We've all been there, a high school graduation ceremony or really any function where groups of people gather and someone has a microphone. At some point during their oratory they will ask that we the common man acknowledge the sacrifices made by the public servants, the cops, the firefighters and most importantly the military. But why?
We've all heard some variation of "oh if it wasn't for the military we would all be speaking German etc etc" but is it really true? What has the military done for you? When in the last 150 years has the US military fought to defend our land against an invading army? Would Germany have invaded before WWII, the idea to any honest historian is laughable since Germany did everything it could to avoid war with the US, would Korea have invaded the US before the Korean War, or what about Vietnam? Where they a threat to us?
Last time I checked our borders are wide open and a brown army floods in from the south. But honestly and seriously consider what threat has the US military protected any of us from? We go along with this notion because everyone else does, we "thank the troops" without considering what it is they actually do for us. It's been one excursion at the behest of the military industrial complex after another, just rampant adventurism for decades.
Now don't take this the wrong way, I am not opposed to having a military (although like the founders I think if you have a standing army history proves that you will use it) but I am saying that the military or any government worker shouldn't be elevated on any pedestal even an inch above the working class White man.
Aside from the fact that the military has not engaged in a single conflict to defend this land while the illegal aliens have invaded by the 10's of millions and the criminals in DC continue to disregard the Constitution which the military SWEARS to uphold, I don't think we need to get the cart before the horse. Who is really the American hero?
Envision the scenario of the high school graduation, people seated on the football field on a early summer evening, the speaker steps up and begins the ritual of "thanking the troops" he asks for military past and present to stand up and the audience will undoubtedly erupt with applause. The audience filled with blue collar working white men, men who toil in the sun building houses, bridges, roads, mining, drilling wells, farming etc. Not only do these men provide us with the necessities of life, they pay the salaries of the cops, firefighters and the troops. Every single dime that any government worker is paid is stolen from someone else, either through taxation or inflation.
So I find this situation to not only be backwards but in fact perverse. I think it should be the government workers giving a roaring applause to the White middle class working man who makes it all possible, through the sweat of whose brow the world revolves. This is the atlas who has the world on his shoulders.
So next time someone talks about thanking the troops, firefighters, or cops think about who is more important the employee, them, or the employer, us.
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Eisenhower's Death Camps
The Last Dirty Secret of World War Two
Saturday Night
Sept 1989
Call it callousness, call it reprisal, call it a policy of hostile neglect: a million Germans taken prisoner by Eisenhower's armies died in captivity after the surrender.
In the spring of 1945, Adolph Hitler's Third Reich was on the brink of collapse, ground between the Red Army, advancing westward towards Berlin, and the American, British, and Canadian armies, under the overall command of General Dwight Eisenhower, moving eastward over the Rhine. Since the D-Day landings in Normandy the previous June, the westward Allies had won back France and the Low Countries, and some Wehrmacht commanders were already trying to negotiate local surrenders. Other units, though, continued to obey Hitler's orders to fight to the last man. Most systems, including transport, had broken down, and civilians in panic flight fromt he advancing Russians roamed at large.
"Hungry and frightened, lying in grain fields within fifty feet of us, awaiting the appropriate time to jump up with their hands in the air"; that's how Captain H. F. McCullough of the 2nd Anti-Tank Regiment Division described the chaos of the German surrender at the end of the Second World War. In a day and a half, according to Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery, 500,000 Germans surrendered to his 21st Army Group in Northern Germany. Soon after V-E Day--May 8, 1945--the British-Canadian catch totalled more that 2 million. Virtually nothing about their treatment survives in the archives in Ottawa or London, but some skimpy evidence from the International Committee of the Red Cross, the armies concerned, and the prisoners themselves indicates that almost all continued in fair health. In any case, most were quickly released and sent home, or else transferred to the French to help in the post-war work of reconstruction. The French army had itself taken fewer than 300,000 prisoners.
Like the British and Canadians, the Americans suddenly faced astounding numbers of surrendering German troops: the final tally of prisoners taken by the U.S. army in Europe (excluding Italy and North Africa) was 5.25 million. But the Americans responded very differently.
Among the early U.S captives was one Corporal Helmut Liebich, who had been working in an anti-aircraft experimental group at Peenemunde on the Baltic. Liebich was captured by the Americans on April 17, near Gotha in Central Germany. Forty-two years later, he recalled vividly that there were no tents in the Gotha camp, just barbed wire fences around a field soon churned to mud. The prisoners received a small ration of food on the first day but it was then cut in half. In order to get it, they were forced to run a gauntlet. Hunched ocer, they ran between lines of American guards who hit them with sticks as they scurried towards their food. On April 27, they were transferred to the U.S. camp at Heidesheim farther wet, where there was no food at all for days, then very little. Exposed, starved, and thirsty, the men started to die. Liebich saw between ten and thirty bodies a day being dragged out of his section, B, which at first held around 5,200 men.. He saw one prisoner beat another to death to get his piece of bread. One night when it rained, Liebich saw the sides of the holes in which they were sheltered, dug in soft sandy earth, collapse on men who were too weak to struggle out. They smothered before anyone could get to them. Liebich sat down and wept. "I could hardly believe men could be so cruel to each other."
Typhus broke out in Heidesheim about the beginning of May. Five days after V-E Day, on May 13, Liebich was transferred to another U.S. POW camp, at Bingen-Rudesheim in the Rhineland near Bad Kreuznach, where he was told that the prisoners numbered somewhere between 200,000 and 400,000, all without shelter, food, water, medicine, or sufficient space.
Soon he fell sick with dysentery and typhus. he was moved again, semiconscious and delirious, in an open-topped railway car with about sixty other prisoners: northwest down the Rhine, with a detour through Holland, where the Dutch stood on bridges to smash stones down on the heads of the prisoners. Sometimes the American guards fired warning shots near the Dutch to keep them off. After three nights, his fellow prisoners helped him stagger into the hug camp at Rheinberg, near the border with the Netherlands, again without shelter or food.
When a little food finally did arrive, it was rotten. In none of the four camps had Leibich seen any shelter for the prisoners. the death rate in the U.S. Rhineland camps at this point, according to surrviving data from a medical survey, was about thirty per cent per year. A normal death rate for a civilian population in 1945 was between one and two percent.
One day in June, through hallucinations of his fever, Liebich saw "the Tommies" coming into the camp. The British had taken over Rheinberg, and that probably saved his life. At this point, Liebich, who is five-foot-ten, weighed 96.8 ponds.
According to stories told to this day by other ex-prisoners of Rheinberg, tha last act of the Americans before the British took over was to bulldoze one section level while there were still men living in their holes in the ground.
Under the Geneva Convention, three important rights are guaranteed prisoners of war: that they will be fed and sheltered to the same standard as base or depot troops of the Capturing Power; that they can send and receive mail; and that they will be visited by delegates of the International Red Cross (ICRC) who will report in secret on their treatment to a Protecting Power. (In the cas eof Germany, as the government disintegrated in the closing stages of the war, Switzerland had been designated the protecting power.)
In fact, German prisoners taken by the U.S. Army at the end of the Second World War were denied these and most other rights by a series of specific decisions and directives stemming mainly from SHAEF--Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force. General Dwight Eisenhower was both supreme commander of SHAEF--all the Allied armies in northwest Europe--and the commanding general of the U.S. forces in the European theatre. He was subject to the Combined Chiefs of Staff (CCS) of Britain and the U.S., to the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), and to the policy of the U.S. government, but in the absence of explicit directives--to the contrary or otherwise--ultimate responsibility for the treatment of the German prisoners in American hands lies with him.
"God , I hate the Germans," Eisenhower wrote to his wife, Mamie, in September, 1944. Earlier, in front of the British ambassador to Washington, he had said that all the 3,500 or so officers of the German General Staff should be "exterminated."
In March, 1945, a message to the Combined Chiefs of Staff signed and initialled by Eisenhower recommended creating a new class of prisoners--Disarmed Enemy Forces, or DEFs--who, unlike Geneva-defined prisoners of war, would not be fed by the army after the surrender of Germany. This would be a direct breach of the Geneva Convention. The message, dated March 10, argues in part: "The additional maintenance commitment entailed by declaring the German Armed Forces prisoners [sic] of war which would necessitate the prevision of rations on a scale equal to that of base troops would prove far beyond the capacity of the Allies even if all German sources were tapped." It ends: "Your approval is requested. Existing plans have been prepared upon this basis."
On April 26, 1945, the Combined Chiefs approved the DEF status for prisoners of war in American hands only: the British members had refused to adopt the American plan for their own prisoners. The Combined Chiefs stipulated that the status of disarmed troops be kept secret.
By that time, Eisenhower's quartermaster general at SHAEF, General Robert Littlejohn, had already twice reduced rations for prisoners, and a SHAEF message signed "Eisenhower" had reported to General George Marshall, the U.S. Army Chief of staff, that the prisoner pens would provide "no shelter or other comforts...."
The problem was not supplies. There was more than enough material stockpiled in Europe to construct prison camp facilities. Eisenhower's special assistant, general Everett Hughes, had visited the huge supply dumps at Naples and Marseille and reported: "More stocks than we can ever use. Stretch as far as eye can see." Food should not have been a problem, either. In the U.S., wheat and corn surpluses were higher than they had ever been, and there was a record crop of potatoes. The army itself had so much food in reserve that when a whole warehouse was dropped from the supply list by accident in England it was not noticed for three months. In addition, the International Red Cross had over 100,000 tons of food in storage in Switzerland. When it tried to send two trainloads of this to the American sector of Germany, U.S. Army Officers turned the trains back, saying their warehouses were already overflowing with ICRC food which they had never distributed.
Nonetheless it was through the supply side that the policy of deprivation was carried out. Water, food, tents, space, medicine--everything necessary for the prisoners was kept fatally scarce. Camp Rheinberg, where Corporal Liebich would fetch up in in mid-May, shivering with dysentery and typhus, had no food at all when it was opened on April 17. As in the other big "Rhine meadow" camps, opened by the Americans in mid-April, there were no guard towers, tents, buildings, cooking facilities, water, latrines, or food.
George Weiss, at tank repairman who now lives in Toronto, recalls of his camp on the Rhine: "All night we had to sit up jammed against each other. But the lack of water was the worst thing of all. For three and a half days, we had no water at all. We would drink our own urine...."
Private Heinz T. (his surname is withheld at his request) had just turned eighteen in hospital when the Americans walked into his ward on April 18. he and all his fellow patients were taken out to the camp at Bad Kreuzpath in the Rhineland, which already held several hundred thousand prisoners. Heinz was wearing only a pair of shorts, shoes, and a shirt.
Heinz was far from the youngest in the camp, which also held thousands of displaced German civilians. there were children as young as six among the prisoners, as well as pregnant women, and men over sixty. At the beginning, when trees still grew i the camp, some men managed to cut off limbs to build a fire. the guards ordered the fire put out. In many of the enclosures, it was forbidden to dig holes in the ground for shelter. "All we had to eat was grass," Heinz remembers.
Charles von Luttichau was convalescing at home when he decided to surrender voluntarily to US troops about to occupy his house. He was taken to Camp Kripp, on the Rhine near Remagen.
"We were kept in crowded barbed wire cages in the open with scarcely any food," he recalled recently. "More than half the days we had no food at all. On the rest, we got a little K ration. I could see from the package that they were giving us one-tenth of the rations that they issued to their own men....I complained to the American camp commander that he was breaking the Geneva Convention, but he just said, 'Forget the Convention. You haven't any rights.'
"The latrines were just logs flung over ditches next to the barbed-wire fences. Because of illness, the men had to defecate on the ground. Soon, many of us were too weak to take our trousers off first. So our clothing was infected, and so was the mud where we had to walk and sit and lie down. In these conditions, our men very soon started to die. Within a few days, some of the men who had gone healthy into the camp were dead. I saw our men dragging many bodies to the gate of the camp, where they were thrown loose on top of each other onto trucks, which took them away."
Von Luttichau's mother was American and he later emigrated to Washington, D.C., where he became a historian and wrote a military history for the U.S. Army. he was in the Kripp camp for about three months.
Wolfgang Iff, who was imprisoned at Rheinberg and still lives in Germany, reports that, in his subsection of perhaps 10,000 prisoners, thirty to fifty bodies were dragged out every day. A member of the burial work party, Iff says he helped haul the dead from his cage out to the gate of the camp, where the bodies were carried by wheel barrow to several big steel garages. there Iff and his team stripped the corpses of clothing, snapped off half of their aluminium dog tag, spread the bodies in layers of fifteen to twenty, with ten shovelfuls of quicklime over each layer till they were stacked a metre high, placed the personal efefcts in a bag for the Americans, then left. Some of the corpses were dead of gangrene following frostbite. (It was an unusually wet, cold spring.) A dozen or more others had grown too weak to cling to the log flung across the ditch for a latrine, and had fallen off and drowned.
The conditions in the American camps along the Rhine in late April were observed by two colonels in the U.S. Army Medical Corps, James Mason and Charles Beasley, who described them in a paper published in 1950: "Huddled close together for warmth, behind the barbed wire was a most awesome sight--nearly 100,000 haggard, apathetic, dirty, gaunt, blank-staring med clad in dirty field grey uniforms, and standing ankle-deep in mud....The German Divisions Commander reported that the men had not eaten for at least two days, and the provisions of water was a major problem--yet only 200 yards away was the River Rhine running bankfull."
On May 4, 1945, the first German prisoners of war in U.S. hands were transferred to DEF status. The same day, the U.S. war Department banned mail to or from the prisoners. (when the International Committee of the Red Cross suggested a plan for restoring mail in June, it was rejected.)
On May 8, V-E Day, the German government was abolished and, simultaneously, the U.S. State Department dismissed Switzerland as the protecting power for the German prisoners. (Prime Minister Mackenzie King of Canada protested to the foreign Office in London the parallel removal of the Swiss as protecting power in British-Canadian camps, but was squelched for his pains.) With this done, the State Department informed the International Red Cross that, since there was no protecting power to report to, there was no longer and point in visiting the camps.
From then on, prisoners held by the US Army had no access to any impartial observer, nor could they receive food parcels, clothing, or medicines from any relief agency, or letters from their kin.
general George Patton's US Third Army was the only army in the whole European theatre to free significant numbers of captives during ma, saving many of them from probable death. Bothe Omar Bradley and General J.C.H. lee, Commander Communications Zone (Com Z) Europe, ordered a release of prisoners within a week of the war's end, but a SHAEF order signed "Eisenhower" countermanded them on my 15.
That same day, according to a minute of their meeting, General Eisenhower and Prime Minister Churchill talked about reducing prisoner rations. Churchill asked for an agreement on the scale of rations for prisoners, because he would soon have to announce cuts in the British meat ration and wanted to make sure that the prisoners "as far as possible...should be fed on those supplies which we could best spare." Eisenhower replied that he had already "given the matter considerable attention," but was planning to re-examine the whole thing to see "whether or not a further ereduction was possible." He told Churchill that POWs had been getting 2,200 calories a day. (The US Army medical Corps considered 2,150 an absolute minimum subsistence level for sedentary adults living under shelter. US troops were issued 4,000 calories a day.) What he did not tell Churchill was that the army was not feeding the DEFs at all, or was feeding them far less than those who still enjoyed prisoner-of-war status.
Rations were reduced again soon after this: a direct cut was recorded in the Quartermaster Reports. But indirect cuts were taking place as well. One was the effect of extraordinary gaps between prisoner strength as given on the ration lists and official "on hand" accounts, and between the on-hand counts, and between the on-hand count and the actual number of prisoners in the camps.
The meticulous General Lee grew so worried about the discrepancies that he fired off a challenging cable from his headquarters in paris to SHAEF headquarters in Frankfurt:
"This Headquarters is having considerable difficulty in establishing adequate basis for requisitioning rations for prisoners of war currently held in Theatre...In response to inquiries from this Headquarters...several varying statements of number of prisoners held in theatre have been published by SHAEF."
He then cites the latest SHAEF statement:
"Cable...dated 31 May states 1,890,000 prisoners of war and 1,200,000 disarmed German forces on hand. Best available figures at this Headquarters show prisoners of war in ComZ910,980, in ComZ transient enclosures 1,002,422 and in Twelfth Army GP 965,125, making a total of 2,878,537 and an additional 1,000,000 disarmed German forces Germany and Austria."
The situation was astounding: Lee was reporting a million or more men in the US Army camps in Europe than SHAEF said it ha don its books. But he was wrestling with the wind: he had to his issue of food on the number of prisoners on hand supplied to him by SHAEF G-3 (Operations).
Given the general turmoil, fluctuating and inaccurate tallies were probably inevitable, but more than 1 million captives can actual be seen disappearing between two reports of the Theatre Provost Marshal, issued on the same day, June2. the last in a series of daily reports from the TPM logs 2,870,400 POWs on hand at June 2. The first report of the new weekly series, dated the same day, says that there are only 1,836,000 on hand. At one point in the middle of June, the prisoner strength on the ration list was shown as 1,421,559, while on Lee's and other evidence there were probably almost three times that number.
Spreading the rations thinner was one way to guarantee starvation. Another was accomplished by some strange army bookkeeping during June and July. A million prisoners who had been receiving at least some food because of their nominal POW status lost their rights and their food when they were secretly transferred to the DEF status. The shift was made deliberately over many week, with careful attention paid to maintaining plausible balances in SHAEF's weekly POW and DEF reports. (The discrepancy between those "shifted" from POW status during the period from June 2 to July 28 and those "received" in the DEF status is only 0.43 per cent.) The reclassification to DEF did not require any transfer of men to new camps, or involve any new organisation to get German civilians supplies to them. The men stayed where they were. All that happened was that, by the clatter of a typewriter, their skimpy bit of US Army food was stopped.
The effect of a policy arranged through accountancy and conveyed by winks and nods--without written orders--was first to mystify, then to frustrate, then to exhaust the middle-rank officers who were responsible for POWs. A colonel in the Quartermaster Section of the advance US fighting units wrote a personal plea to Quartermaster General Robert Littlejohn as early as April 27: "Aside from the 750 tons received from Fifteenth Army, no subsistence has been received nor do I expect any. What desirable Class II and IV (rations) we have received has been entirely at the suffernece of the Armies, upon personbal appeal and has been insignificant in relation to the demands which are being put upon us by the influx of prisoners of war."
Rumours of conditions in the camps ran through the US Army. "Boy, those camps were bad news," said Benedict K. Zobrist, a technical sergeant in the Medical Corps. "We were warned to stay as far away as we could." In May and early June of 1945, a team of US Medical Corps doctors did survey some of the Rhineland camps, holding just over 80,000 German POWs. Its report is missing from the appropriate section of the National Archives in Washington, but two secondary sources reproduce some of the findings. The three main killers were diarrhoea and dysentery (treated as one category), cardiac disease, and pneumonia. But, straining medical terminology, the doctors also recorded deaths from "emaciation" and "exhaustion." And their data revealed death rates eighty times as high as any peacetime norm.
Only 9.7 percent to fifteen percent of the prisoners had died of causes clearly associated with lack of food, such as emaciation and dehydration, and "exhaustion." But the other diseases, directly attributable to exposure, overcrowding, filth, and lack of sanitation, were undoubtedly exacerbated by starvation. As the report noted, "Exposure, overcrowding of pens and lack of food and sanitary facilities all contributed to these excessive (death) rates." The data, it must be remembered, were taken from the POW camps, not from the DEF camps.
By the end of May,1945, more people had already died in the US camps than would die in the atomic blast at Hiroshima.
On June 4, 1945, a cable signed "Eisenhower" told Washington that it was "urgently necessary to reduce the number of prisoners at earliest opportunity by discharging all classes of prisoners not likely to be required by Allies." It is hard to understand what prompted this cable. No reason for it is evident in the massive cable traffic that survives the period in the archives in London, Washington, and Abilene, Kansas. And far from ordering Eisenhower to take or hold on to prisoners, the Combined Chiefs' message of April 26 had urged him not to take in any more after V-E Day, even for labour. Nonetheless more than 2 million DEFs were impounded after May 8.
During June, Germany was partitioned into zones of occupation and in July, 1945, SHAEF was disbanded. Eisenhower, reverting to his single role as US commanding general in Europe, becoming military governor of the US zone. He continued to keep out Red Cross representatives, and the US Army also informed American relief teams that the zone was closed to them. It was closed to all relief shipments as well--until December, 1945, when a slight relaxation came in to effect.
Also starting in July, the Americans turned over between 600,000 and 700,000 German captives to the French to help repair damages done to their country during the war. many of the transferees were in five US camps clustered around Dietersheim, near Mainz, in the section of Germany that had just come under French control. (most of the rest were in US camps in France.)
On July 10, a French unit took over Dietersheim and seventeen days later a Captain Julien arrived to assume command. His report survives as part of an army inquiry into a dispute between Julien and his predecessor. In the first camp he entered, he testified to finding muddy ground "people living skeletons," some of whom died as he watched. others huddled under bits of cardboard which they clutched although the July day was hot. Women lying in holes in the ground stared up at him with hunger oedema bulging their bellies in gross parody of pregnancy; old men with long grey hair watched him feebly; children of six or seven with the racoon rings of starvation looked at him from lifeless eyes. Tow German doctors in the "hospital" were trying to care for the dying on the ground under the hot sky, between, the marks of the tent that the Americans had taken with them. Julien, who had fought against the Germans with his regiment, the 3erne Regiment de Tirailleure Algeriens, found himself thinking in horror: "This is just like the photographs of Buchenwald and Dachau."
There were 103, 500 people in the five camps round Dietersheim and amongst them Julien's officers counted 32, 640 who could do no work at all. These were released immediately. In all, two-thirds of the prisoners taken over by the French that summer from American camps in Germany and in France were useless for reparations labour. In the camp at Sainte-Marthe, 615 of 700 captives were reported to be unable to work. At Erbiseul near Mons, Belgium, according to a written complaint, twenty-five per cent of the men received by the French were "dechets," or garbage.
In July and August, as US Quartermaster Littejohn signalled to Eisenhower in due course, the Army food reserves in Europe grew by thirty-nine percent.
On August 4, a one-sentence order signed "Eisenhower" condemned all prisoners of wear still on hand in the US camps to DEF status: "Effective immediately all members of the German forces held in US custody in the American zone of occupation in GERMANY will be considered as disarmed enemy forces and and not as having the status of prisoner of war." No reason was given. Surviving weekly tallies suggest the dual classification was preserved, but, for the POWs now being treated as DEFs, the death rate quadrupled within a few weeks, from .2 percent per week to .8 percent.
Long-time DEFs were dying at nearly five times that rate. the official "Weekly PW and DEF Report" for the week ending Sept 8, 1945, still exists in the US National archives in Washington. It shows an aggregate of 1,056,482 prisoners being held by the US Army in the European theatre, of whom about two-thirds are identified as POWs. the other third--363,587 men--are DEFs. During that one week, 13,051 of them died.
In November, 1045, general Eisenhower succeeded George Marshall as US Army chief of staff and returned to the US. In January, 1946, the camps still held significant numbers of captives but the US had wound down its prisoner holdings almost to zero by the end of 1946. the French continued holding hundreds of of thousands through 1946, but gradually reduced the number to nothing by about 1949. During the 1950's, most non-record material relating to the US prison camps was destroyed by the Army.
Eisenhower had deplored the Germans' useless defence of the Reich in the last months of the war because of the waste of life. At least ten times as many Germans--undoubtedly 800,000, almost certainly more than 900,000, and quite probably over 1 million--died in the French and American camps as were killed in all the combat on the Western Front in northwest Europe from America's entry into the war in 1941 through to April, 1945.
A German newspaper, Rhein-Zeltung has identified this uncaptioned U.S Army photograph of German POWs as : camp at Sinzig-Remagen, spring, 1945
Saturday Night
Sept 1989
Call it callousness, call it reprisal, call it a policy of hostile neglect: a million Germans taken prisoner by Eisenhower's armies died in captivity after the surrender.
In the spring of 1945, Adolph Hitler's Third Reich was on the brink of collapse, ground between the Red Army, advancing westward towards Berlin, and the American, British, and Canadian armies, under the overall command of General Dwight Eisenhower, moving eastward over the Rhine. Since the D-Day landings in Normandy the previous June, the westward Allies had won back France and the Low Countries, and some Wehrmacht commanders were already trying to negotiate local surrenders. Other units, though, continued to obey Hitler's orders to fight to the last man. Most systems, including transport, had broken down, and civilians in panic flight fromt he advancing Russians roamed at large.
"Hungry and frightened, lying in grain fields within fifty feet of us, awaiting the appropriate time to jump up with their hands in the air"; that's how Captain H. F. McCullough of the 2nd Anti-Tank Regiment Division described the chaos of the German surrender at the end of the Second World War. In a day and a half, according to Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery, 500,000 Germans surrendered to his 21st Army Group in Northern Germany. Soon after V-E Day--May 8, 1945--the British-Canadian catch totalled more that 2 million. Virtually nothing about their treatment survives in the archives in Ottawa or London, but some skimpy evidence from the International Committee of the Red Cross, the armies concerned, and the prisoners themselves indicates that almost all continued in fair health. In any case, most were quickly released and sent home, or else transferred to the French to help in the post-war work of reconstruction. The French army had itself taken fewer than 300,000 prisoners.
Like the British and Canadians, the Americans suddenly faced astounding numbers of surrendering German troops: the final tally of prisoners taken by the U.S. army in Europe (excluding Italy and North Africa) was 5.25 million. But the Americans responded very differently.
Among the early U.S captives was one Corporal Helmut Liebich, who had been working in an anti-aircraft experimental group at Peenemunde on the Baltic. Liebich was captured by the Americans on April 17, near Gotha in Central Germany. Forty-two years later, he recalled vividly that there were no tents in the Gotha camp, just barbed wire fences around a field soon churned to mud. The prisoners received a small ration of food on the first day but it was then cut in half. In order to get it, they were forced to run a gauntlet. Hunched ocer, they ran between lines of American guards who hit them with sticks as they scurried towards their food. On April 27, they were transferred to the U.S. camp at Heidesheim farther wet, where there was no food at all for days, then very little. Exposed, starved, and thirsty, the men started to die. Liebich saw between ten and thirty bodies a day being dragged out of his section, B, which at first held around 5,200 men.. He saw one prisoner beat another to death to get his piece of bread. One night when it rained, Liebich saw the sides of the holes in which they were sheltered, dug in soft sandy earth, collapse on men who were too weak to struggle out. They smothered before anyone could get to them. Liebich sat down and wept. "I could hardly believe men could be so cruel to each other."
Typhus broke out in Heidesheim about the beginning of May. Five days after V-E Day, on May 13, Liebich was transferred to another U.S. POW camp, at Bingen-Rudesheim in the Rhineland near Bad Kreuznach, where he was told that the prisoners numbered somewhere between 200,000 and 400,000, all without shelter, food, water, medicine, or sufficient space.
Soon he fell sick with dysentery and typhus. he was moved again, semiconscious and delirious, in an open-topped railway car with about sixty other prisoners: northwest down the Rhine, with a detour through Holland, where the Dutch stood on bridges to smash stones down on the heads of the prisoners. Sometimes the American guards fired warning shots near the Dutch to keep them off. After three nights, his fellow prisoners helped him stagger into the hug camp at Rheinberg, near the border with the Netherlands, again without shelter or food.
When a little food finally did arrive, it was rotten. In none of the four camps had Leibich seen any shelter for the prisoners. the death rate in the U.S. Rhineland camps at this point, according to surrviving data from a medical survey, was about thirty per cent per year. A normal death rate for a civilian population in 1945 was between one and two percent.
One day in June, through hallucinations of his fever, Liebich saw "the Tommies" coming into the camp. The British had taken over Rheinberg, and that probably saved his life. At this point, Liebich, who is five-foot-ten, weighed 96.8 ponds.
According to stories told to this day by other ex-prisoners of Rheinberg, tha last act of the Americans before the British took over was to bulldoze one section level while there were still men living in their holes in the ground.
Under the Geneva Convention, three important rights are guaranteed prisoners of war: that they will be fed and sheltered to the same standard as base or depot troops of the Capturing Power; that they can send and receive mail; and that they will be visited by delegates of the International Red Cross (ICRC) who will report in secret on their treatment to a Protecting Power. (In the cas eof Germany, as the government disintegrated in the closing stages of the war, Switzerland had been designated the protecting power.)
In fact, German prisoners taken by the U.S. Army at the end of the Second World War were denied these and most other rights by a series of specific decisions and directives stemming mainly from SHAEF--Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force. General Dwight Eisenhower was both supreme commander of SHAEF--all the Allied armies in northwest Europe--and the commanding general of the U.S. forces in the European theatre. He was subject to the Combined Chiefs of Staff (CCS) of Britain and the U.S., to the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), and to the policy of the U.S. government, but in the absence of explicit directives--to the contrary or otherwise--ultimate responsibility for the treatment of the German prisoners in American hands lies with him.
"God , I hate the Germans," Eisenhower wrote to his wife, Mamie, in September, 1944. Earlier, in front of the British ambassador to Washington, he had said that all the 3,500 or so officers of the German General Staff should be "exterminated."
In March, 1945, a message to the Combined Chiefs of Staff signed and initialled by Eisenhower recommended creating a new class of prisoners--Disarmed Enemy Forces, or DEFs--who, unlike Geneva-defined prisoners of war, would not be fed by the army after the surrender of Germany. This would be a direct breach of the Geneva Convention. The message, dated March 10, argues in part: "The additional maintenance commitment entailed by declaring the German Armed Forces prisoners [sic] of war which would necessitate the prevision of rations on a scale equal to that of base troops would prove far beyond the capacity of the Allies even if all German sources were tapped." It ends: "Your approval is requested. Existing plans have been prepared upon this basis."
On April 26, 1945, the Combined Chiefs approved the DEF status for prisoners of war in American hands only: the British members had refused to adopt the American plan for their own prisoners. The Combined Chiefs stipulated that the status of disarmed troops be kept secret.
By that time, Eisenhower's quartermaster general at SHAEF, General Robert Littlejohn, had already twice reduced rations for prisoners, and a SHAEF message signed "Eisenhower" had reported to General George Marshall, the U.S. Army Chief of staff, that the prisoner pens would provide "no shelter or other comforts...."
The problem was not supplies. There was more than enough material stockpiled in Europe to construct prison camp facilities. Eisenhower's special assistant, general Everett Hughes, had visited the huge supply dumps at Naples and Marseille and reported: "More stocks than we can ever use. Stretch as far as eye can see." Food should not have been a problem, either. In the U.S., wheat and corn surpluses were higher than they had ever been, and there was a record crop of potatoes. The army itself had so much food in reserve that when a whole warehouse was dropped from the supply list by accident in England it was not noticed for three months. In addition, the International Red Cross had over 100,000 tons of food in storage in Switzerland. When it tried to send two trainloads of this to the American sector of Germany, U.S. Army Officers turned the trains back, saying their warehouses were already overflowing with ICRC food which they had never distributed.
Nonetheless it was through the supply side that the policy of deprivation was carried out. Water, food, tents, space, medicine--everything necessary for the prisoners was kept fatally scarce. Camp Rheinberg, where Corporal Liebich would fetch up in in mid-May, shivering with dysentery and typhus, had no food at all when it was opened on April 17. As in the other big "Rhine meadow" camps, opened by the Americans in mid-April, there were no guard towers, tents, buildings, cooking facilities, water, latrines, or food.
George Weiss, at tank repairman who now lives in Toronto, recalls of his camp on the Rhine: "All night we had to sit up jammed against each other. But the lack of water was the worst thing of all. For three and a half days, we had no water at all. We would drink our own urine...."
Private Heinz T. (his surname is withheld at his request) had just turned eighteen in hospital when the Americans walked into his ward on April 18. he and all his fellow patients were taken out to the camp at Bad Kreuzpath in the Rhineland, which already held several hundred thousand prisoners. Heinz was wearing only a pair of shorts, shoes, and a shirt.
Heinz was far from the youngest in the camp, which also held thousands of displaced German civilians. there were children as young as six among the prisoners, as well as pregnant women, and men over sixty. At the beginning, when trees still grew i the camp, some men managed to cut off limbs to build a fire. the guards ordered the fire put out. In many of the enclosures, it was forbidden to dig holes in the ground for shelter. "All we had to eat was grass," Heinz remembers.
Charles von Luttichau was convalescing at home when he decided to surrender voluntarily to US troops about to occupy his house. He was taken to Camp Kripp, on the Rhine near Remagen.
"We were kept in crowded barbed wire cages in the open with scarcely any food," he recalled recently. "More than half the days we had no food at all. On the rest, we got a little K ration. I could see from the package that they were giving us one-tenth of the rations that they issued to their own men....I complained to the American camp commander that he was breaking the Geneva Convention, but he just said, 'Forget the Convention. You haven't any rights.'
"The latrines were just logs flung over ditches next to the barbed-wire fences. Because of illness, the men had to defecate on the ground. Soon, many of us were too weak to take our trousers off first. So our clothing was infected, and so was the mud where we had to walk and sit and lie down. In these conditions, our men very soon started to die. Within a few days, some of the men who had gone healthy into the camp were dead. I saw our men dragging many bodies to the gate of the camp, where they were thrown loose on top of each other onto trucks, which took them away."
Von Luttichau's mother was American and he later emigrated to Washington, D.C., where he became a historian and wrote a military history for the U.S. Army. he was in the Kripp camp for about three months.
Wolfgang Iff, who was imprisoned at Rheinberg and still lives in Germany, reports that, in his subsection of perhaps 10,000 prisoners, thirty to fifty bodies were dragged out every day. A member of the burial work party, Iff says he helped haul the dead from his cage out to the gate of the camp, where the bodies were carried by wheel barrow to several big steel garages. there Iff and his team stripped the corpses of clothing, snapped off half of their aluminium dog tag, spread the bodies in layers of fifteen to twenty, with ten shovelfuls of quicklime over each layer till they were stacked a metre high, placed the personal efefcts in a bag for the Americans, then left. Some of the corpses were dead of gangrene following frostbite. (It was an unusually wet, cold spring.) A dozen or more others had grown too weak to cling to the log flung across the ditch for a latrine, and had fallen off and drowned.
The conditions in the American camps along the Rhine in late April were observed by two colonels in the U.S. Army Medical Corps, James Mason and Charles Beasley, who described them in a paper published in 1950: "Huddled close together for warmth, behind the barbed wire was a most awesome sight--nearly 100,000 haggard, apathetic, dirty, gaunt, blank-staring med clad in dirty field grey uniforms, and standing ankle-deep in mud....The German Divisions Commander reported that the men had not eaten for at least two days, and the provisions of water was a major problem--yet only 200 yards away was the River Rhine running bankfull."
On May 4, 1945, the first German prisoners of war in U.S. hands were transferred to DEF status. The same day, the U.S. war Department banned mail to or from the prisoners. (when the International Committee of the Red Cross suggested a plan for restoring mail in June, it was rejected.)
On May 8, V-E Day, the German government was abolished and, simultaneously, the U.S. State Department dismissed Switzerland as the protecting power for the German prisoners. (Prime Minister Mackenzie King of Canada protested to the foreign Office in London the parallel removal of the Swiss as protecting power in British-Canadian camps, but was squelched for his pains.) With this done, the State Department informed the International Red Cross that, since there was no protecting power to report to, there was no longer and point in visiting the camps.
From then on, prisoners held by the US Army had no access to any impartial observer, nor could they receive food parcels, clothing, or medicines from any relief agency, or letters from their kin.
general George Patton's US Third Army was the only army in the whole European theatre to free significant numbers of captives during ma, saving many of them from probable death. Bothe Omar Bradley and General J.C.H. lee, Commander Communications Zone (Com Z) Europe, ordered a release of prisoners within a week of the war's end, but a SHAEF order signed "Eisenhower" countermanded them on my 15.
That same day, according to a minute of their meeting, General Eisenhower and Prime Minister Churchill talked about reducing prisoner rations. Churchill asked for an agreement on the scale of rations for prisoners, because he would soon have to announce cuts in the British meat ration and wanted to make sure that the prisoners "as far as possible...should be fed on those supplies which we could best spare." Eisenhower replied that he had already "given the matter considerable attention," but was planning to re-examine the whole thing to see "whether or not a further ereduction was possible." He told Churchill that POWs had been getting 2,200 calories a day. (The US Army medical Corps considered 2,150 an absolute minimum subsistence level for sedentary adults living under shelter. US troops were issued 4,000 calories a day.) What he did not tell Churchill was that the army was not feeding the DEFs at all, or was feeding them far less than those who still enjoyed prisoner-of-war status.
Rations were reduced again soon after this: a direct cut was recorded in the Quartermaster Reports. But indirect cuts were taking place as well. One was the effect of extraordinary gaps between prisoner strength as given on the ration lists and official "on hand" accounts, and between the on-hand counts, and between the on-hand count and the actual number of prisoners in the camps.
The meticulous General Lee grew so worried about the discrepancies that he fired off a challenging cable from his headquarters in paris to SHAEF headquarters in Frankfurt:
"This Headquarters is having considerable difficulty in establishing adequate basis for requisitioning rations for prisoners of war currently held in Theatre...In response to inquiries from this Headquarters...several varying statements of number of prisoners held in theatre have been published by SHAEF."
He then cites the latest SHAEF statement:
"Cable...dated 31 May states 1,890,000 prisoners of war and 1,200,000 disarmed German forces on hand. Best available figures at this Headquarters show prisoners of war in ComZ910,980, in ComZ transient enclosures 1,002,422 and in Twelfth Army GP 965,125, making a total of 2,878,537 and an additional 1,000,000 disarmed German forces Germany and Austria."
The situation was astounding: Lee was reporting a million or more men in the US Army camps in Europe than SHAEF said it ha don its books. But he was wrestling with the wind: he had to his issue of food on the number of prisoners on hand supplied to him by SHAEF G-3 (Operations).
Given the general turmoil, fluctuating and inaccurate tallies were probably inevitable, but more than 1 million captives can actual be seen disappearing between two reports of the Theatre Provost Marshal, issued on the same day, June2. the last in a series of daily reports from the TPM logs 2,870,400 POWs on hand at June 2. The first report of the new weekly series, dated the same day, says that there are only 1,836,000 on hand. At one point in the middle of June, the prisoner strength on the ration list was shown as 1,421,559, while on Lee's and other evidence there were probably almost three times that number.
Spreading the rations thinner was one way to guarantee starvation. Another was accomplished by some strange army bookkeeping during June and July. A million prisoners who had been receiving at least some food because of their nominal POW status lost their rights and their food when they were secretly transferred to the DEF status. The shift was made deliberately over many week, with careful attention paid to maintaining plausible balances in SHAEF's weekly POW and DEF reports. (The discrepancy between those "shifted" from POW status during the period from June 2 to July 28 and those "received" in the DEF status is only 0.43 per cent.) The reclassification to DEF did not require any transfer of men to new camps, or involve any new organisation to get German civilians supplies to them. The men stayed where they were. All that happened was that, by the clatter of a typewriter, their skimpy bit of US Army food was stopped.
The effect of a policy arranged through accountancy and conveyed by winks and nods--without written orders--was first to mystify, then to frustrate, then to exhaust the middle-rank officers who were responsible for POWs. A colonel in the Quartermaster Section of the advance US fighting units wrote a personal plea to Quartermaster General Robert Littlejohn as early as April 27: "Aside from the 750 tons received from Fifteenth Army, no subsistence has been received nor do I expect any. What desirable Class II and IV (rations) we have received has been entirely at the suffernece of the Armies, upon personbal appeal and has been insignificant in relation to the demands which are being put upon us by the influx of prisoners of war."
Rumours of conditions in the camps ran through the US Army. "Boy, those camps were bad news," said Benedict K. Zobrist, a technical sergeant in the Medical Corps. "We were warned to stay as far away as we could." In May and early June of 1945, a team of US Medical Corps doctors did survey some of the Rhineland camps, holding just over 80,000 German POWs. Its report is missing from the appropriate section of the National Archives in Washington, but two secondary sources reproduce some of the findings. The three main killers were diarrhoea and dysentery (treated as one category), cardiac disease, and pneumonia. But, straining medical terminology, the doctors also recorded deaths from "emaciation" and "exhaustion." And their data revealed death rates eighty times as high as any peacetime norm.
Only 9.7 percent to fifteen percent of the prisoners had died of causes clearly associated with lack of food, such as emaciation and dehydration, and "exhaustion." But the other diseases, directly attributable to exposure, overcrowding, filth, and lack of sanitation, were undoubtedly exacerbated by starvation. As the report noted, "Exposure, overcrowding of pens and lack of food and sanitary facilities all contributed to these excessive (death) rates." The data, it must be remembered, were taken from the POW camps, not from the DEF camps.
By the end of May,1945, more people had already died in the US camps than would die in the atomic blast at Hiroshima.
On June 4, 1945, a cable signed "Eisenhower" told Washington that it was "urgently necessary to reduce the number of prisoners at earliest opportunity by discharging all classes of prisoners not likely to be required by Allies." It is hard to understand what prompted this cable. No reason for it is evident in the massive cable traffic that survives the period in the archives in London, Washington, and Abilene, Kansas. And far from ordering Eisenhower to take or hold on to prisoners, the Combined Chiefs' message of April 26 had urged him not to take in any more after V-E Day, even for labour. Nonetheless more than 2 million DEFs were impounded after May 8.
During June, Germany was partitioned into zones of occupation and in July, 1945, SHAEF was disbanded. Eisenhower, reverting to his single role as US commanding general in Europe, becoming military governor of the US zone. He continued to keep out Red Cross representatives, and the US Army also informed American relief teams that the zone was closed to them. It was closed to all relief shipments as well--until December, 1945, when a slight relaxation came in to effect.
Also starting in July, the Americans turned over between 600,000 and 700,000 German captives to the French to help repair damages done to their country during the war. many of the transferees were in five US camps clustered around Dietersheim, near Mainz, in the section of Germany that had just come under French control. (most of the rest were in US camps in France.)
On July 10, a French unit took over Dietersheim and seventeen days later a Captain Julien arrived to assume command. His report survives as part of an army inquiry into a dispute between Julien and his predecessor. In the first camp he entered, he testified to finding muddy ground "people living skeletons," some of whom died as he watched. others huddled under bits of cardboard which they clutched although the July day was hot. Women lying in holes in the ground stared up at him with hunger oedema bulging their bellies in gross parody of pregnancy; old men with long grey hair watched him feebly; children of six or seven with the racoon rings of starvation looked at him from lifeless eyes. Tow German doctors in the "hospital" were trying to care for the dying on the ground under the hot sky, between, the marks of the tent that the Americans had taken with them. Julien, who had fought against the Germans with his regiment, the 3erne Regiment de Tirailleure Algeriens, found himself thinking in horror: "This is just like the photographs of Buchenwald and Dachau."
There were 103, 500 people in the five camps round Dietersheim and amongst them Julien's officers counted 32, 640 who could do no work at all. These were released immediately. In all, two-thirds of the prisoners taken over by the French that summer from American camps in Germany and in France were useless for reparations labour. In the camp at Sainte-Marthe, 615 of 700 captives were reported to be unable to work. At Erbiseul near Mons, Belgium, according to a written complaint, twenty-five per cent of the men received by the French were "dechets," or garbage.
In July and August, as US Quartermaster Littejohn signalled to Eisenhower in due course, the Army food reserves in Europe grew by thirty-nine percent.
On August 4, a one-sentence order signed "Eisenhower" condemned all prisoners of wear still on hand in the US camps to DEF status: "Effective immediately all members of the German forces held in US custody in the American zone of occupation in GERMANY will be considered as disarmed enemy forces and and not as having the status of prisoner of war." No reason was given. Surviving weekly tallies suggest the dual classification was preserved, but, for the POWs now being treated as DEFs, the death rate quadrupled within a few weeks, from .2 percent per week to .8 percent.
Long-time DEFs were dying at nearly five times that rate. the official "Weekly PW and DEF Report" for the week ending Sept 8, 1945, still exists in the US National archives in Washington. It shows an aggregate of 1,056,482 prisoners being held by the US Army in the European theatre, of whom about two-thirds are identified as POWs. the other third--363,587 men--are DEFs. During that one week, 13,051 of them died.
In November, 1045, general Eisenhower succeeded George Marshall as US Army chief of staff and returned to the US. In January, 1946, the camps still held significant numbers of captives but the US had wound down its prisoner holdings almost to zero by the end of 1946. the French continued holding hundreds of of thousands through 1946, but gradually reduced the number to nothing by about 1949. During the 1950's, most non-record material relating to the US prison camps was destroyed by the Army.
Eisenhower had deplored the Germans' useless defence of the Reich in the last months of the war because of the waste of life. At least ten times as many Germans--undoubtedly 800,000, almost certainly more than 900,000, and quite probably over 1 million--died in the French and American camps as were killed in all the combat on the Western Front in northwest Europe from America's entry into the war in 1941 through to April, 1945.
No Hope for a Consumer-Driven Economic Recovery
SOURCE
The Great Correction intensifies…
The Dow rose on Friday. The dollar fell. Gold is back over $1,400. And the euro – the world’s most despised currency – is back over $1.40.
A chart circulates, supposedly proving that GDP is now back to where it was in ’07, after falling only 4% in the downturn.
We don’t believe it; they’ve juked and jived the figures.
None of the key components of US GDP have recovered. Housing starts, for example, are running at a million less than they were before the crisis began. Employment is back to the levels it was at 10 years ago – with 7 million fewer jobs than in 2007! Retail sales are going up – but they are still not at the level they were in ’06 or ’07.
So how could the overall economy recover, while the most important parts of it do not?
The real answer: the economy hasn’t recovered. And the Great Correction hasn’t gone away. Instead, the correction is like a hurricane sitting just off the coast. It took a swipe at land, and now, it’s back out at sea; its winds are picking up speed. It’s getting larger…stronger… It’s intensifying.
Why?
As we’ve said too many times, none of the problems that led to the crisis of ’07-’09 were corrected. Instead, they were twisted into awful new shapes. They’re still there – swirling around, worse than ever.
Approximately 73% of the economy comes from consumer shopping. So, in order for the economy to grow, consumers have to be able to shop, right? But how can they?
Properly adjusted for inflation, the average wage is lower today than it was in 1973. That’s right, almost 40 years of going nowhere.
Well, hold on…we know what you’re thinking: “What are you talking about? There were some great years for the US economy between ’73 and ’07.”
And you’re right. But they didn’t come from solid, real growth in consumer purchasing power. Instead, they came from two sources:
First, consumers borrowed more. Total debt went from about 150% of GDP to over 370%. The financial industry went wild, sending our credit cards to dogs and dead people…lending money to people without jobs or income…writing mortgage contracts with built-in fuses.
This was not healthy growth. It was not sustainable. It just took “growth” from the future and moved it forward. Want to know why the housing industry builds so few houses today? Easy. It already built today’s houses yesterday. Why is a credit-fueled boom not sustainable? It’s because credit markets go up and down, just like all other markets. When credit is cheaper, people borrow more and buy more. When credit becomes more expensive, they have to pay down their loans and stop buying so much.
Second, during the period ’74 to ’07 more people worked longer hours. The whole family went to work; not just the head of the household. And they worked more hours. This was proclaimed as a great era for women. They went to college. They got jobs. And they had families too. Now, they no longer supplement their husband’s salary. They’ve become equal partners in the household…often, senior partners. The lucky ladies; they get to work two jobs now – one at the office and another one at home!
Up until 2007, the feds could counteract every attempted correction by making more credit available at lower prices. But by 2006, the credit machine no longer worked. The private sector economy was saturated with debt. It couldn’t take any more.
Only the feds could still borrow freely – which they did. In ’09 and ’10, the US government borrowed ALL America’s savings – and then some. Since November of ’10, the Fed has simply been printing money – enough to cover 109% of the government’s borrowing needs during that period.
For the most part, households still can’t borrow…and don’t want to. Unless they are borrowing from the government. All the recent increase in consumer credit, for example, can be explained by the increase in student loans.
Consumers are in no position to borrow…and no position to drive a real recovery. They’re still nailing up plywood over the windows and moving the furniture to the second floor. They don’t have jobs. They don’t have credit. And their houses – which they might have borrowed against – are still sinking below the waterline.
Oh yes, the next big surge of ARM resets, recasts and defaults begins next month.
Pity the poor lumpenconsumer. He was in such a hurry to consume in the bubble years. Now he can’t consume at all. His income is stagnant. His net worth is falling.
And if that weren’t bad enough. The poor consumer’s costs are rising.
Take a look at this report from CNBC:
Cost of Living Hits Record, Passing Pre-Crisis High
One would think that after the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, Americans could at least catch a break for a while …
A special index created by the Labor Department to measure the actual cost of living for Americans hit a record high in February, according to data released Thursday, surpassing the old high in July 2008. The Chained Consumer Price Index, released along with the more widely-watched CPI, increased 0.5 percent to 127.4, from 126.8 in January. In July 2008, just as the housing crisis was tightening its grip, the Chained Consumer Price Index hit its previous record of 126.9.
The regular CPI, which has already been at a record for a while, increased 0.5 percent, the fastest pace in 1-1/2 years. However, the Fed’s preferred measure, CPI excluding food and energy, increased by just 0.2 percent.
Bottom line: The cost of living for Americans is now above where it was when housing prices were in a bubble, stock prices at a record, unemployment low and consumer confidence was soaring. Something has gotta give.
The Great Correction intensifies…
The Dow rose on Friday. The dollar fell. Gold is back over $1,400. And the euro – the world’s most despised currency – is back over $1.40.
A chart circulates, supposedly proving that GDP is now back to where it was in ’07, after falling only 4% in the downturn.
We don’t believe it; they’ve juked and jived the figures.
None of the key components of US GDP have recovered. Housing starts, for example, are running at a million less than they were before the crisis began. Employment is back to the levels it was at 10 years ago – with 7 million fewer jobs than in 2007! Retail sales are going up – but they are still not at the level they were in ’06 or ’07.
So how could the overall economy recover, while the most important parts of it do not?
The real answer: the economy hasn’t recovered. And the Great Correction hasn’t gone away. Instead, the correction is like a hurricane sitting just off the coast. It took a swipe at land, and now, it’s back out at sea; its winds are picking up speed. It’s getting larger…stronger… It’s intensifying.
Why?
As we’ve said too many times, none of the problems that led to the crisis of ’07-’09 were corrected. Instead, they were twisted into awful new shapes. They’re still there – swirling around, worse than ever.
Approximately 73% of the economy comes from consumer shopping. So, in order for the economy to grow, consumers have to be able to shop, right? But how can they?
Properly adjusted for inflation, the average wage is lower today than it was in 1973. That’s right, almost 40 years of going nowhere.
Well, hold on…we know what you’re thinking: “What are you talking about? There were some great years for the US economy between ’73 and ’07.”
And you’re right. But they didn’t come from solid, real growth in consumer purchasing power. Instead, they came from two sources:
First, consumers borrowed more. Total debt went from about 150% of GDP to over 370%. The financial industry went wild, sending our credit cards to dogs and dead people…lending money to people without jobs or income…writing mortgage contracts with built-in fuses.
This was not healthy growth. It was not sustainable. It just took “growth” from the future and moved it forward. Want to know why the housing industry builds so few houses today? Easy. It already built today’s houses yesterday. Why is a credit-fueled boom not sustainable? It’s because credit markets go up and down, just like all other markets. When credit is cheaper, people borrow more and buy more. When credit becomes more expensive, they have to pay down their loans and stop buying so much.
Second, during the period ’74 to ’07 more people worked longer hours. The whole family went to work; not just the head of the household. And they worked more hours. This was proclaimed as a great era for women. They went to college. They got jobs. And they had families too. Now, they no longer supplement their husband’s salary. They’ve become equal partners in the household…often, senior partners. The lucky ladies; they get to work two jobs now – one at the office and another one at home!
Up until 2007, the feds could counteract every attempted correction by making more credit available at lower prices. But by 2006, the credit machine no longer worked. The private sector economy was saturated with debt. It couldn’t take any more.
Only the feds could still borrow freely – which they did. In ’09 and ’10, the US government borrowed ALL America’s savings – and then some. Since November of ’10, the Fed has simply been printing money – enough to cover 109% of the government’s borrowing needs during that period.
For the most part, households still can’t borrow…and don’t want to. Unless they are borrowing from the government. All the recent increase in consumer credit, for example, can be explained by the increase in student loans.
Consumers are in no position to borrow…and no position to drive a real recovery. They’re still nailing up plywood over the windows and moving the furniture to the second floor. They don’t have jobs. They don’t have credit. And their houses – which they might have borrowed against – are still sinking below the waterline.
Oh yes, the next big surge of ARM resets, recasts and defaults begins next month.
Pity the poor lumpenconsumer. He was in such a hurry to consume in the bubble years. Now he can’t consume at all. His income is stagnant. His net worth is falling.
And if that weren’t bad enough. The poor consumer’s costs are rising.
Take a look at this report from CNBC:
Cost of Living Hits Record, Passing Pre-Crisis High
One would think that after the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, Americans could at least catch a break for a while …
A special index created by the Labor Department to measure the actual cost of living for Americans hit a record high in February, according to data released Thursday, surpassing the old high in July 2008. The Chained Consumer Price Index, released along with the more widely-watched CPI, increased 0.5 percent to 127.4, from 126.8 in January. In July 2008, just as the housing crisis was tightening its grip, the Chained Consumer Price Index hit its previous record of 126.9.
The regular CPI, which has already been at a record for a while, increased 0.5 percent, the fastest pace in 1-1/2 years. However, the Fed’s preferred measure, CPI excluding food and energy, increased by just 0.2 percent.
Bottom line: The cost of living for Americans is now above where it was when housing prices were in a bubble, stock prices at a record, unemployment low and consumer confidence was soaring. Something has gotta give.
US Army 'kill team' in Afghanistan posed for photos of murdered civilians
SOURCE
Commanders in Afghanistan are bracing themselves for possible riots and public fury triggered by the publication of "trophy" photographs of US soldiers posing with the dead bodies of defenceless Afghan civilians they killed.
Senior officials at Nato's International Security Assistance Force in Kabul have compared the pictures published by the German news weekly Der Spiegel to the images of US soldiers abusing prisoners in Abu Ghraib in Iraq which sparked waves of anti-US protests around the world.
They fear that the pictures could be even more damaging as they show the aftermath of the deliberate murders of Afghan civilians by a rogue US Stryker tank unit that operated in the southern province of Kandahar last year.
Some of the activities of the self-styled "kill team" are already public, with 12 men currently on trial in Seattle for their role in the killing of three civilians.
Five of the soldiers are on trial for pre-meditated murder, after they staged killings to make it look like they were defending themselves from Taliban attacks.
Other charges include the mutilation of corpses, the possession of images of human casualties and drug abuse.
All of the soldiers have denied the charges. They face the death penalty or life in prison if convicted.
The case has already created shock around the world, particularly with the revelations that the men cut "trophies" from the bodies of the people they killed.
An investigation by Der Spiegel has unearthed approximately 4,000 photos and videos taken by the men.
The magazine, which is planning to publish only three images, said that in addition to the crimes the men were on trial for there are "also entire collections of pictures of other victims that some of the defendants were keeping".
The US military has strived to keep the pictures out of the public domain fearing it could inflame feelings at a time when anti-Americanism in Afghanistan is already running high.
In a statement, the army said it apologised for the distress caused by photographs "depicting actions repugnant to us as human beings and contrary to the standards and values of the United States".
The lengthy Spiegel article that accompanies the photographs contains new details about the sadistic behaviour of the men.
In one incident in May last year, the article says, during a patrol, the team apprehended a mullah who was standing by the road and took him into a ditch where they made him kneel down.
The group's leader, Staff Sergeant Calvin Gibbs, then allegedly threw a grenade at the man while an order was given for him to be shot.
Afterwards, Gibbs is described cutting off one of the man's little fingers and removing a tooth.
The patrol team later claimed to their superiors that the mullah had tried to threaten them with a grenade and that they had no choice but to shoot.
On Sunday night many organisations employing foreign staff, including the United Nations, ordered their staff into a "lockdown", banning all movements around Kabul and requiring people to remain in their compounds.
In addition to the threat from the publication of the photographs, security has been heightened amid fears the Taliban may try to attack Persian new year celebrations.
There could also be attacks because Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, is due to make a speech declaring which areas of the country should be transferred from international to Afghan control in the coming months.
One security manager for the US company DynCorp sent an email to clients warning that publication of the photos was likely "to incite the local population" as the "severity of the incidents to be revealed are graphic and extreme".
Commanders in Afghanistan are bracing themselves for possible riots and public fury triggered by the publication of "trophy" photographs of US soldiers posing with the dead bodies of defenceless Afghan civilians they killed.
Senior officials at Nato's International Security Assistance Force in Kabul have compared the pictures published by the German news weekly Der Spiegel to the images of US soldiers abusing prisoners in Abu Ghraib in Iraq which sparked waves of anti-US protests around the world.
They fear that the pictures could be even more damaging as they show the aftermath of the deliberate murders of Afghan civilians by a rogue US Stryker tank unit that operated in the southern province of Kandahar last year.
Some of the activities of the self-styled "kill team" are already public, with 12 men currently on trial in Seattle for their role in the killing of three civilians.
Five of the soldiers are on trial for pre-meditated murder, after they staged killings to make it look like they were defending themselves from Taliban attacks.
Other charges include the mutilation of corpses, the possession of images of human casualties and drug abuse.
All of the soldiers have denied the charges. They face the death penalty or life in prison if convicted.
The case has already created shock around the world, particularly with the revelations that the men cut "trophies" from the bodies of the people they killed.
An investigation by Der Spiegel has unearthed approximately 4,000 photos and videos taken by the men.
The magazine, which is planning to publish only three images, said that in addition to the crimes the men were on trial for there are "also entire collections of pictures of other victims that some of the defendants were keeping".
The US military has strived to keep the pictures out of the public domain fearing it could inflame feelings at a time when anti-Americanism in Afghanistan is already running high.
In a statement, the army said it apologised for the distress caused by photographs "depicting actions repugnant to us as human beings and contrary to the standards and values of the United States".
The lengthy Spiegel article that accompanies the photographs contains new details about the sadistic behaviour of the men.
In one incident in May last year, the article says, during a patrol, the team apprehended a mullah who was standing by the road and took him into a ditch where they made him kneel down.
The group's leader, Staff Sergeant Calvin Gibbs, then allegedly threw a grenade at the man while an order was given for him to be shot.
Afterwards, Gibbs is described cutting off one of the man's little fingers and removing a tooth.
The patrol team later claimed to their superiors that the mullah had tried to threaten them with a grenade and that they had no choice but to shoot.
On Sunday night many organisations employing foreign staff, including the United Nations, ordered their staff into a "lockdown", banning all movements around Kabul and requiring people to remain in their compounds.
In addition to the threat from the publication of the photographs, security has been heightened amid fears the Taliban may try to attack Persian new year celebrations.
There could also be attacks because Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, is due to make a speech declaring which areas of the country should be transferred from international to Afghan control in the coming months.
One security manager for the US company DynCorp sent an email to clients warning that publication of the photos was likely "to incite the local population" as the "severity of the incidents to be revealed are graphic and extreme".
February Existing Home Sales Dive, Prices Near 9-Year Low
Sales of previously owned U.S. homes fell unexpectedly sharply in February and prices touched their lowest level in nearly nine years, implying a housing market recovery was still a long off.
The National Association of Realtors said on Monday sales fell 9.6 percent month over month to an annual rate of 4.88 million units, snapping three straight months of gains. The percentage decline was the largest since July.
Economists polled by Reuters had expected February sales to fall 4.0 percent to a 5.15 million-unit pace from the previously reported 5.36 million unit rate in January, which was revised slightly up to 5.40 million.
The median home price dropped 5.2 percent in February from a year earlier to $156,100, the lowest since April 2002.
"If the price declines persist, even with the job market recovery, that could hamper recovery in the housing market," said NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun.
Compared with February last year, sales were down 2.8 percent.
Oversupply of homes and a relentless wave of foreclosures are pressuring prices, holding back recovery in the sector, whose collapse helped to tip the U.S. economy into its worst recession since the 1930s.
Foreclosures and short sales, which typically occur below market value, accounted for 39 percent of transactions in February, up from 37 percent the prior month. All-cash purchases made up a record 33 percent of transactions in February.
Sales last month fell across the board, with multifamily dwellings declining 10 percent and single-family home units dropping 10.0 percent.
At February's sales pace, the supply of existing homes on the market rose to 8.6 months' worth from 7.5 in January. A supply of between six and seven months is generally considered ideal, with higher readings pointing to lower house prices.
The National Association of Realtors said on Monday sales fell 9.6 percent month over month to an annual rate of 4.88 million units, snapping three straight months of gains. The percentage decline was the largest since July.
Economists polled by Reuters had expected February sales to fall 4.0 percent to a 5.15 million-unit pace from the previously reported 5.36 million unit rate in January, which was revised slightly up to 5.40 million.
The median home price dropped 5.2 percent in February from a year earlier to $156,100, the lowest since April 2002.
"If the price declines persist, even with the job market recovery, that could hamper recovery in the housing market," said NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun.
Compared with February last year, sales were down 2.8 percent.
Oversupply of homes and a relentless wave of foreclosures are pressuring prices, holding back recovery in the sector, whose collapse helped to tip the U.S. economy into its worst recession since the 1930s.
Foreclosures and short sales, which typically occur below market value, accounted for 39 percent of transactions in February, up from 37 percent the prior month. All-cash purchases made up a record 33 percent of transactions in February.
Sales last month fell across the board, with multifamily dwellings declining 10 percent and single-family home units dropping 10.0 percent.
At February's sales pace, the supply of existing homes on the market rose to 8.6 months' worth from 7.5 in January. A supply of between six and seven months is generally considered ideal, with higher readings pointing to lower house prices.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Eisenhower's Holocaust - His Slaughter Of 1.7 Million Germans
SOURCE
"God, I hate the Germans..." (Dwight David
Eisenhower in a letter to his wife in September, 1944)
First, I want you to picture something in your mind. You are a German soldier who survived through the battles of World II. You were not really politically involved, and your parents were also indifferent to politics, but suddenly your education was interrupted and you were drafted into the German army and told where to fight. Now, in the Spring of 1945, you see that your country has been demolished by the Allies, your cities lie in ruins, and half of your family has been killed or is missing. Now, your unit is being surrounded, and it is finally time to surrender. The fact is, there is no other choice.
It has been a long, cold winter. The German army rations have not been all that good, but you managed to survive. Spring came late that year, with weeks of cold rainy weather in demolished Europe. Your boots are tattered, your uniform is falling apart, and the stress of surrender and the confusion that lies ahead for you has your guts being torn out. Now, it is over, you must surrender or be shot. This is war and the real world.
You are taken as a German Prisoner of War into American hands. The Americans had 200 such Prisoner of War camps scattered across Germany. You are marched to a compound surrounded with barbed wire fences as far as the eye can see. Thousands upon thousands of your fellow German soldiers are already in this make-shift corral. You see no evidence of a latrine and after three hours of marching through the mud of the spring rain, the comfort of a latrine is upper-most in your mind. You are driven through the heavily guarded gate and find yourself free to move about, and you begin the futile search for the latrine. Finally, you ask for directions, and are informed that no such luxury exists.
No more time. You find a place and squat. First you were exhausted, then hungry, then fearful, and now; dirty. Hundreds more German prisoners are behind you, pushing you on, jamming you together and every one of them searching for the latrine as soon as they could do so. Now, late in the day, there is no space to even squat, much less sit down to rest your weary legs. None of the prisoners, you quickly learn, have had any food that day, in fact there was no food while in the American hands that any surviving prisoner can testify to. No one has eaten any food for weeks, and they are slowly starving and dying. But, they can't do this to us! There are the Geneva Convention rules for the treatment of Prisoners of War. There must be some mistake! Hope continues through the night, with no shelter from the cold, biting rain.
Your uniform is sopping wet, and formerly brave soldiers are weeping all around you, as buddy after buddy dies from the lack of food, water, sleep and shelter from the weather. After weeks of this, your own hope bleeds off into despair, and finally you actually begin to envy those who, having surrendered first manhood and then dignity, now also surrender life itself. More hopeless weeks go by. Finally, the last thing you remember is falling, unable to get up, and lying face down in the mud mixed with the excrement of those who have gone before.
Your body will be picked up long after it is cold, and taken to a special tent where your clothing is stripped off. So that you will be quickly forgotten, and never again identified, your dog-tag is snipped in half and your body along with those of your fellow soldiers are covered with chemicals for rapid decomposition and buried. You were not one of the exceptions, for more than one million seven hundred thousand German Prisoners of War died from a deliberate policy of extermination by starvation, exposure, and disease, under direct orders of the General Dwight David Eisenhower.
One month before the end of World War 11, General Eisenhower issued special orders concerning the treatment of German Prisoners and specific in the language of those orders was this statement,
"Prison enclosures are to provide no shelter or other comforts."
Eisenhower biographer Stephen Ambrose, who was given access to the Eisenhower personal letters, states that he proposed to exterminate the entire German General Staff, thousands of people, after the war.
Eisenhower, in his personal letters, did not merely hate the Nazi Regime, and the few who imposed its will down from the top, but that HE HATED THE GERMAN PEOPLE AS A RACE. It was his personal intent to destroy as many of them as he could, and one way was to wipe out as many prisoners of war as possible.
Of course, that was illegal under International law, so he issued an order on March 10, 1945 and verified by his initials on a cable of that date, that German Prisoners of War be predesignated as "Disarmed Enemy Forces" called in these reports as DEF. He ordered that these Germans did not fall under the Geneva Rules, and were not to be fed or given any water or medical attention. The Swiss Red Cross was not to inspect the camps, for under the DEF classification, they had no such authority or jurisdiction.
Months after the war was officially over, Eisenhower's special German DEF camps were still in operation forcing the men into confinement, but denying that they were prisoners. As soon as the war was over, General George Patton simply turned his prisoners loose to fend for themselves and find their way home as best they could. Eisenhower was furious, and issued a specific order to Patton, to turn these men over to the DEF camps. Knowing Patton as we do from history, we know that these orders were largely ignored, and it may well be that Patton's untimely and curious death may have been a result of what he knew about these wretched Eisenhower DEF camps.
The book, OTHER LOSSES, found its way into the hands of a Canadian news reporter, Peter Worthington, of the OTTAWA SUN. He did his own research through contacts he had in Canada, and reported in his column on September 12,1989 the following, in part:
"...it is hard to escape the conclusion that Dwight Eisenhower was a war criminal of epic proportions. His (DEF) policy killed more Germans in peace than were killed in the European Theater."
"For years we have blamed the 1.7 million missing German POW's on the Russians. Until now, no one dug too deeply ... Witnesses and survivors have been interviewed by the author; one Allied officer compared the American camps to Buchenwald."
It is known, that the Allies had sufficient stockpiles of food and medicine to care for these German soldiers. This was deliberately and intentionally denied them. Many men died of gangrene from frostbite due to deliberate exposure. Local German people who offered these men food, were denied. General Patton's Third Army was the only command in the European Theater to release significant numbers of Germans.
Others, such as Omar Bradley and General J.C.H. Lee, Commander of Com Z, tried, and ordered the release of prisoners within a week of the war's end. However, a SHAEF Order, signed by Eisenhower, countermanded them on May 15th.
Does that make you angry? What will it take to get the average apathetic American involved in saving his country from such traitors at the top? Thirty years ago, amid the high popularity of Eisenhower, a book was written setting out the political and moral philosophy; of Dwight David Eisenhower called, THE POLITICIAN, by Robert Welch. This year is the 107th Anniversary of Eisenhower's birth in Denison, Texas on October 14, 1890, the son of Jacob David Eisenhower and his wife Ida. Everyone is all excited about the celebration of this landmark in the history of "this American patriot." Senator Robert Dole, in honor of the Commander of the American Death Camps, proposed that Washington's Dulles Airport be renamed the Eisenhower Airport!
The UNITED STATES MINT in Philadelphia, PA is actually issuing a special Eisenhower Centennial Silver Dollar for only $25 each. They will only mint 4 million of these collector's items, and veteran's magazines are promoting these coins under the slogan, "Remember the Man...Remember the Times..." Pardon me if I regurgitate!
There will be some veterans who will not be buying these coins. Two will be Col. James Mason and Col. Charles Beasley who were in the U.S. Army Medical Corps who published a paper on the Eisenhower Death Camps in 1950. They stated in part:
"Huddled close together for warmth, behind the barbed wire was a most awesome sight; nearly 100,000 haggard, apathetic, dirty, gaunt, blank-staring men clad in dirty gray uniforms, and standing ankle deep in mud ... water was a major problem, yet only 200 yards away the River Rhine was running bank-full."
Another Veteran, who will not be buying any of the Eisenhower Silver Dollars is Martin Brech of Mahopac, New York, a semi-retired professor of philosophy at Mercy College in Dobbs Ferry, NY. In 1945, Brech was an 18 year old Private First Class in Company C of the 14th Infantry, assigned as a guard and interpreter at the Eisenhower Death Camp at Andernach, along
the Rhine River. He stated for SPOTLIGHT, February 12, 1990:
"My protests (regarding treatment of the German DEF'S) were met with hostility or indifference, and when I threw our ample rations to them over the barbed wire. I was threatened, making it clear that it was our deliberate policy not to adequately feed them."
"When they caught me throwing C- Rations over the fence, they threatened me with imprisonment. One Captain told me that he would shoot me if he saw me again tossing food to the Germans ... Some of the men were really only boys 13 years of age...Some of the prisoners were old men drafted by Hitler in his last ditch stand ... I understand that average weight of the prisoners at Andernach was 90 pounds...I have received threats ... Nevertheless, this...has liberated me, for I may now be heard when I relate the horrible atrocity I witnessed as a prison guard for one of 'Ike's death camps' along the Rhine." (Betty Lou Smith Hanson)
Note: Remember the photo of Ike's West Point yearbook picture when he was dubbed "IKE, THE TERRIBLE SWEDISH JEW"? By the way, he was next, or nearly so, to the last in his class. This article was first printed in 1990, but we thought it was meaningful to reprint it now.
Note: During Cadet Eisenhower's time at West Point Academy, Eisenhower was summoned to the office of the headmaster and was asked some pointed questions. At the time, it was routine procedure to test a cadet's blood to insure White racial integrity.
Apparently, there was a question of Eisenhower's racial lineage and this was brought to Eisenhower's attention by the headmaster. When asked if he was part Oriental, Eisenhower replied in the negative. After some discussion, Eisenhower admitted having Jewish background. The headmaster then reportedly said, "That's where you get your Oriental blood?" Although he was allowed to remain at the academy, word got around since this was a time in history when non-Whites were not allowed into the academy. Note - The issue of Eisenhower's little-known Jewish background in academically essential in understanding his psychopathic
hatred of German men, women and children.
Later, in Eisenhower's West Point Military Academy graduating class yearbook, published in 1915, Eisenhower is identified as a "terrible Swedish Jew."
Wherever Eisenhower went during his military career, Eisenhower's Jewish background and secondary manifesting behavior was a concern to his fellow officers. During World War II when Col. Eisenhower was working for Gen. Douglas MacArthur in the South Pacific, MacArthur protested to his superiors in Washington (DC) that Eisenhower was incompetent and that he did not want Eisenhower on his staff.
In 1943, Washington not only transferred Col. Eisenhower to Europe but promoted him over more than 30 more experienced senior officers to five star general and placed him in charge of all the US forces in Europe.
Thus it comes as no surprise that General George Patton, a real Aryan warrior, hated Eisenhower.
[Ed: Patton was keen to fight the Soviets, and reportedly kept some German units ready to move against the Soviets...unsurprisingly he was killed; after the war, in a 'car crash,' just like Lawrence of Arabia was conveniently bumped off, in a similar manner, for his 'pro-fascist' views].
Comment
From George
12-28-3
Finally, the truth about Ike. He was a zionist!, a racist! and a slaughterer of innocents! He was always these things. And all anyone remembers is his famous quote "to beware of the military/industrial complex." Like this knowledge means he was a great precient prophet, when he was really a part of the NWO and helped set the US up for all that followed. The tooling jobs and industry started to leave the US in the early '50's, when Ike got into power. It was Japan they were building. Notice the difference between the destruction of Japan and the quick buildup of the Philipines and Japan and the Pacific the US took over, after the war of hegemony to steal the wealth of the Pacific Rim and present day Afghanistan, Iraq etc., now that the zionists rule the 'world'. The zionist essence is evil, destructive and self-destructive. Ike was a tool of the zionist evil essence.
German POW's Diary Reveals More Of Ike's Holocaust
12-29-3
Note - The following diary extract has been provided by the nephew of the author under the conditions we honor his request for anonymity. -ed
A transcript of my Uncle's words...from my Mother's diary:
"Suddenly an American Jeep moved towards us and several American Soldiers surrounded us. There was no officer in charge, and the first thing the 'Amis' did - they liberated us, I mean, from our few valuables, mainly rings and watches........ We were now prisoners of war- no doubt about it!
The first night we were herded into a barn, where we met about 100 men who shared the same fate. To make my story short, we were finally transported to Fuerstenfeldbruck near Munich. Here we, who were gathered around Hermann, interrupted him and gasped in dismay.
Fuerstenfeldbruck had become known to us as one of the most cruel POW camps in the American zone.
Then my brother continued:
Again we were searched and had to surrender everything, even our field utensils, except a spoon. Here, in freezing temperature, 20,000 of us were squeezed together on the naked ground, without blanket or cover, exposed day and night to the winter weather.
For six days we received neither food nor water! We used our spoons to catch drops of rain.
We were surrounded by heavy tanks. During the night bright searchlights blinded us, so that sleep was impossible. We napped from time to time, standing up and leaning against each other. It was keeping us warmer that sitting on the frozen ground.
Many of us were near collapse. One of our comrades went mad, he jumped around wildly, wailing and whimpering. he was shot at once. His body was lying on the ground, and we were not allowed to come near him. He was not he only one. Each suspicious movement caused the guards to shoot into the crowd, and a few were always hit.
German civilians, mainly women of the surrounding villages, tried to approach the camp to bring food and water for us prisoners. they were chased away.
Our German officers could finally succeed to submit an official protest, particularly because of the deprivation of water. As a response, a fire hose was thrown into the midst of the densely crowded prisoners and then turned on. Because of the high water pressure the hose moved violently to and fro. Prisoners tumbled, fell, got up and ran again to catch a bit of water. In that confusion the water went to waste, and the ground under us turned into slippery mud. All the while the 'Amis' watched that spectacle, finding it very funny and most entertaining. They laughed at our predicament as hard as they could. Then suddenly, they turned the water off again.
We had not expected that the Americans would behave in such a manner. We could hardly believe it. War brutalizes human beings.
One day later we were organized into groups of 400 men .... We were to receive two cans of food for each man. This is how it was to be done: The prisoners had to run through he slippery mud, and each one had to grab his two cans quickly, at the moment he passed the guards. One of my comrades slipped and could not run fast enough, He was shot at once ....
On May 10th , several truckloads of us were transported the the garrison of Ulm by the Danube..... As each man jumped into the truck, a guard kicked him in the backbone with his rifle butt.
We arrived in the city of Heilbronn by the Neckar, In the end we counted 240,000 men, who lived on the naked ground and without cover.
Spring and summer were mild this year, but we were starving. At 6;00 am we received coffee, at noon about a pint of soup and 100 grams of bread a day........
The 'Amis' gave us newspapers in German language, describing the terrors of the concentration camps. We did not believe any of it. We figured the Americans only wanted to demoralize us further.
The fields on which we lived belonged to the farmers of the area...soon nothing of the clover and other sprouting greens were left, and the trees were barren. We had eaten each blade of grass.....
In some camps there were Hungarian POW's. 15,000 of them. Mutiny against their officers broke out twice amongst them. After the second mutiny the Americans decided to use German prisoners to govern the Hungarians. Since the Hungarians were used as workers they were well fed. There was more food than they could eat. But when the Germans asked the Americans for permission to bring the Hungarians' leftovers into the camps of the starving Germans, it was denied. The Americans rather destroyed surplus food, than giving it to the Germans.
Sometimes it happened that groups of our own men were gathered and transported away. We presumed they were discharged to go home, and naturally, we wished to be among them. Much later we heard they were sent to labor camps! My mother's cousin, feared that he would be drafted into the Hitler Youth SS, he volunteered to the marines, in 1945 his unit was in Denmark. On April 20th they were captured by the Americans. his experience in the POW camp was identical that of my brother's. They lived in open fields, did not receive and food and water the first six days, and starved nearly to death. German wives and mothers who wanted to throw loaves of bread over the fence, were chased off. The prisoners, just to have something to chew, scraped the bark from young trees. my cousins job was to report each morning how many had died during the night. "and these were not just a few!" he adds to his report he wrote me.
It became known, that the conditions in the POW camps in the American Zone were identical everywhere. We could therefore safely conclude, that it was by intent and by orders from higher ups to starve the German POW's and we blamed General Eisenhower for it. He, who was of German descent could not discern the evildoers during the Nazi time from our decent people. We held that neglect of knowledge and understanding severely against him.
I wish to quote the inscription on the grave stones of those of my German compatriots who have already passed away:
We had to pass through fire and through water. But now you have loosened our bonds.
"God, I hate the Germans..." (Dwight David
Eisenhower in a letter to his wife in September, 1944)
First, I want you to picture something in your mind. You are a German soldier who survived through the battles of World II. You were not really politically involved, and your parents were also indifferent to politics, but suddenly your education was interrupted and you were drafted into the German army and told where to fight. Now, in the Spring of 1945, you see that your country has been demolished by the Allies, your cities lie in ruins, and half of your family has been killed or is missing. Now, your unit is being surrounded, and it is finally time to surrender. The fact is, there is no other choice.
It has been a long, cold winter. The German army rations have not been all that good, but you managed to survive. Spring came late that year, with weeks of cold rainy weather in demolished Europe. Your boots are tattered, your uniform is falling apart, and the stress of surrender and the confusion that lies ahead for you has your guts being torn out. Now, it is over, you must surrender or be shot. This is war and the real world.
You are taken as a German Prisoner of War into American hands. The Americans had 200 such Prisoner of War camps scattered across Germany. You are marched to a compound surrounded with barbed wire fences as far as the eye can see. Thousands upon thousands of your fellow German soldiers are already in this make-shift corral. You see no evidence of a latrine and after three hours of marching through the mud of the spring rain, the comfort of a latrine is upper-most in your mind. You are driven through the heavily guarded gate and find yourself free to move about, and you begin the futile search for the latrine. Finally, you ask for directions, and are informed that no such luxury exists.
No more time. You find a place and squat. First you were exhausted, then hungry, then fearful, and now; dirty. Hundreds more German prisoners are behind you, pushing you on, jamming you together and every one of them searching for the latrine as soon as they could do so. Now, late in the day, there is no space to even squat, much less sit down to rest your weary legs. None of the prisoners, you quickly learn, have had any food that day, in fact there was no food while in the American hands that any surviving prisoner can testify to. No one has eaten any food for weeks, and they are slowly starving and dying. But, they can't do this to us! There are the Geneva Convention rules for the treatment of Prisoners of War. There must be some mistake! Hope continues through the night, with no shelter from the cold, biting rain.
Your uniform is sopping wet, and formerly brave soldiers are weeping all around you, as buddy after buddy dies from the lack of food, water, sleep and shelter from the weather. After weeks of this, your own hope bleeds off into despair, and finally you actually begin to envy those who, having surrendered first manhood and then dignity, now also surrender life itself. More hopeless weeks go by. Finally, the last thing you remember is falling, unable to get up, and lying face down in the mud mixed with the excrement of those who have gone before.
Your body will be picked up long after it is cold, and taken to a special tent where your clothing is stripped off. So that you will be quickly forgotten, and never again identified, your dog-tag is snipped in half and your body along with those of your fellow soldiers are covered with chemicals for rapid decomposition and buried. You were not one of the exceptions, for more than one million seven hundred thousand German Prisoners of War died from a deliberate policy of extermination by starvation, exposure, and disease, under direct orders of the General Dwight David Eisenhower.
One month before the end of World War 11, General Eisenhower issued special orders concerning the treatment of German Prisoners and specific in the language of those orders was this statement,
"Prison enclosures are to provide no shelter or other comforts."
Eisenhower biographer Stephen Ambrose, who was given access to the Eisenhower personal letters, states that he proposed to exterminate the entire German General Staff, thousands of people, after the war.
Eisenhower, in his personal letters, did not merely hate the Nazi Regime, and the few who imposed its will down from the top, but that HE HATED THE GERMAN PEOPLE AS A RACE. It was his personal intent to destroy as many of them as he could, and one way was to wipe out as many prisoners of war as possible.
Of course, that was illegal under International law, so he issued an order on March 10, 1945 and verified by his initials on a cable of that date, that German Prisoners of War be predesignated as "Disarmed Enemy Forces" called in these reports as DEF. He ordered that these Germans did not fall under the Geneva Rules, and were not to be fed or given any water or medical attention. The Swiss Red Cross was not to inspect the camps, for under the DEF classification, they had no such authority or jurisdiction.
Months after the war was officially over, Eisenhower's special German DEF camps were still in operation forcing the men into confinement, but denying that they were prisoners. As soon as the war was over, General George Patton simply turned his prisoners loose to fend for themselves and find their way home as best they could. Eisenhower was furious, and issued a specific order to Patton, to turn these men over to the DEF camps. Knowing Patton as we do from history, we know that these orders were largely ignored, and it may well be that Patton's untimely and curious death may have been a result of what he knew about these wretched Eisenhower DEF camps.
The book, OTHER LOSSES, found its way into the hands of a Canadian news reporter, Peter Worthington, of the OTTAWA SUN. He did his own research through contacts he had in Canada, and reported in his column on September 12,1989 the following, in part:
"...it is hard to escape the conclusion that Dwight Eisenhower was a war criminal of epic proportions. His (DEF) policy killed more Germans in peace than were killed in the European Theater."
"For years we have blamed the 1.7 million missing German POW's on the Russians. Until now, no one dug too deeply ... Witnesses and survivors have been interviewed by the author; one Allied officer compared the American camps to Buchenwald."
It is known, that the Allies had sufficient stockpiles of food and medicine to care for these German soldiers. This was deliberately and intentionally denied them. Many men died of gangrene from frostbite due to deliberate exposure. Local German people who offered these men food, were denied. General Patton's Third Army was the only command in the European Theater to release significant numbers of Germans.
Others, such as Omar Bradley and General J.C.H. Lee, Commander of Com Z, tried, and ordered the release of prisoners within a week of the war's end. However, a SHAEF Order, signed by Eisenhower, countermanded them on May 15th.
Does that make you angry? What will it take to get the average apathetic American involved in saving his country from such traitors at the top? Thirty years ago, amid the high popularity of Eisenhower, a book was written setting out the political and moral philosophy; of Dwight David Eisenhower called, THE POLITICIAN, by Robert Welch. This year is the 107th Anniversary of Eisenhower's birth in Denison, Texas on October 14, 1890, the son of Jacob David Eisenhower and his wife Ida. Everyone is all excited about the celebration of this landmark in the history of "this American patriot." Senator Robert Dole, in honor of the Commander of the American Death Camps, proposed that Washington's Dulles Airport be renamed the Eisenhower Airport!
The UNITED STATES MINT in Philadelphia, PA is actually issuing a special Eisenhower Centennial Silver Dollar for only $25 each. They will only mint 4 million of these collector's items, and veteran's magazines are promoting these coins under the slogan, "Remember the Man...Remember the Times..." Pardon me if I regurgitate!
There will be some veterans who will not be buying these coins. Two will be Col. James Mason and Col. Charles Beasley who were in the U.S. Army Medical Corps who published a paper on the Eisenhower Death Camps in 1950. They stated in part:
"Huddled close together for warmth, behind the barbed wire was a most awesome sight; nearly 100,000 haggard, apathetic, dirty, gaunt, blank-staring men clad in dirty gray uniforms, and standing ankle deep in mud ... water was a major problem, yet only 200 yards away the River Rhine was running bank-full."
Another Veteran, who will not be buying any of the Eisenhower Silver Dollars is Martin Brech of Mahopac, New York, a semi-retired professor of philosophy at Mercy College in Dobbs Ferry, NY. In 1945, Brech was an 18 year old Private First Class in Company C of the 14th Infantry, assigned as a guard and interpreter at the Eisenhower Death Camp at Andernach, along
the Rhine River. He stated for SPOTLIGHT, February 12, 1990:
"My protests (regarding treatment of the German DEF'S) were met with hostility or indifference, and when I threw our ample rations to them over the barbed wire. I was threatened, making it clear that it was our deliberate policy not to adequately feed them."
"When they caught me throwing C- Rations over the fence, they threatened me with imprisonment. One Captain told me that he would shoot me if he saw me again tossing food to the Germans ... Some of the men were really only boys 13 years of age...Some of the prisoners were old men drafted by Hitler in his last ditch stand ... I understand that average weight of the prisoners at Andernach was 90 pounds...I have received threats ... Nevertheless, this...has liberated me, for I may now be heard when I relate the horrible atrocity I witnessed as a prison guard for one of 'Ike's death camps' along the Rhine." (Betty Lou Smith Hanson)
Note: Remember the photo of Ike's West Point yearbook picture when he was dubbed "IKE, THE TERRIBLE SWEDISH JEW"? By the way, he was next, or nearly so, to the last in his class. This article was first printed in 1990, but we thought it was meaningful to reprint it now.
Note: During Cadet Eisenhower's time at West Point Academy, Eisenhower was summoned to the office of the headmaster and was asked some pointed questions. At the time, it was routine procedure to test a cadet's blood to insure White racial integrity.
Apparently, there was a question of Eisenhower's racial lineage and this was brought to Eisenhower's attention by the headmaster. When asked if he was part Oriental, Eisenhower replied in the negative. After some discussion, Eisenhower admitted having Jewish background. The headmaster then reportedly said, "That's where you get your Oriental blood?" Although he was allowed to remain at the academy, word got around since this was a time in history when non-Whites were not allowed into the academy. Note - The issue of Eisenhower's little-known Jewish background in academically essential in understanding his psychopathic
hatred of German men, women and children.
Later, in Eisenhower's West Point Military Academy graduating class yearbook, published in 1915, Eisenhower is identified as a "terrible Swedish Jew."
Wherever Eisenhower went during his military career, Eisenhower's Jewish background and secondary manifesting behavior was a concern to his fellow officers. During World War II when Col. Eisenhower was working for Gen. Douglas MacArthur in the South Pacific, MacArthur protested to his superiors in Washington (DC) that Eisenhower was incompetent and that he did not want Eisenhower on his staff.
In 1943, Washington not only transferred Col. Eisenhower to Europe but promoted him over more than 30 more experienced senior officers to five star general and placed him in charge of all the US forces in Europe.
Thus it comes as no surprise that General George Patton, a real Aryan warrior, hated Eisenhower.
[Ed: Patton was keen to fight the Soviets, and reportedly kept some German units ready to move against the Soviets...unsurprisingly he was killed; after the war, in a 'car crash,' just like Lawrence of Arabia was conveniently bumped off, in a similar manner, for his 'pro-fascist' views].
Comment
From George
12-28-3
Finally, the truth about Ike. He was a zionist!, a racist! and a slaughterer of innocents! He was always these things. And all anyone remembers is his famous quote "to beware of the military/industrial complex." Like this knowledge means he was a great precient prophet, when he was really a part of the NWO and helped set the US up for all that followed. The tooling jobs and industry started to leave the US in the early '50's, when Ike got into power. It was Japan they were building. Notice the difference between the destruction of Japan and the quick buildup of the Philipines and Japan and the Pacific the US took over, after the war of hegemony to steal the wealth of the Pacific Rim and present day Afghanistan, Iraq etc., now that the zionists rule the 'world'. The zionist essence is evil, destructive and self-destructive. Ike was a tool of the zionist evil essence.
German POW's Diary Reveals More Of Ike's Holocaust
12-29-3
Note - The following diary extract has been provided by the nephew of the author under the conditions we honor his request for anonymity. -ed
A transcript of my Uncle's words...from my Mother's diary:
"Suddenly an American Jeep moved towards us and several American Soldiers surrounded us. There was no officer in charge, and the first thing the 'Amis' did - they liberated us, I mean, from our few valuables, mainly rings and watches........ We were now prisoners of war- no doubt about it!
The first night we were herded into a barn, where we met about 100 men who shared the same fate. To make my story short, we were finally transported to Fuerstenfeldbruck near Munich. Here we, who were gathered around Hermann, interrupted him and gasped in dismay.
Fuerstenfeldbruck had become known to us as one of the most cruel POW camps in the American zone.
Then my brother continued:
Again we were searched and had to surrender everything, even our field utensils, except a spoon. Here, in freezing temperature, 20,000 of us were squeezed together on the naked ground, without blanket or cover, exposed day and night to the winter weather.
For six days we received neither food nor water! We used our spoons to catch drops of rain.
We were surrounded by heavy tanks. During the night bright searchlights blinded us, so that sleep was impossible. We napped from time to time, standing up and leaning against each other. It was keeping us warmer that sitting on the frozen ground.
Many of us were near collapse. One of our comrades went mad, he jumped around wildly, wailing and whimpering. he was shot at once. His body was lying on the ground, and we were not allowed to come near him. He was not he only one. Each suspicious movement caused the guards to shoot into the crowd, and a few were always hit.
German civilians, mainly women of the surrounding villages, tried to approach the camp to bring food and water for us prisoners. they were chased away.
Our German officers could finally succeed to submit an official protest, particularly because of the deprivation of water. As a response, a fire hose was thrown into the midst of the densely crowded prisoners and then turned on. Because of the high water pressure the hose moved violently to and fro. Prisoners tumbled, fell, got up and ran again to catch a bit of water. In that confusion the water went to waste, and the ground under us turned into slippery mud. All the while the 'Amis' watched that spectacle, finding it very funny and most entertaining. They laughed at our predicament as hard as they could. Then suddenly, they turned the water off again.
We had not expected that the Americans would behave in such a manner. We could hardly believe it. War brutalizes human beings.
One day later we were organized into groups of 400 men .... We were to receive two cans of food for each man. This is how it was to be done: The prisoners had to run through he slippery mud, and each one had to grab his two cans quickly, at the moment he passed the guards. One of my comrades slipped and could not run fast enough, He was shot at once ....
On May 10th , several truckloads of us were transported the the garrison of Ulm by the Danube..... As each man jumped into the truck, a guard kicked him in the backbone with his rifle butt.
We arrived in the city of Heilbronn by the Neckar, In the end we counted 240,000 men, who lived on the naked ground and without cover.
Spring and summer were mild this year, but we were starving. At 6;00 am we received coffee, at noon about a pint of soup and 100 grams of bread a day........
The 'Amis' gave us newspapers in German language, describing the terrors of the concentration camps. We did not believe any of it. We figured the Americans only wanted to demoralize us further.
The fields on which we lived belonged to the farmers of the area...soon nothing of the clover and other sprouting greens were left, and the trees were barren. We had eaten each blade of grass.....
In some camps there were Hungarian POW's. 15,000 of them. Mutiny against their officers broke out twice amongst them. After the second mutiny the Americans decided to use German prisoners to govern the Hungarians. Since the Hungarians were used as workers they were well fed. There was more food than they could eat. But when the Germans asked the Americans for permission to bring the Hungarians' leftovers into the camps of the starving Germans, it was denied. The Americans rather destroyed surplus food, than giving it to the Germans.
Sometimes it happened that groups of our own men were gathered and transported away. We presumed they were discharged to go home, and naturally, we wished to be among them. Much later we heard they were sent to labor camps! My mother's cousin, feared that he would be drafted into the Hitler Youth SS, he volunteered to the marines, in 1945 his unit was in Denmark. On April 20th they were captured by the Americans. his experience in the POW camp was identical that of my brother's. They lived in open fields, did not receive and food and water the first six days, and starved nearly to death. German wives and mothers who wanted to throw loaves of bread over the fence, were chased off. The prisoners, just to have something to chew, scraped the bark from young trees. my cousins job was to report each morning how many had died during the night. "and these were not just a few!" he adds to his report he wrote me.
It became known, that the conditions in the POW camps in the American Zone were identical everywhere. We could therefore safely conclude, that it was by intent and by orders from higher ups to starve the German POW's and we blamed General Eisenhower for it. He, who was of German descent could not discern the evildoers during the Nazi time from our decent people. We held that neglect of knowledge and understanding severely against him.
I wish to quote the inscription on the grave stones of those of my German compatriots who have already passed away:
We had to pass through fire and through water. But now you have loosened our bonds.
This Is Justice?
by Val Koinen
December 9, 2010
I’ve been doing quite a lot of reading about the Edgar Steele case lately (the North Idaho murder-for-hire case in which attorney Steele is accused of plotting with and hiring his neighbor Larry Fairfax to kill his wife and her mother). I wouldn’t call it research. Just browsing news reports and blogs along with statements made by his wife Cyndi Steele, the FBI, the Federal prosecuting attorney, judges, and of course the “lead actor” in this mess, would-be car bomber Larry Fairfax (“Larry the plumber;” the Steele’s “hillbilly handyman”).
As a result, I have not only learned some things; I have developed a number of impressions, questions, suspicions, and “reasonable doubts.”
Here’s what we seem to have so far –
On the “you’re guilty as hell, you scheming, plotting, politically incorrect, murder-for-hire guy” side (a rather short and shaky list if you ask me):
(1) We have the bankrupt, long-time FBI snoop and “confidential informant,” desperate-for-money, known liar and thief, and confessed pipe bomber Larry Fairfax saying that Edgar Steele plotted with him and hired him to kill his (Steele’s) wife and mother-in-law (Mr. Steele being a long-time attorney in good standing, an upright member of the community, as far as known a loving husband and father, a good, solid citizen with no criminal record whatsoever, and a U.S. Coast Guard veteran).
(2) And more than that – Fairfax says he has audio tapes to prove it (recordings which were allegedly made with the complicity of the FBI) – never mind that Edgar Steele denies saying the things on the tapes that have to do with a murder plot and that Cyndi Steele says she has heard those tapes and they are “untrustworthy” because of variances in background noise and a lack of characteristic vocal inflections every time her husband is supposed to be saying something about the murder plot (as though the tapes have been cobbled together – synthesized – probably using Mr. Steele’s utterances taken from his many readily available speeches).
On the “whoa, wait just a minute,” healthy-skepticism side (a long and continually growing list):
(1) Back in November 2009 then 64-year-old Edgar Steele very nearly died from a ruptured ascending aortic aneurism, and that was followed by at least one more aneurism and other serious medical problems over the ensuing months – hardly a condition in which one would be plotting multiple murders on multiple occasions over a prolonged period of time as described by Fairfax, it seems to me. (Actually, if he is guilty of the things he is accused of, Steele would have been working on these murder plots during exactly the same time period when he was convalescing, enduring new medical issues and surgeries, and being nursed back to health by his wife, the very woman he is accused of wanting to murder. Go figure.)
(2) It has been reported that Fairfax stole some $45,000 worth of silver coins from Steele’s residential and horse-ranch property, and no doubt knew Steele would discover the loss and would know who the thief was.
(3) That, together with Fairfax’s recent bankruptcy (debts of some $638,000.), imminent risk of losing his home to foreclosure, and desperation for cash; could certainly have provided ample motivation for him, as some have speculated, to decide to steal the silver and murder the Steeles.
(4) I have seen some references to the Jewish Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in connection with this case (in a letter to a friend Steele said the ADL “was quoted extensively in the government’s opening papers in court”). If one is inclined to consider the possibility that Edgar Steele is being “set up” on these charges – framed – it would be pretty hard to ignore any involvement or participation on the part of the ADL. They are surely no friends of Edgar Steele, who was highly critical of them and their operations on any number of occasions in his past writings and speeches. Also noteworthy in this regard is the fact that the ADL would probably have had “tribally facilitated” access to the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and the Mossad, both of which have the technology and wherewithal to simulate voice recordings (the IDF has admitted to doing that very kind of thing at about the same time the Steele case broke, by doctoring audio recordings from radio exchanges with the “Gaza Freedom Flotilla”).
(5) Sometime in May, 2010, according to Cyndi Steele, Fairfax borrowed Edgar Steele’s pickup truck and swapped-out the nearly new tires (stole them and replaced them with his more worn tires). What a guy!
(6) Fairfax’s descriptions of the murder-for-hire plot are complicated, have included a number of discrepancies and contradictions, and in some particulars seem to have changed over time. The time-line over the most critical period of events is therefore very important:
-Nov. 21, 2009: Edgar Steele nearly dies from a ruptured aortic aneurism (he is hospitalized for an extended period and has other related serious health problems over the next months).
-Late 2009: Fairfax says he had several discussions with Steele in which Steele mentioned people he would like to see killed (including his wife and mother-in-law).
-April 14, 2010: Fairfax declares bankruptcy.
-On or about May 28-30, 2010: Fairfax made two pipe bombs and attached one to Cyndi Steele’s vehicle.
-Around May 29 - 31: Cyndi Steele departs for Oregon to care for her mother, who is also in poor health.
-May 31: Fairfax, reportedly accompanied by cousin Jim Maher, traveled to Oregon.
-June 8 or 9: Fairfax informed FBI of supposed murder-for-hire plot.
-June 9: First of two supposed incriminating plotting
conversations with Steele; Fairfax may or may not have recorded the conversation.
-June 10: Supposedly recorded second conversation.
-June 11: FBI visits Cyndi Steele at her mother’s home in Oregon City, Oregon.
-June 11: Edgar Steele arrested at his home.
-Prior to June 15: Cyndi Steele drives back to Idaho.
-June 14: Steele arraignment postponed one day due to phony "white powder" event (white powder later identified as harmless calcium carbonate mailed by person(s) unknown to the federal courthouse in Coeur d'Alene, and to several federal facilities in western states).
-June 15: Edgar Steele arraignment. Just hours before that event, that morning, Cyndi Steele takes her vehicle to a shop for an oil change, and an employee finds the pipe bomb still attached to the frame of her SUV.
-June 15: Fairfax interviewed (interrogated) by Coeur d’Alene Idaho police and then arrested by U.S. Government.
(7) By his own admission, in late May 2010, Fairfax made two pipe bombs and attached one underneath the SUV usually driven by Cyndi Steele. Depending on which story we believe, he may or may not have attached the other one under Edgar Steele’s vehicle – in any case, if he did he must have removed it, and he eventually turned it over to the FBI.
(8) One version of the plot offered by Fairfax had it that the purpose of the bomb that was to be placed on Edgar Steele’s vehicle was to deflect suspicion from him. Steele was to detonate that bomb, making it look as though he too (and not just his wife) had been targeted. But just how would Steele have detonated that bomb safely and privately? By starting the vehicle and letting it run for several (or many) minutes or hours in his garage or driveway? Maybe in the middle of the night when there was no chance someone else would just happen to come upon the scene? Wouldn’t it be a little suspicious, and wouldn’t he expect to come under suspicion, if the bomb went off when he wasn’t in the vehicle or anywhere near it?
(9) At one point (in a bail hearing) Fairfax’s lawyer said in court that Fairfax had only planted the bomb on Cyndi Steele’s vehicle as a ruse to convince Edgar Steele he was complying with the plan. And I believe Fairfax himself told investigators at one point that he planted that bomb to convince Steele the plan was moving forward. (What plan was that – to have the bomb “wait” to go off magically at some unknowable time when both Cyndi Steele and her mother were in the car together, over in Oregon?) Remember – Fairfax said Mr. Steele wanted both his wife and her mother killed, and the FBI is claiming they have proof (on tape) that he plotted that very situation a couple weeks later (for the second time). But the bomb was placed on Mrs. Steele’s SUV when it was at her home in Idaho, and she had to drive about 450 miles to get to her mother’s home in Oregon. So that earlier car-bombing attempt is inconsistent with any plan to kill both women.
(10) Let’s not forget – this was later determined to be a large, real, “live” bomb packed with high explosives and equipped with a detonating fuse. Hardly the kind of thing you would build and attach to a vehicle just as a ruse to convince someone you were carrying out some hare-brained murder scheme. And another thing – are we to suppose that the government just accepted on Fairfax’s word, without a detailed examination of the way the bomb had been placed (wired and/or taped) on the chassis of Cyndi Steele’s vehicle and the opinion of a qualified expert, his explanation that he disabled the bomb he placed on her vehicle by taping the fuse in such a way that it would not burn through and detonate the bomb? (I’m not convinced that is how it would work, as a practical matter.) Is Fairfax really such an expert when it comes to car bombs and fuses? Are we to believe that explanation is what makes him the “good guy,” the one who saved Mrs. Steele’s life (as she was reportedly told by the FBI)?
(11) My personal opinion is that a much more likely story would be that Fairfax attached pipe bombs to both of the Steele’s vehicles in an attempt to kill them both, but he didn’t know what he was doing and neither one exploded. Then, concerned that they would be found intact and traced back to him, he removed the bomb from Edgar’s vehicle and went to Oregon to check on the bomb he had put on Cyndi’s vehicle but for some reason couldn’t find it and assumed it had fallen off. Then he belatedly concocted the ridiculous murder-for-hire plot involving the Steeles and the mother-in-law, went to the FBI, and arranged to get the doctored audio tapes made and into their hands.
(12) Sometime in early June (on the 8th or 9th), Fairfax went to the FBI and told them of the supposed murder-for-hire plot, but at that time he neglected to tell them he had already placed a pipe bomb underneath Cyndi Steele’s SUV and had already driven to Oregon ostensibly to check to see if the bomb was still on the vehicle. Later, he said the Oregon trip on May 31 was to check Cyndi Steele’s vehicle to see what happened to the bomb but he and/or his alleged accomplice Jim Maher didn’t see it and they assumed it had fallen off. (That in itself is a little hard to understand, considering that Fairfax himself had attached the bomb in the first place and knew exactly where it should be underneath the vehicle. Maybe that too was a lie and circumstances prevented them from actually looking for the bomb?)
(13) If, as initially described by Fairfax, the murder via an automobile crash was supposed to look like an accident so Steele could collect insurance, it is hard to understand how that could be accomplished with a pipe bomb – an explosive event such as that would never be considered “accidental” by any police or insurance investigator, and both Steele and Fairfax (dim-bulb though he may be) would have known that.
(14) Fairfax said early-on that Steele agreed to compensate him for the murders with a $25,000. initial payment to be followed by $100,000. more if he (Steele) was cleared of suspicion and if he received an anticipated life insurance settlement. But what Fairfax didn’t know was that there was no life insurance (an inconvenient fact divulged later by Cyndi Steele).
(15) The FBI says they have Edgar Steele on tape insisting the hit had to look like a car crash, and that both his wife and mother-in-law had to die, because he “did not want to take care of a paraplegic.” Now just think about that for a minute. What is the likelihood that the Fairfax gang could just go over to a heavily populated part of Oregon and follow Cyndi Steele and her mother along some road in their neighborhood, where the whole thing wouldn’t be witnessed by anybody, and then force them off the road in an “accident” and have any reason to expect that would kill them both? Even if the accident was triggered by a bomb that was magically set to go off at precisely the right moment?
(16) In any case, the bomb attached to Mrs. Steele’s vehicle in late May was apparently connected by a fuse to the exhaust system. Once again, if it had gone off before she left for Oregon or while she was enroute on that trip, how could that have killed her mother? How did Fairfax convince Steele he could kill both women with an explosion and car crash unless he had a way to trigger the explosion by remote control after Mrs. Steele had reached the Oregon destination when both women were in the vehicle – especially if he wasn’t there himself to do the deed? So far as I know Fairfax has never claimed that he told Steele his purpose for going to Oregon was to somehow trigger the bomb on Cyndi Steele’s vehicle at just the right time, although he has given a number of other reasons for the trip.
(17) Things continue to get all “tangled up” when we stop to think about the switch from a car-bomb to a rigged auto accident and when we consider the timeline. One has to wonder how Steele could have just forgotten about the earlier attempt and then, apparently without even mentioning it, start plotting days or weeks later to make a second attempt to kill his wife and mother-in-law. But we do have reports (allegations) that Steele said at the June 9 meeting, “…if the black Endeavor (his wife’s SUV) were to leave he guaranteed that his wife would be driving it.” Now keep in mind that at the time Cyndi Steele was still at her mother’s place in Oregon City, Oregon; whereas Edgar Steele and Fairfax were in north Idaho, and they were both still there the next day as well. Apparently, Fairfax was supposed to drive to Oregon later on Thursday, June 10, or overnight, and be in Oregon (more than 400 miles away) on Friday the 11th so he could stage the “accident” one way or the other. But of course he never made that trip.
(18) None of this makes sense. Maybe that’s because it’s not reality – because it’s just differing versions of a not-too-well-thought-out story concocted by Fairfax? Another huge discrepancy in Fairfax’s story-telling in my opinion: Fairfax was a long-time FBI “confidential informant.” He had no doubt been spying on Edgar Steele for months in that capacity. When he built and planted bombs in late May, it would almost certainly have been after any number of planning discussions with Steele, no doubt over many days, or weeks (assuming of course that his allegations about Steele’s involvement are true). Yet during that first phase of the drama he didn’t so much as go to the FBI and inform them of anything. And so, they made no effort to record any conversations between Fairfax and Steele as they did later. One has to wonder – why didn’t Fairfax tell the FBI about that earlier planning and that first attempt? Note that when he went to the FBI on June 9, or possibly, at the very earliest on June 8 – that time, it only took the FBI a few hours to start monitoring and recording planning conversations for that second attempt (according to the FBI’s account). That the same thing didn’t happen the first time around is just not believable to me; in fact, it is preposterous.
(19) At this point it all gets hopelessly confusing. It is really hard for me to understand how all this nonsense could possibly provide the authorities with a rationale for accepting Fairfax’s stories as a credible basis for charging Edgar Steele with anything. When Fairfax contacted the FBI on June 8 or 9, and then supposedly recorded incriminating conversations with Steele on June 9(?) and/or 10, he said the murders were planned for June 11 because Steele had an alibi for that day. But note that Cyndi Steele was already in Oregon, with the bomb under her car; and Fairfax had already made a trip to Oregon (May 31) to check on that bomb. Also, Fairfax’s reasons given for that trip to Oregon keep changing (no surprise there). At various times he has stated the trip was to assure Edgar Steele the plan was moving forward; to scout out Cyndi Steele’s mother’s residence etc.; to check to see if the bomb was still on the vehicle; and to check on Cyndi Steele having an affair (as he says Edgar Steele suspected) (right – he could expect to just drive up to the mother’s house and there would be clear evidence of Cyndi Steele having an affair). And I still can’t reconcile Steele’s supposed payment of $400. to cover Fairfax’s travel costs for the trip(s) to Oregon. Was that for the May 31 trip? Or was it for another trip following the June 9-10 meetings? Or both?
(20) It seems pretty clear to me now that the whole matter of including Edgar Steele’s mother-in-law in the murder-for-hire plot might just have been contrived so this would become an interstate crime and the Federal Department of Justice could get involved (FBI, federal prosecutors, federal courts and judges).
(21) In my view it is beyond just being ludicrous and incomprehensible – it is absolutely and totally irrational, to the point of being virtually impossible – that an educated and federal persecution-savvy (er---prosecution-savvy) attorney such as Edgar Steele would: (a) hire someone like Fairfax to commit a complex (actually, just about impossible) interstate double murder such as this on his behalf; (b) expect to receive accident insurance compensation for a bomb-caused crash; or (c) go out to his horse barn with Fairfax for two days running (June 9-10) and plan the murders (between discussions of handyman and farm-chore assignments) for a second time (following Fairfax’s bungled first attempt to do the dirty deed in late May); and to do that apparently without so much as a mention of the first (failed) effort.
(22) Apparently, as noted above, Fairfax did not tell the FBI anything about the bombs when he first contacted them about the murder-for-hire plotting. According to Cyndi Steele, an FBI agent told her they did not hear any reference to bombs on the tapes. But she says she heard the word “bomb” several times. If she is correct about that, and if the FBI actually knew about the bomb under her car; then they knowingly endangered her, her passengers at various times, and everyone else along her entire driving route after they learned about it. According to Cyndi Steele, they didn’t even tell her about the bomb when they visited her at her mother’s residence on June 11.
(23) As mentioned above, Cyndi Steele has been allowed to listen to two of the supposedly incriminating tapes. On those tapes, supposedly surreptitiously recorded by Fairfax during meetings (in one of Steele’s horse barns?) on June 9 and 10, the recorded discussions reportedly switch back and forth between Steele giving instructions about work to be done on his property and elements of the murder plot. Mrs. Steele has stated that whenever her husband started to discuss the plot, there were changes in background noise and his voice lost certain inflections she is well familiar with. So she told the attending FBI agent that those incriminating portions of the taped conversations were untrustworthy.
(24) According to Mrs. Steele, “It has been implied by the FBI that if I do not go along with what they want me to say, such as their view of the disputed tapes, they will cause problems for me. Every time that I have told the FBI that I did not trust those tapes, the agent becomes defensive and insists that they are authentic and his demeanor is overbearing and he insists that I should agree with him. This is witness tampering perpetrated by the U.S. Government.”
(25) Also according to Cyndi Steele, FBI agents have tried to intimidate her by telling her Fairfax is the “good guy” who tried to save her life, and they have insisted that her husband Edgar Steele is the “bad guy.” They have told Mrs. Steele what a horrible person her husband is.
(26) By the way, the FBI allowed Cyndi Steele to listen to two tapes, but they told her there is a third one but that she couldn’t listen to that one because it “isn’t ready yet.” Hmmmm. I wonder what the FBI has to do to that tape to make it “ready?” To my knowledge she never has been allowed to listen to that third tape.
(27) It seems noteworthy to me that, about the time Edgar Steele was arrested and as the story was breaking, the local press was a bit too eager to “cooperate” with the FBI and the prosecution by vilifying Edgar Steele for his social and political positions and his political incorrectness, thus painting him as the bad guy in the public mind. I don’t suppose that could be considered “poisoning the jury pool,” now could it?
(28) One thing I find a little odd is how the Federal prosecutor and judges seem to be really, really reluctant to treat Fairfax and Company too harshly. At one point last June, at a Fairfax hearing, Magistrate Candy Dale called her decision to keep Fairfax behind bars (by denying him bail) “very difficult.” (I have to wonder why she would hold that view or even have that thought, let alone express it in court, considering Fairfax’s confessed crimes and his duplicity, and considering also the fact that Edgar Steele was being held in jail without bail!) Then, the Federal prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Traci Whelan, chose to grossly undercharge Fairfax (in my opinion), just charging him with “possession of an unregistered firearm and making a firearm in violation of the National Firearms Act.” I just can’t quite understand why he was not charged with the same or equivalent, much more serious crimes as Edgar Steele (for example, something like “use of interstate commerce to facilitate murder for hire;” “use of explosive material to commit a federal felony;” and “possession of a destructive device in relation to a crime of violence”). (Oh, well, maybe the State of Idaho will step up and charge him with attempted murder after this federal fiasco runs it course?) And then, as if to add insult to injury, Ms. Whelan offers Fairfax a plea-bargain deal that could get him as little as 18 months in prison when he is sentenced later this month. And lastly, to top it all off, the Feds have so far refused to arrest or charge supposed accomplice Jim Maher and any other of Fairfax’s accomplices still out there (at one time the FBI indicated to Cyndi Steele that there could be more than one of them). To me, none of this is even remotely understandable, and I think we the people should demand to know why the government has taken the positions it has.
(29) U.S. Attorney Traci Whelan would seem to spare no effort to prevent Cyndi Steele from saying (or even thinking) anything positive about her husband. When Edgar Steele gave some good (albeit emphatic and perhaps a little stern) husbandly and family-attorney-in-fact advisement to his wife and son in telephone conversations shortly after his arrest, Whelan had Steele held without bail and then piled on an additional felony charge (witness tampering). When Edgar Steele mailed a card to his daughter which contained a loving and reassuring message Whelan says was probably intended for his wife (whose birthday was July 29, about the same time), Whelan was all over Mr. Steele for violating the no-contact order. When Cyndi Steele and her mother filed affidavits in order to assert their “victim’s rights” prior to the governments’ acceptance of the sweetheart-deal plea bargain from Fairfax, Whelan derided the affidavits as just being speculation, and even questioned if the women wrote the affidavits themselves (as though there would be something wrong, or illegal, in getting an attorney to help draft the language for a legal instrument to be submitted to the court) (isn’t that what lawyers are for?). Whelan even went so far as to say she anticipates “an investigation into how the affidavits came to be drafted.” She also said the documents (affidavits) contain “statements set up to bolster Mr. Steele’s defense.” And just what in the world is wrong with that? After all, virtually everything the Feds say and do is meant to “bolster” their prosecution of Edgar Steele and their contention that he is guilty. And it gets worse. At the Fairfax plea hearing itself, U.S. District Court Judge B. Lynn Winmill declined to entertain Mrs. Steele’s request that the hearing be postponed so tougher penalties could be imposed, noting Cyndi Steel had filed her request that morning despite knowing of the hearing for two weeks. That was his reason? Was a legally defined deadline missed? If so, so be it (but why then didn’t he say so?). But if not, should the short “lead-time” afforded by Mrs. Steele’s last minute filing constitute a proper basis for denying the victim’s requests? Winmill also said, “I have to question either the motive or the sincerity of their request.” Well I read the affidavits and I saw nothing at all wrong, or suspicious, about the motivation or sincerity; and again, I would question if that is a sufficient basis for rejecting the several very good points made in the affidavits. Certainly, to my way of thinking, there is at least the appearance of impropriety in all this. It just seems to me that a reasonable person might get the impression that the FBI, the prosecution and the courts are, whether knowingly and deliberately or not, in effect conspiring to deprive Cyndi Steele of her civil rights by working together to intimidate her into not trying to do anything to help her husband.
(30) Meanwhile, in spite of the government’s attitude toward Cyndi Steele, and their kid-gloves treatment of Fairfax and his reported accomplice Maher; they have no problem and spare no effort ensuring that Edgar Steele is held in virtual solitary confinement, without bail, with no assets with which to mount a proper defense, and under a (recently just partially lifted) no-contact order that prevents him from discussing his case with his wife.
(31) Following Edgar Steele’s arrest on June 11, the FBI apparently tore portions of the Steele’s house apart (walls, floorboards) in search of precious metals he was known to have hidden. Reports are that the FBI took a considerable quantity of silver (and gold?) (the Steele’s “life savings”) plus other valuable property, thus depriving Steele of the assets he needs to mount a proper defense.
(32) The FBI and prosecution have tried mightily to come up with a motive – any motive – for Edgar Steele to want to murder his wife and mother in law (especially since Cyndi Steele has said there was no life insurance coverage). At one point after Edgar’s arrest they found a boxed teddy bear in the Steele’s house, with a note that it was for his “Ukrainian girlfriends.” They deliberately opened the box and left the “gift” for Mrs. Steele to find, apparently hoping to make her think it might indicate some untoward (illicit) behavior on Mr. Steele’s part (in his condition, considering the medication he was no doubt taking?). But they didn’t know that this was simply a gift intended for one or more of Mr. Steele’s female Ukrainian clients, which he often referred to as his “Ukrainian girlfriends” (a completely innocent thing, not at all surprising or upsetting to Mrs. Steele). Then, later, according to Mrs. Steele, the FBI unsuccessfully tried to coerce her into admitting an involvement in an affair (they said they had photos, but they didn’t, of course). Once again, I would think that is much worse “witness tampering” or intimidation that anything Edgar Steele said in his June 13 telephone conversations with his son and wife.
(33) As I recall, the local press once again came through and “aided and abetted” the government’s perfidy by giving the impression in its reporting that Edgar Steele did in fact have a “real” “Ukrainian girlfriend.”
(34) While I haven’t as yet seen any definitive evidence of wrongdoing on the part of upper echelons of the U.S. government in this case, Edgar Steele in telephone calls to his son and wife from jail, not long after his arrest, did mention to them that he had learned there is involvement in the effort to prosecute him at the “highest levels” of the Attorney General’s office. So, considering that Barack Obama and Eric Holder are both Negroid, and considering Mr. Steele’s often expressed and quite proper but politically-incorrect concerns for his fellow White people, and some comparatively non-complimentary (albeit true and accurate) things he has said in the past about the nature of black people; I don’t think we can automatically dismiss the possibility of motivation for his arrest, and even the possibility of his being set up, coming from high levels of the U.S. government.
(35) More possible motive for a frame-up: It has been reported that Edgar Steele had been working on a book focused on Jewish and/or Israeli involvement in human trafficking – sex trafficking, in particular. It could be that he was prepared to expose some very serious wrongdoing by some very important people. It seems to me that could be real motivation for Jews/Israelis/Zionists/ZOG to want to put Steele out of commission.
(36) It is now believed by some that Fairfax, as a Federal informant, had for many months been nosing around the Steele’s place trying to turn up some wrongdoing that the U.S. Government could use to prosecute Steele for something (because they didn’t like his politically incorrect positions on some issues and were “out to get him”). If that is the case, the effort failed. But (just speculating, now) could such an “anti-Steele” position on the part of the U.S. Government be what first put thoughts into Fairfax’s head that eventually led to his planning and committing his crimes? (Assuming, of course, that he hasn’t been acting at the direction of the government all along.)
(37) Things just keep getting “weirder and weirder.” It has recently been disclosed that
Fairfax’s alleged accomplice Jim Maher, another neighbor in Steele’s residential Sagle/Talache Idaho area, is none other than the brother of nationally prominent comedian and talk-show host Bill Maher; and it is even reported that Larry Fairfax is a cousin of the Maher brothers. While it is admittedly small evidence of motivation, it should at least be mentioned that Edgar Steele once described Bill Maher’s political positions and actions and/or utterances in a less-than-favorable light in one of his essays, and that the Mahers are thought by some to be partly Jewish (and once again, we know that many Jews don’t think very highly of Edgar Steele due to his perceptive outtake on many things Jewish).
(38) When considering the guilt or innocence of Edgar Steele, I cannot leave this one very important thing unstated as a stand-alone item: his wife Cyndi Steele does not believe or accept that he is guilty of plotting to kill her and her mother (and neither does her mother, by the way, who has referred to Mr. Steele in an affidavit as care-giving and supportive). I would simply suggest in that regard that Cyndi Steele, of all people, should know.
_________________________
In summary, it seems that the Edgar Steele case is an ongoing gross (and possibly even deliberate?) miscarriage of justice. It looks as though he is being railroaded because of his beliefs, writings, and speeches; and possibly because of investigations he had been conducting that he planned to publish in the near future. And it even seems a reasonable possibility that certain elements of the U.S. Government may have joined Larry Fairfax et al in initiating and carrying out that crime.
It does seem possible that all this is being done at the behest of the Jews that control certain elements of the U.S. Government (ZOG); in collusion with the key Negroes-in-charge: Eric Holder, Attorney General (likely); and President Barack Obama (conceivably and possibly). Hard as it might be to believe, it appears as though these factions of the government jumped on this case when it was initiated by Fairfax (or by Fairfax in collusion with the ADL and/or the FBI) as a way to “get” Steele after they couldn’t find anything else to nail him with.
We may never know the real facts and truth in regard to this case. But it strikes me that what has been lacking up to this point is real, rigorous and intensive, and unbiased investigation of all the elements, and especially of the claims and actions of Larry Fairfax. And here I’m thinking of honest and competent investigation by both the local press (investigative journalism) and by the FBI (the Federal Bureau of Investigation).
December 9, 2010
I’ve been doing quite a lot of reading about the Edgar Steele case lately (the North Idaho murder-for-hire case in which attorney Steele is accused of plotting with and hiring his neighbor Larry Fairfax to kill his wife and her mother). I wouldn’t call it research. Just browsing news reports and blogs along with statements made by his wife Cyndi Steele, the FBI, the Federal prosecuting attorney, judges, and of course the “lead actor” in this mess, would-be car bomber Larry Fairfax (“Larry the plumber;” the Steele’s “hillbilly handyman”).
As a result, I have not only learned some things; I have developed a number of impressions, questions, suspicions, and “reasonable doubts.”
Here’s what we seem to have so far –
On the “you’re guilty as hell, you scheming, plotting, politically incorrect, murder-for-hire guy” side (a rather short and shaky list if you ask me):
(1) We have the bankrupt, long-time FBI snoop and “confidential informant,” desperate-for-money, known liar and thief, and confessed pipe bomber Larry Fairfax saying that Edgar Steele plotted with him and hired him to kill his (Steele’s) wife and mother-in-law (Mr. Steele being a long-time attorney in good standing, an upright member of the community, as far as known a loving husband and father, a good, solid citizen with no criminal record whatsoever, and a U.S. Coast Guard veteran).
(2) And more than that – Fairfax says he has audio tapes to prove it (recordings which were allegedly made with the complicity of the FBI) – never mind that Edgar Steele denies saying the things on the tapes that have to do with a murder plot and that Cyndi Steele says she has heard those tapes and they are “untrustworthy” because of variances in background noise and a lack of characteristic vocal inflections every time her husband is supposed to be saying something about the murder plot (as though the tapes have been cobbled together – synthesized – probably using Mr. Steele’s utterances taken from his many readily available speeches).
On the “whoa, wait just a minute,” healthy-skepticism side (a long and continually growing list):
(1) Back in November 2009 then 64-year-old Edgar Steele very nearly died from a ruptured ascending aortic aneurism, and that was followed by at least one more aneurism and other serious medical problems over the ensuing months – hardly a condition in which one would be plotting multiple murders on multiple occasions over a prolonged period of time as described by Fairfax, it seems to me. (Actually, if he is guilty of the things he is accused of, Steele would have been working on these murder plots during exactly the same time period when he was convalescing, enduring new medical issues and surgeries, and being nursed back to health by his wife, the very woman he is accused of wanting to murder. Go figure.)
(2) It has been reported that Fairfax stole some $45,000 worth of silver coins from Steele’s residential and horse-ranch property, and no doubt knew Steele would discover the loss and would know who the thief was.
(3) That, together with Fairfax’s recent bankruptcy (debts of some $638,000.), imminent risk of losing his home to foreclosure, and desperation for cash; could certainly have provided ample motivation for him, as some have speculated, to decide to steal the silver and murder the Steeles.
(4) I have seen some references to the Jewish Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in connection with this case (in a letter to a friend Steele said the ADL “was quoted extensively in the government’s opening papers in court”). If one is inclined to consider the possibility that Edgar Steele is being “set up” on these charges – framed – it would be pretty hard to ignore any involvement or participation on the part of the ADL. They are surely no friends of Edgar Steele, who was highly critical of them and their operations on any number of occasions in his past writings and speeches. Also noteworthy in this regard is the fact that the ADL would probably have had “tribally facilitated” access to the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and the Mossad, both of which have the technology and wherewithal to simulate voice recordings (the IDF has admitted to doing that very kind of thing at about the same time the Steele case broke, by doctoring audio recordings from radio exchanges with the “Gaza Freedom Flotilla”).
(5) Sometime in May, 2010, according to Cyndi Steele, Fairfax borrowed Edgar Steele’s pickup truck and swapped-out the nearly new tires (stole them and replaced them with his more worn tires). What a guy!
(6) Fairfax’s descriptions of the murder-for-hire plot are complicated, have included a number of discrepancies and contradictions, and in some particulars seem to have changed over time. The time-line over the most critical period of events is therefore very important:
-Nov. 21, 2009: Edgar Steele nearly dies from a ruptured aortic aneurism (he is hospitalized for an extended period and has other related serious health problems over the next months).
-Late 2009: Fairfax says he had several discussions with Steele in which Steele mentioned people he would like to see killed (including his wife and mother-in-law).
-April 14, 2010: Fairfax declares bankruptcy.
-On or about May 28-30, 2010: Fairfax made two pipe bombs and attached one to Cyndi Steele’s vehicle.
-Around May 29 - 31: Cyndi Steele departs for Oregon to care for her mother, who is also in poor health.
-May 31: Fairfax, reportedly accompanied by cousin Jim Maher, traveled to Oregon.
-June 8 or 9: Fairfax informed FBI of supposed murder-for-hire plot.
-June 9: First of two supposed incriminating plotting
conversations with Steele; Fairfax may or may not have recorded the conversation.
-June 10: Supposedly recorded second conversation.
-June 11: FBI visits Cyndi Steele at her mother’s home in Oregon City, Oregon.
-June 11: Edgar Steele arrested at his home.
-Prior to June 15: Cyndi Steele drives back to Idaho.
-June 14: Steele arraignment postponed one day due to phony "white powder" event (white powder later identified as harmless calcium carbonate mailed by person(s) unknown to the federal courthouse in Coeur d'Alene, and to several federal facilities in western states).
-June 15: Edgar Steele arraignment. Just hours before that event, that morning, Cyndi Steele takes her vehicle to a shop for an oil change, and an employee finds the pipe bomb still attached to the frame of her SUV.
-June 15: Fairfax interviewed (interrogated) by Coeur d’Alene Idaho police and then arrested by U.S. Government.
(7) By his own admission, in late May 2010, Fairfax made two pipe bombs and attached one underneath the SUV usually driven by Cyndi Steele. Depending on which story we believe, he may or may not have attached the other one under Edgar Steele’s vehicle – in any case, if he did he must have removed it, and he eventually turned it over to the FBI.
(8) One version of the plot offered by Fairfax had it that the purpose of the bomb that was to be placed on Edgar Steele’s vehicle was to deflect suspicion from him. Steele was to detonate that bomb, making it look as though he too (and not just his wife) had been targeted. But just how would Steele have detonated that bomb safely and privately? By starting the vehicle and letting it run for several (or many) minutes or hours in his garage or driveway? Maybe in the middle of the night when there was no chance someone else would just happen to come upon the scene? Wouldn’t it be a little suspicious, and wouldn’t he expect to come under suspicion, if the bomb went off when he wasn’t in the vehicle or anywhere near it?
(9) At one point (in a bail hearing) Fairfax’s lawyer said in court that Fairfax had only planted the bomb on Cyndi Steele’s vehicle as a ruse to convince Edgar Steele he was complying with the plan. And I believe Fairfax himself told investigators at one point that he planted that bomb to convince Steele the plan was moving forward. (What plan was that – to have the bomb “wait” to go off magically at some unknowable time when both Cyndi Steele and her mother were in the car together, over in Oregon?) Remember – Fairfax said Mr. Steele wanted both his wife and her mother killed, and the FBI is claiming they have proof (on tape) that he plotted that very situation a couple weeks later (for the second time). But the bomb was placed on Mrs. Steele’s SUV when it was at her home in Idaho, and she had to drive about 450 miles to get to her mother’s home in Oregon. So that earlier car-bombing attempt is inconsistent with any plan to kill both women.
(10) Let’s not forget – this was later determined to be a large, real, “live” bomb packed with high explosives and equipped with a detonating fuse. Hardly the kind of thing you would build and attach to a vehicle just as a ruse to convince someone you were carrying out some hare-brained murder scheme. And another thing – are we to suppose that the government just accepted on Fairfax’s word, without a detailed examination of the way the bomb had been placed (wired and/or taped) on the chassis of Cyndi Steele’s vehicle and the opinion of a qualified expert, his explanation that he disabled the bomb he placed on her vehicle by taping the fuse in such a way that it would not burn through and detonate the bomb? (I’m not convinced that is how it would work, as a practical matter.) Is Fairfax really such an expert when it comes to car bombs and fuses? Are we to believe that explanation is what makes him the “good guy,” the one who saved Mrs. Steele’s life (as she was reportedly told by the FBI)?
(11) My personal opinion is that a much more likely story would be that Fairfax attached pipe bombs to both of the Steele’s vehicles in an attempt to kill them both, but he didn’t know what he was doing and neither one exploded. Then, concerned that they would be found intact and traced back to him, he removed the bomb from Edgar’s vehicle and went to Oregon to check on the bomb he had put on Cyndi’s vehicle but for some reason couldn’t find it and assumed it had fallen off. Then he belatedly concocted the ridiculous murder-for-hire plot involving the Steeles and the mother-in-law, went to the FBI, and arranged to get the doctored audio tapes made and into their hands.
(12) Sometime in early June (on the 8th or 9th), Fairfax went to the FBI and told them of the supposed murder-for-hire plot, but at that time he neglected to tell them he had already placed a pipe bomb underneath Cyndi Steele’s SUV and had already driven to Oregon ostensibly to check to see if the bomb was still on the vehicle. Later, he said the Oregon trip on May 31 was to check Cyndi Steele’s vehicle to see what happened to the bomb but he and/or his alleged accomplice Jim Maher didn’t see it and they assumed it had fallen off. (That in itself is a little hard to understand, considering that Fairfax himself had attached the bomb in the first place and knew exactly where it should be underneath the vehicle. Maybe that too was a lie and circumstances prevented them from actually looking for the bomb?)
(13) If, as initially described by Fairfax, the murder via an automobile crash was supposed to look like an accident so Steele could collect insurance, it is hard to understand how that could be accomplished with a pipe bomb – an explosive event such as that would never be considered “accidental” by any police or insurance investigator, and both Steele and Fairfax (dim-bulb though he may be) would have known that.
(14) Fairfax said early-on that Steele agreed to compensate him for the murders with a $25,000. initial payment to be followed by $100,000. more if he (Steele) was cleared of suspicion and if he received an anticipated life insurance settlement. But what Fairfax didn’t know was that there was no life insurance (an inconvenient fact divulged later by Cyndi Steele).
(15) The FBI says they have Edgar Steele on tape insisting the hit had to look like a car crash, and that both his wife and mother-in-law had to die, because he “did not want to take care of a paraplegic.” Now just think about that for a minute. What is the likelihood that the Fairfax gang could just go over to a heavily populated part of Oregon and follow Cyndi Steele and her mother along some road in their neighborhood, where the whole thing wouldn’t be witnessed by anybody, and then force them off the road in an “accident” and have any reason to expect that would kill them both? Even if the accident was triggered by a bomb that was magically set to go off at precisely the right moment?
(16) In any case, the bomb attached to Mrs. Steele’s vehicle in late May was apparently connected by a fuse to the exhaust system. Once again, if it had gone off before she left for Oregon or while she was enroute on that trip, how could that have killed her mother? How did Fairfax convince Steele he could kill both women with an explosion and car crash unless he had a way to trigger the explosion by remote control after Mrs. Steele had reached the Oregon destination when both women were in the vehicle – especially if he wasn’t there himself to do the deed? So far as I know Fairfax has never claimed that he told Steele his purpose for going to Oregon was to somehow trigger the bomb on Cyndi Steele’s vehicle at just the right time, although he has given a number of other reasons for the trip.
(17) Things continue to get all “tangled up” when we stop to think about the switch from a car-bomb to a rigged auto accident and when we consider the timeline. One has to wonder how Steele could have just forgotten about the earlier attempt and then, apparently without even mentioning it, start plotting days or weeks later to make a second attempt to kill his wife and mother-in-law. But we do have reports (allegations) that Steele said at the June 9 meeting, “…if the black Endeavor (his wife’s SUV) were to leave he guaranteed that his wife would be driving it.” Now keep in mind that at the time Cyndi Steele was still at her mother’s place in Oregon City, Oregon; whereas Edgar Steele and Fairfax were in north Idaho, and they were both still there the next day as well. Apparently, Fairfax was supposed to drive to Oregon later on Thursday, June 10, or overnight, and be in Oregon (more than 400 miles away) on Friday the 11th so he could stage the “accident” one way or the other. But of course he never made that trip.
(18) None of this makes sense. Maybe that’s because it’s not reality – because it’s just differing versions of a not-too-well-thought-out story concocted by Fairfax? Another huge discrepancy in Fairfax’s story-telling in my opinion: Fairfax was a long-time FBI “confidential informant.” He had no doubt been spying on Edgar Steele for months in that capacity. When he built and planted bombs in late May, it would almost certainly have been after any number of planning discussions with Steele, no doubt over many days, or weeks (assuming of course that his allegations about Steele’s involvement are true). Yet during that first phase of the drama he didn’t so much as go to the FBI and inform them of anything. And so, they made no effort to record any conversations between Fairfax and Steele as they did later. One has to wonder – why didn’t Fairfax tell the FBI about that earlier planning and that first attempt? Note that when he went to the FBI on June 9, or possibly, at the very earliest on June 8 – that time, it only took the FBI a few hours to start monitoring and recording planning conversations for that second attempt (according to the FBI’s account). That the same thing didn’t happen the first time around is just not believable to me; in fact, it is preposterous.
(19) At this point it all gets hopelessly confusing. It is really hard for me to understand how all this nonsense could possibly provide the authorities with a rationale for accepting Fairfax’s stories as a credible basis for charging Edgar Steele with anything. When Fairfax contacted the FBI on June 8 or 9, and then supposedly recorded incriminating conversations with Steele on June 9(?) and/or 10, he said the murders were planned for June 11 because Steele had an alibi for that day. But note that Cyndi Steele was already in Oregon, with the bomb under her car; and Fairfax had already made a trip to Oregon (May 31) to check on that bomb. Also, Fairfax’s reasons given for that trip to Oregon keep changing (no surprise there). At various times he has stated the trip was to assure Edgar Steele the plan was moving forward; to scout out Cyndi Steele’s mother’s residence etc.; to check to see if the bomb was still on the vehicle; and to check on Cyndi Steele having an affair (as he says Edgar Steele suspected) (right – he could expect to just drive up to the mother’s house and there would be clear evidence of Cyndi Steele having an affair). And I still can’t reconcile Steele’s supposed payment of $400. to cover Fairfax’s travel costs for the trip(s) to Oregon. Was that for the May 31 trip? Or was it for another trip following the June 9-10 meetings? Or both?
(20) It seems pretty clear to me now that the whole matter of including Edgar Steele’s mother-in-law in the murder-for-hire plot might just have been contrived so this would become an interstate crime and the Federal Department of Justice could get involved (FBI, federal prosecutors, federal courts and judges).
(21) In my view it is beyond just being ludicrous and incomprehensible – it is absolutely and totally irrational, to the point of being virtually impossible – that an educated and federal persecution-savvy (er---prosecution-savvy) attorney such as Edgar Steele would: (a) hire someone like Fairfax to commit a complex (actually, just about impossible) interstate double murder such as this on his behalf; (b) expect to receive accident insurance compensation for a bomb-caused crash; or (c) go out to his horse barn with Fairfax for two days running (June 9-10) and plan the murders (between discussions of handyman and farm-chore assignments) for a second time (following Fairfax’s bungled first attempt to do the dirty deed in late May); and to do that apparently without so much as a mention of the first (failed) effort.
(22) Apparently, as noted above, Fairfax did not tell the FBI anything about the bombs when he first contacted them about the murder-for-hire plotting. According to Cyndi Steele, an FBI agent told her they did not hear any reference to bombs on the tapes. But she says she heard the word “bomb” several times. If she is correct about that, and if the FBI actually knew about the bomb under her car; then they knowingly endangered her, her passengers at various times, and everyone else along her entire driving route after they learned about it. According to Cyndi Steele, they didn’t even tell her about the bomb when they visited her at her mother’s residence on June 11.
(23) As mentioned above, Cyndi Steele has been allowed to listen to two of the supposedly incriminating tapes. On those tapes, supposedly surreptitiously recorded by Fairfax during meetings (in one of Steele’s horse barns?) on June 9 and 10, the recorded discussions reportedly switch back and forth between Steele giving instructions about work to be done on his property and elements of the murder plot. Mrs. Steele has stated that whenever her husband started to discuss the plot, there were changes in background noise and his voice lost certain inflections she is well familiar with. So she told the attending FBI agent that those incriminating portions of the taped conversations were untrustworthy.
(24) According to Mrs. Steele, “It has been implied by the FBI that if I do not go along with what they want me to say, such as their view of the disputed tapes, they will cause problems for me. Every time that I have told the FBI that I did not trust those tapes, the agent becomes defensive and insists that they are authentic and his demeanor is overbearing and he insists that I should agree with him. This is witness tampering perpetrated by the U.S. Government.”
(25) Also according to Cyndi Steele, FBI agents have tried to intimidate her by telling her Fairfax is the “good guy” who tried to save her life, and they have insisted that her husband Edgar Steele is the “bad guy.” They have told Mrs. Steele what a horrible person her husband is.
(26) By the way, the FBI allowed Cyndi Steele to listen to two tapes, but they told her there is a third one but that she couldn’t listen to that one because it “isn’t ready yet.” Hmmmm. I wonder what the FBI has to do to that tape to make it “ready?” To my knowledge she never has been allowed to listen to that third tape.
(27) It seems noteworthy to me that, about the time Edgar Steele was arrested and as the story was breaking, the local press was a bit too eager to “cooperate” with the FBI and the prosecution by vilifying Edgar Steele for his social and political positions and his political incorrectness, thus painting him as the bad guy in the public mind. I don’t suppose that could be considered “poisoning the jury pool,” now could it?
(28) One thing I find a little odd is how the Federal prosecutor and judges seem to be really, really reluctant to treat Fairfax and Company too harshly. At one point last June, at a Fairfax hearing, Magistrate Candy Dale called her decision to keep Fairfax behind bars (by denying him bail) “very difficult.” (I have to wonder why she would hold that view or even have that thought, let alone express it in court, considering Fairfax’s confessed crimes and his duplicity, and considering also the fact that Edgar Steele was being held in jail without bail!) Then, the Federal prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Traci Whelan, chose to grossly undercharge Fairfax (in my opinion), just charging him with “possession of an unregistered firearm and making a firearm in violation of the National Firearms Act.” I just can’t quite understand why he was not charged with the same or equivalent, much more serious crimes as Edgar Steele (for example, something like “use of interstate commerce to facilitate murder for hire;” “use of explosive material to commit a federal felony;” and “possession of a destructive device in relation to a crime of violence”). (Oh, well, maybe the State of Idaho will step up and charge him with attempted murder after this federal fiasco runs it course?) And then, as if to add insult to injury, Ms. Whelan offers Fairfax a plea-bargain deal that could get him as little as 18 months in prison when he is sentenced later this month. And lastly, to top it all off, the Feds have so far refused to arrest or charge supposed accomplice Jim Maher and any other of Fairfax’s accomplices still out there (at one time the FBI indicated to Cyndi Steele that there could be more than one of them). To me, none of this is even remotely understandable, and I think we the people should demand to know why the government has taken the positions it has.
(29) U.S. Attorney Traci Whelan would seem to spare no effort to prevent Cyndi Steele from saying (or even thinking) anything positive about her husband. When Edgar Steele gave some good (albeit emphatic and perhaps a little stern) husbandly and family-attorney-in-fact advisement to his wife and son in telephone conversations shortly after his arrest, Whelan had Steele held without bail and then piled on an additional felony charge (witness tampering). When Edgar Steele mailed a card to his daughter which contained a loving and reassuring message Whelan says was probably intended for his wife (whose birthday was July 29, about the same time), Whelan was all over Mr. Steele for violating the no-contact order. When Cyndi Steele and her mother filed affidavits in order to assert their “victim’s rights” prior to the governments’ acceptance of the sweetheart-deal plea bargain from Fairfax, Whelan derided the affidavits as just being speculation, and even questioned if the women wrote the affidavits themselves (as though there would be something wrong, or illegal, in getting an attorney to help draft the language for a legal instrument to be submitted to the court) (isn’t that what lawyers are for?). Whelan even went so far as to say she anticipates “an investigation into how the affidavits came to be drafted.” She also said the documents (affidavits) contain “statements set up to bolster Mr. Steele’s defense.” And just what in the world is wrong with that? After all, virtually everything the Feds say and do is meant to “bolster” their prosecution of Edgar Steele and their contention that he is guilty. And it gets worse. At the Fairfax plea hearing itself, U.S. District Court Judge B. Lynn Winmill declined to entertain Mrs. Steele’s request that the hearing be postponed so tougher penalties could be imposed, noting Cyndi Steel had filed her request that morning despite knowing of the hearing for two weeks. That was his reason? Was a legally defined deadline missed? If so, so be it (but why then didn’t he say so?). But if not, should the short “lead-time” afforded by Mrs. Steele’s last minute filing constitute a proper basis for denying the victim’s requests? Winmill also said, “I have to question either the motive or the sincerity of their request.” Well I read the affidavits and I saw nothing at all wrong, or suspicious, about the motivation or sincerity; and again, I would question if that is a sufficient basis for rejecting the several very good points made in the affidavits. Certainly, to my way of thinking, there is at least the appearance of impropriety in all this. It just seems to me that a reasonable person might get the impression that the FBI, the prosecution and the courts are, whether knowingly and deliberately or not, in effect conspiring to deprive Cyndi Steele of her civil rights by working together to intimidate her into not trying to do anything to help her husband.
(30) Meanwhile, in spite of the government’s attitude toward Cyndi Steele, and their kid-gloves treatment of Fairfax and his reported accomplice Maher; they have no problem and spare no effort ensuring that Edgar Steele is held in virtual solitary confinement, without bail, with no assets with which to mount a proper defense, and under a (recently just partially lifted) no-contact order that prevents him from discussing his case with his wife.
(31) Following Edgar Steele’s arrest on June 11, the FBI apparently tore portions of the Steele’s house apart (walls, floorboards) in search of precious metals he was known to have hidden. Reports are that the FBI took a considerable quantity of silver (and gold?) (the Steele’s “life savings”) plus other valuable property, thus depriving Steele of the assets he needs to mount a proper defense.
(32) The FBI and prosecution have tried mightily to come up with a motive – any motive – for Edgar Steele to want to murder his wife and mother in law (especially since Cyndi Steele has said there was no life insurance coverage). At one point after Edgar’s arrest they found a boxed teddy bear in the Steele’s house, with a note that it was for his “Ukrainian girlfriends.” They deliberately opened the box and left the “gift” for Mrs. Steele to find, apparently hoping to make her think it might indicate some untoward (illicit) behavior on Mr. Steele’s part (in his condition, considering the medication he was no doubt taking?). But they didn’t know that this was simply a gift intended for one or more of Mr. Steele’s female Ukrainian clients, which he often referred to as his “Ukrainian girlfriends” (a completely innocent thing, not at all surprising or upsetting to Mrs. Steele). Then, later, according to Mrs. Steele, the FBI unsuccessfully tried to coerce her into admitting an involvement in an affair (they said they had photos, but they didn’t, of course). Once again, I would think that is much worse “witness tampering” or intimidation that anything Edgar Steele said in his June 13 telephone conversations with his son and wife.
(33) As I recall, the local press once again came through and “aided and abetted” the government’s perfidy by giving the impression in its reporting that Edgar Steele did in fact have a “real” “Ukrainian girlfriend.”
(34) While I haven’t as yet seen any definitive evidence of wrongdoing on the part of upper echelons of the U.S. government in this case, Edgar Steele in telephone calls to his son and wife from jail, not long after his arrest, did mention to them that he had learned there is involvement in the effort to prosecute him at the “highest levels” of the Attorney General’s office. So, considering that Barack Obama and Eric Holder are both Negroid, and considering Mr. Steele’s often expressed and quite proper but politically-incorrect concerns for his fellow White people, and some comparatively non-complimentary (albeit true and accurate) things he has said in the past about the nature of black people; I don’t think we can automatically dismiss the possibility of motivation for his arrest, and even the possibility of his being set up, coming from high levels of the U.S. government.
(35) More possible motive for a frame-up: It has been reported that Edgar Steele had been working on a book focused on Jewish and/or Israeli involvement in human trafficking – sex trafficking, in particular. It could be that he was prepared to expose some very serious wrongdoing by some very important people. It seems to me that could be real motivation for Jews/Israelis/Zionists/ZOG to want to put Steele out of commission.
(36) It is now believed by some that Fairfax, as a Federal informant, had for many months been nosing around the Steele’s place trying to turn up some wrongdoing that the U.S. Government could use to prosecute Steele for something (because they didn’t like his politically incorrect positions on some issues and were “out to get him”). If that is the case, the effort failed. But (just speculating, now) could such an “anti-Steele” position on the part of the U.S. Government be what first put thoughts into Fairfax’s head that eventually led to his planning and committing his crimes? (Assuming, of course, that he hasn’t been acting at the direction of the government all along.)
(37) Things just keep getting “weirder and weirder.” It has recently been disclosed that
Fairfax’s alleged accomplice Jim Maher, another neighbor in Steele’s residential Sagle/Talache Idaho area, is none other than the brother of nationally prominent comedian and talk-show host Bill Maher; and it is even reported that Larry Fairfax is a cousin of the Maher brothers. While it is admittedly small evidence of motivation, it should at least be mentioned that Edgar Steele once described Bill Maher’s political positions and actions and/or utterances in a less-than-favorable light in one of his essays, and that the Mahers are thought by some to be partly Jewish (and once again, we know that many Jews don’t think very highly of Edgar Steele due to his perceptive outtake on many things Jewish).
(38) When considering the guilt or innocence of Edgar Steele, I cannot leave this one very important thing unstated as a stand-alone item: his wife Cyndi Steele does not believe or accept that he is guilty of plotting to kill her and her mother (and neither does her mother, by the way, who has referred to Mr. Steele in an affidavit as care-giving and supportive). I would simply suggest in that regard that Cyndi Steele, of all people, should know.
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In summary, it seems that the Edgar Steele case is an ongoing gross (and possibly even deliberate?) miscarriage of justice. It looks as though he is being railroaded because of his beliefs, writings, and speeches; and possibly because of investigations he had been conducting that he planned to publish in the near future. And it even seems a reasonable possibility that certain elements of the U.S. Government may have joined Larry Fairfax et al in initiating and carrying out that crime.
It does seem possible that all this is being done at the behest of the Jews that control certain elements of the U.S. Government (ZOG); in collusion with the key Negroes-in-charge: Eric Holder, Attorney General (likely); and President Barack Obama (conceivably and possibly). Hard as it might be to believe, it appears as though these factions of the government jumped on this case when it was initiated by Fairfax (or by Fairfax in collusion with the ADL and/or the FBI) as a way to “get” Steele after they couldn’t find anything else to nail him with.
We may never know the real facts and truth in regard to this case. But it strikes me that what has been lacking up to this point is real, rigorous and intensive, and unbiased investigation of all the elements, and especially of the claims and actions of Larry Fairfax. And here I’m thinking of honest and competent investigation by both the local press (investigative journalism) and by the FBI (the Federal Bureau of Investigation).
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