Tuesday, March 5, 2013
Monday, March 4, 2013
Juicing and Raw Foods: Mister Ed on your plate
Juicing and Raw Foods: Mister Ed on your plate: Turns out, Taco Bell and Bird's Eye meat products are testing positive for horse DNA. Be advised.
Stealing from the poorest of the poor: the homeless in SLO county
Keeping them homeless
By KAREN VELIE, JOSH FRIEDMAN and DANIEL BLACKBURN
(Editor’s note: This is the first in a series about San Luis Obispo County Homeless Services and the non-profit that manages the program. See Cliff Anderson’s struggles at the bottom of this story.)
Cliff Anderson lost his home in 2008 when a fire broke out in his apartment. Almost four years later and after making $41,420 in payments to remain in Community Action Partnership of San Luis Obispo’s case management, Anderson still has no home.
“They said they are going to get me into housing any day,” Anderson said last week.
However, he remains in the Maxine Lewis Homeless Shelter — and nearly all of the money he’s entrusted to CAPSLO’s case management appears to have disappeared. CAPSLO’s administration requires homeless who sleep in the shelter or a car parked in their lot to make the program the payee for their government checks. Case management then keeps 50 to 70 percent of a client’s money with claims it is placed into a secure account to be used in the future to pay for housing.
Anderson’s situation with CAPSLO is not unique. CalCoastNews has spent two years investigating CAPSLO and interviewing people the quasi-public agency claims to serve. CCN has learned that CAPSLO has engaged in practices that have homeless people giving the partnership much of the public assistance money they receive, but getting little or nothing in return.
In Anderson’s case, he has signed over his disability benefits to case management for the last three and a half years, Social Security records show.
CAPSLO administration claims collected money belongs to the client, and is being saved in order to get them into housing. There is no charge for staying at the shelter.
In Social Security benefits, Anderson brings in about $970 a month; CAPSLO permits him to keep $400 per month which leaves case management owing him about $20,000.
In addition, his case manager charges Anderson $25 every few months to run credit checks to determine if he qualifies for housing, and he is required pay about $37 a month for others to manage his money.
The federal government requires that entities trying to become payees for disabled clients receiving SSI attend special meetings where Social Security officials inform them that people on SSI must spend the benefits they receive. Disability money is required to be expended each month on necessities, not saved in the bank. People on SSI can only save a total of $2,000 out of their SSI payments.
And each year, the entities, known as payees, have to confirm to the Social Security Administration that recipients have not saved more than $2,000. It is considered fraud to misreport.
An SSI recipient or payee is responsible for returning payments to the federal government after the $2,000 limit has been reached. That means CAPSLO or Family Ties, a company retained by the agency, owes the Social Security Administration approximately $37,000 for misreporting Anderson’s account.
But CAPSLO says it doesn’t owe anything. CAPSLO Chief Operating Officer Jim Famalette claims that CAPSLO’s case managers are not the payees taking Anderson’s money. Anderson and the people like him are working with Family Ties, not CAPSLO, according to Famalette.
“We do not act as a payee for those funds,” Famalette said in an email to CalCoastNews.
But Lisa Niesen, Family Ties’ owner, said her company is not the payee getting the SSI payments for CAPSLO’s homeless clients. In any event, most of the client accounts contain minimal balances, she said.
“None of the clients we have from case management have more than a few thousand dollars in their account, and most have just $20 to $30,” Niesen said.
Several of CAPSLO’s homeless clients said they do not have an agreement with Family Ties. Niesen said her company’s agreement is with CAPSLO, not the case management clients.
SSI records for Anderson list Family Ties as the recipient for his money, but when homeless clients have questions about their accounts, they are required to deal with CAPSLO case managers.
In the past two years, homeless clients of CAPSLO have approached CalCoastNews with allegations that CAPSLO case managers often refuse to return all client monies when they leave the program or sometimes give a small percentage of what they are owed. If clients complain, they are barred from receiving CAPSLO homeless services.
Several current and former case managers have also said that they believe money is being embezzled from the clients’ accounts.
For years, CAPSLO administrators have refused to respond to allegations of missing funds, or to answer questions about what happens to a client’s money if they die.
On Friday, Famalette responded, saying that the allegations against a CAPSLO manager are a “baseless innuendo not worthy of a response.”
Meanwhile, CAPSLO is working to get approval for a 200-bed shelter and an overnight parking program. The parking program eventually would accommodate 200 vehicles.
Dee Torres asks the San Luis Obispo City Council to approve more aggressive treatment of the homeless who do not enter case management.
In March, the San Luis Obispo City Council entertained CAPSLO’s proposal to increase ticketing of homeless who sleep in their vehicles without agreeing to participate in case management, which requires giving CAPSLO case management a portion of their income.
Proponents of the more aggressive ticketing include San Luis Obispo County Supervisor Adam Hill. Hill is in a relationship with CAPSLO’s Homeless Services Coordinator Dee Torres. Torres and Hill did not respond to requests for comment.
When Torres brought the proposal to the SLO City Council, Hill asked the council not to heed comments by members of the public who oppose Torres’ proposal. He said that the issue of homelessness is too complicated for most lay people to understand.
Torres argued for the change, claiming that CAPSLO had already managed to get five homeless clients in the parking program into housing. One client, Gulf War veteran Kimberly Frey-Griffin, said the claim was not accurate. Though she did get into housing, she said it was in spite of CAPSLO.
From December 2011 through May 2012, Frey-Griffin paid her case manager $25 to $50 a week she earned from cleaning houses. After more than five months in the program, on her own, she found and paid to get herself into housing. When she asked for her approximately $700 back, her case manager handed her a check for $133, and then added Frey-Griffin to the CAPSLO list of housing success stories.
Nevertheless, public officials throughout the county, many of whom sit on the CAPSLO Board of Directors, are the first to applaud CAPSLO for its work with the homeless.
Cliff Anderson’s struggles
He is a shell of a man, 6 feet tall and only 158 pounds, afflicted with severe edema and varicose veins, he lives in unrelenting agony.
He spends his days exposed to the elements, weathered beyond his years, trying to navigate the dangerous and homeless world of violent drug addicts, the mentally ill and those looking to steal what little he has.
He is a 69-year-old San Luis Obispo native who worked as a butcher most of his life, spending about a decade employed at the United Meat Market in San Luis Obispo.
It is a difficult life at the Maxine Lewis Shelter. Staff awaken clients at 6 a.m. to do chores, and then require the clients to leave by 7 a.m. Cliff Anderson often sits by the railroad tracks waiting for the 10 a.m. bus to the Prado Day Center, where he is exposed to the elements because CAPSLO management contends there is not enough money available to open the warming center.
The Prado warming center has been open only four days this year, despite a $25,000 donation last year from PG&E to benefit energy efficiency at Prado. The money was spent installing an air conditioning unit in the staff office area.
Cliff Anderson’s foot
Anderson must be waiting outside the shelter each night at 5 p.m., even though check-in does not start until 6 p.m. Once inside, clients are not permitted to watch television except on Saturday and Sunday evenings. Conversely, the North County shelter allows their clients to watch television each evening until 10 p.m.
Anderson’s cowboy boots are worn and uncomfortable. His feet are swollen and covered in veins. Anderson said a doctor had told him to get new shoes. But he has no money.
Nevertheless, his numerous requests to case managers — some witnessed by CalCoastNews reporters — to provide some of his own money to purchase a new pair of shoes have been rebuffed or ignored. Other homeless clients of CAPSLO tell similar stories of their medical needs not being met because their case managers refuse to provide the clients own money to do so.
http://calcoastnews.com/2013/02/alleged-homeless-advocates-accused-of-stealing-from-the-poor/
By KAREN VELIE, JOSH FRIEDMAN and DANIEL BLACKBURN
(Editor’s note: This is the first in a series about San Luis Obispo County Homeless Services and the non-profit that manages the program. See Cliff Anderson’s struggles at the bottom of this story.)
Cliff Anderson lost his home in 2008 when a fire broke out in his apartment. Almost four years later and after making $41,420 in payments to remain in Community Action Partnership of San Luis Obispo’s case management, Anderson still has no home.
“They said they are going to get me into housing any day,” Anderson said last week.
However, he remains in the Maxine Lewis Homeless Shelter — and nearly all of the money he’s entrusted to CAPSLO’s case management appears to have disappeared. CAPSLO’s administration requires homeless who sleep in the shelter or a car parked in their lot to make the program the payee for their government checks. Case management then keeps 50 to 70 percent of a client’s money with claims it is placed into a secure account to be used in the future to pay for housing.
Anderson’s situation with CAPSLO is not unique. CalCoastNews has spent two years investigating CAPSLO and interviewing people the quasi-public agency claims to serve. CCN has learned that CAPSLO has engaged in practices that have homeless people giving the partnership much of the public assistance money they receive, but getting little or nothing in return.
In Anderson’s case, he has signed over his disability benefits to case management for the last three and a half years, Social Security records show.
CAPSLO administration claims collected money belongs to the client, and is being saved in order to get them into housing. There is no charge for staying at the shelter.
In Social Security benefits, Anderson brings in about $970 a month; CAPSLO permits him to keep $400 per month which leaves case management owing him about $20,000.
In addition, his case manager charges Anderson $25 every few months to run credit checks to determine if he qualifies for housing, and he is required pay about $37 a month for others to manage his money.
The federal government requires that entities trying to become payees for disabled clients receiving SSI attend special meetings where Social Security officials inform them that people on SSI must spend the benefits they receive. Disability money is required to be expended each month on necessities, not saved in the bank. People on SSI can only save a total of $2,000 out of their SSI payments.
And each year, the entities, known as payees, have to confirm to the Social Security Administration that recipients have not saved more than $2,000. It is considered fraud to misreport.
An SSI recipient or payee is responsible for returning payments to the federal government after the $2,000 limit has been reached. That means CAPSLO or Family Ties, a company retained by the agency, owes the Social Security Administration approximately $37,000 for misreporting Anderson’s account.
But CAPSLO says it doesn’t owe anything. CAPSLO Chief Operating Officer Jim Famalette claims that CAPSLO’s case managers are not the payees taking Anderson’s money. Anderson and the people like him are working with Family Ties, not CAPSLO, according to Famalette.
“We do not act as a payee for those funds,” Famalette said in an email to CalCoastNews.
But Lisa Niesen, Family Ties’ owner, said her company is not the payee getting the SSI payments for CAPSLO’s homeless clients. In any event, most of the client accounts contain minimal balances, she said.
“None of the clients we have from case management have more than a few thousand dollars in their account, and most have just $20 to $30,” Niesen said.
Several of CAPSLO’s homeless clients said they do not have an agreement with Family Ties. Niesen said her company’s agreement is with CAPSLO, not the case management clients.
SSI records for Anderson list Family Ties as the recipient for his money, but when homeless clients have questions about their accounts, they are required to deal with CAPSLO case managers.
In the past two years, homeless clients of CAPSLO have approached CalCoastNews with allegations that CAPSLO case managers often refuse to return all client monies when they leave the program or sometimes give a small percentage of what they are owed. If clients complain, they are barred from receiving CAPSLO homeless services.
Several current and former case managers have also said that they believe money is being embezzled from the clients’ accounts.
For years, CAPSLO administrators have refused to respond to allegations of missing funds, or to answer questions about what happens to a client’s money if they die.
On Friday, Famalette responded, saying that the allegations against a CAPSLO manager are a “baseless innuendo not worthy of a response.”
Meanwhile, CAPSLO is working to get approval for a 200-bed shelter and an overnight parking program. The parking program eventually would accommodate 200 vehicles.
Dee Torres asks the San Luis Obispo City Council to approve more aggressive treatment of the homeless who do not enter case management.
In March, the San Luis Obispo City Council entertained CAPSLO’s proposal to increase ticketing of homeless who sleep in their vehicles without agreeing to participate in case management, which requires giving CAPSLO case management a portion of their income.
Proponents of the more aggressive ticketing include San Luis Obispo County Supervisor Adam Hill. Hill is in a relationship with CAPSLO’s Homeless Services Coordinator Dee Torres. Torres and Hill did not respond to requests for comment.
When Torres brought the proposal to the SLO City Council, Hill asked the council not to heed comments by members of the public who oppose Torres’ proposal. He said that the issue of homelessness is too complicated for most lay people to understand.
Torres argued for the change, claiming that CAPSLO had already managed to get five homeless clients in the parking program into housing. One client, Gulf War veteran Kimberly Frey-Griffin, said the claim was not accurate. Though she did get into housing, she said it was in spite of CAPSLO.
From December 2011 through May 2012, Frey-Griffin paid her case manager $25 to $50 a week she earned from cleaning houses. After more than five months in the program, on her own, she found and paid to get herself into housing. When she asked for her approximately $700 back, her case manager handed her a check for $133, and then added Frey-Griffin to the CAPSLO list of housing success stories.
Nevertheless, public officials throughout the county, many of whom sit on the CAPSLO Board of Directors, are the first to applaud CAPSLO for its work with the homeless.
Cliff Anderson’s struggles
He is a shell of a man, 6 feet tall and only 158 pounds, afflicted with severe edema and varicose veins, he lives in unrelenting agony.
He spends his days exposed to the elements, weathered beyond his years, trying to navigate the dangerous and homeless world of violent drug addicts, the mentally ill and those looking to steal what little he has.
He is a 69-year-old San Luis Obispo native who worked as a butcher most of his life, spending about a decade employed at the United Meat Market in San Luis Obispo.
It is a difficult life at the Maxine Lewis Shelter. Staff awaken clients at 6 a.m. to do chores, and then require the clients to leave by 7 a.m. Cliff Anderson often sits by the railroad tracks waiting for the 10 a.m. bus to the Prado Day Center, where he is exposed to the elements because CAPSLO management contends there is not enough money available to open the warming center.
The Prado warming center has been open only four days this year, despite a $25,000 donation last year from PG&E to benefit energy efficiency at Prado. The money was spent installing an air conditioning unit in the staff office area.
Cliff Anderson’s foot
Anderson must be waiting outside the shelter each night at 5 p.m., even though check-in does not start until 6 p.m. Once inside, clients are not permitted to watch television except on Saturday and Sunday evenings. Conversely, the North County shelter allows their clients to watch television each evening until 10 p.m.
Anderson’s cowboy boots are worn and uncomfortable. His feet are swollen and covered in veins. Anderson said a doctor had told him to get new shoes. But he has no money.
Nevertheless, his numerous requests to case managers — some witnessed by CalCoastNews reporters — to provide some of his own money to purchase a new pair of shoes have been rebuffed or ignored. Other homeless clients of CAPSLO tell similar stories of their medical needs not being met because their case managers refuse to provide the clients own money to do so.
http://calcoastnews.com/2013/02/alleged-homeless-advocates-accused-of-stealing-from-the-poor/
Sunday, March 3, 2013
Thursday, February 28, 2013
Benedicto becomes Maledicti
And now, for your False Prophet, lead the many straight into the abyss...here's
I'm betting on a Beltaine ritual for this one...but, it could also go down on either the usual 20th or thereabouts zodiacal shift. That gives them plenty of time to play reindeer games with the presentation of the masses.
PETER THE ROMAN
I'm betting on a Beltaine ritual for this one...but, it could also go down on either the usual 20th or thereabouts zodiacal shift. That gives them plenty of time to play reindeer games with the presentation of the masses.
Just like last time.
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
Monday, February 25, 2013
The Banks Show No Mercy: 10 Foreclosure Horror Stories That Will Blow Your Mind
Michael Snyder During the last housing crash, the big banks begged the federal government for help and they received it, but when average Americans ask the big banks for help most of the time the banks show no mercy whatsoever. If you fall behind on your mortgage payments, the big banks have shown that they are willing to be absolutely ruthless. They will change locks in the middle of the night, they will toss disabled veterans and families with children out into the street in the middle of winter, and sometimes once the foreclosure process has begun they will not even allow someone to come forward and offer to pay off the loan if they think that they can make more money by selling the home.
The big banks will often string homeowners along for months or even years with loan modification promises, only to drop the hammer on them at the most inopportune time. Over the past several years there has been case after case where mortgage documents have “disappeared”, where big banks have “manufactured” missing documents out of thin air and there have even been cases where big banks have tried to foreclose on homes that do not even have a mortgage. Once in a while, the big banks get a small slap on the wrist, but nobody ever really gets into much trouble for any of this. In fact, the big banks just continue to gain even more market share and even more power. Hopefully when some of these foreclosure horror stories start to become publicized more widely we will start to see some real changes in the marketplace.
The following are 10 foreclosure horror stories that will blow your mind…
#1 If you get behind on your mortgage, your family might be tossed into the street at gunpoint in the middle of the night… This week, Christine Frazer and her family were thrown out of the Atlanta home they’d lived in for 18 years, at gunpoint in the dead of night. They were not set upon by robbers, but by the Dekalb County Sheriff’s department, which evicted the family at the request of Investors One Corporation. As Steven Rosenfeld reported for AlterNet, it was the fourth company to buy the family’s mortgage in eight months.
#2 Time after time we have seen authorities show absolutely no mercy when conducting these evictions… It was bad enough when 62-year-old disabled veteran Ramsey Harris was evicted from a foreclosed house on Jamaica Lane where the former owner had been letting him live. Then it started to rain as all his worldly possessions sat in a heap by the side of the road and Harris noticed some of his valuables were missing. “It was just ugly,” Harris said Friday. “I was just broken-hearted. I couldn’t believe what was happening to me. I ended up standing, watching all my life’s work go down the tubes.”
#3 Sometimes financial institutions will promise you a loan modification for many months and then turn around and foreclose on you anyway… When the economy crashed and his business slowed down, Wells Fargo offered to modify Steve Bailey’s loan to lower his payments. After making a series of trial payments, Wells Fargo notified Steve that his modification was on the way. A few days later he received a letter stating that his modification had been denied. The Wells Fargo representative he spoke with reassured him that they had made a mistake and that he should keep making the payments, which he did for seven months. Steve then started to receive foreclosure notices. Again, the bank representative assured him that the notices had been sent in error. Then Steve checked his credit. Wells Fargo had reported him delinquent on his mortgage for the last six months. The reduced payments that Steve had agreed to pay for the previous months had been put into a separate trust by Wells Fargo, and they had not gone towards his mortgage. Steve took the case to court but lost despite mountains of evidence in his favor. He lost his home and his business.
#4 Other homeowners have found themselves trapped in loan modification hell for years… I am self-employed, have been all my life and have owned a home for 30 years. When I started my Loan Modification process in August of 09 I WAS NOT behind on any payments. I sent full documentation, over 150 pages, with the things they needed to verify my income. I am now 2 payments behind and I am getting nowhere. They keep flipping me between Loss Mitigation and Imminent Default, back and fourth month end month out. I made a habit of calling every week, then every two weeks just to be sure all was moving forward. From the middle of November I was told my file was with the underwriter and it would only be 30-60 days. I began automatically updating my income verification, verification that I still resided at the property and an updated 4506-T every month. In the middle of April a rep finally told me I was not in the loan modification process. In fact, that I had been denied on March 2. Keep in mind, I’m talking to these people every 2 weeks. She did a financial interview and sent me a new packet so that I could start all over, resubmitting all the documentation yet again. She told me she was my Account Manager. I completed the packet, called with a question (2 weeks later – over a week to receive the packet and another few days to complete it and gather all my documents again) and learned that my “Account Manager” was on maternity leave and I now didn’t have an account manager. Also, I was told that I had received the incorrect packet…it was the old version rather than the updated version. She asked me to fax four or five pieces of information in the hopes it would, quote, “jump start my file back into the process” and said she we send me another packet. That was mid April. Here we sit, 2-1/2 months later, I have still not received anything in writing about my rejection. And, though I’ve now had people tell me on three separate occasions that I would receive a new packet, it has yet to show up on my door step. I asked several times why my application was denied and the answer I finally got last week was that it was because I was DELIQUENT in my payments. Call me crazy but I thought that was the whole point??!! I almost hired a third party but am so hesitant to take that step. Every time I get on the phone with them it takes an hour out of my day and I am usually so upset I find it difficult to work, so I just don’t call. I’m going to sit back and regroup and decide what I need to do next.
#5 Sometimes a big bank will kick someone out of their home and then never actually take possession of the house. As a result, many former homeowners now find themselves stuck with thousands of dollars of unpaid bills. For example, a recent CNN article told the story of Rose Nathan, a 37-year-old office manager… Nathan lost her South Bend, Ind., home in January 2009, after working out a deal with CitiMortgage to voluntarily walk away in a “deed in lieu of foreclosure.” “On Christmas Eve, the bank called and told me a sheriff’s sale was coming and I had to move out right away,” she said. “So that’s what I did — seven days after New Year’s.” She sold her belongings and moved to Hawaii. Nearly two years later, she received a property tax bill from the City of South Bend for $5,000. The bank had never taken possession of the house. These unpaid taxes that she didn’t even know about have absolutely destroyed Nathan’s finances… Meanwhile, the unpaid debt has crushed Nathan’s credit score. The deed-in-lieu alone lowered her score by 80 to 120 points, but the unpaid debt meant her credit kept taking a hit. Eventually her credit card companies cut her off, even though she said she was making her payments. Her auto loan now carries a 25% rate. Her car insurance premiums have skyrocketed. She can only afford a one-bedroom apartment where she lives with her three kids. And forget about buying another home. “Nobody will give me a mortgage,” she said.
#6 Sometimes a big bank will decide to foreclose on you even when you have been making all of your payments. Just check out what real estate agent Mark Conca went through with one major bank… He decided to approach his lender, Bank of America, to see if he’d qualify for a modification. After he applied, many months passed and Conca heard nothing from the bank. Knowing lenders had huge backups in modification requests, he remained patient. Conca, 41, continued to make the full payment on the mortgage for his Caldwell home, on time, every month. But that’s not what Bank of America said when it sent Conca a letter about its intent to foreclose. “I would have been better going to a loan shark and borrowing all that money,” Conca said. “At least with the street mafia, you know where you stand.”
#7 Sadly, the customer service at many of these large financial institutions is almost non-existent. In fact, sometimes representatives from these companies will literally tell you that they won’t lift a finger to help you… After a car accident Kathryn Nava wound up on disability and had trouble making her mortgage payments. She had a friend who was willing to help her make her back payments, but that friend wanted to see a payment history before giving her the money. Nava called her mortgage lender to request that history—and was told it would cost her $50 per hour, and take 90 days to receive it. So she tried again, calling the president of the company. She got a voicemail response that shocked her so much she recorded it and saved it. “Let me enlighten you, Kathy. First of all, there’s nothing in your contract with us says we owe you any history, now, next year, five years from now or the next time…I’ve begun foreclosure today. I bet you’re sorry now that you made that phone call. I don’t need to put up with your crap, OK?…Bottom line, I’m doing nothing for you now.” Indeed, she did end up losing her home.
#8 Sometimes the big banks will try to foreclose even when you paid cash for your house and you don’t even have a mortgage… Charlie and Maria Cardoso are among the millions of Americans who have experienced the misery and embarrassment that come with home foreclosure. Just one problem: The Massachusetts couple paid for their future retirement home in Spring Hill with cash in 2005, five years before agents for Bank of America seized the house, removed belongings and changed the locks on the doors, according to a lawsuit the couple have filed in federal court.
#9 Dealing with these big banks is so incredibly frustrating that some homeowners have completely snapped. For example, one very frustrated homeowner in Ohio decided to crash his SUV into his own home… 30-year-old Steve Doak told deputies he was recently served with foreclosure papers and wanted to destroy the house rather than turn it over to the bank. The sheriff’s office says Doak drove the vehicle into fencing and then into the rear of the house
#10 Another very frustrated homeowner literally bulldozed his own home… “The average homeowner that can’t afford an attorney or can fight as long as we have, they don’t stand a chance,” he said. Hoskins said he’d gotten a $170,000 offer from someone to pay off the house, but the bank refused, saying they could get more from selling it in foreclosure. Hoskins told News 5′s Courtis Fuller that he issued the bank an ultimatum. “I’ll tear it down before I let you take it,” Hoskins told them. And that’s exactly what Hoskins did.
Meanwhile, the big banks that are doing all of this continue to receive billions of dollars in assistance from the federal government. The following is from a recent Bloomberg article… When JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon testifies in the U.S. House today, he will present himself as a champion of free-market capitalism in opposition to an overweening government. His position would be more convincing if his bank weren’t such a beneficiary of corporate welfare.
To be precise, JPMorgan receives a government subsidy worth about $14 billion a year, according to research published by the International Monetary Fund and our own analysis of bank balance sheets. The money helps the bank pay big salaries and bonuses. More important, it distorts markets, fueling crises such as the recent subprime-lending disaster and the sovereign-debt debacle that is now threatening to destroy the euro and sink the global economy.
The big banks will often string homeowners along for months or even years with loan modification promises, only to drop the hammer on them at the most inopportune time. Over the past several years there has been case after case where mortgage documents have “disappeared”, where big banks have “manufactured” missing documents out of thin air and there have even been cases where big banks have tried to foreclose on homes that do not even have a mortgage. Once in a while, the big banks get a small slap on the wrist, but nobody ever really gets into much trouble for any of this. In fact, the big banks just continue to gain even more market share and even more power. Hopefully when some of these foreclosure horror stories start to become publicized more widely we will start to see some real changes in the marketplace.
The following are 10 foreclosure horror stories that will blow your mind…
#1 If you get behind on your mortgage, your family might be tossed into the street at gunpoint in the middle of the night… This week, Christine Frazer and her family were thrown out of the Atlanta home they’d lived in for 18 years, at gunpoint in the dead of night. They were not set upon by robbers, but by the Dekalb County Sheriff’s department, which evicted the family at the request of Investors One Corporation. As Steven Rosenfeld reported for AlterNet, it was the fourth company to buy the family’s mortgage in eight months.
#2 Time after time we have seen authorities show absolutely no mercy when conducting these evictions… It was bad enough when 62-year-old disabled veteran Ramsey Harris was evicted from a foreclosed house on Jamaica Lane where the former owner had been letting him live. Then it started to rain as all his worldly possessions sat in a heap by the side of the road and Harris noticed some of his valuables were missing. “It was just ugly,” Harris said Friday. “I was just broken-hearted. I couldn’t believe what was happening to me. I ended up standing, watching all my life’s work go down the tubes.”
#3 Sometimes financial institutions will promise you a loan modification for many months and then turn around and foreclose on you anyway… When the economy crashed and his business slowed down, Wells Fargo offered to modify Steve Bailey’s loan to lower his payments. After making a series of trial payments, Wells Fargo notified Steve that his modification was on the way. A few days later he received a letter stating that his modification had been denied. The Wells Fargo representative he spoke with reassured him that they had made a mistake and that he should keep making the payments, which he did for seven months. Steve then started to receive foreclosure notices. Again, the bank representative assured him that the notices had been sent in error. Then Steve checked his credit. Wells Fargo had reported him delinquent on his mortgage for the last six months. The reduced payments that Steve had agreed to pay for the previous months had been put into a separate trust by Wells Fargo, and they had not gone towards his mortgage. Steve took the case to court but lost despite mountains of evidence in his favor. He lost his home and his business.
#4 Other homeowners have found themselves trapped in loan modification hell for years… I am self-employed, have been all my life and have owned a home for 30 years. When I started my Loan Modification process in August of 09 I WAS NOT behind on any payments. I sent full documentation, over 150 pages, with the things they needed to verify my income. I am now 2 payments behind and I am getting nowhere. They keep flipping me between Loss Mitigation and Imminent Default, back and fourth month end month out. I made a habit of calling every week, then every two weeks just to be sure all was moving forward. From the middle of November I was told my file was with the underwriter and it would only be 30-60 days. I began automatically updating my income verification, verification that I still resided at the property and an updated 4506-T every month. In the middle of April a rep finally told me I was not in the loan modification process. In fact, that I had been denied on March 2. Keep in mind, I’m talking to these people every 2 weeks. She did a financial interview and sent me a new packet so that I could start all over, resubmitting all the documentation yet again. She told me she was my Account Manager. I completed the packet, called with a question (2 weeks later – over a week to receive the packet and another few days to complete it and gather all my documents again) and learned that my “Account Manager” was on maternity leave and I now didn’t have an account manager. Also, I was told that I had received the incorrect packet…it was the old version rather than the updated version. She asked me to fax four or five pieces of information in the hopes it would, quote, “jump start my file back into the process” and said she we send me another packet. That was mid April. Here we sit, 2-1/2 months later, I have still not received anything in writing about my rejection. And, though I’ve now had people tell me on three separate occasions that I would receive a new packet, it has yet to show up on my door step. I asked several times why my application was denied and the answer I finally got last week was that it was because I was DELIQUENT in my payments. Call me crazy but I thought that was the whole point??!! I almost hired a third party but am so hesitant to take that step. Every time I get on the phone with them it takes an hour out of my day and I am usually so upset I find it difficult to work, so I just don’t call. I’m going to sit back and regroup and decide what I need to do next.
#5 Sometimes a big bank will kick someone out of their home and then never actually take possession of the house. As a result, many former homeowners now find themselves stuck with thousands of dollars of unpaid bills. For example, a recent CNN article told the story of Rose Nathan, a 37-year-old office manager… Nathan lost her South Bend, Ind., home in January 2009, after working out a deal with CitiMortgage to voluntarily walk away in a “deed in lieu of foreclosure.” “On Christmas Eve, the bank called and told me a sheriff’s sale was coming and I had to move out right away,” she said. “So that’s what I did — seven days after New Year’s.” She sold her belongings and moved to Hawaii. Nearly two years later, she received a property tax bill from the City of South Bend for $5,000. The bank had never taken possession of the house. These unpaid taxes that she didn’t even know about have absolutely destroyed Nathan’s finances… Meanwhile, the unpaid debt has crushed Nathan’s credit score. The deed-in-lieu alone lowered her score by 80 to 120 points, but the unpaid debt meant her credit kept taking a hit. Eventually her credit card companies cut her off, even though she said she was making her payments. Her auto loan now carries a 25% rate. Her car insurance premiums have skyrocketed. She can only afford a one-bedroom apartment where she lives with her three kids. And forget about buying another home. “Nobody will give me a mortgage,” she said.
#6 Sometimes a big bank will decide to foreclose on you even when you have been making all of your payments. Just check out what real estate agent Mark Conca went through with one major bank… He decided to approach his lender, Bank of America, to see if he’d qualify for a modification. After he applied, many months passed and Conca heard nothing from the bank. Knowing lenders had huge backups in modification requests, he remained patient. Conca, 41, continued to make the full payment on the mortgage for his Caldwell home, on time, every month. But that’s not what Bank of America said when it sent Conca a letter about its intent to foreclose. “I would have been better going to a loan shark and borrowing all that money,” Conca said. “At least with the street mafia, you know where you stand.”
#7 Sadly, the customer service at many of these large financial institutions is almost non-existent. In fact, sometimes representatives from these companies will literally tell you that they won’t lift a finger to help you… After a car accident Kathryn Nava wound up on disability and had trouble making her mortgage payments. She had a friend who was willing to help her make her back payments, but that friend wanted to see a payment history before giving her the money. Nava called her mortgage lender to request that history—and was told it would cost her $50 per hour, and take 90 days to receive it. So she tried again, calling the president of the company. She got a voicemail response that shocked her so much she recorded it and saved it. “Let me enlighten you, Kathy. First of all, there’s nothing in your contract with us says we owe you any history, now, next year, five years from now or the next time…I’ve begun foreclosure today. I bet you’re sorry now that you made that phone call. I don’t need to put up with your crap, OK?…Bottom line, I’m doing nothing for you now.” Indeed, she did end up losing her home.
#8 Sometimes the big banks will try to foreclose even when you paid cash for your house and you don’t even have a mortgage… Charlie and Maria Cardoso are among the millions of Americans who have experienced the misery and embarrassment that come with home foreclosure. Just one problem: The Massachusetts couple paid for their future retirement home in Spring Hill with cash in 2005, five years before agents for Bank of America seized the house, removed belongings and changed the locks on the doors, according to a lawsuit the couple have filed in federal court.
#9 Dealing with these big banks is so incredibly frustrating that some homeowners have completely snapped. For example, one very frustrated homeowner in Ohio decided to crash his SUV into his own home… 30-year-old Steve Doak told deputies he was recently served with foreclosure papers and wanted to destroy the house rather than turn it over to the bank. The sheriff’s office says Doak drove the vehicle into fencing and then into the rear of the house
#10 Another very frustrated homeowner literally bulldozed his own home… “The average homeowner that can’t afford an attorney or can fight as long as we have, they don’t stand a chance,” he said. Hoskins said he’d gotten a $170,000 offer from someone to pay off the house, but the bank refused, saying they could get more from selling it in foreclosure. Hoskins told News 5′s Courtis Fuller that he issued the bank an ultimatum. “I’ll tear it down before I let you take it,” Hoskins told them. And that’s exactly what Hoskins did.
Meanwhile, the big banks that are doing all of this continue to receive billions of dollars in assistance from the federal government. The following is from a recent Bloomberg article… When JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon testifies in the U.S. House today, he will present himself as a champion of free-market capitalism in opposition to an overweening government. His position would be more convincing if his bank weren’t such a beneficiary of corporate welfare.
To be precise, JPMorgan receives a government subsidy worth about $14 billion a year, according to research published by the International Monetary Fund and our own analysis of bank balance sheets. The money helps the bank pay big salaries and bonuses. More important, it distorts markets, fueling crises such as the recent subprime-lending disaster and the sovereign-debt debacle that is now threatening to destroy the euro and sink the global economy.
Friday, February 22, 2013
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
Once FACEBOOK has you, it's forever...and ever and ever.
COLUMBUS, Ohio - The topic of online privacy is something we hear about all the time -- especially when it comes to Facebook.
If you have a Facebook profile, you know there are all kind of different settings and choices you can make to customize your personal level of privacy; but are those tools working how you want them to?
HOW TO: Download & Explore Your Facebook Archive
BLOG: Employers Rights Vs. Your Right To Privacy
What does your on-line profile say about you? What would your employer – or prospective employer – learn if they went online and looked at your Facebook page?
A Xenia, Ohio Burger King employee lost his job when he celebrated his 25th birthday by getting naked and taking a bath inside a sink used to clean the restaurant's kitchen utensils. He compounded his poor judgment by posting a video of his bubble-bath on his MySpace page.
Surely you have more sense than that. You would delete unsavory pictures and illicit posts before you went on a job interview, or if you learned your employer would be looking at your social media pages. But here in Ohio you can't delete your way out of your messy social media life. It is legal in Ohio for employers, employment agencies and labor unions to ask you to surrender your personal password, and as we learned in a recent experiment, your password can open your entire history to inspection and judgment.
I went on Facebook and found a volunteer who was willing to give us her password. Using that password, local attorney Sara Jodka went to work. In the interest of full disclosure, Sara and I are colleagues at Porter Wright. You should also know that Sara advises her clients who are employers against asking for personal passwords during the hiring process. What she uncovered demonstrates the exposure you face if you surrender your password.
Using the volunteer's password, Sara was able to access every item the volunteer posted on her Facebook wall since the day she signed on – in December 2007. She was able to see every picture and every video the volunteer posted, every ad she ever viewed, a list of all her current and deleted friends. What I found most surprising, however, is that even the private messages to single individuals that the volunteer had typed into a pop-up message box were available for viewing. We printed out more than 200 pages of conversations the volunteer believed to be private – even those she thought were deleted. If an employer has your password all of this information will be at their fingertips.
Ohio Senator Charleta Tavares calls it an invasion of privacy. She has re-introduced a bill that stalled in the legislature last year that would make it illegal for an employer, an employment agency or a labor union to ask you to surrender your personal passwords. It is vital to note that the Tavares bill would not ban employers from looking at your social media pages, it would merely deny them access to the password that opens to examination your hidden files, deleted items and history. Tavares says employers have a legitimate right to examine the pages that you have open to the rest of your on-line connections. It's especially relevant, for example, to exclude people with sexually explicit and inappropriate language from working with children.
Sara Jodka points out that the passwords are also relevant in certain legal disputes. For example, a worker claiming debilitating injuries that made it impossible for him to lift heavy objects was found to have posted pictures of himself weight-lifting.
Our volunteer was shocked at how much private information we were able to uncover – especially her private conversations dating back to 2007. It's all readily available thanks to a new Facebook access program that lets you download your entire history. Anyone can do it if they simply have a Facebook account and know the password. If you are curious about your own on-line history and what it might reveal to an employer, the director of NBC4i.com, Denise Yost, has prepared instructions that will let you download information about your Facebook account. You can access the instructions here. Additionally, I authored a post for a legal blog examining where your right to privacy ends and the employers' right to screen applicants begins. You can find it here.
Our volunteer vows to never have another private conversation on Facebook. Are you re-examining your on-line habits? Experts have always said you should not post anything on social media that you don't want your grandmother to see. You might want to also think about how your online posts would be viewed by your employer. And, don't get me started on what all this might mean in divorce court.
http://www.nbc4i.com/story/21239362/online-privacy-is-it-working-for-you
If you have a Facebook profile, you know there are all kind of different settings and choices you can make to customize your personal level of privacy; but are those tools working how you want them to?
HOW TO: Download & Explore Your Facebook Archive
BLOG: Employers Rights Vs. Your Right To Privacy
What does your on-line profile say about you? What would your employer – or prospective employer – learn if they went online and looked at your Facebook page?
A Xenia, Ohio Burger King employee lost his job when he celebrated his 25th birthday by getting naked and taking a bath inside a sink used to clean the restaurant's kitchen utensils. He compounded his poor judgment by posting a video of his bubble-bath on his MySpace page.
Surely you have more sense than that. You would delete unsavory pictures and illicit posts before you went on a job interview, or if you learned your employer would be looking at your social media pages. But here in Ohio you can't delete your way out of your messy social media life. It is legal in Ohio for employers, employment agencies and labor unions to ask you to surrender your personal password, and as we learned in a recent experiment, your password can open your entire history to inspection and judgment.
I went on Facebook and found a volunteer who was willing to give us her password. Using that password, local attorney Sara Jodka went to work. In the interest of full disclosure, Sara and I are colleagues at Porter Wright. You should also know that Sara advises her clients who are employers against asking for personal passwords during the hiring process. What she uncovered demonstrates the exposure you face if you surrender your password.
Using the volunteer's password, Sara was able to access every item the volunteer posted on her Facebook wall since the day she signed on – in December 2007. She was able to see every picture and every video the volunteer posted, every ad she ever viewed, a list of all her current and deleted friends. What I found most surprising, however, is that even the private messages to single individuals that the volunteer had typed into a pop-up message box were available for viewing. We printed out more than 200 pages of conversations the volunteer believed to be private – even those she thought were deleted. If an employer has your password all of this information will be at their fingertips.
Ohio Senator Charleta Tavares calls it an invasion of privacy. She has re-introduced a bill that stalled in the legislature last year that would make it illegal for an employer, an employment agency or a labor union to ask you to surrender your personal passwords. It is vital to note that the Tavares bill would not ban employers from looking at your social media pages, it would merely deny them access to the password that opens to examination your hidden files, deleted items and history. Tavares says employers have a legitimate right to examine the pages that you have open to the rest of your on-line connections. It's especially relevant, for example, to exclude people with sexually explicit and inappropriate language from working with children.
Sara Jodka points out that the passwords are also relevant in certain legal disputes. For example, a worker claiming debilitating injuries that made it impossible for him to lift heavy objects was found to have posted pictures of himself weight-lifting.
Our volunteer was shocked at how much private information we were able to uncover – especially her private conversations dating back to 2007. It's all readily available thanks to a new Facebook access program that lets you download your entire history. Anyone can do it if they simply have a Facebook account and know the password. If you are curious about your own on-line history and what it might reveal to an employer, the director of NBC4i.com, Denise Yost, has prepared instructions that will let you download information about your Facebook account. You can access the instructions here. Additionally, I authored a post for a legal blog examining where your right to privacy ends and the employers' right to screen applicants begins. You can find it here.
Our volunteer vows to never have another private conversation on Facebook. Are you re-examining your on-line habits? Experts have always said you should not post anything on social media that you don't want your grandmother to see. You might want to also think about how your online posts would be viewed by your employer. And, don't get me started on what all this might mean in divorce court.
http://www.nbc4i.com/story/21239362/online-privacy-is-it-working-for-you
They are training on shooting pregnant women in the head
A provider of “realistic” shooting targets to the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies has created a line of “non-traditional threat” targets that include pregnant women, mothers in playgrounds and elderly American gun owners. They and police agencies are and have ordered MILLIONS of these real-to-life targets.
Not even the SS or the KGB was this fucked up.
Turns out the company, LTC Inc, sells 5.5 million dollars of these a year and that LAW ENFORCEMENT SPECIFICALLY ASKED FOR THESE KINDS OF TARGETS.
Children...mothers...pregnant women...little girls...this just blows the mind.
It's all about conditioning the gunsels so they can shoot up families without hesitation. In fact, the product line is called
NO MORE HESITATION
Welcome to Amerika, comrades.
Gas is $4.45 a gallon in Los
The devils are driving the poor into the ground and gouging. Unlike police, firemen, and other government services jobs (who get gas subsidies YOU pay for), most folks have to deduct from food to pay for gas.
Monsanto prevails revealing the congeilled network of evil in government
By Sarah Dee
theintelhub.com
February 20, 2013
Tuesday, the Supreme Court “heard” the case of Bowman V. Monsanto Co., in which the mega-powerful food and chemical company is suing a small-time Indiana farmer whose only “crime” was looking for a cheaper source of seed outside of Monsanto’s federally backed monopoly.
In order to protect its genetically modified soybean seeds called Round Up Ready (so named because they are resistant to Monsanto’s weed-killer “Round-Up”), that have been on the market since 1996, farmers are contractually obligated to buy and use the seeds only once, to prevent copy-cats and patent infringement on the monster company’s cash cow of a seed. Mr. Vernon H. Bowen, tired of paying a high price for the genetically modified seeds each new growing season, decided to use soybean seeds from a local grain elevator instead of buying from the seed giant time and time again.
He figured that since these seeds were fathered from the Round Up Ready seeds they would also be resistant to weed-killer, and he figured right.
“He didn’t try to keep it a secret from Monsanto and in October 2007, the company sued him for violating its patent. Bowman’s is one of 146 lawsuits Monsanto has filed since 1996 claiming unauthorized use of its Roundup Ready seeds, Snively said [a Monsanto spokesman].
A federal court in Indiana sided with Monsanto and awarded the company $84,456 for Bowman’s unlicensed use of Monsanto’s technology. The federal appeals court in Washington that handles all appeals in patent cases, upheld the award. The appeals court said that farmers may never replant Roundup Ready seeds without running afoul of Monsanto’s patents (1).”
Of course the monolithic company would sue a 75 year old farmer for getting eight extra growing seasons out of seeds that have “their” patented genetic marker on them! Greedy is as greedy does. In a court hearing that was described by the New York Times as “freewheeling and almost entirely one-sided (2),” Bowen’s lawyer, had his work cut out for him.
“A lawyer for Monsanto, Seth P. Waxman, a former United States solicitor general, was allowed to talk uninterrupted for long stretches, which is usually a sign of impending victory..At Tuesday’s argument, Mr. Bowman’s lawyer received a markedly more hostile reception than Mr. Waxman. He was peppered with skeptical questions from almost every justice (2).”
““Why in the world,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. asked, “would anybody spend any money to try to improve the seed if as soon as they sold the first one anybody could grow more and have as many of those seeds as they want? …Walters said that it was Monsanto’s approach that was extreme.”
“The reach of Monsanto’s theory,” Mr. Walters said, “is that once that seed is sold, even though title has passed to the farmer, and the farmer assumes all risks associated with farming, that they can still control the ownership of that seed, control how that seed is used.”
Justice Stephen G. Breyer said that there were lots of things Mr. Bowman could do with the seeds he bought from the grain elevator.
“You can feed it to animals, you can feed it to your family, make tofu turkeys,” he said.
“But I’ll give you two that you can’t do,” he went on. “One, you can’t pick up those seeds that you’ve just bought and throw them in a child’s face. You can’t do that because there’s a law that says you can’t do it. Now, there’s another law that says you cannot make copies of a patented invention.””
You can read more from the hearing here, but it is clear that the Justices were feeling more of an affinity with the weed-killer GMO-king than the septuagenarian Mr. Bowman.
“Justice Breyer seemed in a particularly playful mood on Tuesday, at one point alluding to an infamous line from a 1927 opinion by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. allowing the forced sterilization of a woman with mental disabilities. (“Three generations of imbeciles are enough,” Justice Holmes wrote.)
“There are three generations of seeds,” Justice Breyer said, to knowing chuckles. “Maybe three generations of seeds is enough.””
Wow! Topping it off with an inappropriate joke referencing forced sterilization of the disabled? And yet does the Supreme Courts’ reaction really surprise anyone? Considering:
“The Obama administration also backs Monsanto, having earlier urged the court to stay out of the case because of the potential for far-reaching implications for patents involving DNA molecules, nanotechnologies and other self-replicating technologies (1).”
So Monsanto has ties to the federal government? Who knew?
The Dangers
Let’s take a look at a few of the risks involved in the use and consumption of genetically modified soybeans. The Huffington Post reports that an organism that lives in the Round Up Ready crops can cause miscarriages in animals and disease in plants. This discovery so concerned Purdue University’s Emeritus Professor Don M. Huber that he wrote an open letter to the Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack.
“Recent research claims that Monsanto’s Roundup Ready genetically modified crops contain an organism, previously unknown to science, that can cause miscarriages in farm animals….Huber wrote an open letter to Vilsack requesting a moratorium on deregulating Roundup Ready crops. Huber states that Roundup Ready has a high concentration of an animal pathogen connected to “plant and animal diseases that are reaching epidemic proportions.” Huber finishes his letter by stating, “It deserves immediate attention with significant resources to avoid a general collapse of our critical agricultural infrastructure (3).”
So what about the effects on humans you ask?
In “The Problem with the Safety of Roundup Ready Soybeans” by Judy Carman, MPH, PhD of Flinders University, Australia, the journal critiques Monsanto’s studies citing the safety of the genetically modified seeds, since they do not consider all possible hazards associated with ingesting these altered foods over time.
“In summary, I believe that the scientific basis, provided by the applicant company for considering that Roundup Ready soybeans are safe for animal and human consumption, is seriously flawed. No other, independent investigations seem to have been done. It could be expected that the safety assessments of other genetically modified foods may be as flawed.
Independent testing of these foods is urgently required, incorporating long-term animal and human experiments. As these will take years, it would be wise to place on a moratorium on these foods for 5 years, as suggested by European groups, while these investigations are done. To do otherwise could be likened to permitting a giant feeding experiment on millions of people.
Furthermore, the description that oils and other products derived from genetically-modified foods contain no genetically modified material is also flawed. It could not be expected that such products would be so pure that they would contain nil plant tissue or genetic material or protein. To expect this would be to expect the equivalent of analytical-reagent grade chemical purity from a food-stuff. These products also need rigorous testing, as described above.
Finally, the applicant companies appear to be resisting the labelling of genetically-modified foods or their derived products, such as oils. In countries where these foods and their derivatives are permitted, they should be labelled so that consumers can make their own decision about whether to buy them or not, and so that consumers can reassess their decision as information is provided about the relative safety of these products over the next few years (4).”
http://theintelhub.com/2013/02/20/supreme-court-backs-mon-ster-santo-against-75-year-old-farmer-in-ridiculous-seed-monopoly-case/
theintelhub.com
February 20, 2013
Tuesday, the Supreme Court “heard” the case of Bowman V. Monsanto Co., in which the mega-powerful food and chemical company is suing a small-time Indiana farmer whose only “crime” was looking for a cheaper source of seed outside of Monsanto’s federally backed monopoly.
In order to protect its genetically modified soybean seeds called Round Up Ready (so named because they are resistant to Monsanto’s weed-killer “Round-Up”), that have been on the market since 1996, farmers are contractually obligated to buy and use the seeds only once, to prevent copy-cats and patent infringement on the monster company’s cash cow of a seed. Mr. Vernon H. Bowen, tired of paying a high price for the genetically modified seeds each new growing season, decided to use soybean seeds from a local grain elevator instead of buying from the seed giant time and time again.
He figured that since these seeds were fathered from the Round Up Ready seeds they would also be resistant to weed-killer, and he figured right.
“He didn’t try to keep it a secret from Monsanto and in October 2007, the company sued him for violating its patent. Bowman’s is one of 146 lawsuits Monsanto has filed since 1996 claiming unauthorized use of its Roundup Ready seeds, Snively said [a Monsanto spokesman].
A federal court in Indiana sided with Monsanto and awarded the company $84,456 for Bowman’s unlicensed use of Monsanto’s technology. The federal appeals court in Washington that handles all appeals in patent cases, upheld the award. The appeals court said that farmers may never replant Roundup Ready seeds without running afoul of Monsanto’s patents (1).”
Of course the monolithic company would sue a 75 year old farmer for getting eight extra growing seasons out of seeds that have “their” patented genetic marker on them! Greedy is as greedy does. In a court hearing that was described by the New York Times as “freewheeling and almost entirely one-sided (2),” Bowen’s lawyer, had his work cut out for him.
“A lawyer for Monsanto, Seth P. Waxman, a former United States solicitor general, was allowed to talk uninterrupted for long stretches, which is usually a sign of impending victory..At Tuesday’s argument, Mr. Bowman’s lawyer received a markedly more hostile reception than Mr. Waxman. He was peppered with skeptical questions from almost every justice (2).”
““Why in the world,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. asked, “would anybody spend any money to try to improve the seed if as soon as they sold the first one anybody could grow more and have as many of those seeds as they want? …Walters said that it was Monsanto’s approach that was extreme.”
“The reach of Monsanto’s theory,” Mr. Walters said, “is that once that seed is sold, even though title has passed to the farmer, and the farmer assumes all risks associated with farming, that they can still control the ownership of that seed, control how that seed is used.”
Justice Stephen G. Breyer said that there were lots of things Mr. Bowman could do with the seeds he bought from the grain elevator.
“You can feed it to animals, you can feed it to your family, make tofu turkeys,” he said.
“But I’ll give you two that you can’t do,” he went on. “One, you can’t pick up those seeds that you’ve just bought and throw them in a child’s face. You can’t do that because there’s a law that says you can’t do it. Now, there’s another law that says you cannot make copies of a patented invention.””
You can read more from the hearing here, but it is clear that the Justices were feeling more of an affinity with the weed-killer GMO-king than the septuagenarian Mr. Bowman.
“Justice Breyer seemed in a particularly playful mood on Tuesday, at one point alluding to an infamous line from a 1927 opinion by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. allowing the forced sterilization of a woman with mental disabilities. (“Three generations of imbeciles are enough,” Justice Holmes wrote.)
“There are three generations of seeds,” Justice Breyer said, to knowing chuckles. “Maybe three generations of seeds is enough.””
Wow! Topping it off with an inappropriate joke referencing forced sterilization of the disabled? And yet does the Supreme Courts’ reaction really surprise anyone? Considering:
“The Obama administration also backs Monsanto, having earlier urged the court to stay out of the case because of the potential for far-reaching implications for patents involving DNA molecules, nanotechnologies and other self-replicating technologies (1).”
So Monsanto has ties to the federal government? Who knew?
The Dangers
Let’s take a look at a few of the risks involved in the use and consumption of genetically modified soybeans. The Huffington Post reports that an organism that lives in the Round Up Ready crops can cause miscarriages in animals and disease in plants. This discovery so concerned Purdue University’s Emeritus Professor Don M. Huber that he wrote an open letter to the Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack.
“Recent research claims that Monsanto’s Roundup Ready genetically modified crops contain an organism, previously unknown to science, that can cause miscarriages in farm animals….Huber wrote an open letter to Vilsack requesting a moratorium on deregulating Roundup Ready crops. Huber states that Roundup Ready has a high concentration of an animal pathogen connected to “plant and animal diseases that are reaching epidemic proportions.” Huber finishes his letter by stating, “It deserves immediate attention with significant resources to avoid a general collapse of our critical agricultural infrastructure (3).”
So what about the effects on humans you ask?
In “The Problem with the Safety of Roundup Ready Soybeans” by Judy Carman, MPH, PhD of Flinders University, Australia, the journal critiques Monsanto’s studies citing the safety of the genetically modified seeds, since they do not consider all possible hazards associated with ingesting these altered foods over time.
“In summary, I believe that the scientific basis, provided by the applicant company for considering that Roundup Ready soybeans are safe for animal and human consumption, is seriously flawed. No other, independent investigations seem to have been done. It could be expected that the safety assessments of other genetically modified foods may be as flawed.
Independent testing of these foods is urgently required, incorporating long-term animal and human experiments. As these will take years, it would be wise to place on a moratorium on these foods for 5 years, as suggested by European groups, while these investigations are done. To do otherwise could be likened to permitting a giant feeding experiment on millions of people.
Furthermore, the description that oils and other products derived from genetically-modified foods contain no genetically modified material is also flawed. It could not be expected that such products would be so pure that they would contain nil plant tissue or genetic material or protein. To expect this would be to expect the equivalent of analytical-reagent grade chemical purity from a food-stuff. These products also need rigorous testing, as described above.
Finally, the applicant companies appear to be resisting the labelling of genetically-modified foods or their derived products, such as oils. In countries where these foods and their derivatives are permitted, they should be labelled so that consumers can make their own decision about whether to buy them or not, and so that consumers can reassess their decision as information is provided about the relative safety of these products over the next few years (4).”
http://theintelhub.com/2013/02/20/supreme-court-backs-mon-ster-santo-against-75-year-old-farmer-in-ridiculous-seed-monopoly-case/
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
Why all the Sandy Hoax revelations
the reason for the intended release of staged footage to be "caught" by observant souls is to get hate crime legislation passed on anything TRUTH or FACTUAL CONSPIRACY. That way, they get the guns, the truth, and 1st amendment in one fell swoop. It's a mega-ritual with mega goals.
They want the people to react, get angry and expose the conspiracy with verbal attacks to those part of the hoax. This way they can legislate the truth movement right into prison.
They get it all. No 1st amendment, no 2nd amendment, etc. These are the last two amendments to be taken down since 911. And they need it done now, in 2013.
They want and need and must have, a total active and destructive police ala East German Stasi of old. They need it here, so the USA can crumble into ashes on every level: economic, social, militarily, legislative, etc.
Above all they want chaos and blood. Notice how everyone's work schedule is all chaos and the hours change all mixed up each week. Same with school schedules et al. The more chaos the better so that when they offer ORDER, it will be seen as a welcome relief. They create the circumstance and then offer the solution.
The solution is Princess Billy and a Vatican approved satanic global religion. You can't see it now, but that's what's down the road and around a few corners. To get there, they need stuff like this going on in every FREE country so that the freedoms vanish in the name of safety and security.
Leaving only slaves and the network vetted elite with any kind of freedom. But even those will have their lives surveilled so that they stay "loyal and faithful" and don't go off the reservation.
For the rest of us. It's death or re-education in a slave labor camp as they did in Soviet and Nazi labor camps. Sawdust and poisoned water for food, 18 hour days, and blessed death as a release from the hell awaiting those either unwilling or unable to comply with all the soulless activities of those in the dark side: murder, abuse, hatred, mind control, and obedience to thoughtless thugs with authority who only excel at being cruel and ruthless.
They want the people to react, get angry and expose the conspiracy with verbal attacks to those part of the hoax. This way they can legislate the truth movement right into prison.
They get it all. No 1st amendment, no 2nd amendment, etc. These are the last two amendments to be taken down since 911. And they need it done now, in 2013.
They want and need and must have, a total active and destructive police ala East German Stasi of old. They need it here, so the USA can crumble into ashes on every level: economic, social, militarily, legislative, etc.
Above all they want chaos and blood. Notice how everyone's work schedule is all chaos and the hours change all mixed up each week. Same with school schedules et al. The more chaos the better so that when they offer ORDER, it will be seen as a welcome relief. They create the circumstance and then offer the solution.
The solution is Princess Billy and a Vatican approved satanic global religion. You can't see it now, but that's what's down the road and around a few corners. To get there, they need stuff like this going on in every FREE country so that the freedoms vanish in the name of safety and security.
Leaving only slaves and the network vetted elite with any kind of freedom. But even those will have their lives surveilled so that they stay "loyal and faithful" and don't go off the reservation.
For the rest of us. It's death or re-education in a slave labor camp as they did in Soviet and Nazi labor camps. Sawdust and poisoned water for food, 18 hour days, and blessed death as a release from the hell awaiting those either unwilling or unable to comply with all the soulless activities of those in the dark side: murder, abuse, hatred, mind control, and obedience to thoughtless thugs with authority who only excel at being cruel and ruthless.
Monday, February 18, 2013
Cell Phone Spying: Is Your Life Being Monitored?
It connects you to the world, but your cell phone could also be giving anyone from your boss to your wife a window into your every move. The same technology that lets you stay in touch on-the-go can now let others tap into your private world — without you ever even suspecting something is awry.
The new generation
Long gone are the days of simple wiretapping, when the worst your phone could do was let someone listen in to your conversations. The new generation of cell phone spying tools provides a lot more power.
Eavesdropping is easy. All it takes is a two-minute software install and someone can record your calls and monitor your text messages. They can even set up systems to be automatically alerted when you dial a certain number, then instantly patched into your conversation. Anyone who can perform a basic internet search can find the tools and figure out how to do it in no time.
But the scarier stuff is what your phone can do when you aren’t even using it. Let’s start with your location.
Simple surveillance
You don’t have to plant a CIA-style bug to conduct surveillance any more. A service called World Tracker lets you use data from cell phone towers and GPS systems to pinpoint anyone’s exact whereabouts, any time — as long as they’ve got their phone on them.
All you have to do is log on to the web site and enter the target phone number. The site sends a single text message to the phone that requires one response for confirmation. Once the response is sent, you are locked in to their location and can track them step-by-step. The response is only required the first time the phone is contacted, so you can imagine how easily it could be handled without the phone’s owner even knowing.
Once connected, the service shows you the exact location of the phone by the minute, conveniently pinpointed on a Google Map. So far, the service is only available in the UK, but the company has indicated plans to expand its service to other countries soon.
Advanced eavesdropping
So you’ve figured out where someone is, but now you want to know what they’re actually doing. Turns out you can listen in, even if they aren’t talking on their phone.
Dozens of programs are available that’ll turn any cell phone into a high-tech, long-range listening device. And the scariest part? They run virtually undetectable to the average eye.
Take, for example, Flexispy. The service promises to let you “catch cheating wives or cheating husbands” and even “bug meeting rooms.” Its tools use a phone’s microphone to let you hear essentially any conversations within earshot. Once the program is installed, all you have to do is dial a number to tap into the phone’s mic and hear everything going on. The phone won’t even ring, and its owner will have no idea you are virtually there at his side.
Recover deleted text messages (SMS) and last dialed numbers from any SIM cards and smart cards
Did you know that with the help of a simple, inexpensive device, anyone with access to your phone could read your private text messages (SMS), even if you have deleted them previously? This device can even recover contacts and a good number or previously dialed numbers.
Legal loopholes
You might be asking how this could possibly be legal. Turns out, it isn’t – at least, not in the ways we just described. Much like those fancy smoking devices designed “for tobacco use only,” the software itself gets by because of a disclaimer saying it doesn’t endorse any illegal use.
I did a little digging with our friends from Flexispy. You won’t find it on the flashy front page, but buried a bit further in the site, the company says you’re fine to use their program only “on a phone that you own, for protecting your children,” or for purposes like “archiving data.” It’s a bit of a contrast from the bold suggestions of “uncover[ing] employee espionage,” “catch[ing] cheating husbands,” and “bug[ging] meeting rooms” that fill the company’s materials. After a little more explanation, their answer as to the legality of the service ends with a broad statement: “Please consult a qualified lawyer in your country for the correct answer to this question.”
Let me make it easier for you: Once you get into listening in to private conversations without either party’s consent, you’re treading rough water that could sweep you straight into jail. Whether it’s an employee or a spouse on the receiving end of your mission, neither federal nor state privacy laws take violations lightly in America. Getting caught could cost you several years behind bars, among other serious penalties.
Detecting and protecting
Finding spyware on your phone isn’t easy. There are dozens of bug detectors available from surveillance companies, but the only true fix is taking your phone to your provider and having them wipe it out altogether. That will restore the factory settings and clear out any hidden software that’s running on your phone.
Security experts say there may be some subtle signs your phone is invaded:
You seem to have trouble shutting it off, or it stays lit up after you’ve powered down.
The phone sometimes lights up when you aren’t making or receiving a call, or using any other function.
You regularly hear odd background noises or clicks when you’re on the phone.
Unfortunately, there isn’t much you can do to safeguard your cell just yet. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time until we see McAfee-style programs to firewall your phone and keep intruders out. For now, though, the only sure-fire form of protection is to keep a close guard on your phone. Don’t accept Bluetooth connections unless you know what they are. Most important, make sure no one has access to install something when you aren’t watching. Otherwise, they may soon be watching you when you least expect it.
By JR Raphael
http://www.geeksaresexy.net/2008/05/05/cell-phone-spying-is-your-life-being-monitored/
The new generation
Long gone are the days of simple wiretapping, when the worst your phone could do was let someone listen in to your conversations. The new generation of cell phone spying tools provides a lot more power.
Eavesdropping is easy. All it takes is a two-minute software install and someone can record your calls and monitor your text messages. They can even set up systems to be automatically alerted when you dial a certain number, then instantly patched into your conversation. Anyone who can perform a basic internet search can find the tools and figure out how to do it in no time.
But the scarier stuff is what your phone can do when you aren’t even using it. Let’s start with your location.
Simple surveillance
You don’t have to plant a CIA-style bug to conduct surveillance any more. A service called World Tracker lets you use data from cell phone towers and GPS systems to pinpoint anyone’s exact whereabouts, any time — as long as they’ve got their phone on them.
All you have to do is log on to the web site and enter the target phone number. The site sends a single text message to the phone that requires one response for confirmation. Once the response is sent, you are locked in to their location and can track them step-by-step. The response is only required the first time the phone is contacted, so you can imagine how easily it could be handled without the phone’s owner even knowing.
Once connected, the service shows you the exact location of the phone by the minute, conveniently pinpointed on a Google Map. So far, the service is only available in the UK, but the company has indicated plans to expand its service to other countries soon.
Advanced eavesdropping
So you’ve figured out where someone is, but now you want to know what they’re actually doing. Turns out you can listen in, even if they aren’t talking on their phone.
Dozens of programs are available that’ll turn any cell phone into a high-tech, long-range listening device. And the scariest part? They run virtually undetectable to the average eye.
Take, for example, Flexispy. The service promises to let you “catch cheating wives or cheating husbands” and even “bug meeting rooms.” Its tools use a phone’s microphone to let you hear essentially any conversations within earshot. Once the program is installed, all you have to do is dial a number to tap into the phone’s mic and hear everything going on. The phone won’t even ring, and its owner will have no idea you are virtually there at his side.
Recover deleted text messages (SMS) and last dialed numbers from any SIM cards and smart cards
Did you know that with the help of a simple, inexpensive device, anyone with access to your phone could read your private text messages (SMS), even if you have deleted them previously? This device can even recover contacts and a good number or previously dialed numbers.
Legal loopholes
You might be asking how this could possibly be legal. Turns out, it isn’t – at least, not in the ways we just described. Much like those fancy smoking devices designed “for tobacco use only,” the software itself gets by because of a disclaimer saying it doesn’t endorse any illegal use.
I did a little digging with our friends from Flexispy. You won’t find it on the flashy front page, but buried a bit further in the site, the company says you’re fine to use their program only “on a phone that you own, for protecting your children,” or for purposes like “archiving data.” It’s a bit of a contrast from the bold suggestions of “uncover[ing] employee espionage,” “catch[ing] cheating husbands,” and “bug[ging] meeting rooms” that fill the company’s materials. After a little more explanation, their answer as to the legality of the service ends with a broad statement: “Please consult a qualified lawyer in your country for the correct answer to this question.”
Let me make it easier for you: Once you get into listening in to private conversations without either party’s consent, you’re treading rough water that could sweep you straight into jail. Whether it’s an employee or a spouse on the receiving end of your mission, neither federal nor state privacy laws take violations lightly in America. Getting caught could cost you several years behind bars, among other serious penalties.
Detecting and protecting
Finding spyware on your phone isn’t easy. There are dozens of bug detectors available from surveillance companies, but the only true fix is taking your phone to your provider and having them wipe it out altogether. That will restore the factory settings and clear out any hidden software that’s running on your phone.
Security experts say there may be some subtle signs your phone is invaded:
You seem to have trouble shutting it off, or it stays lit up after you’ve powered down.
The phone sometimes lights up when you aren’t making or receiving a call, or using any other function.
You regularly hear odd background noises or clicks when you’re on the phone.
Unfortunately, there isn’t much you can do to safeguard your cell just yet. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time until we see McAfee-style programs to firewall your phone and keep intruders out. For now, though, the only sure-fire form of protection is to keep a close guard on your phone. Don’t accept Bluetooth connections unless you know what they are. Most important, make sure no one has access to install something when you aren’t watching. Otherwise, they may soon be watching you when you least expect it.
By JR Raphael
http://www.geeksaresexy.net/2008/05/05/cell-phone-spying-is-your-life-being-monitored/
Cops arrest 5 year-old for wearing wrong shoes to class (Police state condintioning in progress)
In Mississippi, if kindergarteners violate the dress code or act out in class, they may end up in the back of a police car.
A story about one five-year-old particularly stands out. The little boy was required to wear black shoes to school. Because he didn’t have black shoes, his mom used a marker to cover up his white and red sneakers. A bit of red and white were still noticeable, so the child was taken home by the cops.
The child was escorted out of school so he and his mother would be taught a lesson.
Ridiculous? Perhaps. But incidents such as this are happening across Mississippi. A new report, “Handcuffs on Success: The Extreme School Discipline Crisis in Mississippi Public Schools,” exposes just how bad it’s become.
A story about one five-year-old particularly stands out. The little boy was required to wear black shoes to school. Because he didn’t have black shoes, his mom used a marker to cover up his white and red sneakers. A bit of red and white were still noticeable, so the child was taken home by the cops.
The child was escorted out of school so he and his mother would be taught a lesson.
Ridiculous? Perhaps. But incidents such as this are happening across Mississippi. A new report, “Handcuffs on Success: The Extreme School Discipline Crisis in Mississippi Public Schools,” exposes just how bad it’s become.
Released on January 17, the report is a joint project between state chapters of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and the Mississippi Coalition for the Prevention of Schoolhouse to Jailhouse and the Advancement Project.
The report examined more than 100 school districts and claimed that black students are affected by harsh disciplinary actions at a much greater rate than their white peers. It notes that “for every one white student who is given an out-of-school suspension, three black students are suspended, even though black students comprise just half of the student population.”
Carlos McCray, an associate professor at Fordham University Graduate School of Education in the Education Leadership Administration Program, says, “Research has shown that students who are subjected to multiple suspensions and expulsions are more likely to drop out of school. And we all know where this leads.”
Sunday, February 17, 2013
Saturday, February 16, 2013
Drones over America - just like "over there"
"Whether your violating constitutional rights at home, or bombing children abroad, this toy's perfect for all clandestine missions! Double tap strike to triple your pleasure and casualties!"
"The coolest detail about this toy are the small body fragments you can litter around your target area following a drone missile strike on a wedding party. THEN (this is where the real fun begins) you circle back in an hour and fire MORE missiles at the people rescuing survivors and mourning the dead! Sure if another country did such a thing we'd decry it as heinous terrorism, but when good Ol' Uncle Sam's finger is on the joystick, you can bet that we call what we hit our target, no matter what."
"Nothing teaches your kids about the fact that they may one day be the target of an extra-judicious execution by executive order via a flying death robot from the movie Terminator, then this beautiful piece of replica toy war crimes."
"I really wanted to show my toddler that it's okay to murder people and still come out a "hero" as long as you're in an air conditioned trailer remotely operating a Predator Drone 10,000 miles away in Pakistan.
I mean, if the government sanctions murder, it must be ok, right?"
"... I bought ten of these for my boy because, as he so rightly says, "So many countries, so little time". He hasn't played with his Matchbox V2 Buzz Bomb once since he became a "Drone Operator". It's given him a real grasp of imperialism, murder of innocents, the art of war and the complex geography of the Middle East. Thank You Maisto, we look forward to your Cluster Bomb, Land Mine and Gas canister multi pack with anticipation hitherto unseen in the world of play." Business Insider
http://www.presstv.com/usdetail/285544.html
Thursday, February 14, 2013
Conditioning the slaves to accept more slavery
Terrorism – or the perceived threat of it – has turned democracies into paranoid armed camps in which the state feels justified in assuming that every citizen is a potential terrorist.” – John Naughton
http://www.wakingtimes.com/2013/02/14/airport-scanners-in-2014-fear-and-the-end-of-privacy/
http://www.wakingtimes.com/2013/02/14/airport-scanners-in-2014-fear-and-the-end-of-privacy/
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
The Anne Frank Diary Fraud (tests prove majority of manuscript werre written with a ball-point pen, not invented prior to 1951...oops!)
The New York Supreme Court awarded the well known American writer, Meyer Levin, $50.000 to be paid by the father of Anne Frank as an honorarium for Levin`s work on the ``Anne Frank Diary.``
by Brian Harring
When Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin, she did so prompted by the highest of motives. Yet she, herself, relates the incident that when she first met Abraham Lincoln in 1863, he commented "So you are the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war!"
Few will deny that the printed word in this instance fanned the flames of passion which brought about one of the bloodiest and saddest wars of American history, with brother sometimes pitted against brother, father against son. Perhaps if there had been less appeal to the emotions the problems might have resolved themselves through peaceful means. However, almost universally read at the time, few people then recognized the potency of one small book or the injustice done the South through its wide acceptance as a fair picture of slavery in the South.
Propaganda, as a weapon of psychological warfare is in even wider use today. Communists were masters of the art. Often they used the direct approach; just as often they employed diversion tactics to focus the eyes and ears of the world in directions other than where the real conflict was being waged. For many years, through propaganda alone, the dead threat of Hitler and Nazism had been constantly held before the public in a diversion maneuver to keep attention from being directed against the live threat of Stalin, Khrushchev and Communism.
Such has been the effect, if not the deliberate intention of many who have promoted its distribution, of a book of popular appeal-The Diary Of Anne Frank. It has been sold to the public as the actual diary of a young Jewish girl who died in a Nazi concentration camp after two years of abuse and horror.
Many Americans have read the book or seen the movie version, and have been deeply moved by the real life drama it claims to present. But have we been misled in the belief that Anne Frank actually wrote this diary? And if so. should an author be permitted to produce a work of fiction and sell it to the world as fact, particularly one of such tremendous emotional appeal?
The Swedish journal Frio Ord published two articles commenting on The Diary of Anne Frank. A condensation of these articles appeared in the April 15, 1959 issue of Economic Council Letter, as follows:
“History has many examples of myths that live a longer and richer life than truth. and may become more effective than truth.
The Western world has for some years hem made aware of a young Jewish girl through the medium of what purports to he her personally written story, "Anne Frank's Diary." Any informed literary inspection of this book has shown it to have been impossible as the work of a teenager.
A noteworthy decision of the New York Supreme Court confirms this point of view, in that the well known American writer, Meyer Levin, has been awarded $50.000 lo he paid him by the father of Anne Frank as an honorarium for Levin's work on the "Anne Frank Diary."
Mr. Frank, in Switzerland, had promised to pay to prominent Jewish author, Meyer Levin. not less than $50,000 because he had used the literary creation of author Levin in toto, and represented it to his publisher and the public as his late daughter’s original work.
Inquiry of the County Clerk. New York County. as to the facts of the case referred to in the Swedish press, brought a reply on April 23, 1962, giving the name of a New York firm of lawyers as “attorneys .far the respondent.” Reference was to ”The Dairy of Anne Frank 2203-58.”
A letter to this firm brought a response on May 4, 1962 that “Although we represent Mr. Levin in other matters, we had nothing to do with the Anne Frank case.”
On May 7, 1962, came the following reply from a member of a firm of New York lawyers to whom the original inquiry had been forwarded:
“I was the attorney for Meyer Levin in his action against Otto Frank and others. It is true that a jury awarded Mr. Levin $50,000 in damages, as indicated in your letter. That award was later set aside by the trial justice. Hon. Samuel C. Coleman. on the ground that the damages had not been proved in the manner required by law. The action was subsequently settled between the litigating parties, while an appeal from Judge Coleman’s decision was pending.
I am afraid that the care itself is not officially reported, so far as the trial itself, or even Judge Coleman’s decision, is concerned. Certain procedural matters were reported. both in 141 New York Supplement. Second Series 170. and in 5 Second Series 181. The correct file number in the New York County Clerk‘s office is 2241-1956 and the file is probably a large and full one which must include Judge Coleman’s decision. Unfortunately, our file is in storage and 1 cannot locate a copy of that decision as it appeared in the New York Law Journal early in the year 1960.”
The Diary Of Anne Frank was first published in 1952 and immediately became a bestseller. It has been republished in paperback, 40 printings. It is impossible to estimate how many people have been touched and aroused by the movie production.
Why has the trial involving the father of Anne Frank, bearing directly on the authenticity of this book, never been "officially reported"? In royalties alone, Otto Frank has profited richly from the sale of this book, purporting to depict the tragic life of his daughter. But is it fact, or is it fiction? Is it truth or is it propaganda? Or is it a combination of all of these? And to what degree does it wrongfully appeal to the emotions through a misrepresentation as to its origin?
School publications for years have recommended this book for young people, presenting it as the work of Anne Frank. Advertising in advance of the movie showing has played up the “factual” nature of the drama being presented. Do not writers of such editorials and promoters of such advertising, “fan the flames of hate” they rightly profess to deplore?
Many American Jews were shocked at the handling of the Eichmann case, the distortions contained in the book Exodus and its movie counterpart, but their protests have had little publicity outside of their own organ, Issues, by the American Council for Judaism. Others who have expressed the same convictions have been charged with anti-Semitism. Yet it is to be noted that both Otto Frank and his accuser Meyer Levin, were Jewish, so a similar charge would hardly be applicable in pursuing this subject to an honest conclusion..
File number 2241-1956 in the New York County Clerk’s office should be opened to the public view and its content thoroughly publicized. Misrepresentation, exaggeration, and falsification has too often colored the judgment of good citizens. If Mr. Frank used the work of Meyer Levin to present to the world what we have been led to believe is the literary work of his daughter, wholly or in part, then the truth should be exposed.
To label fiction as fact is never justified nor should it be condoned.
Since actual period documentation does not exist in support of the Holocaust myth, it has always been incumbent on its supporters to create it.
Not only is the “Anne Frank” diary now considered to be a fake, so also is “The Painted Bird” by Jerzy Kosinski. This book, which is a mass of pornographic and sadistic imagery which, had it not been taken so seriously by the Jewish community, would be merely the pathetic manifestation of a self-serving and very sick person.
This was duly exposed as a shabby, though much revered (by the Jewish community) and quoted, fraud. When this was exposed, Kosinski committed suicide. Later, in Kosinski’s footsteps we find the next fiction entitled “Fragments, ” by a Swiss Protestant named Bruno Dosseker who spent the war in Switzerland as a young child. Dosseker posed as a very young Baltic Jewish concentration camp inmate named Binjamin Wilkomerski. This work consists of allegedly fragmented “memories” and is very difficult to read
Dosseker became the poster boy for the Holocaust supporters and was lionized by the international Jewish community, reaping considerable profit and many in-house awards for his wonderful and moving portrayal of German brutality and sexual sadism.
Another book, allegedly by a Hungarian doctor, concerning his deportation from Budapest in 1944 and subsequent journey by “Death Train” to Auschwitz is another fraud. There was never such a doctor in Hungary during the period involved and the alleged route of the train from Budapest to Auschwitz did not exist.
These sort of pathetic refugees from the back wards seem to be drawn to the Holocausters…and they to them. There are now “Holocaust Survivors” as young as thirty which is an interesting anomaly because the last concentration camp was closed in 1945. Perhaps they consider the last frenzied spring sale at Bloomingdale’s department store to be what they survived.
Next we can expect to see a book based on twenty-seven volumes of secret diaries prepared on a modern word processor within the current year by an alleged inhabitant of the Warsaw ghetto, describing the Nazi slaughter of tens of millions of weeping Jews by means that would shame a modern African state.
And, predictably, the publication of these howlers would be greeted with joy on the part of the fund raisers and fanatics, praised in the columns of the New York Times and scripted by Steven Spielberg for a heart-wrenching and guaranteed Oscar-winning film.
Hundreds of thousands of DVD copies will be donated to American schools and the Jewish community will demand that subservient executive and legislative bodies in America create a Day of Atonement as a National Holiday to balance the terrible Christian Christmas and the wickedly Satanic Halloween.
Conservationists must hate these books because so many otherwise beautiful and useful trees are slaughtered for their preparation
Insofar as the Anne Frank diary is concerned, herewith is some background on Anne Frank, her family and her alleged Diary.
The Franks were upper class German Jews, both coming from wealthy families. Otto and his siblings lived on the exclusive Meronstrasse in Frankfurt .Otto attended a private prep school, and also attended the Lessing Gymnasium, the most expensive school in Frankfurt.
Otto attended Heidelberg University. After graduation he left for a long vacation in England.
In 1909, the 20 year old Otto went to New York City where he stayed with his relatives, the Oppenheimers.
In 1925 Anne's parents married and settled in Frankfurt, Germany. Anne was born in 1929. The Frank's family business included banking, management of the springs at Bad Soden and the manufacture of cough drops. Anne's mother, the former Edith Holländer, was the daughter of a manufacturer.
In 1934, Otto and his family moved to Amsterdam where he bought a spice business, Opekta, which manufactures Pectin used in making household jellies.
On May 1940, after the Germans occupied Amsterdam Otto remained in that city while his mother and brother moved to Switzerland. Otto remained in Amsterdam where his firm did business with the German Wehrmacht. From 1939 to 1944, Otto sold Opeka, and Pectin, to the German army. Pectin was a food preservative, and a anti infectant balm for wounds and as a thickener for raising blood volume in blood transfusions. Pectin was used as an emulsifier for petroleum, gelatized gasoline for fire bombing. By supplying the Wehrmacht, Otto Frank became, in the eyes of the Dutch, a Nazi collaborator.
On July 6, 1942 Otto moved the Frank family into the so-called 'Secret Annex'. The annex is a three story, mostly glass townhouse that shares a garden park with fifty other apartments.
While he was allegedly in hiding, Otto Frank still managed his business, going downstairs to his office at night and on weekends. Anne and the others would go to Otto's office and listen to radio broadcasts from England.
The purported diary begins on June 12, 1942, and runs to December 5,1942 . It consists of a book that is six by four by a quarter inches . In addition to this first diary, Anne supplemented it with personal letters. Otto said Anne heard Gerrit Bolkestein in a broadcast say: ~ "Keep a diary, and he would publish after the war", and that's why Anne’s father claimed she rewrote her diaries second time in 1944.
In this second edition, the new writer changed, rearranged and occasionally combined entries of various dates.
When Anne allegedly rewrote the diaries, she used a ball point pen, which did not exist in 1945, and the book took on an extremely high literary standard, and read more like a professional documentary than a child's diary. In Anne's second edition her writing style, and handwriting, suddenly matured
The actual diary of Anne Frank contained only about 150 notes, according to The New York Times, of October 2 ,1955.
In 1944, German authorities in occupied Holland determined that Otto Frank had been swindling then via his extensive and very lucrative Wehrmacht contracts. The German police then raided his apartment attic, and the eight Jews were sent to Westerbork work camp and forced to perform manual labor .Otto himself was sent to Auschwitz.. Anne, her sister Margot, and her mother, subsequently died of typhus in another camp.
In 1945, after being liberated from German custody, Otto returned to Amsterdam, where he claimed he found Anne's diary cleverly hidden in the Annex's rafters. However, another version has a Dutch friend, Meip Geis finding Anne's diary of fictional events, which she then gave to Otto Frank.
Otto took what he claimed were Anne's letters and notes, edited them into a book, which he then gave to his secretary, Isa Cauvern, to review. Isa Cauvern and her husband Albert Cauvern , a writer, authored the first diary.
Questions were raised by some publishers as to whether Isa and Albert Cauvern, who assisted Otto in typing out the work used the original diaries or whether they took it directly from Mr. Frank's personal transcription.
American author, Meyer Levin wrote the third and final edition
Meyer Levin was an author, and journalist, who lived for many years in France, where he met Otto Frank around 1949.
Born in 1905, Meyer Levin was raised in the section of Chicago notoriously known in the days of gangster warfare as the "Bloody Nineteen Ward." At the age of eighteen he worked as a reporter for the Chicago Daily News and during the next four years became an increasingly frequent contributor to the national literary magazine, The Menorah Journal. In 1929 he published THE REPORTER, which was the first of his sixteen novels.
In 1933 Levin became an assistant editor and film critic at the newly-created Esquire Magazine where he remained until 1939
Perhaps his best-known work is COMPULSION (1956), chronicling the Leopold and Loeb case and hailed by critics as one of the greatest books of the decade. The compelling work was the first "documentary novel" or "non-fiction novel.”
After the enormous success of COMPULSION, Levin embarked on a trilogy of novels dealing with the Holocaust. The first, EVA (1959) was the story of a Jewish girl's experiences throughout the war and her adjustment to life after the concentration camps. This was followed by THE FANATIC (1963), which told the hypnotic story of a Jewish poet dealing with the moral questions that arose from his ordeal at the hands of the Nazis. The last in the triptych, THE STRONGHOLD (1965), is a thriller set in a concentration camp during the last days of the war.
At the outset of World War II Levin made documentary films for the US Office of War Information and later worked in France as a civilian expert in the Psychological Warfare Division. He eventually became a war correspondent for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, with the special mission of uncovering the fate of Jewish concentration camp prisoners. Levin took his role very seriously, sometimes entering concentration camps ahead of the tanks of the liberating forces in order to compile lists of the survivors.
After the war Levin went to Palestine and turned his attention again to the motion picture camera. His film MY FATHER'S HOUSE told the story of a child survivor searching for his family in Palestine. He wrote this story as a novel as well and the book was published in 1947.
Levin also joined the Hagana underground and helped smuggle Jews from the interior of Poland to Palestine, then basically an Arab country under the control of the British..
In 1951 Levin came upon a copy of the French edition of the Anne Frank diary He made a number of attempts to have the work published in English, and conceived it as a play and film. When the diary finally found an American publisher, his play was accepted for production but then suddenly barred, ostensibly for being "unstageworthy," and another writer's version was commissioned.
Levin fought for the rights to perform his version of the play, claiming that the real reason the producers refused to stage his work was because they thought it "too Jewish." He saw the suppression of the play as an extension of the Stalinist attack on Jewish culture and, outraged that even Anne Frank could be censored, he took the producers to court and began an agonizing, prolonged struggle that dragged on for years.
Levin eventually won a jury award against the producers for appropriation of ideas, but the bitterness of the trial made him many enemies in the Jewish and literary communities.
Although Levin's version of the play is still banned by the owners of the dramatic rights, underground productions of the work are frequently staged throughout the world.
Meyer Levin died in 1981
Levin rewrote the various post-war treatments of the Anne Frank diary with an eye toward a Broadway production, but Otto decided to cut him out, refusing to honor his contract or pay him for his work. Meyer Levin sued Otto Frank for his writings, and the New York Supreme court awarded Meyer Levin $50,000, for his 'intellectual work'.
In 1980, Otto sued two Germans, Ernst Romer and Edgar Geiss, for distributing literature denouncing the diary as a forgery. The trial produced a study by official German handwriting experts that determined everything in the diary was written by the same person. The person that wrote the diaries had used a ballpoint pen throughout. Unfortunately for Herr Frank, the ballpoint pen was not available until 1951 whereas Anne was known to have died of typhus in 1944.
Because of the lawsuit in a German court, the German state forensic bureau, the Bundes Kriminal Amt [BKA] forensically examined the manuscript, which at that point in time consisted of three hardbound notebooks and 324 loose pages bound in a fourth notebook, with special forensic equipment.
The results of tests, performed at the BKA laboratories, showed that “significant” portions of the work, especially the fourth volume, were written with a ballpoint pen. Since ballpoint pens were not available before 1951, the BKA concluded those sections must have been added subsequently.
In the end, BKA clearly determined that none of the diary handwriting matched known examples of Anne's handwriting. The German magazine, Der Spiegel, published an account of this report alleging that (a) some editing postdated 1951; (b) an earlier expert had held that all the writing in the journal was by the same hand; and thus (c) the entire diary was a postwar fake.
The BKA information, at the urgent request of the Jewish community, was redacted at the time but later inadvertently released to researchers in the United States.
But it was possible for Ann Frank to have used a ball point pen in the last chapters as dozens of RAF pilots went through the Nederlands in their escape back to the UK from 1940.
by Brian Harring
When Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin, she did so prompted by the highest of motives. Yet she, herself, relates the incident that when she first met Abraham Lincoln in 1863, he commented "So you are the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war!"
Few will deny that the printed word in this instance fanned the flames of passion which brought about one of the bloodiest and saddest wars of American history, with brother sometimes pitted against brother, father against son. Perhaps if there had been less appeal to the emotions the problems might have resolved themselves through peaceful means. However, almost universally read at the time, few people then recognized the potency of one small book or the injustice done the South through its wide acceptance as a fair picture of slavery in the South.
Propaganda, as a weapon of psychological warfare is in even wider use today. Communists were masters of the art. Often they used the direct approach; just as often they employed diversion tactics to focus the eyes and ears of the world in directions other than where the real conflict was being waged. For many years, through propaganda alone, the dead threat of Hitler and Nazism had been constantly held before the public in a diversion maneuver to keep attention from being directed against the live threat of Stalin, Khrushchev and Communism.
Such has been the effect, if not the deliberate intention of many who have promoted its distribution, of a book of popular appeal-The Diary Of Anne Frank. It has been sold to the public as the actual diary of a young Jewish girl who died in a Nazi concentration camp after two years of abuse and horror.
Many Americans have read the book or seen the movie version, and have been deeply moved by the real life drama it claims to present. But have we been misled in the belief that Anne Frank actually wrote this diary? And if so. should an author be permitted to produce a work of fiction and sell it to the world as fact, particularly one of such tremendous emotional appeal?
The Swedish journal Frio Ord published two articles commenting on The Diary of Anne Frank. A condensation of these articles appeared in the April 15, 1959 issue of Economic Council Letter, as follows:
“History has many examples of myths that live a longer and richer life than truth. and may become more effective than truth.
The Western world has for some years hem made aware of a young Jewish girl through the medium of what purports to he her personally written story, "Anne Frank's Diary." Any informed literary inspection of this book has shown it to have been impossible as the work of a teenager.
A noteworthy decision of the New York Supreme Court confirms this point of view, in that the well known American writer, Meyer Levin, has been awarded $50.000 lo he paid him by the father of Anne Frank as an honorarium for Levin's work on the "Anne Frank Diary."
Mr. Frank, in Switzerland, had promised to pay to prominent Jewish author, Meyer Levin. not less than $50,000 because he had used the literary creation of author Levin in toto, and represented it to his publisher and the public as his late daughter’s original work.
Inquiry of the County Clerk. New York County. as to the facts of the case referred to in the Swedish press, brought a reply on April 23, 1962, giving the name of a New York firm of lawyers as “attorneys .far the respondent.” Reference was to ”The Dairy of Anne Frank 2203-58.”
A letter to this firm brought a response on May 4, 1962 that “Although we represent Mr. Levin in other matters, we had nothing to do with the Anne Frank case.”
On May 7, 1962, came the following reply from a member of a firm of New York lawyers to whom the original inquiry had been forwarded:
“I was the attorney for Meyer Levin in his action against Otto Frank and others. It is true that a jury awarded Mr. Levin $50,000 in damages, as indicated in your letter. That award was later set aside by the trial justice. Hon. Samuel C. Coleman. on the ground that the damages had not been proved in the manner required by law. The action was subsequently settled between the litigating parties, while an appeal from Judge Coleman’s decision was pending.
I am afraid that the care itself is not officially reported, so far as the trial itself, or even Judge Coleman’s decision, is concerned. Certain procedural matters were reported. both in 141 New York Supplement. Second Series 170. and in 5 Second Series 181. The correct file number in the New York County Clerk‘s office is 2241-1956 and the file is probably a large and full one which must include Judge Coleman’s decision. Unfortunately, our file is in storage and 1 cannot locate a copy of that decision as it appeared in the New York Law Journal early in the year 1960.”
The Diary Of Anne Frank was first published in 1952 and immediately became a bestseller. It has been republished in paperback, 40 printings. It is impossible to estimate how many people have been touched and aroused by the movie production.
Why has the trial involving the father of Anne Frank, bearing directly on the authenticity of this book, never been "officially reported"? In royalties alone, Otto Frank has profited richly from the sale of this book, purporting to depict the tragic life of his daughter. But is it fact, or is it fiction? Is it truth or is it propaganda? Or is it a combination of all of these? And to what degree does it wrongfully appeal to the emotions through a misrepresentation as to its origin?
School publications for years have recommended this book for young people, presenting it as the work of Anne Frank. Advertising in advance of the movie showing has played up the “factual” nature of the drama being presented. Do not writers of such editorials and promoters of such advertising, “fan the flames of hate” they rightly profess to deplore?
Many American Jews were shocked at the handling of the Eichmann case, the distortions contained in the book Exodus and its movie counterpart, but their protests have had little publicity outside of their own organ, Issues, by the American Council for Judaism. Others who have expressed the same convictions have been charged with anti-Semitism. Yet it is to be noted that both Otto Frank and his accuser Meyer Levin, were Jewish, so a similar charge would hardly be applicable in pursuing this subject to an honest conclusion..
File number 2241-1956 in the New York County Clerk’s office should be opened to the public view and its content thoroughly publicized. Misrepresentation, exaggeration, and falsification has too often colored the judgment of good citizens. If Mr. Frank used the work of Meyer Levin to present to the world what we have been led to believe is the literary work of his daughter, wholly or in part, then the truth should be exposed.
To label fiction as fact is never justified nor should it be condoned.
Since actual period documentation does not exist in support of the Holocaust myth, it has always been incumbent on its supporters to create it.
Not only is the “Anne Frank” diary now considered to be a fake, so also is “The Painted Bird” by Jerzy Kosinski. This book, which is a mass of pornographic and sadistic imagery which, had it not been taken so seriously by the Jewish community, would be merely the pathetic manifestation of a self-serving and very sick person.
This was duly exposed as a shabby, though much revered (by the Jewish community) and quoted, fraud. When this was exposed, Kosinski committed suicide. Later, in Kosinski’s footsteps we find the next fiction entitled “Fragments, ” by a Swiss Protestant named Bruno Dosseker who spent the war in Switzerland as a young child. Dosseker posed as a very young Baltic Jewish concentration camp inmate named Binjamin Wilkomerski. This work consists of allegedly fragmented “memories” and is very difficult to read
Dosseker became the poster boy for the Holocaust supporters and was lionized by the international Jewish community, reaping considerable profit and many in-house awards for his wonderful and moving portrayal of German brutality and sexual sadism.
Another book, allegedly by a Hungarian doctor, concerning his deportation from Budapest in 1944 and subsequent journey by “Death Train” to Auschwitz is another fraud. There was never such a doctor in Hungary during the period involved and the alleged route of the train from Budapest to Auschwitz did not exist.
These sort of pathetic refugees from the back wards seem to be drawn to the Holocausters…and they to them. There are now “Holocaust Survivors” as young as thirty which is an interesting anomaly because the last concentration camp was closed in 1945. Perhaps they consider the last frenzied spring sale at Bloomingdale’s department store to be what they survived.
Next we can expect to see a book based on twenty-seven volumes of secret diaries prepared on a modern word processor within the current year by an alleged inhabitant of the Warsaw ghetto, describing the Nazi slaughter of tens of millions of weeping Jews by means that would shame a modern African state.
And, predictably, the publication of these howlers would be greeted with joy on the part of the fund raisers and fanatics, praised in the columns of the New York Times and scripted by Steven Spielberg for a heart-wrenching and guaranteed Oscar-winning film.
Hundreds of thousands of DVD copies will be donated to American schools and the Jewish community will demand that subservient executive and legislative bodies in America create a Day of Atonement as a National Holiday to balance the terrible Christian Christmas and the wickedly Satanic Halloween.
Conservationists must hate these books because so many otherwise beautiful and useful trees are slaughtered for their preparation
Insofar as the Anne Frank diary is concerned, herewith is some background on Anne Frank, her family and her alleged Diary.
The Franks were upper class German Jews, both coming from wealthy families. Otto and his siblings lived on the exclusive Meronstrasse in Frankfurt .Otto attended a private prep school, and also attended the Lessing Gymnasium, the most expensive school in Frankfurt.
Otto attended Heidelberg University. After graduation he left for a long vacation in England.
In 1909, the 20 year old Otto went to New York City where he stayed with his relatives, the Oppenheimers.
In 1925 Anne's parents married and settled in Frankfurt, Germany. Anne was born in 1929. The Frank's family business included banking, management of the springs at Bad Soden and the manufacture of cough drops. Anne's mother, the former Edith Holländer, was the daughter of a manufacturer.
In 1934, Otto and his family moved to Amsterdam where he bought a spice business, Opekta, which manufactures Pectin used in making household jellies.
On May 1940, after the Germans occupied Amsterdam Otto remained in that city while his mother and brother moved to Switzerland. Otto remained in Amsterdam where his firm did business with the German Wehrmacht. From 1939 to 1944, Otto sold Opeka, and Pectin, to the German army. Pectin was a food preservative, and a anti infectant balm for wounds and as a thickener for raising blood volume in blood transfusions. Pectin was used as an emulsifier for petroleum, gelatized gasoline for fire bombing. By supplying the Wehrmacht, Otto Frank became, in the eyes of the Dutch, a Nazi collaborator.
On July 6, 1942 Otto moved the Frank family into the so-called 'Secret Annex'. The annex is a three story, mostly glass townhouse that shares a garden park with fifty other apartments.
While he was allegedly in hiding, Otto Frank still managed his business, going downstairs to his office at night and on weekends. Anne and the others would go to Otto's office and listen to radio broadcasts from England.
The purported diary begins on June 12, 1942, and runs to December 5,1942 . It consists of a book that is six by four by a quarter inches . In addition to this first diary, Anne supplemented it with personal letters. Otto said Anne heard Gerrit Bolkestein in a broadcast say: ~ "Keep a diary, and he would publish after the war", and that's why Anne’s father claimed she rewrote her diaries second time in 1944.
In this second edition, the new writer changed, rearranged and occasionally combined entries of various dates.
When Anne allegedly rewrote the diaries, she used a ball point pen, which did not exist in 1945, and the book took on an extremely high literary standard, and read more like a professional documentary than a child's diary. In Anne's second edition her writing style, and handwriting, suddenly matured
The actual diary of Anne Frank contained only about 150 notes, according to The New York Times, of October 2 ,1955.
In 1944, German authorities in occupied Holland determined that Otto Frank had been swindling then via his extensive and very lucrative Wehrmacht contracts. The German police then raided his apartment attic, and the eight Jews were sent to Westerbork work camp and forced to perform manual labor .Otto himself was sent to Auschwitz.. Anne, her sister Margot, and her mother, subsequently died of typhus in another camp.
In 1945, after being liberated from German custody, Otto returned to Amsterdam, where he claimed he found Anne's diary cleverly hidden in the Annex's rafters. However, another version has a Dutch friend, Meip Geis finding Anne's diary of fictional events, which she then gave to Otto Frank.
Otto took what he claimed were Anne's letters and notes, edited them into a book, which he then gave to his secretary, Isa Cauvern, to review. Isa Cauvern and her husband Albert Cauvern , a writer, authored the first diary.
Questions were raised by some publishers as to whether Isa and Albert Cauvern, who assisted Otto in typing out the work used the original diaries or whether they took it directly from Mr. Frank's personal transcription.
American author, Meyer Levin wrote the third and final edition
Meyer Levin was an author, and journalist, who lived for many years in France, where he met Otto Frank around 1949.
Born in 1905, Meyer Levin was raised in the section of Chicago notoriously known in the days of gangster warfare as the "Bloody Nineteen Ward." At the age of eighteen he worked as a reporter for the Chicago Daily News and during the next four years became an increasingly frequent contributor to the national literary magazine, The Menorah Journal. In 1929 he published THE REPORTER, which was the first of his sixteen novels.
In 1933 Levin became an assistant editor and film critic at the newly-created Esquire Magazine where he remained until 1939
Perhaps his best-known work is COMPULSION (1956), chronicling the Leopold and Loeb case and hailed by critics as one of the greatest books of the decade. The compelling work was the first "documentary novel" or "non-fiction novel.”
After the enormous success of COMPULSION, Levin embarked on a trilogy of novels dealing with the Holocaust. The first, EVA (1959) was the story of a Jewish girl's experiences throughout the war and her adjustment to life after the concentration camps. This was followed by THE FANATIC (1963), which told the hypnotic story of a Jewish poet dealing with the moral questions that arose from his ordeal at the hands of the Nazis. The last in the triptych, THE STRONGHOLD (1965), is a thriller set in a concentration camp during the last days of the war.
At the outset of World War II Levin made documentary films for the US Office of War Information and later worked in France as a civilian expert in the Psychological Warfare Division. He eventually became a war correspondent for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, with the special mission of uncovering the fate of Jewish concentration camp prisoners. Levin took his role very seriously, sometimes entering concentration camps ahead of the tanks of the liberating forces in order to compile lists of the survivors.
After the war Levin went to Palestine and turned his attention again to the motion picture camera. His film MY FATHER'S HOUSE told the story of a child survivor searching for his family in Palestine. He wrote this story as a novel as well and the book was published in 1947.
Levin also joined the Hagana underground and helped smuggle Jews from the interior of Poland to Palestine, then basically an Arab country under the control of the British..
In 1951 Levin came upon a copy of the French edition of the Anne Frank diary He made a number of attempts to have the work published in English, and conceived it as a play and film. When the diary finally found an American publisher, his play was accepted for production but then suddenly barred, ostensibly for being "unstageworthy," and another writer's version was commissioned.
Levin fought for the rights to perform his version of the play, claiming that the real reason the producers refused to stage his work was because they thought it "too Jewish." He saw the suppression of the play as an extension of the Stalinist attack on Jewish culture and, outraged that even Anne Frank could be censored, he took the producers to court and began an agonizing, prolonged struggle that dragged on for years.
Levin eventually won a jury award against the producers for appropriation of ideas, but the bitterness of the trial made him many enemies in the Jewish and literary communities.
Although Levin's version of the play is still banned by the owners of the dramatic rights, underground productions of the work are frequently staged throughout the world.
Meyer Levin died in 1981
Levin rewrote the various post-war treatments of the Anne Frank diary with an eye toward a Broadway production, but Otto decided to cut him out, refusing to honor his contract or pay him for his work. Meyer Levin sued Otto Frank for his writings, and the New York Supreme court awarded Meyer Levin $50,000, for his 'intellectual work'.
In 1980, Otto sued two Germans, Ernst Romer and Edgar Geiss, for distributing literature denouncing the diary as a forgery. The trial produced a study by official German handwriting experts that determined everything in the diary was written by the same person. The person that wrote the diaries had used a ballpoint pen throughout. Unfortunately for Herr Frank, the ballpoint pen was not available until 1951 whereas Anne was known to have died of typhus in 1944.
Because of the lawsuit in a German court, the German state forensic bureau, the Bundes Kriminal Amt [BKA] forensically examined the manuscript, which at that point in time consisted of three hardbound notebooks and 324 loose pages bound in a fourth notebook, with special forensic equipment.
The results of tests, performed at the BKA laboratories, showed that “significant” portions of the work, especially the fourth volume, were written with a ballpoint pen. Since ballpoint pens were not available before 1951, the BKA concluded those sections must have been added subsequently.
In the end, BKA clearly determined that none of the diary handwriting matched known examples of Anne's handwriting. The German magazine, Der Spiegel, published an account of this report alleging that (a) some editing postdated 1951; (b) an earlier expert had held that all the writing in the journal was by the same hand; and thus (c) the entire diary was a postwar fake.
The BKA information, at the urgent request of the Jewish community, was redacted at the time but later inadvertently released to researchers in the United States.
But it was possible for Ann Frank to have used a ball point pen in the last chapters as dozens of RAF pilots went through the Nederlands in their escape back to the UK from 1940.
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