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Faces of the Fallen – Iraq
(photos and names of the fallen)
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Metric Conversion kilometer: 0.6214 mile |
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Federal Debt vs GDP– Click image for larger view. (OMB) |
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Chart showing National Debt & Annual Deficits with Presidents. Democrat administrations are blue, Republican in Red. Green reflects projected Bush debt. Click chart for larger image. |
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2006 update (2.25.06)
The Chart Showing the National Debt above is still valid: "The debt to the penny," publicdebt.treas.gov. |
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Interest exceeds Group A outlays. Click chart for larger image. |
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Gross Domestic Products. Click chart for larger image. |
Skippy the Kangeroo
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This monster's own words will
lead to his destruction
Definition of fatwa (fatwah)
Maravot News Comment
12.17.04
10.29.04
2.23.98
August 1996
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Mel West
Bush consortium:
because of me, Dec. 1993
content of any links
from this site.
About Maravot News
Applied news from the
internet with historical perspective
PROLOGUE
January 15, 2006 – Maravot News, is dedicated to historical research following specific trends that have the potential of substantially affecting world history. We have found that the most current information is posted on the internet, hours before major television news broadcasts and delivery of newspapers. The news media are changing their way of acquiring and distributing world news. And all of the news agencies are becoming important as a whole resource, whose journalists report far and wide from the field. And often reports conflict. Where there is a conflict Maravot News shows links to the divergent stories. If one is writing a history of a trend, such as the pursuit of Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, divergent reports often appear, reflecting the interests of the states involved.
Often a state's media are not the first to report a story, and this includes the United States, so we are never surprised to find a story about one nation in another nation's news media. We prefer to record the source article, and often include other resource links where more information / analyses is offered.
Maravot News identifies and follows trends and provides links to the stories reflecting the trends. Since our purpose is to serve as a record, a library resource as it were, we provide an introduction to a story with a link to the site of the story. Though through our links we are promoting news media in our sidebar, we don't endorse any particular media. The small footprint beside specific media indicates the media we check often, because of their superior reporting in the area in which they specialize. We value a link to external resources / media at $12.00 per month, $144.00 per year. We do not charge for this link. When we introduce a story with a link to the entire story, we are promoting the source news medium of that story. This is of value to both the source to whom we linked and also its advertisers and supporters. For Maravot News through the summary and link extends the reach of a news medium through the link, connecting the source with the Maravot News readership. Historians and reporters benefit the most from Maravot News archives, since we consolidate links to pertinent stories affecting a trend, making it easier to assess a more complete understanding of a particular event covered by our news trends research.
A good feature on internet news is the fact that many news media update their stories, posting the time of the update. This makes finding the latest report much easier. Maravot News records the reports of news agencies, such as AP, AFP, Reuters, and PTI, through links to their host news media. While a news agencies may be in our sidebar, linking to the closest news publisher to an event is preferred.
Maravot News fills a niche, serving as a record of world news trends, and thus is not dependent on being the first to report a story, but rather tracks a story – that may have a potential to turn into a trend, affecting world events. Most journalists recap the history behind the story which they are posting on the internet. The Bird Flu trend is an example. The record of world events can involve many categories: economic, cultural or political. Examples of news trends we do not track at this time include certain cultural happenings, such as film and music: what is occurring in Bollywood (India's film and music industry) or Hollywood. Thus, there are many categories of world trends that are not currently tracked and recorded by Maravot News.
A trend we have been tracking since the 1980's involves the US National Debt and the Iraqi War and the shady deals behind it. When we began this news media we prefaced our views with the following, many of our predictions now being facts. As one reads the following, at this current hour stories come to mind of widespread corruption in the US government. "Bigger than Enron" one news report put it.
Linked to the US economic plight, today's news media report Iran threatening to cut off oil to Europe if the EU refers them to the United Nations on violating Atomic Energy agreements. Iran also called for OPEC to reduce oil exports. At the moment we have the president of Iran declaiming other people and nations, while attempting to develop atomic weapons and missile delivery systems, supposedly to fulfill his objective of annihilating those whom he hates. Another Mideast War looms on the horizon. The economic and political impact of oil affects not only the US Debt but also security.
January 15, 2006 – Maravot News, is dedicated to historical research following specific trends that have the potential of substantially affecting world history. We have found that the most current information is posted on the internet, hours before major television news broadcasts and delivery of newspapers. The news media are changing their way of acquiring and distributing world news. And all of the news agencies are becoming important as a whole resource, whose journalists report far and wide from the field. And often reports conflict. Where there is a conflict Maravot News shows links to the divergent stories. If one is writing a history of a trend, such as the pursuit of Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, divergent reports often appear, reflecting the interests of the states involved.
Often a state's media are not the first to report a story, and this includes the United States, so we are never surprised to find a story about one nation in another nation's news media. We prefer to record the source article, and often include other resource links where more information / analyses is offered.
Maravot News identifies and follows trends and provides links to the stories reflecting the trends. Since our purpose is to serve as a record, a library resource as it were, we provide an introduction to a story with a link to the site of the story. Though through our links we are promoting news media in our sidebar, we don't endorse any particular media. The small footprint beside specific media indicates the media we check often, because of their superior reporting in the area in which they specialize. We value a link to external resources / media at $12.00 per month, $144.00 per year. We do not charge for this link. When we introduce a story with a link to the entire story, we are promoting the source news medium of that story. This is of value to both the source to whom we linked and also its advertisers and supporters. For Maravot News through the summary and link extends the reach of a news medium through the link, connecting the source with the Maravot News readership. Historians and reporters benefit the most from Maravot News archives, since we consolidate links to pertinent stories affecting a trend, making it easier to assess a more complete understanding of a particular event covered by our news trends research.
A good feature on internet news is the fact that many news media update their stories, posting the time of the update. This makes finding the latest report much easier. Maravot News records the reports of news agencies, such as AP, AFP, Reuters, and PTI, through links to their host news media. While a news agencies may be in our sidebar, linking to the closest news publisher to an event is preferred.
Maravot News fills a niche, serving as a record of world news trends, and thus is not dependent on being the first to report a story, but rather tracks a story – that may have a potential to turn into a trend, affecting world events. Most journalists recap the history behind the story which they are posting on the internet. The Bird Flu trend is an example. The record of world events can involve many categories: economic, cultural or political. Examples of news trends we do not track at this time include certain cultural happenings, such as film and music: what is occurring in Bollywood (India's film and music industry) or Hollywood. Thus, there are many categories of world trends that are not currently tracked and recorded by Maravot News.
A trend we have been tracking since the 1980's involves the US National Debt and the Iraqi War and the shady deals behind it. When we began this news media we prefaced our views with the following, many of our predictions now being facts. As one reads the following, at this current hour stories come to mind of widespread corruption in the US government. "Bigger than Enron" one news report put it.
Linked to the US economic plight, today's news media report Iran threatening to cut off oil to Europe if the EU refers them to the United Nations on violating Atomic Energy agreements. Iran also called for OPEC to reduce oil exports. At the moment we have the president of Iran declaiming other people and nations, while attempting to develop atomic weapons and missile delivery systems, supposedly to fulfill his objective of annihilating those whom he hates. Another Mideast War looms on the horizon. The economic and political impact of oil affects not only the US Debt but also security.
Because of increasing debt from the two Bush administrations – and before that, with Reagan setting the precedent of fiscal irresponsibility and deception on the part of the Presidency – Federal subsidies to state and local governments have been cut back. The cuts are necessitated to offset the rising cost of servicing the National Debt which is currently heading towards $9 trillion (now at $8.5 trillion). See Maravot News Trends or the sidebar for more information on this problem. Eventually this results in the closing of schools and libraries, all to subsidize what is about $435 billion in interest payments for 2006.
It is fortunate that in terms of education we have the internet. The internet provides information of all sorts in a more current manner and more quickly. In the past we relied upon books in libraries from which to get historical information, or we would go through the archives reading old newspapers, many of which are microfiche. With the libraries closing we need to find another library resource.
The
driving force in the world – from an economic standpoint – is oil and gas. The maps in the sidebar of Maravot News focus on the area of the world that poses hope to supply the rising oil needs of China and India, in addition to the EU and the US. We trace this dependence on oil and its delicate relationships to Presidents Reagan, George H. W. Bush (Bush I) and George W. Bush (Bush II), who increased our dependence on oil and gas. For instance, Bush I dedicated much of his energy attempting to gain corporate control of certain things that drive world economies. He founded Zapata Petroleum Corp.
( 1)
– see houston.bizjournals.com for an article on Zapata Petroleum's history – served as US ambassador to the UN under Presidents Nixon and Ford, Ford's CIA director, Reagan's vice-president and later he served as President of the United States. He purchased United Fruit Company (2), which dominates the bannana economies of Central and South America, became United Brands, known as Chiquita Brands International Inc. Chiquita was one of the major contributors to the presidential campaign of Bush I. About January 20, 2003 George W. Bush brought to his team Joe Hagin who was vice president for corporate affairs at Chiquita Brands International (Jan. 20, The Cincinnati Enquirer article). A proxy on Chiquita Brands International was filed with the Security and Exchange Commission and principals of the company / data can be found on the filing of April 16, 2003 at: http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/101063/000010106303000008/def14a.txt. Cyrus F. Freidheim, Jr., Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Chiquita filed the Proxy Statement. An owner of Chiquita is Wachovia Corp. The officers of this US and international banking institution are listed by forbes.com as follows:
The
G. Kennedy Thompson
Robert P Kelly
John D Baker II
James S Balloun
John T Casteen III
Robert A Ingram
Wallace D Malone, Jr.
Joseph Neubauer
Van L Richey
Dona Davis Young
Wachovia Corporation was one of the 20 companies that funded the second inauguration of George W. Bush, each providing $250,000 (forbes.com). George W. Bush is connected to drug companies. Former CEO Pharmaceuticals, of GlaxoSmithKline plc, is Robert A. Ingram. The CEO of GlaxoSmithKline plc is connected to United Technologies Corp. According to an article January 20, 2005 in commondreams.org these and several other companies bought a piece of George W. Bush. The group of companies listed are: AT&T, Bank of America Corp., Boeing, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Burlington Northern & Santa Fe Corp., ChevronTexaco and Exxon Mobil Corp. and FedEx Corp. Ford Motor Co., Home Depot, Lockheed-Martin Corp., Marriott International, Marriott Vacation Club International, Microsoft and Northrup Grumman. Occidental Petroleum Co., Oracle, Pfizer Inc., Ritz-Carlton Hotel Co., Time Warner, United Parcel Service, United Technologies and Wachovia Corp.
An article by Barry S. Willdorf, Feb. 3, 2005 in agauchepress.com, addresses the aspect of war profiteering. He says:
Recent Department of Defense data shows that $90,000,000,000.00 of their budget last year went to the following major U.S. corporations in 2004 alone: Lockheed Martin Corp. Boeing, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Raytheon, Halliburton (again), United Technologies, Science Applications, CSC, Humana and Bechtel (again.) Collectively, these companies are responsible for the employment of hundreds of thousands of workers. How much of this is specifically earmarked for Iraq is unclear, but does it matter? It is "for the war!"
Willdorf lists the following companies that benefited from contracts in excess of $1 billion for Iraq:
Kellogg, Brown & Root (Halliburton) $11,431,000,000
Parsons Corp. $5,286,136,252
Fluor Corp. $3,754,964,295
Washington Group International $3,133,078,193
Shaw Group/Shaw E & I $3,050,749,910
Perini Corporation (Diane Feinstein's husband, Dick Blum's firm) $2,525,000,000
Contrack International Inc. $2,325,000,000
Tetra Tech Inc. $1,541,947,671
USA Environmental Inc. $1,541,947,671
CH2M Hill $1,500,000,000
American International Contractors, Inc. $1,500,000,000
Odebrect-Austin $1,500,000,000
Zapata Engineering $1,478,838,958
Environmental Chemical Corporation $1,475,000,000
Explosive Ordnance Technologies Inc. $1,475,000,000
Stanley Baker Hill L.L.C. $1,200,000,000
Some other big names in corporate America, you might recognize:
Titan Corporation $402,000,000
Raytheon Aerospace LLC $91,096,464
Lucent Technologies World Services, Inc. $75,000,000
George H. W. Bush (Bush I) helped create a venture before the Second Iraq War with the Carlyle Group whose focus is said to dominate defense (weapons) contracting. Weapons supplies increase with War and to gain control of the oil and gas reserves of the Middle East and Central Asia weapons would be required. There is a War Profiteering connection to the Bush family that is being investigated by many internet sources, including Maravot News. The war seems to have been launched for both oil and weapons profiteering objectives on the part of our Presidents.
To discover the depths of the collusion involves research, the bulk of the data for the research being on the internet, in newspapers, periodicals, SEC filings, forbes. com, etc.
Presidents Reagan, Bush I and Bush II have been allowed to establish the practice of promising their patrons the opportunity to profiteer from their offices, and the grim aspect of this profiteering unfortunately involved launching a war on Iraq. This seems to be the major trend affecting world history for now, until the people of the United States restrain what appears to be unwanton greed working to the adverse affect of other peoples. It is because of this abominable trend, to understand how it came about and where it is probably heading, that Maravot News was created.
OBJECTIVE
Maravot News is a record of worldwide news and certain trends in the news. As a news archive it is pioneering a new form of news presentation, facilitating the broader reach of news resources, coupled with comparative links and analysis for stories that are reported from different perspectives. After having published maravot.com since 1996 we decided to launch this news source that focused on the minute-to-minute nature of world news, only achievable through monitoring news posted on the internet. Most of our resources are in the Maravot News sidebar.
We try to cover all sides of a story, though we are exploring the Bush Profiteering phenomenon as a specific trend and are thus somewhat biased, based upon the evidence gathered to date. Our bias is no different than any other news medium, since all news reports are biased to a certain degree. Even the failure to carry a news report may reflect a bias or act of censorship.
The news media have been struggling for years to get readership, to dominate as much of it as they can. The news was generally brought to you in times past, courtesy of advertisers. To dominate the news, companies – television news, newspapers and magazines – sought to become bigger. As an advisor to the Indian raja Chandragupta said long before Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527) published his advise The Prince: "the big fish eat the little fish; therefore, eat the little fish." This still was nothing new even in Chandragupta's (Candra Gupta) days 325–c. 321 B.C.), who founded the first Indian empire, the Maurya. The Mauryan dynasty was to rule almost the entire subcontinent (except the area south of present-day Karnataka), as well as substantial parts of present-day Afghanistan. Following the advise, in any case, major news media eat the little fish in order to become big fish. The problem with this is that as they grow larger there is less upon which they can feed. Eventually, in order to feed themselves they begin to feed upon themselves.
The big fish eat the little fish may be a creed followed by modern companies, pitting company against company, nation against nation (whether captialism is present or not) – all in an effort to become the big fish in the ocean. Eventually they over-feed, and as we can see even in examples in ocean reefs, the reefs are destroyed. Or as in the case of the Aral sea, an entire ecosystem is destroyed, and what was once one of the world's largest lakes is drying up. Nearby, in the Caspian Sea, it is the opposite situation: The Caspian Sea has risen over 7 meters since 1978. The Caspian Sea phenomena is probably a result of the Greenhouse Effect, where the climate continues to get wetter each year (thus explaining the increase in typhoons and hurricanes, sinking coastlines).
The current trend is in the chase of oil, to dominate its sources and supply. And this trend is now heavily invested in the Caspian Sea and Central Asian nations. In addition to these areas China, among many, has been developing new fuel resources in South America and Africa.
Maravot's News snoops out the economics behind world news, for the economic happenings often lead to major political and social events.
Because of the internet, there are ways of keeping better informed on what is really happening. A short skip through various internet resources will confirm rather quickly that often the news you get from the major news publishers is old news (as well as missing some facts). They can't update their news as quickly as the internet reporters who are posting their bits of information every second of the day.
Because we are in a world of nations growing ever more interdependent, and economic interests manipulate opportunities and appear in the most unusual places, keeping a staff of reporters on hand to cover breaking news is impossible. The trend appears to be greater reliance on independent, local news agents feeding local news media, from which other agencies and news publishers may draw. Maravot News thus focuses on the local reports, facilitating their wider reach.
Maravot News snoops out information following the track of the economic imperative, and records what it finds for those who explore the history behind a trend and where the trend may be heading. We employ the knowledge of history to snoop around.
We provide an abstract of news stories for the historical record. Unfortunately not all of the newspapers / media maintain archives and our links provided to the articles on Maravot News may end up as a blank. Those who need to read a specific article thus linked may have to locate a library or other source where they can find the report, and in some cases the source of an article will provide a copy for a fee. By summarizing a story – as in an abstract – Maravot News facilitates the reporter's or historian's research.
Mel Copeland
November 2, 2006
Notes:
(1) Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, John Perkins, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., San Francisco, CA, p. 79
(2) ibid, p. 59
The Bush family and Cheney's financial holdings in Halliburton via Vanguard and other corporations: http://marc.perkel.com/archives/000067.html
Duty & Profit.html, a portion of the correspondence with Wm. F. Buckley Jr. from 1992-1995 on the national debt
Bushwatch: http://www.bushwatch.net/binladens.htm, Link on the Bush bin Laden wheeling and dealings
Maravot's Homepage
Launched: 11.02.04
Updated: 12.03.04; 1.15.06; 11.01.06
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Copyright © 1981-2006 Mel Copeland. All rights reserved
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