Tapir's Rants

The Scandal of PG&E's New Meters -- Signs of the Times News

2010-04-24T06:04:00.000-05:00

The Scandal of PG&E's New Meters -- Signs of the Times News: "http://www.sott.net/articles/show/207400-The-Scandal-of-PG-E-s-New-Meters"

The BioInitiative Report - The Dangerous Health Impacts of Microwave Radiation -- Signs of the Times News

2010-04-22T16:54:00.000-05:00

The BioInitiative Report - The Dangerous Health Impacts of Microwave Radiation -- Signs of the Times News: "http://www.sott.net/articles/show/207253-The-BioInitiative-Report-The-Dangerous-Health-Impacts-of-Microwave-Radiation"

8 Invented Diseases Big Pharma Is Banking on -- Signs of the Times News

2010-04-16T13:39:00.000-05:00

8 Invented Diseases Big Pharma Is Banking on -- Signs of the Times News: "http://www.sott.net/articles/show/206946-8-Invented-Diseases-Big-Pharma-Is-Banking-on"

Crime Prediction Software Is Here and It's a Very Bad Idea -- Signs of the Times News

2010-04-15T06:05:00.000-05:00

Crime Prediction Software Is Here and It's a Very Bad Idea -- Signs of the Times News: "http://www.sott.net/articles/show/206795-Crime-Prediction-Software-Is-Here-and-It-s-a-Very-Bad-Idea"

John Pilger: The two sides of Barack Obama -- Signs of the Times News

2009-08-15T05:32:00.000-05:00

John Pilger: The two sides of Barack Obama -- Signs of the Times News: "http://www.sott.net/articles/show/191292-John-Pilger-The-two-sides-of-Barack-Obama"

How the Secret Team transformed America into an Empire -- Signs of the Times News

2009-08-12T06:21:00.000-05:00

How the Secret Team transformed America into an Empire -- Signs of the Times News: "http://www.sott.net/articles/show/191000-How-the-Secret-Team-transformed-America-into-an-Empire"

Flying Pigs, Tamiflu and Factory Farms Part II: -- Signs of the Times News

2009-05-05T06:31:00.000-05:00

Flying Pigs, Tamiflu and Factory Farms Part II: -- Signs of the Times News: "http://www.sott.net/articles/show/183586-Flying-Pigs-Tamiflu-and-Factory-Farms-Part-II-"

Bush/Cheny Assasination Squads

2009-03-12T06:14:00.001-05:00

http://http//informationclearinghouse.info/article22194.htm

Connecting the Dots: The War on People, Obama's No-Change and the Hardening of Right-Wing Israel -- Signs of the Times News

2009-03-01T18:47:00.000-05:00

Connecting the Dots: The War on People, Obama's No-Change and the Hardening of Right-Wing Israel -- Signs of the Times News: "http://www.sott.net/articles/show/177727-Connecting-the-Dots-The-War-on-People-Obama-s-No-Change-and-the-Hardening-of-Right-Wing-Israel"

Why Does the World Feel Wrong? -- Signs of the Times News

2009-01-31T07:40:00.000-05:00

Why Does the World Feel Wrong? -- Signs of the Times News: "http://www.sott.net/articles/show/174235-Why-Does-the-World-Feel-Wrong-"

2009-01-29T07:21:00.002-05:00

Police State: New Legislation Authorizes FEMA Camps In U.S.

by Paul Joseph Watson

Global Research, January 28, 2009
infowars.com

A new bill introduced in Congress authorizes the Department of Homeland Security to set up a network of FEMA camp facilities to be used to house U.S. citizens in the event of a national emergency.

The National Emergency Centers Act or HR 645 mandates the establishment of “national emergency centers” to be located on military installations for the purpose of to providing “temporary housing, medical, and humanitarian assistance to individuals and families dislocated due to an emergency or major disaster,” according to the bill.

The legislation also states that the camps will be used to “provide centralized locations to improve the coordination of preparedness, response, and recovery efforts of government, private, and not-for-profit entities and faith-based organizations”.

Ominously, the bill also states that the camps can be used to “meet other appropriate needs, as determined by the Secretary of Homeland Security,” an open ended mandate which many fear could mean the forced detention of American citizens in the event of widespread rioting after a national emergency or total economic collapse.

Many credible forecasters have predicted riots and rebellions in America that will dwarf those already witnessed in countries like Iceland and Greece.

With active duty military personnel already being stationed inside the U.S. under Northcom, partly for purposes of “crowd control,” fears that Americans could be incarcerated in detainment camps are all too real.

The bill mandates that six separate facilities be established in different Federal Emergency Management Agency Regions (FEMA) throughout the country.

The camps will double up as “command and control” centers that will also house a “24/7 operations watch center” as well as training facilities for Federal, State, and local first responders.

The bill also contains language that will authorize camps to be established within closed or already operating military bases around the country.

As we have previously highlighted, in early 2006 Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root was awarded a $385 million dollar contract by Homeland Security to construct detention and processing facilities in the event of a national emergency.

The language of the preamble to the agreement veils the program with talk of temporary migrant holding centers, but it is made clear that the camps would also be used “as the development of a plan to react to a national emergency.”

As far back as 2002, FEMA sought bids from major real estate and engineering firms to construct giant internment facilities in the case of a chemical, biological or nuclear attack or a natural disaster.

A much discussed and circulated report, the Pentagon’s Civilian Inmate Labor Program, was more recently updated and the revision details a “template for developing agreements” between the Army and corrections facilities for the use of civilian inmate labor on Army installations.”

Alex Jones has attended numerous military urban warfare training drills across the US where role players were used to simulate arresting American citizens and taking them to internment camps.

Read the new legislation in full below.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

National Emergency Centers Establishment Act (Introduced in House)

HR 645 IH

111th CONGRESS

1st Session

H. R. 645 To direct the Secretary of Homeland Security to establish national emergency centers on military installations.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

January 22, 2009 Mr. HASTINGS of Florida introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, and in addition to the Committee on Armed Services, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned

A BILL To direct the Secretary of Homeland Security to establish national emergency centers on military installations.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as the `National Emergency Centers Establishment Act’.

SEC. 2. ESTABLISHMENT OF NATIONAL EMERGENCY CENTERS.

(a) In General- In accordance with the requirements of this Act, the Secretary of Homeland Security shall establish not fewer than 6 national emergency centers on military installations.

(b) Purpose of National Emergency Centers- The purpose of a national emergency center shall be to use existing infrastructure–

(1) to provide temporary housing, medical, and humanitarian assistance to individuals and families dislocated due to an emergency or major disaster;

(2) to provide centralized locations for the purposes of training and ensuring the coordination of Federal, State, and local first responders;

(3) to provide centralized locations to improve the coordination of preparedness, response, and recovery efforts of government, private, and not-for-profit entities and faith-based organizations; and

(4) to meet other appropriate needs, as determined by the Secretary of Homeland Security.

SEC. 3. DESIGNATION OF MILITARY INSTALLATIONS AS NATIONAL EMERGENCY CENTERS.

(a) In General- Not later than 60 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with the Secretary of Defense, shall designate not fewer than 6 military installations as sites for the establishment of national emergency centers.

(b) Minimum Requirements- A site designated as a national emergency center shall be–

(1) capable of meeting for an extended period of time the housing, health, transportation, education, public works, humanitarian and other transition needs of a large number of individuals affected by an emergency or major disaster;

(2) environmentally safe and shall not pose a health risk to individuals who may use the center;

(3) capable of being scaled up or down to accommodate major disaster preparedness and response drills, operations, and procedures;

(4) capable of housing existing permanent structures necessary to meet training and first responders coordination requirements during nondisaster p eriods;

(5) capable of hosting the infrastructure necessary to rapidly adjust to temporary housing, medical, and humanitarian assistance needs;

(6) required to consist of a complete operations command center, including 2 state-of-the art command and control centers that will comprise a 24/7 operations watch center as follows:

(A) one of the command and control centers shall be in full ready mode; and

(B) the other shall be used daily for training; and

(7) easily accessible at all times and be able to facilitate handicapped and medical facilities, including during an emergency or major disaster.

(c) Location of National Emergency Centers- There shall be established not fewer than one national emergency center in each of the following areas:

(1) The area consisting of Federal Emergency Management Agency Regions I, II, and III.

(2) The area consisting of Federal Emergency Management Agency Region IV.

(3) The area consisting of Federal Emergency Management Agency Regions V and VII.

(4) The area consisting of Federal Emergency Management Agency Region VI.

(5) The area consisting of Federal Emergency Management Agency Regions VIII and X.

(6) The area consisting of Federal Emergency Management Agency Region IX.

(d) Preference for Designation of Closed Military Installations- Wherever possible, the Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with the Secretary of Defense, shall designate a closed military installation as a site for a national emergency center. If the Secretaries of Homeland Security and Defense jointly determine that there is not a sufficient number of closed military installations that meet the requirements of subsections (b) and (c), the Secretaries shall jointly designate portions of existing military installations other than closed military installations as national emergency centers.

(e) Transfer of Control of Closed Military Installations- If a closed military installation is designated as a national emergency center, not later than 180 days after the date of designation, the Secretary of Defense shall transfer to the Secretary of Homeland Security administrative jurisdiction over such closed military installation.

(f) Cooperative Agreement for Joint Use of Existing Military Installations- If an existing military installation other than a closed military installation is designated as a national emergency center, not later than 180 days after the date of designation, the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Secretary of Defense shall enter into a cooperative agreement to provide for the establishment of the national emergency center.

(g) Reports-

(1) PRELIMINARY REPORT- Not later than 90 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Homeland Security, acting jointly with the Secretary of Defense, shall submit to Congress a report that contains for each designated site–

(A) an outline of the reasons why the site was selected;

(B) an outline of the need to construct, repair, or update any existing infrastructure at the site;

(C) an outline of the need to conduct any necessary environmental clean-up at the site;

(D) an outline of preliminary plans for the transfer of control of the site from the Secretary of Defense to the Secretary of Homeland Security, if necessary under subsection (e); and

(E) an outline of preliminary plans for entering into a cooperative agreement for the establishment of a national emergency center at the site, if necessary under subsection (f).

(2) UPDATE REPORT- Not later than 120 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Homeland Security, acting jointly with the Secretary of Defense, shall submit to Congress a report that contains for each designated site–

(A) an update on the information contained in the report as required by paragraph (1);

(B) an outline of the progress made toward the transfer of control of the site, if necessary under subsection (e);

(C) an outline of the progress made toward entering a cooperative agreement for the establishment of a national emergency center at the site, if necessary under subsection (f); and

(D) recommendations regarding any authorizations and appropriations that may be necessary to provide for the establishment of a national emergency center at the site.

(3) FINAL REPORT- Not later than 1 year after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Homeland Security, acting jointly with the Secretary of Defense, shall submit to Congress a report that contains for each designated site–

(A) finalized information detailing the transfer of control of the site, if necessary under subsection (e);

(B) the finalized cooperative agreement for the establishment of a national emergency center at the site, if necessary under subsection (f); and

(C) any additional information pertinent to the establishment of a national emergency center at the site.

(4) ADDITIONAL REPORTS- The Secretary of Homeland Security, acting jointly with the Secretary of Defense, may submit to Congress additional reports as necessary to provide updates on steps being taken to meet the requirements of this Act.

SEC. 4. LIMITATIONS ON STATUTORY CONSTRUCTION.

This Act does not affect–

(1) the authority of the Federal Government to provide emergency or major disaster assistance or to implement any disaster mitigation and response program, including any program authorized by the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (42 U.S.C. 5121 et seq.); or

(2) the authority of a State or local government to respond to an emergency.

SEC. 5. AUTHORIZATION OF APPROPRIATIONS.

There is authorized to be appropriated $180,000,000 for each of fiscal years 2009 and 2010 to carry out this Act. Such funds shall remain available until expended.

SEC. 6. DEFINITIONS.

In this Act, the following definitions apply:

(1) CLOSED MILITARY INSTALLATION- The term `closed military installation’ means a military installation, or portion thereof, approved for closure or realignment under the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Act of 1990 (part A of title XXIX of Public Law 101-510; 10 U.S.C. 2687 note) that meet all, or 2 out of the 3 following requirements:

(A) Is located in close proximity to a transportation corridor.

(B) Is located in a State with a high level or threat of disaster related activities.

(C) Is located near a major metropolitan center.

(2) EMERGENCY- The term `emergency’ has the meaning given such term in section 102 of the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (42 U.S.C. 5122).

(3) MAJOR DISASTER- The term `major disaster’ has the meaning given such term in section 102 of the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (42 U.S.C. 5122).

(4) MILITARY INSTALLATION- The term `military installation’ has the meaning given such term in section 2910 of the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Act of 1990 (part A of title XXIX of Public Law 101-510; 10 U.S.C. 2687 note).

Paul Joseph Watson is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Paul Joseph Watson

2009-01-27T20:12:00.002-05:00

Obama and the Drug of Hope

by Bryann Alexandros

Global Research, January 27, 20009

On January 20, 2009, during a frigid and fiercely cold day, hundreds of thousands of allegedly sane American patriots had traversed land, air, and sea to attend a majestic spectacle: the inauguration of President Barack Obama, 44th behaloed president of the United States of America.

CNN, the mainstream news network for lemmings that spearheaded the event, bore witness to a jubilant and expectant audience of men, women, and children, sweeping across Washington like a sea, nay, a tsunami that prophets would be reluctant to part. Within the cold thunderous mishmash, old war veterans and baby boomers, the young and hip hopefuls, and trendites, socialites, and new-agey feel-goods attended this spiritually vivifying event. Flag-wavers, nationalists, newly-born patriots and born-again patriots reveled in song, dance, and poetry, patting one another, eyes shut and smiling wryly in disbelief, congratulating each other as comrades with the look of a mission finally accomplished. Roland Martin reminded us that, in the name of change, pop-culture iconoclasts Oprah, Puff Daddy, and Smokey Robinson were present. Hilarity ensues – as if Americans just had to know. As if the Washingtons, Paines, Lincolns, and squirrels gave a flying acorn whether they attended or not. The monolithic gears of the corporate media machine were well-oiled, running, and ready to embellish a princely procession estimated to cost a baffling $150 million.

Talking female heads glossed over excitedly the philosophy behind the new charismatic leader, pontificating the resemblance to the struggles of Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King, Jr. As Obama began to utter his prescribed words, televised montages were intricately slabbed across American screens: pictures of starry-eyed commoners from Memphis, New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Pasadena, a perfect portrayal of people so enraptured by Obama's rhetoric that they were cerebrally neutralized and rendered speechless. In one scene, a woman with clasped, prayerful hands and chin atremble is choked in tears. Opposite that, men nod their heads agreeably to the tune of the same war agenda. The rest continued to listen and watch with mouths agape. Hilary Rosen admitted to crying after witnessing the chain reaction of scenes of other teary-eyed people. The audience, unable to contain their joy, horned in their hollers of approval when the speech got really good. Proceeding to the paperwork, Wolf Blitzer and Anderson Cooper commented on the panache of Obama's penmarkship and the sexiness of his signature's flourish, in case viewers were slow to appreciate the way a man signs his papers. Everything segues into the fluttering backdrop of a silent American flag.

Quoting Thomas Paine in his speech, Obama says: "Let it be told to the future world, that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet it." How often had politicians touted the eloquence and wisdom of the revolutionaries as if they admired it, respected it – understood it? The ugly punishing reality contends many have abused it and forgotten it: where is the virtue in funneling billions to foreign conflicts and shenanigans, wasting more billions brewing client states and proxy wars, welcoming the bankers with their fiat money and fiat laws, and rewriting our own laws to transform a grand republic into a corporate, draconian democracy?

The few strong who could wield what was left of their intellectual reserves were aware of the carefully planned coup de grace, and dodged the merciful blow intended to daze the populace and cloak runaway tyranny as it reformed itself. The geriatric elite in their crisp American flag-pinned suits and their Zionist counterparts from afar must've realized that the blitzkrieg doctrines under Bush and Cheney could only last for so long no matter who passed the torch. A defiant public had even sacrificed self-reliance and are now rank with a sickly dependence on big government, and coupled with their ignorance of the darker realms of history, they are now binging on the ecstatic drug of hope to replenish their depleted, wayworn souls. Now the timid and inexperienced are apt to choose pretenders who easily masquerade as messiahs. The timing was perfect. Henry Kissinger in a recent interview with CNBC had praised Obama. With a majority of the anti-war movement now quelled and pacified, a "new world order" can finally emerge.

"The president-elect is coming into office at a moment when there is upheaval in many parts of the world simultaneously. You have India, Pakistan; you have the jihadist movement. So he can't really say there is one problem, that it's the most important one. But he can give new impetus to American foreign policy partly because the reception of him is so extraordinary around the world. His task will be to develop an overall strategy for America in this period when, really, a new world order can be created. It's a great opportunity, it isn't just a crisis."

Many remain green, evasive, and unacquainted towards geopolitics and the ancient art of empire. And now Obama, who has bedded the Israeli Zionist leadership and their AIPAC cohorts, is now free and fated to willingly carry out that elusive agenda.

Obama surrounds himself by an unmistakably pro-war and pro-business entourage that includes Iraqi war architect Robert Gates, classic war hawk Hillary Clinton, and the new national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, who has entertained racy thoughts of imperialism through subterfuge and proxy since the days of the Cold War. The appointment of Secretary of Agriculture, former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack and big-agribusiness stooge, is ominous to the domination of big-agribusiness at home and operations abroad. Hope-Change addicts cannot help but further stroke themselves to the cockered Obama who kowtows without qualms or conscience to the racist Zionist euphemism of "security" in Israel, salivating over any meaty piece of legislature that suppresses the original Semities – the Palestinians – and sends munitions unconditionally to Israel as they continue to quarter and eradicate Gazan civilians en masse. Zionism 1, Change 0.

Meanwhile, Russia, the mighty bear who emerged victorious against the proxy South Ossetia war, expressed cautious optimism about Obama who still believes Russia was the aggressor in the conflict. Eugene Kolesnikov, a private consultant in the Netherlands, had it nicely summed up during in Expert's Panel for Russia Profile, that it's unclear what the pro-war Obama administration will now do, whether they will continue sponsoring the loathed missile-shield in Poland, push forward the annexation of Georgia into NATO, or amplify other "Russia-containment policies."

"Obama's Clintonite foreign affairs team and such advisors as Zbigniew Brzezinski will want [Obama] to carry on with the Russia containment policies. The containment approach is based on the assessment prevalent in the U.S. establishment that America will be capable of dominating the world if China is allied, Europe is taken back into the fold by involvement in decision-making, and all sorts of "smart power" improvements are implemented elsewhere."

Hamid Karzai, stooge and successor to the bygone Taliban leadership, is now condemning Obama's audacity-authorized missile strike that killed 16 civilians. And likewise, another missile strike – with love from Obama – hits Pakistan, where many enraged Pakistanis clamored that it would only aggravate the growth of terrorist and militant activity, should Americans continue to violate the country's sovereignty. Juan Cole from Salon.com writes:

"This resort to violence from the skies even before Obama had initiated discussions with Islamabad is a bad sign. It is not clear if Obama really believes that the fractious tribes of the Pakistani northwest can be subdued with some airstrikes and if he really believes that U.S. security depends on what happens in Waziristan."

Obama's audacious attacks only days within office run counter to the hope and change policies that he had mightily professed. Even the executive orders for the closure of Gitmo and other prisons still cannot abolish torture and illegal detention, in stark contrast to what CNN lackeys had prematurely parroted during the inauguration. The orders are still tinged and knowingly laden with loopholes, as investigated by Prof. James Hill of Global Research.

"The loopholes in President Obama's executive order on torture may permit cruel abuses of prisoners to continue, using a legal parlor trick. Labeling detainees the product of counterterrorism operations rather than of armed conflict, or holding detainees in detention facilities operated by entities other than the CIA, may allow government agents and private contractors conforming to the letter of the president's order to continue practices most would consider torture."

It's impossible to class Obama amongst the ranks of men who did uphold virtue in the stately quarters of Washington, where the storms of corruption always struck. Before they fancied thoughts of presidency, where was the hero Obama as Dennis Kucinich spoke against and voted against Iraq war funding and the rising tide of unconstitutional laws such as the Patriot Act, which Obama had both supported? Where was the absent Obama as Ron Paul lambasted the bailouts and the illegal Federal Reserve, both again which Obama either stood quiet or supported? Ex post facto remorse doesn't count. In the depth of winter, when the city and country were finally met with that one common danger: Where was the man during the decisive battle, not after!

Obama's cheerleaders and corps of provocateurs can only admit that they have foolishly divined a man who has masterfully altered his image and aura to where people have mistaken him as someone spiritual, magical – seductive. Stout and reactionary, many have become forever loyal and refuse any Obama criticism. In turn they brand their opposites as querulous, fault-finding haters who trumpet paranoia over hope and change. However, the real freedom-fighters had always embraced the blood-stained ideals of common sense, the same tired sons and daughters of liberty who would fight in chains rather than swallow sweet acid and die by the sword of a politician's scripture. They are indeed the same brothers and sisters who, on another frigid and fiercely cold day, stood together with Obama's supporters against Bush, Cheney, and the Zionists, long before Obama was deified. Now our armies have been split: by altering the realities of the ignorant. Divide and conquer.

Bryann Alexandros is a freelance writer and contributor to Global Research. He lives in Virginia Beach, VA.

2009-01-25T09:08:00.002-05:00

Day One for the Global Savior Barack Obama
Kurt Nimmo, Infowars, January 21, 2009

Now that Obama is installed in the Oval Office, the job of "saving the world" can begin. Of course, that's what the corporate media tells us - this one-term senator, basically a man out of nowhere - will save us. In fact, Barack Obama cannot save us and that will not be his job, even though millions apparently believe it. Barack Obama is a front man for the New World Order. He is a used car salesman tasked with selling us on global fascism, that is to say transnational corporatism.

As Obama wrote for the globalist Council on Foreign Relations periodical Foreign Affairs, "the security and well-being of each and every American depend on the security and well-being of those who live beyond our borders."

For the globalists, "security and well-being" translates into invading small and enfeebled countries like Iraq and Afghanistan. In order for the global elite to be secure - that is to say, for them to retain power and push their world domination agenda forward - small nations resisting globalization must be invaded and carpet bombed with depleted uranium. Saddam Hussein was not a threat to the American people, as fraudulently advertised - he was a threat to the banksters and globalists who frown upon leaders with ideas of their own, even if they are brutal dictators.

In Afghanistan, before the magical and timely appearance of the CIA-ISI created terrorist group named after a database, the Taliban were told that they could choose between a carpet of gold or a carpet of bombs. Transnational corporations had ideas about oil and gas pipelines transversing the country.

Stooges of the Taliban were kidnapped and sent to Gitmo, while Saddam had a date with a noose. This is how the global elite mobsters Obama represents do business.

Now the American people will get a taste. Obama promised as much in the lead-up to his anointment when he peddled his sacrifice and "responsibility" mantra. In the months and years ahead, there will be plenty of suffering required as the elite take down the last bastion of liberty and install their version of a brave new world - a global slave plantation with a high-tech surveillance and control grid overlay. Glaring aspects of this control grid were on display as Obama was sworn into office, never mind his supposed botching of the oath.

"The US military will fly air patrols, man surface-to-air weapons systems, ply the Potomac River with gunboats, assess chemical and biological threats, organize large-scale medical support in the event of an attack, and provide visible and undercover on-the-ground security," the Telegraph reported on January 20.

In order to send the message, the FBI and Homeland Security manufactured a "possible threat from an East Africa radical Islamic terrorist group," al-Shabaab, that "might try to travel to the U.S. with plans to disrupt the inauguration." Naturally, the threat "had limited specificity and uncertain credibility," according to Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke.

Even Congress critters were bluntly instructed on the prerequisites of the police state. "Inauguration security is getting so tough that even lawmakers are getting warnings," Paul Bedard wrote on January 2. "What's more, the House sergeant at arms has a new list of banned personal items that includes camera bags and thermoses."

Obama's change is nothing if not a slick parlor trick. He will continue the course plotted by the global elite during the Bush administration. "Recently, President Obama said al-Qaida was the most important threat. He's right, but we must address this threat more comprehensively than we have," declared former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Richard Myers. "We must recognize that violent extremists around the world make up a global insurgency. Iraq, Afghanistan and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are part of this insurgency, but the insurgency is larger than these 'tactical' fights."

Translation: the Arabs and Muslims are still resisting the plans of the global elite, so they must be corrected by way of bunker-buster and depleted uranium.

"Developing a strategy to deal comprehensively with this global insurgency should be high on the president's priority list. Any strategy must realize this will require the efforts of the international community, not just America," the good general averred.

Israel will remain the client bastion-fortress in the Middle East. "America to lead the effort to build the road to a lasting peace [in the Middle East]," Obama writes for the CFR. "Our starting point must always be a clear and strong commitment to the security of Israel, our strongest ally in the region and its only established democracy."

Bush's "minds," the neocons, were determined to bomb Iran - numero uno when it comes to resisting the New World Order - and this plan will remain the same under Obama, albeit with a rearrangement of window dressing. "Our diplomacy should aim to raise the cost for Iran of continuing its nuclear program by applying tougher sanctions and increasing pressure from its key trading partners," he writes for the CFR. Obama plans to "show Iran - and especially the Iranian people - what could be gained from fundamental change: economic engagement, security assurances, and diplomatic relations."

In other words, the Iranian people have to take orders from the global elite. Sanctions will work about the same as they did against Iraq - that is to say Iraq suffered more than a decade of medieval sanctions, resulting in the murder of more than 500,000 children and over a million Iraqi adults. Iran can expect the same if they don't whistle the New World Order tune and right quick.

The installment of Barack Obama represents a new game plan for the global elite. George Bush did his part - under his administration, draconian domestic "executive orders" were put in place to set the stage for martial law and a police state. Obama will have this toolset at his disposal now that everybody from esteemed economists to policy wonks at the Pentagon are predicting everything from revolution in the streets to food riots as the bankster engineered depression settles over the land like a ten ton gorilla.

As cynical as it may seem, Obama was chosen and installed because it will be nearly impossible to disagree with his policies - the policies of the globalists. If you do so, you will be labeled a racist and a defeatist. Soon enough, "Obama 2.0," the fascistic mass movement, will organize and dispatch goons to deal with these supposed racists mano-a-mano. It is no mistake Obama's "grass roots" election campaign is now being turned into an up-to-date version of Hitler's brownshirts that will not only ferret out environmental criminals, but all opposition to the global elite plan to turn the world into a hellish totalitarian nightmare.

Obama is a creature manufactured by the New World Order. He is not a savior, although he is a darn good snake oil salesman. He can read the teleprompters better than George Bush, too. In the weeks ahead he will be sold as not only a savior for America, but one for the world at large. Obama's image as a global leader will be used to sell world government, especially as the economy continues to crumble, as planned.

As usual, the question is: will we accept this or rise up in opposition?

Robert Fisk: Posturing and laughter as victims rot -- Signs of the Times News

2009-01-25T08:51:00.001-05:00

Robert Fisk: Posturing and laughter as victims rot -- Signs of the Times News: "http://www.sott.net/articles/show/173860-Robert-Fisk-Posturing-and-laughter-as-victims-rot"

2009-01-23T07:19:00.003-05:00

Fri

23

Jan

2009
Thus Sprach Barack: Pouring Acid on Gaza's Wounds
Written by Chris Floyd

Yesterday, we wrote of our eager anticipation of Barack Obama's long-suppressed opinion on the mass slaughter in Gaza. As we all know, the most eloquent, forthright and morally concerned orator of the age kept a demure silence on this subject for weeks, because, he said, "we have only one president at a time," who alone should speak about foreign policy. Of course, that didn't keep the morally concerned orator from speaking freely on almost every other aspect of foreign policy -- Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, etc. But consistency, as they say, is the hobgoblin of small minds, and the brain of the new president -- who has set the world aflame with rhetoric that has never been heard in Washington before, soaring phrases of penetrating uniqueness about freedom, hope, peace, and the enduring greatness of the American people -- is famously large.

Anyway, we have waited, and at last Obama has spoken. Here's what he had to say today, while welcoming Hillary Clinton to the State Department and appointing Establishment grandee George Mitchell as his special envoy to the Middle East:

Let me be clear: America is committed to Israel's security. And we will always support Israel's right to defend itself against legitimate threats. For years, Hamas has launched thousands of rockets at innocent Israeli citizens. No democracy can tolerate such danger to its people, nor should the international community, and neither should the Palestinian people themselves, whose interests are only set back by acts of terror.

To be a genuine party to peace, the quartet has made it clear that Hamas must meet clear conditions: recognize Israel's right to exist; renounce violence; and abide by past agreements. Going forward, the outline for a durable cease-fire is clear: Hamas must end its rocket fire; Israel will complete the withdrawal of its forces from Gaza; the United States and our partners will support a credible anti-smuggling and interdiction regime, so that Hamas cannot rearm.

Yesterday I spoke to President Mubarak and expressed my appreciation for the important role that Egypt played in achieving a cease-fire. And we look forward to Egypt's continued leadership and partnership in laying a foundation for a broader peace through a commitment to end smuggling from within its borders.

There you have it. The invasion of Gaza -- which began after Israel broke the ceasefire, launched provocative and deadly raids inside Gaza, and had also tightened its death-grip blockade to a level quite legitimately comparable to the Warsaw Ghetto -- was actually the fault of (wait for it, wait for it).... the Palestinians. Thus sprach Barack.

But do let's be fair. The new president also feels the pain of the Palestinians in Gaza. He feels it so much that he is going to ensure that any reconstruction in Gaza is controlled by the kleptocracy known as the Palestinian Authority -- the same faction that tried -- with American and Israeli backing -- to overthrow the legitimate, democratically elected government of Palestine, instigating a vicious civil war that, lo and behold, left Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation weak and splintered. Now hear the words of the Compassionate One:

Now, just as the terror of rocket fire aimed at innocent Israelis is intolerable, so, too, is a future without hope for the Palestinians. I was deeply concerned by the loss of Palestinian and Israeli life in recent days and by the substantial suffering and humanitarian needs in Gaza. Our hearts go out to Palestinian civilians who are in need of immediate food, clean water, and basic medical care, and who've faced suffocating poverty for far too long.

Now we must extend a hand of opportunity to those who seek peace. As part of a lasting cease-fire, Gaza's border crossings should be open to allow the flow of aid and commerce, with an appropriate monitoring regime, with the international and Palestinian Authority participating.

Relief efforts must be able to reach innocent Palestinians who depend on them. The United States will fully support an international donor's conference to seek short-term humanitarian assistance and long-term reconstruction for the Palestinian economy. This assistance will be provided to and guided by the Palestinian Authority.

At every point, the control of the "Palestinian Authority" -- which means, of course, the Israeli government -- is stressed. Even Obama's dramatic call to open the crossings that Israel has imposed on the open-air prison of Gaza, where many thousands of people have been living in refugee camps for 60 years, and where the entire 1.5 million-strong population is kept stateless and imprisoned, is carefully hedged: the crossings will require "an appropriate monitoring regime" -- i.e., the same regime that has been monitoring the crossings for years on end: the Israeli government. Of course, the PA -- the former insurgent group that has turned itself into the Judenrat of the occupation, doing the Israeli government's dirty work for them -- is to be cut in on the action, along with unspecified "international participation." Of course, the recent deadly attack on UN buildings in Gaza has given us yet another in a long string of demonstrations of how Israel treats "international participation" within its domains and targeted territories.

Now we can see why Obama kept silent on Gaza while Bush was still in the White House: because he held precisely the same views as Bush on the subject. There is nothing in Obama's statement that could not have been said -- or was not actually said -- by Bush. You couldn't slide a piece of onion-skin paper between the stances of the two men on Gaza.

Meanwhile, Professor As'ad AbuKhalil, the "Angry Arab," takes an equally dim view of today's developments:

Well, it took two longs days before Obama dispelled any notions of a change in US Middle East policy. For some reasons, many Arabs and many American leftists I know (you know yourselves) have wanted to believe so bad that Obama will deviate from the Zionist path of US foreign policy. I knew that it would be a matter of weeks that he would prove me right, but I did not know that he would prove me right in a matter of hours. His speech on the Middle East today could have easily been written by Benjamin Netanyahu....

Obama's speech was quite something. It was like sprinkling sulfuric acid on the wounds of the children in Gaza--those who survived the Israeli terrorist festival of butchery and massacres. His remarks leave you with the impression that there are two sets of problems in the holy land: that there was terrorism against civilians in "southern Israel" and then there is some undefined civilian suffering in Gaza from some undefined natural disaster--an earthquake or hurricane.... He then followed the Zionist line that all aid should pass through the transparent gangs in Ramallah--but that is important because Fatah has a very long record of integrity, transparency, merit, and high ethical standards--along with collaboration with Israel.

AbuKhalil also points us to this analysis of Obama's chosen partner in Middle East peace, the man who was in fact the first foreign leader the new president called upon taking office: Palestinian "president" Mahmoud Abbas. (The quote are required because Abbas' term has actually ended, but he is still somehow president of a rump Palestinian Authority.) From The National:

The reasons for Abbas’s demise are few, and they predate the Israeli attack on Gaza: he long ago placed all of his eggs in the Israeli-American basket. Acting as if his chickens had already hatched, his inability to deliver any tangible achievement has instead meant they came home to roost with a vengeance.

Key to this is Abbas’s relationship to his people: simply put, it never existed. Arafat saw the Palestinians as the ace in the deck to be played when all else failed, and understood that his leverage with outside actors derived from their conviction that he represented the Palestinian people. If he consistently failed or refused to properly mobilise this primary resource, he at least always held it in reserve.

Abbas has by contrast been an inveterate elitist, who seems to have regarded the Palestinian population as an obstacle to be overcome so that the game of nations could proceed – there are after all only so many seats at the table where great statesmen like George Bush and Ehud Olmert together create the contours of a new Middle East....

Cursed with exceptional self-regard, Abbas has always shown disinterest in the opinions of others. From the moment he convinced himself of the sincerity of Bush’s visions, which put the onus on the Palestinians to prove they qualify for membership in the human race and are worthy of being spoken to by Tsipi Livni and Condoleezza Rice, there was no turning back. Henceforth the Palestinian security forces would point their weapons exclusively at their own people, and only Saeb Erakat would be aimed at Israel. At the United Nations, once a primary arena for the Palestinian struggle, Abbas’s emissary Riad Mansour was too busy drafting a resolution declaring Hamas a terrorist entity to deal with more trivial Palestinian concerns. It was simply impossible to steer Abbas towards a change of course, let alone a national dialogue that could produce a genuine strategy.

By the expiration of his presidency on January 9, his constitutional status had become the least of his problems. Each and every one of his policies had failed. In the West Bank, settlement expansion was proceeding at an unprecedented pace while the Wall neared final completion, rendering talk of a two-state settlement all but moot.

After Hamas triumphed in the 2006 parliamentary elections, Abbas’s ceaseless scheming to remove the Islamists from office and overturn the election’s results – characteristically in active partnership with outside forces rather than the Palestinian electorate – was a veritable carnival of folly and incompetence. When Hamas acted first in 2007, it took the Islamists only several days to dispose of those few forces still prepared to fight for Mohammed Dahlan [the PA's ruthless "security" enforcer and much-beloved Washington favorite].

This then is the broken reed upon which Obama proposes to build "a lasting peace in the Middle East." An unconstitutional, totally compromised puppet leader rejected by his people, whom he disdains.

What, wasn't Ahmad Chalabi available?

The Bush Years: All Circus, No Bread -- Signs of the Times News

2009-01-20T23:00:00.000-05:00

The Bush Years: All Circus, No Bread -- Signs of the Times News: "http://www.sott.net/articles/show/173598-The-Bush-Years-All-Circus-No-Bread"

Arthur Silber Nails it AGAIN

2009-01-19T20:20:00.001-05:00

Imperial Pageantry for Moronically Idiotic Idiots
So Jon Favreau, Obama's chief speechwriter, has done a lot of work on Obama's inaugural address.

Does this mean Obama will talk about Hillary Clinton's tits?

"Rising tits lift all our hopes..."

"These are the tits that launched a thousand dreams..."

"Let me speak of the tits of change..."

I well realize the galactic scope of Americans' capacity for utterly mindless, contentless, meaningless spectacle. God knows, I've written about it often enough. But the absolutely overwhelming amount of colossal shit attendant upon this inauguration ("Look, Mom! Barack made me fly!" -- I do not exaggerate even slightly, scroll to about the midpoint of the story) is enough to make anyone who remains remotely sane loathe all mankind throughout all eternity.

I post this brief message only to let those few of you who have not lost your fucking minds know that you are not alone. Some of us, perhaps three or four hundred, still retain some connection to reality. But it frays and is under lethal attack. Whether the connection will survive the next day or two is an open question. Recourse to alcohol (and/or other substances of your choosing), sex and other diversions might be the wisest choice, until midweek at the earliest. Let's play safely: make it until the weekend. Hell, through the weekend.

I'm sure that other empires in their final phase of decline exhibited similar signs of complete intellectual collapse, combined with ungraspably trivial sentimentality that would embarrass a four-year-old of average intelligence. But the determined refusal to face facts, including the foundational fact that Obama is a singularly dangerous fraud, in tandem with Americans' love of political philosophy and ideas in general as expressed in a Hallmark card may well be unmatched in history.

To those of you so devotionally intent on celebrating this historically historic moment in history, as you accuse those few of us who are still capable of speaking in full sentences with actual referents of being "cynical" and shockingly lacking in what you so irresponsibly and reprehensibly call "idealism": Have a moronically good time, morons.

2009-01-19T18:50:00.003-05:00

So, I asked the UN secretary general, isn't it time for a war crimes tribunal?

Mr Ban said it would not be up to him to launch a war crimes tribunal. It was pathetic

By Robert Fisk:

January 19, 2009 "The Independent" -- -- - It's a wrap, a doddle, an Israeli ceasefire just in time for Barack Obama to have a squeaky-clean inauguration with all the world looking at the streets of Washington rather than the rubble of Gaza. Condi and Ms Livni thought their new arms-monitoring agreement – reached without a single Arab being involved – would work. Ban Ki-moon welcomed the unilateral truce. The great and the good gathered for a Sharm el-Sheikh summit. Only Hamas itself was not consulted. Which led, of course, to a few wrinkles in the plan. First, before declaring its own ceasefire, Hamas fired off more rockets at Israel, proving that Israel's primary war aim – to stop the missiles – had failed. Then Cairo shrugged off the deal because no one was going to set up electronic surveillance equipment on Egyptian soil. And not one European leader travelling to the region suggested the survivors might be helped if Israel, the EU and the US ended the food and fuel siege of Gaza.

After killing hundreds of women and children, Israel was the good guy again, by declaring a unilateral ceasefire that Hamas was certain to break. But Obama will be smiling on Tuesday. Was not this the reason, after all, why Israel suddenly wanted a truce?

Egypt's objections may be theatre – the US spent £18m last year training Egyptian security men to stop arms smuggling into Gaza and since the US bails out Egypt's economy, ignores the corruption of its regime and goes on backing Hosni Mubarak, there's sure to be a "compromise" very soon.

And Hamas has had its claws cut. Israel's informers in Gaza handed over the locations of its homes and hideouts and the government of Gaza must be wondering if they can ever close down the spy rings. Hamas thought its militia was the Hizbollah – a serious error – and that the world would eventually come to its aid. The world (although not its pompous leaders) felt enormous pity for the Palestinians, but not for the cynical men of Hamas who staged a coup in Gaza in 2007 which killed 151 Palestinians. As usual, the European statesmen appeared hopelessly out of touch with what their own electorates thought.

And history was quite forgotten. The Hamas rockets were the result of the food and fuel siege; Israel broke Hamas's own truce on 4 and 17 November. Forgotten is the fact Hamas won the 2006 elections, although Israel has killed a clutch of the victors.

And there'll be little time for the peacemakers of Sharm el-Sheikh to reflect on the three UN schools targeted by the Israelis and the slaughter of the civilians inside. Poor old Ban Ki-moon. He tried to make his voice heard just before the ceasefire, saying Israel's troops had acted "outrageously" and should be "punished" for the third school killing. Some hope. At a Beirut press conference, he admitted he had failed to get a call through to Israel's Foreign Minister to complain.

It was pathetic. When I asked Mr Ban if he would consider a UN war crimes tribunal in Gaza, he said this would not be for him to "determine". But only a few journalists bothered to listen to him and his officials were quickly folding up the UN flag on the table. About time too. Bring back the League of Nations. All is forgiven.

What no one noticed yesterday – not the Arabs nor the Israelis nor the portentous men from Europe – was that the Sharm el-Sheikh meeting last night was opening on the 90th anniversary – to the day – of the opening of the 1919 Paris peace conference which created the modern Middle East. One of its main topics was "the borders of Palestine". There followed the Versailles Treaty. And we know what happened then. The rest really is history. Bring on the ghosts.

2009-01-17T11:57:00.004-05:00

The End of Hypocrisy: Crime's Gleeful Abandon in Gaza
Written by Chris Floyd

More and more, comment on Israel's savage attack on the people of Gaza seems superfluous. The facts -- even the modicum of facts that can be gleaned through the deadly wall of Israeli censorship and the perverse and sinister distortions of the American media -- speak loudly, with horrifying clarity, for themselves. We are witnessing monstrous crimes, committed with cold deliberation: a bloodthirsty spectacle of unbridled terrorism, openly celebrated by the political and media elites of Israel and America.

This is, of course, the same kind of moral insanity that has raged around the American terrorist attack on Iraq for many years. It is the same moral insanity that guides the actions of power in many lands, in increasingly brazen and unapologetic ways, with less and less of the shamefaced furtiveness that once surrounded such abominations as military aggression, torture, "ethnic cleansing" and other crimes of power down through the centuries. This furtiveness was hypocrisy, of course -- but in hypocrisy there remains some vestige of the morality it falsely purports to uphold, some awareness that an evil thing is being done which must be hidden or disguised.

But now the masks are falling away -- or rather, they are being flung aside with gleeful abandon. America's top officials -- including the president and vice president -- openly admit to ordering torture...and they are praised for it, even held up as shining examples for future leaders to follow. Vast swathes of the corporate media labor mightily to justify the ancient evil of the water torture, and other "high-end interrogation techniques," to use the diabolical terminology of CIA Director Michael Hayden. The escalation of the on-going American war crime in Iraq -- the so-called "surge" -- is lauded as a "success beyond our wildest dreams" by the new, "progressive" manager of the empire, Barack Obama. (Imagine calling an action that allowed a known serial killer to extend his spree for years into the future a wild, dreamy "success.") Citizens of the "liberal democracy" in Israel -- the "light unto the nations" -- gather in safety and comfort on open hillsides to watch, cheering, as bombs fall on the trapped and helpless civilians penned in the Gaza ghetto. These macabre celebrations are echoed across America, where bitter partisan foes put aside their differences to come together in their unstinting, uncritical support of child murder across the sea.

What commentary could adequately address such madness? Simply to see it is to know what it is. And if you cannot already see it for what it plainly is -- when the bare, unaccomodated facts shout this evil from the lower depths to the highest heavens -- what amount of commentary will sway you?

Then again, I don't write to sway anybody any more, if I ever did. I write to stay sane, to keep from exploding in rage or going dead with despair, to try to clear a space in the howling madness for myself, and for anyone else who might come this way. I write to bear witness -- mostly to myself, and to what's left of my conscience. I write because somewhere along the line, by drift of circumstance, my mind was shaped in such a way that it is only by writing that I can try to understand the world, and my own thoughts and beliefs. If I could do all that without writing -- or if I could stop looking at reality and caring about it -- then I probably would. But for whatever reason -- those same drifts of circumstance, no doubt -- I can't; so I go on.

And so, back to it. What is the latest on the slow-motion razing of the Gaza Ghetto? How many dead, how many new horrors? What madness cries out from the facts today? The Independent reports:

Israeli tanks thrust deep inside Gaza City last night as ferocious fighting raged in dense residential areas with terrified families fleeing along streets echoing with gunfire, although many others were trapped in their homes. sraeli shelling set fire to the UN headquarters, a hospital, a school and a building used by the media, leading to widespread international protests and renewed calls for a ceasefire in the conflict which has so far cost 1,073 Palestinian and 13 Israeli lives....

Three members of UN staff were injured when three Israeli shells hit the headquarters, setting it on fire. Thousands of tonnes of desperately needed food and humanitarian supplies were destroyed and about 700 refugees given shelter in the building had to be evacuated. UN officials said the shells were white phosphorus, believed to have been responsible for burns suffered by some Palestinian civilians.

The Scotsman has more on the Israeli chemical weapon torching of desperately needed food supplies:

ISRAELI shells set ablaze a food warehouse at UN headquarters in Gaza yesterday, destroying tons of emergency rations intended for needy Gaza civilians, a senior UN official said. pall of black smoke rose from the UN compound, visible across Gaza City. Flour spilled on the ground and mixed with soot as Palestinian firefighters tried to douse the flames.

"The main warehouse was badly damaged by what appeared to be white phosphorus shells," UN humanitarian affairs chief John Holmes said at a news briefing in New York. Those on the ground don't have any doubt that's what they were. If you were looking for confirmation, that looks like it to me." The compound belongs to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (Unwra).....

Israel's prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said the military fired artillery shells at the UN compound after Hamas militants opened fire from the location, a version of events John Ging, director of Unwra in Gaza, rejected as "nonsense"

Mr Ging said Israeli shells first hit a courtyard filled with refugees, then struck garages and the UN's main warehouse, sending thousands of tons of food aid up in flames. Later, fuel supplies ignited, sending a thick plume of smoke into the air.

Was this really a "mistake," as the Israelis first claimed? Of course not; they knew exactly where the UN compound was located, as the Independent reports:

Mr Ging said the UN had warned the Israelis the compound was in danger from shelling that had begun overnight, and provided them with GPS co-ordinates to prevent an attack.

The only mistake here was the UN's, in telling the Israelis exactly where to fire in order to terrorize the organization into curtailing its increasingly strident criticism of the Gaza razing. And as noted above, it was not long before the Israelis dropped the transparent lie that the UN attack was a mistake, and instead began claiming that it was a justified response to gunfire coming from the compound. This lie too will be doubtless tumbled in due course, but the story will have already moved on to new prevarications over other atrocities by then.

Yesterday also marked the beginning of what looks to be sustained campaign to destroy the remnants of Gaza's medical infrastructure. The Independent reports:

The Al-Quds hospital was also hit by shellfire when Israeli tanks moved further into the city....The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said the damage caused to the Al Quds hospital is "completely and utterly unacceptable based on every known standard of international humanitarian law".

The hospital is in the Tal Hawa district, a packed residential area. Streams of people fled from the fighting, carrying what belongings they could on foot, by car, and, in some cases wheelbarrows after homes were demolished and set ablaze. Mahmud Tejan Hussein drove away with seven members of his family. "Bullets started hitting our house and I decided that we must get away from here. There are Israeli tanks in the area now and we might get blocked off if we wait. But I do not know where we are going to go. We wanted to go to the UN office, but that has been attacked. Wherever we go, the fighting will follow us."

Musah Mohammed, 36, who stayed at his home in an apartment block, said: "We cannot go out. There is shooting in the street. My mother is ill and she is old; we cannot leave her here. People are shouting to each other from balconies crying that they need help. We have no electricity and very little food and water. We are very afraid; we do not know what will happen next."

What is the purpose of all this crimeful frenzy, this berserker rampage? Despite the earnest handwringing over these questions among the punditry, here too the facts speak clearly. The purpose of the action in Gaza is the same purpose behind every Israeli military action against the Palestinians, a goal enunciated with Kurtz-like clarity by General Moshe Ya'alon, former chief of staff of the Israeli Defense Force, in 2002: to "sear deep into the consciousness of Palestinians that they are a defeated people."

We are continually told that Israel is a bastion of "Western values" in midst of barbarian lands. It is certainly proving it now. As we noted here the other day, Israel is displaying the same kind of Western values that the European settlers in North America showed in searing into the consciousness of the Native Americans that they were a defeated people. Or that the English showed in breaking the Welsh and subduing the Scots. (Although they never could quite sear the Irish deeply enough.) Or as, going back through the glorious history of European civilization, nation after nation, people after people, tribe after tribe were seared, broken, vanquished, absorbed or simply liquidated.

Yes, yes, I know that's not what they mean when they speak of "Western values." They mean, essentially, that there is more personal freedom in Israel than you will find in many other countries, especially in that region. And this, essentially, is true -- as long as you are not an Israeli Arab, or a journalist who wishes to report on what your "liberal democracy" is doing in its military actions, or someone who has run afoul the ever-more violent religious extremists who are increasingly embraced by the power structure.

But the Israelis have learned what the American elites have long known: "personal freedoms" (for approved groups) need not threaten the power structure. In fact, the infinite distractions they provide can even siphon away most of the political energy of the body politic, leaving elites free to do as they like: start wars, bomb hospitals, torture captives, loot the treasury on behalf of their cronies, etc.

Personal freedoms are a fundamental good, of course; in fact, they are a fundamental human right, not a "gift" from the powerful. But the presence of a relative amount of personal freedom -- even a large, flourishing "dissent" industry -- in any society is not of itself a bar to crime, violence, terror, injustice and repression on the part of the government. Think of Saddam's Iraq, or Afghanistan before the American-sponsored jihad destroyed the secular socialist state there in the 1980s. Both regimes combined political repression with more personal freedoms than either of those states enjoy now.

In much the same way, the personal freedoms of many Israelis and Americans have not prevented their governments from committing horrendous crimes. The victims of these crimes are just as dead, the lives of the survivors are just as shattered, just as riddled with grief and cries for revenge, no matter how free the espousers of Western values are to walk into Starbucks with a copy of Haaretz or The Nation -- or Das Kapital or Mein Kampf or People Magazine -- in their hands. If the espousers don't use their personal freedoms to oppose evil by their governments, then what does that say about their "values"?

In any case, the bravura display of ancient Western values keeps going in Gaza, while a handful of people in the Western citadels of "civilization" (including Israel) are trying to use their personal freedoms to stop it. For example, a letter published in Friday's Guardian, signed by dozens of British scholars, scientists, writers, physicians, and others -- with many Jews, even some IDF veterans, among them -- gives a succinct overview of the context of the ghetto razing, along with measures to change this murderous context:

The massacres in Gaza are the latest phase of a war that Israel has been waging against the people of Palestine for more than 60 years. The goal of this war has never changed: to use overwhelming military power to eradicate the Palestinians as a political force, one capable of resisting Israel's ongoing appropriation of their land and resources. Israel's war against the Palestinians has turned Gaza and the West Bank into a pair of gigantic political prisons. There is nothing symmetrical about this war in terms of principles, tactics or consequences. Israel is responsible for launching and intensifying it, and for ending the most recent lull in hostilities....

We must do what we can to stop Israel from winning its war. Israel must accept that its security depends on justice and peaceful coexistence with its neighbours, and not upon the criminal use of force.

We believe Israel should immediately and unconditionally end its assault on Gaza, end the occupation of the West Bank, and abandon all claims to possess or control territory beyond its 1967 borders. We call on the British government and the British people to take all feasible steps to oblige Israel to comply with these demands, starting with a programme of boycott, divestment and sanctions.

Perhaps they too are doing nothing more than trying to stay sane, trying not to explode, acting out of some psychological need to bear witness to a reality that will not change. Perhaps protesting and documenting evil will prove futile in the end. These are great likelihoods. But if those who do have some measure of personal freedom do not act and do not speak, then it is an iron certainty that these great evils will go on.

2009-01-13T10:47:00.002-05:00

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The New World Order Is Almost In Place
Published on 01-12-2009

Source: www.roguegovernment.com
Written By: Lee Rogers

The New World Order is for the most part already here. This might be a horrible fact for most to accept but unfortunately it is a reality. For many years we have had international institutions like the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the World Trade Organization and many others actively working towards global government. Phony free trade deals like NAFTA, CAFTA and others have been utilized to tear down borders between nations and usher in a new age of globalization. Prominent individuals such as George HW Bush, David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, Gordon Brown, Bill Clinton, Gary Hart and several others have spoken about the possibility of forming a global government or a New World Order. Despite the revelations from these men, it has continually been dismissed as conspiracy theory by the corporate controlled mockingbird media. In fact Kissinger the former Secretary of State under Richard Nixon spoke yet again about a New World Order during a CNBC interview and recently wrote an opinion editorial published in the International Herald Tribune entitled “The Chance for a New World Order”. If the New World Order is a conspiracy theory, why is it that prominent individuals amongst the U.S. and European political elite continue to talk about it?

The New World Order is being forged out of intentionally creating chaos and offering phony solutions. The global financial crisis was created by Alan Greenspan the former Federal Reserve Chairman by cutting interest rates to levels so low that it facilitated reckless borrowing and lending. Simultaneously, George W. Bush pushed the concept of an ownership society to encourage people to engage in irresponsible behavior. This created an enormous bubble in the housing market which resulted in the crash that we are experiencing right now. The housing market crash has in turn caused devastation in financial markets around the world.

In addition, events like the staged false flag terrorist attacks of 9/11 have enabled the political elite to engineer wars and additional crises around the world. The combination of the political and economic turmoil is providing the elite the necessary excuses to setup new institutions which they falsely claim will fix the problems. In actuality, any future institutions formed out of these global crises will only be used to consolidate the wealth and power of the elite.

It is interesting that in Kissinger’s opinion editorial, he states in his own terms that the only solution to all of the financial and political problems occurring around the world is a new international order. What he doesn’t say is that most of these problems have been created by the same people who are offering a new international order as a solution. How can any sane person trust the same people who have screwed up the world so badly, to fix the problems? It is entirely absurd.

Kissinger writes:
The nadir of the existing international financial system coincides with simultaneous political crises around the globe. Never have so many transformations occurred at the same time in so many different parts of the world and been made globally accessible via instantaneous communication. The alternative to a new international order is chaos.

Later Kissinger elaborates even further, admitting that the fear of economic collapse and terrorism will be used to facilitate a common strategy. This common strategy he refers to can only mean a push towards a new international order because according to him the alternative would be chaos.

Kissinger writes:
The extraordinary impact of the president-elect on the imagination of humanity is an important element in shaping a new world order. But it defines an opportunity, not a policy.

The ultimate challenge is to shape the common concern of most countries and all major ones regarding the economic crisis, together with a common fear of jihadist terrorism, into a common strategy reinforced by the realization that the new issues like proliferation, energy and climate change permit no national or regional solution.

There is little doubt that these crises are being used to setup the opportunity for the elite to fulfill their great dream of global government. As they finish piecing the puzzles together in merging the global financial and political systems, the United States in its current form will be destroyed. The United States and a New World Order cannot co-exist, and they won’t if these elite are successful in putting the capstone on the pyramid.

2008-12-30T16:50:00.002-05:00

Tuesday, December 30
The Rise of the Anti-Christ in the Nation from Hell.

I look in awestruck disbelief at the lies being repeated over and over; bullshit and the tragedy of false belief. In respect of that I would like to set the record straight. I realize only a few people will read this but I can’t let that interfere with the need to say it. Perhaps this will add to the collective outcry across the world and one or another of us may be that final straw that breaks the horned camel’s back.

Once again I am going to direct your attention to the incredible shrinking map of Palestine. You can trace the changes and compartmentalizations that have occurred across the last sixty years of aggressive land theft by Ersatz Israel. We can start at that point sixty or so years ago or we can go back further still. It doesn’t matter, the animal is the same and the intention is the same.

During a short period of time over seven hundred thousand Palestinians were displaced. They were displaced by force at the hands of a rapacious group of avaricious land bandits who poisoned wells and murdered entire families as examples to the rest. Basically it was “move or die.” There’s no disputing this. It is fact. Following the theft of these lands and towns, the areas and towns were renamed in an effort to blot out the history of the previous inhabitants.

The argument for allowance in regard to the murderous operations of these vicious psychopaths marching under the banner of some demon that they call God was the belief that these people had suffered mightily at the hands of a German dictator and that they were deserving of a certain piece of land that was promised to them by this demon according to things written in a book that was also written by these people. In other words these people wrote that the demon told them that they were his ‘Chosen People’. As history has shown, they are correct. They are the chosen people of this demon. However, this demon is not God and the book was not written by God either… unless God really is a bloodthirsty demon who advises his chosen to kill these people and kill those people and that it’s all fine and kosher.

While these people were suffering in Europe, other members of these people did everything possible to make the suffering more and more intense and used the event entirely as a public relations stunt to gain control of this piece of property in order to set out and take over the whole world. Today, through their control of The Federal Reserve (this is not disputable either), they control who gets the money, where the money goes, how much and how little money is available and by pulling on different strings they can make the puppets dance to whatever tune they want to play.

If there’s a God then Israel appears to be the throne of the Devil. It’s possible that the anti Christ is not a person but a nation. In any case, those he rules are part and parcel of the package. It’s eerie indeed to see the old prophecies of the anti-Christ who is said to arise in the Middle East around this time and to see that, in fact, there is one nation seeking to plunge the Earth into global war. Only one nation is assaulting it’s neighbors and blackmailing the super powers into wiping out it’s alleged enemies based on an assault that this nation engineered in the land of the biggest super power of all; soon to be less than super.

Here’s my first point. When you invade someone’s land and kill the people and drive them into exile and when you then continue to steal the land of those remaining until they are forced into ever smaller ghettos. When you routinely kill these people and use their children for target practice; when you bulldoze their olive trees and orchards and homes, when you move violent settlers into their neighborhoods and allow and protect these settlers when they beat and rob and injure and kill the ancient inhabitants of this land, when you arrest the representatives of their LEGALLY ELECTED government and then throw them into jail for no other reason that that they were elected, when you then begin to increase your genocidal practices upon these people by cutting off their power, their water, their medical supplies and opportunities for treatment and causing them to suffer in any way that you possibly can BECAUSE, allegedly they are firing missiles into lands that were STOLEN FROM THEM but which missiles never seem to hit anything THEN… THEN… these people have EVERY RIGHT… EVERY RIGHT to fire any and all missiles they want to fire any time they want to fire them.

It is interesting to note that now, after Israel’s recent bloodbath… now playing… rockets are actually hitting people and things where they almost never did before. Israel has launched rockets on her own people before and when caught said it was a mistake; an accident. This is also not in dispute.

Now we find that the only reason Israel has made this assault is because there is an election coming and certain candidates want to be seen as the sort of murderous scum that the general public likes to have in office. In other words, all of these people are dying for no more than the election concerns of a handful of psychopaths.

In the meantime, all the self-righteous swine on the left and all of the self-righteous swine on the right and the endless rank of indifferent swine in the middle, feeding at the trough of their personal appetites…they make excuses for Israel as if to say that Israel had the right, not only to drive these people off of their lands but also to continuously terrorize them for decades while making the portions of land upon which they live ever smaller and smaller until there is no where for them to stand and- as is their intention- no one left to stand on it.

Here’s my point and this point is indisputable… whether members of Hamas are or are not launching missiles into Israel they have EVERY RIGHT TO DO SO. Is there anyone among you who would tolerate such actions against yourself? Wait a minute… yeah, there’s quite a few of you.

Today Israel is attacking the ship, Dignity. Cynthia McKinney is on that boat along with a handful of the few human beings left on Earth. It’s not in the news because it isn’t news. Oh you vipers… you whores in the governments and in the press. All of you are exposed by your actions and your words. When justice comes you will none of you be overlooked.

It is a very strange thing how events mirror prophecy. If these prophecies are true then; where does that leave you?

In conclusion; Palestine and the Palestinians have EVERY RIGHT to fight back in any way they can because Israel is attempting to exterminate them and prior to that make their life a living Hell every day of the week. The facts are indisputable so what is this argument about bottle rockets really about?

All of you who support this… all the gatekeepers and bought out slaves to personal fortune… all those laughing at their pursuits while dining in the high tower and shopping for shit to gild your walking corpses… all of you who speak for the nations who permit these murders, not just in Palestine but across the world; who staged the assault in India to bring war to Pakistan… you and your mighty ghost armies are nothing more than chaff in the wind and you will reap the whirlwind. Yes you will.

2008-12-11T08:35:00.001-05:00

Thu

11

Dec

2008
Continuity Error: Top Dems Want Obama to Keep Bush Torture Program
Written by Chris Floyd

Ray McGovern reports on the Congressional Democrats now urging Barack Obama to seek the same kind of "continuity" in the Bush torture programs as he has displayed in keeping Bush Family capo Robert Gates as top warlord in the Pentagon. (Glenn Greenwald has more.) McGovern:

From change-you-can-believe-in, we seem to be slipping back to fear-you-can-trade-on.

Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, has publicly warned those in charge of the administration transition that “continuity is going to be pivotal in keeping us safe and secure.”

Thus, he argues, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell and CIA Director Michael Hayden should stay in their posts.

If that were not enough, Reyes told Congress Daily’s Chris Strohm that he [Reyes] had advised the Obama team that some parts of what Strohm referred to as “CIA’s controversial alternative interrogation program” should be allowed to continue.

Using some of the same euphemisms and circumlocutions employed by the ersatz-lawyers hired by President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, Reyes fired this shot across the bow of Barack Obama’s transition ship:

“It gets back to a world that is very dangerous. … There are some options that need to be available. … We don’t want to be known for torturing people. At the same time, we don’t want to limit our ability to get information that’s vital and critical to our national security. That’s where the new administration is going to have to decide what those parameters are, what those limitations are."
Someone needs to tell Reyes what those parameters – what those limitations – should be. They are set by the Geneva Accords and the U.S. War Crimes Act of 1996.

McGovern also notes the Mafia-style squeeze put on one of the few Pentagon figures who tried to shine a light into the great gulag darkness, Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, who investigated the tip-of-the-iceberg atrocities at Abu Ghraib:

Taguba issued a tough report, which was then leaked to the press — and thus was largely responsible for preventing the scandal from being swept entirely under the rug. Rather than thank Taguba for upholding the honor of the U.S. military, the Bush administration singled him out for ridicule, retribution and forced retirement.

Taguba told Seymour Hersh of a chilling conversation he had with Gen. John Abizaid, then head of Central Command, a few weeks after Taguba’s report became public in 2004. Sitting in the back of Abizaid’s Mercedes sedan in Kuwait, Abizaid quietly told Taguba, “You and your report will be investigated.”

“I’d been in the Army 32 years by then,” Taguba told Hersh, “and it was the first time that I thought I was in the Mafia.”

Of course, if General Taguba had paid heed to one of his predecessors, Gen. Smedley Butler, he would have already known the true nature of the organization he was running with. Butler, a popular officer who refused to take part in an coup d'etat planned by America's corporate elite (contrast the behavior of, say, Colin Powell, who happily joined the Bush gang after the Supreme Court coup in 2000, then happily helped instigate a war of aggression that has killed a million civilians), had this to say, in 1931, about his tenure in America's war machine:

"I spent 33 years...being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism....

"I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1916. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City [Bank] boys to collect revenue in. I helped in the rape of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street....

"In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested....I had...a swell racket. I was rewarded with honors, medals, promotions....I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate a racket in three cities. The Marines operated on three continents..."

You ought to see the operation now, Smedley. Both you and Capone were pikers compared to the goons in charge today. But yes, by all means, lets have "continuity" in this endless, ever-expanding racket, where the blood money never stops rolling in.

2008-12-07T07:32:00.001-05:00

The Open-Air Prison Called Gaza Strip
Donna Wallach

December 6, 2008

Gaza Strip, Palestine has been brutally occupied by Apartheid Israel since 1967 and has been under a genocidal siege since mid-2007. Israel controls all the borders, and the southern border is additionally controlled by Egypt. The sea and the air space are as if behind bars too. 1.5 million Palestinians collectively punished – prisoner-like - in the largest open-air prison in the world. Incubatored babies, children, teenagers, adults, senior citizens, all are totally encaged. Israel has deemed them to be terrorists, threats to the security and peace of every Israeli citizen, and all the governments of the world, and many international organizations, comply in this illegal action by their do nothing, say nothing policies.

This hermetic closure on Gaza Strip is preventing fuel, medicine, food, wheat for milling, spare parts, all various and sundry supplies through the border crossings. The fuel which powers the sewage treatment plants, which supplies the power plant that provides electricity and running water to the people in their homes and businesses, i.e. the businesses that are still open among the hundreds of thousands that have closed as a direct result of the siege and occupation, is in short supply. Some areas have electricity and running water only 12 hours a day and some people living in the many refugee camps or in high multi-storied buildings are without running water and electricity for days at a time. All the hospitals use generators for power every day when the electricity goes out. The generators are breaking down and there are no spare parts available to fix them, they are at the border crossing waiting to enter. In addition, hundreds if not thousands of medicines are lacking. There have been various attempts to bring medicines in, but they have all been thwarted by Israel and by Egypt who refuse to allow the medicines in. Sick people have no right to life by Zionist standards.

Nobody comes in or out of Gaza Strip unless Israel approves: businesspeople, foreign travelers, non-violent direct action volunteers, journalists, and of course Palestinians – cannot enter or leave. Sick people, with urgent medical conditions who need treatment in hospitals outside of Gaza Strip, can't get out. As a result at least 258 Palestinians have died, needlessly. 500 students with scholarships and 3,000 students with admittance to Universities abroad, are not permitted to leave Gaza Strip to continue their higher education. They are losing their scholarships and admittances daily, thwarting their attempts to be the future leaders of this area.

Exports of strawberries, flowers, fish and other Gazan produced products can't get out to be sold abroad or even in Israel and so hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living in Gaza Strip are denied a livelihood. Why?!

Since the genocidal siege was implemented, the Israeli occupation force Navy has enforced an arbitrary 4 to 6 mile fishing limit on all the fishermen of Gaza Strip. Israeli gunboats enforce this arbitrary limit by patrolling the internationally recognized Gazan waters. You have to understand, war ships are invading the Gazan fishing waters on a daily basis – breaking the ceasefire. The navy soldiers often shoot, wound and kill unarmed Palestinian fishermen while they are trawling and fishing, trying to earn a livelihood for their families. These are acts of war, yet you never hear about it or see it on the news.

On 23rd August 2008, the first two Free Gaza Movement boats entered the waters of Gaza Strip and landed at Gaza City port in Palestine, the first time in 41 years that an international boat has landed in this once thriving port city. Since then, members of International Solidarity Movement (ISM) Gaza Strip, who arrived on the boats, have been accompanying some of the Palestinian fishermen from Gaza City when they trawl for fish in their internationally recognized Gazan waters. The volunteers have witnessed the Israeli occupation force Navy shooting machine guns, grenades, and other weapons towards the Palestinian trawling vessels and also using a high-powered water cannon against them while they are trawling for fish, often as they are bringing in the nets. The water cannon shoots high-powered blasts of water onto the boats, damaging the boats and injuring people. A new weapon used by this specific gunboat is blasting high-powered dirty water, with a very bad smell, onto the boats and onto the fishermen and volunteers. Sometimes the gunboat waits to blast this bad smelling water until the trawlers have pulled in a netfull of fish, the fish and decks of the boat are then covered with this horrendous smelly water. It is unknown what is in the water, but it is feared that it is highly toxic and could present a health threat to anybody who has come into contact with the water and anyone who eats the fish sprayed by the dirty water.

On Tuesday 18th November 2008, three Palestinian trawling vessels, fishing 7 miles off the coast of Deir Al-Balah, Gaza Strip, Palestine, clearly inside internationally recognized Gazan fishing waters, were surrounded by nine Israeli naval gunboats. Sixteen unarmed Palestinian fishermen, and three international ISM volunteers, were arrested and kidnapped at gunpoint by commandos of the 4th largest army in the world. The three Palestinian trawling vessels were illegally confiscated. The sixteen fishermen were released at midnight that night, but the international volunteers were kidnapped into Israel against their will and later deported to Europe and to USA, although each of them wanted to return to Gaza Strip. Ten days later the trawling vessels were returned to the Gazan fishing waters, the day after legal briefs were filed in Israel's Supreme Court against the Israeli occupation force Navy.

The farming communities living along the border with Israel also face a difficult situation. The Israeli occupation force army declared an arbitrary Buffer Zone along the entire eastern border of Gaza Strip with Israel. Palestinian farmers who live in the area can't farm their lands, some for 5 – 15 years. This zone is 100 - 500 meters deep inside Palestine. This "Buffer Zone" is on agriculturally-rich soil, but soldiers driving the D9 bulldozers have created a desert by destroying all the olive, fruit, nut trees, the vegetable crops, the hot houses and killing all the sheep and chicken farms – destroying the livelihood of the farmers and their families. Directly on the other side are Israeli farms (kibbutzes) and those farmers farm right up against the fence. Even today when farmers go to their land they are shot at – they are forbidden to work their own land.

"As of March 2005, there are approximately 7,500 Palestinian political prisoners being held in Israeli prisons. Over 750 of these are administrative detainees, held without charge or trial for indefinite periods of time. 344 of the political prisoners are aged 18 and under, 78 of whom are 16 years and under. There are 115 Palestinian female political prisoners, 19 of whom are mothers and 1 of whom gave birth in prison, with their children remaining in prison with them. Of the total 7,500 political prisoners, 3,800 are being held in civil prisons, with the remaining political prisoners held in Israeli military detention centers and prison camps." (1) The above statistics are from three years ago, the number of Palestinian political prisoners held in Israeli prisons is now over 11,000! The Palestinian political prisoners are from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, all collectively punished for being alive while Palestinian.

It is the Apartheid Israeli occupation force army who have been the aggressors and who make war on the Palestinian people every day, yet the major news media in the US target the Palestinians as terrorists. For decades, the Israeli occupation force army has been sending jeeps, tanks, D9 bulldozers, F-16s, apache helicopters, drones, and Israeli occupation force soldiers into Palestinian farms, villages, cities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, causing death and destruction to all in their path - hundreds of babies, children, women and men killed and thousands maimed for life. Why are they always being vilified? The Palestinian people are a generous, kind, peace-loving people who want to live in peace and dignity with all people in the region. They need the world community to step forward and demand that the violators of their human right to self-determination, their human rights for peace and security, their human right to live in freedom be held to account.

On 29th November 2008, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Campaign National Committee (BNC), presented its strategic position paper " UNITED AGAINST Apartheid, Colonialism and Occupation DIGNITY & JUSTICE for the Palestinian People (Final Draft, October 2008) Palestinian Civil Society's Strategic Position Paper for the Durban Review Conference, Geneva, 20 – 24 April 2009 ", here is an excerpt from only one of its findings:

" The State of Israel must be held accountable to its legal obligations. Impunity for its massive and systematic violations of international law and treating it as an exception above the law of nations must be ended. Only thus can justice and dignity be restored to the Palestinian people, and lasting, comprehensive peace be established in the Middle East. As states and the United Nations have lacked political will for effective action, the wider international community, in particular churches, unions, NGOs, cultural and academic figures, and independent experts are called upon to develop and strengthen effective measures, such as the civil society Campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel (BDS) and legal action, that can create political will among states and the United Nations to respect their legal obligations to the Palestinian people and halt and reverse Israel's regime of apartheid, settler-colonialism and belligerent occupation." (2)

(1) ADDAMEER Prisoners' Support and Human Rights Association, http://www.addameer.org/addameer/campaigns/manal/factsheet.h
tml

(2) BNC Position Paper Durban, UNITED AGAINST Apartheid, Colonialism and Occupation DIGNITY & JUSTICE for the Palestinian People (Final Draft, October 2008) Palestinian Civil Society's Strategic Position Paper for the Durban Review Conference, Geneva, 20 – 24 April 2009

:: Article nr. 49386 sent on 07-dec-2008 11:30 ECT

www.uruknet.info?p=49386

2008-12-07T06:54:00.002-05:00

Harper's Coup; Power grab in Ottawa

by Mike Whitney

Global Research, December 5, 2008

“We are in the worst crisis since 1929 and we have no government. How can this be good?” Stephen Jarislowsky, chairman of Montreal money manager Jarislowsky Fraser Ltd.

On Thursday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper suspended Canada's parliament to avoid a challenge from opposition parties that were planning to oust him from power. The 3-party coalition--the Liberals, the NDP and the Bloc Quebecois---decided to remove Harper because of his strong opposition to a stimulus package that was designed to minimize the effects of the financial crisis. They also opposed his "proposed elimination of subsidies for political parties, a three-year ban on the right of civil servants to strike, and limits on the ability of women to sue for pay equity." Governor General Michaelle Jean helped Harper to hang on by using her constitutional authority to close the legislature for seven weeks. Now the country is in a furor.

Harper is a far right conservative ideologue who served as president of the National Citizens Coalition (NCC), a conservative think-tank and advocacy group. The organization opposes national healthcare but supports privitization and tax cuts. It has 40,000 members but the names are kept confidential. It's motto is "more freedom with less government."

The Prime Minister has been a staunch supporter of George Bush and the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Many of his critics accuse him of being a neoconservative allied to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and the Bilderburger Group. He is alleged to be a proponent of plans for a North American Union, which is an elitist scheme to end US sovereignty by merging the three countries-- Canada, the US, and Mexico--into one superstate. The plan coincides with Harper's unwavering support for free trade.

Harper's connection to extremist organizations may sound far fetched, until one one sees a video of him giving a speech that was also given by Australian PM John Howard prior to the war in Iraq. The speeches are identical--word for word--indicating that they must have been written by a third party somewhere in the bowels of the Pentagon or a nearby think tank. The video dispels any illusion that Karzai, Abbas, and Siniora are the only sock-puppets working for Washington.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10491

Harper is also a trusted ally of Israel and has defended Israel's 31 day invasion of Lebanon in 2006 that killed over 1,300 Lebanese civilians who were fleeing the south to escape Israeli bombing. According to Wikipedia: "the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish organizations presented Stephen Harper with its inaugural International Leadership Award for his support for Israel...the award was given to express the group's appreciation for Canada's "courageous stands" to boycott the Durban 2 Anti-Racism Conference.

On June, Harper was also awarded the Presidential Gold Medallion for Humanitarianism by B'nai B'rith International. He is the first Canadian to be awarded this medal."

Harper is also a committed militarist who has circumvented Parliament and announced a plan that will greatly expand Canada's armed forces. According to Linda McQuaig of the Toronto Star:

"Harper has already laid out an agenda that would fundamentally change this country - in ways most Canadians would oppose. While this agenda is not "secret," my guess is few Canadians know about it... Sometime in the dark of night last June 20, the Harper government posted a plan on the Department of National Defence's website - called Canada First Defence Strategy - to spend an eye-popping $490 billion over the next 20 years on the military.

It's hard to imagine an agenda with more profound consequences for Canadians, beginning with a dramatic reordering of national priorities. Public health care? Child poverty? Fighting global warming?

While the election campaign has focused on economic issues, the military and its combat role in Afghanistan have actually been the centrepieces of the Harper administration. Harper has tried to reshape the way Canadians think about Canada, weaning us off our fondness for peacekeeping (and medicare, for that matter), and getting us excited about being a war-making nation, able to swagger on the world stage in the footsteps of the Americans." (Linda McQuaig, "Stephen Harper: Bulking up Pentagon North", the Toronto Star)

The Putsch Will Be Televised

Harper's nationally televised speech on Monday night was pure political theater; a near-perfect duplication of George Bush's many solemn addresses from the Oval office. Wrapping himself in the Maple Leaf, the smooth-talking Harper rattled off the familiar patriotic buzzwords and catchphrases while trying to affect the appearance of a man genuinely devoted to principle:

"We will use all legal means to resist this undemocratic seizure of power," Harper thundered peering straight into the camera.

Fortunately, Harper doesn't have a leg to stand on. Constitutional scholars unanimously agree that the parties have the right to deliver a "no confidence" vote and strip him of his power. Harper is just trying to brazen it out to buy some time.

"The Canadian government has always been chosen by the people," said the Prime Minister.

Not true, and Harper knows it.

"He's appealing to people who learned their civics from American television," said Henry Jacek, a political scientist at McMaster University. Other scholars... say Harper's populist theory of democracy is more suited to a U.S.-style presidential system, in which voters cast ballots directly for a national leader, than it is to Canadian parliamentary democracy. In Canada, there's no national vote for prime minister. People elect MPs in 308 ridings, and a government holds power only as long as it has the support of a majority of those MPs.

"We have a rule that the licence to govern is having the confidence of the House of Commons," said Peter Russell, a former University of Toronto professor and adviser to past governors general.

"I'm sorry, that's the rule. If they want to change it to having a public opinion poll, we'd have to reform and rewrite our Constitution." ("Harper Wrong on Democracy Experts Claim" CTV)

Harper is just blowing smoke, but his challenge should be taken seriously just the same. Neocons do not go gently into that good night. Americans know that better than anyone.

Mike Whitney is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

2008-12-05T20:07:00.002-05:00

The Destructive World of "Troubled Assets": Paulson shoots another arrow into the heart of the Economy

by Andrew Hughes

Global Research, December 6, 2008

The announcement in the last few days of a deal reached between the U.S. Treasury and the moribund insurance giant, A.I.G. provides a very lucid insight in to the nefarious and destructive world of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, otherwise known as T.A.R.P..Not only have A.I.G. received $152 billion to date and subsequently reported a third quarter loss of $25 billion, now they are to be cleared of their obligation on $53 billion worth of toxic credit default swaps. U.S. taxpayers are now on the hook for $205 billion courtesy of an institution which played in the Wall St. casino that passes for a "Financial Sector" and lost. Under the "Free market" system, so expounded upon by Government and Wall St. alike, A.I.G should be in chapter 11. Bailing out A.I.G and other failing institutions does absolutely nothing to address the fundamental issues at hand.

The economy is in crisis because unemployment and overarching debt levels pushed thousands of families in to the untenable situation where they did not earn enough to cover their debts. This burst the real estate bubble inflated by Alan Greenspan, crashed real estate prices, consumer spending and manufacturing. What we are seeing now is the inevitable result of lack of Financial regulation, lax monetary policy and a symbiosis between Government and the Financial industry. The mortgages taken out by buyers had been bundled into complex financial instruments; Mortgage backed securities. The latter along with Credit default swaps and derivatives set the stage for a global financial meltdown. The Glass-Steagal act of 1933 had been conceived to prevent the Banking sector from indulging in high risk investments to protect the depositors of these institutions. This was repealed at the end of the Clinton Administration through the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 which opened the gates to financial destruction. With the stroke of a pen, the financial services sector was given the power to literally bring down an economy

The most urgent matter for Treasury to address is the toxic derivatives market. The notional amount of outstanding derivatives, as noted by the Bank of International settlements, comes close to $512 trillion. This represents a figure that is impossible to settle and is the real Armageddon which Banks are preparing for by hoarding the cash that they have received through the T.A.R.P..Unless this time bomb is defused by bringing the undeclared positions on the table, the duration and gravity of this crisis can only increase. As the underlying assets of these instruments crumble the Banks' exposure to counterparty risk increases and will lead to the inevitable collapse of even more banks and reduce the availability of investment credit even more. The underlying assets include interest rates, mortgages, foreign exchange rates, credit ratings on companies and even creditworthiness of entire countries. This is the level of insanity that has passed for "Leveraged Investment"

With over $3 trillion of taxpayer money injected in to Banks, insurance companies, commercial paper, Fannie and Freddie what has come back to benefit the dying economy ? A reduction in lending, increased interest rates on credit card payments and further losses for these same institutions. No big surprise as the real economy has never stopped it's nosedive. Does the Treasury really not realise that there is no point in investing in companies that have no chance of redemption ? By handing over Americans' hard earned tax dollars and indebting future generations, the Treasury has been engaging in the biggest transfer of wealth in Human history. The U.S. is now the biggest debtor on the planet and the rest of the world has noticed. China, Japan and the Oil kingdoms that buy U.S. debt are losing faith and it's only a matter of time until they turn off the tap.

Andrew Hughes is a frequent contributor to Global Research

2008-12-05T07:11:00.001-05:00

Obama's War Cabinet

by Stephen Lendman

Global Research, December 5, 2008

December 1 brought more disappointment but no surprises. Obama's national security appointees (like all his earlier ones) aren't "change to believe in" or what people expected for their votes. They're recycled establishment figures. Their agenda is business as usual, and they'll continue the same failed Bush administration policies at home and abroad. Washington's criminal class is bipartisan. Obama was chosen to lead it and is assembling a rogue team that's little different from the one it's replacing.

For "security", it means:

-- maintaining the "strongest military on the planet" and do it by outspending all other countries combined;

-- continued foreign wars;

-- possibly another against Iran;

-- permanent occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan - directly and with proxy forces; Obama saying he'll withdraw all US forces from Iraq in 16 months (around mid-2010) is false and misleading;

-- a reinvented Cold War against Russia;

-- an "absolute" commitment "to eliminating the threat of terrorism (with) the full force of our power;"

-- inciting instability anywhere it serves US imperial interests with special emphasis on resource-rich Eurasia, including the Asian sub-continent; Exhibit A: the Bombay (Mumbai) terror attacks that Michel Chossudovsky explains have "the fingerprints of a (carefully planned) paramilitary-intelligence operation (and) are described as India's 9/11," or at least a mini version of it; the usual suspects are blamed; the purpose is to incite fear and more violence; the consequences - an internal hard line crackdown, increased tensions between India and Pakistan, and a military opening for Washington to intervene further in the region; and

-- additional North American militarization as evidenced by a disturbing December 1 Washington Post report - that (on the pretext of national security) the Pentagon will deploy 20,000 troops nationwide by 2011 "to help state and local officials respond to a nuclear attack or other domestic catastrophe;" three "rapid-reaction" combat units are planned; two or more additional ones may follow; they'll be supplemented by 80 smaller National Guard units and will be trained to respond to chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, high-yield explosive, and other domestic "terror" attacks or disturbances; in other words, homeland militarization and occupation is planned using combat troops trained to kill.

Media Reaction to Obama's National Security Appointees

The New York Times suggested he's "put(ting) the rancor and even some of the rhetoric of the presidential campaign behind him on Monday as he welcomed his chief Democratic adversary into his cabinet and signaled flexibility in his plans to withdraw troops from Iraq." He stated: "I will listen to the recommendations of my commanders (and it's) likely to be necessary to maintain a residual force to provide potential training (and) logistical support to protect our civilians in Iraq."

According to the Cato Institute's foreign policy director, Christopher Preble, Obama chose Iraq war supporters, so it "suggests that we will only get more of the same."

The Washington Post highlighted Obama's "high-powered national security team....to face a complex security picture." It quoted him calling for "a new beginning, a new dawn of American leadership (and) the power of our moral example."

According to UN ambassador-designee Susan Rice, it's a team "to prevent conflict, to promote peace, combat terrorism, prevent the spread and use of nuclear weapons, tackle climate change, end genocide, fight poverty and disease." More on those aims below.

The Wall Street Journal suggested that Obama's national security team will make "a clean break from Bush administration policies on Iraq, Afghanistan and overseas diplomacy." It will differ from "an over-reliance on the military and a failure to devote enough resources to political reconciliation and economic development in those nations." More on that below as well.

Obama's National Security Designees

On December 1 in the UK Guardian, author Jeremy Scahill called them a "Kettle of Hawks" so it's no surprise that hard line neocon writer Max Boot was jubilant over the selections and said they "as easily (could) have come from a President McCain." He and like-minded ideologues believe this puts "an end to the 16-month timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, the unconditional summits with dictators (aka democrats like Chavez, president Ahmadinejad of Iran, and Fidel and Raul Castro), and other foolishness that once emanated from the Obama campaign." His selections "should be powerful voices for neoliberalism which is not so different from neoconservatism."

According to Boot, Obama will pick up right where Bush left off with a near-seamless transition. "Only churlish partisans of both the left and the right can be unhappy with the emerging tenor of our nation's new leadership."

According to former Chicago congressman, federal judge, and Clinton White House Counsel Abner Mikva in a Chicago Jewish News article, it's also true for the nation's Jews and the state of Israel. As some call Clinton 'the nation's first black president,' "I think when this is over, people are going to say that Barack Obama is the first Jewish president." Rabbi Arnold Wolf agrees in saying Obama is "embedded in the Jewish world." Given the team he's assembling, there's every reason to believe they're right.

Hillary Clinton

She's co-heading the team (with Robert Gates) as Secretary of State designee, so it's clear no change is planned given her hard line neocon ideology. As one analyst puts it: it's why many on the left "are grinding their teeth" about her and other former Clinton administration appointees.

Back in May, CounterPunch co-editor Jeff St. Clair referred to her "Gothic politics" that offer no hope for needed change. He called her "constitutionally wedded to a stern neoliberalism, a disposition (she's unable to) camouflage."

Darker still is her hawkishness, far enough to the right to be indistinguishable from Joe Lieberman or John McCain. It's why one analyst calls her a "war goddess" and with good reason. She supported the invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan and still does. She voted for the Patriot, Homeland Security, and other repressive acts.

She's extremely bellicose, endorses attacking Iran, supported Israel's destructive 2006 Lebanon war, praised Israel's apartheid wall, demeans the Palestinian people, equates them with terrorists, calls any Israeli criticism anti-Semitism, is close to AIPAC, and at its June convention said "The United States stands with Israel now and forever....We have shared interests....shared ideals....common values. I have a bedrock commitment to Israel's security. (Against Islamic extremists) our two nations are fighting a shared threat....I strongly support Israel's right to self-defense (and) believe America should aid in that defense....I am committed to making sure that Israel maintains a military edge to meet increasing threats."

"I am deeply concerned about the growing threat in Gaza (and) Hamas' campaign of terror....Its charter calls for the destruction of Israel....Iran (also) threatens to destroy Israel....I support calling the Iranian Revolutionary Guard what it is: a terrorist organization. It is imperative that we get both tough and smart about dealing with Iran before it is too late."

In other speeches, Clinton has been extremely belligerent and blatantly malicious in accusations mirror opposite of the truth. She called Iran a strategic long-term threat, a country that practices state terrorism, that uses "surrogates to supply explosives that kill US troops in Iraq," and that must be dealt with with "all options on the table."

She also said that if Iran attacks Israel (that's implausible on its face), America would respond by "obliterating" the country - in other words, incinerate its entire population through a nuclear holocaust. During the 2008 campaign, she told ABC's Good Morning America:

"I want the Iranians to know, if I am the president, we will attack Iran. And I want them to understand that (if) they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them."

She's just as extremist on all foreign policy issues. She opposes an international treaty to ban land mines and was against banning cluster bomb exports to countries that use them on civilians. She backs arms transfers and police training to human rights abusing countries like Israel, Egypt, Pakistan, India, Saudi Arabia and similar US allies.

She's for a larger military budget, continuing the "war on terror," the nation's illegal wars and occupation, and Israel's repressive Palestinian occupation. In July 2004, she denounced the UN, accused it of opposing aggressive US policies, its judicial arm for challenging Israel's Separation Barrier, and she sponsored a Senate resolution "urging no further action by the UN to delay" its construction.

She's done nothing to contain nuclear proliferation except to condemn Iran's legal commercial development. It's in full accord with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) unlike the world's greatest nuclear outlaw - America. Israel, India, and Pakistan as well, but they're US allies unlike Iran. Clinton also supports the Bush Doctrine and his administration's unilateral position on using first strike nuclear weapons, including against non-nuclear states.

Hillary Clinton at State sends a strong message to free people everywhere and especially to all Muslims and the Arab world - the "war on terror" will continue. Your people are its main target, and America will continue to invade and occupy your lands. It also tells the anti-war movement that it's work has just begun and will be no simpler under Obama than it's been up to now. Clinton is a powerful bulwark against it and to all freedom loving people everywhere. "Gothic" indeed - dark and foreboding in the same "war party" under new management.

Robert Gates

He'll remain as Defense Secretary and is a clear signal of Bush administration policy continuity. After being named to succeed Donald Rumsfeld in November 2006, this writer said about him: The appointment of Robert Gates "replac(es) one controversial (defense) secretary and accused war criminal with an unindicted liar and equally controversial former Reagan and senior Bush official." Earlier he was involved "in cooking the intelligence to fit the policy in the Iran-Contra scandal he was never held to account for." He also had a hand "in secretly arming Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. When he takes over (at DOD), expect the Pentagon under (his) management to be no different" than the leadership it's replacing. In all respects, Gates lived up to expectations and will continue the same policies under Obama.

In an October 28 speech at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, he argued for expanding the Bush administration's pre-emptive war doctrine to include first strike nuclear weapons. He said that pacifist illusions shouldn't deter planning for a broader war.

He added that "As long as other states have or seek nuclear weapons - and can potentially threaten us, our allies and friends - then we must have a deterrent capacity that makes it clear that challenging the US in the nuclear arena - or with weapons of mass destruction - could result in an overwhelming, catastrophic response." In other words, if non-US allies seek nuclear weapons or if Washington (without evidence) claims it, they then become potential targets for a nuclear response even if their intentions are peaceful.

Gates' other credentials include 26 years with the CIA where he was its deputy director from 1986 - 1989 and director from 1991 - 1993. Former CIA official, turned political activist, Ray McGovern knew him there and wrote about his "dexterity in orchestrating his own advancement (and) never (being) one to let truth derail (his) ambition."

Former CIA analyst Mel Goodman described how he "tried hard to anticipate the views of policy makers in order to pander to their needs" and played a major role in politicizing the agency. One of his key distortions led to higher military spending under Ronald Reagan - by exaggerating the Soviet menace (along with CIA director Bill Casey) as a "military behemoth with a robust economy rather than a decaying power with a shriveling GDP."

Goodman added: "While serving as deputy director for intelligence from 1982 - 1986, Gates wrote the manual for manipulating and centralizing the intelligence process to get the desired intelligence product." He promoted pliable CIA careerists to top positions while sidelining or retiring more independent ones. In 1991 under GHW Bush, his colleagues staged an unprecedented revolt for his role in destroying the agency's commitment to objectivity.

At the time, Harold P. Ford, former National Intelligence Council vice-chairman, told the Senate Intelligence Committee: "Bob Gates has often depended too much on his own individual analytic judgments and has ignored or scorned the views of others whose assessments did not accord with his own. This would be okay if he were uniquely all-seeing. He has not been."

Throughout his career, Gates was devious and opportunistic. He'll bring those "qualities" to the new Obama administration.

He's also a past president of Texas A & M University (a position gotten with considerable Bush family help), a member of several corporate boards, served on the Baker Iraq Study Group, and was George Bush's first choice for Department of Homeland Security secretary but declined to remain at Texas A & M.

Retired Marine General James Jones

He's the announced National Security Advisor designee to head the White House National Security Council (NSC). Since inception under Harry Truman, it's to advise the president on national security and foreign policies as well as coordinate them among various government agencies (including the military branches, CIA, and other intelligence agencies).

Jones is a former NATO commander (from 2003 - 2006), Commandant of the Marine Corp (from 1999 - 2003), and 40 year veteran after retiring from the Corp in 2007. He's now a US Chamber of Commerce executive and last November was named the administration's special Middle East envoy with this endorsement: he's the "person we need to take up this vital mission....an experienced leader who can address the regional security challenges comprehensively and at the highest levels...." His assignment was to draft a strategic security stabilization plan to complement (so-called) Israeli - Palestinian peace talks. He supports stationing US forces in Occupied Palestine under the pretext of NATO peacekeepers.

He also investigated the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, concluded that America "t(ook) its eye off the ball" in Afghanistan and is losing. That view supports Obama's wanting 10,000 more combat troops there (30,000 according to some reports) and also plans "as our first priority" increased regional military operations - against Afghanistan and Pakistan with a more convenient than ever pretext in the wake of the Bombay (Mumbai) terror attacks in the part of the world he calls the greatest menace to US security.

Increasing numbers of US missile strikes are killing more Pakistani civilians. They're inciting growing anger in the country, are escalating the Afghan war, and threaten to expand the war theater to a much larger area with potentially catastrophic consequences - a strategy Obama and his incoming team apparently support.

In his latest article titled "Afghanistan, Another Untold Story," Michael Parenti has a different view. After reviewing the country's recent history, he says:

"US intervention in Afghanistan has proven not much different from US intervention in Cambodia, Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Nicaragua, Grenada, Panama, and elsewhere. It had the same intent of preventing egalitarian social change, and the same effect of overthrowing an economically reformist government. In all these instances, the intervention brought retrograde elements into ascendance, left the economy in ruins, and pitilessly laid waste to many innocent lives."

"The war in Afghanistan, a battered impoverished country, continues to be portrayed in US official circles as a gallant crusade against terrorism. If it ever was that, it also has been a means to other things: destroying a leftist revolutionary social order, gaining profitable control of one of the last vast untapped reserves of the earth's dwindling fossil fuel supply, and planting US bases and US military power into still another region of the world....In the face of all this, Obama's call for 'change' rings hollow."

It also suggests a frightening prospect under his leadership - a continuation of Bush's (preventive war) Doctrine against countries we claim (true or false) practice "terrorism," harbor "terrorist" elements, or aid "terrorist" groups. In other words, an agenda that needs enemies, invents them strategically, and intends to wage permanent aggressive wars to expand US imperialism globally and especially over resource-rich parts of the world like Eurasia.

Eric Holder

As Attorney General designee, he's another very troublesome choice because of his hard line law-and-order reputation. He's Obama's senior legal advisor, a former District of Columbia Superior Court judge, and Deputy Attorney General under Bill Clinton.

As senior Democrat Party legal advisor during the Bush administration, he was actively involved in his party's complicity in enacting repressive police state laws.

In 1998, he issued a statement known as the "Holder memo" in which he supported government intervention into policing Internet free speech. It stated:

"Because of the nature of the Internet and availability of agents trained in conducting criminal investigations in cyberspace, investigation and prosecution of Internet obscenity is particularly suitable to federal resources."

In a 1998 letter to Morality In Media (an extremist religious right front group against pornography), he said: "I appreciated having the opportunity to meet with you recently to discuss the prosecution of obscenity cases." Holder supported multi-jurisdictional prosecutions of Internet web sites and businesses on such charges, even in cases of First Amendment-protected material.

Some claim his strategy wasn't to win, but to burden defendants with mounting legal costs, exhaust them through repeated litigation, and perhaps drive them into bankruptcy. It's a tactic very similar to so-called SLAPP (strategic lawsuit against public participation) lawsuits that are used to intimidate and silence critics.

Holder was also involved in Bill Clinton's indefensible last day in office Mark Rich pardon, the billionaire fugitive commodities trader. In 1983, Rich and his partner were indicted on 65 counts of defrauding the IRS, mail fraud, tax evasion, racketeering, defrauding the Treasury and trading with the enemy. Holder was deputy attorney general at the time.

As US attorney for the District of Columbia, he also pushed for stiffer marijuana penalties, and according to one report, advocated "minimum sentences of 18 months for first-time convicted drug dealers, 36 months for second offenses, and 72 months for each subsequent conviction." He also wanted to "make the penalty for distribution and possession with intent to distribute marijuana a felony, punishable with up to a five-year sentence." The DC Council enacted Holder's recommendation into law in 2000. His hard line stance against non-violent drug offenders runs counter to Obama's softer position, apparently about to harden.

Holder also played a lead role in the 2005 Patriot Act reauthorization, supported at the time by Obama. In addition, after his Clinton administration service, he was a partner in the Covington & Burling law and lobbying firm at which he defended Chiquita Brands International executives on charges of aiding terrorism by financing and arming Colombian (AUC) death squads. In spite of overwhelming evidence and the company's own admission, he got it off with a fine of around half of one percent of its annual revenue.

Holder also believes that accused "terrorists" have no Geneva Convention rights. In a January 2002 CNN interview he said:

"One of the things we clearly want to do with these prisoners is to have an ability to interrogate them and find out what their future plans might be, where other cells are located; under the Geneva Convention you are really limited in the amount of information that you can elicit from people."

"It seems to me that given the way in which they have conducted themselves, however, that they are not, in fact, people entitled to the protection of the Geneva Convention. They are not prisoners of war."

Holder left unaddressed the question of torture, guilt or innocence. The fact that they were captured and imprisoned is good enough for him.

As the nation's top law enforcement official, he'll assure more of the same criminal abuses under George Bush. He's no civil libertarian or what people should expect from the nation's top law enforcement officer. He represents business as usual, and a sign of continued dark times ahead.

Keeping FBI Director Robert Mueller as his chief law enforcement deputy (even though his term runs until 2011) is an even stronger signal. Mueller enforced the worst of "war on terrorism" policies, including witch-hunt prosecutions, illegal spying, and targeting political dissent.

The possible appointment of former George Tenet aide John Brennan as new CIA chief is also disturbing although reportedly he's out of the running. He heads Obama's intelligence transition team, supported warrantless wiretapping, extraordinary rendition, and was involved in politicizing intelligence alleging Saddam's WMDs in the run-up to the Iraq war.

Possible CIA Directors

On December 2, The New York Times reported that "Obama Faces a Delicate Task" in choosing his CIA chief - "one of the more treacherous patches of his transition to the White House" given the agency's disturbing involvement in extraordinary renditions, torture, and other illegal practices under Bush.

Even so, "some senior Democratic lawmakers who are vehement critics of the Bush administration's interrogation policies seemed reluctant in recent interviews to commit the new administration to following the Army Field Manual in all cases."

Diane Feinstein will become Senate Intelligence Committee chairperson in January. She says extreme cases and potential terrorist threats call for flexibility, so her message is clear even though in a subsequent statement she softened it. Repressive interrogations, including torture, will likely continue under Obama even if Guantanamo is closed and even though they're illegal under US and international law.

During the campaign, Obama aides said he'd let CIA keep holding prisoners in overseas jails but that International Committee of the Red Cross representatives should be given access to them. It matters little because, when allowed, their tours are carefully orchestrated to conceal repressive practices and no contact with prisoners most aggrieved by them.

The Army Field Manual (No. 27-10) is explicit on the rule of law. It incorporates the Nuremberg Principles prohibiting crimes against humanity, and in paragraph 498 states that any person, military or civilian, who commits a crime under international law bears responsibility and may be punished. In addition, paragraph 499 defines a "war crime." Paragraph 500 refers to conspiracy, attempts to commit it and complicity with respect to international crimes. Paragraph 509 denies the defense of superior orders in the commission of a crime; and paragraph 510 denies the defense of an "act of state."

Most members of Congress from both parties have been complicit with the administration in egregiously violating both US and international laws. All signs point to little, if any, change under the incoming Obama administration.

The Times reports that Obama will replace CIA director Michael Hayden. Possible candidates include:

-- deputy director (since 2004) Stephen Kappes, a 27-year CIA veteran;

-- former Indiana congressman and member of the 9/11 commission Tim Roemer; he's now president of the Center for National Policy, a Washington-based national security think tank;

-- Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel who's retiring from the Senate in January; he's also a former conservative talk-show host and is (or was during his runs for the Senate) part owner, chairman, and CEO of the Election Systems & Software (ES&S) electronic voting machine company; it installed, programmed and operated the equipment used by most voters for the elections in which he ran; he won a second term in 1982 with 83% of the vote - the largest ever political victory in the state; some critics called it a dress rehearsal for Bush's 2004 electoral theft and various state ones favoring Republican candidates; and

-- Jack Devine, a 32-year CIA veteran, now retired, and former head of clandestine service; he describes himself as "a covert action person (who believes) we should be out there pushing US policy wherever we can, covertly and overtly."

Admiral Dennis Blair

Reports are that retired Admiral Dennis Blair is top choice to be Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The office was established by the 2004 Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act and was formed in April 2005. It's the president's principal national security intelligence advisor; heads the nation's 16 intelligence agencies; and oversees and directs the National Intelligence Program.

Now retired, Blair is a 34 year Navy veteran and currently holds the (former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman) John Shalikashvili Chair in National Security Studies at The National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR). Also the General of the Army Omar Bradley Chair of Strategic Leadership at Dickenson College and the US Army War College. He's the immediate past president of the Institute for Defense Analyses, a US government Washington, DC think tank that calls itself "a non-profit corporation that administers three federally funded (R & D) centers to assist the (government) in national security issues."

Blair was also an Oxford classmate of Bill Clinton and a Naval Academy classmate of Senator Jim Webb. If appointed, he'll bring more militarist credentials to Obama's war cabinet. In his various command assignments during the Bush administration, he was a point man in the "war on terrorism." He'll continue that role as the nation's intelligence chief.

An obstacle in his way was in a Pentagon inspector general finding regarding DOD conflict-of-interest standards. Earlier he was involved with a study of a major military contract for the F-22 fighter while a board member of the company that makes it, Lockheed Martin. It occurred while Blair was president of the Institute for Defense Analyses. Whether this will derail him is an open question, but it highlights the pervasive Washington revolving-door and overall corrupted culture.

Janet Napolitano

According to Michael Lacey of LA Weekly News, the current Arizona governor and designee for Homeland Security secretary is a troublesome choice. He cites her sorrowful Arizona service "consorting with anti-immigrant enforcers, indulging rank opportunism, and adhering to failed policies (that make for) an unlikely recipe for change we can believe in. And yet this very cocktail of mediocrity" made her Obama's choice for DHS chief or what this writer calls the nation's Gestapo.

As Arizona governor, Napolitano defended her states border with a "pitchfork. Her multi-pronged strategy: embrace the nation's most regressive legislation; empower a notorious sheriff using cynical political calculations; (and) employ boots on the ground" - shock troop enforcers against defenseless Latino immigrants forced north because of destructive NAFTA policies.

Lacey goes on to describe Napolitano's "bungled billions," hiring companies embedded with former state agency employees and cronies, ducking hard choices, using accounting gimmicks in state budgets, and various other practices amounting to "corruption, greed, and the cupidity of boondoggle bookkeeping in hard times." She also signed legislation criminalizing the need to work and support one's family and created a state atmosphere reminiscent of Prohibition - today against Latino immigrants driven north to find work. Now she'll do for America what she's doing to Arizona.

Susan Rice

She'll be Obama's nominee for UN ambassador. Earlier under Bill Clinton, she was on the National Security Council and served as Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs. Some call her progressive but recommending the unilateral use of military force against any country violates the Charter of the organization where she'll work. In 2006, she recommended it against Sudan in stating:

"History demonstrates that there is one language Khartoum understands: the credible threat or use of force....After swift diplomatic consultations, the United States should press for a UN resolution that issues Sudan an ultimatum: accept unconditional deployment of the UN force within one week or face military consequences."

Chapter VII of the UN Charter authorizes only the Security Council to "determine the existence of any threat to the peace, or act of aggression (and, if necessary, take military or other actions to) restore international peace and stability." It permits a nation to use force only under two conditions: when authorized by the Security Council or under Article 51 allowing the "right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member....until the Security Council has taken measures to maintain international peace and security."

Calling for unilateral force against another state for any reason is illegal and criminal. Susan Rice did it, yet will serve as America's UN ambassador as her reward.

Obama continues to round out his team, and each appointment mirrors the others. On his watch, it'll be business as usual, but what else would we expect.

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Mondays from 11AM - 1PM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on world and national issues. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11219

Stephen Lendman is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Stephen Lendman

2008-12-03T13:45:00.001-05:00

Wed

03

Dec

2008
Continuity Error: Guts, Goo and Obama's Imperial Dream
Written by Chris Floyd

Barack Obama's new "national security team" is a grim conglomeration of war criminals, warmongers and apologists for torture and empire who have been praised justly by some rightwingers as a continuation and validation of the Bush Regime's foreign policy. But despite the growing unease these choices have induced in some "progressive" quarters, they in no way constitute a "betrayal" on Obama's part. He has always made it abudantly clear that he stands squarely on the side of a militarist empire – expansive, dominating, brooking no challenge or hindrance to its actions or its preeminence. An empire conceived in bloodshed and dedicated to the proposition that no nation is created equal to the divine American state, whose "interests" – as self-servingly defined by whatever faction of the ruling elite holds temporary sway in Washington – must be pursued at any and every cost. A cost to be paid, of course, by the lesser breeds beyond the Homeland's borders, and, increasingly, by the American people themselves.

Obama's forthright stand on the issue of empire was evident throughout the campaign, in speeches, on his website, in his Senate votes and in his publicly announced positions – such as his always conditional, circumscribed promise to "end" the war in Iraq, on essentially the same terms by which George W. Bush claims to be ending it now. At no point in his much-ballyhooed "opposition" to the nation-gutting in Iraq did Obama ever once call it what it is: a crime. An abomination. An act of mass murder that has left more than a million innocent people dead.

Who then can be surprised that he has chosen as his own war chief a man who has presided over this pointless slaughter for two of the five years that it has been going on? And who can be surprised that he has chosen as his secretary of state a woman whose chief contributions to foreign policy have been: urging her husband to bomb civilians in an illegal, undeclared war against Serbia; promising to "obliterate" an entire nation of 65 million people from the face of the earth; and voting for one of the worst war crimes in the last half-century – then damning the victims as lousy ingrates for not appreciating America's benevolent destruction of their country and murder of their children?

Really now, what did anyone expect from a man who walks into a room where a dozen children have had their head bashed in by a thug in a silk suit still holding the blood-dripping bat in his hand, and says, "My word! I think a mistake has been made here. By gum, I think beating these children into a steaming pulp of guts and goo might have been a 'stupid policy.' If you give me that bat, I promise to stop beating these children into a steaming pulp of guts and goo within the next 16 months – depending, of course, on the conditions in the room at the time, and the advice of my new top adviser, an experienced, pragmatic, safe pair of hands who has just spent the last two years helping this thug – who should not be prosecuted, by the way, because that would just criminalize political differences – beat these children into a steaming pulp of guts and goo." This, in a nutshell, is Obama's Iraq policy, and always has been. Where then is the betrayal?

II.
Here we must turn, once again, to Arthur Silber, who has long understood the true nature of the Obama candidacy and what its triumph will mean for the future. No talk of "betrayal" from Silber, who knows that Obama's recent appointments are only the inevitable fruit of the imperial, exceptionalist philosophy that has always guided his votes and positions on foreign policy. Silber's new post, "Clinging to the Wreckage I: Murder Inc. -- The Continuing Obscenity of U.S. Foreign Policy," is a masterpiece of bitter clarity about the reality of the American empire -- even in the rosy glow of the false dawn of the era of "hope and change." You should read the whole, devastating piece -- and follow the links in the original -- but below are a few excerpts:

"Our troops did the job they were asked to do. They got rid of Saddam Hussein. They conducted the search for weapons of mass destruction. They gave the Iraqi people a chance for elections and to have a government. It is the Iraqis who have failed to take advantage of that opportunity." – Hillary Clinton

"It's not change when [McCain] promises to continue a policy in Iraq that asks everything of our brave men and women in uniform and nothing of Iraqi politicians..." -- Barack Obama

If you have ever wondered how a serial murderer -- a murderer who is sane and fully aware of the acts he has committed -- can remain steadfastly convinced of his own moral superiority and show not even the slightest glimmer of remorse, you should not wonder any longer.

The United States government is such a murderer. It conducts its murders in full view of the entire world. It even boasts of them. Our government, and all our leading commentators, still maintain that the end justifies the means -- and that even the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocents is of no moral consequence, provided a sufficient number of people can delude themselves into believing the final result is a "success."

We are a nation that has voluntarily renounced all its most crucial values, and all its founding principles. We can appeal all we want to "American exceptionalism," but any "exceptionalism" that remains ours is that of a mass murderer without a soul, and without a conscience….

As a nation, we are resolute in our refusal to identify the true nature of our actions, and in our refusal to acknowledge the consequences of what we do. This may well be true of most nations throughout history. Yet there is a direct correlation between a nation's power and influence, and its reliance on myth and other public relations ploys. As the world's sole superpower, the United States via its ruling class saturates its subjects at home and abroad with propaganda on a scale and with an intensity that have rarely been surpassed. As is true of all propaganda, permissible viewpoints are confined within suffocatingly constricted boundaries of thought; variation of any moment from the prescribed guidelines is prohibited.

Consider how far into fantasy we have traveled, consider the scope of our determination to banish facts from our awareness. It should not be controversial or noteworthy in the least to observe that conquest of foreign peoples by force of arms necessarily involves bloodletting, dismemberment and mutilation, that subjugation shatters the mind and the body, not just of the subjugated, but of those who would rule in this manner. History tells this tale repeatedly. Indeed, when our leaders wish to condemn other nations which utilize identical practices, they will examine these evils in endless detail. Our leaders will explain to us with enthusiastic commitment that such practices are deeply immoral and can only lead to disaster. But suddenly, when the United States sets out to conquer entire regions of the world, all these evils are not only transformed into a force for good: the evils miraculously cease to exist. The United States is good -- it is "the culmination of human development" -- and all its works are good. In "respectable" conversation in "respectable" places, you may not say otherwise….

In the context of what the United States has done and continues to do, the statements from Clinton and Obama about the "failure" of the Iraqis to act in a manner they find "acceptable" are loathsome in the extreme. Their views, which I emphasize again are shared by every national politician who actually wields power (by which formulation, I exclude the very few exceptions such as Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul), represent the murderous triumph of "American exceptionalism" -- the doctrine that lauds the United States as uniquely "good" and Americans as "the good guys" in a manner that no other peoples can ever hope to equal, and that, with its always implicit and frequently explicit racism, condemns all other peoples on Earth to sub- or even inhuman status. That final element, of course, makes it considerably easier to slaughter them in large numbers, even when they could never possibly threaten us.

This is the philosophy that has guided American foreign policy for decades; it is the philosophy that has guided it during the Bush Administration; it is the philosophy that will guide it in the Obama Administration. Obama has made this clear, once more, with his "national security" appointments. But he has not betrayed us. He has indeed brought the promised change – a change in the faces that will mouth the required pieties when the next small child is beaten into a steaming pulp of guts and goo.

2008-11-30T08:23:00.002-05:00

Who is Paul Volcker? Obama appoints a longtime enemy of the working class
Patrick Martin, WSWS

29 November 2008

President-elect Barack Obama announced Wednesday the appointment of former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volcker to head a White House advisory board to oversee the new administration's policies for stabilizing financial markets. The selection of the 81-year-old Volcker puts an inveterate enemy of the working class at the side of the new president, and demonstrates the class character of the right-wing government that Obama is assembling.

In the course of the week, Obama selected his entire economic team: Timothy Geithner, currently president of the New York branch of the Federal Reserve, who will become secretary of the treasury; Lawrence Summers, former Clinton treasury secretary, who will head the National Economic Council, the chief White House group for coordinating economic policy; and Peter Orszag, who will become budget director. Summers, Geithner and Orszag are all protégés of former Clinton treasury secretary Robert Rubin, former CEO of Goldman Sachs and now director and vice chairman of Citigroup.

These appointments have been greeted favorably on Wall Street, with a 1,200-point runup in stock prices since Geithner's name was made public last Friday. Congressional Republicans hailed the selection of Geithner and Summers, and an op-ed column in the Wall Street Journal November 28 by former Bush political adviser Karl Rove was headlined, "Thanksgiving Cheer From Obama: He's assembled a first-rate economic team."

But it is the selection of Volcker that is the sharpest warning to the working class. No other individual in modern US history is so closely identified with the deliberate creation of mass unemployment to drive down wages and smash the organized resistance of the working class to the demands of corporate America. He put into motion policies that led to the destruction of large sections of industry and the explosive growth of financial speculation in the US economy.

Volcker served as Fed Chairman from 1979 to 1987, a critical period in the history of the American working class, in which the official labor movement was effectively destroyed as an instrument of workers' self-defense, and the unions transformed into what they are today: a mechanism for the suppression of workers' struggles and the destruction of their jobs and wages.

Democratic President Jimmy Carter nominated Volcker—a former Chase Manhattan Bank executive—to head the Federal Reserve in August 1979, at a turning point for the American ruling class and world capitalism as a whole. The coming to power of Margaret Thatcher in Britain three months earlier first signaled the drastic shift to the right internationally on the part of big business. The selection of Volcker initiated a similar shift within the United States, which culminated in November 1980 when Ronald Reagan defeated Carter for reelection.

Runaway price inflation had sparked a series of bitter strikes by workers seeking to defend their living standards, and the Carter administration had suffered a humiliating defeat when more than 100,000 coal miners struck for 111 days in 1977-78 in defiance of a presidential no-strike order under the Taft-Hartley Law. The White House had been unable to cow the miners into submission—they publicly burned copies of the president's back-to-work order on the picket line—and Carter was compelled to rely on the leadership of the United Mine Workers union to deprive the rank-and-file of any gains from their struggle.

Volcker was brought in to initiate policies that would suppress inflation—and the wages movement in the working class—by driving up the rate of unemployment. Under his leadership, the Federal Reserve rapidly raised interest rates to an unprecedented 20 percent, choking off home-buying and purchases of cars and other durable goods and triggering a series of corporate bankruptcies.

The economic turmoil contributed heavily to Carter's defeat in the presidential contest, but that prospect did not faze Volcker, whose loyalty to the Democratic Party and the president who nominated him took a distant second place to his devotion to the long-term interests of American capitalism, which required the most draconian methods.

Once Reagan entered the White House in January 1981, Volcker worked closely with the new Republican administration, and was reappointed by Reagan in 1983 to continue his inflation-fighting course. In 1982-83, the US economy plunged into the sharpest recession of the post-World War II period.

The economic devastation was focused particularly in the industrial Midwest—steel mills, auto plants, coal mines were shut down, many of them permanently. The city of Detroit began the downward slide that has continued to this day, and Buffalo, Akron, Youngstown, Gary, Indiana and countless industrial towns followed suit.

The response to the attacks by big business and the Reagan administration was the biggest wave of strike struggles since the 1940s, beginning with the PATCO air traffic controllers strike in August 1981, where Reagan ordered the firing of 12,000 workers and made the firings stick. He had the backing of the entire US ruling elite, Democrats and Republicans alike, and critical assistance from the AFL-CIO bureaucracy, which blocked any large-scale mobilization of workers behind the PATCO strikers, leaving them to isolation and defeat.

Volcker famously praised Reagan for breaking the PATCO strike, calling his action the most important factor in bringing inflation under control.

PATCO set the pattern for the struggles which followed: Greyhound, Phelps Dodge, Hormel, International Paper, A. T. Massey Coal, Continental Airlines, and Eastern Airlines. Isolated groups of workers engaged in militant and protracted battles, in many cases against state repression and employer violence, all stabbed in the back by the AFL-CIO. The outcome was the destruction of union locals, the arrest, imprisonment and even murder of striking workers, the strengthening of the bureaucratic apparatus, and the emergence of corporatism—labor-management "partnership" —as the guiding philosophy of the American unions.

Throughout this period, there was a bipartisan anti-labor front in Washington: Republican Reagan in the White House, Democrat Volcker at the Fed, a Republican-controlled US Senate, and a Democratic-controlled House of Representatives. Democratic governors and mayors worked hand-in-glove with unionbusting corporations, calling out the National Guard or mobilizing local police against strikes in Arizona, Minnesota, Kentucky, West Virginia and countless cities and towns.

Particularly relevant today is the role played by the Democrats in the bailout of Chrysler Corporation in 1979-80. The Carter administration provided loan guarantees to Chrysler in return for concessions by the United Auto Workers union, including the first-ever cuts in wages and benefits imposed by a major American trade union on its own membership—setting the pattern for the concessions bargaining of the 1980s.

Like a criminal returning to the scene of the crime, Volcker now goes back to Washington as a principal adviser to another Democratic Party administration preparing to bail out bankrupt auto manufacturers at the expense of the auto workers and the working class as a whole. He can rely on his direct personal experience with the UAW bureaucracy to demand that the union finish the job it began three decades ago: transforming what was once the most powerful section of the American working class into a super-exploited mass of low-paid, casual laborers, without any rights.

When Obama announced that he was establishing the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board, with Volcker as its head, he praised the "sound and independent judgment" of the former Fed chairman. That "judgment" included early support for Obama's presidential campaign—he gave $2,300 to Obama's primary campaign last February, the most Volcker has ever contributed to any candidate, Democrat or Republican.

"Paul Volcker hasn't been in Washington for quite some time," Obama said, "and that's part of the reason he can provide a fresh perspective."

Volcker's record from 1979 to 1987 suggests what this "fresh perspective" will consist of. Unemployment in the United States reached 11.3 percent in 1982, double the level of 1975. The average wage of young workers fell 30 percent by 1987. Infant mortality, family violence, drug addiction and other concomitants of economic hardship soared.

But the wealthiest 1 percent of the population saw a staggering 50 percent increase in their wealth during that period. That is why the American ruling elite remembers the Volcker years fondly, and why, acting through their servant Obama, the financial aristocracy has summoned the old reactionary for one last service in attacking the working class.

:: Article nr. 49190 sent on 30-nov-2008 08:28 ECT

www.uruknet.info?p=49190

Link: wsws.org/articles/2008/nov2008/volc-n29.shtml

:: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Uruknet .

2008-11-23T08:25:00.002-05:00

SOME THINGS NEVER CHANGE
Malcom Lagauche

November 22, 2008

It hasn’t taken long for some of those on the left who heralded Barack Obama as the long-awaited savior of the U.S. to begin asking, "Why has he appointed the same people from the Clinton and Bush II administrations to positions?" The answer is that he never promised huge changes. If any of his leftist supporters took the time to research his voting record and speeches, he/she would have come up blank with reasons to support Obama. He has taken some old names — like Daschle, Clinton, and even Colin Powell — thrown them in a bag, shook it up, and thrown the names on a table, some with new positions. Obama even is thinking of keeping Gates as the Secretary of War.

A year ago, I wrote the following article and prompted those who were desperate for a change in U.S. imperialistic policy to think again before they put their eggs in the Democrat basket. Names and dates may differ, but the actions of the Democratic Party have not.

DEMOCRATS SPEAK WITH FORKED TONGUES

Tuesday-Thursday, November 6-8, 2007

To listen to Democrats today, you would think they all opposed George Bush’s illegal 2003 invasion of Iraq. Bush, now at his lowest in public opinion polls, is open game for his Democratic opponents. He is being portrayed as a lying warmonger while the Dems are extolling the virtues of their anti-war philosophy.

All this posturing is false. Five years ago, the Democratic Party jumped on board the war bandwagon. Many voted to go to war and gave resounding testimony to the evil of Iraq. However, if you believe the messages being sent by Democrats, you would think that not one supported the war.

The Boston Globe of April 22, 2006 carried an op-ed piece written by 2004 Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. He mentioned his 1971 appearance before the U.S. Senate and how he spoke of opposing the Vietnam War. Then, he added:

Thirty-five years later, in another war gone off course, I see history repeating itself … Again, we must refuse to sit quietly and watch our troops sacrificed for a policy that isn’t working while Americans who dissent and ask tough questions are branded unpatriotic.

Just as it was in 1971, it is again right to make clear that the best way to support the troops is to oppose a course that squanders their lives, dishonors their sacrifice, and disserves the American people and our principles.

Good stuff, but there some minor omissions on Kerry’s part. He supported the invasion of Iraq, and, at times during the presidential campaign, called for more troops in Iraq than the Republicans sent. Here are a few quotes from the past John Kerry, not the "enlightened" one speaking today:

"We urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq’s refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs." (Oct. 9, 1998)
"I will be voting to give the president of the United States the authority to use force — if necessary — to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security." (Oct. 9, 2002)
"We are in possession of what I think to be compelling evidence that Saddam Hussein has, and has had for a number of years, a developing capacity for the production and storage of weapons of mass destruction. Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime … And now he had continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction … So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real." (Jan. 23, 2003)
This does not sound like the Kerry of today. It is possible for one to change opinions. However, when the person does, there is a usual explanation of how he/she was previously misled or made bad judgements. Not so with Kerry. For years, he supported military action against Iraq. Then, he shows up speaking of a misguided Iraq war and policy.

Madeleine Albright is another one who is changing her tune in the same manner as Kerry: just give a speech that is opposite from your years-long stance without an explanation for the change in course.

Al-Jazeera News published an article called "Albright Warns of Iraq Disaster" on April 23, 2006. Here is the beginning of the piece:

Madeleine Albright, the former U.S. secretary of state, has warned that the invasion of Iraq may end up as one of the worst disasters in American foreign policy.

In an interview with the New York Times, published on Sunday, Albright said she did not think Saddam Hussein had been an imminent threat to the United States.

"You can’t go to war with everybody you dislike," she said.

"I think Iraq may end up being one of the worst disasters in American foreign policy

"I’m for democracy, but imposing democracy is an oxymoron. People have to choose democracy and it has to come from below," she said.

Remember, this is the same Albright who told Leslie Stahl in an interview in 1997 that the deaths of more than 500,000 Iraqi children at the hands of the embargo was a worthy result of U.S. foreign policy. Here are a few statements from the old Albright:

"Iraq is a long way from here, but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face." (Feb. 18, 1998)
"Hussein has chosen to spend his money on building weapons of mass destruction and palaces for his cronies." (Nov. 10, 1999)
Poor Saddam. In the space of a few years, he was relegated by Albright from being the "greatest security threat we face" to not being an imminent threat to the United States. They’ve even taken accusations for Saddam being a sonofabitch away from him. The U.S. talks out of both sides of its mouth.

Before and after the invasion of 2003, anti-war Democrats have argued with me about the merits of the Democratic Party. I have heard, and continue to hear, every lame excuse in the book about the party acquiescing to the warmongers from "They had bad information" to "That’s not their real position." Facts are facts. The Democrats allowed George Bush to invade Iraq for one reason: they were afraid that if the U.S. attacked Iraq and that the soldiers were welcomed with flowers and candy, they would have been on the wrong side of the issue and would have been considered anti-American. No matter how they talk today, Madeleine Albright, John Kerry, and many other Democrats allowed the invasion to occur. Integrity, research and truth went out the window.

Despite all their current anti-war talk, there is one aspect missing from the hollow mouths of the Democrats: not one has mentioned the plight of the Iraqi people and the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilian deaths and the destruction of the country that came about because of their silence.

2008-11-22T19:57:00.002-05:00

Demonic Cabal

The demonic cabal that's ruled America since the early decades of the twentieth century has retained its power through adjusting its strategies as world conditions change. In this essay, we'll investigate their changed strategies so we can understand their effects and discover ways to achieve victory over their savage tactics.

Fixed Elections
In the 2008 presidential election, Americans were made to feel that there were complex factors in determining how we should vote. We knew that Barack Obama was as much a creature of the cabal as John McCain. We were aware that only a person tied to the cabal could be elected.

The cabal had already selected Obama and its neoliberal Democratic Party wing to front for the continuation of its militaristic, imperialistic, fascist tactics. Had Americans wanted to understand this fact, they would only have had to look at Obama's receiving over twice as much financial backing as McCain and the Republican Party neocon wing.

As usual, it didn't matter one whit how we voted, since the cabal controlled this as it does all elections. The cabal had decided not to repeat their 2000 coup d'etat (starring Jeb Bush, Katherine Harris, and the Supreme Court) and their stealing of the 2004 election through vote fraud--because the American public might get a little skittish if such blatant criminal behavior was repeated too often.

The Bush-Neocon wing has served its purpose in perpetrating a Reichstag Fire syndrome 1 catastrophe--9/11, starting a warprofiteering armed conflict on two fronts, decimating Constitutional liberties through the Patriot Act and domestic spying, and committing a second 9/11 on the economic front by pulling off a 1929-style collapse of the entire world economy.

What Happens Next

"What happens next will be ratcheting in gains and preparing a fresh new story line [Obama the Messiah]. That is to say, none of the very impressive (ie, horrific) achievements of the neocons will be undone, and yet the American people will be led to believe that the evils are in the past—the same standard tactic that we saw work so well when Nixon resigned. The media will be filled with fresh new story lines, along with bright intelligent confident reassuring empathetic Earth-loving new faces, plus other new fantasies—and the Bush experience will fade from public memory, along with last season’s football scores. Such an advantage it is for our rulers, that we Americans have such tiny memory spans and such limited powers of independent observation, compared to the rest of the world’s population. I guess the purpose of the melting pot was to melt away our basic intuitive judgment."

Global Research, December 27, 2007, "The Post-Bush Regime: A Prognosis"

Now that Obama has been elected--and the confidence game ramped up--it becomes our responsibility to see through the false masquerade they've concocted, just as we had to penetrate the facade contrived around Dubya and the neocon junta. Many Americans were incapable of seeing through Bush II's innumerable crimes and outrages, perceiving him to be either a positive force or merely a harmless buffoon.
But discerning people worldwide saw through Dubya's "good ole boy" false front to his insane depravity. They comprehended that he and his co-conspirators had turned America into a militaristic police state.

The cabal has now contrived a powerful, multi-faceted disguise for Obama and the new Democratic administration, making many people believe that he's an independent agent who has genuine regard for the welfare of working people. We have to hand it to the cabal: they've manufactured an effective camouflage for Obama and the neo-liberals, turning him into a cult figure that people accept mindlessly as the new political Savior.

As we earlier penetrated Dubya's mask and the cabal's disguised policies of world devastation and looting during Bush II's reign of terror, we must now pierce Obama's disguise and the subterfuge they've placed around their new camouflaged policies of global plunder and despoilment.

If we don't penetrate through to the actual new policies and tactics of devastation the cabal has adopted in conjunction with their Obama-puppet regime, we'll be at the mercy of their propaganda and subterfuge. American citizens need to know the grand imperialist scheme that the criminal cabal is now carrying out. Only by understanding it fully will we be able to defeat this murderous plot of the plutocrats.
The imperialist schemers are so sure of themselves that they don't hesitate to publish their conspiracy plot to conquer the world politically, economically, and militarily. Mandarins such as Brzezinski, Kissinger, Wolfowitz, and a host of others, draw up the blueprints for their world police state. By studying their imperialist designs we can understand just how the demonic cabal plans to seize complete world dominance and maintain it.

Whereas we earlier pierced through to the cabal's schemes through a discerning scrutiny of Brzezinski's 1997 book The Grand Chessboard, now we can penetrate to their new world domination policies through a perspicacious examination of his 2004 book The Choice and his 2007 book Second Chance.

Even before the 2008 election of the supposed African-American savior--Barack Obama--it was possible to determine unequivocally that he was a cabal puppet, by seeing that his policy statements identically echoed Brzezinski's ideas in his book Second Chance.

Zbigniew Brzezinski the PuppetMaster Barack Obama the Puppet
"Americans must recognize that their patterns of consumption will soon collide head-on with increasingly impatient egalitarian aspirations. Whether through the exploitation of natural resources, excessive energy consumption, indifference to global ecology, or the exorbitant size of houses for the well-to-do, indulgent self-gratification at home conveys indifference to the persisting deprivations of much of the world. (Just try to imagine a world in which 2.5 billion Chinese and Indians consume as much energy per capita as Americans do.) That reality the American public has yet to assimilate. To lead, America must not only be sensitive to global realities. It must also be socially attractive. That calls for a broader national consensus in favor of correcting the key failings of the American social model."

Zbigniew Brzezinski, Second Chance At a recent campaign stop in Oregon, Obama stated: "We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK," Obama said. "That's not leadership. That's not going to happen," he added. If India and China's "carbon footprint gets as big as ours, we're gone." (AFP)

The Diabolical New Schemes

A perceptive study of Brzezinski's two books reveals what the cabal's new strategies are. (All quotations below are taken from these books.)

The United States will continue as the sole super-power for the foreseeable future, with a brand new assessment of the world situation.
"The former major European powers--Great Britain, Germany, and France--are too weak to step into the breach. In the next two decades, it is quite unlikely that the European Union will become sufficiently united politically to muster the popular will to compete with the United States in the politico-military arena. Russia is no longer an imperial power, and its central challenge is to recover socioeconomically lest it lose its far eastern territories to China. Japan's population is aging and its economy has slowed; the conventional wisdom of the 1980's that Japan is destined to be the next 'superstate' now has the ring of historical irony. China, even if it succeeds in maintaining high rates of economic growth and retains its internal political stability (both are far from certain), will at best be a regional power still constrained by an impoverished population, antiquated infrastructure, and limited appeal worldwide. The same is true of India, which additionally faces uncertainties regarding its long-term national unity."

"For the next two decades, the steadying effect of American power will be indispensable to global stability, while the principal challenge to American power can come only from within--either from the repudiation of power by the American democracy itself, or from America's global misuse of its own power."

The old brand of global militaristic imperialism will continue but will now have a new, amiable facade.

"Though hostility toward the United States has risen to unprecedented levels and has not yet crested, an America aware of its responsibilities, measured in its presidential rhetoric, sensitive to the complexities of the human condition, and consensual rather than abrasive in its external relations (in brief, entirely different from its recent emanation [Bush II]) is an America that much of the world would still like to see at the global helm."

"The post-1991 worldwide impression of U.S. global military omnipotence and Washington's illusions about the extent of America's power have been shattered by U.S. failures in postvictory Iraq. The United States acknowledges the need for cooperation with the European Union, China, Japan, and Russia regarding major issues of global security. The Middle East becomes the make-or-break test case of U.S. leadership."

Fascism and imperialism with a friendly face: This is why Obama was chosen--because he is a master at pretending to be an agreeable guy.

The reason for the good-natured mask is that Dubya and the neocons pushed the world into a dangerous reactive hatred for the U. S. and the cabal now needs to pretend to be playing nice.

The old brand of predatory capitalism will continue but will now pretend to be sensitive to economic and social inequities worldwide.

"The exercise of global leadership today requires an instinctive grasp of the times in a world that is stirring, interactive, and motivated by a vague but pervasive sense of prevailing injustice in the human condition."

". . . Income inequality has risen to new heights, with the best paid rewarded at almost obscene levels while average wages have barely crept upward."

The cabal understands the need to pretend to be concerned about economic inequality and other worker travails. The "natives" are becoming restless and the cabal must fool them into thinking that they're sympathetic to their plight.

"Many, disliking the status quo, are susceptible to being mobilized against those whom they perceive as self-interestedly preserving it."

"Only by identifying itself with the idea of universal human dignity--with its basic requirement of respect for culturally diverse political, social, and religious emanations--can America overcome the risk that the global political awakening will turn against it."

The old brand of domestic tyranny--devastation of Constitutional liberties--will continue but citizen awareness and agitation will be blunted by creating a new domestic civilian army.

"Even civil rights came to be seen by some as an impediment to effective national security."

"Needed social reassessment . . . can be encouraged by deliberate civic education that stresses the notion of service to a higher cause than oneself. As some have occasionally urged, a major step in that direction would be the adoption of an obligatory period of national service for every young adult, perhaps involving a variety of congressionally approved domestic or foreign good works."

5. The old non-winnable conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan will be phased out, but since a primary cabal strategy is ongoing barbaric annihilation through warfare, new armed conflicts will be identified and planned.

The general locus for these new wars is what Brzezinski calls the new global balkans. The way Brzezinski describes the global balkans, it's clear there are enough potential hot-spots to satisfy any blood-thirsty barbarian.

"Extending from Egypt's Suez Canal to China's Xinjiang region, from northern Kazakhstan to the Arabian Sea, the Global Balkans of today mirror the traditional Balkans of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in that they are internally unstable and their geopolitical importance causes foreign rivalries. The contemporary Balkans circled above, inhabited by 500 million people, are burdened by internal instability derived from ethnic and religious tension, poverty, and authoritarian governments. Ethnic conflict within the Global Balkans involves 5.5 million Jewish Israelis and 5 million Arab Palestinians. 25 million Kurds and their partitioning states of Turkey, Iraq, and Syria; and between India and Pakistan in the dispute over Kashmir, as well as numerous potentially severe ethnic and minority conflicts in Iran and Pakistan. Religious conflicts involve the Muslims and the Hindus, Muslin Shiites versus Sunnis, and a variety of others."
The cabal must select a primary conflict for its most immediate attention, and the choice--surprise, surprise--is Brzezinski's old nemesis: Russia.

"A central and massively destructive strategic war, at this stage still feasible though unlikely between the United states and Russia and perhaps in twenty or so years between the United States and China, as well as between China and Russia."
The plan appears to be to surround Russia with missiles, said to be for defense against Iran, admitting all or most of the previous Soviet regions into NATO, and driving Russia into collaboration with China, Venezuela, and Iran.

There are many additional insights about new cabal strategies to be gleaned from these two books by Brzezinski; what we've reviewed are merely some of the most significant. I would recommend that anyone who wishes to understand what will be happening in America in the next four years read them carefully. 2

A Cabal By Any Other Name

For the truly discerning reader, Brzezinski's discussion of what he calls "an American hegemonic elite"--what I'm calling a demonic cabal--is very informative, not the least in the very fact that he acknowledges that there is a group of "imperial bureaucrats."
"Animated by a forceful concentration of knowledge, interests, power, and responsibility, the imperial bureaucrats view themselves as singularly equipped to determine America's conduct in a complicated and dangerous world. . . . A vast web of expertise, access to information and interests abroad is inherent in the exercise of political-military power. Its very scope creates a multifaceted community capable at any one point of marshaling a powerful combination of experience, facts, and persuasion on behalf of a preferred policy." 3

Will The Real Obama Sit Down

Obama the cabal puppet is already revealing his true character by appointing Israeli "hit man" Rahm Emmanuel as his Chief of Staff, offering the Secretary of State position to Hillary Clinton, 4 and betraying his supporters by allowing the traitorous Joe Lieberman to remain in the Democratic caucus, among many other outrages. Whatever you do, watch out for Obama the False Messiah and his church of False Hope for Fake Change.

Stay tuned to see how these new cabal strategies play out. You can bet the American worker is going to get the short end of the stick in every way possible. By discerning what their new diabolical strategies really are we are forewarned--and thus forearmed!

Notes:

1 The Reichstag Fire Syndrome occurs whenever a democracy is destroyed by creating a law-and-order crisis and offering as a "solution" the abdication of civil liberties and states' rights to a powerful but unaccountable central dictator. The men of wealth who put the tyrant into power are then able to reap obscene war profits.

2 I wouldn't suggest you buy the books--since that supports one of the worst creatures of the cabal--but the books will be available in your local public library.

3 Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Choicee, pp. 200, 201

4 Some persons believe that the selection of Emmanuel and Clinton to those posts effectively neutralizes two potentially troublesome people.

What Is NorthCom Up To? -- Signs of the Times News

2008-11-14T19:47:00.000-05:00

What Is NorthCom Up To? -- Signs of the Times News: "http://www.sott.net/articles/show/169044-What-Is-NorthCom-Up-To-"

2008-11-01T08:37:00.002-05:00

The Bush-Obama-McCain Administration
Morton Skorodin, M.D.*, Axis of Logic

Oct 31, 2008, 03:56

The period we're living in now is the Bush-Obama-McCain Administration.

Bush obligingly initiated Obama's bombing campaign on Pakistan. The three of them colluded on the recent wealth transfer (about $840 billion) from the American people to Wall St.

The 24 hr/7 days/wk media Wurlitzer distracts us from looking at these white elephants too closely. The circus is so loud and visually entraining that it hides the deeper structure of society. The U.S. is a military dictatorship with scientific public relations. Part of this scientific PR is the careful cultivation of and trumpeting of America’s democratic trappings. The important thing to remember is that McCain and Obama were carefully vetted by the moneyed rulers and this is not particularly a secret. It’s called "campaign contributions". After that, we the people get to choose from two approved candidates.

The fix is in. McCain's a patsy. Obama's repeatedly been anointed sovereign on the cover of Time (That's of Time-Warner, the media conglomerate he won't break up.)

There's no left to speak of in the US. There are material reasons for this- weak unions, few strikes. (The reasons why unions are weak are beyond the scope of this discussion.) So left-wing stars like Ralph Nader and Amy Goodman are tethered to nothing, like bloated Macy parade balloons that have floated up and become more bloated. So their efforts, however well-intentioned, don't have force behind them and are sometimes completely ineffective.

The Society of the Spectacle meets the neo-totalitarian total information awareness society. The state has technology for and has commandeered the resources to spy upon everyone with 16 or 18 "intelligence" agencies and control us as much as possible with the media of five corporations that are pretty well unified as to how and how much the populace is "informed". On the other hand, the populace is atomized (deprived of meaningful ties to others); the only major non corporate-government institutions are the cooptable churches.

The handsome prince and his foil, the wicked, but comely, queen. They're comic book superheroes- perfect for TV, the key instrument of oppression and ignorance. (Notice the immense effort to make sure everybody has digital TV by next Feb. I wish they cared that much to give water to our brethren in New Orleans.)

Barack Obama and Sarah Palin are too good to be true:

Barack Obama- that name is foreign beyond foreign, mother a hippy who had a black's child, an actual African (gasp). This sounds as scary to many whites as the orchestrated excesses of the police state such as the Daarth Vader outfitted police with their North Korea style truncheons at the Republican convention seem to anxious liberals and righteous activists.

Sarah Palin - superhero mom, she'll serve milk and cookies for you while on the way to running and ruining the world. She’s not regular pro-gun, church, etc. She is the cartoon version- actually shoots wolves from helicopters; associates with, to put it a little too politely, "white nationalists".

This dichotomy serves only the rulers. What the vast majority on both sides need are exactly the same things: peace, economic relief, and freedom from the intrusive state.

Divide and conquer. The rulers have been promoting race war as a counter to class struggle since the 1600s. They are very good at it.

After the election the economy may get still worse and there will be further military adventures. As things unravel the game will be: blame the Black guy. This process has already started.

As far as U.S. military planners go, the election cycle and the public’s feelings are only a factor in determining the timing and announcement of aggressive actions, kind of like taking into account the weather for an optimal time for the Normandy landing in WW2.

It’s a military dictatorship with Handsome Presidents. The election is a joke, but more importantly, a waste of the people’s time (except, perhaps some local races). Get over it. Think and find effective ways to rebel.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Morton Skorodin, M.D. submitted this article to Axis of Logic for republication. He is a columnist on My Town, the original source for this essay.

Down the Rabbit Hole towards a New Economic World Order -- Signs of the Times News

2008-10-27T22:10:00.000-05:00

Down the Rabbit Hole towards a New Economic World Order -- Signs of the Times News: "http://www.sott.net/articles/show/168137-Down-the-Rabbit-Hole-towards-a-New-Economic-World-Order"

2008-09-23T18:42:00.002-05:00

Coming Attractions: War Without End, Amen by Chris Floyd
Tuesday, 23 September 2008
I've seen the future, baby: it is murder. -- Leonard Cohen

I. Modern Times
While our national leaders quibble and carp over just how much public money they should ladle out to Wall Street's den of thieves, and how many people should be in charge of divvying up this vast pork pie (one guy at Treasury? a panel of Establishment worthies? a couple of goobers in Congress?), the real business of the American empire -- war and rumors of war -- goes on without let or hindrance.

Even now, the masters of war down at Hell's Bottom -- the fetid swamp where they planted the Pentagon way back when -- are laying plans for decades of "persistent conflict" against a host of targets: the poor, the young, the desperate, the deprived, the Chinese, the Russians -- and the American people.

In a remarkably candid document, "The 2008 Army Modernization Strategy," the Pentagon lays out the perpetual blowback arising from the relentless pursuit of what George W. Bush once proudly hailed as "the single sustainable model of national success" -- i.e., rapacious crony capitalism backed up with state violence. This "model" -- which was once proclaimed as the "end of history," the unsurpassable apex of human development -- has been imposed -- at gunpoint, bribery and extortion -- on much of the world. The result has been, quite literally, the devouring of the earth: resources stripped bare, the climate poisoned and sent careening wildly out of balance, nations destroyed, populations dispossessed, societies rent asunder, violence run rampant, a tsunami of corruption and degradation ravaging the world.

Of course, it is not the Pentagon's job to rectify this situation or to modify the system that has in large part produced it. The boys at Hell's Bottom just do what they're told. And as the report indicates, they have obviously been told to do whatever it takes to keep the American elite floating -- in comfort and splendour -- on the surface of this blood-choked sea of suffering for as long as possible. Hence, the plans for "perpetual war" outlined in the document.

This week the Irish Times' Tom Clonan provided a succinct précis of the document, which conveys a truth universally unacknowledged by the bipartisan American elite: the "Global War on Terror" is by no means confined to slapping down religious extremists, but is designed to maintain and extend America's "unipolar domination" of world affairs -- and world resources.

Thus in addition to the usual suspects -- "a radical, ideology-based, long-term terrorist threat" -- it encompasses a number of other military targets for what Bush once called "the path of action." As Clonan notes:

Relatively new, "emerging" features are also included in the document's rationale for future threats.

"We face a potential return to traditional security threats posed by emerging near-peers as we compete globally for depleting natural resources and overseas markets."

This thinly-veiled reference to Russia and China will, perhaps, come as little surprise given recent events in Ossetia and Abkhazia. The explicit reference in this context to future resource wars, however, will probably raise eyebrows among the international diplomatic community, who prefer to couch such conflicts as human rights-based or rooted in notions around freedom and democracy.

The document, however, contains no such lofty pretences. It goes on to list as a pre-eminent threat to the security of the US and its allies "population growth - especially in less-developed countries - [which] will expose a resulting 'youth bulge'."

This youth bulge, the document goes on to state, will present the US with further "resource competition" in that these expanding populations in the developing world "will consume ever increasing amounts of food, water and energy".

The document goes on to describe in broad-strokes the manner in which its downsized military might ensure survival of the fittest for the US and its allies in future resource wars for water, food and energy.

As noted above, the report is quite open in its recognition of the fact that the "single, sustainable model" of resource-devouring crony capitalism for selected elites is in fact producing the threats that the Terror War purports to address:

An expanding, interconnected global economy supported by advancements in technology will continue to drive prosperity. However, this will also underscore wealth and power disparities between populations while providing the means to export terror and extremism around the world...Resource competition induced by growing populations and expanding economies will consume ever increasing amounts of food, water and energy. States or entities controlling these resources will leverage them as part of their security calculus.

Nor do the savants of Hell's Bottom have any illusions about the reality of global warming and its catastrophic human costs:

Climate change and natural disasters will compound already difficult positions in many developing countries, thereby increasing the potential for humanitarian crises, epidemic disease and regionally destabilizing population migrations.

It doesn't get much plainer than all this. Again, there is not the slightest indication or awareness that there might be any other way to address the immense challenges of the 21st century other than a vicious fight to the finish to retain the lion's share of the earth's dwindling spoils. Certainly, the slightly more gussied-up policy proposals of the bipartisan elite -- now represented by Barack Obama and the withered appendage of the Bush Faction known as John McCain -- envision no other alternative. For them, it's Terror War all the time, Terror War to the bitter end.

Clonan also zeroes in on another key element of the plan: the fact that these never-ending future wars will be focused to a large degree on civilian populations:

As a consequence of identifying growing populations in the developed world as a threat in itself, the strategy document highlights a number of paradigm shifts in the way future wars are to be conducted.

It predicts that "21st Century operations will require soldiers to engage among populations and diverse cultures instead of avoiding them". The document reveals that new US tactical doctrine provides a template by which air, naval and field commanders will no longer just secure traditional strategic targets such as airspace, seaports and bridgeheads, but will, of necessity, also deploy and fight amongst and against the target population itself to win wars.

The document refers to this euphemistically as "commanders employing offensive, defensive and stability or civil support operations simultaneously".

This is already the template being used in Iraq and Afghanistan, where civilian homes are bombed to bits just down the road from "reconstruction" projects, while vast armies raid homes, imprison tens of thousands of people without charges, set up hair-trigger checkpoints and sniper nests all over the "liberated" lands.

As Clonan notes, the document goes on to detail just how the Pentagon will militarize the global commons of outer space, employ advanced technologies of ever-increasing lethality, and also

create a new "networked" human soldier - the 'Future Force Warrior' - who will deploy among the target population and will operate simultaneously several remote, unmanned ground and air weapons systems.

This human engineering project is not limited to the external technologies outlined in the document. As I noted in the Moscow Times several years ago (and as Time magazine noted this month), the Pentagon is embarked on a number of research programs to alter the physical mind and bodies of its "warriors." ("Warrior" is now the term of choice for our military jargonists; obviously, the old-fashioned term "soldier" is not fearsome enough for the mighty chieftains of Hell's Bottom.)

First, from Time:

[T]he U.S. Army has just awarded a $4 million contract to begin developing "thought helmets" that would harness silent brain waves for secure communication among troops. Ultimately, the Army hopes the project will "lead to direct mental control of military systems by thought alone."

... "It'd be radio without a microphone, " says Dr. Elmar Schmeisser, the Army neuroscientist overseeing the program. "Because soldiers are already trained to talk in clean, clear and formulaic ways, it would be a very small step to have them think that way."

Dr. Mike D'Zmura, the civilian scientist in charge of the project, is quick to assure us that this brain-altering technology poses no risks; no spooky "mind control" mechanisms can ever possibly result from this research. And of course, he's right; when in the course of human history has any form of technology ever been adapted to malevolent ends?

But brain radio is just the start of what the Pentagon envisions for "future warriors," as I noted back in 2003:

[As the Daily Telegraph and Christian Science Monitor report,] the [Pentagon] "war fighter enhancement" programs -- an acceleration of bipartisan biotinkering that's been going on for years -- will involve injecting young men and women with hormonal, neurological and genetic concoctions; implanting microchips and electrodes in their bodies to control their internal organs and brain functions; and plying them with drugs that deaden some of their normal human tendencies: the need for sleep, the fear of death, the reluctance to kill their fellow human beings.

The research is "very aggressive and wide open," says Admiral Stephen Baker of the Center for Defense Information. Indeed, the U.S. Special Operations Command envisions the creation of "iron bodied and iron willed personnel" who can "resist the mental and physiological effects of sleep deprivation" while relying on "ergogenic substances" to "manage" the "environmental and mentally induced stress" of the battlefield. Their bodies juiced, their brains swaddled in Prozacian haze, the enhanced warfighters can churn relentlessly, remorselessly toward dominion.

And the term "creation" is not just fanciful rhetoric: Some of the research now under way involves actually altering the genetic code of soldiers, modifying bits of DNA to fashion a new type of human specimen, one that functions like a machine, killing tirelessly for days and nights on end. These mutations will "revolutionize the contemporary order of battle" and guarantee "operational dominance across the whole range of potential U.S. military employments," the [Pentagon] wizards enthuse...

[The Pentagon] remains undeterred in its bold quest to "push the limits of human input/output," advance the "symbiotic relationship between man and machine," and customize "pharmaceutical technology" to "embolden the warfighter and his superiors," as military scientists declared at a Pentagon-sponsored conference on future warfare.

Mutant soldiers waging "perpetual war" against desperate, deprived people in heavily-populated civilian areas -- welcome to the 21st century. Like the man said: It's murder, baby!

II. Bringing It All Back Home
But you shouldn't think that all these fun and games are designed just for foreigners. No indeed; the home folk too are in the cross-hairs of the Pentagon's perpetual conflict machine. In fact, Americans have just gotten the very first active combat unit aimed exclusively at them, as Arthur Silber reports.

Silber notes an Army Times article which spells it out plainly and with no addition: a battle-hardened combat team -- honed by 35 months of occupation duty in the killing fields of Iraq -- has now been assigned to bring those specialized skills back to the Homeland. From the Army Times:

Beginning Oct. 1 for 12 months, the [3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team] will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks.

...this new mission marks the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to NorthCom, a joint command established in 2002 to provide command and control for federal homeland defense efforts and coordinate defense support of civil authorities....

They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control...The 1st BCT’s soldiers also will learn how to use “the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has fielded,” 1st BCT commander Col. Roger Cloutier said, referring to crowd and traffic control equipment and nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals without killing them.

“It’s a new modular package of nonlethal capabilities that they’re fielding. They’ve been using pieces of it in Iraq, but this is the first time that these modules were consolidated and this package fielded, and because of this mission we’re undertaking we were the first to get it.”

This "non-lethal" package includes the copious use of tasers, that remarkably effective -- and often lethal -- weapon of repression whose growing use Silber has documented so well. It also features the ability "to stand up hasty roadblocks" and establish those hair-trigger checkpoints that have lead to countless fatal "incidents" for innocent Iraqis.

Silber puts this development in its immediate context -- the accelerating deterioration of American society under the hammer blows of economic collapse, authoritarian rule, endless war and resource scarcity:

You're not crazy if...you've begun to have waking nightmares about what might be coming as the economy worsens and signs of "normalcy" (of what?) begin to vanish from our lives. Many more people without jobs and homeless, tent cities springing up here and there, perhaps regular power outages and growing shortages of goods that had once been plentiful...the list goes on and on.

And what, you might wonder, is our beneficent, all-caring government doing to prepare for this multitude of possibilities? After all, some of those poor, jobless, homeless, starving people might get unruly.

One answer, says Silber, is the good old battle-tested 1st BCT, and all the other resources of the "Northern Command." Silber then focuses on an essential point:

If and when the order comes to fire on American citizens, what happens then? I don't think we want to find out. Many of these individuals are overly familiar with killing innocent people -- as indeed, our criminal war in Iraq is nothing but an operation dedicated to killing innocent people in ungraspably huge numbers -- so a new kind of target probably won't deter them for long, if at all.

Add in all the private mercenary forces now available to the government, and, well...

So if you lose your home, lose your job, lose your family, lose your health -- while Wall Street fraudsters lick molasses from the federal spoon -- for God's sake, don't get riled up. Bow your head, bend your back and keep it yourself. The future is now.

2008-09-20T17:41:00.001-05:00

Welcome to the Asylum by Arthur Silber

Strolling here and there on the interdolts, I read this:
The Bush administration on Saturday formally proposed to Congress what could become the largest financial bailout in United States history, requesting unfettered authority for the Treasury Department to buy up to $700 billion in mortgage-related assets.

The proposal, not quite three pages long, was stunning for its stark simplicity. It would raise the national debt ceiling to $11.3 trillion. And it would place no restrictions on the administration other than requiring semiannual reports to Congress, granting the Treasury secretary unprecedented power to buy and resell mortgage debt.

...

The ambitious effort to transfer the bad debts of Wall Street, at least temporarily, into the obligations of American taxpayers, was first put forward by the administration late last week, after a series of bold interventions on behalf of ailing private firms seemed unlikely to prevent a crash of world financial markets.

A $700-billion expenditure on distressed mortgage-related assets would be roughly what the country has spent so far in direct costs on the Iraq war and more than the Pentagon’s total yearly budget appropriation. Divided across the population, it would amount to more than $2,000 for every man, woman and child in the United States.

Whatever is spent will add to a budget deficit already projected at more than $500 billion next year. And it comes on top of the $85-billion government rescue of the insurance giant, American International Group, and a plan to spend up to $200 billion to shore up the mortgage finance giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
You feeling lucky? You should be. It's not every serf who enjoys the overwhelming honor of paying off his rulers' idiotically stupid bad debts, thus ensuring that his rulers maintain their incredibly privileged position among the wealthiest and most powerful of Americans. You lucky dog! I just love that "at least temporarily." You falling for that one again? You dog, you!

Earlier in my travels through the interdolts, I had looked at the proposal that "was stunning for its stark simplicity." No kidding. All of it is mindboggling, but it was when I saw this provision that my eyes started to fall out of their sockets:
Sec. 10. Increase in Statutory Limit on the Public Debt.

Subsection (b) of section 3101 of title 31, United States Code, is amended by striking out the dollar limitation contained in such subsection and inserting in lieu thereof $11,315,000,000,000.
It's hardly as if I had never thought about this issue before, but it takes on added, terrible meaning in light of this week's events. Make real to yourself all the implications of that short statement. Try to make real to yourself the enormity of that debt figure. You can't make it real to yourself. I certainly can't. How in the world does any adult -- any adult who is not suffering fatal impairment of his cognitive faculties -- convince himself that this kind of make-believe can continue indefinitely? The United States government is completely broke and drowning in debt that extends through the next three, five, ten, who knows how many generations. Finished. Washed up. Oh, yes, it might take a long time for the unwinding to occur, and the lives of many Americans may continue pretty much as they are for quite a while. Or, depending on events, the fantasy might begin to disintegrate at a much faster pace and very quickly turn into a nightmare. There are so many factors involved that it's impossible to predict exactly how it will play out.

And Congress will quickly approve this plan or one like it in its essentials. After all, they have to do something! And it's an election year! They have to show they're in charge! They're taking care of business! And they want to get out of Washington so they can rush back home and make sure they're reelected -- so they can continue their work of destroying what little remains of this country.

As Mike Whitney said:
Not a dime of public money is provided for over-extended mortgage-owners trying to stay in their homes. Not one congressman or senator at Thursday's meeting rejected the bailout plan or called for a criminal investigation to establish whether laws were broken in the sale of fraudulent securities which have clogged the global system; pushed banks, hedge funds, insurance companies and homeowners into default, and precipitated the greatest financial crisis in the nation's 230 year history.

Ironically, the very people who created this mess, are the ones who will decide how to resolve it; the Federal Reserve and the US Treasury. Where else, but Washington would such massive failure be rewarded with more power and authority.
As I wrote last week:
What you have seen over the last six months and more, and what you will see in the coming months and years, is the same phenomenon in the realm of economic policy [as has occurred with regard to foreign policy]. All of the solons who led us into this abyss of mounting debt, worthless securities, failing financial institutions, economic contraction and collapse ... and all the rest, will now instruct us as to how we should "solve" the crisis that they have created. The crisis may be ameliorated to a degree, and the worst of the consequences may be postponed for a while. But whatever "solutions" are implemented, whatever reorganization and reregulation is imposed, it will all be done in accordance with the ruling class's desires and goals. It will all be to protect their own wealth and power to whatever extent is possible, and to expand their wealth and power still more...
It's like the lousiest, most moronic sitcom ever made, crossed with the goriest, most nauseating slasher movie ever imagined. A stupidly grinning idiot wielding an axe in one hand and a butcher's knife in the other, as he dismembers the millions of bodies spread before him.

This is America today, a sickening joke run by people who are incapable of understanding the most rudimentary facts, drunk on power, and who perform only one action in a fully convincing manner: demonstrating their absolute determination to make their ignorance total and irreversible, as the blood of their victims rises around them.

Welcome to the asylum for the homicidally insane.
posted by Arthur Silber at 1:01 PM

2008-09-16T06:06:00.001-05:00

A Furnace Seal'd: The Wondrous Death Squads of the American Elite
Tuesday, 16 September 2008
Terror the Human Form Divine
And Secrecy the Human Dress
-- William Blake

I.
Another way station on our plunge into darkness was passed last week with the publication of Bob Woodward's new book, The War Within. Along with the usual backstairs gossip dished out by self-serving insiders eager to plant their spin on events, Woodward revealed -- or, rather, confirmed -- the existence of what he called the key element to the "success" of Bush's escalation of the war crime in Iraq: a "secret killing program" aimed at assassinating anyone arbitrarily deemed a "terrorist" by the leaders of the foreign forces occupying the conquered land.

In a TV appearance to puff the book, Woodward celebrated the arbitrary murder, by methods unknown, of people designated "terrorists," by criteria unknown, as "a wonderful example of American ingenuity solving a problem in war, as we often have." The White House acknowledged the existence of the assassination program, but insisted that it was the "surge" of troops that was mainly responsible for the drop in violence from the howling hell of 2006 to today's level, which, as Juan Cole has pointed out, is still greater than some of the most horrific civic conflicts of the last century. (It is a strange country indeed that can celebrate the creation of a blood-gushing sinkhole of violence and destruction as a "success beyond our wildest dreams," to use Barack Obama's new take on the surge.)

Of course, Woodward, the consummate Beltway courtier, embraces this bipartisan conventional wisdom about the success of the surge. And he is certainly right, at least from one point of view, as we noted here recently:

The "surge" -- which in addition to an influx of troops included the ruthless ethnic cleansing of Baghdad, the walled ghettoization of vast swathes of the city, and the arming and funding of violent sectarian militias across the land -- certainly succeeded in extending the duration of the murder, suffering and chaos engendered by America's armed and belligerent presence in Iraq. So it is indeed a great "success" ... in the same way that, say, Albert Speer's miraculous efforts to keep the Nazi war machine going from 1943 to 1945 -- resulting in the deaths of millions of people, including the worst ravages of the Holocaust -- was a "success."

But beyond this little insider quibble over the most effective element in the prolongation of the war -- Woodward, a former military intelligence officer, naturally plumps for the covert op, while the White House ballyhoos the high-profile presidential directive to increase troop levels -- what is most noteworthy about the "revelations" is that they have provoked no controversy at all. The United States admits that it is operating secret death squads in Iraq, and this barely rates a passing mention in the press, and certainly no comment whatsoever on the campaign trail, no debate among the national leadership. And this despite the fact that, as Woodward makes clear, the targets of the American death squads are not merely "terrorists," as the general public broadly understands the term -- i.e., religious extremists in the al Qaeda mold -- but anyone arbitrarily designated an "insurgent" or a leader in "the resistance."

That is, anyone who resists the invasion and occupation of his native land is deemed a legitimate target for a secret death squad. For execution without charges, without trial, without evidence. And this, to Woodward, is "wonderful" and "amazing." By this logic, of course, the Nazis were fully justified in murdering leaders of the French resistance in World War II. The British would certainly have been justified in sneaking into George Washington's house and killing the insurgent leader in his bed. (And his wife too, no doubt, as an acceptable level of "collateral damage.") In fact, Woodward sternly warns members -- members, mind you, not just leaders -- of "the resistance" to "get your rear end out of town;" i.e., leave your native land or else be murdered in your bed by secret assassins of the occupying power.

This is the heroic, honorable stance of the American elite in the 21st century. What the Nazis did, we do, and for the same reason: to secure the forcible occupation of a land we conquered through an unprovoked war of aggression. It is indeed wonderful and amazing that such a state of affairs -- such an abyss of depravity -- is accepted so calmly by the great and good among us....and by tens of millions of our fellow citizens.

II.
But as noted above, there is really nothing new about Woodward's "revelations." I've been writing here, and elsewhere, for several years about the "global death squad" of the Terror War. These reports were based not on any insider knowledge but on universally accessible stories from the most staid and respectable media sources: mainstream papers, news agencies, leading magazines, etc.

And of course, it began long before the war crime in Iraq. As I noted in 2005:

On September 17, 2001, George W. Bush signed an executive order authorizing the use of "lethal measures" against anyone in the world whom he or his minions designated an "enemy combatant." This order remains in force today. No judicial evidence, no hearing, no charges are required for these killings; no law, no border, no oversight restrains them. Bush has also given agents in the field carte blanche to designate "enemies" on their own initiative and kill them as they see fit.
The existence of this universal death squad – and the total obliteration of human liberty it represents – has not provoked so much as a crumb, an atom, a quantum particle of controversy in the American Establishment, although it's no secret. The executive order was first bruited in the Washington Post in October 2001. I first wrote of it in my Moscow Times column in November 2001. The New York Times added further details in December 2002. That same month, Bush officials made clear that the dread edict also applied to American citizens, as the Associated Press reported.

The first officially confirmed use of this power was the killing of an American citizen in Yemen by a CIA drone missile on November 3, 2002. A similar strike occurred in Pakistan this month, when a CIA missile destroyed a house and purportedly killed Abu Hamza Rabia, a suspected al Qaeda figure. But the only bodies found at the site were those of two children, the houseowner's son and nephew, Reuters reports. The grieving father denied any connection to terrorism. An earlier CIA strike on another house missed Rabia but killed his wife and children, Pakistani officials reported.

But most of the assassinations are carried out in secret, quietly, professionally, like a contract killing for the mob. As a Pentagon document unearthed by the New Yorker in December 2002 put it, the death squads must be "small and agile," and "able to operate clandestinely, using a full range of official and non-official cover arrangements to…enter countries surreptitiously."

The dangers of this policy are obvious, as a UN report on "extrajudicial killings" noted in December 2004: " Empowering governments to identify and kill 'known terrorists' places no verifiable obligation upon them to demonstrate in any way that those against whom lethal force is used are indeed terrorists… While it is portrayed as a limited 'exception' to international norms, it actually creates the potential for an endless expansion of the relevant category to include any enemies of the State, social misfits, political opponents, or others."

It's hard to believe that any genuine democracy would accept a claim by its leader that he could have anyone killed simply by labeling them an "enemy." It's hard to believe that any adult with even the slightest knowledge of history or human nature could countenance such unlimited, arbitrary power, knowing the evil it is bound to produce. Yet this is what the great and good in America have done.

And this is what they continue to do, to this very day, this very hour, as the non-response to Woodward's macabre and freakish celebration of covert murder demonstrates so clearly.

(Continued after the jump.)
In Iraq, the death squads were in operation almost from the start. For example, one of the earliest reports about the American formation of "paramilitaries" and "commando squads" to "track down" insurgents came from the Washington Post in December 2003:

Two weeks ago, the U.S. occupation authority decided to form a paramilitary unit to track down insurgents. The unit, composed of Iraqi militiamen from the country's five largest political parties, will work with U.S. Special Forces soldiers, and their operations will be overseen by U.S. military commanders. Since the summer, the CIA has recruited and trained some former Iraqi intelligence agents to help identify the insurgents...

An even earlier Post report, in August 2003, also noted the hiring of Baathist operatives to hunt "insurgents." As I put it in the Moscow Times that month:

Here's a headline you don't see every day: "War Criminals Hire War Criminals to Hunt Down War Criminals."

Perhaps that's not the precise wording used by the Washington Post this week, but it is the absolute essence of its story about the Bush Regime's new campaign to put Saddam's murderous security forces on America's payroll.

Yes, the sahibs in Bush's Iraqi Raj are now doling out American tax dollars to hire the murderers of the infamous Mukhabarat and other agents of the Baathist Gestapo – perhaps hundreds of them. The logic, if that's the word, seems to be that these bloodstained "insiders" will lead their new imperial masters to other bloodstained "insiders" responsible for bombing the UN headquarters in Baghdad – and killing another dozen American soldiers while Little George was playing with his putts during his month-long Texas siesta.

Naturally, the Iraqi people – even the Bush-appointed leaders of the Potemkin "Governing Council" – aren't exactly overjoyed at seeing Saddam's goons return, flush with American money and firepower. And they're certainly not reassured by the fact that the Bushists have also re-opened Saddam's most notorious prison, the dread Abu Ghraib, and are now, Mukhabarat-like, filling it with Iraqis – men, women and children as young as 11 – seized from their homes or plucked off the street to be held incommunicado, indefinitely, without due process, just like the old days. As The Times reports, weeping relatives who dare approach the gleaming American razor-wire in search of their "disappeared" loved ones are referred to a crude, hand-written sign pinned to a spike: "No visits are allowed, no information will be given and you must leave." Perhaps an Iraqi Akhmatova will do justice to these scenes one day.

So here -- in August 2003 -- the leading newspaper in the nation's capital is openly reporting that goon squads are being sent to take care of insurgents and "terrorists," while the leading newspaper in the capital of America's war ally, Britain, is openly reporting that the notorious Abu Ghraib prison is being glutted with new captives -- including children -- sealed off behind American razor wire. The seedbed of the whole panalopy of the horrors to come was already there, in the open, from the very beginning.

And so it went on. As I noted early last year:

As Sy Hersh has reported ("The Coming Wars," New Yorker, Jan. 24, 2005), after his re-election in 2004, George W. Bush signed a series of secret presidential directives that authorized the Pentagon to run virtually unrestricted covert operations, including a reprise of the American-backed, American-trained death squads employed by authoritarian regimes in Central and South America during the Reagan Administration, where so many of the Bush faction cut their teeth – and made their bones.

"Do you remember the right-wing execution squads in El Salvador?” a former high-level intelligence official said to Hersh. "We founded them and we financed them. The objective now is to recruit locals in any area we want. And we aren’t going to tell Congress about it." A Pentagon insider added: "We’re going to be riding with the bad boys." Another role model for the expanded dirty war cited by Pentagon sources, said Hersh, was Britain's brutal repression of the Mau Mau in Kenya during the 1950s, when British forces set up concentration camps, created their own terrorist groups to confuse and discredit the insurgency, and killed thousands of innocent civilians in quashing the uprising.

Bush's formal greenlighting of the death-squad option built upon an already securely-established base, part of a larger effort to turn the world into a "global free-fire zone" for covert operatives, as one top Pentagon official told Hersh. For example, in November 2002 a Pentagon plan to infiltrate terrorist groups and "stimulate" them into action was uncovered by William Arkin, then writing for the Los Angeles Times. The new unit, the "Proactive, Pre-emptive Operations Group," was described in the Pentagon documents as "a super-Intelligence Support Activity" that brings "together CIA and military covert action, information warfare, intelligence and cover and deception."

Later, in August 2004, then deputy Pentagon chief Paul Wolfowitz appeared before Congress to ask for $500 million to arm and train non-governmental "local militias" to serve as U.S. proxies for "counter-insurgency and "counterterrorist" operations in "ungoverned areas" and hot spots around the world, Agence France Presse (and virtually no one else) reported at the time. These hired paramilitaries were to be employed in what Wolfowitz called an "arc of crisis" that just happened to stretch across the oil-bearing lands and strategic pipeline routes of Central Asia, the Middle East, Africa and South America...

Brazen daylight raids by "men dressed in uniforms" of Iraqi police or Iraqi commandos or other Iraqi security agencies swept up dozens of victims at a time. For months, U.S. "advisers" to Iraqi security agencies – including veterans of the original "Salvador Option" – insisted that these were Sunni insurgents in stolen threads, although many of the victims were Sunni civilians. Later, the line was changed: the chief culprits were now "rogue elements" of the various sectarian militias that had "infiltrated" Iraq's institutions.

But as investigative reporter Max Fuller has pointed out in his detailed examination of information buried in reams of mainstream news stories and public Pentagon documents, the vast majority of atrocities then attributed to "rogue" Shiite and Sunni militias were in fact the work of government-controlled commandos and "special forces," trained by Americans, "advised" by Americans and run largely by former CIA assets. As Fuller puts it: "If there are militias in the Ministry of Interior, you can be sure that they are militias that stand to attention whenever a U.S. colonel enters the room."

...With the Anglo-American coalition so deeply embedded in dirty war – infiltrating terrorist groups, "stimulating" them into action," protecting "crown jewel" double-agents no matter what the cost, "riding with the bad boys," greenlighting the "Salvador Option" – it is simply impossible to determine the genuine origin of almost any particular terrorist outrage or death squad atrocity in Iraq. All of these operations take place in the shadow world, where terrorists are sometimes government operatives and vice versa, and where security agencies and terrorist groups interpenetrate in murky thickets of collusion and duplicity. This moral chaos leaves "a kind of blot/To mark the full-fraught man and best indued/With some suspicion," as Shakespeare's Henry V says.

Or as Blake put it:

The Human Dress is forged Iron
The Human Form a fiery Forge
The Human Face a Furnace Seal'd
The Human Heart its hungry Gorge

2008-09-15T19:42:00.001-05:00

The Vampire, Struck by Sunlight
Arthur Silber

September 15, 2008

Simplicity and directness would appear to be advisable, as we are all buried in a torrent of irrelevancies, self-justifications, explanations which explain nothing and serve only to confuse everyone (which is precisely their aim), and an unending stream of lies and half-truths. Perhaps it would be easier to think of it in the following terms, for vampire stories are very popular. The economy of the United States is disintegrating in the same way a vampire does when exposed to sunlight, and for the same reason. Having sucked the blood out of all the living creatures unfortunate enough to be nearby, the vampire becomes intoxicated with what he perceives as his own power. Heedless of the warnings screamed at him from the few sane voices that remain, the vampire frolics and gambols long past the appointed time for his return to the soil of reality, so drunk is he on the glory of his being. The sun has been slowly rising for quite a while. Anyone who is looking can see it. Anyone who knows the relevant facts is fully aware of what will happen when the sun's rays strike the vampire. But almost no one is looking at the sun, and anyone who states the relevant facts is ignored.

Finally and now inevitably, the sun strikes the vampire. Within minutes, the vampire no longer exists. This is not a surprise. This is what happens -- this is the only thing that happens -- in these circumstances, given the nature and characteristics of the sun and the vampire.

Here are a few simple principles to keep in mind. Given the propaganda spewed by the ruling class, all of which is eagerly gulped down by most Americans, I should rephrase that: here are a few simple principles to understand, perhaps for the first time.

One: You can't get something from nothing.

Didn't your parents teach you this when you were four or five? Did you forget it? Or perhaps you never actually believed it. After all, most people want to believe they will win the big lottery. Fools, that's what they are. If the description applies to you, put that shoe on, sister or brother.

Mike Whitney:

The funny thing about capitalism is that you need capital to play. When the bank-vault is full of nothing but worthless mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and overvalued junk bonds; the whole thing goes belly-up fast. That appears to be the case with Lehman Bros, the century-old Wall Street warhorse that has joined the long procession of underwater banking establishments now hurtling towards the cliff. Lehman had a great go of it during the boom times when all it took to make oodles of money was a predictable flood of low interest credit from the Fed and a compliant ratings agency that would stamp every crappy securitized pool of mortgages with a big Triple A before hawking it to some gullible investor in Shanghai or Heidelberg.

Lehman travails are not much different from anyone else in the banking fraternity. The problem is that the entire system is under-capitalized and over-leveraged. When Bear Stearns went down last year, it was levered at a ratio of 26 to 1. When Hedgie Carlyle Capital blew up, it was levered at 32 to 1. And when Fannie and Freddie were finally taken over by the US Treasury; the two behemoths were levered at 80 to 1, which is to say that they had a one dollar capital cushion for every $80 they had loaned out.
A major part (perhaps the major part) of the U.S. economy has treated debts as assets for a long time. The best and brightest made it appear sophisticated and smart: they took debts and securitized them, chopped them up, repackaged them, recombined them, splintered them some more, repackaged and sold those, and on and on it went. This process doesn't turn nothing into something: it spreads the nothing among more and more institutions and makes the entire system increasingly vulnerable. Everyone pretends that the nothing is backed by something, but it isn't. To be more precise, as in the case of Fannie and Freddie, for example, there is $1 of something for every $80 of nothing. In fact, there's much more nothing, when you add in the repackaging, recombining, splintering, selling and reselling. That's a lot of nothing, and almost no something.

This is how con games work. Your parents probably explained this to you, many years ago. You forgot, or you didn't believe it. Believe it now.

Two: You, the "ordinary" American, are the one who finally pays for all of this. You are the ultimate sucker.

My only criticism of Whitney's latest article is that he buries the most critical sentence in the middle of a longer explanation:
Keep in mind, the biggest source of American power is its access to cheap capital via the US taxpayer.
Read that sentence again. Once more. Again. One more time.

You pay for all the depredations of empire: for the endless criminal wars of aggression abroad, and for the feast of the vampires here at home. It's your blood that kept them going all this time -- and it's your blood that will still keep them going. The ruling class rigged the game a century ago. Short of leaving the country or dropping out of the system altogether, you can't go somewhere else. There isn't anywhere else to go. The system is designed by and for the benefit of the ruling class, and for no one else.

Now look at that sentence in the context of the longer passage:
When the net foreign purchases of US financial assets begin to slow; the game is over. The Fed will be forced to raise interest rates to attract foreign capital which will put downward pressure on the economy and accelerate the housing crash. Paulson's decision to provide unlimited capital to Fannie and Freddie, will stack more and more debt atop the faltering dollar and US Treasuries. It is the equivalent of lashing the greenback to an anvil and tossing it overboard. Paulson's attempts to stave off a systemic banking crisis ensures that the federal government will undergo an unprecedented funding crisis sometime in the near future. There will be higher taxes for the battered middle class and higher interest rates for businesses and consumers. This will trigger a protracted economic slowdown and weaker growth. Credit will get tighter, banks will default, unemployment will soar and GDP will shrivel. A negative feedback loop will develop from the faltering financial system to the real economy; a vicious circle ending in massive layoffs, weakening demand, falling stock prices, and withering consumer confidence. Welcome to Soup kitchen USA.

Presently, Paulson and New York Fed chief Timothy Geithner are pressing Wall Street banking elites to pony-up enough money to buy up Lehman's devalued real estate assets. The Fed's proposal is similar to Greenspan's rescue of Long-Term Management LP (LTCM) which roiled financial markets in the late 1990s. Paulson has signaled that there be NO government bailout like Bear Stearns when the Fed bought up $29 billion in mortgage-related assets. The Fed is tapped out, having already committed half of its balance sheet -- nearly $500 billion -- in repos through its "auction facilities" which have recently skyrocketed to record highs of $19 billion per week for the last 3 weeks. The crisis is deepening by the day. Similarly, the Treasury has hitched its wagon to Fannie and Freddie which expands the National Debt by another $5.2 trillion and seriously undermines the "full faith and credit" of the US in the process. Keep in mind, the biggest source of American power is its access to cheap capital via the US taxpayer. Paulson has now put that source of revenue at risk by nationalizing the housing industry and burdening the taxpayer with (potentially) astronomical future obligations, even though he knows full-well that the market could drop another 15 to 20 per cent before the end of 2010. Paulson's recklessness has doomed the country to years of struggle
You've been conned, and the con is killing you and everyone you know. Whatcha gonna do about it? Not a damned thing, that's what.

Three: As with every other crisis, the ruling class, which created the crisis in the first place, will tell us how to "solve" it.

As I wrote in, "Psst -- While You Were Gibbering, the Ruling Class Rigged the Game and Won Everything":
This election campaign will be especially awful for anyone still capable of the most minimal kind of rigorous thought, in significant part because we have the triple- or quadruple-twist of the Obama lies on top of all the lies that are regularly trotted out every four years (and on a lesser scale, every two). We are told about how "important" it is that we vote -- although for many of us (including me, since I live in California), our votes are altogether meaningless on the presidential level, to say nothing of newer voting methods, which make one wonder if all of this is nothing but a charade for idiots -- and we are told of the glories of "participatory democracy" and how splendiferous it is to hear "the people's voice."

These are the idiotically empty cliches and slogans of our civic religion, which serve to drug "the people" into apathy, into granting the ruling class still more power, into taking part in these vacuous exercises in "democracy," and into colluding in a massive coverup of the truth of what has transpired over more than a century and is now set in stone: this is government of the ruling class, by the ruling class, and for the ruling class. Barring severe economic collapse (more than possible), widespread global war (also more than possible), repeated natural catastrophes (similarly more than possible), it shall not perish from the earth -- until it implodes as the result of its own rot and corruption, as have all similar systems in the past. Assuming disasters on a massive scale don't occur, it's probably here for your lifetime at least.

...

This amalgamation of major business interests with state power, this system of oligopoly and governance of, by and for the ruling class, has metastasized beyond imagining since the Progressive era. It has expanded in every direction and subsumed virtually every industry and business in America, large and small. It is this system of "political capitalism" that dictates domestic and foreign policy, including a foreign policy of endless war, preparation for war, and various forms of "cleaning up" after war. You the ordinary citizen, you "the people," figure nowhere in this -- except to provide the necessary labor and, when required, your blood and your life.

...

[T]his "transformation of the American political narrative" was essentially completed during and immediately following the Progressive era, and then enshrined by the New Deal and World War II. We were fucked a very long time ago. What's tragic is that it is only now that a few more people are beginning to notice -- and even now, it is still only a very few additional people. These are truths that no politician will tell you, and that almost no commentators or bloggers will mention. Lies are what sustain you, lies are what you live on, lies are what you demand, and lies are what you'll get and all you'll get. If you keep this up, the lies without end will kill you, and a lot of other people as well.
Those people who have followed the foreign policy catastrophes of recent years are repeatedly struck by this phenomenon: all the "experts" who are supposedly so knowledgeable in this area -- that is, all the "experts" who led us into the catastrophes and who were grievously, bloodily, murderously wrong about every significant matter -- remain entrenched in the foreign policy establishment. Moreover, they are precisely the people to whom everyone turns for the "solution" to the disasters that engulf us, both now and the disasters likely to come. This is what it means to have a ruling class. As I have said, the ruling class rules. The ruling class exercises a lethal monopoly on the terms of public debate, just as it exercises a lethal monopoly on the uses of state power.

What you have seen over the last six months and more, and what you will see in the coming months and years, is the same phenomenon in the realm of economic policy. All of the solons who led us into this abyss of mounting debt, worthless securities, failing financial institutions, economic contraction and collapse, rising taxation, and all the rest, will now instruct us as to how we should "solve" the crisis that they have created. The crisis may be ameliorated to a degree, and the worst of the consequences may be postponed for a while. But whatever "solutions" are implemented, whatever reorganization and reregulation is imposed, it will all be done in accordance with the ruling class's desires and goals. It will all be to protect their own wealth and power to whatever extent is possible, and to expand their wealth and power still more, if that remains at all feasible. And it probably will be feasible: your taxes can increase. They can increase a lot. You still have some blood that can be drained. And/or, if Obama is elected, you can look for his adoration of "voluntary" service to switch seamlessly to mandatory service very quickly, especially if the crisis deepens sufficiently. Almost no one will complain. Almost no one will remember the bloody history of those past regimes, of both left and right, that relied on mandatory national service.

The ruling class is the state. The state exists to serve the interests of the ruling class, and only the interests of the ruling class. They may promise you greater unemployment benefits, better health care, and a host of other government benefits -- all benefits also paid for by you, please note (the ruling class does have a sense of humor, after all; vampires are often crudely funny creatures) -- and those promises will cause most Americans to fall for the con still one more time.

Whatcha gonna do? Not a goddamned thing. Vote for McCain! Vote for Obama! It doesn't matter. The ruling class wins either way. The ruling class always wins. That's how the system was designed, and that's how it works. For the ruling class, it works very admirably.

Whatcha gonna do?

Laugh. Laugh a lot. Fuck the bastards.

2008-09-13T05:51:00.001-05:00

Another Day, Another Gate of Hell Swings Open
Friday, 12 September 2008 www.chris-floyd.com
This week another gate swung open in the multi-chambered hell that is the "War on Terror." George W. Bush has authorized the invasion of Pakistan by American ground forces, and the armed incursions have already begun. The implications of this move -- which largely corresponds with the strategy that Barack Obama has said he would employ in the region -- are disturbing in the extreme.

William Pfaff takes up this subject with his usual clarity and good sense in a new article at Truthdig. In a telling insight, he produces the historical analogy most relevant to the current situation:

The United States has just invaded Cambodia. The name of Cambodia this time is Pakistan, but otherwise it’s the same story as in Indochina in 1970.

An American army, deeply frustrated by its inability to defeat an anti-American insurgent movement despite years of struggle, decides that the key to victory lies in a neighboring country. In 1970, the problem was the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Cambodia. Today it is Taliban and al-Qaida bases inside Pakistan, which the United States has been attacking from the air for some time, with controversial “collateral damage.”...

Washington’s decision was made known just in time for the seventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks that opened the first phase of the “war on terror,” after which “nothing could ever be the same.” We no doubt have now begun phase two.

Pfaff notes that the result of that previous "surge" was not a happy one:

The eventual outcome of the American intervention in Cambodia in 1970 was Communist overthrow of the American-sponsored military government in that country, followed by genocide....

In the Vietnamese case, the American military command held that it could win the war by invading Cambodia to cut the so-called Ho Chi Minh Trail, along which supplies and arms for the Viet Cong Communist insurrection were being transported. The argument made was that cutting this route would starve the Viet Cong of supplies.

Initially, the unhappy Prince Sihanouk of Cambodia, desperately trying to keep his country out of the Vietnam War, was persuaded to turn a blind eye to U.S. bombing of the trail. A military coup followed in 1970, installing an American puppet general. B-52 saturation bombing ensued, without the desired military effect, but killing many Cambodians.

The joint U.S. and South Vietnamese “incursion” to cut the trail came in April 1970; it simply pushed the supply operations deeper into Cambodia. Richard Nixon said he acted to prove that the United States was not “a second-rate power.” “If, when the chips are down, the world’s most powerful nation acts like a pitiful helpless giant, the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten free nations and free institutions throughout the world.”

Or to translate this into our modern idiom: "The terrorists would win." To forestall the terrible fate of looking like a "second-rate power" -- a persistent anxiety of our national leaders; which is not surprising, given how second-rate they are -- Nixon opted for the usual method employed by presidents in such circumstances: mass murder. As I noted in a piece written a few years ago:

It's 1970. Nixon is angry: The Air Force is not killing enough people in Cambodia, the country he has just illegally invaded without the slightest pretence of Congressional approval. The flyboys are doing "milk runs," their intelligence-gathering is too by-the-book: There are "other methods" of getting intelligence, he tells Kissinger. "You understand what I mean?" "Yes, I do," pipes the loyal retainer.

Nixon then orders Kissinger to send every available plane into Cambodia -- bombers, fighters, helicopters, prop planes -- to "crack the hell out of them," smother the entire country with deadly fire: "I want them to hit everything." Kissinger tells his own top aide, General Alexander Haig, to try to implement the plan: "He wants a massive bombing campaign in Cambodia," Kissinger says. "It's an order, it's to be done. Anything that flies on anything that moves."

That's how the system works, beneath the mask. A blustering fool issues an order, and thousands upon thousands of innocent people die. An entire country is ripped to shreds, and into the smoking ruins steps a fanatical band of crazed extremists -- the Khmer Rouge -- who murder two million more.

Years later, of course, George W. Bush -- another little second-rater anxious about his manhood -- would "crack the hell" out of Iraq: an operation that is already nearing Khmer Rouge proportions, with more than a million dead so far. The new Bush-McCain-Obama move into Pakistan could presage an even greater orgy of death and ruin, especially if Pakistan's nuclear arsenal comes into play. As Pfaff notes:

The future consequences in (nuclear-armed) Pakistan await. There is every reason to think they may include civil protest and disorder in the country, political crisis, a major rise in the strength of Pakistan’s own Islamic fundamentalist movement and, conceivably, a small war between the United States and the Pakistan army, which is the central institution in the country, has a mind of its own and is not a negligible military force.

Pfaff also references one of the most salient -- and almost universally ignored -- facts about the current crisis: Washington's direct hand in creating it:

Pakistan’s military intelligence services created the Taliban while they were collaborating with the CIA to form the mujahadeen that drove the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan. Many in the service still support the Taliban as a useful instrument against India, and to keep Afghanistan out of the hands of more dangerous enemies.

Indeed. As we noted here a few months ago:

Those Taliban and al Qaeda sanctuaries that threaten American forces would not exist if Afghanistan was not a massively failed state, ravaged to pieces by 30 years of sectarian war. And that sectarian war would not have raged so long and so virulently if the American government (and its allies in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia) had not decided to arm, train, fund and organize the world's most violent, retrograde religious extremists into a worldwide movement. And why did Washington do such a "notably wrong-headed" thing? Because the American elite -- stung and emasculated by their defeat in Indochina -- wanted to "give the Soviets their own Vietnam," in the words of Zbigniew Brzezinski. And so Jimmy Carter -- yes, mild-mannered ole Jimmuh -- greenlighted the covert op to build up a jihad army that would destabilize the secular government of Afghanistan and provoke the Soviets to intervene to save their clients there.

The fact that America's support of violent religious extremists in Afghanistan pre-dated the Soviet invasion there -- and was actually a cause of the invasion -- is of course virtually unknown in the land of the free (free of any useful information about what their overlords are getting up to, that is). At almost every turn, American policies have created more violence and more extremism in the region, either by design, or through neglect, or as the inevitable result of heavy-handed, blood-sodden massive military intervention.

Expanding the war to Pakistan...would certainly be in keeping with the long, bipartisan tradition of American policy there. And it would undoubtedly produce the same bitter fruit: more decades of hatred, extremism, poverty, ruin and suffering.

Now that expansion has begun. It will doubtless continue no matter who is president next year, for both major candidates and their running mates have enthusiastically pledged their allegiance to the Terror War -- despite the fact, as I wrote more than two years ago:

...What matters most now is ending the so-called "war on terror," this dance of death led by two small factions whose ambitions and principles are depraved, inhuman and obscene.

Naturally, we should apprehend anyone who commits a crime--murder, destruction, looting, extortion, intimidation--and subject them to the rule of law. And this should of course be done no matter what kind of organization the criminal belongs to: a religious sect, a mafia clan, a corporation--or a national government. All such criminals should be subjected to the judicial process--either domestically, in the countries where they commit their crimes, or internationally--no matter what grand abstraction they claim as "justification" for their misdeeds: "freedom and democracy," "national security," "defense of the ummah," "God's will."

"Stateless criminals" like the terrorists of al Qaeda are just that: criminals. They should be dealt with as criminals, and not inflated and glorified into gigantic figures of world-historical import. The perpetrators of state terrorism are somewhat different, because they are far more powerful and wreak far more damage than the freebooters on the fringe of society. But of course they too should be held accountable, as individuals, not only for the crimes they commit, but also for the crimes they order to be committed, and the crimes that arise indirectly from circumstances they have deliberately created with their great power.

Both sides need the other in this insane global conflict--but ironically, only one side can actually stop the "war." Only the United States can cease to respond with massive military force all over the world to provocations from criminals on the fringe. Only the United States can say, "We are not fighting a war; we are dealing with criminal actions as they arise--while working feverishly on the diplomatic, social, political, cultural and economic fronts to address the conditions in which the particular set of crimes known as 'terrorism' are apt to arise. It is a complicated business, to be sure: hard work, often unrewarding, full of pitfalls and reverses--but we are wise enough and strong enough as a nation to see it through."

But this course--the only sensible, and only genuinely effective response to criminal actions of extremist groups -- will never be undertaken by the Bush Faction, no matter who heads it. Nor by anyone else, of whatever political stripe, who buys into the militarist philosophy of an American dominance imposed on the world by force (either directly or through the more subtly implied but ever-present threat of force favored by "liberal" advocates of "soft power").

As long as the Bush Regime -- or some other permutation of "Bushism" [which, as we can see in 2008, includes the Obama-Biden Terror War ticket] -- is in power, the "war on terror" will never end. It will go on spawning new wars, real wars... This blood-dimmed tide will keep rising: thousands, perhaps millions (if the hard-Right's dream of nuking Iran comes true) will be struck down by death and grief, and we will all keep falling deeper into the pit of a lamed and brutal life.

So when they ask why you are so "angry," why you are so "strident" and "shrill," tell them you've been vexed to nightmare by the foul embrace of the "war on terror" factions. Tell them you've had enough of the blood and filth, the power games, the talk of God from murderers' lips. Tell them the war is over -- the war is over -- and you'll have no more senseless killing in your name.

2008-09-07T07:08:00.002-05:00

Cave Dwellers: Biden Backs Down From Any Pursuit of Bush Crime
Sunday, 07 September 2008

There was a flurry and flutter of hope among many of the progressive faithful last week after reports of a declaration by Joe Biden that an Obama administration might pursue criminal charges against top Bush officials. The happy cry went up: At last, the Democrats are laying it on the line, standing up to defend the Constitution, the rule of law and common human decency againt a vicious gang of mass murderers and tyrannical thugs! Fightin' Joe will lead the way!

But by week's end, Fightin' Joe was caving and cratering in the time-honored Democratic fashion. As Raw Story reports, Biden went on what is rapidly becoming the Dem ticket's favorite venue -- Fox News -- and heatedly denied an interviewer's allegation that "if you guys are elected...you're actually going to pursue criminal charges against President Bush's administration and different people that served there."

"That's not true," Biden immediately replied. "I don't know where that report's coming from. What is true is the United States Congress is trying to preserve records on questions that relate to whether or not the law has been violated by anyone. Anybody should be doing that."

Biden emphasized that "no one's talking about President Bush. ... I've never heard anybody mention President Bush in that context." He noted that "there's been an awful lot of unsavory stuff that's gone on ... but I have no evidence of any of that. No one's talking about pursuing President Bush criminally."

Biden concluded his comments by explaining that possible misdeeds are "being looked into now, just so it never happens again in any other administration. ... The Obama-Biden administration is not going to start off saying, 'God, let's go take a look at what this --.' The American people want to know what we're going to do, not what happened."

There you have it. The only reason that the Democrats might, conceivably, look into some "possible misdeeds" is to make sure that "they don't happen again," not -- God forbid! -- in order to prosecute anyone for flagrant violations of the law. (Although exactly how you will prevent future abuses by never, ever punishing a past abuse according to the law of the land is not entirely clear.)

And Lord have mercy, nobody in the Democratic camp has the slightest suspicion that George W. Bush himself has ever done anything remotely criminal! Biden has never heard anyone even mention Bush in such a context -- a statement which, if taken at face value (which of course it shouldn't be), means that he has never read the editorial pages of the New York Times or the bill of impeachment introduced into Congress by a former presidential candidate of his own party. Nope. Never heard anyone anywhere ever say anything about any crimes that good old George might have committed. It's unthinkable!

And anyway, nobody cares about "what happened" -- that is, nobody cares that a million Iraqis have been murdered and tens of thousands of American soldiers have been killed or mutilated for life; nobody cares that captives held without charges in secret prisons have been tortured and beaten to death; nobody cares that the Constitution has been raped by authoritarian cretins who openly and proudly proclaim their disdain for the law. Nobody cares about that, says Biden; people just want to hear about all the magic ponies that he and Obama are going to bestow upon each and every one of us.

In other words, Barack Obama and Joe Biden will uphold the machtpolitik principle that has replaced Constitutional government in the United States: leaders cannot be punished for even the most egregious high crimes -- aggressive war, torture, tyranny. Not one of the principal perpetrators of the crimes that we have all seen committed before our eyes in the last few years will be punished, or face even the slightest discomfort or dishonor. Not one.

How much clearer can they make it? The "surge" -- the escalation of a massive war crime -- is a "wild success," says Obama. The "War on Terror" must be expanded. And no one will be prosecuted for launching a war of aggression on false pretenses, for authorizing the systematic use of torture (a capital crime under U.S. law), for spying on the American people, or any other "possible misdeed."

This is what Obama and Biden themselves are saying, directly, in their own words, at every opportunity. No one is forcing them to say it. And given the fact that more than 70 percent of the American people openly despise Bush and his administration, and more than half believe that this gang has committed impeachable offense -- i.e., high crimes -- it is not even political expedience that compels such statements.

It can only be their own sincere agreement with Bush, McCain and Palin on the fundamental principles that now inform governance of the American state, no matter which faction temporarily holds office: militarism, "unipolar domination" of world affairs by violence and the threat of violence, and authoritarian rule -- however rouged and lipsticked by ritualistic displays of the trapping of a long-vanished republic, as in the days of Rome's first Caesars.
***

2008-09-07T06:42:00.002-05:00

9/11’s Accomplices vie for US Presidency
Obama and McCain campaigns fan "war on terrorism" hysteria

By Larry Chin

Global Research, September 7, 2008

In his much-ballyhooed acceptance speech, Barack Obama declared that he would "finish the fight against the terrorists who actually attacked us on 9/11". If Obama wishes to be true to his promise, he could begin with his own running mate, Senator Joe Biden.

Biden and the ISI chief

Biden was one of several top Washington officials who met with Lieutenant General Mahmoud Ahmad, the head of Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) on and around September 11, 2001.

The ISI is a foreign branch of the CIA. "Al-Qaeda" is a covert operation that is managed by Anglo-American military-intelligence. Ahmad, the "9/11 money man" who delivered funds to alleged lead suicide hijacker Mohammed Atta prior to the attacks, met personally with Biden on September 13, 2001.

This case, detailed in Michel Chossodovsky’s Political Deception: Missing Link Behind 9/11, remains one of hundreds of smoking guns revealing direct US connections to 9/11, for which Biden has never provided a credible explanation.

At the same time that he was meeting with a man directly connected to the alleged hijackers, Biden was among the loudest and most bellicose voices joining Bush-Cheney for the bombing of Afghanistan, in retaliation for 9/11. Biden expressed an interest in "personally shooting Osama bin Laden". Not surprisingly, John McCain expressed the same post-9/11 bloodlust, in his infamous editorial, "War is hell. Let's get on with it."

Biden’s tune has remained unchanged, to this day. He wants to "finish the fight against al-Qaeda and the Taliban", and (in language that appears to be the new neoliberal "talking point") "take out the ones who actually attacked us on 9/11".

The fact that Biden and McCain, two major shills for the "war on terrorism" lie, are vying for White House power speaks for itself.

When recently confronted by an independent journalist about his meeting with Mahmoud Ahmad, Biden offered a series of non-sequitors, and then had his security guards escort the inquiring individual away.

Biden the insider

Dirty politics and back-door deals are nothing new for Biden, the perfect neoliberal establishment insider who has made a career of opportunism, obstruction, and political cover-up.

Biden, the senator of Delaware, the largest tax haven for corporations in the US, has played a key role in virtually every major US policy decision over the past two decades. Every military conflict. Supreme Court confirmations. Cabinet confirmations. Judiciary appointments. Congressional probes (cover-ups) of major political scandals.

Biden, a longtime Council on Foreign Relations stalwart, is a leading architect of "Homeland Security". He considers his "national security credentials" to be "unimpeachable".

Joe Biden and his longtime Senate colleague and war criminal/Keating Five "friend" McCain are as responsible for the current world crisis as anyone else alive.

Obama’s bombastic deception

If Barack Obama genuinely wishes to "take out" those who "actually attacked us" on 9/11, he would "take out" the legions of elite sponsors who have made his own rise to power possible.

He could begin with his own foreign policy guru, super-elite Zbigniew Brzezinski, the virtual creator of Islamic terrorism during the Carter administration, who suggested that a Pearl Harbor-like attack, a "massive and widely perceived external threat" would be useful; the man whose vision of "American primacy" and destablization across the Eurasian "Grand Chessboard" has been a lifelong obsession.

Obama might also "take out" the Clintons, and other neoliberal bigwigs supporting his campaign, given the fact that they were instrumental in sowing the seeds of 9/11 throughout the 1990s. Obama should "take out" members of Bush-Cheney, and members of Reagan and George H.W. Bush presidencies, and a worldwide legion of covert operatives, policy advisors, think tank figures (Project for a New American Century, etc.), and oil executives who "lit the match". He might also tell the truth about the global war for oil.

Obama, of course, will do nothing of the sort. (And Bush-Cheney will not be prosecuted, no matter what he and Biden say on the campaign trail to the contrary.)

Obama will do nothing. He will leave intact the abomination of the Patriot Act, permit illegal surveilliance, torture and renditions. He will endorse the cover-up of the 9/11 Commission, and deepen the militarization of the US homeland.

The winner of the 2008 election: the Big Lie

In the book The Iran-Contra Connection: Secret Teams and Covert Operations in the Reagan Era by Jonathan Marshall, Peter Dale Scott, and Jane Hunter, the authors describe how the combination of government recalcitrance and public acquiescence hampered attempts to limit presidential power and CIA abuses in the 1970s and 1980s.

One telling passage quotes Joe Biden:

"And when legislators tried to write a new CIA charter to limit presidential powers and check abuses, [President Jimmy] Carter’s people fought every inch of the way. Exhausted liberals caved in. To complaints from the American Civil Liberties Union, that the proposed charter was too permissive, Senator Joseph Biden (D-Del) said, "Let me tell you something, fellas. The folks don’t care. The average American could care less right now about any of this. You keep talking about public concern. There ain’t none."

Today, Bush-Cheney and the respective presidential campaigns hold the people of the world in even greater contempt.

The election is already over.

The bipartisan consensus responsible for the "war on terrorism" lie has never been more ironclad. The next presidential administration will be a continuation of the Bush-Cheney nightmare---in substance, if not in style.

The only thing left to be decided (besides the exact choreography of the final electronic vote fraud) is which lie about "change", which brand of poison to pour down the throats of the American populace.

Will it be the classic neoliberal establishment deception of Obama-Biden?

Or the more overt insult and slap in the face, and the most cynical appeal to the lowest of lowest common denominators: the insane and deeply corrupt John McCain, and the deeply corrupt insane, willfully stupid (George W. Bush-like), vitriol-spewing psychopath Sarah Palin (whose chief qualification appears to be her direct criminal ties to Alaskan energy interests)?

The "Big Lie" comes with both.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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The Olympics: Unveiling Police State 2.0 -- Signs of the Times News

2008-08-11T19:20:00.000-05:00

The Olympics: Unveiling Police State 2.0 -- Signs of the Times News: "http://www.sott.net/articles/show/163701-The-Olympics-Unveiling-Police-State-2-0"

2008-08-08T19:57:00.002-05:00

Club of Rome

(Committee of 300 subversive body)

This group was organized in 1968 by the Morgenthau Group for the purpose of accelerating the plans to have the New World Order in place by the year 2000. The Club of Rome developed a plan to divide the world into ten regions or kingdoms.

In 1976, the United States Association of the Club of Rome (USACOR) was formed for the purpose of shutting down the U.S. economy gradually. The Technetronic Era Henry Kissinger was then, and still is, an important agent in the service of the Royal Institute for International Affairs, a member of the Club of Rome and the Council on Foreign Relations.

Kissinger's role in destabilizing the United States by means of three wars, the Middle East, Korea and Vietnam, is well known, as is his role in the Gulf War, in which the U.S. Army acted as mercenaries for the Committee of 300 in bringing Kuwait back under its control and at the same time making an example out of Iraq so that other small nations would not be tempted to work out their own destiny. The Club of Rome, acting on Committee of 300 orders to eliminate General ul Haq, had no compunction in sacrificing the lives of a number of U.S. servicemen on board the flight, including a U.S. Army Defense Intelligence Agency group headed by Brigadier General Herber Wassom. General ul Haq had been warned by the Turkish Secret Service not to travel by plane, as he was targeted for a mid-air bombing. With this in mind, ul Haq took the United States team with him as "an insurance policy," as he commented to his inner circle advisors.

Club of Rome and its financiers under the title of the German Marshall Fund were two highly-organized conspiratorial bodies operating under cover of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and that the majority of Club of Rome executives were drawn from NATO. The Club of Rome formulated all of what NATO claimed as its policies and, through the activities of Committee of 300 member Lord Carrington, was able to split NATO into two factions, a political (left wing) power group and its former military alliance. The Club of Rome is still one of the most important foreign policy arms of the Committee of 300, and the other being the Bilderbergers. It was put together in 1968 from hard-core members of the original Morgenthau group on the basis of a telephone call made by the late Aurellio Peccei for a new and urgent drive to speed up the plans of the One World Government now called the New World Order. Peccei's call was answered by the most subversive "future planners" drawn from the United States, France, Sweden, Britain, Switzerland and Japan that could be mustered.

During the period 1968-1972, The Club of Rome became a cohesive entity of new-science scientists, Globalist, future planners and inter- nationalists of every stripe. As one delegate put it, "We became Joseph's Coat of Many Colors." Peccei's book "Human Quality" formed the basis of the doctrine adopted by NATO's political wing. Peccei headed the Atlantic Institute's Economic Council for three decades while he was the Chief Executive Officer for Giovanni Agnellis' Fiat Motor Company. Agnelli, a member of an ancient Italian Black Nobility family of the same name, is one of the most important members of the Committee of 300. He played a leading role in development projects in the Soviet Union.

The Club of Rome is a conspiratorial umbrella organization, a marriage between Anglo-American financiers and the old Black Nobility families of Europe, particularly the so-called "nobility" of London, Venice and Genoa. The key to the successful control of the world is their ability to create and manage savage economic recessions and eventual depressions. The Committee of 300 looks to social convulsions on a global scale, followed by depressions, as a softening-up technique for bigger things to come, as its principal method of creating masses of people all over the world who will become its "welfare" recipients of the future.

The committee appears to base much of its important decisions affecting mankind on the philosophy of Polish aristocrat, Felix Dzerzinski, who regarded mankind as being slightly above the level of cattle. As a close friend of British intelligence agent Sydney Reilly (Reilly was actually Dzerzinski's controller during the Bolshevik Revolution's formative years), he often confided in Reilly during his drinking bouts. Dzerzinski was, of course, the beast who ran the Red Terror apparatus. He once told Reilly, while the two were on a drinking binge, that "Man is of no importance. Look at what happens when you starve him. He begins to eat his dead companions to stay alive. Man is only interested in his own survival. That is all that counts.

All the Spinoza stuff is a lot of rubbish." With regard to the Third World, the Club of Rome's Harland Cleveland prepared a report which was the height of cynicism. At the time, Cleveland was United States Ambassador to NATO. Essentially, the paper said it would be up to Third World nations to decide among themselves which populations should be eliminated. As Peccei later wrote (based on the Cleveland Report): "Damaged by conflicting policies of three major countries and blocs, roughly patched up here and there, the existing international economic order is visibly coming apart at the seams....The prospect of the necessity of the recourse to triage deciding who must be saved is a very grim one indeed. But, if lamentably, events should come to such a pass, the right to make such decisions cannot be left to just a few nations because it would lend themselves to ominous power over life of the world's hungry."

2008-08-08T09:16:00.001-05:00

Massive US Naval Armada Heads for Iran

Timothy Alexander – August 8, 2008

Operation Brimstone ended only one week ago. This was the joint US/UK/French naval war games in the Atlantic Ocean preparing for a naval blockade of Iran and the likely resulting war in the Persian Gulf area. The massive war games included a US Navy supercarrier battle group, an US Navy expeditionary carrier battle group, a Royal Navy carrier battle group, a French nuclear hunter-killer submarine plus a large number of US Navy cruisers, destroyers and frigates playing the "enemy force".

The lead American ship in these war games, the USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN71) and its Carrier Strike Group Two (CCSG-2) are now headed towards Iran along with the USS Ronald Reagon (CVN76) and its Carrier Strike Group Seven (CCSG-7) coming from Japan.

Northrop X47b UCAS's over the Operation Brimstone flotilla

They are joining two existing USN battle groups in the Gulf area: the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN72) with its Carrier Strike Group Nine (CCSG-9); and the USS Peleliu (LHA-5) with its expeditionary strike group.

Likely also under way towards the Persian Gulf is the USS Iwo Jima (LHD-7) and its expeditionary strike group, the UK Royal Navy HMS Ark Royal (R07) carrier battle group, assorted French naval assets including the nuclear hunter-killer submarine Amethyste and French Naval Rafale fighter jets on-board the USS Theodore Roosevelt. These ships took part in the just completed Operation Brimstone.

The build up of naval forces in the Gulf will be one of the largest multi-national naval armadas since the First and Second Gulf Wars. The intent is to create a US/EU naval blockade (which is an Act of War under international law) around Iran (with supporting air and land elements) to prevent the shipment of benzene and certain other refined oil products headed to Iranian ports. Iran has limited domestic oil refining capacity and imports 40% of its benzene. Cutting off benzene and other key products would cripple the Iranian economy. The neo-cons are counting on such a blockade launching a war with Iran.

The US Naval forces being assembled include the following:

Carrier Strike Group Nine
USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN72) nuclear powered supercarrier
with its Carrier Air Wing Two
Destroyer Squadron Nine:
USS Mobile Bay (CG53) guided missile cruiser
USS Russell (DDG59) guided missile destroyer
USS Momsen (DDG92) guided missile destroyer
USS Shoup (DDG86) guided missile destroyer
USS Ford (FFG54) guided missile frigate
USS Ingraham (FFG61) guided missile frigate
USS Rodney M. Davis (FFG60) guided missile frigate
USS Curts (FFG38) guided missile frigate
Plus one or more nuclear hunter-killer submarines

Peleliu Expeditionary Strike Group
USS Peleliu (LHA-5) a Tarawa-class amphibious assault carrier
USS Pearl Harbor (LSD52) assult ship
USS Dubuque (LPD8) assult ship/landing dock
USS Cape St. George (CG71) guided missile cruiser
USS Halsey (DDG97) guided missile destroyer
USS Benfold (DDG65) guided missile destroyer

Carrier Strike Group Two
USS Theodore Roosevelt (DVN71) nuclear powered supercarrier
with its Carrier Air Wing Eight
Destroyer Squadron 22
USS Monterey (CG61) guided missile cruiser
USS Mason (DDG87) guided missile destroyer
USS Nitze (DDG94) guided missile destroyer
USS Sullivans (DDG68) guided missile destroyer

USS Springfield (SSN761) nuclear powered hunter-killer submarine

IWO ESG ~ Iwo Jima Expeditionary Strike Group
USS Iwo Jima (LHD7) amphibious assault carrier
with its Amphibious Squadron Four
and with its 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit
USS San Antonio (LPD17) assault ship
USS Velia Gulf (CG72) guided missile cruiser
USS Ramage (DDG61) guided missile destroyer
USS Carter Hall (LSD50) assault ship
USS Roosevelt (DDG80) guided missile destroyer

USS Hartfore (SSN768) nuclear powered hunter-killer submarine

Carrier Strike Group Seven
USS Ronald Reagan (CVN76) nuclear powered supercarrier
with its Carrier Air Wing 14
Destroyer Squadron 7
USS Chancellorsville (CG62) guided missile cruiser
USS Howard (DDG83) guided missile destroyer
USS Gridley (DDG101) guided missile destroyer
USS Decatur (DDG73) guided missile destroyer
USS Thach (FFG43) guided missile frigate
USNS Rainier (T-AOE-7) fast combat support ship

Also likely to join the battle armada:

UK Royal Navy HMS Ark Royal Carrier Strike Group with assorted guided missile destroyers and frigates, nuclear hunter-killer submarines and support ships

French Navy nuclear powered hunter-killer submarines (likely the Amethyste and perhaps others), plus French Naval Rafale fighter jets operating off of the USS Theodore Roosevelt as the French Carrier Charles de Gaulle is in dry dock, and assorted surface warships

Various other US Navy warships and submarines and support ships. The following USN ships took part (as the "enemy" forces) in Operation Brimstone and several may join in:

USS San Jacinto (CG56) guided missile cruiser
USS Anzio (CG68) guided missile cruiser
USS Normandy (CG60) guided missile cruiser
USS Carney (DDG64) guided missile destroyer
USS Oscar Austin (DDG79) guided missile destroyer
USS Winston S. Churchill (DDG81) guided missile destroyer
USS Carr (FFG52) guided missile frigate

The USS Iwo Jima and USS Peleliu Expeditionary Strike Groups have USMC Harrier jump jets and an assortment of assault and attack helicopters. The Expeditionary Strike Groups have powerful USMC Expeditionary Units with amphibious armor and ground forces trained for operating in shallow waters and in seizures of land assets, such as Qeshm Island (a 50 mile long island off of Bandar Abbas in the Gulf of Hormuz and headquarters of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps).

The large and very advanced nature of the US Naval warships is not only directed at Iran. There is a great fear that Russia and China may oppose the naval and air/land blockade of Iran. If Russian and perhaps Chinese naval warships escort commercial tankers to Iran in violation of the blockade it could be the most dangerous at-sea confrontation since the Cuban Missile Crisis. The US and allied Navies, by front loading a Naval blockade force with very powerful guided missile warships and strike carriers is attempting to have a force so powerful that Russia and China will not be tempted to mess with. This is a most serious game of military brinkmanship with major nuclear armed powers that have profound objections to the neo-con grand strategy and to western control of all of the Middle East's oil supply.

The Russian Navy this spring sent a major battle fleet into the Mediterranean headed by the modern aircraft carrier the Admiral Kuznetsov and the flagship of its Black Sea Fleet, the Guided Missile Heavy Cruiser Moskva. This powerful fleet has at least 11 surface ships and unknown numbers of subs and can use the Russian naval facility at Syria's Tartous port for resupply. The Admiral Kuznetsov carries approximately 47 warplanes and 10 helicopters. The warplanes are mostly the powerful Su-33, a naval version (with mid-air refueling capability) of the Su-27 family. While the Su-33 is a very powerful warplane it lacks the power of the stealth USAF F-22. However, the Russians insist that they have developed a plasma based system that allows them to stealth any aircraft and a recent incident where Russian fighters were able to appear unannounced over a US Navy carrier battle group tends to confirm their claims. The Su-33 can be armed with the 3M82 Moskit sea-skimming missile (NATO code name SS-N-22 Sunburn) and the even more powerful P-800 Oniks (also named Yakhonts; NATO code name SS-N-26 Onyx). Both missiles are designed to kill US Navy supercarriers by getting past the cruiser/destroyer screen and the USN point-defense Phalanx system by using high supersonic speeds and violent end maneuvers. Russian subs currently use the underwater rocket VA-111 Shkval (Squall), which is fired from standard 533mm torpedo tubes and reaches a speed of 360kph (230mph) underwater. There is no effective countermeasures to this system and no western counterpart.

A strategic diversion has been created for Russia. The Republic of Georgia, with US backing, is actively preparing for war on South Ossetia. The South Ossetia capital has been shelled and a large Georgian tank force has been heading towards the border. Russia has stated that it will not sit by and allow the Georgians to attack South Ossetia. The Russians are great chess players and this game may not turn out so well for the neo-cons.

Kuwait has activated its "Emergency War Plan" as it and other Gulf nations prepare for the likelihood of a major regional war in the Middle East involving weapons of mass destruction.

The two-ton elephant in the living room of the neo-con strategy is the advanced biowar (ABW) that Iran, and to a lessor extent Syria, has. This places the motherlands of the major neo-con nations (America, France, the United Kingdom), as well as Israel, in grave danger. When the Soviet Union fell the Iranians hired as many out-of-work former Soviet advanced biowar experts as possible. In the last 15 or so years they have helped to develop a truly world class ABW program utilizing recombination DNA genetic engineering technology to create a large number of man made killer viruses. This form of weapon system does not require high tech military delivery systems. The viruses are sub-microscopic and once seeded in a population use the population itself as vectors. Seeding can be done without notice in shopping malls, churches, and other public places. The only real defense to an advanced global strategic biowar attack is to lock down the population as rapidly as possible and let those infected die off.

Unless the public gets it act together and forces the neo-cons to stop the march to yet another war in the Middle East we are apt to see a truly horrific nightmare unfold in OUR COUNTRIES.
http://europebusines.blogspot.com/2008/08/massive-us-naval-armada-heads-for-iran.html

2008-08-06T19:28:00.002-05:00

Vision 2015: Consolidation of Intelligence Into Global Intel Network

by Michael Vail

Global Research, August 6, 2008
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“By 2015, a globally networked Intelligence Enterprise will be essential to meet the demands for greater forethought and improved strategic agility. The existing agency-centric Intelligence Community must evolve into a true Intelligence Enterprise established on a collaborative foundation of shared services, mission-centric operations, and integrated mission management, all enabled by a smooth flow of people, ideas, and activities across the boundaries of the Intelligence Community agency members.” – Mike McConnell(DNI)[1]

The Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell and The Council on Foreign Relations has made public a twenty eight page document called ‘Vision 2015’ which outlines a plan to integrate the entire United States intelligence network into a global intelligence community. Unsurprisingly there are many in the 16 intelligence agencies that support this project. At this very moment there is in-fighting between our own intelligence agencies, also currently there are problems between the CIA and Pakistani ISI. So how are they going to resolve these issues that have existed for decades?

“Old problems assume new dimensions: information operations with emphasis on a cyber domain, asymmetric political or military responses, and illicit trafficking. Lastly, we confront the challenge of acting in an environment that is more time-sensitive and open to the flow of information, in which intelligence sources and analysis compete in a public context established by a global media. By 2015 we will need integrated and collaborative capabilities that can anticipate and rapidly respond to a wide array of threats and risks.” –Mike McConnell(DNI)

According to the existing protocols they will integrate and patch up the problems as they emerge. This is the Achilles heel of globalism, and we have seen time after time how calamity comes forth and brings globalism to a standstill. And nations that were fully globalized begin to act in their own interests which is the nature of the beast. This mammoth global intelligence project has been under wraps for some time and now the NGOs, members of elite academia and think tanks are going to unveil it in front of our eyes as if it was a brand new concept.

“Our analytic professionals will collaborate with world-class experts in academe, commercial interests, and think tanks, all with similar knowledge and personal networks. Deep expertise will require broad access to open source information, our unique collection results, and a network of outside experts. Our understanding of the breadth and depth of policy intelligence doctrine, and global situational awareness must match the depth of our analyses.” –Mike McConnell(DNI)

Our world has slowly been globalized from the economic sector to health, wealth and trade. They have taken the power from we the people and placed it in unelected non-governmental organizations which has led to heights of corruption never seen before. The direct and after effects of the IMF[2], WTO[3] and WHO[4] are well known but just imagine the power and influence that will be wielded by those who will control our spy satellites and command intelligence forces around the world. Will there be increased domestic spying on citizens who fight against globalism? More importantly will all of our intelligence capabilities be controlled from outside the and will there be foreign Intel forces operating in ?

“By 2015, the Intelligence Community will be expected to provide more details about more issues to more customers. We anticipate different types of customers — with greater expectations — and new demands to change the basic engagement model by which we serve them. “

“To carry out its mission in an increasingly turbulent and complex global environment, the Intelligence Enterprise must enhance capabilities to evaluate global risks affecting our national security. Greater systems interconnectedness increases the need to identify vulnerabilities emerging at the nexus of multiple systems (e.g., critical information infrastructures, disruptions in energy supplies, fragile financial markets, and climate change-related spread of diseases) and the potential for multiple, simultaneous crises. Global awareness and strategic foresight will provide the response to these challenges, linking methods for strategic forecasting and assessment of systems vulnerabilities in constantly renewed communities of diverse expertise and insight. “ –Mike McConnell(DNI)

The intelligence agencies which provide geopolitical statistical data and analysis increasingly have to compete with multinational corporations who have former high-level military generals on staff making six figure salaries. Booz Allen Hamilton[5], Blackwater Worldwide[6], SAIC[7] and others have Intel analysts who have been providing services to not only the NSA, NGA, and NRO but also to foreign governments. These multilateral corporations offer their services to the highest bidder. Everything is for sale in this global economy.

“The opportunity now exists to tap into a vastly larger amount of expertise than was previously available to intelligence. However, this will require working from a very different paradigm from that which characterized much of our Cold War history. The key features of that traditional paradigm were: secrets; classified channels of information flows; a focus on a few hard targets (e.g., the Soviet Union, other so-called “denied area” Communist Bloc countries, their military forces and technologies and other observables); very limited contact with outside experts who were almost always US citizens; and focus on key facts and finished intelligence products.

The new paradigm, in contrast, will focus on “open source” information and reach out to a wide variety of experts who are non-intelligence professionals drawn from different sectors and often non-Americans.” –Roger Z. George(CIA)[8]

Globalization dissolves our borders, strips us of our independence and renders us dependant on unstable nations for our daily bread and clothes on our backs. From top to bottom every sector of our government is going under the influence of foreigners. Globalization should be a dirty word if you look at our world from a larger perspective. This should be a stark example for anyone who would rely on this government for the protection of their life and liberty. The only way to survive in this new dark age of global governance is to become self reliant. Let’s establish our own intelligence network on and off the internet.

"The only thing worth globalising is dissent", Arundati Roy

NOTES

1. Mike McConnell. Vision 2015: a Globally Networked and Integrated Intelligence Enterprise. 2008 [cited; Available from:
http://www.cfr.org/publication/16890/vision_2015.html]

2. Physorg. New research links International Monetary Fund loans with higher death rates from tuberculosis. 2008 [cited; Available from:
http://www.physorg.com/news135917494.html]

3. Ronald Bailey. Perpetuating Poverty by Protecting Livelihoods. 2008 [cited; Available from:
http://www.reason.com/news/show/127925.html]

4. Living Nutrition. Codex Alimentarius: Monstrously Toxic Power Play for Control of the Global Food Supply & Natural Health Industry. 2007 [cited; Available from:
http://www.livingnutrition.com/articles/codex.html]

5. Democracy Now! Mike McConnell, Booz Allen and the Privatization of Intelligence. 2007 [cited; Available from:
http://www.democracynow.org/2007/1/12/mike_mcconnell_booz_allen_and_the]

6. Washington Post. Blackwater's Owner Has Spies for Hire. 2007 [cited; Available from:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/02/AR2007110202165.html]

7. FCW. NSA taps SAIC for Trailblazer. 2002 [cited; Available from: http://www.fcw.com/print/8_43/news/77905-1.html]

8. Roger Z. George. Meeting 21st Century Transnational Challenges: Building a Global Intelligence Paradigm. 2007 [cited; Available from:
https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol51no3/building-a-global-intelligence-paradigm.html]

Global Research Articles by Michael Vail

2008-08-06T06:51:00.002-05:00

Wednesday, August 6
Zionism; a pernicious virus and World Problem.

Dr. Ivins is dead. I guess that’s all we really know. Although it is widely reported that Dr. Philip Zack, a more credible source for the stolen anthrax, is a Zionist Jew, we now see reports that he is a Catholic (see the bottom of the article for the writer’s strange arguments for why Philip Zack is a Catholic). Apparently the fact that he is a member of a particular Catholic church and got married in a Methodist church is all the proof one needs. I think you will find this portion of the article as amusing as did I. You will note the headline that accompanies the article.

I’ve been reading that there are kiosks in malls around the U.S. you can get a lot of information on this by using a search engine. They are selling everything from bad art to skin lotions. The Jewish Journal has quite an article on them. When you look at the membership of PNAC and any list of Neo-cons and when you look at who heads up a number of the main departments at Homeland Security you find mostly Zionist Jews. When you look at who pushed for the Iraq War and who is pushing for an attack on Iran you come up with a preponderance of Zionist Jews. Five Israelis were found celebrating the assault on the WTC. How did they know?

It’s well beyond strange at this point. How is it that Zionist American and Israeli Jews are connected to so many things involving murders, single and plural? How is it that the same Israeli security firm was in charge of all 9/11 airports as well as the London Tube and the Madrid train station at the time of the attacks? What’s the story with Odigo and Promis software? Why does it all track back to Israel? Understand that I could add much, much more from Larry Silverstein to the curious locations of Olmert and Netanyahu on certain significant dates. Two things seem apparent, thinking or talking about these things is anti-Semitic and whatever happened was mere coincidence and Israel should probably get more money and guns for being associated with unbearable coincidences.

When you look at who controls the world media and much of the entertainment industry; when you look at who is behind the banks that are euphemistically called the ‘Federal’ Reserve; when you look at the identity of the Russian oligarchs and their London operations and when you look at the endless list of ancillary connections across the globe it becomes apparent you should look under your bed too because there is likely a Zionist there as well.

If you are a person who weighs evidence and uses reason and logic. If you are a person who believes that, quite often, where there is smoke there is fire. If you are a person who believes that hundreds of coincidences remove your conclusions from the area of coincidence, then it becomes crystal clear that the tag of anti-Semitism was created to counter one coming to conclusions based on informed research when that research continuously turns up the same group of people in relation to global criminal operations.

Now we have Alexander Solzhenitsyn pointing out that two thirds of the Cheka members who murdered tens of millions of Russians were… yeah, you guessed it. Then, maybe you notice the wording of the article and the tippy toeing about that is de rigueur for any discussion on the matter. It turns out that the number of people murdered makes the Holocaust Industry victims bigger killers than victims. You can’t talk about these things, even though I am. Even if you are Solzhenitsyn, they are going to say about you what is said about him in the article just mentioned. It’s clear beyond clear what is happening. Somehow, some collection of some tiny percent of the world’s population is and has been wreaking havoc around the globe for a long time.

Nothing that I have said here can be refuted or contested. The meaning of these things can be obfuscated and argued about but the things themselves are real. What is the world going to do about this? I don’t know the answer to that.

Then you have things like this. It seems that a person is left in a precarious situation when engaged in the study of this subject. They can go where the truth leads them and reap ignominy and censure. They can be imprisoned for saying things that the evidence affirms. They avoid the truth of the affair and kiss the hands of their oppressors. They can run from the room any time the affair is mentioned. They can continue to graze like the beasts of the field upon ever diminishing forage or they could just kill themselves by shooting themselves in the back of the head five or six times.

It isn’t just the things that I have mentioned here. It is the enormous amount of evidence that could not be contained in a single book, much less a brief essay like this. I guess the thing is to find some place that they don’t want and try to live under the radar while they enslave and lay waste to the world. Just about everyone slides away from the subject. Just about everyone zips their mouth. Just about everyone has lied to themselves about what is real and what is not in order to survive beneath the hobnailed boot of history’s slavemasters; speaking of which I guess I don’t have to mention who a large percentage of the owners of the slave ships turn out to be according to the records of the times.

So it appears that those who have told the truth are libeled and slandered and also correct in what they say. It turns out that Louis Farrakhan is correct in what he says. It turns out that a large portion of those accused of being anti-Semitic were really just guilty of telling the truth; not that anyone was listening. It seems that their greatest crime was against themselves and their families for not having had the good sense to keep their mouths shut. Bertrand Russell and the rest of them should have just closed their eyes and worked to blame others for the crimes of those for whom it is a crime to speak about.

Now the Palestinians are being systematically abused and tortured, make homeless, thrown from the roofs of buildings while celebrating a wedding at their home, shot, stabbed, beaten and tormented while the world turns its head. It sickens me. You, the willfully blind sicken me more. Your cowardice sickens me. Your complicity with these ruthless killers sickens me.

What I have said here is so. I wish it were not so. I wish it were not so that a certain percentage of the world’s smallest population was not the worlds and the truths most aggressive enemy. I wish there were some way to end this but that is the nature of the world. Those whose love of money and power exceeds any human constraints on behavior are those who possess the greatest amount of money and power because they desire it more than anyone else and are not hobbled, like you, by the possession of a conscience. While systematically raping the world and its people they paint themselves as humanities benefactors. While enslaving the world they paint themselves as its liberators. While lying, as a beloved avocation, they paint themselves as defenders of the truth. While pretending to do one thing they accomplish the other. What they say and do have no connection to one another except for contrast. What they say they are is the opposite of what they really are.

I do not know what will come as the movie plays out before us. I know that evil destroys itself and the sooner the better. My thoughts are with you who know the truth of what I have said. For the rest of you, this is a dream that just came and went and your participation and recollection of your life will scatter in the wind the way leaves are tossed on a windy street, turning in time, back to the common earth from which they came.

In a few days I will be on the road and unable to post your comments for a couple of days. I may not write again for awhile. I’m not sure that what I have to say makes much of a difference in any case. Thank you for your fine commentary and for the time we spent together. I don’t know what lies ahead. We will have to wait and see.

It Always Breaks Your Heart

Connecting the Dots: A New Cold War Meets Chinese Lanterns Flying in the Wind of Change -- Signs of the Times News

2008-08-03T06:46:00.000-05:00

Connecting the Dots: A New Cold War Meets Chinese Lanterns Flying in the Wind of Change -- Signs of the Times News: "http://www.sott.net/articles/show/163218-Connecting-the-Dots-A-New-Cold-War-Meets-Chinese-Lanterns-Flying-in-the-Wind-of-Change"

2008-07-30T20:49:00.003-05:00

Operation Sarkozy
Thierry Meyssan – Axis of Logic July 14, 2008 Translated by Robert Thompson

How the CIA planted one of its agents as President of the French Republic.

Nicolas Sarkozy should be judged on his actions and not on his personality.

But when his actions surprise even his own electors, it is legitimate to examine in detail his biography and to ask about the alliances which brought him to power. Thierry Meyssan decided to write the truth about the origins of the President of the French Republic. All the information contained in this article is verifiable, with the exception of two imputations, pointed out by the author who assumes sole responsibility for them.

The French people, weary of the over-long presidencies of François Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac, elected Nicolas Sarkozy and counted on his energy to revitalise their country. They hoped for a break with the years of immobilism and superannuated ideologies. They have had a break with the principles which form the foundation of the French nation. They have been stupefied by this "hyper president", every day grabbing hold of another new file, drawing the right and the left to him, thus disposing of all the land-marks to the point of creating complete confusion.

Like children who have just done something very stupid, the French are too busy finding excuses to admit the extent of the damage and of their naïvety. This makes them refuse all the more to see who Nicolas Sarkozy is, which they ought to have realised long ago.

The man is clever. Like an illusionist, he has diverted their attention by offering them his private life as a spectacle and in posing in celebrity magazines, to the point of making them overlook his political history.

Let the sense of this article be fully understood: it is not to reproach Mr Sarkozy with his links of family, friends and professional contacts, but to reproach him with having hidden his links from the French people who believed that they were electing a free man.

To understand how a man in whom all agree they see an agent of the United States and Israel has been able to become the head of the Gaullist party, then the President of the French Republic, one must go back in time. Far back. We must follow a long digression during which we shall introduce the protagonists who are today taking their revenge.

FAMILY SECRETS

At the end of the Second World War, the USA secret services counted on the Italo-US godfather Lucky Luciano to control the security of American ports and to prepare the allied landings in Sicily.

Luciano's contacts with the US services passed above all through Frank Wisner Sr. then, when the 'godfather' was freed and went into exile in Italy, through his Corsican 'ambassador', Étienne Léandri.

In 1958, the United States, worried about a possible victory of the FLN in Algeria which would have opened North Africa to Soviet influence, decided to give rise to a military coup d'état in France. The operation was organised jointly by the Planning Direction of the CIA - in theory run by Frank Wisner Sr.- and by NATO. But Wisner had already sunk into dementia so that it was his successor, Allan Dulles, who supervised the action. From Algiers, the French Generals formed a Committee of Public Safety which exerted pressure on the civil government in Paris and forced it to give full powers to General De Gaulle without any need to use force.

However, Charles De Gaulle was not the pawn whom the Anglo-Saxons believed they could manipulate. To start with, he tried to find a way out of the colonial contradiction by giving wide autonomy to the overseas territories within a French Union. But it was already too late to save the French Empire since the colonised peoples did not believe in the promises from the metropolis and insisted on their independence. After having successfully led fierce campaigns of repression against the independentists, De Gaulle realised what had to be done. Showing rare political wisdom, he decided to give each colony its independence.

This U-turn was seen as a betrayal by most of those who brought him to power. The CIA and NATO then backed all sorts of plots to get rid of him, including a failed putsch and some forty attempts to assassinate him. However, some of his partisans approved of his political evolution. Around Charles Pasqua, they formed the SAC, a militia to protect him.

Pasqua is both a Corsican crook and a former member of the resistance. He married the daughter of a Canadian bootlegger who made a fortune during prohibition. He ran the Ricard company which, after having dealt in absinthe, a forbidden drink, made itself respectable by selling anisette. However, the company continued to serve as a cover for all sorts of deals in relation with the Italo-New Yorker Genovese family, that of Lucky Luciano. It was therefore not surprising that Pasqua called on Étienne Léandri (Luciano's "ambassador") to recruit strong arm men and build up a Gaullist militia. A third man played an important role in the formation of the SAC, De Gaulle's former body-guard, Achille Peretti -another Corsican.

Thus protected, De Gaulle drew up with panache a policy of national independence. While confirming that he belonged to the Atlantic camp, he questioned the Anglo-Saxon leadership. He objected to the entry of the United Kingdom into the European Common Market (1961 and 1967); he refused the deployment of UNO blue helmets in the Congo (1961); he encouraged Latin American states to break free of US imperialism (speech in Mexico, 1964); he expelled NATO from France and withdrew form the Integrated Command Structure of the Atlantic Alliance (1966); he denounced the Viet-Nam War (speech in Phnon Penh, 1966); he condemned Israeli expansionism during the Six Day War (1967); he supported the independence of Quebec (speech in Montreal 1967) ; etc...

At the same time, De Gaulle consolidated France's power by giving it a military-industrial complex including a nuclear dissuasion force, and by guaranteeing its supply of energy. He usefully separated the troublesome Corsicans from his entourage by giving them overseas missions. Thus Étienne Léandri became the dealer for the Elf group (now Total), while Charles Pasqua became the confidant of the heads of state in French-speaking Africa.

Aware that he could now defy the Anglo-Saxons everywhere at the same time, De Gaulle allied himself with the Rothschild family. He chose as Prime Minister the Director of the Bank, Georges Pompidou. The two men formed an efficient tandem. The political audacity of the first never lost sight of the economic realism of the second.

When De Gaulle resigned, in 1969, Georges Pompidou briefly succeeded him as President before being carried off by cancer. The historical Gaullists did not accept his leadership and were worried by his excessively anglophile attitude. They cried treason when Pompidou, seconded by the Secretary General of the Elyse Eduard Balladur, allowed "perfidious Albion" into the European Common Market.

THE MAKING OF NICOLAS SARKOZY

Having thus described the background, let us come back to our principal personage, Nicolas Sarkozy. Born in 1955, he was the son of a Hungarian nobleman, Pal Sarkösy de Nagy-Bocsa, who fled to France after fleeing the Red Army, and Andrée Mallah, a Jewish lady from Sallonica. After having had three children (Guillaume, Nicolas and François), the couple divorced. Pal Sarkösy de Nagy-Bocsa remarried with an aristocrat, Christine de Ganay, by whom he had two children (Pierre-Olivier and Caroline). Nicolas was not brought up by his parents alone, but passed to and fro in this recomposed family.

His mother became the Secretary of Achille Peretti. After having co-founded the SAC, De Gaulle's body-guard had pursued a brilliant political career. He was elected Député and Mayor of Neuilly-sur-Seine, the richest suburb of the capital, then President of the National Assembly.

Unhappily, in 1972, Achille Peretti was subject to serious accusations. In the United States, the magazine Time revealed the existence of a secret Corsican criminal organisation the 'Union corse ' which was said to control a large share of the traffic in drugs between Europe and America, the famous "French connection" which Hollywood brought to the screen. Based on parliamentary hearings and its own investigations, Time quoted the name of a Mafia boss, Jean Venturi, arrested some years earlier in Canada, who was no other than the commercial representative of Charles Pasqua for the drinks company Ricard. The names of several families were mentioned who were said to run the "Union corse", including the Perettis. Achille denied this, but had to resign from the presidency of the National Assembly and even escaped from a "suicide".

In 1977, Pal Sarközy separated from his second wife, Christine de Ganay, who then linked herself with the number two of the central administration of the Department of State in the United States. She married him and set up home with him in America. The world being small, as is well known, her husband was no other than Frank Wisner Jr., the son of the previous one. The functions of Junior at the CIA are not known, but it was clear that he had an important role there. Nicolas, who remained close to his step-mother, his half-brother and his half-sister, began to turn towards the United States where he "benefitted" from training programmes in the Department of State.

At the same time, Nicolas Sarkozy joined the Gaullist Party. He there met and had contacts with Charles Pasqua more speedily as he was not only a national leader, but also in charge of the local section in the Hauts-de-Seine.

In 1982, Nicolas Sarkozy, having completed his legal training and having been called to the Bar, married Achilles Pretty's niece. His best man was Charles Pasqual. As an Avocet, Maître Sarkozy looked after the interests of the Corsican friends of his mentors. He bought a property in Corsica, at Vice, and thought of making his name more Corsican by replacing the 'y' with an 'I': Sarkozy.

The following year, he was elected Mayor of Neuilly-sure-Seine in the place of his uncle-in-law, Achilles Pretty, stricken by a heart attack.

However, Nicolas did not take long to betray his wife and, from 1984 onward, he had a hidden liaison with Cecilia, the wife of the most famous French television personality at the time, Jacques Martin, whom he had met when celebrating their marriage as Mayor of Neuilly. This double life lasted for five years, before the lovers left their respective spouses to set up a new household.

Nicolas was a witness at the marriage, in 1992, of Jacques Chirac's daughter, Claude, to an editorialist at Le Figaro. he could not stop himself from seducing Claude and to have a brief affair with her, while living officially with Cecilia. The betrayed husband committed suicide by taking drugs. The break between the Chirac's and Nicolas Sarkozy was brutal and permanent.

In 1993, the left lost the parliamentary elections. President François Mitterrand refused to resign and entered into a cohabitation with a Prime Minister from the right, Jacques Chirac. His ambition was to become President and thought of then forming a tandem with Eduard Balladur comparable with that of De Gaulle and Pompidou, and he refused to be Prime Minister again and left the place to his "friend for over thirty years", Eduard Balladur. Despite his dubious past, Charles Pasqual became Minister of the Interior. Even if he kept a firm grip Moroccan marijuana, he took advantage of his position to legalise his other activities by taking control of the casinos, gaming and racing in French-speaking Africa. He also established links in Saudi Arabia and in Israel an became an honorary officer in the Mossad. As for Nicolas Sarkozy, he was Minister of the Budget and government spokesman.

In Washington, Frank Wisner Jr. took over from Paul Wolfowitz as being responsible for political planning in the Defence Department. Nobody commented on the links which he had with the French government's spokesman.
This was when the tension within the Gaullist Party came back as thirty years earlier between the historic Gaullists and the financial right, in the person of Balladur. The novelty was that Charles Pasqua and with him the young Nicolas Sarkozy betrayed Jacques Chirac to come closer to the Rothschild tendency. Everything went wrong. The conflict reached its peak in 1995 when Édouard Balladur put himself forward against his ex-friend Jacques Chirac for the presidential election, and was beaten. Above all, following the instructions received from London and Washington, the Balladur government opened negotiations for adhesion to the European Union and to NATO of the States in Central and Eastern Europe, freed from Soviet control.

Everything went wrong in the Gaullist Party where the friends of yester-year were ready to kill one another. To finance his electoral campaign, Édouard Balladur tried to get hold of the Gaullist Party's black funds, hidden within the double accounting system of the oil company Elf. Hardly had the old Étienne Léandri died, when Judges looked into the company and its bosses were incarcerated. But Balladur, Pasqua and Sarkozy never managed to recuperate the booty.

CROSSING THE DESERT

Throughout his first term, Jacques Chirac kept Nicolas Sarkozy at a distance. The man became discreet during this long period of crossing the desert. Discreetly, he continued to make links in financial circles.

In 1996, Nicolas Sarkozy having finally managed to end an endless divorce procedure married Cécilia. As witnesses they had the two billionaires Martin Bouygues and Bernard Arnaud (the richest man in the country).

LAST ACT

Well before the Iraq crisis, Frank Wisner Jr. and his colleagues at the CIA were planning the destruction of the Gaullist line and the rise in power of Nicolas Sarkozy. They acted in three stages: firstly the elimination of the leaders of the Gaullist Party and taking over this body, then the elimination of the principal rival on the right and the investiture by the Gaullist Party for the presidential election, and finally the elimination of any serious challenger from the left in order to be sure of carrying off the presidential election.

For years, the media were kept excited by posthumous revelations by a real property speculator. Before dying of a serious illness, he had registered for reasons never made clear a video confession. For even more obscure reasons, the "cassette" fell into the hands of a highly placed member of the Socialist Party, Dominique Strauss-Khan, who passed it on indirectly to the press.

Even if the confessions of the speculator did not lead to any judicial sanction, they opened a Pandora's box. The principal victim of the successive affairs was to be the Prime Minister Alain Juppé. To protect Chirac, he alone took on all the criminal offences. Putting Juppé out of the way left the way clear for Nicolas Sarkozy to take over the running of the Gaullist Party.

Sarkozy then made use of his position to force Jacques Chirac to take him back into the government, despite their mutual hatred. He was definitively to be the Minister of the Interior. What a mistake! In this post, he controlled the Préfets and the interior intelligence network which he used to put his appointees into the major branches of the administration.

He also dealt with Corsican matters. The Préfet Claude Érignac had been assassinated. Although no-one had claimed it, the murder was immediately interpreted as a challenge made by the independentists to the Republic. After a long hunt, the police managed to arrest a fleeing suspect, Yvan Colonna, the son of a Socialist Député. Without regard for the presumption of innocence, Nicolas Sarkozy announced this arrest accusing the suspect of being the assassin. This news was too good two days before a referendum being organised by the Minister of the Interior in Corsica to modify the status of the Island. However that may be, the voters rejected the Sarkozy project which, according to some, favoured Mafia interests.

Although Yvan Colonna was later found guilty, he has always claimed his innocence and no material evidence has been found against him. Strangely, the man refused to talk, preferring to be found guilty than to reveal what he knows. We here reveal that the Préfet Érignac was not killed by nationalists, but shot by the hit-man, Igor Pecatte, immediately sent off to Angola where he has been taken on by the Elf group. The motive for the crime was closely linked to the previous functions of Érignac, in charge of the African networks of Charles Pasqua at the Ministry of Cooperation. As for Yvan Colonna, he has been a personal friend of Nicolas Sarkozy for many years and their children are in friendly contact with one another.

A new affair came to light: false listings were circulating which untruthfully accused certain personalities of hiding bank accounts in Luxembourg, with Clearstream. Among the personalities defamed: Nicolas Sarkozy. He took the case to court and let it seem that his right-wing rival for the presidential election, the Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin, had organised this machination. He did not hide his intention to have him sent to prison. In reality, the false listings were put in circulation by members of the Franco-American Foundation, of which John Negroponte was the President and Frank Wisner Jr. the Director. What the Judges did not know and we reveal here was that the listings were made in London by a joint office of the CIA and the MI6, Hakluyt & Co, of which Frank Wisner Jr. is also Director. Villepin fights back against the accusations, but he is charged, forbidden to leave his home and, de facto, temporarily removed from political life. The way is open for on the right for Nicolas Sarkozy.

It remained necessary to neutralise opposition candidates. The membership dues to the Socialist Party have gone down to a symbolic level to attract new members. Suddenly thousands of young people applied for membership cards. Among them are at least ten thousand new members who are in reality members of the Trotskyite "Lambertist" Party (so called from the name of their founder Pierre Lambert). This small extreme left formation has a history of working for the CIA against the Stalinist communists during the Cold War (it was the equivalent of the SD/USA of Max Shatchman, which formed the neoconservatives in the USA). This was not the first time that the "Lambertists" had infiltrated the Socialist Party.

In particular they planted two famous CIA agents: Lionel Jospin (who became Prime Minister) and Jean-Christophe Cambadélis, the principal adviser to Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

Primaries were organised in the Socialist Party to appoint its candidate for the presidential election. Two personalities were competing: Laurent Fabius and Ségolène Royal. Only the first represented a danger for Sarkozy. Dominique Strauss-Kahn became a candidate with the task of eliminating Fabius at the last moment. This he was able to do thanks to the votes of the infiltrated "Lambertist" militants who voted not for him but for Royal. The operation was possible because Strauss-Kahn, of Moroccan Jewish origin, had been on the US payroll for many years. The French were not aware that he lectured at Stanford, where he had been taken on by the Provost of the University, Condoleezza Rice. As soon as he took office, Nicolas Sarkozy and Condoleezza Rice thanked Strauss-Kahn by having him appointed to head the International Monetary Fund.

FIRST DAYS AT THE ÉLYSÉE PALACE

On the evening of the second round of the presidential election, when the opinion polls announced his probable victory, Nicolas Sarkozy made a short speech to the nation from his campaign HQ. Then, contrary to custom, he did not go to celebrate with the militants of his party, but went to Fouquet's. The famous restaurant on the Champs-Élysées, which had once been the meeting place for the "Union Corse" now belongs to the casino operator Dominique Desseigne. It was placed at the disposition of the elected President to receive his friends and principal donors to his campaign. A hundred or so guests crowded in, the richest men in France were there with the casino bosses.

Then the elected President allowed himself a few days of earned rest. Taken there in a private Falcon-900 to Malta, he rested there on the Paloma, the 65 metre yacht of his friend Vincent Bolloré, a billionaire formed at the Banque Rothschild.

Finally, Nicolas Sarkozy was invested as President of the French Republic. The first decree which he signed was not to proclaim an amnesty, but to allow casinos to be operated by his friends Desseigne et Partouche and increase the number of gambling machines.

He formed his working team and his government. With no surprise, one finds there a very worrying casino owner (Minister of Youth and Sport) and lobbyist for the casinos of his friend Desseigne (who became spokesman for the "Gaullist" Party).

Nicolas Sarkozy relied above all on four men: Claude Guéant, Secretary General of the Élysée Palace. He was the former right arm of Charles Pasqua. François Pérol, Assistant Secretary General of the Élysée. He was a managing partner of the Banque Rothschild. Jean-David Lévitte, diplomatic adviser. Son of the former Director of the Jewish Agency. French Ambassador to UNO, he was removed from his post by Chirac who considered him too close to George Bush. Alain Bauer, the man in the shadow. His name does not appear in any directory. He is in charge of the intelligence services. Grandson of the Grand Rabbi of Lyon, former Grand-Master of the Grand Orient of France (the principal Masonic obedience in France) and former number 2 of the USA National Security Agency in Europe.

Frank Wisner Jr., who had in the meantime been appointed special envoy by President Bush for the independence of Kosovo, insisted that Bernard Kouchner be appointed Minister for Foreign Affairs with a dual priority mission: The independence of Kosovo and the ending of France's Arab policy.

Kouchner, of Baltic Jewish origin, started his career by taking part in creating a humanitarian NGO. Thanks to money from the National Endowment for Democracy, he took part in operations for Zbigniew Brzezinski in Afghanistan, alongside Osama Ben Laden and the Karzaï brothers against the Soviets. He could be found in the 90s alongside Alija Izetbegoviç in Bosnia-Herzegovina. From 1999 to 2001, he was the High Representative of UNO in Kosovo.

Under the control of the younger brother of President Hamid Karzaï, Afghanistan became the largest producer in the world of opium poppies. The juice is transformed on the spot into heroin and transported by the US Air Force to Camp Bondsteed (Kosovo). There the drug is taken over by the men of Haçim Thaçi who distribute it principally in Europe and also in the United States. The profits are used to finance the illegal operations of the CIA. Karzaï and Thaçi are long-time personal friends of Bernard Kouchner, who obviously knows nothing of their criminal activities despite the international reports which have been made on the subject.

To complete his government, Nicolas Sarkozy appoints Christine Lagarde, Minister of Economy and Finance. She had made all her career in the United States where she ran the prestigious law firm of Baker & McKenzie. Within Dick Cheney's the Center for International & Strategic Studies, she co-chaired with Zbigniew Brzezinski a working group which supervised the privatisations in Poland. She had organised intense lobbying for Lockheed Martin against the French aircraft manufacturer Dassault.

A new escapade during the summer. Nicolas, Cécilia, their joint mistress and their children were offered holidays in the USA at Wolfenboro, not far from President Bush's property. The bill this time was paid by Robert F. Agostinelli, an Italo-New York merchant banker, a Zionist and a leading neo-conservative who gives his views in Commentary, the magazine of the American Jewish Committee.

The success of Nicolas spreads to his half-brother Pierre-Olivier. Under the Americanised name of "Oliver", he was appointed by Frank Carlucci (who was the number 2 of the CIA after having been recruited by Frank Wisner Sr.) Director of a new investment fund of the Carlyle Group (the joint management company of the portfolios of the Bushes and the Ben Ladens). Having become the 5th deal-maker in the world, he manages the principal assets of the sovereign funds of Kuwait and Singapore.

The popularity of the President is in free-fall in the opinion polls. One of his advisers in communication, Jacques Séguéla, planned to distract the attention of the public with new "celebrity stories". The announcement of the divorce from Cécilia was published by Libération, the newspaper of his friend Édouard de Rothschild, to cover up the demonstrators' slogans during a day of general strikes. Going further still, the communicator organised a meeting with the singer and former model, Carla Bruni. Several days later, her affair with the President became official and the media din again covered up the political criticisms. A few weeks later still and it was Nicolas' third marriage. This time the witnesses whom he chose were Mathilde Agostinelli (the wife of Robert) and Nicolas Bazire, former private secretary of Édouard Balladur who had become a managing partner at the Banque Rothschild.

When will the French open their eyes to see what they should do?
http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_27642.shtml

2008-07-28T20:32:00.000-05:00

2008-07-25T19:43:00.002-05:00

Visualize the Dow at 6,000
By Mike Whitney
Online Journal Contributing Writer

Jul 25, 2008, 00:22

At an improvised press conference last week, George Bush gave what might have been the most comical performance of his eight-year presidency. Looking like the skipper on the flight-deck of the Hindenburg, Bush tried his best to reassure the public that “all’s well” with the economy and that everyone’s deposits were perfectly safe in the rapidly disintegrating US banking system.

Leaning lazily on the presidential podium, Bush shrugged his shoulders and said, “My hope is that people take a deep breath and realize that their deposits are protected by our government. We’re not seeing the growth we’d like to see, but the financial system is basically sound.”

Right. “Breath deep” and chill out; no need to panic. One shouldn’t let the long lines of anxious depositors who are presently trying to extract what’s left of their life savings from the now-defunct IndyMac Bank upset one’s basic equanimity. The banking system is perfectly safe, you heard it from President Trickledown himself.

At the same time Bush was offering his soothing words on all the major TV news networks, Fed chairman Ben Bernanke was on the other side of Washington giving a decidedly grimmer assessment of the economy: “The contraction in housing activity that began in 2006 and the associated deterioration in mortgage markets that became evident last year have led to sizable losses at financial institutions and a sharp tightening in overall credit conditions. The effects of the housing contraction and of the financial headwinds on spending and economic activity have been compounded by rapid increases in the prices of energy and other commodities, which have sapped household purchasing power even as they have boosted inflation. Against this backdrop, economic activity has advanced at a sluggish pace during the first half of this year, while inflation has remained elevated.”

Keep in mind, that these two events were perfectly coordinated to take place at exactly the same time, 10:20 a.m. July 15. Quite a coincidence, eh? Just another masterful public relations coup engineered by the Bush PR team, the last functioning agency in the entire bureaucracy. To no one’s surprise, the collusive media managed to divert attention from the impending financial firestorm long enough to lull the American people into believing that nothing is really wrong; the economy is just hunky-dory.

Fed-chief Bernanke again: “The economy continues to face numerous difficulties, including ongoing strains in financial markets, declining house prices, a softening labor market, and rising prices of oil, food, and some other commodities. . . . The deteriorating performance of subprime mortgages in the United States triggered turbulence in domestic and international financial markets as investors became markedly less willing to bear credit risks of any type. . . . Many financial markets and institutions remain under considerable stress, in part because the outlook for the economy, and thus for credit quality, remains uncertain.”

As Bernanke delivered one hammer-blow after another, our engaging Commander in Chief was busy swapping funny stories and rough-housing with his pals in the Washington press corps. The media confab turned out to be a typical Bush frat-party with plenty of back-slapping and hee-haws to go around.

“You had a question, Stretch?” (Ha, ha)

And that was that. Bernanke’s candid and (frankly) scary assessment of the economy was dwarfed by Bush’s diversionary palavering and bravado -- another stunning victory for the White House spinmeisters. Even so, the Fed chairman’s testimony should be dug up and examined by anyone who is interested in knowing how bad things really are so they can prepare themselves for the hard times ahead. (Find it here: Bernanke’s Semiannual Monetary Policy Report to Congress)

Bernanke again: “In the housing sector, activity continues to weaken . . . Home prices are falling, particularly in regions that experienced the largest price increases earlier this decade. The declines in home prices have contributed to the rising tide of foreclosures; by adding to the stock of vacant homes for sale, these foreclosures have, in turn, intensified the downward pressure on home prices in some areas. . . . The declines in home prices have contributed to the rising tide of foreclosures; by adding to the stock of vacant homes for sale, these foreclosures have, in turn, intensified the downward pressure on home prices in some areas. . . . . . Surveys of capital spending plans indicate that firms remain concerned about the economic and financial environment, including sharply rising costs of inputs and indications of tightening credit, and they are likely to be cautious with spending in the second half of the year.”

The economic sky is quickly darkening and Bernanke made no effort to hide his concern. His testimony was as close to the truth as one gets in Washington where honesty is usually eradicated like a malignant tumor. In any event, it is worth wading through Bernanke’s speech word by word even if it only reinforces one’s belief that the economy is about to take a sleigh-ride through a deflationary blast-furnace which will ultimately result in the demise of Breton Woods, the disorderly replacement of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, and an end to the United States short-lived dominance as the world’s lone superpower. The American Century has about run out of steam just eight years into the new millennium. Bernanke’s presentation confirms what the econo-bloggers have been saying for the past three years: the end is nigh, get your house in order.

Personal consumption is down, the labor market is softening, and food and fuel prices are soaring. Housing values are plummeting, wages have stagnated, and American households are more overextended, underpaid and stressed out than any time in history. It’s all bad. No wonder consumer confidence is at its nadir.

“The summer of 1931”?

The next shoe to drop is the stock market. It’s not that complicated either. When wholesale prices on supplies and raw materials go up, but businesses can’t pass along those costs because consumers are already maxed-out, then corporate profits plummet and the stock market crashes down with the force of an avalanche.

Journalist Ambrose Evans-Pritchard summed it up like this: “It feels like the summer of 1931. The world’s two biggest financial institutions have had a heart attack. The global currency system is breaking down. The policy doctrines that got us into this mess are bankrupt. No world leader seems able to discern the problem, let alone forge a solution. The International Monetary Fund has abdicated into schizophrenia. . . . My view is that a dollar crash will be averted as it becomes clearer that contagion has spread worldwide. But we are now at the point of maximum danger.” (Ambrose Evans- Pritchard, “The Global Economy is at the point of maximum danger,” UK Telegraph)

“Maximum danger,” indeed. Stock market mayhem is just around the corner. Visualize the Dow at 6,000 and then hang on for dear life. The indexes will tumble and Wall Street will be reduced to Dresden-type rubble, nothing left but toxic fumes and twisted iron. By the end of 2009, the last few bulls will be driven out of the exchanges and onto the streets where they’ll be slaughtered one by one. It won’t be pretty.

According to Bloomberg News, “Investors worldwide are betting more than $1 trillion on a collapse in stock prices.”

But no matter how bad it gets, the media will still bang-out its “Sunny Jim” market forecasts while reiterating every mangled phrase and muddled thought from our alcohol-addled Dear Leader. The lines from the shelters, pawn shops and soup kitchens may stretch from the Golden Gate to the Statue of Liberty, but the perennially upbeat predictions of a “bottom in housing” or an “economic turnaround” will continue to blast from every media bullhorn in the nation. America’s financial media is a never-ending source of baseless optimism and hogwash.

It’s funny, while Bush was hosting his faux-press conference, live-footage was appearing on other media of fully armed LA policemen being dispatched to the various IndyMac locations. Their task was to remind the gathering of elderly “blue-hair” women and middle-aged white guys in Tommy Bahama T-shirts that any public display of outrage would be swiftly met with Rodney King-style justice. Hmmm. So now withdrawing one’s savings from the bank is not only riskier, it’s tantamount to committing a felony. My, how America has changed.

Just imagine the frustration of spending $5 a gallon for gas to drive to the local IndyMac branch to get whatever is left of your savings only to get roughed up by the local constabulary. Nice touch, eh?

Going to the bank? Don’t forget the protective headgear!

The truth is the banking system is built on a foundation of pure quicksand and it’s only a matter of time before the Bush’s truncheon-wielding Robocops start Tasering old ladies and gassing portly white guys for massing in front of the boarded up doors of their local bank. Move along, now.

Market Ticker’s Denniger made this insightful observation about the present condition of the banking system. He said, “Why does Paulson keep telling us that the banking system is sound every time he gets within 200’ of a microphone? Maybe it is because the banking system is on the verge of all-out collapse, and he knows you could blow it over with a feather!” (The Market-Ticker)

It is worth noting that the demise of IndyMac is expected to cost the FDIC around $8 billion of its meager $53 billion of reserves. four or five bank failures of equal size and the FDIC will be underwater, which is a serious problem since even conservative estimates expect bank failures to run into the hundreds. The Fed will be forced to monetize the debt, further weakening the dollar.

But IndyMac is small potatoes compared to the liabilities of the two mortgage behemoths, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Years of sketchy accounting, risky investments, abusive lending, and political cronyism have eroded the two government sponsored enterprises’ (GSEs) balance sheets and pushed them to the brink of insolvency. If they fail, it will be disastrous for the US taxpayer who will be expected to guarantee $5.2 trillion of US residential mortgages, hundreds of billions of which was lent to borrowers who will likely default on their loans in the next few years. As the housing bubble continues to fizzle; Fannie and Freddie will face losses of $500 billion or more, forcing disgruntled foreign investors to ditch their bonds and make for the exits. When that happens, long-term interest rates will skyrocket and the ailing dollar will collapse in a heap. The Bush administration can’t allow that to happen, which means that Henry Paulson will push for emergency funding from the congress (which he is doing now), so he can rebuild investor confidence and stop the hemorrhaging of foreign capital. Whether Fannie and Freddie are saved or not, it is bound to be a drain on the dollar which can only get weaker as deficits soar and confidence wanes. There’s really very little chance the dollar will survive as the “international currency.”

Economist Nouriel Roubini summed it up like this: “The existence of GSEs . . . is a major part of the overall U.S. subsidization of housing capital that will eventually lead to the bankruptcy of the U.S. economy. For the last 70 years investment in housing -- the most unproductive form of accumulation of capital -- has been heavily subsidized in 100 different ways in the U.S.: tax benefits, tax-deductibility of interest on mortgages, use of the FHA, massive role of Fannie and Freddie, role of the Federal Home Loan Bank system, and a host of other legislative and regulatory measures.

“The reality is that the U.S. has invested too much -- especially in the last eight years -- in building its stock of wasteful housing capital (whose effect on the productivity of labor is zero) and has not invested enough in the accumulation of productive physical capital (equipment, machinery, etc.) that leads to an increase in the productivity of labor and increases long run economic growth. This financial crisis is a crisis of accumulation of too much debt -- by the household sector, the government and the country -- to finance the accumulation of the most useless and unproductive form of capital, housing, that provides only housing services to consumers and has zippo effect on the productivity of labor.” (Seeking Alpha, “Just How Terrible is Housing as an Asset Class? Roubini Weighs In”)

Fannie and Freddie made a big mistake by shifting into mortgage-backed securities (MBS) in the 1990s. From 1997 to 2007, Fannie’s portfolio of dodgy MBS jumped from $18.5 billion to $127.8 billion by the end of 2007. The numbers at Freddie were even higher. Now they’re caught in the same downgrading-spiral as the investment banks, with billions of dollars of assets steadily losing value every month. It’s death by a thousand cuts. The losses have left the two GSEs cash-starved and searching frantically for new sources of capital to build their cushion. Regrettably, foreign sovereign wealth funds feel like they were burned in the Citigroup bailout and are no longer in the market for destitute US investment banks.

Here’s “The Economist” shedding a little more light of Fannie and Freddie’s creative bookkeeping: “The companies have also been unwilling to accept the pain of market prices in acknowledging delinquent loans. When borrowers fail to keep up payments on mortgages in the pool that supports asset-backed loans, Fannie and Freddie must buy back the loan. But that requires an immediate write-off at a time when the market prices of asset-backed loans are depressed. Instead, the twins sometimes pay the interest into the pool to keep the loans afloat. In Mr Rosner’s view, this merely pushes the losses into the future.” (The Economist, “The End of Illusions”)

Nice, eh? Wouldn’t it be great if guys didn’t have to explain to their wives why they pissed away their paycheck at the racetrack? Apparently, it’s okay for Fannie and Freddie; just keep paying the interest on bad loans and no one’s the wiser. What a racket. This is the type of sleazy Enron-type accounting that goes unchallenged in Washington, where everyone fudges the numbers to hide their losses from their shareholders or taxpayers, as the case may be. That’s why the namby-pamby regulators at the SEC need to be replaced with a few knuckle-dragging Abu Ghraib interrogators. There’s nothing going on at Fannie and Freddie that a set of leg irons and a few lively dunks on a waterboard wouldn’t fix.

The road to perdition: Paulson’s scatterbrain capitalism

Something has gone terribly wrong with the economy, but no one wants to say what it is. This is more than just a typical downturn in the demand-cycle or a temporary “rough patch.” In fact, it’s not a recession at all; it is a meltdown of the financial system. And it’s obvious. The “deep pocketed” Federal Reserve is currently providing hundreds of billions of dollars through its auction facilities to the most craven speculators on the planet, the investment banks. These very same banks have no ability to pay that money back. Show me their revenues; show me their assets; show me their capital cushion which is calculated mainly in terms of “Level 3 assets” and which allow the banks to assign their own value to the bad paper that’s overflowing from their vaults. Have you ever heard of anything more ridiculous? One blogger called Level 3 assets “mark to fantasy.” He’s right, too. It’s all smoke and mirrors. So why are we letting crooks decide what their assets are worth?

True, a few of the investment banks just reported “better than expected” earnings, but no one on Wall Street is fooled by that baloney. The SEC changed the rules on shorting bank stocks just days before their earnings reports were due -- another gift from Uncle Sam to hide the dirty laundry. Also, some of the banks have started extending their “write downs” from 120 days to 160 days, buying themselves a little more time to deceive their shareholders about the size of their losses. It’s all one big swindle following another. The whole business stinks to high heaven and the Bush administration is right there in bed with them, snuggling up close and holding their hands.

If the public grasped the significance of the Bear Stearns fiasco, they’d understand how grave the situation really is. The technical details are irrelevant; don’t bother with them. What IS important is that the Fed acknowledged that the investment speculators had so polluted the financial system with their toxic, unregulated garbage (Credit default swaps) that if the transaction with JP Morgan flopped, the entire system would have imploded. Think about that. In other words, the legitimate “Real Economy” is now inextricably lashed to a massive $500 trillion dollar unregulated shadow banking system that operates without rules, supervision or sufficient capital. Over the counter derivatives trading is a cancer that has spread to every part of the system and is devouring it from the inside. It’s only a matter of time before the patient succumbs. That’s what the Bear bailout really means; the rest is bunkum.

The banking system is broke, busted, penniless; and yet the Fed and the G-7 allow this comedy to persist like nothing is wrong. When will the American people wake up?

And, will someone please explain how free markets can exist when speculators are subsidized by the state, or when the risk is removed from risky investing? That’s what it means when the Fed opens its auction facilities to the investment banks and brokerage houses. It makes no sense at all. Government “safety nets” are anathema to free market capitalism. “You pays yer money and you takes yer chances.” That’s finance capitalism; deal with it.

What we are seeing is a hybridized version of capitalism, “Paulson’s Scatterbrain Capitalism,” a hodge-podge of taxpayer bailouts, government intervention and free market mumbo-jumbo. It’s a toxic mix of off-balance sheets operations, over-the-counter “unregulated” derivatives, dark pool trading, opaque hedge funds, dodgy Enron-style accounting, and complex, hard-to-pronounce debt-instruments wrapped up into one, cheesy, unsustainable shell game, managed by Harvard-educated flim-flam men and backed by a 100 percent government guarantee. That’s the system we’re supporting with our tax dollars and that’s the system that is dragging us headlong to ruin.

It ain’t capitalism, my friend. It’s a crooked system run by corporate carpetbaggers and banking scalawags who’ve shot the Golden Goose in hopes of keeping the larder at the cottage on the New Jersey coast chock-full of Dom Perignon and halibut fillets. They created this nightmare and they’ve doomed us all.

As long as we prop up the existing system, the economy will continue to flounder, unemployment will continue to rise, foreclosures will continue to soar, banks will continue to be shuttered, and the wobbly old greenback will continue its inexorable march towards Pesoville. It’s time to clean house and we can start by firing Paulson.

Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com.

2008-07-23T06:27:00.002-05:00

Ecuador’s president now in neocon crosshairs
By Wayne Madsen
Online Journal Contributing Writer

Jul 23, 2008, 00:16

(WMR) -- Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa has now found himself, like his ally Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, in the neocon crosshairs for ordering Ecuador’s Deposit Guarantee Agency (AGD) to seize control of some 200 companies belonging to fugitive Ecuadorian banker brothers William and Roberto Isaias.

The neocons, especially those that inhabit the greater Miami area and hail from Cuba and New York, are accusing Correa of cracking down on press freedoms. It is the same cant heard from the neocons after Chavez closed two TV networks, RCTV and Globovision, for doing the bidding of the neocons in Washington and Miami.

In Ecuador, Correa’s actions had nothing to do with press freedom. The Isaias brothers’ Isaias Group owned Ecuador’s Filanbanco bank. Filanbanco collapsed in 1998 and the Ecuadorian government was left holding the bag. Ecuador’s government claims the Isaias brothers embezzled $661 million from the bank. However, the Ecuadorian government cannot do very much to recover the losses because the Isaias brothers fled Ecuador and now live comfortably, under the protection of the Bush regime, in Florida. They fled to the Miami area in 2000 before an arrest order was issued by Ecuador. The Correa government has asked the United States to extradite the Isaias brothers back to Ecuador and outgoing U.S. ambassador to Ecuador Linda Jewell said the request is being studied.

The Isaias brothers and their friends in Miami, including Miami Herald Latin America correspondent Andres Oppenheimer, are falsely charging that Correa is stamping out press freedom in his seizure of Isaias Group companies because they include three media companies: TC-Television, Gamavision, and Cablevision. However, among the other Isaias companies seized are a sugar mill, construction firms, and trading and insurance companies. Correa has not moved to take over other media companies that have criticized him much more vociferously than the Isaias Group TV stations.

Much like the Russian oligarchs who raided the Soviet and Russian treasuries and then absconded abroad with the funds, the Isaias brothers lorded over a business empire amid the collapse of the Ecuadorian economy in 1998. Ecuador was even forced to scrap its national currency and adopt the U.S. dollar.

Correa, a U.S.-trained economist, is now trying to revive Ecuador’s economy and political system, the latter through a referendum on a new constitution, and part of his plan is to try to recover the money embezzled by the Isaias brothers.

U.S. ambassador Jewell, who is leaving her post in Quito, may see Correa as a victim of the neocon U.S. foreign policy that is being dictated from their think tanks in Washington and condos in Miami and Coral Gables. She recently defended Correa and said there is no proof to past neocon allegations that Correa is supporting the Colombian FARC rebels. Colombia conducted a U.S.-supported military raid into Ecuador in March of this year, killing a number of FARC guerrillas, including FARC deputy commander Raul Reyes, as well as others. U.S. support for the Colombian raid was seen as retaliation for Ecuador’s ordering the U.S. to leave its military airbase at Manta on the Ecuadorian coast.

The comments by Jewell in support of Correa are sure to earn her the wrath of the neocons in Washington and Miami, which will now place a vendetta against the ambassador high on their “to do” list.

2008-07-20T06:46:00.002-05:00

Israel’s collective psychosis: The denial syndrome
Khaled Amayreh

July 20, 2008

This week, Israel sank in an avalanche of national lethargy, hypocrisy and self-righteousness.
Seeking to cope with Hezbullah’s success in getting Israel to release all Lebanese prisoners, dead and living, in exchange for the remains of two Israeli soldiers, Israeli leaders, media and shapers of public opinion have been indulging in sanctimonious self-glorification while denouncing the other side as "hateful, uncivilized and representing an inferior culture."

This is a characteristic Israeli behavior. It perfectly characterizes a society that has been living in a state of denial ever since Zionist gangs, aided by western powers, succeeded in uprooting the bulk of native Palestinians from Palestine, their ancestral homeland, and implanting therein Israel, a state based on racism, terror, ethnic cleansing and falsification of history.

The orgy of lying, especially the shocking amenability of most Zionist Jews to take the obscene lies at face value caricatures a people that dreads knowing the truth, let alone coping with it. And when the truth eventually manages to penetrate the "iron wall" of Zionist lies, the custodians of the big lie, which is Zionism, resort to a whole set of defense mechanisms to protect the collective mental sanity of a state whose very existence constitutes a crime against humanity.

Thus, according to this depraved and psychotic mindset, Israel doesn’t murder children and innocent civilians, It is only the victims that bring death upon themselves. And Israelis don’t steal the land and property of Palestinians, since the entire world was created for the sake of the "chosen people."

And even when Jews do commit "certain mistakes" and "abominable sins," they are not really to blame for that since it is the victims that always force Jews to make these mistakes.

Hence, the proverbial Palestinian victim of Israeli savagery is always responsible for the demolition of his own home, the murder of his own children and the destruction of his own farm, grove and orchard by Israeli bulldozer!!

Eventually, the entire Palestinian Nakba is a self-inflicted calamity which the Palestinians brought upon themselves because they refused to succumb to the will of the "chosen people." More to the point, if the Palestinians don’t come to terms with the Nakba and the occupation, a greater Nakba, or holocaust, would be inflicted upon them.

Interestingly, the wave of self-righteous overindulgence in Israel has been led by the establishment people, figures that know too well that Israel doesn’t really represent the culture of peace, but rather the culture of war and aggression; they know that Israel is inculcated with a criminal and murderous mentality that differs very little from the Nazi mentality.

Yes, they do know all of this, but like all murderers, thieves and liars, they dread facing the truth. The truth would simply make them lose their raison d’etre. This is why they always try to turn the black into white, the white into black and the big lie into a "truth" glorified by millions of "beneficiaries" at home and ignorant "fans" abroad.

It may be particularly difficult to convince the "beneficiaries" of their sinfulness, namely the fact that they are living in homes that belong to other people and living on land that belongs to another people.

However, for the sake of the ignorant or naïve fans in Europe and north America as well as the rest of the world, it is imperative that they be delivered from the grip of Zionist lies.

Yes, westerners must be allowed to know the naked truth about this sick and sickening state that deceptively claims to be the sole true inheritor of Judaism while its ideology, behavior and actions are antithetical to all religious and moral values that stress universal justice and human equality.

Let us remember some of the "glorious expressions" of the Zionist culture of love and self-abnegation in recent years.

Chris Hedges is a prominent journalist and author specialized in American and Middle Eastern politics. He worked for a number of publications including the Christian Science Monitor, the Dallas Morning News and the New York Times where he spent 15 years.

In his recent book, War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning, Hedges tells a chilling story from his trip to the Gaza Strip in the heydays of the intifada, or the second Palestinian uprising against the Israeli occupation.

Hedges watched, ten- and eleven-year-old Palestinian children being lured to their neighborhood’s perimeter fence by taunts from a loudspeaker on the Israeli side. "Where are all the dogs of Khan Younis? Come! Come! The Israeli voice barked insults at the boys’ mothers. The boys responded by hurling their rocks at the jeep with the loudspeaker. The Israelis shot at them with M-16s fitted with silencers. Hedges found the victims in the hospital, children with their stomachs ripped out, and with gaping holes in their limbs.

Writing for "Harper’s Magazine" (see The Nation, March 11, 2002), Hedges wrote: " Children have been shot in other conflicts I have covered. Death squads gunned them down in El Salvador and Guatemala, mothers with infants were lined up and massacred in Algeria, and Serb snipers put children in their sights in Sarajevo, but I have never before watched soldiers entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport."

Here is another "expression of love:" In November, 2001, an undercover unit of the Israeli army buried a landmine in the sand that flows around Abdullah Siyam Primary School in Khan Younis in southern Gaza.

A few hours later, as Palestinian children headed to school, the mine exploded. Five school kids were instantly reduced to broken flesh. The youngest was six. All the victims came from the same extended family: Akram Naim Astal, 6, and his brother Mohammed, 13; Omar Idris Astal, 12, and his brother Anis, 10; and their cousin Muhamemd Sultan Astal, 12. Their young bodies were mutilated beyond recognition. The limbs of one child were found 50 meters away. Some of the kids could only be identified by their school bags, brightly colored and spattered with blood, still dangling from their butchered bodies.

Hasbara doctors in Israel might seek to extenuate the gravity or even whitewash these crimes by claiming that these were "individual acts" that didn’t reflect the overall policy of the Israeli government and army.

However, this is a big lie. In 2001, the noted Israeli award-wining journalist Amira Hass interviewed an Israeli sniper in which the soldier described the commands he received from his superiors:

"Twelve and up, you are allowed to shoot. That is what they tell us," the soldier said. "So," responded the reporter, "according to the IDF, the appropriate minimum age group at which to shoot is 12." The soldier replied: "this is according to what the IDF says to its soldiers. I don’t know if this is what the IDF says to the media."

A further "expression of love and humanity of Israeli culture" manifested itself, also in Gaza, in 2004, when an Israeli occupation army soldier, dubbed Captain-R, shot a Palestinian girl, Iman al Hums, who was on her way to school. However, the soldier was not sure whether the 13-year-girl died or not. Hence, he walked to the bleeding child, and instead of trying to save her life, he shot here 25 times, emptying his entire magazine of bullets into her tender body. He did what he did in order " to verify the kill," a standard Israeli army practice in such circumstances

Now, the reader might be prompted to think that the bloodthirsty murderer was arrested and made to stand trial for his hair-raising crime. Well, the opposite happened. The soldier not only was innocent of any wrongdoing but was also awarded tens of thousands of dollars for being "hurt and libeled by unfavorable media coverage."

In truth, it is not only Israeli army soldiers and officers who willfully indulge in such Nazi behavior. Zionist rabbis routinely issue religious edicts that would allow Israeli troops to murder non-Jewish children knowingly and deliberately without having to worry about any ramifications, moral or otherwise.

In May 2007, shortly before Israeli occupation soldiers murdered two Gaza children who apparently were searching for scrap metal to sell for a few cents in order help feed their impoverished families, the former Israeli Chief rabbi, Mordechai Elyahu, petitioned the Israeli government to carry out a series of carpet bombing of Gaza population centers.

Elyahu argued that a ground invasion of the world’s most crowded spot would endanger Israeli soldiers. He said "If they don’t stop after we kill 100, then we must kill a thousand. And if they do not stop after 1,000, then we must kill 10,000. If they still don’t stop we must kill 100,000, even a million, whatever it takes to make them stop."

Earlier, Elyahu, a prominent Talmudic sage, called on the Israeli occupation army not to refrain from killing Palestinian children if that means saving the lives of Israeli soldiers.

The above-mentioned are only sporadic examples of the barbarian spirit inculcated in Israelis, especially soldiers dispatched to the occupied Palestinian territories to guard the occupation and enforce apartheid.

It is this barbarian mindset that makes Israeli soldiers abduct Palestinian school children and take them to nearby Jewish settlements where they are used as "training objects" by Jewish youngsters. It is this barbarian mentality that makes Jewish soldiers force helpless Palestinian laborers do certain depraved acts such as drinking soldiers’ urine and singing, individually or in unison, "wahad Hommas, wahad fool, Allah Iyhay-yee Mishmar Gvul" (one 'dish’ hummus, one broad beans, may Allah greet the Border Police)!!!

There are of course thousands, even tens of thousands, of examples which one could easily and readily cite to underscore Israeli barbarianism.

To be sure, this disgraceful reality is known to many Israelis. In 2001, Shulamit Aloni, a former minister of education, wrote in the Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv that "we have become a barbarian people."

So, what makes a leftist, liberal woman see in Israel what the vast bulk of Israelis, including the country’s intelligentsia, wouldn’t see, or more correctly, wouldn’t want to see.

Well, it is Israel’s collective psychosis, the denial syndrome?

:: Article nr. 45832 sent on 20-jul-2008 08:36 ECT

www.uruknet.info?p=45832

2008-07-12T05:46:00.001-05:00

The Toddler King’s Insufferable Reign is Doomed
July 9th, 2008 · No Comments

By Jason Miller

6/30/08

Both George Bush and Dick Cheney have emphatically proclaimed the American Way of Life as “non-negotiable.” As hard as it may be for the feeble-minded, deluded, conscienceless, or hopelessly addicted to grasp, Mother Nature and billions of human beings are going to force us to the bargaining table. We can kick, scream, stomp our feet, and hold our breath all we want, but our abhorrent mode of existence is going down.

Aside from the fact that they are utterly unsustainable, why is it such a certainty that American Capitalism, consumerism, militarism, and the myriad associated ills that exist to maintain our obscene lifestyle are a house of cards on the verge of collapse?

Quite simple really. With our overwhelming wealth, power, and military firepower, the United States exercises virtual hegemony over the globe. Granted our influence is waning, but we still call most of the shots. As lord and master of the planet, we are doing a miserable job. Emotionally infantile, we have a sense of entitlement that dwarfs Mt. Everest, we are absolutely certain that we are center of the universe, and we throw incredibly destructive tantrums when we don’t get our way, the American Way that is. We are massive toddlers inflicting our version of the “terrible twos” on the world. Were we not wielding such a massive cudgel, our childishness would be laughable.

Under our “good stewardship,” as our current unitary executive loves to call it, the world is careening down the highway at breakneck speed with an infant at the wheel. And if he crashes before an adult can wrest control from him, we’re looking at a major accident with multiple fatalities. We’ve already pushed the world to the verge of economic collapse, the brink of starvation, the initiation of perpetual war, and impending environmental disaster.

Collectively, we act without conscience or concern for the consequences of our actions. The American Way of Life is “all about me and to hell with everyone else.” We revere narcissism, hyper-individualism, greed, wealth, and status as virtues. Becoming a rich, acquisitive careerist by clawing one’s way to the top of the hierarchy through deceit, betrayal, sycophancy, and whoring oneself out in any way imaginable is enshrined as the penultimate achievement in our sewer of a society.

Contrary to the common misconception, the psychological umbilical cord between our mothers and us is severed at a very young age. Nearly the instant we are able to intellectualize we drop mom like a hot potato and become psychically parasitic, our hosts being those ubiquitous devices known as televisions.

When we were in the womb, our mothers’ rich and nurturing blood flowed through our veins, quite literally providing the essence of our physical being. Fast forward a few years. Our psychic umbilical cord detaches from mom and is immediately seduced to fuse itself to that seemingly innocent yet deeply nefarious pusher of mind crack. In stark contrast to our mother’s wholesome blood that nourished us in a way that ensured healthy physical growth, the rancid filth we derive from television cripples and malforms our psyches in profound and perverse ways.

Planned or not, television has become the power elite’s primary weapon in the daily propaganda war they wage to maintain the American Way of Life, furiously beating down any and all challengers. Calling the content of television “programming” is quite fitting. Through our addiction to pixilated images, the lords and masters of American Capitalism manipulate us into participating in the banality of evil without giving it a first thought, let alone a second one.

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Much like the Leatherman, TV is an incredibly multi-faceted tool that enables the ruling elites in the US to hone the masses into the infantilized little sociopaths they need to man the bulwarks of American Capitalism, spreading our “corporatocracy and freedom from the pangs of conscience and critical thought” the world over.

If you don’t know the stats, you’ve been somnambulating, but here are a few:

1. We are 5% of the population and siphon off more than 30% of the world’s goodies, while 35,000 people starve to death each day.
2. We, the land of the free, exercise a higher degree of social control than even those “tyrants” in China and Russia. We have the world’s largest prison population, many of whom are non-violent drug offenders. And then there’s our clever way of imposing our agenda in Latin America via the “War on Drugs…..”
3. We lost about 500,000 people in WWII while Russia lost over 22 million yet we arrogantly boast that WE “defeated fascism.” And that’s not to mention the fact that many of our beloved capitalists, including members of the Bush dynasty, supported Hitler until they faced potential criminal prosecution.
4. We have staged coups and incursions the world over (our interventions are far too numerous to document in this dispatch, but visit this site to familiarize yourself with the reach of our malevolent imperialist tentacles: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Foreign_Policy/US_ForeignPolicy.html)
5. Ironically, we justify our trillion dollar a year military budget by waging wars against nations with phantom weapons of mass destruction–while we are the only nation to have utilized such weapons. Ask Japan about the devastating impact.
6. We pour billions of dollars into the support of those miserable Zionist squatters in Palestine because a very small percentage of our population (which has very deep pockets, a strangle-hold on mass media, and a juggernaut lobbying organization-the AIPAC) has many of us brain-washed into believing “poor little Israel” is fighting for its very existence—when the reality is that it has a more formidable military than all of its alleged threats combined and has ruthlessly brutalized the Palestinians like the terrorist state that it is.
7. We slaughtered over two million Vietnamese in an attempt to keep the world safe for capitalism and are poised to consider putting one of the perpetrators in the White House.
8. We have murdered millions of Iraqis since the Gulf War via invasion, brutal economic sanctions, fomenting civil war and chaos, illegal occupation, and destruction of infrastructure, not to mention art and archeological treasures that are in fact the patrimony of all humanity. And neither of the performers in the theater of the absurd we call a “presidential election” has promised to bring an immediate end to this moral and legal abomination. If we enforced the Nuremberg Laws that WE crafted, all responsible would be hanged, including whoever replaces Bush and perpetuates this genocide.

And that is just a brief and very incomplete summary of the evil that we openly or tacitly support simply by being Americans, even if our role is very banal or pedestrian. As cogs in a murderous machine built on stolen land and primarily with the blood, sweat and tears of slaves and poor immigrants, we all bear a degree of responsibility for the atrocities we commit. Even those who choose to remain and fight the system from within are still buttressing the American Way to some extent.

How do we sleep at night? Some of us don’t and some of us have pharmaceutical help. But by and large our television programming has given us the “gifts” of a pathologically muted conscience, heavy doses of blissful ignorance, and the attention span of anencephalic sheep.

Desensitized to violence, mentally malnourished by a steady diet of brain candy, conditioned to putting our brains in neutral and letting the “idiot box” do our thinking for us, psychologically beaten down by constant reminders that the subjects of our idolatry are “better than us,” and manipulated into believing that the spiritually vacuous American Dream is more than just a mirage that keeps the working class trudging through the desert of perpetual corporatism, many of us remain true believers, prefer wage slavery to sleeping under a bridge, or recognize that (despite the shop-worn and inane rhetoric about freedom and democracy) the system has harsh consequences for those who don’t at least ostensibly toe the line.

Regardless of our individual level of consciousness or level of participation in this criminal enterprise known in some circles as the American Empire, we Americans as a collective are an intriguingly repulsive synthesis of excessively spoiled brats and sociopaths. We want what we want when we want it, consequences be damned. We have the means to get what we desire, virtually no capacity to delay gratification, and the ability to punish those who stand in our way. To top it off, we don’t let trivialities like conscience restrain us. We are a nation of sociobrats.

Individually, we can change. Many have transformed and many more will. But there are some pretty long odds against enough of us shedding our grotesquely malformed psyches and evolving beyond our state of infantilization before the American Way of Life collapses under the weight of its own excrement or is eradicated by its hordes of victims.

Jason Miller is the associate editor of Cyrano’s Journal Online. He is the editorial director of Cyrano’s largest blog, Thomas Paine’s Corner.

2008-07-11T06:07:00.002-05:00

The Russian-Israeli Mafia: Off-limits to FBI, US intelligence
By Wayne Madsen
Online Journal Contributing Writer

Jul 11, 2008, 00:19

(WMR) -- The same cancer that bankrupted the Soviet Union and the early Russian Federation, namely the Russian-Israeli Mafia -- the global organized crime syndicate that uses Israeli government protection and passports to cover their illegal worldwide activities -- has so thoroughly permeated the American political and business system that the FBI and U.S. intelligence agencies are virtually powerless to bring the major perpetrators to justice.

Across the United States, FBI agents have been hamstrung by the Justice and Homeland Security Departments, led by two individuals, Michael Mukasey and Michael Chertoff, whose close links to the Russian-Israeli Mafia in New York and New Jersey have seen case after case involving Russian-Israeli mobsters going un-investigated and virtually ignored.

In fact, the National Security Agency (NSA), FBI, and the military intelligence services have seen their ranks of Russian linguists slashed by the Bush administration. In most cases, Russian-Israeli mobsters use their native Russian language in their telephone conversations and email communications. Only recently, perhaps owing to a shift within the Defense Department led by Robert Gates, has the NSA began re-hiring Russian linguists, although at a very slow pace.

Neo-con outlets such as The Daily Telegraph in Great Britain, which has also witnessed an infiltration of its government, law enforcement, and intelligence services by individuals linked to the Russian-Israeli mob, are now complaining that there are so many Russian Federal Security Bureau (FSB) agents in Britain that MI-6, MI-5, and the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) are finding it difficult to battle “Islamist terrorists.” However, the FSB is primarily a law enforcement agency that has been waging battle against the Russian-Israeli Mafia, particularly its major backers like exiled Russian-Israeli oligarch Boris Berezovsky who have been granted protection by the British government while they plan subversive activities against Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

In fact, as seen in the poisoning of Russian ex-FSB and KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko in London, there are solid links between Berezovsky, the Russian-Israeli Mafia, and Islamist guerrillas in Chechnya and abroad. However, British intelligence, which recently suffered a major blow with the strange illness that struck the Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), Alex Allan, who was found in a coma and covered with blood in his Hammersmith apartment in the London suburbs, has been unable to crack down on the Russian-Israeli Mafia infiltration of Britain since the billions of pounds in dirty money has made its way into the coffers of top Labor and Conservative politicians.

Allan reportedly had plans to return to Freemantle, Australia, where he lived with his Australian-born wife before she died of cancer. Allan had been the British High Commissioner in Canberra before moving back to London to serve as JIC Chairman. As JIC Chairman, Allan coordinated the activities of MI5, MI6, and GCHQ. The last high-ranking British spy to take up residence in Australia was the late Peter Wright, whose book “Spycatcher,” detailed past secret activities of MI6 and MI5. Attempts by the Margaret Thatcher government to have the book’s publication banned in Australia were unsuccessful.

The United States is only second to Britain in infiltration by the Russian-Israeli gangsters in the highest echelons of government. The Bush administration has ignored INTERPOL arrest warrants and requests for information issued on behalf of Russia for wanted Russian-Israeli billionaires like Leonid Nevzlin, Boris Berezovsky, aka Platon Elenin (suspected by Russian authorities of links to the assassinations of Litvinenko and Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya), Arkady Gaydamak, Semyon “Sam” Kislin, Michael Chernoy, and others.

The Russian-Israeli interference in the law enforcement activities of the FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) have hobbled major investigations to the detriment of the national security of the United States. The FBI investigation of the assassination of retired CIA Houston station chief Roland “Tony” Carnaby, who was investigating Israeli Mossad and Russian-Israeli mob activities in the Houston area, has been relegated to a low-level and non-descript national security investigation by FBI higher ups. The DEA and FBI investigations of the activities of Israeli “art students” and “movers” in the months leading up to the 9/11 attacks were similarly stymied by the direct orders of then-FBI director Louis Freeh and Attorney General John Ashcroft, according to a major wire service journalist who covered the Justice Department. The Boston-based Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), funded by wealthy Jewish American private contributors and the Israeli government, “threatened” media outlets, including the Associated Press, who continued to report on the activities of the Israeli art students and movers.

The FBI has also ignored the massive thefts of personal data of American citizens. WMR has previously reported that most of the major thefts are part of a covert operation by the NSA and the Department of Homeland Security to pick up where Iran-contra felon Admiral John Poindexter left off with his aborted Total Information Awareness (TIA) system, designed to collect the most personal details of American citizens in a massive database. A February 27, 2008, truck theft of backup data tapes from Bank of New York Mellon Corporation’s Jersey City Shareholder Services unit has the hallmarks of an organized crime heist. Shareholders of the Walt Disney Company, John Hancock Financial Services (a division of Manulife Financial Corporation), People’s United Bank of Connecticut, and the Bank of New York were informed that their stock sale transactions may have been compromised. WMR has learned that Disney stock holders were not officially informed of the theft of their data until June 13, 2008, four months later. Perhaps not coincidentally, a number of Israeli-owned computer services companies are now offering protection against data theft to potential customers. In addition, Kislin was linked to a money laundering scandal involving the Bank of New York, now Bank of New York Mellon. WMR previously reported on the Bank of New York (BONY) scandal and the Russian-Israeli mob:

“Forest Hills has been identified by the FBI as a major center for both the Russian-Israeli Mafia and Mossad and it is a place where the two interests often cooperate. In 2002, OPERATION SPIDERWEB, a joint FBI-EUROPOL operation, resulted in the arrest of 20 Russian-Israeli dual citizens on charges of money laundering. The laundering primarily involved the Bank of New York (BONY), the Russian bank Menatep, and an ‘Internet bank’ called the European Union Bank. More importantly, the money laundering network also included Benex, a firm connected to Bill Clinton-pardoned Mossad figure Marc Rich, who still resides primarily in Switzerland. . . . Benex’s office was located on Queens Boulevard in Forest Hills in the same building where Grigori Loutchansky headquartered two of his companies. Loutchansky is a Latvian-born Israeli who laundered billions through his Vienna-based NORDEX firm. National Security Agency (NSA) signals intercepts have reportedly yielded intelligence on Loutchansky’s role in the smuggling of nuclear materials. Loutchansky also was closely linked to Clinton’s 1996 re-election campaign through New York real estate magnate and Democratic donor Sam Dombs. . . . Forest Hills was also the hometown of international diamond dealer Yehuda Abraham, convicted in a plot to smuggle surface-to-air missile launchers from Russia into the United States, mere four months after 9/11, and launder the proceeds from the deal through Malaysia. The network was discovered to have links with the Viktor Bout weapons smuggling network and money laundering facilities linked to ‘Al Qaeda’ Southeast Asia affiliate Jemaah Islamiyah. Abraham, an Afghan Jew, was linked not only to Mossad but to the Saudi Royal Family.”

It is now being reported that John McCain has a severe gambling addiction, evidenced by his long bouts with the craps tables in Las Vegas. There are reports that convicted GOP lobbyist and Russian-Israeli mob money launderer Jack Abramoff traded favors with McCain and Alabama Governor Bob Riley, who, through election malfeasance, cost Democratic Governor Don Siegelman his governorship in 2002 and then proceeded to engage in a criminal conspiracy to indict and convict Siegelman on trumped up charges.

A set of emails sent between Abramoff and Tom DeLay’s Communications Director in December 2002, emails that were never produced by McCain’s Indian Affairs Committee, show that Abramoff was conspiring with Riley, a casino gambling opponent, to keep gambling from the Poarch Creek Indian Reservation to benefit gambling on the Coushatta Indian Reservations in Mississippi. The email also describes efforts between Mississippi Republican Governor Haley Barbour and Maryland Republican Governor Bob Ehrlich to bring casino gambling to Indian reservations in their states. Ehrlich and his staff were targets of a federal investigation linking them to a prostitution ring involving Pamela Martin & Associates escorts and Shirlington Limousine, which ferried escorts on behalf of individuals and lobbyists linked to Abramoff in the Washington, DC and Baltimore areas. That investigation was shut down after George W. Bush’s re-election in 2004.

McCain has also been linked to Russian aluminum tycoon Oleg Deripaska, another member of the Russian Mafia who has been denied an entry visa to the United States. Deripaska, unlike his Russian Jewish comrades, has maintained good links to Putin. Deripaska has also figured prominently as a supplier of aluminum to the European Airbus aircraft frames to be used in the production of the US Air Force tanker plane, a contract pushed hard by McCain and his top campaign advisers, some of whom were lobbyists for Airbus.

The Russian-Israeli mob infiltration of the McCain campaign is only the continuation of a cancerous infiltration of the American body politic that began with the takeover of the Senate office of Washington’s Henry “Scoop” Jackson by anti-Soviet Jewish “neo-conservatives” in the early 1970s and blossomed into the full scale coup witnessed in the presidential election of 2000.