dizzying pantomime plays out in TV commercials

CREDIT CARD ROBOTS
By: Rafi Martina
11.22.06

A dizzying pantomime plays out in a new TV commercial: To a hip jazz tune, short-order cooks twirl and flip their products out on trays. Toasters depress their own toast, shooting them up when complete. Smoothie makers of all colors churn while sales clerks toss colorful sodas across the deli to customer after customer. The whole charade has a mechanical feel as an endless line of customers files in and out of the restaurant. Then, alas, one poor schmuck ruins the whole gig: Unlike all the savvy customers around him paying with their Visa cards (never mind that they file in and out like mindless automata), this average Joe has the audacity to pay with cash. Imagine that! Cash? How parochial. The catchphrase: "Money shouldn't slow you down."
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I simply couldn't believe my eyes after witnessing such a bold proclamation by Visa. Stigmatizing cash
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Moreover, in light of this country's growing problem with debt - both at the personal and national level - where does Visa get off glorifying the abjuration of cash in even the most prosaic moments (i.e. paying for something as paltry as lunch) in favor of instant and unnecessary debt? To me, the whole ad campaign is like Smirnoff putting out an ad admonishing water in light of vodka's "fantastic thirst-quenching effects." The catchphrase? "Hydration shouldn't sober you up."
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A study last year by Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer's office found that the average student at a four-year state college in New York owed more than $2,300 in credit card debt. I can't imagine the figures differ much for Michigan students. Nonetheless, we're bombarded daily with offers from credit pushers. In the mail, on the phone, the credit card industry waits impatiently for our next moment of seeming buyer necessity.
Credit card companies undoubtedly argue that credit comes with responsibility, that accepting a line of credit obviously involves a mature decision on the part of the credit card holder - and with it the commitment to manage one's funds (and inevitable debts) responsibly.

But credit cards don't fit the profile of caveat emptor essentially because you're not a buyer; credit cards aren't something you buy, they're something you buy with. The sense of the credit card as something other than an object but as something with which we pursue objects remains an important distinction. Indeed, if we superimpose any analogy to credit card addiction, the card doesn't represent any drug; the real drug figures as materialism and consumerism in general. Rather, credit cards stand to facilitate an addiction, to extend our material desires beyond the parameters of our actual buying power.
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A study last year by Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer's office found that the average student at a four-year state college in New York owed more than $2,300 in credit card debt. I can't imagine the figures differ much for Michigan students. Nonetheless, we're bombarded daily with offers from credit pushers. In the mail, on the phone, the credit card industry waits impatiently for our next moment of seeming buyer necessity.
Credit card companies undoubtedly argue that credit comes with responsibility, that accepting a line of credit obviously involves a mature decision on the part of the credit card holder - and with it the commitment to manage one's funds (and inevitable debts) responsibly.

But credit cards don't fit the profile of caveat emptor essentially because you're not a buyer; credit cards aren't something you buy, they're something you buy with. The sense of the credit card as something other than an object but as something with which we pursue objects remains an important distinction. Indeed, if we superimpose any analogy to credit card addiction, the card doesn't represent any drug; the real drug figures as materialism and consumerism in general. Rather, credit cards stand to facilitate an addiction, to extend our material desires beyond the parameters of our actual buying power.

The assumption of the Anglo-Dutch Liberals' imperialist financier cabal today, is that on condition that the U.S.A. is broken, and Russia, China, and India are crushed, there exists no other effective force of resistance to the establishment of a "permanent" world empire of the type which Shelburne and his lackey Jeremy Bentham sought in the closing decades of the Eighteenth Century.
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(THE PLAN?)
We are thus, presently, approaching a state of military affairs coincident with the most lunatic, Ockhamite-like science-fiction fantasies of the late 1940s and early 1950s. The prospect now emerging in the planning of our military affairs, is of a surface of the Earth reduced to a ruined state lower than bucolic idiocy, while space-based superweapon complexes control life on Earth's surface from above—something like the picture at the close of H.G. Wells' The Shape of Things to Come.

Inherently, automatic systems are intrinsically fragile, especially when ingenious human minds are determined to outflank, by outwitting those systems. The development of a "space command" system of global management of the planet's (FINANCIAL) affairs, is intrinsically vulnerable precisely because it is not human. The human mind, if qualified for such work, will always devise a method for outflanking any automatic super-system of defense and punishment. The relevant incidents involving China's experiments with countermeasures, are an echo of the feature of the SDI which terrified the off-the-shelf fanatics of the 1980s Heritage Foundation. As SDI illustrates this point, opponents of the utopian military dogmas associated with the recent U.S. and other trends, foster a situation in which the opponents of such utopian systems take human aim at what is inherently the most vulnerable feature of any quasi-automated space command system: its control system.
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However, nonetheless, push capable powers with instincts for sovereignty hard enough, and they will respond, sooner or later, to the lunatic policies expressed by the current Bush Administration's Dirty Dick Cheney. China's exploration of at least the fringes of something like the SDI, typifies the rather inevitable result.
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The policies associated with Mrs. Lynne Cheney's mascot, Dick, since his post as Secretary of Defense under George H.W. Bush, have created a present situation in which China has, quite lawfully, shown its sense of urgent interest in laser and related policies previously associated with the SDI. The already referenced events, the earlier illumination of a U.S. spy-satellite by China, and the recent laser-assisted destruction, by China, of one of China's own satellites, has set the proverbial "cat among the pigeons." In fact, the SDI is back! It never actually left us, but was waiting to ambush history on an appropriate later occasion, now.

BIG CHANGE' IN ELECTIONS SMOKESCREEN TO PACIFY PUBLIC
Where's the change? Will Speaker answer 'tough questions'?
11.13.06
By: Greg Szymanski
(arcticbeacon.com)

Repeal of the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act
"Congresswoman Pelosi has been opposed to the Patriot Act, but has not yet gone on record whether she will make it a priority to seek its repeal."
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Robert Gates Nomination for Secretary of Defense
"Congresswoman Pelosi has gone on the record, saying Mr. Gates is well qualified for the position, but the Senate should look at him very closely before he is sworn in."

And hopefully Pelosi and others will contact Patricia Johnson-Holm of Seattle who claims Gates through his connection with the Preston, Gates and Ellis Seattle Law Firm was involved in a sex slavery ring on the West Coast, involved in kidnapping her son, David L. Johnson, involved with Jack Abramoff, involved with George H. Bush in the 80's when they illegally wire tapped Johnson-Holm, involved with illegal gun-running in Iraq and Iran through the connections of the Kenn Borek Airline Co. and his involvement with the Ft. Steilacom Apartment complex and illegal drug-running.
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With the easy questions out of the way, here are some of the tough ones never asked by the media and never answered by the politicians. Let's see if Pelosi has the courage to answer the following in a forthright manner without sidestepping the issues or claiming ignorance. Although the following five questions are of a very general nature, they should open up a myriad of others. If you, the reader, have any specific questions for Pelosi, forward them to the Arctic Beacon as we will be contacting her office on a regular basis (for the rest of the story click here)

Dr. Robert M. Gates is the 22nd President of Texas A&M University, the nation's seventh largest university and an institution recognized internationally for its teaching, research and public service. He assumed the presidency of the land-grant, sea-grant and space-grant university on August 1, 2002. Dr. Gates served as Interim Dean of the George Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M from 1999-2001.

Dr. Gates joined the Central Intelligence Agency in 1966 and spent nearly 27 years as an intelligence professional, serving six presidents. During that period, he spent nearly nine years at the National Security Council, The White House, serving four presidents of both political parties.

Dr. Gates has been awarded the National Security Medal, the Presidential Citizens Medal, has twice received the National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal, and has three times received CIA's highest award, the Distinguished Intelligence Medal.
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Dr. Gates serves on the Board of Directors and Executive Committee of the American Council on Education, the Board of Directors of the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges, and the National Executive Board of the Boy Scouts of America. He is President of the National Eagle Scout Association.

Dr. Gates serves as Chairman of the Independent Trustees of The Fidelity Funds, the nation's largest mutual fund company, and on the board of directors of NACCO Industries, Inc., Brinker International, Inc. and Parker Drilling Company, Inc.

BIOPIRACY - IRAQ
BIOPIRACY AND GMOS: THE FATE OF IRAQ'S AGRICULTURE
By: Ghali Hassan
(organicconsumers.org)
12.12.05

While the Iraqi people are struggling to end the U.S. military Occupation and its associated violence, the fate of their food sources and agricultural heritage is being looted behind closed doors. Unless the colonisation of Iraq ends, the U.S. Occupation of Iraq will continue to have lasting and disastrous effects on Iraq's economy and Iraq's ability to feed its people.

Iraq is home to the oldest agricultural traditions in the world. Historical, genetic and archaeological evidence, including radiocarbon dating of carbon containing materials at the site, show that the Fertile Crescent, including modern Iraq, was the centre of domestication for a remarkable array of today's primary agricultural crops and livestock animals. Wheat, barley, rye, lentils, sheep, goats, and pigs were all originally brought under human control around 8000 BCE. Iraq is where wild wheat was once originated and many of its cereal varieties have been exported and adapted worldwide.
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Just before announcing his departure from Iraq and handing "power" to the U.S.-installed band of discredited quislings (the so-called "transfer of fake] sovereignty"), U.S. proconsul and head of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), Paul Bremer issued "100 Orders" to transfer Iraq's economy and legal ownership of Iraqi resources into the private hands of U.S. corporations.
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...A closer examination of these "100 Orders" and U.S. policy in Iraq shows that the war on Iraq had nothing to do with WMD, terrorism, "democracy" and "liberation," but to colonise Iraq and enrich U.S. corporations at the expense of the Iraqi people.

Order 81 deals specifically with Plant Variety Protection (PVP) because it is designed to protect the commercial interests of corporate seed companies. Its aim is to force Iraqi farmers to plant so-called "protected" crop varieties 'defined as new, distinct uniform and stable', and most likely genetically modified. This means Iraqi farmers will have one choice; to buy PVP registered seeds. Order 81 opens the way for patenting (ownership) of plant forms, and facilitates the introduction of genetically modified crops or organisms (GMOs) to Iraq. U.S. agricultural biotechnology corporations, such as Monsanto and Syngenta will be the beneficiaries. Iraqi farmers will be forced to buy their seeds from these corporations. GMOs will replace the old tradition of breeding closely related plants, and replace them with organisms composed of DNA from an altogether different species, e.g., bacterium genes into corn. In the long run, there won't be a big enough gene pool for genetic viability.
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Iraqi traditional plant varieties, which were kept in Iraq's gene bank at the town of Abu Ghraib -- the town where the Bush administration used the prison to abuse, torture and murder Iraqi prisoners and detainees --may have been looted and lost during the invasion. There is hope that the Syria-based Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) and the affiliated International Centre for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas (ICARDA) still holds accessions of several Iraqi varieties in the form of germplasm. Evidence shows that Western "bio-prospectors" have been using indigenous genetic material taken from their traditional owners. It is this kind of looting or "biopiracy" that is contributing to the destruction of farmers in the developing world, because they have lost control of what they sow, grow, reap and eat.
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The man who is in charge of dismantling Iraq's agriculture is Daniel Amstutz, formerly an executive of the Cargill Corporation. Cargill is well known for having the reputation of being one the worst violators of the rights and independence of family farmers throughout the world. Amstutz appointment is designed to undermine Iraqi farmers and destroy Iraq's ability to produce food to feed its people. His service has been to advance U.S. agribusiness corporations. For his task, Amstutz will be assisted by no others than Cargill, Monsanto, Dow and Texas A & M's Agriculture Program and its subsidiary the Arizona-based agriculture research firm, World Wide Wheat Company.

"Donald Rumsfeld still has an office in the Pentagon that he is working out of...and has six staff members working for him."
 
In what capacity is Rumsfeld still at the Pentagon? Is Gates just a front man for Rumsfeld like Bush, Jr is a front man for Cheney and Bush senior ?

From Rumsfeld’s Monsanto to Gates’ A&M?
BANKING ON BIOTECH
By: Nate Blakeslee
3.30.01

Farms in Texas are not what they used to be. Small, self-sufficient family operations have given way to capital intensive, single-crop enterprises, where knowledge increasingly comes not from experience, but from reading labels on barrels of chemical pesticides and fertilizers.
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In 1999, fully one quarter of all crops planted in the U.S. were genetically modified, including 35 percent of corn, 55 percent of soybeans, and almost half of all cotton. Many of the world’s giant chemical companies have reinvented themselves as "life science" companies. Monsanto, for example, is now earning millions on its Roundup Ready soybeans, which can withstand direct applications of the company’s popular weed-killer, Roundup.
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Regulatory agencies, including the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Environmental Protection Agency, have all signed off on the technology, though no safety testing of these products has been done by any public agency.
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Texas A&M University is one of the leading institutions in the field, and several genetically modified organisms (GMOs) on the market originated in College Station.
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Food Science and Engineering in College Station. "This is Not a Public Building," reads the glass front door of the building that houses the Institute, which is located in the Research Park area of campus, an array of low, modern buildings with large black windows and vast, treeless lawns of well fertilized Bermuda grass. Vestal explains that the building also serves as a "business incubator" for young biotech companies, which take advantage of low rents and access to laboratory facilities to develop their products on campus before taking them to market.
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Few institutions have done more than Texas A&M to promote chemical intensive agriculture, a model of farming exported to the developing world in the 1960s under a program known as the Green Revolution. (Norman Borlaug, known as the "Father of the Green Revolution" for his pioneering work in Mexico, is a professor emeritus at Texas A&M and still teaches one semester a year. He is now a big supporter of biotech.)

AN IDEAL ORGANIC SYSTEM HAS NO INPUTS; IT’S ALMOST A CLOSED CYCLE," .... NO CHEMICAL FERTILIZER OR PESTICIDES TO BE APPLIED, NO EXPENSIVE, PATENTED SEEDS TO BUY FROM MONSANTO

Malcolm Beck, the "Grandfather of Compost" and Texas’s outlaw farming guru. Begun as a small organic farm in the late fifties, Garden-Ville is now a million dollar business, dispensing compost and other organic soil supplements, herbicides, and pesticides to buyers across the country. Beck, who prefers to call his method of farming "economical" instead of organic, is one of the pioneers of organic farming in America. He was one of the first to promote the idea of soil health, insisting against conventional wisdom that chemical fertilizers helped plants but damaged the soil, eventually leading to reduced yields. Now in his sixties, he travels the country delivering his message of healthy soil and healthy plants, with a healthy dose of A&M bashing to boot.

For Beck, biotech is just another example of Texas A&M’s folly, which he has spent a lifetime documenting. Beck, who never attended college, compiled his knowledge of Texas agriculture through experience, observation, and methodical research in his greenhouse and on his organic farm. His office is lined with books about organic agriculture, including several he authored himself. When he started farming without chemicals in the late 1950s, the A&M-trained extension agents laughed at him. Over the years he has carefully documented the number of times he has proven A&M wrong. "I’m up to thirteen," he says. Beck has a slide show of his own, demonstrating side by-side rows of the same crops grown his way, and what he calls "A&M’s way." In the Garden-Ville model of science, seeing is believing, and he points enthusiastically at the large, healthy plants in the organic rows. "How you gonna argue with something like that?"

Beck says biotech is simply a bad deal for farmers. "The land-grant colleges are sellin’ farmers down the river. It’s not sustainable,"
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Beck says of the extension service. Yields are down and farmers are in trouble in Texas, though 10 years of drought and severe weather have played a large part. Yet biotech has not always delivered the promised high yields. A group of cotton farmers, including some from North Texas, filed a class action suit against Monsanto in 1999, when the company’s Bollguard brand of Bt cotton produced pathetically low yields. The stems were so weak, the bolls fell off before they could be harvested.

More often, it has been Monsanto suing the farmers. Farmers who purchase expensive biotech seeds are actually only "renting" the seeds, according to contracts they sign with Monsanto. Collecting the seeds from the subsequent harvest, a cycle followed by farmers for thousands of years, is expressly forbidden, and Monsanto has shown a willingness to sue even small producers suspected of re-planting second generation seeds. Some conventional farmers, either fed up with the seed giants, or seeking to capitalize on a growing market for organic or non-GMO products, have begun to explore other options.

The message was part of a master plan that had been crafted by corporations determined to control the world’s food supply. This was made clear at a biotech industry conference in January 1999, where a representative from Arthur Anderson Consulting Group explained how his company had helped Monsanto create that plan.

Over the past few years, Monsanto, a chemical company, has positioned itself as an agricultural company through control over seed the first link in the food chain. Monsanto now wants to control water, the very basis of life.
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Monsanto is now trying to establish its control over water. During 1999 Monsanto plans to launch a new water business, starting with India and Mexico since both these countries are facing water shortages.
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Monsanto plans to earn revenues of $420 million and net income of $63 million by 2008 from its water business in India and Mexico.
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Monsanto's Water and Aquaculture Business, like it's seed business, is aimed at controlling vital resources necessary for survival, converting them into a market and using public finances to underwrite the investments. A more efficient conversion of public goods into private profit would be difficult to find. Water is however too basic for life and survival. The right to water is the right to life. The privatisation and commodification of water is a threat to the right to life.
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Control over this scarce and vital resource will of course be a source of guaranteed profits.
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For Monsanto "Sustainable Development" means the conversion of an ecological crisis into a market of scarce resources.

Sept. 12, 2006 -- According to sources who worked with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) at Ground Zero on and after 911, residents of southern Manhattan and rescue and clean-up workers involved in the recovery operations at the site of the former World Trade Center are experiencing an unusually high rate of non-Hodgkin lymphoma -- a cancer that is common among individuals who have been exposed to extremely high levels of ionizing radiation, such as that from nuclear blasts and major nuclear reactor leaks. In addition to the respiratory problems among rescue workers at Ground Zero who breathed toxic "pulverized" concrete and other debris into their lungs, the radiation cancer is of extreme interest to researchers who suspect that the World Trade Center towers and Building 7 were brought down with the help of high energy releases. WMR spoke to a number of individuals who were at Ground Zero on 911 who are now experiencing symptoms resulting from severe damage to their immune systems -- a condition that is common among those exposed to high levels of radiation.

Sources close to FEMA in New York confirmed to WMR that the lymphoma cases are believed to be the result of a release of extremely high levels of radiation from a series of nuclear events on the morning of 911. They believe that explains the reason for the "pulverization" of concrete, molten metals, pyroclastic surges and fallout, and other anomalies resulting from the catastrophe. It was also pointed out that some vehicles parked on the west side of the World Trade Center were "fused" on the sides facing the towers -- the doors being melted into the body frames. Other cars parked nearby were not similarly affected.
(Click below link for the rest of the story)
http://waynemadsenreport.com/

I have been talking about these "atomic pigs" since 1975 when I was given all the details by a former top technical advisor of the Pope who wanted the data publicized since these buildings were in a way competing with the Pope's electric company in Chicago. Also, I have pledged absolute secrecy of the identities of the nuclear engineers who confided details to me. Until recently, no one seemed interested in my comments on this.

The Vatican has owned several of the major nuclear electric facilities in the U.S., Commonwealth Edison, Florida Power, and a facility near the nation's capitol. This ownership is illegal, since the Atomic Energy Act forbids foreign powers to own nuclear facilities inside the U.S. An associate of mine had her power arbitrarily cut off by Edison as a reprisal, after she petitioned the Atomic Energy Commission to deny Edison a new license for an additional nuclear electric facility, since Edison was owned by the Vatican, a foreign power. The Vatican ownership became an issue in Court, and she won a sizeable settlement from Edison. Eight major buildings downtown Chicago reportedly are not concerned about any power black-out. Why? Well, they reportedly have "atomic pigs" secretly installed in a sub-basement. The compact, nuclear submarine-type mechanism is called "atomic pig" because it is mounted on legs in a room 20 by 20 by 20 feet. Occupants of the office buildings have NOT been informed, on the theory that they might be unnecessarily alarmed. Only a handful of nuclear engineers in the U.S. who installed these mechanisms, are aware of the construction details. The entrances to these sub-basement rooms are some of the best kept secrets in the nation.

WITNESS ACCOUNT: 500 witness statements taken from firefighters and rescue personnel detailing their experiences of September 11th were marked confidential. Will we ever know the full story? Experts now state that glowing metal found amongst the basement ruins exhibited temperatures in excess of 1500 degrees Celsius. Temperatures like these, sustained for weeks at a time, cannot be attributed to jet fuel or to fires in the offices. Other indications suggest the use of a Thermite-like explosive combined with sulphur – a controlled demolition.
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...DURING THE CLEAN-UP, large quantities of molten metal were found in the basement floors under the rubble from the three buildings. It has been well documented that some of this molten metal continued to smoulder for several weeks after the event. The structural engineer responsible for the design of the World Trade Center Towers reported that fires in the debris continued to burn 21 days after the attacks and that he saw running streams of molten steel. Another reported the discovery of molten steel in pockets uncovered later that autumn.

The molten metal aroused the interest of Steven E. Jones – a highly respected professor of physics and astronomy at the Brigham Young University in Utah, (see also main article), specialising in metal-catalysed fusion. A colour photograph in the official technical report (FEMA 2002) shows molten metal being removed by a bulldozer from the ruins of the North tower’s basement. This photograph became a vital component of Jones’ investigation.

FBI agents lied about what they wanted from Jack Anderson's papers. The FBI agents who, in December, approached Olivia Anderson, the widow of deceased investigative reporter Jack Anderson and more recently, in March, author and researcher Mark Feldstein, who is writing a book about Jack Anderson, were interested in far more than the names of sources in the America-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) espionage case. That explanation by the FBI did not hold any water since Jack Anderson had not been active in pursuing that particular story -- he had suffered from Parkinson's Disease since 1986. According to individuals close to the FBI fishing expedition, the actual documents the FBI wanted to seize were files Anderson collected in the 1960s that linked George H. W. Bush's activities in Texas in 1963 to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas on November 22 of that year. Bush was a friend of George DeMohrenschildt, Lee Harvey Oswald's Belarusian-born contact officer.  DeMohrenschildt befriended Oswald and arranged for him to settle in Dallas after leaving the Soviet Union. DeMohrenshildt "committed suicide" shortly before he was due to testify before the 1978 House Assassinations Committee. The elder Bush's name, address, and phone number in Midland, Texas was found in DeMohrenshildt's address book under the heading "Poppy."