Natalee Holloway update 2;Peter R. de Vries will reveal all on Sunday. Joran van der Sloot allegedly confesses to accidental death.Beth Twitty footage

Peter R. De Vries just appeared on the same talk show (Pauw and Witteman) with the infamous wine incident, but was remarkably tight lipped, sticking to the story that he released earlier and refusing to 'accuse or acquit anyone' at this point. He has stated that there is no reason to believe that Natalee is alive.

The Aruban Authourities have not found a body, but the rumour is that Joran van der Sloot has confessed, to something at least. Other rumours state that it might have been an accident.

De Vries stated that it was the use of spectacular hidden camera footage that provided the break through and that he might have known more during his last appearance on the talk show with van der Sloot and his parents. His questions provoked van der Sloot so much on this occasion that the then former suspect threw a glass of red wine in his face.



Pauw en Witteman also showed a clip of de Vries revealing the information to Holloway's mother, Beth Twitty. She appeared upset but composed, exclaiming; 'Look what they've done. Look what those animals have done. What they've done to her...'
Even after the clip, de Vries refused to reveal more.

Both the hosts, Jeroen Pauw and Paul Witteman criticised de Vries for holding back and used various leading questions to get an answer out of him. De Vries was steadfast in saying he doesn't intend to reveal more until his programme scheduled for Sunday.



Translation;
This is the place in Aruba where Natalee Holloway disappeared without a trace. Almost no one believed that this mystery would ever be solved. But we have the solution. We discovered, in the course of blood curdling hidden camera operation, what happened to Natalee, and who did it. An extremely shocking documentary that will be world news on sunday, when it is broadcast by SBS 6. Make sure you are an eyewitness to the most exciting, most revealing documentary I have ever made.

Holloway update; Peter R. De Vries refuses to say anything. Joran van der Sloot allegedly confesses. Natalee definitively Dead. Beth Twitty in Holland

Dutch TV channel SBS 6 just reported that there are strong rumours that Joran van der Sloot just confessed to the murder. Neighbours in Arnhem, where Van der Sloot studies law haven't seen him at all the last few weeks.

The Aruban Justice department is reporting that arrests will be made soon and apparently de Vries managed to get a hidden camera confession out of van der Sloot. The rumour is that van der Sloot claims it was an accident.

De Vries definitively stated that Natalee Holloway is dead and that he knows how she died and what happened to the body. Natalee's mother, Beth Twitty is reportedly flying back to the U.S. shortly.

Dutch TV sleuth claims to have solved Holloway case

I responded to your many demands (1) and have started commenting on Dutch stuff over here; http://watjespolemiek.blogspot.com/. As for the hottest news as of 5 minutes ago, it's Dutch TV-presenter/crime reporter Peter R. De Vries, who just revealed that he's solved the Natalee Holloway case. He's not telling anyone who did it until his program runs on Sunday, though. I assume he's brokering the deal with the U.S. right now, which would make for some excellent viewing pleasure.

Here's the news as broken by his own website. The Aruban Justice department has given the response that de Vries' help was instrumental in breaking the case. Apparently, Natalee Holloway's mother has been informed and is in Holland now.

This is the last incident before this one were former (now possibly current?) suspect Joran van der Sloot throws a glass of wine at the reporter after a talk show, in wich he accuses van der Sloot of holding back vital information.


Anyway, De Vries' promises to reveal all next Sunday, and on American TV shortly after.

International Banking Conspiracy

"Politics is the shadow cast by big business over society." This is probably truer today than when John Dewey wrote it. Why the pessimism you ask? I watched another one of those internet exclusive conspiracy movies. This one. Don't bother watching the whole thing, here's the recap: Ten minutes of stock footage labeled 'war' interspersed with George Carlin and Bill Hicks routines give way to a frank discussion (read: garbled agitprop) of the historicity of Jesus Christ. Jesus is a tribute band to the solar messiah idea that's a lot older than 2000 years and the bible is filled with mystical astrology. All true, but a more compelling argument wouldn't contain so many factual errors and be a lot funnier, like QI tackled the subject.



Act two details the requisite 9-11 conspiracy. These are problematic by any standards of good journalism, but I'm game. It was an awfully convenient pretext for war in the middle east. But the third act was genuinely interesting, and apparently only slightly overblown. The U.S. federal Reserve Bank is privately owned, by the Rockefellers and the Rothschilds, somewhat prominent families.

This I didn't know. And there's a lot of current conspiracy books about it. This one, or this one, etc. There was plenty of opposition at the time, Charles Lindbergh weighed in with this at the bill's second run through congress in 1913, with a new name;

"This is the Aldrich bill in disguise…The worst legislative crime of the ages is perpetrated by this banking bill…The banks have been granted the special privilege of distributing the money, and they charge as much as they wish…This is the strangest, most dangerous advantage ever placed in the hands of a special privilege class by any Government that ever existed. The system is private...There should be no legal tender other than that issued by the government…The People are the Government. Therefore the Government should, as the Constitution provides, regulate the value of money." (Congressional Record, 1913-12-22)

The only current politician who has this on the agenda is Ron Paul, hence the return to the gold standard. If you didn't have a soft spot for the guy before...

The filmmakers then go to town with the liberal horror story, starring total control as the ultimate evil. Even going as far as 'they will barcode our children'. Which they will. This in reference to rfid chips. This school district wants to use them to 'monitor' children. Gordon Brown would like to use them to keep track of prisoners. It is rather guileless of them to just suppose no one notices how ominous this all sounds, very Orwellian and biblical, even. Mark of the beast, etc. Of course Britain has plenty of experts who are already foaming at the mouth, but politely point out that it probably won't work as advertised. And this after the whole massive government leak of supposedly secure data. If there is some kind of revolt against this, I might end up on the same side as the Christians for once.

Naomi Klein is moving in pretty much the same direction in her latest book, which has the added bonus of being well-researched. I've only just started, but it guarantees to be a thoroughly depressing read. And here's the short film she did as promotion with Alfonso Cuarón.



Nelson W. Aldrich, the architect behind the federal reserve act famously said; The only question is whether World Government will be achieved by conquest or consent." Consent obviously. It shouldn't come as a surprise that 90% of the world's population has neither the time nor the patience to be masters of their own destiny. All that self-determination is useless to them. The only people that will even mind are a diverse collection of fools, traitors and criminals and I am happy to count myself among their number, right up until the moment the beatings start. Rest assured I will name names.

As you can probably tell, I'm a whole lot less worried about this these days than I would have been a couple of years ago. It's just that conspiracy theorists have far too much faith in the ability of totalitarian governments to control people. Human societies tend towards greater freedoms in the long run, not because of any noble ideals, but because it's impossible to ass-hole proof any system involving human beings. Grant Morrison said it best in the Invisibles:"They can't win. Chaos always creeps in. They can cover the whole world with cameras, but they can't stop the guys in the control room from wanking when they should be watching you." Random mismanagement and incompetence will destroy any utopia or distopia within a reasonable time span. One need only look back and see the ruins of past empires, all relegated to the dust of history.

A Confederacy of Dunces

I used to wonder why these primaries mattered. Since considerably less people vote than in the U.S. elections proper, it didn't seem like a good way to figure out which of your candidates would win the election. That's because that isn't the point. After reading Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72, I had a much better idea of how this whole process is supposed to play out and how it can be stolen by political pros with some knowledge of the system.

Not all of the primaries are proper elections. A good deal of them are like Iowa, which is a caucus, just a formal show of hands among the party's voters in the state, usually the local party heads and however else shows up. You could call a caucus on any issue as well, nationally or in that state, usually to force candidates to debate fringe issues that wouldn't adress if they could avoid them.New Hampshire was the first real primary, and as such, has slightly more realistic results compared to a caucus.

The real point of these primaries is an ongoing opinion poll/rallying cry/cash call/platform negotiation depending on where your weakness is. You might have to win a couple of primaries just to get noticed, or to secure better financial backing or to convince a popular politician to endorse you in his home state and nab crucial votes that way. This means you're pretty much going to have to compromise at some point. Once the primaries are over, you go to your party's convention with a potential piece of the vote and any delegates you won in the primaries. The party has a large number of delegates themselves which they will throw behind a candidate for whatever arbitrary reason or sleazy back room deal. These days the Democrats have opted for the same model as the Republicans, announcing the party candidate long before the convention, so that the convention becomes a formality and merely ratifies the candidate.

This is mostly because of the televised chaos of the 1968 and 1972 conventions. In the HST book, guaranteed front runner Ed Muskie does things the old-fashioned way. He secures endorsements from every Democrat in the country that's not running themselves and specifically from Richard J. Daley, the union-maffia connected Chicago mayor and de facto head of the Democratic party. This is the power base that got Roosevelt and Kennedy elected and seemed like the smart choice. But he burns out long before the primaries end and the front runner from that point on is George McGovern. McGovern is technically just left of the center but is also the only one appealing to the youth vote and other progressives, Vietnam veterans and feminists.

Not coincidentally, George McGovern was heavily involved in reforming the convention rules after the assassination of Bobby Kennedy in 1968 made the nomination of Hubert Humphrey possible, despite him never winning a single primary. All kinds of unheard of national caucuses were being voted on, the delegates needed to be representative of the population for the first time in U.S. history and there were at least two distinct blocs besides McGovern. The Daley group of party cadre types and traditional Democratic constituencies and George Wallace's ancient racist Democratic vote, believed to be the only way to win the south. McGovern beat them all, by using the rules he came up with to full effect, only to be run into the ground by the Nixon Machine a few months later.

The current democratic race is a good deal less interesting, seeing as we'll never know who played it best until one of the candidates walks out of the secret negotiations smiling for the press. It is developing along similar lines in terms of voting blocs, though. Hilary Clinton is obviously backed by the old party system (different, but the same), but does well with badly-informed progressives. Barrack Obama has the left of the centre and most of the fickle youth/progressive vote this time. John Edwards might appeal to anyone, but has no chance, except for another vice-presidency ticket if he gets enough bargaining power. He does have a decent chance of carrying the south, but this has been such a Republican stronghold since the Reagan years, there's really no point to that. The other candidates don't really matter, and never did. Mike Gravel's campaign has the stench of death worse than Joe Biden had and Dennis Kucinich is never going anywhere, despite his fantastic outrage at being kicked out of the NBC debate. The sad thing is, while in America he's a dangerously insane lefty, in Europe he would be a remarkably dull social democrat with 20 year old ideas.

Hillary is demonstrably left/liberal on every issue, but will probably be the most bought- and-paid-for president in the history of the United States. She also doesn't seem like a likely candidate to reduce the absurd powers of the executive office in her term. Obama, though less beholden to business interests will probably fuck up the negotiations at some point, and have to accept the VP nomination or try again 2012 or 2016, at which point he'll be considerably more corrupt than he is now. There is also virtually no comprehensive data concerning his voting record, seeing as he's only been in office two years, half of which was spent campaigning for the presidency.

On the Republican side, things are a lot more entertaining even though they're well aware that they need a miracle to win the election.

Rudy Giuliani still hasn't realised that America needs a president, not a mayor. But after the elections will probably get the bipartisan nod and become the new head of FEMA (I have my fingers crossed, he might actually be good at that.)
Ron Paul is this year's charming oddball whose internet presence is vastly overestimated as real world votes, though his return of the gold standard plan is completely insane in execution, it does bring up the uncomfortable fact of the semi-private ownership of the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank, a staple of post 9-11 conspiracy thinking and genuinely chilling fact.
Mitt Romney's appeal is largely based on his Mormon hair and teeth. I forgot who said it, but someone mentioned that if it came out that he was a cannibal, most people would just shrug and go with their gut anyway. He's trying to appeal to the religious right, which will never generate the same turnout as for Bush, no matter how much of his personal fortune he spends, Utah is the only state that's in the bag.
Mike Huckabee has that 'aw shucks' thing going for him and of course the lame Chuck Norris endorsement, but he's counting on the same voter base as Romney and is more likely to get it, but not before throwing half of it to McCain. He's also the out of touch senior citizen in this campaign, somewhat more earnest and predictably naff than the others.
John McCain will probably win the nomination if he keeps his cool after Super Tuesday, which would make him by far the most reasonable candidate to vote for in the general election.

Rest assured that the always dependable American public will be galvanised by the excitement to turn out in droves, unless of course they 'have a thing to do' on election day, which will make it difficult to reach anything resembling a mandate. But if 2004's 64% is topped, this might be the first election since 1972 in which more than half of the country actually wants the president they get. They wanted Nixon, though.