stockholmer
stockholmer's JournalInsane Leverage by the Too Big to Fail Banks, Not Deadbeat Borrowers, Caused the Financial Crisis
The Cause of the Financial Crisis: Fraudulent Creation of 3,000 Times Leverage On House Prices by the Big Bankshttp://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/12/insane-levels-of-leverage-by-the-tbtf-banks-caused-the-financial-crisis/
We’ve repeatedly noted that fraud by the big banks – more than anything done by the little guy – caused the financial crisis. http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/12/the-fbi-estimates-that-80-percent-of-all-mortgage-fraud-involves-collaboration-or-collusion-by-industry-insiders.html And we’ve repeatedly noted that excessive leverage helped cause the Great Depression and the current crisis. http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/04/excessive-leverage-helped-cause-the-great-depression-and-the-current-crisis-and-government-responds-by-encouraging-more-leverage.html
Reader McFid – who has been a breach of fiduciary duty expert since 2003 – sent me the following article (edited slightly) which provides a new angle on both themes. This article disabuses the notion that “deadbeat borrowers” caused the financial crisis. And offers an answer to the question that still lurks in the mind of every American; whether black, white, native American, asian or Hispanic; whether educated or not; whether English, Spanish, or Mandarin speaking. Taking a big step back, and looking at it like a business process: “How could so many Americans ALL have made the same ill-advised mortgage borrowing decisions?” The answer lies in what did they ALL have in common… It was all about leverage:
What is leverage? Leverage is a way to control more of something when you can’t pay for it in full. We do it all the time; when we buy a car — except few of us actually buy the car, we finance it or lease it. We also do it when we buy a house — except almost no one pays cash for a house, we finance the purchase with a loan; it’s secured by a mortgage on the property.
Example of 5 times leverage: When we buy a house and put 20% down, we buy a house worth 5 times as much as the down payment. If we put $100 thousand down we can buy a house worth $500 thousand. $500 thousand divided by the $100 thousand we put down equals 5 times leverage. 100 times leverage: By the same calculation ZERO down mortgages were suffice it to say, 100 times leverage, it’s actually more but that’s a discussion for later. Repeat after me, no money down mortgages equal 100 times leverage.
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James Koutoulas on JP Morgan Boycott, MF Global Failure, ZIRP ... more.
Warren Pollock interviews James Koutoulas CEO of the Commodity Customer Coalition. Were it not for James, MF Global customers would have been totally overrun by an exparte bankruptcy process dominated by JP Morgan and the SIPC. This breaking interview covers important issues regarding JP Morgan's refusal to address concerns regarding its conduct as custodian of MF Global segregated house, their role in lowballing MF Global customers with a 40c offer on the dollar, with their fingers all over the bankruptcy, head of creditors committee, preferential purchases of LME stock, the ability to flip assets of MF Global without competitive bid. JMP even asked MF Global for a comfort letter to assure that funds were not sourced from customers, yet JPM still grabbed the 200 Million even without such assurance. JPM even fired James as a customer via a vindictive letter written midlevel executive.
JPM does not think that 8000 customers under representation is not a credible force. We talk about having clean hands and unclean hands through a process where people do wrongdoing and then benefit from it. JPM has been stonewalling inquiries on the part of interested parties. MF global may be indicative of other situations in term of hypothecation and re-hypothecation. James thinks that ZIRP Zero Interest rate policy has encouraged the issuance of leverage via derivatives with no provision for loss. Its natural that a small percentage loss on a levered bet would result in customer funds being tapped simply because no other real money or collateral exists. We talk about the idea of segregation of funds being a basic financial construct, yet fractional reserve banking, derivatives, and netting mean that liabilities are far in excess of total cash. Judge Glenn has established a high standard of illegal conveyance in order for MF Global customers to reach into MF Global holdings assets.
James has a strategy to address this standard by arguing that CFTC regulations with bankruptcy laws say otherwise since customer funds must be segregated every second of every day. This may be a venue issue because the bankruptcy is managed by the SIPC even though only 400 customers are securities customers with tens of thousands being commodity customers. Bankruptcy managed under CFTC regulations would have worked to majority interest. Not a single FCM (commodities brokers) filed a document to represent the interests of customers. The commodity customer coalition had to build an organization from scratch then having to deal with issues that managed before its influenced was passed. In a way its outside the process or exparte. JPM has been acting with arrogance and hubris by not listening to the issues of the CCC. JPM made an offer of 40c on the dollar vs an industry standard offer between 80c and 86c.
According to James, a fat cat Trustee has reformed itself based on meetings which he led. The Trustee has been prevented from milking the situation for millions in fees. The Trustee has not incorporated most of the CCC's talking points which has saved the businesses of many a market participant including farmers who would have been put out of business were the bankruptcy proceed at a Lehman pace. Readily Identifiable property, including gold and sliver certificates and treasuries, represents a major issue that has not been addressed. and much more.
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Keiser Report: Outrageous Predictions for 2012 (E230) Plus JP Morgan Caught Stealing Again
In this episode Max Keiser and co-host, Stacy Herbert, present a New Year's special featuring outrageous predictions, bloopers and Berlusconi's 2012 Bunga Bunga Guide to finance. They look back to some 2010 predictions that came true in 2011 and look at the future of European bank runs, rising US treasury yields and the Jim Rogers - Marc Faber Chinese showdown.
KR on FB: http://www.facebook.com/KeiserReport
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JPMorgan, Ally Sued by HSH Nordbank on Losses
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-29/jpmorgan-ally-sued-by-hsh-nordbank-over-losses-on-mortgage-securities.html
JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), the biggest U.S. bank by assets, and Ally Financial Inc (ALLY). were among the financial institutions blamed by the German lender HSH Nordbank AG in lawsuits over losses on about $293 million in mortgage bonds.
Offering documents for the securities contained “material misrepresentations and omissions” about the loans backing the securities, HSH Nordbank said in summonses filed yesterday in New York State Supreme Court.
Wrongdoing by JPMorgan, Ally and other defendants named in three separate cases “led directly” to losses on the securities, HSH Nordbank said. Barclays Capital Inc. (BARC) and Credit Suisse Securities (USA) were also among those sued for their roles in different offerings, according to court papers.
HSH Nordbank also claims that offering materials contained misrepresentations about the legal validity of assignments of loans to mortgage-securitization trusts and the rights of the trusts to receive interest and principal payments on the loans, which are used to pay investors.
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Sopa Would DESTROY Jobs and the Economy … So Why are Unions Supporting It?
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/sopa-would-destroy-jobs-and-economy-%E2%80%A6-so-why-are-unions-supporting-itThe promoters of the Stop Online Privacy Act (Sopa) are pretending that it would save jobs and help the economy. But it would actually destroy jobs and hurt the economy. No one is going to invest in the next Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Reddit, or YouTube if they know that websites can be shut down after a single unsubstantiated copyright complaint. http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/12/americas-future-russians-and-chinese-use-copyright-crusade-to-crush-government-criticism.html The only sector of our economy that’s in good shape is web technology (for example, Google is hiring like crazy right now). Sopa would put a huge dent in the web sector and destroy jobs.
Venture capitalist Fred Wilson notes: http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/10/protecting-the-safe-harbors-of-the-dmca-and-protecting-jobs.html Big companies . . . can afford to defend themselves from litigious content companies. But three person startups cannot. And Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube were three person startups not so long ago. If they had not had the protection of the safe harbors of the DMCA, they could have been litigated out of business before they even had a chance to grow and develop into the powerhouses they have become. And venture capitalists will think more than twice about putting $3mm of early stage capital into startups if they know that the vast majority of the funds will go to pay lawyers to defend the companies instead of to hire engineers to create and build product.
A group of well-known law professors say: http://cdt.org/files/pdfs/SOPA_House_letter_with_PROTECT_IP_letter_FINAL.pdf SOPA is a dangerous bill. It threatens the most vibrant sector of our economy – Internet commerce. It is directly at odds with the United States’ foreign policy of Internet openness, a fact that repressive regimes will seize upon to justify their censorship of the Internet. And it violates the First Amendment.
Vice President Joe Biden admits:
The digital marketplace of ideas that welcomes every blog and tweet is the same one that inspires the next generation of innovators to fuel our economies. And when businesses consider investing in a country with a poor record on Internet freedom, and they know that their website could be shut down suddenly, their transactions monitored, their staffs harassed, they’ll look for opportunities elsewhere.
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Keiser Report: Breastfeeding the Bankers (E229)
This week Max Keiser and co-host, Stacy Herbert, present London brokers shrinking, boycotting JP Morgan, boycotting the financial system and command and control credit derivatives. In the second half of the show, Max talks to JS Kim of SmartknowledgeU about the MF Global fraud and gold and silver.
KR on FB: http://www.facebook.com/KeiserReport
Big Brother Cab: Taxi CCTV to spy on passengers (Video and Sound Recorded, Databased)
Your every move and word could be recorded and used against you - human rights activists in Britain fight an increasing number of surveillance cameras - they're now to be installed in every taxi in the city of Oxford. Authorities in the British city plan to install an audio and video surveillance system in every cab by 2015. Campaigners have called the city council's decision a staggering invasion of privacy and claim people's rights will be violated. However authorities insist that the risk of intrusion is acceptable compared to the public safety benefits.
Capital Account Web Exclusive: Max Keiser: Presidential Futures are like "Running Man on Steroids"
US congress today approved an extension of the payroll tax cut for two months...putting off a tax increase for millions of workers. So, after much partisan politicking, they did it -- saving face for the moment, but could it hurt their stock price headed into the 2012 elections? You heard me right. We'll talk about the political derivatives market a Chicago exchange is betting on. Would it be a continuation of a climate on wall street that encourages special treatment that our guest, financial journalist and inventor of the virtual specialist technology, Max Keiser, calls "the special olympics for financial fraud." And speaking of derivatives, those bets added fuel to the fire that engulfed the financial markets in 2008...most famously seen in the explosion and bailout of AGI (backdoor bailout of the big banks like goldman sachs, jp morgan, bank of america, etc.). More recently, MF Global customer money used to trade on these exchanges went missing. So where do futures exchanges come from and where have they gone wrong?
Keiser Report – Parasites with bailouts [KR228]
This week Max Keiser and co-host Stacy Herbert present their bah-humbug special, taking a closer look at claims that the top 1% have more 'skin' in the game. They'll also question the intentions of the 'well-meaning' people who drive Kenyans off their land, and could be doing more harm than good with malaria vaccines. They also talk to independent journalist, Thomas C. Mountain, about charity in Africa and China's investments.
KR on FB: http://www.facebook.com/KeiserReport
Yemen Opposition Slams US Ambassador’s Statement Encouraging Crackdown, Demands He Be Expelled
2011 Nobel Peace Laureate Tawakel Karman Condemns US Ambassador Gerald Feierstein
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http://www.yobserver.com/local-news/10021735.html
Yemen’s revolutionary council and peace Laureate Tawakul Karman condemned the announcements of the US ambassador Gerald Feierstein that said the Life March from Taiz to Sana’a was not peaceful.
The revolutionary council demanded that ambassador Feierstein most apologize while Tawkul Karman in her face book described the announcement as brutal. “How did he know that the march would turn violent,” she wondered. Some other youth affiliated to Houthi even demanded the US ambassador to leave Yemen.
Feierstein had said in a press conference held at the embassy on Saturday that the march of life that was approaching Sana'a aimed to erupt chaos and violence. “It seems to have the intention not to carry out a peaceful march, but to get access to Sana'a in order to generate chaos and provoke a violent response by the security forces”, US ambassador said.
“Peace is not only not to take up arms, for example , if 2000 people decided to protest to the White House in US, we do not consider it a peaceful act and will not allow this,” US ambassador added. These announcements provoked controversy and anger among the youth and opposition activists that organized the march.
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Yemenis protest latest killing of demonstrators, denounce vice president
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle-east/yemenis-protest-latest-killing-of-demonstrators-denounce-vice-president/2011/12/25/gIQAnX1EHP_story.html
SANAA, Yemen — Tens of thousands of people demonstrated Sunday in Yemen’s capital, protesting the deaths of protesters and demanding the resignation of the vice president for failing to bring the killers to justice.
Marching past the office of Vice President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, the protesters denounced him as a “tool in the hands” of outgoing President Ali Abdullah Saleh. The march took place as Hadi was meeting with U.S. Ambassador Gerald Feierstein. A statement from Hadi’s office said they discussed Yemen’s crisis, and Hadi appealed for calm.
Hadi is heading a transitional government after Saleh agreed to transfer power following months of demonstrations and turmoil. Under the U.S.-backed plan, Saleh won immunity from prosecution, angering many of his opponents. Yielding to pressure to defuse the country’s tensions, Saleh said Saturday he would leave for the United States.
The U.S. is concerned about months of turmoil in Yemen that has led to a security breakdown, because the dangerous al-Qaida branch in Yemen has taken advantage of the vacuum to expand its presence in the south of the country.
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Yemeni protesters demand U.S. ambassador in Sana'a be Expelled
http://www.yemenpost.net/Detail123456789.aspx?ID=3&SubID=4444&MainCat=3
Protesters in Taiz provinces called on Sunday, the expulsion of U.S. ambassador Gerald Feierstein from Yemen, following his statements on the peaceful March of Life launched from Taiz to Sana'a when he said it was not a peaceful march.
The protesters in Sana'a also called on during their demonstration today, the U.S. ambassador to leave Yemen, carrying banners condemning his statements. Pointing out that the U.S. ambassador's remarks are irresponsible and do not meet the hopes and aspirations of the Yemeni youth who are looking for change.
They also asked him to withdraw his statements and apologize to the people of Yemen, pointing out that 15 of the martyrs were killed and more than 200 wounded in the March of Life by the forces of President Ali Saleh, who is trying to defend him.
Firestein, said in his statement to pressmen following the events of the March of Life, which saw confrontations between demonstrators and Saleh security forces, said that "the March of Life is not peaceful, and its access to Sana'a is to generate chaos led to cause a violent response by the security forces". "It is not legal, so the government has the right to maintain law, if people said they want to reach the presidential palace and parliament to surround them, this is not legitimate." Firestein added.
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The Obama Administration backs new Yemeni dictator Major General Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who is getting bolder against the pro-democracy protesters:
http://www.yobserver.com/front-page/10021724.html
Yemen ruling party threatens to change mind about GCC deal
The Yemen ruling party threatened to change its mind about the power transfer agreement if the opposition did stop reclaiming. In a statement the ruling party accused the opposition of seeking to thwart the internationally-supported deal by financing more demonstrations.
The ruling party called the regional and international mediators to interfere for continuation of implementation of the power- transfer deal. “Or we will take another position in the coming few hours,” said the statement.
The opposition organized a demonstration marching from Taiz to Sana’a and the ruling party organized a similar one marching from Sana’a to Taiz. These two marches show the escalation after relative calm since the conflicting parties signed the GCC initiative and scheduled implementation plan in the Saudi capital Riyadh on November 23, 2011.
The Yemeni unity government is expected to submit its program to the Parliament next week. An official source in the National Alliance “NA” leadership (GPC and alliances,) announced that the GPC and its alliances call on ambassadors of the Gulf, the the permanent members of the Security Council, the European Union and the United Nations to stop the JMP from committing chaos actions and instigating seditions by trying to storm the capital and to implement the decisions of the military committee, demanding the implementation of the GCC deal.
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Yemenis Rally, Denounce Killing Of Protesters
http://www.salon.com/2011/12/25/yemenis_rally_denounce_killing_of_protesters/
Sanaa , Yemen (AP) — Tens of thousands of people demonstrated Sunday in Yemen’s capital, protesting the deaths of protesters and demanding the resignation of the vice president for failing to bring the killers to justice.
Marching past the office of Vice President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, the protesters denounced him as a “tool in the hands” of outgoing President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
The march took place as Hadi was meeting with U.S. Ambassador Gerald Feierstein. A statement from Hadi’s office said they discussed Yemen’s crisis, and Hadi appealed for calm.
Hadi is heading a transitional government after Saleh agreed to transfer power following months of demonstrations and turmoil. Under the U.S.-backed plan, Saleh won immunity from prosecution, angering many of his opponents. Yielding to pressure to defuse the country’s tensions, Saleh said Saturday he would leave for the United States.
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So, to sum it up, the US, to put it mildy, is selective in its 'humanitarianism'. If you are in Bahrain, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE, Yemen, etc (even Egypt for the first month or so) and you are rebelling against a US-friendly dictator or corrupt royal despotic family, then you are a 'threat to stabilty', no matter how brutal the regime is.
If, however you sit on an ocean of the lighest, sweetst crude oil in the world and try to cut out the Anglo/Americans oil firms (Libya, even though Gaddafi was bossom buddies for years when he was letting BP have their way) OR you are a strategic ally (Syria) of both Russia (naval base) and Iran, then its all on.
I also love how al-Qaeda and its franchises are 'good' when they are used in the Libya coup http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x5062310#5062405 , and now Syria http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=69593 , but bad when they are in Yemen (see above article from the Washington Post).
Let's Start A War: Anti-Assad Syrian NGOs Working Directly With British Government
http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2011/12/syrian-ngos-working-directly-with.htmlIn May 2011's article "The Siege of Syria," http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2011/05/seige-of-syria.html it was reported: "The coverage by the corporate-owned Western media exclusively relies on "activists inside and outside the country," the London-based "Syrian Human Rights Monitoring Centre" which apparently has no web presence, the Damascus Center for Human Rights http://www.dchrs.org/english/news.php?aboutus which boasts memberships with the National Endowment for Democracy and Tides Foundation-funded http://www.fidh.org/-Financial-Statements- International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the Coalition for the International Criminal Court, http://www.iccnow.org/?mod=supporters funded by the European Union, the Ford Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Open Society Institute, the Sigrid Rausing Trust, and Humanity United.
Humanity United in turn boast http://www.humanityunited.org/all/partners partnerships with the BBC World Service Trust, NED/Open Society/US State Department-funded Benetech, http://www.benetech.org/about/strategic_partners.shtml the Open Society Institute, and the NED-funded http://www.ned.org/where-we-work/middle-east-and-northern-africa/mena-regional Solidarity Center http://www.humanityunited.org/all/partners/page:8 which mobilized Egypt's labor unions http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2011/02/who-are-egypts-protesters_09.html just as the US-stoked unrest began to falter. In other words, every organization involved interlocks with the vast corporate/foundation-funded imperial network masquerading as individual "human rights organizations" and benign NGOs. In reality this "civil society" network seeks to supplant national governments, and interface with global "institutions" like the IMF, World Bank, and the UN, all of which have been contrived by corporate-financier oligarchs. It is a modern day empire in the making."
The US National Endowment for Democracy's journal, Democracy Digest, would report in their August 2011 article titled, "Syrian military ‘strained’, http://www.demdigest.net/blog/2011/08/syrian-military-strained-as-clinton-meets-opposition-activists/ as Clinton meets opposition activists," (warning: link automatically plays very loud video clip) that the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights made one of many joint statements with the above mentioned US-funded Damascus Center for Human Rights. Meanwhile, Reuters featured a photograph http://news.yahoo.com/photos/rami-abdelrahman-head-syrian-observatory-human-rights-leaves-photo-195213346.html of the Observatory's head, Rami Abdelrahman, leaving a meeting with the British Foreign Minister William Hague.
It is quite clear that the "Syrian Observatory for Human Rights" based in London and receiving the entirety of their reports via "phone" & YouTube videos from Syria, is working in coordination with both US-funded NGOs and the British Foreign Minister. Considering that Hague similarly coddled Libyan opposition leaders in London http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2011/05/libyan-rebels-inspired-by-globalization.html while playing a key role in promoting the NATO attack on Libya and the subsequent installation of a BP oilman as "prime minister," http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2011/11/new-libyan-pm-big-oil-goon.html Abdelrahman's consorting signifies a verbatim repeat of the now openly fraudulent and genocidal NATO campaign in Libya. Just as in Libya, where "human rights activists" have now admitted to fabricating the evidence http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2011/10/lies-behind-humanitarian-war-in-libya.html used by the International Criminal Court and the United Nations to rubber stamp Wall Street and London's designs for regime change, likewise the "evidence" from Syria has turned out to be a complete fraud, http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2011/11/un-report-on-syria-based-on-witness.html derived by opposition "witnesses" and compiled by a corporate D.C. think-tank director http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2011/11/syria-nato-genocide-approaches.html into a UN "human rights report."
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much more at top link
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flashbacks to similar propaganda/psy-ops methods:
(Tom MacMaster, the fake 'Gay Girl in Damascus' blogger's wife is Britta Froelicher, an activist with the American Friends Service Committee, an organization linked to the US intelligence community since the Cold War)
'A Gay Girl in Damascus': how the hoax unfolded
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/8572884/A-Gay-Girl-in-Damascus-how-the-hoax-unfolded.html
Here were examine how events unfolded which led to the diary being exposed as the work of the a married American man studying at the University of Edinburgh:
February 19, 2011: MacMaster posts the first item on the blog, pretending to be Amina Abdallah Arraf al Omari. The first posts introduce the author as a lesbian of American and Syrian parents, born in the US and now living in Damascus.
February to April, 2011: MacMaster gives sporadic updates from his character, ranging from political analysis and hard news accounts of the brutal repression of the country’s pro-democracy movement to love poetry and Mills and Boon-esque homosexual memoirs.
May 7, 2011: Western media start to take notice of the blog. In Britain, The Guardian leads the coverage, reporting: “She is perhaps an unlikely hero of revolt in a conservative country. Female, gay and half-American, Amina Abdullah is capturing the imagination of the Syrian opposition with a blog that has shot to prominence as the protest movement struggles in the face of a brutal government crackdown. Her blog, A Gay Girl in Damascus, is brutally honest, poking at subjects long considered taboo in Arab culture.” The story is accompanied by a photograph purporting to be of Amina. In reality, the image is of Jelena Lecic, a Londoner, and has been lifted off Facebook.
May 2011: As the blog gathers pace and followers, The Guardian arranges a sit down interview with Amina at a café in Damascus but she fails to show up, later claiming that harassment from secret police prevented the meeting. CNN also publishes an email interview with Amina, in which the character was quoted as saying: "A whole lot of long time changes are coming suddenly bubbling to the surface and views towards women, gay people and minorities are rapidly changing,"
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The Gay Girl in Damascus hoax, 'mass rape' in Libya, and press credulity
Have our propaganda detectors been dulled?
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Backchannels/2011/0613/The-Gay-Girl-in-Damascus-hoax-mass-rape-in-Libya-and-press-credulity
The Gay Girl in Damascus hoax, 'mass rape' in Libya, and press credulity
Have our propaganda detectors been dulled?
If you don't follow NPR's Andy Carvin on Twitter, let me be the first to tell you that The Gay Girl in Damascus is actually a 40-year-old American guy with a beard.
Through the efforts of Mr. Carvin, Ali Abunimah, and a few others, Thomas MacMaster was unveiled as the hoaxster. Mr. MacMaster said today that his wife, Britta Froelicher – an American listed as an associate fellow at St. Andrew's Center for Syrian Studies – was involved as a consultant. One of the better roundups on how MacMaster was forced into admitting his lies is on Ali Abunimah's Electronic Intifada blog.
But while MacMaster appears to be a garden-variety Internet troll, the Amina persona was boosted by the willingness of the conventional press (The Guardian, CNN, New York Times) and bloggers with major followings, like Andrew Sullivan, to accept what they were being told at face value.
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Yet another American military operative outed as fake (Paula Brooks, aka 58-year-old former Air Force pilot David Graber)
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2011/06/more-revelations-straight-males-posing-lesbian-bloggers/38796/
Only days after we learned that the author behind A Gay Girl in Damascus was a straight man from Georgia, The Washington Post is reporting http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/paula-brooks-editor-of-lez-get-real-also-a-man/2011/06/13/AGld2ZTH_blog.html#pagebreak that the purported DC-based lesbian mother who edited the lesbian news site Lez Get Real ("A Gay Girl's View on the World"
, which re-published Gay Girl in Damascus posts and helped the blog get started, is actually a 58-year-old former Air Force pilot and construction worker from Ohio named Bill Graber (pictured at right).
During interviews about the Gay Girl in Damascus hoax, "Paula Brooks" (Garber's wife's name), claiming she was deaf, initially spoke to Post reporters on the phone through her "father," who finally, after numerous conversations, admitted, "I am Paula Brooks." In perhaps the most surreal part of the story, the Post adds that Garber often flirted online with Gay Girl in Damascus author Tom MacMaster without either man realizing that the other was pretending to be a lesbian. Garber has turned over the site's management to Linda Carbonell, who writes under her maiden name but, we're pretty sure, is a woman. As of this writing, the site appears to be down.
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