Jerome R. Corsi's Blog, page 336
April 17, 2014
Democrats awash in 'green' energy deals on public land
Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid at ground-breaking ceremony for First Solar’s Moapa Southern Paiute Solar Project, March 21 (Nevada Business)
NEW YORK – In the wake of the Bundy Ranch standoff, Nevada’s public energy utility confirmed it has so many renewable-energy projects in the works that it has no need for the $5 billion solar-power project with the Chinese government and ENN Group that was withdrawn last year.
Fay Andersen, spokeswoman for NV Energy, told WND the state currently has 39 producing renewable energy projects, with an additional project under construction and another in the development phase.
“Nevada has one of the highest Renewable Portfolio Standards in the country, determined as a percent of retail energy sales, and requiring the company to achieve 25 percent of its power from renewable sources by 2025,” she explained to WND.
She said NV Energy has exceeded its renewable energy requirement of 18 percent for 2013-14, with 20.3 percent in southern Nevada in 2013 and 34.7 percent in northern Nevada.
The public utility was on track to issue a Request for Proposal, or RFP, for 100 megawatts of renewable energy for each of the years 2014, 2015, and 2016, in accordance with the requirements of Nevada state law, Anderson said.
As WND reported, bloggers made a connection between the Bureau of Land Management’s raid of rancher Cliven Bundy’s land and a solar energy project in southern Nevada financed by the communist Chinese energy firm ENN. It was to be the largest solar farm in the U.S.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada had lobbied heavily for the company’s business, even traveling to China. Reid’s son, Rory Reid, formerly a Clark County commissioner, became a lobbyist for ENN while Sen. Reid’s former senior adviser, Neil Kornze, now leads the BLM.
The project died last year, but the BLM’s library of renewable energy projects revealed it was only one of more than 50 solar, wind and geothermal projects planned for Nevada, California, Arizona and other Western states.
Big payout
The plan to convert an increasingly large share of Nevada’s public land to renewable-energy projects appears to have been a key motivation for Reid to run a war against coal-burning electric power in Nevada that began during the second term of President George W. Bush.
On March 21, Nevada Business published a photograph showing Reid breaking ground on a project with representatives of the Moapa Band of Paiutes, executives with First Solar Inc. and representatives of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. The 250 megawatt Moapa Southern Paiute Solar Project is planned to deliver renewable energy to the city of Los Angeles for the next 24 years.
The leaseholder on the Moapa Southern Paiute Solar Project is K Road Power, LLC, a New York City-based energy company that employs as business manager Jonathan Magaziner, formerly an associate at the Clinton Climate Initiative of the William J. Clinton Foundation.
Jonathan Magaziner is the son of Ira Magaziner, who served President Bill Clinton in the White House as senior policy adviser for policy development from 1993 through 1998, and is now the chief executive officer and vice chairman of the Clinton Health Access Initiative and chairman of the Clinton Climate Initiative. He also is a board member of the Clinton Hunter Development Initiative.
According to research conducted by investigator reporter Christine Lakatos, First Solar Inc. was an early green investment funded by Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street investment banking firm that ranked as a top $1 million contributor to Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. Lakota also documented that First Solar investors include bundlers Bruce Heyman and David Heller, two Goldman Sachs executives who sat on Obama’s 2008 Finance Committee.
Peter Schweizer, on pages 91-92 of his 2011 book “Throw Them All Out,” also lists Michael Ahearn, First Solar’s chief executive officer, as having given generously and exclusively to Democrats. He also pointed out that billionaire investor Paul Tudor Jones, another Obama bundler, owns a major stake in First Solar.
In March 2012, the Washington Examiner reported First Solar, an Arizona-based manufacturer of solar panels, received in 2010 a $16.3 million subsidy to expand its factory in Ohio. The grant came after a $455.7 million taxpayer-funded loan guarantee awarded by the Export-Import Bank to subsidize the sale of solar panels to two solar firms in Canada.
One of the Canadian firms, St. Clair Solar, was a wholly owned subsidiary of First Solar, so when First Solar was shipping its solar panels from Ohio to a solar farm it owned in Canada, the U.S. taxpayers were subsidizing the “export,” the Examiner said.
In 2012, NV Energy rebuffed pressure by Reid to get behind the $5 billion solar project that ENN Group wanted to build near Laughlin, Nev. Steve Tetreault noted in the Las Vegas Journal-Review in July 2012 that Reid said the envisioned ambitious complex “would start tomorrow if NV Energy would purchase the power,” but the company “has not been willing to work on this and that’s a shame.”
Tetreault said the Senate majority leader’s remarks were the linkage between the Nevada utility and the clean energy project.
Previously, he wrote, the project was aimed at serving utilities in California, but state officials there said they had no interest in importing power from other sources.
“NV Energy is a regulated monopoly,” Reid said, according to Tetreault’s report. “They control 95 percent of all the electricity that is produced in Nevada and they should go along with this.”
The Las Vegas Review-Journal further reported that in response to Reid, an NV Energy spokeswoman said the utility was not in the market for more renewable energy, having exceeded the state’s requirement that 15 percent of its portfolio originate from clean sources.
Tetreault noted Reid has a personal stake in pushing NV Energy to use more solar power. Reid had teamed up with the Chinese firm to invest $8 billion in the U.S. on renewable energy projects in the coming decade. Also, Reid had invited ENN Group’s chairman, Wang Yusuo, to speak at the senator’s clean energy summit in Las Vegas during the summer 2011.
Chinese pull the plug
In April 2012, Bloomberg reported the Reid-sponsored deal to have ENN Group invest $5 billion in a solar plant and energy-generating farm in Laughlin, Nev., was on the ropes because Reid and ENN were unable to find a utility company willing to buy the solar energy.
According to Bloomberg, Reid never stopped pressuring California, evidently concerned he would need an alternative if NV Energy could not be convinced.
The energy plant “will generate the electricity California must have in just a few years,” Reid said in March, referring to a state mandate requiring 33 percent of a utility’s electricity to come from renewable sources by 2020. “This project is close to California. It’s within walking distance.”
Reid’s spokeswoman, Kristen Orthman, said the senator was working on introducing ENN to utilities.
Laughlin officials were getting calls every week from investors, job seekers and local business owners wanting to know the status.
“It’s extremely frustrating,” [Clark County Commissioner] Steve Sisolak said at the time. “Everybody is so anxious and wants this project to move forward.”
Then, on June 17, 2013, the Associated Press reported ENN Group dropped its plans to build the $5 billion solar project. ENN officials informed Clark County officials the company was terminating its agreement to purchase 9,000 acres because it was unable to sign up public utilities in either Nevada or California to agree to purchase the solar energy generated.
On June 14, 2013, Clark County Commissioner explained to the Las Vegas Sun: “Alternative energies are still more expensive than fossil fuels and they [ENN] couldn’t get (the costs) down to a point where they could sell any of the power. Even if we had given them an extension for a year or two, it wouldn’t have made a difference.”
Bundy’s ‘trespass cattle’
On April 9, the U.S. Senate in a 71-28 vote confirmed Neil Kornze, a former senior adviser to Reid, to head the Bureau of Land Management.
At BLM, an agency Kornze originally joined in 2011, Kornze distinguished himself by spearheading BLM’s “Western Solar Energy” plan that produced the following year a “Final Pragmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) for Solar Energy Development in Six Southwestern States.”
The document currently serves as a blueprint for the federal government to “mitigate” the potential environmental impact of the planned Solar Energy Zones, or SEZs.
The government seeks to transform thousands of acres throughout six Southwestern states into alternative habitats to relocate endangered species from private land sold to accommodate renewable energy projects.
A BLM study titled “Regional Mitigation Strategy for the Dry Lake Solar Energy Zone, Technical Note 444,” dated March 2014, identifies Bunkerville, Nev., the site of the Bundy Ranch approximately 80 miles northwest of Las Vegas, as a mitigation area for the Dry Lake SEZ.
The Dry Lake SEZ, about 15 miles northeast of Las Vegas, encompasses approximately 5,717 acres under management of the Clark County BLM office.
A BLM map identifying the “Bundy Cattle Tresspass Overview,” the area designated by black diagonal lines, also shows cattle from the Bundy Ranch ranging on public land adjoining the Moapa Indian Reservation, site of the previously referenced First Solar project.
BLM map of “Bundy Cattle Trespass Overview”
A document removed from the BLM website but located in Internet archive files clearly notes complaints that Bundy’s “cattle trespass impacts” include “concern that the regional mitigation strategy for the Dry Lake Solar Energy Zone utilizes Gold Butte as the location for impacts from solar development, and that those restoration activities are not durable with the presence of the trespass cattle.”
Page removed from BLM website on the Bundy Ranch "cattle trespass"
That means the grazing of Bundy’s cattle on federal lands in the Gold Butte area is not compatible with moving the endangered tortoises there as part of the “mitigation strategy” planned for the Dry Lake SEZ.
Reid’s war against coal power plants
The Democratic Party plan to convert an increasingly large share of Nevada’s public land to solar power projects appears to have been a key motivation prompting Reid to run a war against coal-burning electric power in Nevada that appears to have begun during the second term of President George W. Bush.
The Laughlin site on which ENN had planned to build its solar project was the home to the 1,580 megawatt coal-fired Mohave Generating Station, owned by Southern California Edison, that Reid and other Democrats in Congress forced closed in 2005.
After the Mohave Generating Station had been closed down and demolished, Reid contacted Southern California Edison, the majority owner of the demolished coal-fueled power plant, to ask permission to use the site for a solar power plant.
“When the plant closed down, the local communities and Native American tribes lost valuable jobs,” Reid said in a statement published by his office. “I am urging Southern California Edison to convert the plant and its assets into a vibrant solar power producer to give the area an economic boost.”
Reid further suggested to Southern California Edison that industrial plants could sell sulfur dioxide credits, rather than continue to operate and spew out pollution, and the company could use that money to build a solar power plant.
In 2007, the Las Vegas Sun reported, Reid was opposing three plants proposed in Lincoln and White Pine Counties in Nevada, despite their plans to burn environmentally safe clean coal.
“They say, ‘We’ll use clean coal technology,’” Reid said. “It doesn’t exist. There is no such thing as clean coal technology. There is not a coal plant in America that is clean.”
Reid claimed the three plants would emit a combined 31 million tons of carbon dioxide each year for about 50 years, despite reduced emissions of sulfur, nitrogen, mercury and other pollutants.
Reid’s argument was that the emitted carbon dioxide for the proposed three new clean coal-burning power plants made them as bad as the Mohave Generating Station, a coal-burning electric power plant consisting of four units built between 1965 and 1983. Located near Reid’s hometown of Searchlight, Nev., Reid and his Democratic colleagues in Congress had labeled it the dirtiest power plant in the nation.
Speaking at the first Nevada Clean Energy Summit in Reno in 2007, Reid said he was “going to do everything I can to stop” the construction of new coal-fired power plants in Nevada, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.
“There is no clean coal technology,” Reid said, according to the newspaper report. “There is cleaner coal technology, but there is no clean coal technology.”
Reid argued Nevada was wasting its sunlight by not capturing solar power.
“Fifty percent of the power comes from outside the state of Nevada, even though we have fuel shining on us every day – the sun,” Reid said.
The newspaper reported that Reid was determined to block the plans of Michael Yackira, the chief executive officer of Reno-based Sierra Pacific Resources, the company that sought to build the coal-fired $3.7 billion Ely Energy Center that would generate 1,500 megawatts of electricity.
The company also had signed in 2006 nine contracts for approximately 300 megawatts of geothermal and solar energy to be produced in Nevada, with the company and others investing $2 billion in the renewable energy projects between 2007 and 2015.
“We are going to build the cleanest coal plant in the world,” Yackira said.
But Reid objected, claiming it was a “matter of conscience” because he believed the proposed coal plant would pollute areas of Nevada, including national park lands.
In November 2008, the Wall Street Journal reported Reid wrote a letter to then-Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons, praising a decision by the Environmental Protection Agency’s appeals board to block the construction of a proposed coal plant in Utah. Reid argued the EPA decision “makes it overwhelmingly clear” that Nevada should not approve any new coal-fired plants without considering the “extremely high greenhouse gas emissions” of such plants.
April 16, 2014
Obama brother partners with polygamist cult
NEW YORK – In his partnership with the self-styled prophet of a polygamist cult in Texas, a half-brother of President Obama has expressed his support for the cult’s proposal to build the Third Temple in Jerusalem in fulfillment of biblical prophecy.
As WND reported Wednesday, Malik Obama’s nonprofit, Barack H. Obama Foundation, has a partnership with the House of Yahweh, a cult headed by Yisrayl Hawkins. Malik plans to be in Abilene, Texas, Friday to attend a conference hosted by Hawkins.
Malik Obama, a professing Muslim, embraced Yisrayl Hawkins’ proposal to build the Third Temple next to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, or Dome of the Rock, in a Nov. 16, 2010, address to the First Annual Global Council of Peace in Washington, D.C., sponsored by the House of Yahweh.
The Dome of the Rock, on what Jews identify as the Temple Mount, is one of the holiest and most revered Islamic sites in the world.
The Temple Mount is the site of the First and Second Temples.
“I’m at that stage now where I’m trying to do something and make a contribution to mankind,” Malik Obama said, referring to Yisrayl Hawkins’ Third Temple proposal. “I feel a lot better with myself today, and I welcome and embrace the principles and the concept I am hearing today.”
In the speech, Malik addressed the apparent contradiction between his Muslim faith and the goal of rebuilding the Third Temple adjacent to the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount.
“It’s easy for me to get with the program because I’m a Muslim, you know, a practicing Muslim, and all the principles that are within the program [of building the Third Temple] are within my beliefs,” Malik said. “So, it’s easy for me to step right in and be part of the program.”
Arabic-speaking Islam researcher Walid Shoebat has noted on his blog that Malik Obama’s advocacy for building the Third Temple is “blasphemous to his own religion.”
Shoebat also points out that Hawkins meets the standard definition of “false prophet” in Islam.
Rebuilt ‘in our time
Hawkins’ plan for the Third Temple was reported in a April 10, 1997, article published by the Boston Jewish Times. The article quoted Hawkins as saying the group was inspired to build the Third Temple by what Hawkins believes is a biblical prophecy by the Prophet Ezekiel, whom the group calls “Yechetzqyah,” that the Third Temple will be rebuilt “in our time.”
In an undated newsletter titled “A Peaceful Solution to Building the Next Temple Yerusalem” published on the House of Yahweh website, Hawkins explained goals for the Third Temple.
“In my many years of study – of which you will only see a part in this article – we have discovered that the Prophet Yechetzqyah wrote about a temple and a time period – for the day in which we now live!
“Even though Yechetzqyah was inspired to write this prophecy over 600 ears before the Temple was destroyed in 70 c.e. [“Common Era”] – He (sic) was inspired to write for us who live in these days; these troublous days; these same troublous times that the other inspired also proclaimed.
“In these same prophecies we are also shown a peaceful solution to building the Temple; the Temple of Yahweh!”
In the publication, Hawkins further claimed that the building of the Third Temple – according to precise specifications of location, design and measurement he claims to have discerned from his reading of Ezekiel in the Bible – are essential to bringing peace to Jerusalem and to the world.
A composite image produced by the House of Yahweh to illustrate Hawkins’ proposed Third Temple make clear the cult intends to construct the edifice on the Temple Mount adjacent to the Dome of the Rock, so as to dominate the Dome of the Rock by its close location and larger size.
Composite image of House of Yahweh's planned Third Temple, adjacent to the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem
The House of Yahweh claims Hawkins has been traveling to Israel since the 1980s to advance with various Jewish leaders the House of Yahweh plans to build the proposed Third Temple.
A House of Yahweh press release dated Feb. 21 reacts to a story published in the Times of Israel Jan. 3, 2013, in which Jordan’s Islamic Endowments Minister Abdul Salam Abadi accused Israel of planning to partition the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem and the surrounding Temple Mount plaza to erect the Third Temple.
“I’ve been to Jerusalem. My team and I have measured the area, and we’ve lined everything up with prophecy correctly,” Hawkins said in the press release.
“Our work has been studied and found valid by many biblical scholars. Rebuilding the third Temple next to the Dome of the Rock is the right solution, add a dividing wall between the two and you’ve got what the Bible says will work,” he said.
“To remove the Dome of the Rock would cause all out war. It’s unnecessary, and it’s not the peaceful solution.”
WND was unable to find any credible Jewish religious or political leader in Israel that endorses Hawkins’ proposal to construct his version of the Third Temple.
Malik supports Hamas
In an apparent contradiction of his goal to build the Third Temple according to the plans of Yisrayl Hawkins and the House of Yahweh, Malik Obama has embraced Hamas, the radical Palestinian terrorist organization which has a state aim of eliminating Israel.
WND reported in January Malik Obama posted on the Barack H. Obama Foundation website a photograph showing him at a conference in Yemen in 2010 wearing a Hamas scarf that bore the well-known Palestinian slogan “Jerusalem is ours – We are coming!”
On the Hamas logo is a map with the phrase “From the river to the sea,” a reference to the elimination of Israel which lies between the Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea.
Malik Obama, second from right, expressing support for Hamas at 2010 conference in Yemen
WND reported that Malik Obama is the executive secretary of the Islamic Dawa Organization, IDO, and has operated bank accounts in the Middle East with known ties to al-Qaida that are being widely utilized to raise money for terrorist activities conducted by Hamas in Gaza.
Though small, the Al Shamal Islamic Bank enabled bin Laden to move money quickly from one country to another through its correspondent relationships with some of the world’s major banks, said University of California, Berkeley, professor Peter Dale Scott, writing for GlobalResearch.org in 2013.
The Al Shamal bank was identified as one of bin Laden’s principal financial entities during the trial last year of four al-Qaida operatives convicted in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa.
Malik’s IDO is part of the Coalition of Islamic Organizations, CIO, that also includes the Islamic Society in Gaza, a Hamas front organization founded by Hamas terror leader Sheikh Yassin.
The U.S. Counterterrorism Center has characterized Hamas as a radical Islamic organization with roots in the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood that calls for the creation of an Islamic Palestinian state in place of Israel and rejects all agreements made between the Palestinian Liberation Organization and Israel.
Highly irregular
WND reported in 2011 that Lois Lerner, who directed the IRS tax-exempt division currently under congressional investigation for discriminating against tea-party and other conservative groups, signed the letter approving tax-exempt status for Malik’s foundation.
The foundation received the highly irregular IRS retroactive tax-exempt approval only after the group came under fire for operating as a 501(c)3 foundation since 2008 without ever having applied to the IRS for a tax determination.
In September 2011, the IRS confirmed to WND that the Barack H. Obama Foundation had received a determination letter in June 2011, awarding the group tax-exempt 501(c)3 status, retroactively to 2008.
On April 9, the House Ways and Means Committee voted along party lines to refer Lerner to the Justice Department for possible criminal prosecution. The next day, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee voted along party lines to recommend to the House that Lerner should be held in contempt of Congress for refusing to answer questions.
WND reported last year that the vice president of the Supreme Constitutional Court of Egypt gave a speech and participated in an interview on Egyptian television identifying Malik Obama as “a major architect” managing investments for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
In September 2013, WND reported a criminal complaint cited Malik for managing funds for both the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the Islamic Dawa Organization in Sudan, a country designated by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist state.
WND reported Egyptian lawyers filed criminal terrorism charges in the International Criminal Court against President Obama, in addition to the criminal terrorism charges previously filed in Egyptian courts against Malik.
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April 15, 2014
Obama brother works with 'Koresh-style' cult leader
Yisrayl Hawkins and Malik Obama
NEW YORK – President Obama’s half-brother from Kenya, Abongo Malik Obama, will return Friday to the U.S., not to visit the White House as he has done before, but to begin a partnership with a cult leader in Texas who has been compared to David Koresh and Jim Jones.
Malik will be in Abilene, Texas, to attend the Peaceful Solution Character Education Convention hosted by known polygamist Yisrayl Hawkins, head of a group called the House of Yahweh, reports Arabic-speaking Islam researcher Walid Shoebat.
Among his various predictions as a self-proclaimed prophet, Hawkins has proclaimed that a “nuclear baby” born in 2007 will grow up to cause a nuclear holocaust in which one-third of the earth’s population will be annihilated.
In 2008, Hawkins was prosecuted in Baird, Texas, after being charged with performing polygamous weddings and forcing children as young as 11 to work at his 44-acre compound, the the Associated Press reported at the time.
“But this isn’t the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints’ ranch, which authorities raided last month in Eldorado after receiving reports that underage girls were being forced to marry much older men,” the AP noted.
“This is the House of Yahweh: a different, even darker sect that the state has been investigating for years.”
In 2009, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the bigamy charges against Hawkins were dropped in his Callahan County court case, because a Class A misdemeanor bigamy charge had a two-year limitation and the charges dated back to 2005. There also was a resource limitation when the trial judge granted a change in venue from Callahan County to Parker County, Texas.
Hawkins, however, pleaded “no contest” to four counts of child labor violations for which he was assessed a $2,000 fine, 100 hours of community service and 15 months probation for each count.
The Abilene Reporter-News reported the sect was founded in 1980 by “Buffalo Bill Hawkins,” a former Abilene policeman fired for having beer in his patrol car.
After founding the sect, Hawkins changed his name to Yisrayl Hawkins, setting a standard in the group for members to change their last name to Hawkins, with the convention of adopting a new first name with an unusual spelling that typically incorporates at least one letter Y.
Malik Obama partners with House of Yahweh
Shoebat pointed out in a report that Malik has described Hawkins’ group as a “partner organization” in a posting titled “Impacting people everywhere for meaningful change” on his Barack H. Obama Foundation website.
Barack H. Obama Foundation website announcement of Hawkins “Peaceful Solution Character Education Incorporated” meeting in Abilene, Texas
A press release issued this week by Peaceful Solution Character Education promoted the upcoming meeting.
“Various speakers from around the globe, including Malik Obama, yes, the brother of President Obama, will address a variety of issues. The group says each speaker will provide answers that will solve many of the problems being faced in the home, school, workplace, and society as a whole.”
The press release also quoted Yisrayl Hawkins, as founder of the program, saying: “We will give you answers to solve any problem you can think of. Just show up, and be ready to get your solution.”
The website of Peaceful Solution Character Education Inc. lists the organization as a 501(c)3 founded by Yisrayl Hawkins in 1994 “for the purpose of maintaining a facility for authoring, manufacturing, distributing literature and multi-media presentations, conducting workshops, seminars, lecturing and conferences on a global basis, with the focus on secular character educational programming and curricula in service to the world.”
Sadik Rauf Ebeid, an Egyptian physician residing in the United States and an officer in the Egyptian Air Force, forwarded to WND a photograph from a 2013 press release showing Malik Obama with Yisrayl Hawkins.
Malik Obama embracing Yisrayl Hawkins
WND reported Ebeid has filed a criminal complaint against Malik Obama with Egyptian Attorney General Hisham Barakat, charging that Obama should be placed on Egypt’s terror watch list. Ebeid charges Malik was responsible for managing money for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, which is designated by the Egyptian government as a terrorist organization. Also cited is Malik’s involvement as an owner and investment adviser for the Sudan-based Islamic Dawa Organization, or IDO, a group Ebeid has linked with terrorist activities associated with Sudan President Omar Al-Bashir.
Shoebat, noting Hawkins considers himself a prophet, said Malik is on dangerous ground, because Muslims regard it as blasphemous for anyone to declare himself a prophet after the “last prophet,” Muhammad.
Shoebat, in his extensive research documenting Malik Obama’s polygamy, also published links to a video Shoebat claims shows Malik admitting to having convinced the mother and brother of an under-aged girl to sign away the girl to him in marriage.
The ‘nuclear baby’ apocalypse
Shoebat said that while it’s not clear if Hawkins violated the terms of his probation by associating with a known polygamist in Malik Obama, his decision to do so certainly raises issues of judgment.
“Why would a man on probation and who’d been charged with bigamy and whose compound remained a source of concern during that probationary period, choose to welcome a polygamist?” Shoebat asked.
In 2007, Hawkins authored a book titled “The Birth of the Nuclear Baby” in which he alleged a “nuclear baby” was conceived on Sept. 12, 2006, and born on June 12, 2007, who will mature to kill one-third of all human beings over a fourth-part of the earth in and around the River Euphrates.
Cover of 2007 book by Yisrayl Hawkins, “Birth of the Nuclear Baby”
Shoebat pointed out that similar to notorious cult leader Jim Jones’ move with his followers in the 1960s to Ukiah, Calif., to avoid a nuclear holocaust, Hawkins predicted a nuclear war would take place in 2006 and that Abilene would be spared.
The BBC reported in 2006 that the Texas-based House of Yahweh sect had believers in the village of Kyandaura, Kenya, 300 kilometers west of Nairobi.
The tie could explain how Malik Obama became linked to Yisrayl Hawkins, Shoebat said.
Noel Mwakugu, a reporter the BBC sent to Kyandaura after the failure of Hawkins’ apocalyptic prediction, noted the House of Yahweh leaders were out on bail after being arrested and restricted from inciting fear in the local population.
Mwakugu reported he was able to speak only by telephone to Eliasu Kamotho, a cult leader in Kyandaura who insisted the end of the world was still imminent, although he refused to give a deadline.
A 2006 YouTube video shows Hawkins making his apocalyptic nuclear war prediction.
See the video of Hawkins:
The cult compound
The 2008 AP story reported the House of Yahweh compound was on a ranch outside Abilene, fully equipped with wind generators, a food-processing plant, dozens of tractor-trailers holding canned goods, and a few stores carrying homemade toiletries and clothing.
While most of the sect members live in mobile homes surrounding the sect’s compound, the AP reported other member own homes nearby or live in trailer parks owned by Hawkins in Abilene.
Former members describe Hawkins as a “zealot whose teachings are a blend of Old Testament directives on diet and cleanliness, New Testament beliefs in Jesus, and Hawkins’ own prophecies rooted in the Book of Revelation,” the AP reported.
“Some former members also say Hawkins’ followers tithe nearly a third of their incomes to the church. Many purchase the church’s organically grown food, herbal drinks and dairy products, believing similar items available elsewhere are ‘unclean.’”
The AP further reported public records show Yisrayl Hawkins owned at least $2.1 million in land, housing and mobile homes.
“Nowhere is [Hawkins’] influence more apparent than in the sect’s 1,200-seat warehouse-like sanctuary, where a dozen poster-size pictures of Hawkins adorn the front wall,” the AP noted.
“Worshippers must first remove their shoes, and feet and hands are then sprayed with disinfectant before they come in. Men and women are seated on separate sides of an 8-foot wall dividing the sanctuary. Women wear long clothing and veils for modesty, and everyone wears gloves for cleanliness.”
A YouTube video posted in 2012 shows House of Yahweh members giving testimony regarding their involvement with the cult.
TThe House of Yahweh displays the group’s 2014 calendar, featuring the photograph seen above of Malik Obama embracing Yisrayl Hawkins.
House of Yahweh 2014 calendar
The 2010 Form 990 tax return for the House of Yahweh lists the 501(c)3 organization as headquartered in Lawndale, Calif., with total revenue of $1,962,470, and assets of just less than $1 million.
Malik’s tax-exempt problems
WND reported in May that funds contributed in the United States to the Barack H. Obama Foundation may have been diverted to support his multiple wives in Kenya.
Questioned about the distribution of funds, Malik positioned himself as a philanthropist.
“I am a peace activist and my organization is registered as a peace-making philanthropy in Kenya,” Malik said. “As head of the Obama clan, I do my part in spreading world peace and human development through the Barack H. Obama Foundation that we established in Kenya.”
WND reported in 2011 that Lois Lerner, the former head of the IRS tax-exempt division who is under congressional investigation for discriminating against tea party and other conservative groups, signed the letter approving tax-exempt status for Malik’s foundation.
The foundation received the highly irregular IRS retroactive tax-exempt approval only after the group came under fire for operating as a 501(c)3 foundation since 2008 without ever having applied to the IRS for a tax determination.
In September 2011, the IRS confirmed to WND that the Barack H. Obama Foundation had received a determination letter in June 2011, awarding the group tax-exempt 501(c)3 status retroactively to 2008.
Last week, the House Ways and Means Committee voted along party lines to refer Lerner to the Justice Department for possible criminal prosecution. On April 10, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee voted along party lines to recommend to the House that Lerner be held in contempt of Congress for refusing to answer questions.
In 2012, WND reported a separate foundation, the Mama Sarah Obama Foundation, created on behalf of Obama’s step-grandmother in Kenya, has operated as a 501(c)3 based in Los Angeles. The group transferred funds, 90 percent of which are raised from U.S. individuals and corporations, to Kenya to send Kenyan students to the top three most radical Wahhabist madrassas in Saudi Arabia.
After its founding in 2008, the Barack H. Obama Foundation, operating out of a commercial mail drop in Arlington, Va., solicited tax-deductible contributions on the Internet, listing addresses and telephone numbers both in the United States and Kenya without disclosing the group lacked tax-exempt status.
Malik’s history with Barack
Abongo Malik “Roy” Obama surfaced during the 2008 presidential campaign dressed in African garb and holding a photograph of Barack Obama, also wearing African garb.
Malik Obama displays a 1980s-era photograph of Barack Obama in Kenya, wearing African garb
Malik Obama was the best man at Barack Obama’s wedding to Michelle Robinson in 1992.
Malik Obama, best man at the wedding of Barack H. Obama, Oct. 3, 1992
He has been photographed at the White House, showing that as president, Barack Obama has openly welcomed his brother.
President Barack Obama meets with his Kenyan half-brother Malik Obama in White House
Born in Kenya on March 15, 1958, Malik Obama was the first child born to Barack Obama Sr.
The son of Kezia, Obama Sr.’s first wife, Malik Obama was only 18 months old when Barack Obama Sr. began undergraduate studies at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu.
Having abandoned Kezia in Kenya, Obama Sr. subsequently married Stanley Ann Dunham, Barack Obama Jr.’s mother, while in Honolulu, according to Barack Obama’s account in his autobiography “Dreams from My Father.”
April 12, 2014
Reid smelling anything but rosy in ranch fight
Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.
NEW YORK – When Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy refused to take his cattle off land the federal government demanded for the habitat of an endangered desert tortoise, it focused the nation’s attention on an arena Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., may have preferred to be kept quiet.
An investigative report published last week by Infowars.com drew a connection between Senate Majority Leader Reid’s involvement with Chinese energy giant ENN, Chinese efforts to build massive solar facilities in the Nevada desert and the showdown between Bundy and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, or BLM.
It wasn’t the first report to notice curious dealings involving the Chinese and America’s top Democrats.
On Jan. 20, 2013, WND warned Chinese government-backed economists were proposing a plan to allow Chinese corporations to set up “development zones” in the United States as part of a plan proposed by the Chinese government to convert into equity the more than $1 trillion in U.S. Treasury debt owned by the Chinese government.
The next day, Jan. 21, 2013, WND documented the Obama administration had begun to allow China to acquire major ownership interests in oil and natural gas resources across the USA.
China grabs oil interests in USA
The first major intrusion of China in the U.S. oil and natural gas market can be traced to the Obama administration decision in October 2009 to allow state-owned Chinese energy giant China Offshore Oil Corporation, or CNOOC, to purchase a multi-million dollar stake in 600,000 acres of South Texas oil and gas fields.
By allowing China to have equity interests in U.S. oil and natural gas production, the Obama administration reversed a policy of the Bush administration that in 2005 blocked China on grounds of national security concerns from a $18.4-billion dollar deal in which China planned to purchase California-based Unocal Corp.
China’s two, giant, state-owned oil companies acquiring oil and natural gas interests in the USA are CNOOC, 100-percent owned by the government of the People’s Republic of China, and Sinopec Group, the largest shareholder of Sinopac Corporation, an investment company owned by the government of the People’s Republic of China, incorporated in China in 1998, largely to acquire and operate oil and natural gas interests worldwide.
On March 6, 2012, the Wall Street Journal compiled a state-by-state list of the $17 billion in oil and natural gas equity interests CNOOC and Sinopec have acquired in the United States since 2010.
Colorado: CNOOC gained a one-third stake in 800,000 acres in northeast Colorado and southwest Wyoming in a $1.27-billion pact with Chesapeake Energy Corporation.
Louisiana: Sinopec has a one-third interest in 265,000 acres in the Tuscaloosa Marine Shale after a broader $2.5-billion deal with Devon Energy.
Michigan: Sinopec gained a one-third interest in 350,000 acres in a larger $2.5-billion deal with Devon Energy.
Ohio: Sinopec acquired a one-third interest in Devon Energy’s 235,000 Utica Shale acres in a larger $2.5-billion deal.
Oklahoma: Sinopec has a one-third interest in 215,000 acres in a broader $2.5-billion deal with Devon Energy.
Texas: CNOOC acquired a one-third interest in Chesapeake Energy’s 600,000 acres in the Eagle Ford Shale in a $2.16-billion deal.
Wyoming: CNOOC has a one-third stake in northeast Colorado and southeast Wyoming after a $1.27-billion pact with Chesapeake Energy. Sinopec gained a one-third interest in Devon Energy’s 320,000 acres as part of a larger $2.5-billion deal.
On March 6, 2012, in a separate story, the Wall Street Journal described that China’s strategy implemented since 2010 by Fu Chengyu, who has served as chairman of both CNOOC and Sinopec, involved the following components: “Seek minority states, play a passive role, and, in a nod to U.S. regulators, keep Chinese personnel at arm’s length from advanced U.S. technology.”
Harry Reid and Chinese solar investments in Nevada
On April 3, 3012, Bloomberg reported Chinese billionaire Wang Yusuo, one of China’s richest citizens and the founder of Chinese energy giant ENN Group, had teamed up with Senate Majority Leader Reid to win incentives including land 113 miles southeast of Las Vegas that ENN sought to buy for $4.5 million, less than one-eighth of the land’s $38.6 million assessed value.
Bloomberg reported ENN intended to create solar energy farms on the Nevada land, despite the nearly 50 percent plunge in solar panel prices globally in the previous 15 months that led to the bankruptcy of solar equipment maker Solyndra LLC, which had received approximately $535 million in U.S. government loan guarantees.
Bloomberg further documented ENN had contributed $40,650 individually and through its political action committee to Sen. Reid over the previous three election cycles.
Subsequently, on Sept. 4, 2012, Breitbart.com reported lawyer Rory Reid, the son of Sen. Reid, had been appointed the primary representative for ENN Energy Group, fronting the bid by the Chinese company to build a $5-billion solar panel plant on a 9,000-acre Clark County desert plot in Laughton, Nevada.
A Reuters report published on Aug. 31, 2012, documented that Reid was recruited by ENN during a 2011 trip he took to China with nine other U.S. senators, supposedly to invite Chinese investment in the United States.
The Senate group accompanying Reid on his 2011 trip to China included six other Democrats and three Republicans: Richard Shelby, R-Ala.; Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.; Dick Durbin, D-Ill.; Mike Enzi, R-Wyo.; Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.; Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J.; Johnny Isakson, R-Ga.; Jeff Merkley, D-Ore.; and Michael Bennet, D-Colo.
“A tortoise isn’t the reason why BLM is harassing a 67-year-old rancher,” blogger Dana Loesch wrote last week. “They want his land.”
Loesch pointed out that Reid has been accused by ranchers in Nevada of using the BLM to control Nevada land, over 84 percent of which is already owned by the federal government, and to pay back special interests, including his top donor, Harry Whittemore, who first urged Reid to have the habitat of the desert tortoise moved before he was convicted of violating federal election laws by illegally funneling $150,000 to Reid’s 2007 reelection campaign.
Confirmed by a 71-28 Senate vote on April 9, BLM chief Neil Kornze served as a former senior adviser to Reid before he joined BLM in 2011, serving for the past year as the agency’s principal deputy director, according to a CBS local television news report broadcast in Carson City, Nevada.
In 2012, BLM and the U.S. Department of Energy published a “Final Pragmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) for Solar Energy Development in Six Southwestern States” that Inforwars.com charged established the basis for allowing the endangered desert tortoise to migrate habitats, paving the way to put solar energy development projects on acreage that includes public land at dispute in the Bundy standoff over grazing rights.
Loesch’s analysis of the BLM’s actions was echoed at the Moapa Valley Town board meeting last Wednesday when one of the local citizens rose to give a stirring defense of Cliven Bundy and issue a warning to the BLM.
“They can throw an army of men around there … with sniper rifles on people just like you are, men, women and children … out there, who believe they have a right to be there,” he said.
“Maybe you believe in some other place that you believe you can be. Someday they’re gonna throw that army of men around you. And then somehow they feel like they got the right … they can drop a damn tripod in the ground and set a sniper rifle on it, so if you cross a line, they can put a bullet in you. Who the hell is the man behind that trigger? I wanna know … which one of you guys gives that guy the authority to throw that rifle down? And when he does, which one of us is he going to shoot?”
“Good God, didn’t he grow up in this country? Are we gonna give it up? This is a helluva lot bigger than Clive Bundy.”
The audience erupted in applause as the man concluded his speech.
“And when Clive decides to go back in there after his cows, and they’ve got orders to shoot anyone who goes in there, I’m gonna be with him.”
Someone in the crowd piped up, “Carrying a gun I hope.”
“No, no,” he said, “because them son of a bitches will fire the next shot heard around the world … and we will fire the rest!”
The full speech can be viewed, below.
Stocks dive as Russia abandons U.S. dollar
NEW YORK – The stock market dive Friday that brought the Dow Jones Industrial Average to near 16,000 and the Nasdaq to below 4,000 might reflect an accelerated move by Russia away from the petrodollar in retaliation for the Obama administration’s threatened economic sanctions over Russia’s takeover of Crimea.
Russia’s politically motivated attack on the petrodollar could trigger a major U.S. stock market collapse amid a global loss of confidence in the dollar caused by the Federal Reserve’s continuing policy of buying billions of dollars monthly in U.S. Treasury debt.
The Fed hopes to stimulate the economy by artificially keeping already depressed interest rates at zero.
With the Fed having limited options to address a panic caused by a bear market that could continue into next week, the risk of heavy selling of the U.S. dollar in international markets could raise prices in the increasingly import-dependent U.S. economy.
Hyperinflation could result, pushing the struggling economic recovery into a renewed economic recession.
On Friday, the third straight day of stock market losses, the Nasdaq plunged 54.37 points, or 1.3 percent, to 3,999.73. The Dow dropped 143.47 points, or 0.9 percent to 16,026.75, and the Standard & Poor’s 500 index fell 17.39 points, or 1 percent, to 1,815.69.
U.S.A. Today reported Friday that after the market selloff last week, investors remain jittery as the Nasdaq has dropped 3.1 percent, its worst plunge since November 2011, the S&P 500 has fallen 4 percent from its record high close of April 2 and is 1.8 percent lower for the year, while the Dow has retreated 3.3 percent from its Dec. 31 record close of 16,576.66.
Economist Peter Koenig, a former staff member of the World Bank, warned last week Russia is in the process of abandoning the “petro-dollar” as the trading unit for oil and gas transactions, with Russian hydrocarbon trade estimated at approximately a trillion dollars per year.
“The main supporters of this plan are Sergey Glaziev, the economic aide of the Russian president and Igor Sechin, the CEO of Rosneft, the biggest Russian oil company and a close ally of Vladimir Putin,” noted Voice of Russia radio April 4. “Both have been very vocal in their quest to replace the dollar with the Russian ruble. Now, several top Russian officials are pushing the plan forward.”
On March 21, Reuters reported Russia and China were close to finalizing a “Holy Grail” deal in which the Russian state-owned gas firm Gazprom would pump 38 billion cubic meters of natural gas per year to China starting in 2018. The gas would flow through the first pipeline between the world’s largest supplier of natural gas and the world’s largest user of natural gas, with the transactions to be valued in the Russian ruble, Chinese yuan or possibly in gold.
ZeroHedge.com, an economic blog that has been warning Russia’s war on the petrodollar could trigger a major collapse in U.S. stock markets, reported March 20 that Putin thanked China for standing by Russia in Crimea.
In addition to negotiating energy deals with China, Russia is also continuing to negotiate a deal with Iran to barter 500,000 barrels of Iranian oil per day for Russian goods. The deal would enable Iran to sell an additional $20 billion in crude oil without having to value the transactions in dollars.
Sens. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., and Mark Kirk, R-Ill., warned President Obama in a letter addressed to the White House that if Iran “moves forward with this effort to evade U.S. sanctions and violate the terms of oil relief provided for in the [Iranian interim nuclear deal reached in Geneva in November 2013], the United States should respond by re-instating the crude oil sanctions, rigorously enforcing significant reductions in global purchases of Iranian crude oil, and sanctioning any violations to the fullest extent of law.”
Era of dollar debasement
Economist John Williams, editor of the ShadowStats.com economic blog, has warned that the Federal Reserve’s policy of Quantitative Easing, or QE, committing the Fed to buy U.S. Treasury and agency-issued debt, has undermined worldwide confidence in the dollar.
As WND reported, Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen indicated in March that the Federal Reserve had not yet done enough to combat unemployment even after holding interest rates near zero for more than five years and engaging in a policy of Quantitative Easing that has pumped its balance sheet to $4.23 trillion.
Yellen’s remarks were widely interpreted by investors as indicating the Federal Reserve would continuing buying U.S. debt for the foreseeable future.
Under Yellen’s direction, the Fed has engaged in a policy of “tapering” the amount of QE, reducing by $10 billion a month the amount of U.S. debt the Fed purchases, with the aim of reducing the $85 billion a month amount of QE under former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to zero before the end of the year.
Williams warned in an April 2 commentary: “With the federal government and Federal Reserve locked into their respective systemic-destructive fiscal and monetary policies, a related, continuing massive loss of global and domestic confidence in the U.S. dollar, should lead to an outright dumping of the U.S. currency in the global markets, setting the initial stages of a hyperinflationary great depression.”
“The timing of the hyperinflation onset by the end of 2014 remains in place, with the odds of that occurrence estimated at 90 percent,” he wrote.
Williams continues to maintain that gold remains “the basic hedge for preserving the purchasing power of one’s wealth and assets in this still-developing era of dollar debasement.”
In his weekly newsletter published Friday, Williams warned that weak economic fundamentals remain suggestive of deteriorating business activity. The dollar is expected to continuing weakening on international currency markets as a result of the pressure on the Fed to continue buying billions of dollars of U.S. government-issued debt monthly.
In January, WND reported fears that rising interest rates would trigger a major downward stock market adjustment.
Last week, the dollar weakened against the euro and the British pound after the publication of minutes from the Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee’s March meeting. Yellen once again affirmed the Fed would consider allowing interest rates to rise six months after concluding the QE bond-buying program later this year.
After the publication of the FOMC minutes, the euro rose 0.4 percent against the dollar to $1.3852, its highest level since March 24, and the dollar fell against the British pound to $1.6801, the lowest level since Feb. 17.
On Tuesday, WND reported margin debt, the loans made by stock brokers to permit investor clients to buy stocks on credit, has reached a record high of $466 billion, approaching for the first time half a trillion dollars.
Borrowing to buy stocks works only as long as the stock market is going up in value. When the market levels off or begins to drop significantly in value, investors buying stocks on credit run the risk of having borrowed money on a losing proposition.
In the extreme, when an investor’s account begins to lose value in a stock market adjusting downward, a brokerage firm can initiate a “margin call,” forcing the investor either to liquidate stocks or to add money to the account to maintain the ratios demanded by federal regulators between the amount of money borrowed on margin and the underlying value of the stocks purchased.
April 9, 2014
House panel refers IRS official for criminal charges
WASHINGTON – A House panel voted along party lines today to refer Lois Lerner, the former IRS director of tax-exempt organizations, to the Justice Department for criminal investigation.
The House Oversight Committee is expected on Thursday to vote along party lines to charge Lerner with contempt of Congress for refusing to answer questions before Congress on May 22, 2013, and as WND reported, again on March 5 at hearings titled “Targeting Americans for their Political Beliefs.”
House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif, has argued Lerner effectively waived her Fifth Amendment right not to answer questions by reading an opening statement proclaiming her innocence before invoking her self-incrimination rights.
“Documents and testimony point to Lois Lerner as a senior IRS official responsible for conduct that deprived Americans of their rights to free speech and equal protection under our laws,” said Issa.
“Americans expect accountability and want Congress to do all it can to gather relevant evidence about what occurred and who was responsible so that this never happens again,” he said. “Ms. Lerner’s involvement in wrongdoing and refusal to meet her legal obligations has left the Committee with no alternative but to consider a contempt finding.”
As WND reported, in a House Oversight Committee report released March 11 titled “Lois Lerner’s Involvement in the IRS Targeting of Tax-Exempt Organizations,” Republican majority staff charged Lerner with presiding over discrimination against tea party and other conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
The House Oversight Committee majority staff report also charged that Lerner worked on restrictive rules that would apply selectively to tea party and other conservative groups after President Obama and other prominent Democrats expressed outrage at the Supreme Court’s Citizen United decision.
The March 11 report concluded:
“She (Lerner) was keenly aware of acute political pressure to crack down on conservative-leaning organizations. Not only did she seek to convey her agreement with this sentiment publicly, she went so far as to engage in a wholly inappropriate effort to circumvent federal prohibitions in order to publicize her efforts to crack down on a particular Tea Party applicant. She created unprecedented roadblocks for Tea Party organizations, worked surreptitiously to advance new Obama Administration regulations that curtail the activities of existing 501(c)(4) organizations – all the while attempting to maintain an appearance that her efforts did not appear, in her own words, ‘per se political.”
The House report linked statements made by Obama in speeches delivered during the 2010 mid-term election attacking the Citizens United Supreme Court decision with emails and speeches Lerner subsequently wrote expressing her intent to administer the IRS tax-exempt division in a partisan manner in compliance with Obama’s implicit suggestions on the campaign trail.
The decision by House Republicans not to grant Lerner immunity reflects a growing concern that her strongly partisan pro-Obama politics could compromise the depth and sincerity of her testimony should she be forced to answer questions.
If the full House of Representatives ultimately holds Lerner in contempt, the statute directs the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia “to bring the matter before the grand jury for its action.”
WND reported in January that the IRS proposed new rules that would limit the ability of conservative 501(c)4 groups to participate in the mid-term elections this November as they had in 2010, when Republicans won majority control of the House of Representatives.
Last month, WND reported Cleta Mitchell, a leading Washington-based attorney representing a number of grass-roots organizations claiming they were targeted by the IRS, said the Department of Justice had questioned Lerner sometime during the previous six months.
However, the department, under Attorney General Eric Holder, so far has declined to initiate criminal prosecutions against Lerner or any other IRS officials implicated in the discrimination scandal.
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April 8, 2014
Fears of market collapse amid record margin debt
NEW YORK – Borrowing money from stock brokers to buy stocks has now hit an all-time high, triggering fears of a downward market adjustment and a collapse of the brokerage-made loan market investors typically use to fuel continued bull market growth.
Data published by the New York Stock Exchange at the end of March shows margin debt – the loans made by stock brokers to permit investor clients to buy stocks on credit – has reached a record high of $466 billion, approaching for the first time a half-trillion dollars.
Analysis of NYSE margin debt shows previous peaks have foreshadowed severe market corrections.
It happened in the summer of 2000 just before the dot.com stock market crash and in the summer of 2007, preceding the bursting of the housing bubble that caused the dramatic economic downturn that began in 2008.
Stock market technical analysts have recently drawn attention to the rising level of margin debt. They note that when, as now, the margin debt drops below its 12-month moving average a strong signal is being given to investors to get out of the stock market because “investors are using less of the rocket fuel (i.e., margin debt) needed to keep stock prices artificially high.”
The fundamental problem with using margin debt to buy stocks on credit is that borrowing to buy stocks works only as long as the stock market is going up in value. When the stock market levels off or begins to drop significantly in value, investors buying stocks on credit run the risk of having borrowed money on a losing proposition.
In the extreme, when an investor’s account begins to lose value in a stock market adjusting downward, a brokerage firm can initiate a “margin call,” forcing the investor either to liquidate stocks or to add money to the account to maintain the ratios demanded by federal regulators between the amount of money borrowed on margin and the underlying value of the stocks purchased.
On Monday, stocks declined for a third session in a row, pulling the S&P index into the red for the year The decline raised investor fears the Internet, social media and biotechnology stocks that have fueled the current bull market may be losing momentum.
Fed ‘tapering’
At the end of March, Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen indicated that the Federal Reserve has not yet done enough to combat unemployment even after holding interest rates near zero for more than five years and engaging in a policy of “Quantitative Easing,” or QE. The QE policy has pumped the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet to $4.23 trillion with purchases of U.S. Treasuries and other federal government bonds.
Yellen’s remarks were widely interpreted by investors as indicating the Federal Reserve would continuing buying U.S. debt for the foreseeable future.
Under Yellen’s direction, the Fed has engaged in a policy of “tapering” the amount of QE, reducing by $10 billion a month the amount of U.S. debt the Fed purchases. The Fed’s aim is to reduce the $85 billion/month amount of QE under former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to zero before the end of the year.
In January, WND reported fears that tapering QE to zero could cause interest rates to rise, risking the possibility a severe market correction.
Recent concerns about margin debt nearing $500 billion have added to concerns that the Federal Reserve’s ability to continue boosting the U.S. stock markets by buying U.S. debt may be coming to an end, with a downward market adjustment becoming more likely in the next few months.
April 7, 2014
Promising Ebola treatment faces hurdles
NEW YORK – The basic strategy of the international health organizations dealing with the current outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in Guinea is to contain it by isolating the people infected.
The World Health Organization and other global bodies agree no medical treatment or vaccine exists for Ebola, which can prove lethal in 90 percent of cases.
A treatment that appears effective, however, against Ebola, other hemorrhagic fevers and HIV/AIDS, has been in various stages of testing since 2001.
The journey of Cyanovirin-N through the testing and approval process illustrates the difficulty of bringing promising treatments to the market.
Retired entrepreneur Jack Kneifl told WND he obtained a $5-million commitment in March 2001 from an “angel investor” to obtain an FDA license to manufacture a drug incorporating Cyanovirin-N, which is a protein.
It was discovered by a group headed by Dr. Michael R. Boyd at the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health near Washington, D.C.
Kneifl co-founded a pharmaceutical company with three other individuals called OmniViral Therapeutics LLC, located in Germantown, Md., near the National Institutes of Health.
“Within a matter of months we negotiated the license and began the pre-clinical trials,” he told WND.
WND was not able to reach Boyd, who retired last month as director of the University of South Alabama Mitchell Cancer Institute.
Boyd is the co-author of an academic article published in March 2001 by the Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy Journal and posted online by the National Institutes of Health that states Cyanoviron-N potently inactivates diverse strains of HIV-1, HIV-2, simian immunodeficiency virus, and feline immunodeficiency virus.
The bottom line
Kneifl said that preliminary research on Cyanovirin-N by Boyd’s group had shown that, due to its Method of Action, or MOA, it was 100 percent effective in the treatment of HIV/AIDS. In the treatment of all known strains of influenza, including Ebola and other hemorrhagic fevers, it showed at least 90 percent efficacy, he said.
“The bottom line,” Kneifl said, “is Cyanovirin-N demonstrated potential applications to microbicide development.”
Microbicides are chemical substances that reduce the infectious nature of various viruses or bacteria, in comparison to vaccines, which have biological agents that improve immunity to a particular disease.
Simply understood, Cyanovirin-N is a protein that prevents viruses and bacteria from attaching to and infecting healthy cells.
Based on the success of Boyd’s initial research, Kneifl began approaching potential investors to raise the funds needed to transform the discovery of Cyanovirin-N into a commercially viable medical treatment.
“By mid-2003 and some $5.5 million later, OmniViral had completed the pre-clinical studies which demonstrated an extraordinary level of success,” he recalled.
Pre-clinical trials, conducted on animals to determine toxicity and efficacy, are typically followed by more costly Phase 1 trials with a small human population to test toxicity and Phase 2 trials with a small human population to test efficacy.
Kneifl said the chief scientific officer working with OmniViral indicated that Cyanovirin-N “had greater potential than any other drug he had ever tested.”
The next step, he said, was to complete Phase 1 and Phase 2 clinical studies at an estimated cost of $8.5 million.
“I went back to my angel investor requesting him to continue funding the operations,” Kneifl said. “He turned into a chicken and pulled his funding. I believe it was because he was an industrialist, and this was his first venture investing in pharmaceuticals.”
Kneifl said the investor “didn’t realize how expensive FDA drug testing is during development phases.”
Had Cyanovirin-N passed Phase 1 and 2 clinical tests, Kneifl believed large pharmaceutical companies would have been interested in investing the $50 to $100 million needed to complete large-scale Phase 3 tests on human populations.
“Due to lack of funding, OmniViral, for all practical purposes, was closed down at the end of 2004,” he said.
FDA spokeswoman Stephanie Yao told WND she could not speak specifically about Cyanovirin-N, but, in general, she said, “efficacy found during pre-clinical testing does not always translate to clinical testing.”
“Discovering a new molecule that is effective, can be administered and can be tolerated by humans is not an easy task,” Yao said. “Many drugs encounter problems during the development process that prevent their further development.
Boyd and his colleagues announced the discovery of Cyanovirin-N in a professional article published in a peer reviewed medical journal in July 1997.
In subsequent publications in peer reviewed medical journals, Boyd and his colleagues conducted tests demonstrating Cyanovirin-N was highly effective in combating HIV/AIDS, moderately effective treating herpes and various strains of the hepatitis virus, as well as highly effective against almost all strains of the influenza A and B virus.
The findings of the Microbicide Initiative, a Science Working Group founded by the Rockefeller Foundation in 2000, called for the development of microbicides to combat HIV/AIDS. The group argued microbicides were likely to become available more widely and much more rapidly than vaccines and also act at an earlier stage of the infection. They may also be able to interrupt the spread of other sexually transmitted infections that an HIV-specific vaccine would be unlikely to affect.
“Investment in this global priority is now needed as never before,” the Rockefeller report concluded. “Since large-scale pharmaceutical industry involvement is unlikely until a phase 3 trial has demonstrated human efficacy, this investment will be required from public agencies and from private philanthropies. Prioritizing an investment in the microbicides field offers a realistic, manageable, and near-term chance to seize a powerful opportunity to promote the public good.”
Commercial viability
The National Institutes of Health confirmed to WND that OmniViral had patent license agreements with the NIH for Cyanovirin-N technology that are now expired or terminated.
An author of the initial discovery paper, Dr. Barry O’Keefe, deputy chief of molecular biology at the National Cancer Institute’s Molecular Targets Laboratory, has worked with the protein for several years and tested it against both influenza and Ebola.
O’Keefe said he was not personally aware of the results of Omniviral’s preclinical studies. He affirmed, however, that scientific studies were performed on Cyanovirin-N at the National Cancer Institute.
He said the studies found Cyanovirin-N was active against influenza in mice at levels up to 100 percent In the Ebola studies, systemic treatment with Cyanovirin-N only delayed the time until death for treated mice. None of the animals survived.
An April 2013 article in the Brazilian magazine Pesquisa, published by the Sao Paulo Research Foundation, explained that work is still going on to develop Cyanovirin-N, at least for HIV prevention.
The article cites O’Keefe, who explained that Cyanovirin-N was at the pre-clinical development stage and hadn’t been tested on humans yet.
The article noted O’Keefe spearheaded a study published in 2003 that showed that the protein was also active against some strains of the influenza virus.
O’Keefe was taking part in studies, the article said, to obtain the protein through plants, such as soybean seeds.
“We still lack a commercially viable, low-cost way to achieve large-scale production of Cyanovirin-N,” O’Keefe said, “and plants are a good means to that end.”
The researchers’ first stumbling block, the article said, was obtaining large quantities of the protein.
The latest challenge has been to improve the protein extraction process in order to purify larger quantities of Cyanovirin-N from soybean seeds.
Deadly Ebola virus spreads
NEW YORK – Defying efforts at containment, the Ebola outbreak that began in Guinea and has caused 90 dead in Guinea and Liberia has now spread further across West Africa into Mali in what Doctors without Borders is calling an “unprecedented” outbreak.
The U.N.’s World Health Organization, or WHO, has identified the active virus as the Zaire strain of Ebola. The virus has a death rate approaching 90 percent, suggesting that unless contained, the outbreak in West Africa could become one of deadliest epidemics of Ebola, for which there is no known cure.
Doctors without Borders has 52 international staff working alongside its Guinea staff in cooperation with Guinea’s Ministry of Health.
The group is caring for 19 patents held in isolation units set up in various locations across Guinea.
The teams include doctors, nurses, epidemiologists, water and sanitation experts, health promoters and psychologists.
“Our efforts are aimed at containing the outbreak, which is accomplished by detection of the sick and isolating them from the rest of the population,” explained Anja Wolz, MSF’s emergency coordinator in Conakry, Guinea.
“Although there is no cure for this disease, we can reduce its very high mortality by addressing the symptoms. This includes administering a drip to patients who have become dehydrated from diarrhea and by confirming that they do not have a different disease, such as malaria or a bacterial infection like typhoid.”
Meanwhile, tensions in the region are growing as health-care authorities fight to combat panic in the areas affected by the Ebola outbreak.
In Mali, three people have been placed in quarantine, with samples sent off to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta for testing.
The Associated Press reported Friday that residents in Bamako, the capital of Mali, have conducted public demonstrations that resulted in several people wounded when police tried to disperse protesters.
The crowds in Bamako were evidently angry that several people suspected of having the deadly disease were being held in isolation in their neighborhood.
Also on Friday, an angry mob attacked an Ebola treatment center in Guinea, accusing the staff of bring the disease to the town, according to Reuters.
“We have evacuated all our staff and closed the treatment center,” Doctors without Borders medical worker Sam Taylor told Reuters, declining to give details of the attack. “We have the full support of the local leaders and we’re working with the authorities to try and resolve this problem as quickly as possible so we can start treating people again.”
Government health officials in Guinea have banned the consumption of bat and bush meat, local delicacies in West African nations that are considered carriers of the Ebola virus.
Last week, Senegal closed its border with Guinea in an attempt to stop the spread of the virus.
WHO reports Ebola first appeared in 1976 in two simultaneous outbreaks, in Nzara, Sudan, and in a village in Yambuku, Democratic Republic of Congo, situated near the Ebola River, from which the disease takes its name.
“Ebola is introduced into the human population through close contact with the blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected animals,” the WHO website says.
“In Africa, infection has been documented through the handling of infected chimpanzees, gorillas, fruit bats, monkeys, forest antelope and porcupines found dead or ill in the rainforest.”
Ebola spreads from close contact with the blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected people.
WHO warns burial ceremonies in which mourners have direct contact with the body of the deceased person can also play a role in the transmission of Ebola. The transmission of the disease via infected semen can occur up to seven weeks after clinical recovery.
Dr. Peter Piot, co-discoverer of the Ebola virus
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warn the symptoms of Ebola include fever, headache, joint and muscle aches, weakness, diarrhea, vomiting, stomach pain and lack of appetite, while some patients also experience a rash, red eyes, hiccups, cough, sore throat, chest pain, difficulty breathing and swallowing, as well as bleeding inside and outside of the body.
After an incubation period of between two and 21 days, the Ebola virus can cause death a few days later in particularly virulent cases in which the body organs shut down and internal bleeding becomes unstoppable.
People who fall sick with the disease tend to vomit, have diarrhea and suffer both internal and external bleeding, with their bodies often “covered in virus,” explained Dr. Peter Piot, the founding executive director of UNAIDS and under secretary-general of the United Nations from 1995 until 2008.
He’s the microbiologist and physician who co-discovered Ebola and now directs the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
The Ebola virus has alarmed international health officials because the frequency of international air travel has increased the possibility the outbreak of the virus in one nation might quickly be transmitted to other countries by patients in the incubation phase of the infection.
The virus is also a serious threat to health-care workers administering health treatments for the illness.
April 4, 2014
Climate scientist ridicules U.N. report as junk
NEW YORK – A prominent environmental scientist has gone public with his scorn for the recently released fifth climate assessment of U.N.’s International Panel on Climate Change, which concluded that a continued rise in carbon dioxide levels in the Earth’s atmosphere could risk human extinction.
Leslie Woodcock, emeritus professor of chemical thermodynamics at the University of Manchester’s School of Chemical Engineering and Analytical Science, mocked the terms “climate change” and “global warming” in a scientific critique of the U.N.’s climate fears.
Woodcock, a former NASA researcher, said the theory of “man-made climate change” is an “unsubstantiated hypothesis.”
“Water is a much more powerful greenhouse gas, and there is 20 times more of it in our atmosphere, around one percent of the atmosphere, whereas CO2 is only 0.04 percent,” he said, according to the Yorkshire Evening Post in the U.K.
Woodcock, who received his Ph.D. from the University of London, is a fellow of the royal society of chemical engineering, a founding editor of Molecular Simulation and a recipient of a Max Plank Society Visiting Fellowship.
He has published 70 professional papers in peer-reviewed journals.
“Carbon dioxide has been made out to be some kind of toxic gas, but the truth is that it’s the gas of life. We breathe it out, plants breathe it in and it’s not caused by us,” he insisted.
“Global warming is nonsense.”
Woodcock argues that theories of anthropogenic global warming, now morphed by radical leftist environmentalists into less well-defined theories of “climate change,” are economically motivated.
“If you talk to real scientists who have no political interest, they will tell you there is nothing in global warming. It’s an industry that creates vast amounts of money for some people,” Woodcock said.
His outspoken critique of global warming and climate change theories were published in the U.K. a day after the BBC agreed to give less airtime to climate skeptics.
With pressure exerted by Parliament’s Commons Science and Technology Committee, the government-funded network decided editors should seek special clearance to interview climate skeptics and accompany their appearances with “health warnings.”
In his interview with the Yorkshire Evening Post, Woodcock did not hesitate to debunk the “science” behind global warming/climate-change alarmism.
“The term ‘climate change’ is meaningless,” Woodcock contended.
“The Earth’s climate has been changing since time immemorial, that is since the Earth was formed 1,000 million years ago,” he said.
“The theory of ‘man-made climate change’ is an unsubstantiated hypothesis about our climate that says it has been adversely affected by the burning of fossil fuels in the last 100 years, causing the average temperature on the earth’s surface to increase very slightly but with disastrous environmental consequences.”
There is no reproducible scientific evidence CO2 gas even slightly increased in the last 100 years, he argued, insisting climate change is a constant throughout geological time, with radical changes being documented over eons, long before human beings appeared on the planet.
“Events can happen with frequencies on all time scales in the physics of a chaotic system such as the weather,” he said. “Any point on lowland can flood up to a certain level on all time scales from one month to millions of years, and it’s completely unpredictable beyond around five days,” Woodcock said.
“We can go back to great floods and Noah’s Ark in the Middle East regions which are now deserts,” he said.
He explained that the reason records seem to be being frequently broken is “simply because we only started keeping them about 100 years ago.”
“There will always be some record broken somewhere when we have another natural fluctuation in weather,” he said.
It’s “absolutely stupid to blame floods on climate change, as I read the Prime Minister did recently.”
“I don’t blame the politicians in this case, however. I blame his so-called scientific advisors.”
Woodcock said the global warming/climate change political lobby is imposing costs by making it increasingly expensive just to keep warm “as a consequence of the idiotic decisions our politicians have taken in recent years about the green production of electricity.”
“The green lobby has created a do-good industry, and it becomes a way of life, like a religion,” he said. “I understand why people defend it when they have spent so long believing in it; people do not like to admit they have been wrong.”
He said the term “global warming” does not mean anything unless it is given a time scale.
“The temperature of the earth has been going up and down for millions of years,” he said. “If there are extremes, it’s nothing to do with carbon dioxide in the atmosphere; it’s not permanent and it’s not caused by us.”
He pointed to light bulbs to illustrate his concern that climate hysterics are imposing unnecessary costs and hazards on society.
“Light bulbs are a good example of the contradiction with the green movement. Europe has outlawed the tungsten light bulb,” he noted. “Tungsten is a harmless metal, like gold. It does not react with anything, and yet now, in the name of conserving energy, we have low-energy light bulbs full of toxic chemicals, including mercury vapor, which is poisonous.”
He noted that if a low-energy light bulb is smashed, the advice from the Department for the Environment is to vacate the room for 15 minutes.
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