how many similar suicides have gone unreported nationwide.

In July, when police delivered an eviction notice at the Middleburg, Florida home of George and Bonnie Mangum, the couple barricaded themselves inside. Eventually, George Mangum was talked into surrendering and was arrested. "He did the only thing he knew to do, protect his family, all he did was sit on the other side of the door and say I have a gun, I have a gun and that's why he's going to jail because he threatened the police," said Bonnie. The couple's daughter Robin added, "This is my home, this is all our home and I don't think it's right. My dad was a Green Beret, he's sick, how are you going to kick him out?"

Pinellas Park, Florida resident Dallas Dwayne Carter was a 44-year-old disabled, single dad who lost his job, fell into debt, and was faced with eviction. "He always talked about needing help -- financially and help with the kids," neighbor Kevin Luster told the St. Petersburg Times. On July 19th, Carter apparently called the police to say he was armed and disturbed. When they arrived, Carter fired his pistol and rifle inside the apartment, before emerging and pointing his weapons at the officers on the scene. Police say they ordered him to drop them. When he didn't, they killed him in a 10-round fusillade.

On July 23d, about 90 minutes before her foreclosed Taunton, Massachusetts home was scheduled to be sold at auction, Carlene Balderrama faxed a letter to her mortgage company, letting them know that "by the time they foreclosed on the house today she'd be dead." She continued, "I hope you're more compassionate with my husband and son than you were with me." After that, she took a high-powered rifle and, according to the Boston Globe, shot herself. In an interview with the Associated Press, Balderrama's husband John said, "I had no clue." His wife handled the finances and had been intercepting letters from the mortgage company for months. "She put in her suicide note that it got overwhelming for her," he said. In the letter, she wrote, "take the [life] insurance money and pay for the house."

The day after Balderrama took her life, 50 miles away in Worcester, Massachusetts, a 64-year-old man, who had already been evicted, barricaded himself inside his former home. Police were called to the scene to find him reportedly prepared to ignite four propane tanks. "His intention was to burn the house down with him in it," Sgt. Christopher J. George told the Telegram & Gazette. With the man becoming "even more despondent" as "a moving van arrived on the street," police stormed the house to find him "holding a foot-long knife to his own chest" as a piece of paper burned near the propane. The man was disarmed and the fire extinguished.

That very same day, in Visalia, California, a Tulare County sheriff's deputy tried to serve an eviction notice to Melvin Nicks, 50. Nicks responded by stabbing the deputy with a knife and barricading himself in the house for several hours. He later surrendered.

No Way Out

Bay City, Michigan residents David and Sharron Hetzel, both 56, "lost their home to foreclosure and filed for bankruptcy protection. But they did not follow through with the Chapter 13 proceedings." On August 1st, say police reports, David Hetzel mailed a letter of apology to his family members. Later that night, according to the local police, he attacked his sleeping wife, striking her in the head with a golf club and repeatedly stabbing her with a kitchen knife. After that, he began setting fires throughout the house before crawling into bed beside his wife and killing himself with "a single, fatal wound to his torso."

On August 12th, sheriff's deputies arrived at the Saddlebrook, New Jersey home of 88-year-old Beatrice Brennan, another victim of the mortgage crisis, who had refinanced her home and fallen behind on payments. Refusing to stand idly by while his mother was put out on the street, her 60-year-old son John pulled a .22 caliber handgun on the lawmen. That sent the movers, waiting for a court-imposed 10 a.m. deadline, scurrying for their van. Brennan was able to delay the eviction briefly before a SWAT team arrested him and his mother lost her home. "I'm heartbroken over this," Vincent Carabello, a longtime neighbor, told the local paper, the Record. "How could this happen?"

Roseville, Minnesota resident Sylvia Sieferman was under a great deal of stress and beset by financial difficulties. She worried about how she would care for her two 11-year-old daughters. On August 21st, according to police reports, Sieferman "repeatedly stabbed the girls and herself." "She reached her limit," her friend Carrie Micko told the Star Tribune. "She couldn't cope anymore… she felt that her daughters were suffering because she was failing to provide for them." As Micko further explained, "After a series of financial mishaps, she just couldn't see her way through. She was under extreme financial, emotional and spiritual distress and didn't want to fail them."

By Any Means Necessary

The Boston Globe reported that, on September 5th, "[f]our protesters trying to prevent the eviction of a Roxbury woman from her home were arrested… after they chained themselves to the steps of her back porch." As 40 protesters chanted in the street, officials from Bank of America ordered Paula Taylor out of her house. "This is our eighth blockade and the first time there have been arrests," said Soledad Lawrence, an organizer with City Life, a non-profit organization seeking to halt the large numbers of foreclosures and evictions in Boston neighborhoods. "They can be more aggressive and we'll be more aggressive," she added.

On September 25th, as politicians in Washington tried to hash out a massive bailout package for financial institutions, six Boston police officers confronted about 40 City Life activists in front of the home of Ana Esquivel, a public school employee, and her husband Raul, a construction worker, both in their fifties. The Globe reported that four protesters were arrested as police shoved their way through in order to allow a locksmith into the house to bar the Esquivels from their home. "We've been destroyed by the bank," Ana Esquivel said, sobbing. "The bank is too big for us." While the Esquivel blockade failed, Steven Meacham, a City Life organizer, told a Globe reporter that "the protests have helped to stop about nine evictions. In the successful blockades, the homeowners were given additional time by their mortgage holders to negotiate alternatives to foreclosure."

Two days earlier, Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies came to the Monrovia home of 53-year-old Joanne Carter and her 67-year-old husband John to serve an eviction notice. Joanne Carter refused to accept it. According to "Monrovia spokesman" Dick Singer, as reported in the Pasadena Star-News, she "told deputies she had guns in the house and showed them a shotgun." The next day, Monrovia police officers showed up at the home after being informed that the woman "may have made threats to a workers compensation agency." Police Lieutenant Michael Lee said that Carter told them if they "tried to come in, she would defend her house at any means necessary." She and her husband then reportedly barricaded themselves inside, after which a shotgun was fired. Police from other local departments were called in. Following an hours-long standoff, the Carters surrendered and were arrested.

That same day, in northern California, Cliff Kendall, Petaluma's chief building official, shot himself with a rifle. A week earlier, Kendall had learned that he was being laid off. "He was afraid we'd lose our home, and we probably will because I can't afford to keep it," his wife Patricia, who is on disability with a back injury, told the Press Democrat. "He was extremely upset about it and hurt."

On October 3rd, the day before Karthik Rajaram's mass murder/suicide in Los Angeles, 90-year-old Addie Polk was driven to extremes by the financial crisis. With sheriff's deputies at the door, Polk evidently took the only measure she felt was left to her to avoid eviction from her foreclosed home. She tried to kill herself. Her neighbor Robert Dillon, hearing loud noises from her home, used a ladder to enter the second floor window. He found Polk lying on her bed. "Then she kind of moved toward me a little and I saw that blood, and I said, 'Oh, no. Miss Polk musta done shot herself.'" While she was in the hospital recovering from two self-inflicted gunshot wounds, Fannie Mae spokesman Brian Faith announced the mortgage association had decided to forgive her outstanding debt and give her the house "outright."

On October 6th, in Sevier County, Tennessee, sheriff's deputies, with police in tow, arrived to evict Jimmy and Pamela Ross from their home. They heard a shot and entered the home to find 57-year-old Pamela dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest. Neighbor Ruth Blakey told WVLT-TV, "I know she really hated to leave that house. She did not want to leave that house."

Wanda Dunn told neighbors she would rather die than leave her home. On October 13th, the day she was to be evicted, the 53-year-old Pasadena, California native apparently set fire to the home "where her family had lived for generations" before shooting herself in the head. "We knew it was going to happen," neighbor Steve Brooks told the Los Angeles Times. "It was nobody's fault; it was everybody's fault."

Outsourcing Suicide

In September, readers at Slate's "Explainer" column asked the following question: If the financial crisis was so dire, "how come we aren't hearing about executives jumping out of windows?" Writer Nina Shen Rastogi dutifully answered:

"Because the current situation hasn't had nearly as devastating an effect on people's personal finances. The Great Crash of 1929 -- and, to a lesser extent, the crash of 1987 -- did lead some people to commit suicide. But in nearly all of those cases, the deceased had suffered a major loss when the market collapsed. Now, due in large part to those earlier experiences, investors tend to keep their portfolios far more diversified, so as to avoid having their entire fortunes wiped out when stocks take a downturn."

Perhaps this is true. So far, at least, Wall Street's suicides seem to have been outsourced to places that its executives have probably never heard of. There, on the proverbial main streets of America, the Street's financial meltdown is beginning to be measured not only in dollars and cents, but in blood.

[Boethius]

I read this old thread with interest.  One of the first things my better half asked when he moved here was "Who controls the media?"  I didn't really understand the question, and thought his question, and attitude typical of his "Soviet mentality" (which usually meant I disagreed with him ) but he proved right.  I learned, through him, how to really read the news.

As an aside, krimster was partially correct (he was wrong about his post Soviet statements) and the banned poster (Serebro?) was wrong about time frames re collective farm passports.  On collective farms, passports were not issued until the 1970's.  I think krimster's statement on this being modern serfdom is close to correct.

Once passports were issued, at least in Ukraine, the head of the collective farm held the passport, and so long as he (almost always a he) had that passport, the citizen was tied to the collective.  But, if the citizen obtained the passport, he/she could leave, even if he/she declared an intent to return.   I know this was also the case in parts of Belarus, because when my sweetie was in the navy, a lot of the petty officers were Belarussian peasants who joined because this was the only way they'd be able to escape their collective farms.  Usually, they returned after 20 years service (20, not 25 years in the navy), with a full pension, and they weren't tied to the collective the way they would've been had they returned after their military service.

It was not uncommon in parts of Ukraine, even in the 1980's, to be paid in flour, or sugar, or beets by the collective.  There was always enough food.  Not so much cash for other necessities, so a lot of members of collectives had to get cash through other means.