Bailout by Stealth

While distracted by “bailout bill”, trillions are pumped in

to keep financial balloon inflated

Bailout by Stealth

While the public is distracted by the “bailout bill” and its rejection, trillions are pumped in to keep financial balloon inflated

James Corbett

The media is falling all over itself to report on every minutiae of the so-called Wall Street “bailout bill” and its rejection by Congress yesterday (just a few of the thousands of examples can be seen here and here and here and here). And why not? The media’s breathless coverage of the bill has produced a furious backlash by the public and hysteria on Wall Street in a self-justifying feedback loop that makes the media attention seem merited.

The startling truth which the controlled corporate media is not reporting, however, is that a bailout is actually taking place right now, completely out of the public spotlight. This program has already pumped trillions of dollars into Wall Street (compared to the mere $700 billion proposed in the legislation that the media is focusing on) to help prop up the faltering investment banks and promises to pump in even more, every dime of it to the detriment of the taxpayer though the public will have no stake in its success. Why, then, is this program not being talked about in the media?

Slipping under the radar last week amidst the hullabaloo in Washington over the bailout bill was this story noting that in the past week alone, the Federal Reserve had pumped an astonishing $188 billion per day into the system in the form of emergency credit. This means that in just four days, the Fed injected as much money into the system as the entire $700 billion bailout proposal. After the proposal was rejected, the Fed responded by immediately announcing it would pour another $630 billion into the global financial system.

The Federal Reserve, of course, is America’s central bank and although the above story conjures the reassuring image of a national bank lending out some of its vast reserves to help Wall Street weather the storm, the fact is that the Federal Reserve is not Federal and has doubtful reserves. In fact, the trillions of dollars that have been lent to the banks in the last few weeks were created out of nothing by the privately-owned Federal Reserve. When the Federal Reserve “lends” money to a bank through repurchase agreements (repos), credit auction or other method, it is not actually lending out money from its vaults. It is simply creating the money it “lends” out as electronic credits created in the recipient banks account. It is literally money out of thin air.

That the general public is on the hook for this money created out of nothing is not an exaggeration. It is paid for in a dimly-understood mechanism often known as the “inflation tax.”

Inflation is nothing more than an indication that the ratio of money to products that can be purchased with that money has been increased. Since the overall number of dollars has gone up without any corresponding increase in economic production (as happens when the Federal Reserve creates money out of thin air), the value of each individual dollar goes down. That means that the value of the money in each individuals’ bank account (not to mention their pension and social security dividends) can be reduced simply by the flick of a pen of a Federal Reserve paper-pusher. (Unless of course that individual just happens to be a billionaire investment mogul or a Vice President who can divest themselves of U.S. dollars in time for this inflation not to affect them.) This is sometimes known as an inflation tax because its overall effect is the same as if the government came in and took that value out of the individuals’ bank account. Watch Ron Paul explain the inflation tax in the video below:

The most insidious part of this inflation tax is that the inflation does not begin until the new money begins to circulate in the system. In other words, the first person (or, more likely, giant corporate conglomerate) to use the money receives its full value, while those at the bottom of the pyramid retrieve the diminished returns of a devaluing dollar.

Why, then, is the public not furious about this stealth bailout, now taking place at the blistering pace of nearly $1 trillion a week, and all to the taxpayer’s detriment? The obvious answer is that the media is not whipping the public into a frenzy about it, instead focusing its attention on a $700 billion program and allowing the public to feel like they scored a blow against Wall Street when the program gets rejected. If so, it’s time the public got wise to how the system is really being run by and for the benefit of private bankers and at the expense of the average taxpayer. Otherwise, the fleecing of the public will continue unabated even as the public thinks they’ve won the battle.

Fed keeps banks afloat as money market crisis deepens

Fed keeps banks afloat as money market

crisis deepens

By John Parry and Jamie McGeeever

NEW YORK/LONDON (Reuters) – U.S. banks and money managers borrowed a record amount from the Federal Reserve in the latest week, nearly $188 billion a day on average, showing the central bank went to extremes to keep the banking system afloat amid the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression.

The data on borrowing from the Fed closed out another day of high anxiety in global money markets. Key measures of funding stress hit record levels on both sides of the Atlantic as nervous market participants awaited developments from Washington on a $700 billion U.S. financial bailout plan.

Federal Reserve data showed on Thursday the total amount banks borrowed nearly quadrupled the previous record of $47.97 billion per day notched just the week before.

“This looks like the balance sheet of a central bank that is keeping the financial system on life support,” said Michael Feroli, U.S. economist with JPMorgan in New York.

Borrowings by primary dealers via the Primary Dealer Credit Facility, and through another facility created on Sunday for Goldman Sachs (GS.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), Morgan Stanley (MS.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and Merrill Lynch (MER.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and their London-based subsidiaries, totaled $105.66 billion as of Wednesday, the Fed said.

The Federal Reserve’s lending to U.S. depository institutions and bank holding companies to finance their purchases of high-quality asset-backed commercial paper from money market mutual funds via a new lending facility the Fed announced on September 19, came in at $72.67 billion as of Wednesday.

The Fed designed the loan facility to help money market funds meet huge demands for redemptions from fearful investors over the past week after one U.S. money market mutual fund’s value fell below $1 a share, and to foster liquidity in the asset-backed commercial paper markets.

The move followed the U.S. Treasury’s action last Friday to set up a temporary guaranty program for the money market mutual fund industry.

Tom Sowanick, chief investment officer at Clearbrook Financial cited “a big increase in borrowings from securities firms which came at a time when the turmoil on Wall Street hit an apex and money market funds came under pressure, so they went to the window to make sure their funds remained stable.”

Lending in the “other credit extensions” category to insurer American International Group (AIG.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and possibly others was $44.57 billion as of September 24, compared with $28.0 billion as of September 17.

“It is stunning how much you see the Fed extending credit all over the place,” Feroli said.

“Every facility got used to a large degree, the ABCP facility, the AIG loan, the Primary Dealer Credit Facility and the good old discount window,” he said.

“Everywhere you see huge amounts of reserves being put into the system,” Feroli said.

LAST RESORT

The data showing the huge reliance of financial institutions on the U.S. central bank came on a day of other extremes within the funding markets for banks and companies.

Key measures of U.S. dollar funding strains hit record levels as nervous market participants awaited developments from Washington on a $700 billion U.S. financial bailout plan.

The inter-bank premium for borrowing three-month dollars over anticipated official policy rates, or Overnight Index Swaps, known as the Libor/OIS spread, blew out to 200 basis points, while the cost of borrowing euros and sterling also jumped.

That dollar Libor/OIS spread was around 164 basis points on Wednesday, and around 80 basis points at the start of September.

Yet late in the New York day, market participants’ hopes of an imminent passage of the $700 billion government bank bailout dragged some gauges of risk aversion including interest rate swap spreads, back from the brink.

The U.S. commercial paper market also shrank dramatically, marking the biggest weekly contraction in a year, Fed data showed on Thursday, as the escalating global credit crisis shook investors’ confidence in all but the safest instruments issued by the U.S. government.

For the week ended September 24, the size of the U.S. commercial paper market, a vital source of short-term funding for daily operations at many companies, shrank by $61.0 billion to $1.702 trillion, the lowest level since early 2006 Federal Reserve data showed.

“The declines add to the urgency for fixes to the credit crisis,” wrote Tony Crescenzi, chief bond market strategist with Miller, Tabak & Co. in New York in an email note.

The closely-watched TED spread, meanwhile, was last indicated around 430 basis points on Reuters screens, edging back up toward the near 500 basis points struck last week, the widest in over a quarter of a century.

The three-month sterling Libor/OIS spread, meanwhile, widened to almost 160 basis points, more than doubling since the start of the month.

These spreads are seen as a key indicator of financial market stress and risk aversion, reflecting the true cost of funding for banks and financial instututions. Some 60 percent of corporate lending is tied to London interbank offered rates (Libor), according to Credit Suisse.

Interview with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar notorious taliban leader

IN “BIZARRO WORLD,” WHY DO SO-CALLED “TERRORIST” LEADERS MAKE MORE SENSE THAN OUR OWN?

https://youtu.be/niD-7yVvdAY

Throw Them All Out.Com

Are You Tired of Being Ripped Off By Congress and the White House?

Is this Wall Street Bailout the Last Straw for You?

Well we have a chance to do something about it this November, on Election Day.  The people of Pennsylvania showed us the way.

Last year, Pennsylvania residents learned that their legislature–Republicans and Democrats–had connived in the middle of the night to give themselves a raise in violation of the state constitution, which said raises could only be given to the next cycle of elected officials, not to those who were voting. They got around this by declaring the increases “undocumented expense reimbursements.”

The citizenry rose up and in a leaderless grassroots campaign, they swept out off office many long-time members of the legislature who had voted for the measure, as well as a judge who backed the action (the state’s judges get whatever the legislators get)!

If Pennsylvania voters can do this, so can the rest of America.

If you are fed up with having your money (and your kids’ money, and their kids’ money!) stolen and handed to the greedy, crooked bankers, insurance executives and auto tycoons who have been destroying jobs and undermining the US economy for years while enriching themselves at our expense, then make a pledge to yourself to vote against any member of your congressional delegation, whatever the party, who votes for this latest colossal $700-billion Wall Street bailout!

Vote for a third party candidate, or vote for the incumbent’s challenger (a better option if you really want to oust him or her).

No exceptions! It doesn’t matter of your senator or representative has done some good things. Voting for this bailout is a travesty that outweighs any other act.

Next (and this is critical!) send this website address:
http://www.throwthemallout.synthasite.com
to everyone you know.

And talk to everyone you know and get them to join this viral campaign to clean out the Capitol of the thieves and corporate whores who are wrecking the country.

We have been passive too long!

Islamophobia: the pathology of paranoia

By Abukar Arman

While each has its distinctive history, like Anti-Semitism and racism, Islamophobia is a real phenomenon that cultivates hate among communities, stereotypes a whole group for the acts of a few, and justifies transgression against the innocent. And like the rest, Islamophobia was developed and is fostered by special interest groups who often have access to power in order to reach a political, social, or an economic end.

With few exceptions, gone are the days when the perpetrators of hate would march with banners explicitly expressing their bigoted perceptions and attitudes. However, that is hardly an indication that the phenomenon has seized to exist.

Today, hate speech and propaganda are often craftily camouflaged as talk radio punditry, political lampooning, speeches, or political infomercial.

Last year, in a bizarre outburst of bigotry that makes Islamophobes such as David Horowitz, Daniel Pipes and Robert Spencer objective intellectuals, radio talk show host Michael Savage of the Savage Nation had this ranting and raving to share with his audience: �I�m not gonna put my wife in a hijab. And I�m not gonna put my daughter in a burqa. And I�m not gettin� on my all-fours and braying to Mecca . And you could drop dead if you don�t like it.�

Spewing his hate via hundreds of the over 1,200 radio stations owned by the notoriously Islamophobic corporation Clear Channel, he continued his provocative diatribe: �You can shove it up your pipe. I don�t wanna hear anymore about Islam. I don�t wanna hear one more word about Islam. Take your religion and shove it up your behind. I�m sick of you.�

Along the same path, albeit more artistically, the July 2008 issue of the New Yorker magazine had on its front page a political caricature of Barak and Michelle Obama. The couple is standing in the middle of the Oval Office. Obama is wearing a traditional Islamic dress with turban and sandals. He is approvingly fist-bumping with a militant looking Michelle as his sinister left eye gazes away. Michelle is wearing an Angela Davis style afro and a guerilla fatigue with an M-16 hanging from her back. Looking over them is an Africa-American looking picture of Osama Bin Laden . . . hanging over the fire place where the American flag is set on flames.

Then came September 4, 2008 — the Republican Convention — where the merchants of fear and paranoia found their ideal platform. Inadvertently or otherwise, the underlying theme seemed to be to broaden the definition of the enemy from a cult-like Al-Qaeda to a much broader, indeed more fluid, definition that indicts all those who practice Islam as suspect or worse.

Rudolph Giuliani, the former New York City mayor, condemned the Democrats for being �politically correct� and avoiding the use of the term �Islamic terrorism�� to describe the enemy.

Taking the politically synthesized anti-Islamic mantra to the next level by directly speaking to the race-conscious voters, former congressional leader Dick Armey, who now leads one of the most power lobby groups in Washington, had this to say: Barack Obama�s �funny name� could �give people concerns that he could be or has been too much influenced by Muslims, which is a great threat now.� Obama is Christian.

It is a shame that the media are less interested in what Mr. Armey and others who routinely use more provocative and broadly condemning terms such as �Islamo-fascism,� �Islamic terrorism,� and �Jihadism� to describe the enemy send to the 7 million Muslims in the United States and 1.2 billion around the world.

Recently, many localities around the U.S. were hit by a new �swift-boating� campaign. This one, targeting swing states, is aimed to induce paranoia by distributing �28 million DVDs� of the propaganda film Obsession: Radical Islam�s War Against the West.

The film, like any Goebbelian piece of propaganda, connivingly exploits the human tendency to surrender their capacity to think critically when their emotions are stirred or fear is instilled in their hearts. The film does this successfully as it is made from selective footage from various parts of the world of individuals expressing hate, training, and committing acts of terror, and the bloody scenes of their crimes. It is a dangerously effective way of collectively demonizing Muslims, as the so-called experts featured in the film use all the aforementioned hot button terminologies to describe the terrorists and interlink all these cases with their subjective narrative.

This latest campaign is being carried out by an obscure New York based group called The Clarion Fund whose funders are not known.

In pursuit of their goal to effectively distribute the DVDs and secure subliminal legitimacy, this group has selectively targeted the newspaper distribution apparatuses of various cities in critical states. Here in central Ohio, the Columbus Dispatch has distributed 10,000 copies of the DVDs through its most widely read issue, the Sunday Dispatch. The same was done by the New York Times, the Miami Herald and a host of other newspapers.

Venomous hyperbole aimed to stir fear and paranoia and indict all Muslims continues despite the Department of Homeland Security Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties� conclusion that �Words matter� and its recommendation that U.S. officials and representatives should � . . . avoid inflating the religious bases and glamorous appeal of the extremists� ideology.� According to a memo from the said department, the terminologies used should depict the terrorists as the dangerous cult leaders they are.

Abukar Arman is a freelance writer who lives in Ohio. He writes about Islam, Somalia and U.S. foreign policy.

Copyright © 1998-2007 Online Journal

Eat your cats and dogs

By Joel S. Hirschhorn Online Journal Contributing Writer Sep 30, 2008, 00:11

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Nations come and go, rise and fall as elites and the wealthy make victims of most citizens and plutocracies prevail.

Current dogma is that we live in the greatest nation on Earth. Perhaps in terms of ideals there is some truth to that. But with another trillion dollars that we now must borrow at higher costs because of the meltdown of the financial sector, solidifying our position as the greatest debtor nation, Americans have little to be proud of. Our government and politicians as well as the corporate state have failed us. What do our young people and future generations have to look forward to? Be prepared to eat your cats and dogs.

Still more lies and deceptions will surely hit us as the fear-selling two-party plutocracy works hard to convince us prior to the coming election that things have turned better. In reality, there is no reason whatsoever for thinking that the nation is back on the right track. Of all the many narcotic delusions filling people�s heads, the most dangerous and self-defeating is that we can vote our way out of this mess. Everyone needs to understand that Democrats in Congress have played a major role in delivering the nation into the abyss we now find ourselves in.

If Barack Obama had an ounce of honesty and courage, he would have boldly told his first debate audience that he was going to modify his spending plans and focus on reducing the nation�s debt. And why did he not express deep sadness that the current bailout was repeating a long history of making a mockery of capitalism, with government refusing to let most large companies fail? When corporate fat cats know that they can continue to rape the country and walk away with tons of money, all we really have is corporate socialism. So why did we not hear Obama talk about his commitment to put corporate criminals in prison? Not dozens, but hundreds of Wall Street thieves and lying bank officials should be dragged publicly in handcuffs into the justice system. Why can�t Obama talk this way?

Don�t get me wrong. John McCain is even worse. Newsweek has reported that McCain, in his last mission before becoming a prisoner of war, ignored the warning that an enemy missile had locked onto his plane and instead of taking evasive action decided to keep flying straight ahead to complete his mission. Is it not clear that McCain will fly the nation straight into oblivion if he thinks his conception of our national mission should be adhered to, no matter what the costs are?

Back to my point: Americans cannot vote their way out of this mess. Their only real opportunity this year is to vote AGAINST the two-party plutocracy by voting for any of the four third-party presidential candidates. We need the world to see tens of millions of votes protesting the failures of both major parties. This electoral rebellion would keep faith with Thomas Jefferson�s correct view that America would need a revolution every generation or so. To keep voting for Democrats and Republicans just makes gullible and delusional citizens co-conspirators in the vast criminal conspiracy that is our political system.

Keep that sickening image of Americans, many sleeping in the cars, unable to afford pet food and their own food in mind when you go to vote. We are not merely on the wrong track. We are on track for people being forced to eat their cats and dogs.

HOUSE VOTE: The Uprising Comes to Wall Street and Washington

by David Sirota

I’m scheduled to appear on CNN at 3:30pm EST to discuss the House’s extraordinary vote to reject the $700 billion Wall Street bailout. What I’m going to say is pretty simple: it’s clear that Congress is facing a full on revolt from both the Right and Left – the very revolt that I predicted in my book, The Uprising. No longer is this a populist revolt merely scaring Wall Street and Washington – this is a populist revolt that has, to quote Markos, crashed the gate, and it represents a real victory for the progressive movement and voices who said Hell No.

Those who are surprised by this turn of events just haven’t been paying attention to what’s going on out in the country – they haven’t been paying attention to, for instance, the social survey research showing rising rage against both our corrupt government and Corporate America. During my three-month book tour, I faced a wave of skepticism from the Establishment media about my thesis. This earthquake on the floor of the U.S. House should end that skepticism once and for all.

Just as I said in the book that it’s not clear what is going to come out of the Left-Right grassroots uprising throughout the country, it’s not clear what is going to come out of this uprising in Congress. Will Democratic leaders tack to the hard right, load the bill up with corporate tax cuts and pass this bill with only Republican votes? Or will they actually be leaders of the Democratic Party, make this bill a vehicle for the kind of New Deal-style investments and regulations that are necessary to start rebuilding this country, and pass this bill with full Democratic Party support?

This is the question moving forward. I’ve laid out the top 5 reasons to vote against this bill and go back to the drawing board. That article outlines what should be the basic conditions for any bailout, including a speculators tax, re-regulation, economic stimulus, bankruptcy law reform and aid to homeowners. No amount of tinkering with Paulson’s atrocity is going do the trick. They have to go back and start from scratch.

Make no mistake about it. This is not a moment of celebration; it is a moment for increasing pressure. The Uprising is waiting for a serious response; will Congress step up to the plate? Contact your member of Congress right now and demand he/she goes back to the drawing board.

THE PEOPLE DO HAVE A VOICE! Congress Listens Twice In One Week!

IF WE CAN STOP THE WAR AGAINST OUR MONEY

THEN WE CAN STOP OUR WAR AGAINST

THE WORLD!

The Power of “No” and the Need to Keep

the Pressure on Congress

by Dave Lindorff

Incredible! This time, when the People spoke, Congress listened.

At least 228 members of the House listened. They voted early this afternoon to reject the Bush Administration’s scaremongering, and the cowardly Democratic Congressional leadership’s attempt at ducking and covering by attaching some meaningless verbiage to what remains a case of legalized highway robbery. At least for the moment, the bailout scam is killed.

Earlier in the day, the Congressional switchboard was jammed. You could get through, but it took a dedicated finger on the redial button of your phone. Operators at the Capitol say it’s been that way for a week now, as Americans across the country have been flooding their Congressional delegations with phone calls (and emails) urging them to vote “No” on the Bush/Paulson Wall Street bailout.

That today was no exception, even after Democratic Party leaders (and both major party presidential candidates, John McCain and Barack Obama) had bought into the plan following their adding of some window-dressing measures designed to make it look more palatable, showed that the public is not being fooled (calls were reportedly running better than 9:1 or more like 999:1 against a bailout, perhaps more like 99:1).

People see clearly that this proposal is a trillion-dollar giveaway to the very people who have been hollowing out and destroying the US economy for over a decade or more by convincing both parties to let them do whatever they want to get rich, free of any kind of significant oversight or regulation.

As Nobelist economist Joseph Stiglitz has written of this outrageous rip-off, there are four problems facing the financial system, and the bailout proposal only addresses one–getting the toxic mortgages off the banks’ books and onto taxpayers’ hands. Left unsolved is the gaping hole in banks’ balance sheets in the form of loans made to people and companies which cannot be repaid, which will mean they still won’t start lending money again. Left unaddressed too is the continuing collapse of housing prices, which will inevitably lead to more bank collapses even after the bailout. Finally, Stiglitz says there is the general loss of faith in the financial system–a major crisis which the bailout will also not solve.

Stiglitz doesn’t even address a fifth problem which is that this trillion-plus-dollar boondoggle (and when you add in the bailouts of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG, Bear Stearns, the multiple mega-bank failures and the pending auto-industry bailout, you’re already talking $1.5 trillion and counting), all of it with borrowed money, the stage is being set for a collapse in the US dollar, with consequences that will reverberate through the economy. Consider: if the dollar collapses, as many experts say is almost inevitable with this kind of huge addition to the national debt, oil prices (which are set in dollars) will soar to compensate, the price of all the other goods that Americans import–more than half of everything we use in daily life thanks to the decimation of American manufacturing–will rise dramatically, and ultimately, in an effort to stem the bleeding, interest rates will have to be raised, thus bringing what’s left of the economy to a grinding halt.

All of this is readily predictable–and indeed a group of over 200 prominent economists has written Congress joining Stiglitz in opposing the bailout plan–but that doesn’t matter to the proponents of the bailout in Washington. What they want is to get past Election Day, and the bailout may do that, unless the public gets really aroused.

The tsunami of calls and emails to Congress, and last week’s nationwide demonstrations against the bailout suggest that the public is waking up to this looming disaster and to the fact that they are being sold a bill of goods.

But it ain’t over yet. We can be sure there will be arm-twisting now to try and get 12 members of Congress to change their votes and win passage in the House (the Senate, where two-thirds of the members aren’t facing election for two or four years, will probably pass the bill easily). A continued expression of public outrage and of a promise of retaliation at the ballot box against those who vote for the bailout needs to be expressed.

If you haven’t made an effort to call your two senators and your representative to demand that they vote “No” on this bailout, do it now (the number is 202-225-3121 or 202-224-3121), and don’t give up when you get a busy signal. That’s a sign that you are not alone. Just keep hitting “redial” until you get through. At that point, get the operator, before switching you, to give you direct numbers for your three members of Congress, so you can bypass the main switchboard number after that. If you did call, call again and say you don’t want anyone changing their vote to become a bailout backer.

Unlike the 2002 rush to war against Iraq, we’ve shown that this latest bum’s rush can still be stopped. We did stop it.

To make your next call more impactful, make sure you tell each member of your congressional delegation that any yes vote on the bailout means you will vote against them next election. To read about this strategy, go to: ThrowThemAllOut.com…and then spread the word.

Keep the pressure on!

And don’t forget to contact the Obama campaign too. How embarrassing for candidates Obama and McCain, who both got suckered into backing the bailout, which it is now abundantly clear the American people recognize as a ripoff.

PS: Imagine if the same kind of pressure had been brought on Congress back in October 2002 when Bush was scare-mongering Congress into approving a war against Iraq. We’d have 4500 young Americans still alive, 40,000 other young Americans would still have their limbs and other body parts. A million-plus Iraqis would still be alive. And the country would have an extra $500 billion with which to deal with the current economic crisis.

ISRAEL TRIES TO HIDE ITS NUKES BEHIND A PILE OF SEMANTICS

Israel Slams Fresh Arab Move to Isolate It at IAEA Readers Number : 32 30/09/2008 Israel slams fresh Arab move to isolate it at IAEA to fester over inaction regarding what is assumed to be the Middle East’s only nuclear arsenal in Israel, which critics say causes an imbalance of power and spurs adversaries in an unstable region to seek nuclear weaponry. Israel, which has called the Arab move “substantially unwarranted and flawed”, filed a motion on Monday for it to be struck off the IAEA General Conference agenda. The measure is expected to be considered later this week. “Among sponsors of this draft resolution are states which openly do not recognize the state of Israel and even call for its annihilation,” Israel Atomic Energy Commission Director Shaul Chorev said, alluding to Iran. “What is the moral standing of sponsors of this agenda item who do not recognize Israel’s right to exist while criticizing Israeli policies aiming at securing its very existence?” Chorev said Israel, along with India and Pakistan outside the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, “possesses advanced nuclear expertise”. But he said some countries had been developing atomic bomb capability despite being members of the NPT. He was alluding to Iran and Syria, the subjects of special IAEA investigations. Iran and Syria both deny pursuing nuclear weapons or hiding any activity from IAEA non-proliferation inspectors. Chorev said Israel had long backed a Middle East free of nuclear arms and other weapons of mass destruction in principle. “But this cannot be advanced out of context. It can only emerge gradually from a process of mutual acceptance, reconciliation and lasting peace, followed by more confidence building measures and modest arms control measures.” Iranian envoy Ali Asghar Soltanieh condemned the “shameful silence” of Israel’s Western allies about its nuclear exclusivity and said this “left no doubt about the urgent need for reform in the United Nations”.

Israel Has Most to Gain from Syria Terror Attack- “Sacred Terror”?

“Israel Has Most to Gain from Syria Terror Attack”

Batoul Wehbe Readers Number : 398

28/09/2008 Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said Saturday in response to the fatal attack in Damascus that “Israel is one of those who have the most to gain from this criminal act,” Kuwaiti news agency Kuna reported. Seventeen people were killed and dozens were injured in the Syrian capital Saturday morning when a booby-trapped car exploded on the road leading to the country’s international airport. “Unfortunately, in the years following the American war on terror, terror has spread even further. Such incidents can take place anywhere and do not indicate that there was a security breach. “I can promise you that Syria’s security forces will continue to stand guard for the citizens and the state,” said Muallem, who is currently in New York for the United Nations General Assembly. At the meantime, counter-terrorist officers in Syria on Sunday hunted for those behind the car bomb. Earlier Saturday, the Syrian foreign minister held a short meeting with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and one of the issues discussed by the two were the Turkey-mediated negotiations between Israel and Syria. WIDE CONDEMNATIONS The terror attack in Syria was condemned by the US, Europe and the Arab world. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spoke out against the attack, while a State Department spokesman said the US had closed the consular section of its embassy except for emergency services and would reopen on October 5 after the Eid holiday. The UN Security Council condemned the attack “in the strongest terms” and called for the “perpetrators, organizers, financiers and sponsors” of the attack to be brought to justice. Lebanese President Michel Suleiman and Prime Minister Fouad Siniora issued a statement of condemnation, saying that “the blast which hit one of Damascus’ neighborhoods and caused the death and injury of innocent civilians is a disgraced terror crime which we reject. “It must not be accepted under any circumstances, particularly when it takes place in an Arab capital.” Hezbollah added its voice to those condemning the attack. “Hezbollah strongly condemns the bombing… and expresses its full sympathies with its brothers in the Syrian leadership, government and people in face of the atrocious attack that only serves the enemy of the nation in creating chaos and instability in the region,” it said in a statement. Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hassan Qashqavi strongly condemned the “terrorist and inhuman bomb blast in Damascus which took lives of many innocent civilians.” Qashqavi in a message voiced the sympathy of the Iranian nation and government with the families of the victims and prayed for immediate recovery of those injured in the blast. Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit, still in New York for the UN General Assembly session, expressed sympathy for the victims of the attack, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hossam Zaki said. Earlier, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak sent a message of condolences to his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad over the victims of the car bomb blas. In Amman, Jordan’s King Abdullah II on Saturday called the bombing an act of “terrorism,” a royal court statement said. In a message of condolences to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, King Abdullah also expressed Jordan’s solidarity with Syria in its handling of the bombing.

Israel Hails “Decapitator, Throat Slitter” Meir Dagan

Hanan Awarekeh Readers Number : 128 30/09/2008 Israeli sources, close to intelligence services, have revealed close cooperation and coordination between the Mossad and some Arab intelligence apparatuses which led to the success of the Mossad and its chief Meir Dagan in carrying out a series of operations abroad. The sources said that the mentioned Arab states don’t actually have peace ties with Israel. They added that Dagan’s most serious operations were the February assassination of Hezbollah military commander Imad Moghniyeh (Haj Redwan) in the Syrian capital and Syrian army brigadier general Mohammad Suleiman in August. Hence, what is the connection between Israel’s focus on the personality of the Mossad Chief and talking about “his major accomplishments” in Lebanon and Syria? Israeli television security analyst, Ronen Bergman, said, “Dagan made three fundamental steps including establishing cooperation with every intelligence apparatus willing to cooperate with us, not just the Americans, but those whom we did not have previous ties with. When the files are opened one day, we’ll see that this cooperation may have led, more than anything else, to the latest Mossad achievements.” Perhaps the proof to the Mossad and Dagan’s “dirty business” is what Israeli Channel 2 revealed, citing former Israeli PM Ariel Sharon,  about horrific acts. Yaron London, one of the most significant Israeli journalists, said, “Our colleague in Channel 2 disclosed that Meir Dagan used to cut the Arabs’ throats with a Japanese knife, and he quoted that from Ariel Sharon who said that Dagan’s specialty was decapitating Arabs. Be careful to the details: it is a Japanese knife that spreads a lot of blood on TV screens. For the first time I hear the Israeli TV and one of its important Channels say proudly that the Man of the Year (Meir Dagan) is the one who had slaughtered Arabs and not Arab fighters. It quoted from Sharon that his distinguished trait is separating the Arabs’ heads from their bodies and I think that this is absolute savagery.” Israeli media considered that choosing Dagan as the Man of the Year was for carrying out a three-part task, with each part considered as a great intelligence accomplishment, and they are: First: working in very difficult environment, which is Syria Second: Studying a person like (martyr) Imad Moghniyeh Third: placing the bomb in his car.

Grand Theft America: Financial Crime of the Century

Grand Theft America: Financial Crime

of the Century

The 3rd Infantry’s 1st Brigade is for combat. It’s not the National Guard or local police. It’s trained for war. “Equipped to kill people” with potent weapons, and a last hurrah scheme may be planned to divert public attention from the financial crisis. A “terrorist” attack with “chemical, biological” or other dangerous weapons. A possible pretext for martial law at a time the administration and Congress are vulnerable. When people are angry about Washington protecting the privileged. Partnering with them in crime. Defrauding the public and stifling dissent. Moving one step closer to tyranny and away from silly notions about democracy. Proving crime indeed does pay and awfully well on Wall Street. “It’s the economy, stupid.” Theirs, not ours. – Stephen Lendman

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by Stephen Lendman
World Prout Assembly
September 29, 2008

09/29/08 – “WPA” – The crime of the century. The greatest one ever. Author Danny Schechter calls it “Plunder.” The title of his important new book on the subprime and overall financial crisis. Economist Michael Hudson and others refer to a kleptocracy. A Ponzi scheme writ large. Maybe an out-of-control Andromeda Strain. An economic one. Deadly. Unrecallable. Science fiction now real life. Potentially catastrophic. World governments trying to contain it. Trying everything but not sure what can work. Maybe only able to paper it over for short-term relief. Buy time but in the end vindicate the maxim that things that can’t go on forever, won’t.

The world as we know it is changing. Industrial capitalism. The entire global economic system. Interconnected. What affects one nation touches others. If the troubled country is America it reaches everywhere, and if the crisis is great enough, the disease may be fatal and human wreckage catastrophic. Precisely the current dilemma that world leaders and financial experts are scrambling to figure out. Desperate to contain, and not sure what, if anything, can work. How did this happen and why?

The result of unfettered capitalism’s fatal flaw – unbridled greed in a rigged system that rewards the few at the expense of most others. First an explanation of how it works. Free-wheeling, “free market” Chicago School fundamentalism the way economist Milton Friedman championed it in his 1962 book “Capitalism and Freedom” and taught it to students for decades. He believed that government’s sole function is “to protect our freedom both from (outside) enemies….and from our fellow-citizens.” Preserve law and order. Enforce private contracts. Protect private property and “foster competitive (unregulated) markets.” Everything else in public hands is “socialism….blasphemy.” Not to be tolerated.

He said “free markets” work best. Unfettered by rules, regulations, onerous taxes or any at all, trade barriers, entrenched interests, and human interference. That anything government does, business does better, so let it. That the best government is one that governs least. That public wealth should be in private hands. The accumulation of profits unrestrained. Corporate taxes abolished. Social services also, and that “economic freedom is an end to itself….and an indispensable means toward (achieving) political freedom.”

He called most all government interference a restriction of freedom. Opposed foreign aid. Subsidies. Import quotas and tariffs, and illicit drug laws for being a subsidy to organized crime, but he found no fault with major banks laundering their profits. He believed business should be unrestrained in maximizing them, even the illegal kind apparently.

He opposed the minimum wage and right of unions to bargain collectively on equal terms with management. He believed high wages and benefits harm everyone. They raise prices, and in the end, hurt workers as well as management. He called Social Security “The Biggest Ponzi Scheme on Earth,” even though it’s been the most effective poverty reduction program ever for millions of seniors who’d be desperate without it. Especially today given a deepening economic crisis. The nation’s social safety net disappearing, and heading everyone toward managing on his or her own. Dependent on their ingenuity, resources, and good fortune. Milton Friedman’s ideal world. For those who can’t make it, it’s their own fault. It’s everyone for him or herself in his judgment, and let the devil take the hindmost.

As for today’s largest ever unraveling Ponzi scheme, it’s just the workings of the “free market.” Creative destruction. “Freedom to choose.” The best of all possible worlds, and unfettered capitalism will figure out the right solutions. Provided government gets out of the way and gives it free reign. Free money also to wreck world economies and human lives even more than what’s already done.

The Chickens Are Home to Roost

Are they ever, and here’s what we’ve got. A global asset bubble. A predictable crisis allowed to build and mushroom. Begun after Chicago School economics took hold under Ronald Reagan. Continued under GHW Bush. Became religion under Bill Clinton, and ultimately fundamentalism under GW Bush.

The result – a “slow motion train wreck” gaining speed. Banks and other financial institutions failing globally. On September 25, the largest bank failure in US history with Washington Mutual’s collapse. Earlier it was giant insurer AIG. Before that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, and Merrill Lynch a forced liquidation to Bank of America.

Others are now teetering on the edge. Strapped by toxic debt. The result of out-of-control greed for easy profits. Massive fraud to get them. Thinking they’re the best and brightest, and only mere mortals mess up. Knowing Fed moral hazard will cushion them if they do. True for some. Not for others, and learning that the Federal Reserve (the world’s key central bank) failed in its primary job. To protect the country’s financial system from insolvency. By contributing to a financial crisis and one of confidence. By creating near-limitless amounts of capital. Fueling a housing bubble. Outsized consumer debt, and irresponsible investments free from government oversight. Fraudulent ones involving multi-trillions of dollars.

Partnering with government to make it easy. Risking a global economic meltdown as a result. Scrambling to find solutions. Unsure if there are any. The present crisis is unparalled. Maybe it can be fixed, and maybe not. The problem is multi-fold. A perfect storm involving:

— residential housing;

— commercial real estate;

— consumer over-indebtedness;

— unknown amounts of toxic debt (in the multi-trillions);

— affecting world finance and economies;

— causing bankruptcies;

— many more will follow;

— selected ones bailed out;

— the entire system endangered;

— consumer money market, bank accounts and private pension funds as well; government backing is needed to protect them; there’s not enough money to do it; and

— the contagion is spreading; threatening world economies and people everywhere.

This time is really different. A $700 billion bailout (called the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 – EESA) is just a down payment. Trillions will be needed in the end. Other nations contributing to help. The problems are deeper and more intractable than anyone expected. Before this ends, unimaginable amounts of capital will be written off. Too much to even contemplate. Bad investments contaminating good ones. Threatening world financial structures with paralysis. Severe economic damage to their economies as a result.

Eroding industrial capitalism as we know it. At best managing a short-term fix and delaying a final denouement for a later time. Under new management with the current and past ones claiming no responsibility. And unmindful of millions of homeowners facing foreclosure and bankruptcy. One in ten currently behind in their payments. Others losing their jobs and way of life. They’re the most vulnerable. Least able to cope, and for some their ability to survive.

According to The New York Times, here’s how the Paulson scheme helps them: “it requires the government to use its new role as owner of distressed mortgage-backed securities to make ‘more aggressive’ efforts to prevent home foreclosures.” Weasel words. No specifics. No assurances, and nothing apparently for homeowners already in foreclosure.

On September 22, ahead of the announced agreement, American Research Group (ASG) published its latest public sentiment poll results, and they were stunning. At 19%, George Bush scored lowest ever for a US president, surpassing Harry Truman at the depth of the Korean War and Richard Nixon during Watergate. It came at a time ASG’s results showed 82% of Americans believe the economy is getting worse, and only 17% approve of how Bush is handling it. Among registered voters, the number is 18% at a time no one surveyed (zero percent) said the economy is improving and 68% say it’s in recession. True or false, it’s how they feel. How the crisis affects them, and that’s what counts most.

Yet on September 24, the president addressed the nation audaciously. Callously dismissing public pain and anger. Deceitfully stating outright lies. A typical performance. Demanded that Congress give the treasury secretary carte blanche authority over $700 billion to address “a serious financial crisis.” Asked taxpayers to pay for corporate fraud. Reward criminals and ignore their crimes. Said nothing about the root cause. The effect on ordinary people, or how Paulson’s scheme will help them. Ignored growing public opposition. Large numbers of credible observers believing the proposed solution is worse than the problem. The most honest of them saying it will enrich fraudsters and offer no help for homeowners.

Yet Bush concluded that “democratic capitalism (is the) best system the world has ever devised” in spite of clear evidence that it’s broken and corrupted. Exploits people for profit. Enriches the few at the expense of the many. Rewards criminals for their crimes. Protects the rich from beneficial social change.

Ahead of the president’s address on September 24, The New York Times showed a rare display of candor in a critical Timothy Egan opinion piece. About “nearly nationalizing the banking system and giving the treasury secretary more power than a king….whose decisions may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.” He asked readers to remember “where the biggest heist took place, and how Wall Street dragged down the rest of the country once before,” referring to the Great Depression but leaving out everything in between.

He stressed, however, “how Wall Street brought down main street,” and things have now come full circle. Deregulation unleashed casino capitalism, and bankers made a killing. Now they’re in trouble and Bush demands “the biggest bailout in American history….or the world will crumble. He said the a similar thing in the run-up to war” so who can believe him now. Egan quotes a dirt farmer asking why not the same “concerns (for) average Americans.” Because “we the people” Bush speaks for are them, not us.

As for Paulson’s plan, here’s what the Financial Times writer Martin Wolf said on September 23. He called it “not a true solution to the crisis.” It doesn’t address the “fundamental problem.” It’s “neither a necessary nor an efficient solution. It is not necessary because the (Fed can) manage illiquidity through its many lender-of-last resort operations. It is not efficient because it can only deal with insolvency by buying bad assets (overpriced junk) at far above their true value, thereby guaranteeing big losses for taxpayers and providing an open-ended bail-out to the most irresponsible investors.”

Wolf also objects to Paulson getting unchecked powers. Providing little or no help to the poor and “ill-informed” (read duped) borrowers, and lists other operational suggestions “essential for the long-run health of any financial system” without needing “a penny of public money.” Among them, forcing creditors to take losses and not taxpayers.

Unmentioned in his article is the underlying fraud behind the crisis and a lack of regulatory oversight that made it easy. Also, omitted was what’s covered in the section below.

The 1937 Housing Act’s Empowering Section 8 Authority

One Section 8 sentence provided the basis for the treasury secretary’s empowerment. It reads:

“Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administration agency.”

In other words, unchallengeable czarist powers. In contrast to the 1930s Reconstruction Finance Corporation’s (RFC) closely supervised operations. That era’s Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) that refinanced homes to prevent foreclosures. And the 1980s Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) mandate to liquidate assets from failed S & Ls. Not dispense free money for bad investments unchecked. The above authorities subject to judicial review. Not governed by a financial boss to run as he pleased.

The Announced “Bailout” Deal – The Emergency Stabilization Act of 2008 (ESA)

According to The New York Times, EESA calls for “strict oversight of the program by a Congressional panel and conflict-of-interest rules for firms hired by the Treasury to help run the program.” Also “a change in the bankruptcy laws sought by some Democrats to give judges the authority to modify the terms of first mortgages.”

Given the bipartisan blame for today’s crisis. The post-9/11 willingness to give the administration near-carte blanche authority across the board. Eight years of indifference to social needs and public welfare. Who now believes that policy going forward will change and that the agreed-on scheme will protect people or curb the secretary’s authority. On his own initiative, George Bush usurped supreme power post-9/11 while few in Congress blanched. None in leadership positions. Little today has changed.

Disclaimers notwithstanding from both sides of the aisle, Wall Street is pleased. Paulson got what he wanted. The plan’s fine print will assure it. Public money. Far more, if needed, than $700 billion. The power to dispense it freely. With weak at best oversight and judicial review, and the ability to conceal fraud and malfeasance. In short, the between-the-lines meaning of Paulson saying: “We have made great progress toward a deal, which will work and be effective in the marketplace.”

The same one that fleeced the nation and betrayed the public trust. Now empowered to take more with the full faith and blessing of the government from both sides of the aisle. Belying George Bush’s insult that “The rescue effort….is not aimed at Wall Street; it is aimed at your street.” And Nancy Pelosi’s hypocrisy that: “All of this was done in a way to insulate Main Street and everyday Americans from the crisis on Wall Street….I want to congratulate all of the negotiators for the great work they have done.” Who in banker boardrooms would disagree.

Some Relevant Facts

Clearly the present crisis is unprecedented. As stated above, maybe it can be fixed and maybe not. No one is sure because no one understands it fully. Where all the problems lie. To what degree can they be contained. How great their fallout may be. Their full effect on world economies. How bad things may get before they stabilize and improve, and the way the world will look like when they do.

Whatever’s coming, industrial capitalism is eroding. A kleptocracy replaced it. If the system is saved, it will be temporary, and an even greater one will emerge. Why this article is called Grand Theft America. A criminal class runs it, and they’re rewarded for their crimes. Backed by the full faith and credit of the government with taxpayer money. A near-limitless amount created and borrowed. Who said crime doesn’t pay!

For over 30 years, an unimaginable wealth transfer to the rich has been ongoing. To the top 1% and corporate America from most others. It proves the failure of a system that rewards the few at the expense of the many. Licenses greed and creates this kind of global financial crisis so far uncontained. It begs the questions: what caused it and what’s the fallout:

— the ruinous effects of militarization; insane amounts of spending on it; “military Keynesianism;” believing capitalism thrives on foreign wars; “Global Wars on Terrorism” currently; their costs are unsustainable and are heading the nation toward bankruptcy;

— the drain on an already weakened economy;

— maxed out consumers now debt slaves;

— so is government from unrepayable obligations in the tens of trillions; not the fictitious “official” reported numbers;

— the possibility of future default; hyperinflation; national bankruptcy, and the demise of the republic;

— human default as well: mass bankruptcies; home foreclosures; rising unemployment; increased poverty; and growing numbers of families unable to survive;

— the subprime crisis is just part of it; seven million mortgages sold to the unwary; the idea was to criminally defraud them; offer two-year teaser rates; then reset them higher semi-annually based on an interest rate benchmark; payments soared as much as 30% and became unaffordable; the scheme was to cash in at the expense of mortgage holders, and five million risk losing their homes and life savings;

— an “economic Pearl Harbor” for Warren Buffett; for Senator Chris Dodd a “50-state Katrina;” a “house of cards (built on) reckless finance” for author Kevin Phillips; Frankenstein finance; casino capitalism; for most Americans, a human catastrophe;

— the demise of our manufacturing base; letting malls replace factories as the economy’s engine;

— permitting the financialization of the economy; speculative finance writ large; replacing productive investment; totally deregulated; run by fraudsters; free from government oversight; letting investment banks game the system at up to 40 to 1 leverage; until 2004, 12 to 1 was the maximum;

— a government – business conspiracy for global dominance and the single-minded pursuit of profit; unfettered amounts of it through cleverly manipulated schemes; transferring multi-trillions of dollars from workers to the most wealthy; doing it without people even noticing;

— creative destruction to let giant businesses grow larger by removing and devouring smaller ones; even large ones;

— permitting and/or ignoring massive fraud; involving multi-trillions of dollars; the largest ever Ponzi scheme; a calculated crime with media complicity through silence; not reporting a growing problem as it emerged; waiting until it mushroomed and still not explaining it accurately and honestly; and

— wondering won if the best and brightest can fix things or if no amount of money or ingenuity can do it.

The Plan’s Architect – Henry Paulson

From a Nixon administration staff assistant to the assistant secretary of defense. To assistant to key Watergate official John Erlichman. To Goldman Sachs in 1974. To a partnership in the firm in 1982. Then Chief Operation Officer (COO) in 1994 and CEO in 1998 by a palace coup against co-chairman and now New Jersey governor Jon Corzine, according to New York Times columnist Floyd Norris.

Even before the current crisis, Goldman was the preeminent Wall Street firm. A survivor. The largest, and along with Morgan Stanley, the remaining two Street giants left standing. But no longer as investment banks after the Federal Reserve’s September 21 announcement that both companies will become bank holding companies after a mandatory five-day waiting period, now over.

In theory, they’ll be under stricter Fed oversight but will get Fed help to complete their transition and thereafter. As a well-connected financial powerhouse, whatever Goldman wants, Goldman gets. Always in the past by recycling top executives into Democrat and Republican administrations, and now more than ever given Henry Paulson’s extraordinary financial czar powers.

Before his $700 billion giveaway plan, the 2008 Housing and Economic Recovery Act gave him authority to fleece taxpayers by rescuing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as well as raise the national debt by over $5 trillion dollars. He also orchestrated the demise of Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and Washington Mutual. The forced sale of Merrill Lynch, and arranged the government takeover of AIG.

He has near-open checkbook authority to reward close allies with loans and free money and let them acquire troubled assets on the cheap. This from a man with much responsibility for today’s crisis. A June 12, 2006 Business Week cover story titled “Mr. Risk Goes to Washington” called him “one of the key architects of a more daring Wall Street, where securities firms are taking greater and greater chances in their pursuit of profits.” Such as assuming huge amounts of debt and “placing big bets (with their own money) on all sorts of exotic derivatives and other securities.” Advising clients to do the same. Casino capitalism at up to 40 to one leverage. Hugely profitable in up markets. Disastrous in down ones.

Paulson earned millions and now has an estimated $700 million + net worth. For 2007 overall, according to Bloomberg.com, “Wall Street’s five biggest firms (paid out) a record $39 billion in bonuses (and did it in) a year when three of the companies suffered the worst quarterly losses in their history and shareholders lost more than $80 billion.”

Speculative finance pays well, even in down years, and it even raised Bloomberg’s ire in a Michael Lewis September 24 commentary titled “America Must Rescue the Bonuses at Goldman Sachs.” It reflected on a possible global financial collapse but sacrificing Goldman bonuses is another matter. If firm “employees (take) pay cut(s), it will be (tantamount to failure and) our country may never recover.” How will the company induce new talent to come aboard. Goldman is well-positioned to get maximum gain from its former CEO’s $700 billion handout.

Why else would Warren Buffett bet $5 billion on the firm! For preferred shares paying an annual 10% dividend. Warrants as well to buy $5 billion in common stock at a $115 a share strike price. Well off its $251 peak and below the latest September 26 $138 a share.

Joseph Stiglitz on the Economy

Stiglitz was formerly part of the system he now criticizes. Free market fundamentalism in its most extreme form. For many months, he warned about a worsening global economy and growing financial crisis that’s as bad or worse than the Great Depression.

He sees similar problems now as then:

— outsized speculation through excessive leverage;

— pyramid schemes;

— multiple bubbles through so-called Wall Street innovations; and

— a lack of transparency and government oversight.

Combined they created a crisis “so great that no one knows exactly the magnitude of the risk they face. It is particularly bad because our financial institutions are based on trust. You put money in the bank and you trust that you can get (it) out, so trust is absolutely essential for the functioning of our financial markets and economy.”

The problem is exacerbated by those providing the news. The dominant media and frequent spokespeople. Industry representatives like Lehman Brothers CEO saying last April that “we turned the corner, and the economy is on the uptick.” Also from the president, treasury secretary and others in government as things keep worsening.

Stiglitz calls this a “top down crisis.” The “$3 trillion cost” of foreign wars a key. Creating huge deficits and consuming vital resources needed for growth. “This is the first war in American history that has been totally financed on the credit card. For the last five years….we have been a debt economy.” Not since the Revolutionary War have “we have had to turn to foreigners,” so now “40% of our national debt is financed by (them). Even as we went (to war) we had a big deficit, and yet the president called for tax cuts for upper middle class Americans.” Insane but we did it.

Another factor is other countries trusting that our economy is working well, and when the president says it is he’s believable. “This administration burned that trust….no wonder everybody around the world is losing confidence.” Even worse is that the administration isn’t dealing responsibly with these problems, mostly because they’re of our own making.

Stiglitz worries about the “real economy:” home prices dropping; owners forced into foreclosure; more financial firms in crisis; and a good many won’t survive. He sees a weakening financial system unable or unwilling “to provide credit (the lifeblood of the economy for) loans, mortgages,” and that means lower home prices, contracting businesses, rising unemployment, and a “downward vicious cycle. You have to be in fantasy land to say that everything is fine (or even) that we have turned the corner.” He sees at least another 18 months of pain. Maybe longer. Who can know or how much.

For sure, real economic stimulus is needed. Productive investment. Not the phony “bailout” kind proposed. Aiding state and local governments. Better unemployment insurance and more for infrastructure. Providing a basis for long-term growth. Not feeding markets and starving the hungry, as one writer put it. Not believing markets on their own will fix things.

Understanding that government must intervene. Responsibly. Facilitate job creation. End casino capitalism. Provide incentives for real economic growth. Let foreclosed and threatened homeowners stay in their homes. Work out an equitable way to do it. “We learned a painful lesson in the 1930s and today: The invisible hand often seems invisible because it’s not there.” It led to the kind of predicament now confronting the country. The solutions proposed will just compound it.

Ones that Can Fix It

Good ones not considered. From figures like Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Others as well with solid advice to:

— make fraudsters eat the bulk of their losses;

— use public funds only “to sustain the orderly operation of the financial system;”

— minimize speculative finance; the root of the current problem;

— “minimize moral hazard” – the Paulson (and Bernanke) “put” picking up where Greenspan left off;

— let delinquent homeowners stay in their homes and pay rent;

— curtail executive compensation for companies getting government aid;

— make a key Fed responsibility the prevention of asset bubbles; reinstitute regulations to do it; Glass-Steagall for starters that prohibited commercial and investment banks and insurance companies from combining;

— impose a modest financial transactions tax to curb excesses and raise revenue;

— trade assets, like credit default swaps, openly on exchanges to establish fair value for them;

— impose strict limits on leverage;

— keep Fannie and Freddie public institutions; their status before being privatized in 1968; and

— restructure the Fed democratically; a far better solution is abolish it and let government control its own money; use it responsibly for all Americans, not just the privileged few.

Other recommendations recognize no quick or easy solutions to problems this great. Economist James Galbraith says borrowers need collateral. A new Home Owners Loan Corporation to rewrite mortgages. Manage rental conversions, and decide what degraded properties should be demolished. Which ones to save and refurbish. Set it up in communities under federal guidelines and do it quickly. Help state and local governments strapped for cash. Reestablish federal revenue sharing. A National Infrastructure Bank making capital available for infrastructure. Put people to work building it. Protect seniors and near-retirees from wealth loss. Extra Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid revenue will help. Get money in the hands of people who’ll spend it.

Address other crucial issues like energy conservation, reconstruction and renewable power. Infrastructure overall. Tuition help for students. Another GI bill. Credit card and mortgage interest rate caps. Rescind anti-consumist laws like the misnamed 2005 Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act. A boon for credit card companies and other businesses. Unfairly burdensome to the public.

A whole range of other projects and ideas to redirect the economy away from speculative finance and militarism and toward high-return public investment. Do it before it’s too late. Recognize that the present course is unsustainable. Imagine a government working for everyone and not just the privileged few. Imagine it not tolerating fraud and malfeasance.

Instead, Congress agreed to a “bailout” and passed a record $634 billion omnibus spending bill (to run the government through March 6, 2009) to include a record Pentagon budget; $25 billion in low-interest auto industry loans; maybe with no provision for repayment; lifting a quarter-century ban on Atlantic and Pacific off-shore drilling; billions more in earmarked pork; and likely more coming later for the airlines and other endangered companies. Taxpayers for Common Sense criticized the bill at the same time it noted that government “bailout” appropriations will reach about $1.2 trillion with the $700 billion Paulson scheme. Others put the total above $1.5 trillion, and many say it’s only for starters.

Paying “hold-to-maturity” prices compounds the fraud. For securitized assets worth a fraction of full value. Much of it pennies on the dollar, if anything. Trillions of dollars of toxic ones. All sorts of them. Newly invented ones. Structured finance and insurance. Asset-backed securities. Repackaged into marketable pools. Sold to investors. It’s been done for decades but only recently so out of hand. Greed and deregulation created an alphabet soup of levered-up, high-risk securitized assets. Financial alchemy. Largely outright fraud, including:

— collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), including auto loans, credit and corporate debt;

— collateralized (asset-backed home) mortgage obligations (CMOs);

— commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS);

— mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and levered loans;

— structured investment vehicles (SIVs);

— special purpose vehicles (SPVs);

— pass-through securities;

— credit and interest rate default swaps;

— commercial paper and more;

— repackaged arcane stuff most people don’t understand; even investors who bought them; like eating a stew with no idea what’s in it; a recipe with no list of ingredients; learning too late it’s toxic and you’re in trouble;

Credit card companies as well from growing amounts of unrepayable credit card debt. The auto industry already assured of a low-interest $25 billion loan (or maybe handout) for starters. Airlines coming next. Select homebuilders and troubled companies called too big to fail. If they’re too big to fail, says one observer, they’re too big to exist.

EESA will give the treasury secretary near-carte blanche powers to conceal fraud and help the fraudsters, including his former company, Goldman Sachs, now in trouble. Pick and choose among others. Which will survive, and what less favored ones will go on the block at fire sale prices or disappear. Today there are 9000 banks in the country. In a decade, half or more of them may be gone.

Economist Michael Hudson calls EESA “cash for trash” and a “giveaway,” not a bailout. A “transfer of wealth to insiders.” A financial coup d’etat. The “largest and most inequitable (kind) since the (19th century) land giveaways to the railroad barons.”

In this case, socializing losses to let fraudsters “sell out all their bad bets.” Junk of all sorts: a stew of securitized assets, bad mortgages, car loans, credit card loans, student loans, anything for insiders stuck with too much of them.

A doomed scheme that will raise the debt level instead of lowering it. Enrich fraudsters with taxpayer funds. Stick the public with toxic junk. Maybe buy time before more people and markets catch on, but, in the end, cripple the economy and erode industrial capitalism with it.

Hudson is justifiably angry given the amount of fraud and deceit. The government-concocted scheme to whitewash it. Reward criminals. Harm most others, and wreck the country at the same time. He says a “kleptocratic class has taken over the economy to replace industrial capitalism….’banksers’ ” for FDR and earlier condemned by Jefferson with this stinging comment:

“I sincerely believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a money aristocracy that has set the government at defiance. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs.”

A half century later Lincoln said:

“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country….corporations (including bankers) have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”

Lincoln refused to pay bankers usurious rates to finance the Civil War and got Congress to pass the 1862 Legal Tender Act. It empowered the US Treasury to issue “greenbacks” that were interest-free because government printed its own money. When Lincoln was assassinated in 1865, the “Greenback Law” was rescinded. A new national banking act was passed, and the government once again had to pay interest to bankers.

On June 4, 1963, President Kennedy issued executive order (EO) 11110 giving the president authority to issue currency. He ordered the treasury to begin printing “United States (Treasury) Notes” to replace “Federal Reserve Notes.” He began a process to let government control its own money and no longer private bankers under the guise of the Federal Reserve. Months later, Kennedy was assassinated. Once Lyndon Johnson took office, he rescinded EO 11110 and reestablished the current system. More on that below.

The Two Greatest Ever Financial Crimes – Today’s Fraud and the 1913 Federal Reserve Act’s Privatization of Money Creation

Most people think the Federal Reserve is a government agency, subject to its control. It’s sometimes mistakenly called a quasi-governmental decentralized central bank to disguise its real identity and purpose. Its Eccles building headquarters compounds the subterfuge. Below it’s stripped away.

The Federal Reserve is a private for-profit banking cartel. Owned and run by major banks and Wall Street in each of its 12 Districts. It was created and operates in violation of Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution that states that Congress alone shall have the power to create money and regulate its value. In 1935, the Supreme Court ruled that Congress cannot constitutionally delegate this power to another authority, but, in fact it did.

On December 22, 1913, between 1:30 – 4:30 AM, the Federal Reserve Act was shepherded through a special Congressional Conference Committee. Then voted on and passed the next day. Two days before Christmas with many members gone and most others with no time to read or consider this momentous document.

By enacting this law, Congress and President Woodrow Wilson defrauded the public. Wilson later said (when it was too late to matter) he made a mistake and “unwittingly ruined my country.” This from a man who was an intellect. Trained in the law. A PhD in political science and president of Princeton University in his earlier years.

The Federal Reserve Act gives private bankers the most important of all powers. The one most of all that governments should never relinquish. The authority to print money. Control its supply. Its price through the Fed Funds rate and how it influences the whole yield curve. Loan it out for profit, and charge government interest on its own money. It’s later returned minus operating expenses and a guaranteed 6% profit. Taxpayers foot the bill. An early and continuing example of wealth transfer from the public to powerful bankers. Illegally sanctioned by Congress and the president.

The Fed literally creates money out of nothing. Expands or contracts its supply as it wishes – with no government oversight or control. Gold once backed it until Nixon closed the gold window in August 1971. Suspended dollar convertibility into the metal, and ended compliance with the Bretton Woods core provision. The US dollar became fiat currency. Mere paper. Backed by nothing except the faith of the issuing authority.

Given today’s crisis, that faith is fast eroding and is to blame for dollar weakness. Mostly because of profligate policies by private bankers running the country’s monetary policy for their own gain. The grandest of grand thefts along with today’s all-consuming fraud. Backed by the full faith and credit of the government, and up to now at least, with most people none the wiser.

A Growing Public Response to the Crisis

For how long is the question given growing public anger and people expressing it publicly. It has administration officials worried enough to order what Michel Chossudovsky wrote in his September 26 article titled “Pre-election Militarization of the North American Homeland.”

He cites an Army Times article saying that the 3rd Infantry’s 1st Brigade Combat Team is coming home (in October) from Iraq as (according to the Times) “an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks.” Perhaps with a manufactured incident as pretext. To defend the homeland against ourselves. Be deployed against dissent. Erupting public anger. On city streets like in Denver and St. Paul. Displaying civil disobedience. Defiance against fraud, deceit, illegal foreign wars, and nearly eight intolerable years under George Bush and a complicit Congress. Capped by the current financial crisis touching everyone while government rewards crime and hangs its victims out to dry.

The 3rd Infantry’s 1st Brigade is for combat. It’s not the National Guard or local police. It’s trained for war. “Equipped to kill people” with potent weapons, and a last hurrah scheme may be planned to divert public attention from the financial crisis. A “terrorist” attack with “chemical, biological” or other dangerous weapons. A possible pretext for martial law at a time the administration and Congress are vulnerable. When people are angry about Washington protecting the privileged. Partnering with them in crime. Defrauding the public and stifling dissent. Moving one step closer to tyranny and away from silly notions about democracy. Proving crime indeed does pay and awfully well on Wall Street. “It’s the economy, stupid.” Theirs, not ours.

The Shadow of the Pitchfork: Elite Panic Attack as Bailout Goes Bust

The Shadow of the Pitchfork: Elite Panic Attack

as Bailout Goes Bust

Then again, who knows? There are obviously a lot of very powerful and privileged people sweating more bullets tonight than they have sweated in many and many a year. They have roused the drowsy beast of popular anger at last, and no one can say what might happen next. Probably nothing — or rather, more of the same, in some form or another. But still, it is good to see the icy beads of panic dotting the brows of elites who have inflicted and/or countenanced so much death, destruction, terror and degradation in the past few years. Today they have suffered a very rare defeat in the relentless, remorseless class war they have been waging against us for decades. And that it is something to celebrate — at least for one night. – Chris Floyd

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Mon 29 Sep 2008

Written by Chris Floyd

The vote by the House of Representatives to defeat the Wall Street bailout plan is the first act of political courage that the Congress of the United States has mounted in the last seven years. The fact that it was due largely to right-wing Republicans afraid of going down with the sinking ship of the witless leader they have followed blindly throughout his reign is a delicious irony — but the whys and wherefores of the vote are not important. What matters is that one of America’s moribund institutions has flickered to life long enough to derail a disastrous action that would have shoved the nation even deeper into the pit of corruption and ruin where it has been mired for so long.

The New York Times called the House vote “a catastrophic political defeat for President Bush, who had put the full weight of the White House behind the measure.” But this is manifestly untrue. As everyone but the nation’s media — and the Democratic Party — knows, George W. Bush has no “political weight” to use, or lose. Yes, he still retains the authoritarian powers that the spineless Democrats have given him with scarcely a whimper of protest (and often with boundless enthusiasm); but as a political force — i.e., someone whose opinions and statements can sway popular opinion — he has been a dead and rotting carcass for a long time. He is the most unpopular president in American history; and I can report from first-hand, eyewitness knowledge that he is thoroughly despised by some of the most rock-ribbed, Bible-believing, flag-waving, down-home, John Wayne-loving Heartland types that you can imagine. Even his own party — a party fashioned in his own image, the Frankensteinian melding of willfully ignorant religious primitivism and rapaciously greedy crony capitalism that he has embodied in his twerpish person — kept him away from their convention this year.

Nothing — absolutely nothing — could be politically safer than opposing George W. Bush. And yet the entire Democratic leadership, Barack Obama included, lined up to support a cockamamie plan proposed by this scorned and shriveled figure, a plan that was transparently nothing more than an audacious raid on the Treasury by Big Money hoods and yet another authoritarian power grab by a gang of murderous, torturing, warmongering toadies. This was the plan and these were the people that the Democrats decided to fight for.

What’s more, the Democrats stood shoulder to shoulder with the president on what is apparently the only issue that can now stir Americans to genuine anger and widespread protest: a direct threat to their bank accounts. Wars of aggression like the Nazis used to wage; elaborate tortures like the KGB used to practice; concentration camps, lawbreaking leaders, diminishment of liberty, the slaughter of a million innocent people in a land destroyed by an illegal and pointless invasion — all of that stuff is pretty much OK, easily swallowable, worth no more than a shrug or perhaps a frowny “tsk tsk” before going on to the sports pages or flipping over to another channel. But put out an open ploy to steal their money and give it to the filthy rich — and baby, it’s pitchfork time! Yet here, as the public face of just such a ploy, is where the Democrats chose to make their stand.

So Monday’s rejection of the bailout plan is not a catastrophic political defeat for George W. Bush; he has no political standing, no political future. But it is a vast and humiliating defeat for the Democratic leadership, across the board, who, as Democrat Lloyd Dogget of Texas said

“never seriously considered any alternative” to the administration’s plan, and had only barely modified what they were given. He criticized the plan for handing over sweeping new powers to an administration that he said was to blame for allowing the crisis to develop in the first place.

Now the Democratic elites have had their collective head handed to them on a platter. It is a dish most richly deserved. And although it is almost possible to believe that they will learn anything from this episode, there is now a chance — a chance — that we can at least have a discussion of alternatives to the Bush scheme.

I still believe it is unlikely any genuinely effective program — one that could manage and mitigate the now-unavoidable effects of the Wall Street/Washington-induced disaster — will ever get enacted. After all, the Democrats are largely owned by the same corrupt and greedy elites now seeking a handout. And it seems reasonable to assume that the Bipartisan Bailout Bunch will eventually find some kind of sugar to tempt away the two dozen votes they need for their next “compromise” on the Bush-Paulson plan.

Then again, who knows? There are obviously a lot of very powerful and privileged people sweating more bullets tonight than they have sweated in many and many a year. They have roused the drowsy beast of popular anger at last, and no one can say what might happen next. Probably nothing — or rather, more of the same, in some form or another. But still, it is good to see the icy beads of panic dotting the brows of elites who have inflicted and/or countenanced so much death, destruction, terror and degradation in the past few years. Today they have suffered a very rare defeat in the relentless, remorseless class war they have been waging against us for decades. And that it is something to celebrate — at least for one night.

FEMA Concentration Camps: Locations and Executive Orders

FEMA Concentration Camps: Locations

and Executive Orders

It may be easy to find fault with the premise of this article. You may even know of numerous sites that are not used as camps. But the plain fact remains that the USA maintains illegal prisons around the world. It remains a secret only to imbeciles in the US. The rest of the world knows for certain that it’s quite real. The way things are going in the US, it’s not a matter of if, but when these underused facilities come online to serve the master — otherwise known as Moloch. Most likely, not many Japanese in the US doubt the premise of this article. And for Jews in Europe during the Holocaust, the article must hit a hard note. So, what makes you think it can’t happen here? The executive orders below are quite real. The camps exist. Do the math.

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Friends of Liberty (undated) 3 sep 04

Mindfully.org note:

It may be easy to find fault with the premise of this article. You may even know of numerous sites that are not used as camps. But the plain fact remains that the USA maintains illegal prisons around the world. It remains a secret only to imbeciles in the US. The rest of the world knows for certain that it’s quite real.

The way things are going in the US, it’s not a matter of if, but when these underused facilities come online to serve the master — otherwise known as Moloch. Most likely, not many Japanese in the US doubt the premise of this article. And for Jews in Europe during the Holocaust, the article must hit a hard note.

So, what makes you think it can’t happen here?

The executive orders below are quite real. The camps exist. Do the math.

Update. . . 31jan2006 – Halliburton subsidiary KBR Awarded $385 Million Contract to Build Detention Facilities in USA

PARTIAL SOLUTION. . .
Stop taking freedom for granted. Stop watching TV. Learn to ignore commercials and advertisements where ever encountered. Stop believing what you’re told by the popular media and political representatives. Learn to think for yourself. Stop buying the products of this machine that has no scruples. Become more independent by ridding yourself of debt. Become as self-sufficient as possible. Use less power. Buy less stuff in general. Have more time to pay attention to your family and friends. Understand that the frills of the wealthy are generally not worth having in the first place. They take your time and attention away from things that really matter. Demand that your representatives take no corporate contributions. Electing the least-worst candidate is no longer an option. Pay more attention to what representatives actually say by reading between the lines, so to speak. Republicans and Democrats are essentially the same. For instance, did you know that if elected, Barack Obama would shift troops from Iraq to places like Iran and other Mideast countries? Other candidates are about the same or worse. As president, Giuliani would be worse than Bush in pretty much all aspects. And that isn’t easy because Bush is recognized as the worst president in U.S. history. Giuliani likes to cross dress, his father was a felon, and he associates closely with others who have no respect for decency. Under Giuliani we’d live under an even more repressive regime. Hillary Clinton, being the wife of Slick Willie would give us more of the same — NAFTA and more wars.

There over 800 prison camps in the United States, all fully operational and ready to receive prisoners. They are all staffed and even surrounded by full-time guards, but they are all empty. These camps are to be operated by FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) should Martial Law need to be implemented in the United States and all it would take is a presidential signature on a proclamation and the attorney general’s signature on a warrant to which a list of names is attached. Ask yourself if you really want to be on Ashcroft’s list. The Rex 84 Program was established on the reasoning that if a “mass exodus” of illegal aliens crossed the Mexican/US border, they would be quickly rounded up and detained in detention centers by FEMA. Rex 84 allowed many military bases to be closed down and to be turned into prisons.

Operation Cable Splicer and Garden Plot are the two sub programs which will be implemented once the Rex 84 program is initiated for its proper purpose. Garden Plot is the program to control the population. Cable Splicer is the program for an orderly takeover of the state and local governments by the federal government. FEMA is the executive arm of the coming police state and thus will head up all operations. The Presidential Executive Orders already listed on the Federal Register also are part of the legal framework for this operation.

The camps all have railroad facilities as well as roads leading to and from the detention facilities. Many also have an airport nearby. The majority of the camps can house a population of 20,000 prisoners. Currently, the largest of these facilities is just outside of Fairbanks, Alaska. The Alaskan facility is a massive mental health facility and can hold approximately 2 million people.

Now let’s review the justification for any actions taken…

(List of FEMA Camps)

Saudis Sell-Out arab Brothers to Zionist Assassins

Arab country ‘cooperates with Mossad’
Tue, 30 Sep 2008 09:27:02 GMT

Assassinated Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyeh

The Israeli spy agency Mossad may have used intelligence provided by an Arab country to carry out assassinations in the region.

Israeli sources confirmed on Monday that Mossad chief Meir Dagan’s reliance on cooperation with an Arab country was the reason behind the successful completion of Israeli operations in various countries, IRNA reported.

The Arab country does not have diplomatic relations with Israel, the sources added.

Among the operations attributed to the Israeli regime is the assassination of the Lebanese Hezbollah movement’s top commander Imad Mughniyah and Syrian army officer Brigadier-General Mohammed Suleiman.

Israel is also accused of carrying out the recent bombings in Syria and Lebanon.

Lebanon’s Al-Manar TV station reported on Monday that Saudi Arabia was the country that provided the intelligence to Mossad, suggesting that Saudi Secretary General of the National Security Council Prince Bandar bin Sultan played a role in the cooperation between the intelligence agencies.

Fixing The Blame Will Solve The Problem!

Fixing The Blame

Will Solve The Problem!

Jim Kirwan

The verdict has been dissected by the major media, and the public’s opinion is of course still not even being considered, as being necessary to solving this problem. The market began its record breaking fall before the vote was even begun, because this problem has been directly and selectively hitting institutions throughout Europe, and even a bank in Iceland has felt the heat. What has happened is simple: Massive fraud and criminal manipulations have taken over the largest financial institutions in the world because of the actions of the twelve central banks and their owners who are launching a full-court-press in order to capture control over all financial assets. The most directly affected populations are beginning to scream bloody murder because they will be the first ones fired, and the last to be paid if any crumbs are left from the feast that these thieves are about to make of our money! These current day inheritors of the ethics adopted by the original Robber-Barons are convinced that if they hold financial guns to the heads of parliament’s & congress, and virtually every other body anywhere that holds the public’s trust in their blood-stained hands-then they will get what they are demanding (largely because of short-term self-interest). Yet this is far larger than that-because if we surrender now then we are finished as a society, or as free individuals-forever! To the media here this is some kind of game looking for a simple and painless “fix” to problems that can be delayed while enhancing the take for the same people that caused it all. BUT THIS IS NOT THAT! The media is NOT a neutral observer in any of this, because it is they that have massively assisted in this stealth-driven takeover, by those that own their stations and the pages of the publications. This is about the most basic right anyone can possess: the right to have and keep our own money! McCain says: ‘This is no time to be fixing blame; this is the time to find the fix.’ He could not be more wrong! But then he is nothing, as his positions change radically with every passing breeze. This was not a random act of nature, this was planned and carried out to enhance the profits and eliminate all of the responsibilities of the major players behind the latest failings of a lot of so-called institutions. Nor was this ‘a first,’ this was simply Act Two from the play that produced the Crash of 1929. The characters are descendants of the original cast, with the addendum that this time they are going after the entire planet, and all the assets which have been accumulating since Roosevelt put an end to their deluded plundering of the wealth of the world, seventy-nine years ago! They’re in a hurry because they need the cover which these totally-criminal puppets are willing to provide, in the last gasp of the Clinton-Bush legacy. This leaves the American public with a genuine dilemma. The people that are supposed to vote according to our voices, and our will, have decided that “they know best”! But do they? Or are they too part of this slow-motion collapse of the world’s financial markets! If they are not part of this coup, then they should have had a Plan B ready to implement, if there was a taxpayer rebellion against this strong-arm attempt to blackmail the public into compliance: but they did not have such a plan! However history has recorded the entire structure that actually works and would satisfy all the needs which this failure is furiously attempting to bring on. FDR called his plan the “New Deal,” but whatever we end up calling ours, we ought to use a large part of that very successful earlier response to this same problem: in order to both save the country and eliminate the problem people that are bringing this down upon us all. “PRESIDENT FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT: First of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself-nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror, which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. We face our common difficulties. They concern, thank God, only material things. The withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side. Farmers find no markets for their produce. And the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone. More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, and an equally great number toil with little return. Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men. Yes, the money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. This nation is asking for action, and action now. There must be a strict supervision of all banking and credits and investments. There must be an end to speculation with other people’s money. And there must be provision for an adequate but sound currency. These, my friends, are the lines of attack. I shall presently urge upon a new Congress in special session detailed measures for their fulfillment, and I shall seek the immediate assistance of the forty-eight states.” (1) FDR had to wait for the dust to settle, but his legacy leaves us with a blueprint which can be easily read and followed, in order to clean out this ‘Nest of Vipers’ where they have come to live, as certainly as they have schemed to bring us to the edge of this major collapse! The congressional Cyclops has stumbled and shall not regain its footing until Thursday, by then the people of this nation need to have deluged their so-called representatives with the full import of what FDR so eloquently said in 1933: Augmented by their own determinations not “to settle” for anything less! Secretary Paulson created this monstrous beast and then demanded that he and he alone be allowed to dispatch it from our shoulders. No questions, no compromise and nothing at all for the huge population of suffering home-owners, or any of the other ‘little-people’ that will be damaged or ruined by his actions! That fallacy has been proven to be the wrong approach, and now the Secretary must step down, in disgrace, as he is too biased to come up with anything that might actually work toward solving the problem, instead of merely passing it on to the next set of fools in the Tarnished House. If Paulson were to be charged with what he has tried to do, in criminal court, he would be found guilty of attempted grand theft: but since what he has done is nothing short of attempting to steal not only an obscene amount of money, but an entire nation as well as our way of life-So if he is not tried for that treason, and shot, then he ought to at the very least spend the rest of his life (without assets or possessions) in solitary confinement. These people are jackals, predators of the most vicious order; they must be leashed and monitored 24-7! Their every act must be scrutinized and they should never again be allowed anywhere near invests, banking of any kind, or stocks and bonds! That ought to be the first step taken, while we are beginning to implement the necessary new programs. Some might think this is impossible as there is a congressional break coming up: Have those who are mindful of “the break” forgotten that this country is fighting for its very life! Congress is divided into many factions for the protection and creation of what needs to happen to keep this nation functional. They have been on an eight-year long break already: maybe it’s time they did some work on behalf of the public for a change. If they cannot figure out a way to do that, then we certainly don’t need to re-elect them to anything except their own private cells in federal prison. The public juggles a thousand and one things every day just to try and stay alive, while these satiated and over-paid flunkies wallow in their perks while they sell us into the sewers of privation and semi-permanent-poverty. If this had happened in the bad-old days they would all find themselves in the stocks being horse-whipped before they were sent directly off to jail! But maybe some of them might just have a sudden epiphany, or at least a sudden-enough jolt of reality to get this job done right for a change! If the congress were to act decisively enough now: then most of the real nightmare would begin to vanish in the haze. If they fail to act then the nightmare will descend, and none of them will be spared from its most disastrous effects. Make no mistake this is not just the ‘big problem’ that Bush attempts to lamely call it: this is about everything that counts both now and in the future; for you and I as well as for our descendants down to at least the fifth generation. How does this compare with some idiotic and bloated schedule of vacations for these over-paid traitors that have the nerve to call themselves our “representatives”? Call them, write to their cubicles and demand that they do their jobs and “represent us,” because the longer they stay loyal to our enemies the more certain will be their own political demise; and the prison-time that shall follow! kirwanstudios@sbcglobal.net

THE BANKERS’ BUDDIES: Sellout Congressmen Who Voted Yes for Bailout

Ackerman Allen Andrews Arcuri Bachus Baird Baldwin Bean Berman Berry Bishop (GA) Bishop (NY) Blunt Boehner Bonner Bono Mack Boozman Boren Boswell Boucher Boyd (FL) Brady (PA) Brady (TX) Brown (SC) Brown, Corrine Calvert Camp (MI) Campbell (CA) Cannon Cantor Capps Capuano Cardoza Carnahan Castle Clarke Clyburn Cohen Cole (OK) Cooper Costa Cramer Crenshaw Crowley Cubin Davis (AL) Davis (CA) Davis (IL) Davis, Tom DeGette DeLauro Dicks Dingell Donnelly Doyle Dreier Edwards (TX) Ehlers Ellison Ellsworth Emanuel Emerson Engel Eshoo Etheridge Everett Farr Fattah Ferguson

Fossella Foster Frank (MA) Gilchrest Gonzalez Gordon Granger Gutierrez Hall (NY) Hare Harman Hastings (FL) Herger Higgins Hinojosa Hobson Holt Honda Hooley Hoyer Inglis (SC) Israel Johnson, E. B. Kanjorski Kennedy Kildee Kind King (NY) Kirk Klein (FL) Kline (MN) LaHood Langevin Larsen (WA) Larson (CT) Levin Lewis (CA) Lewis (KY) Loebsack Lofgren, Zoe Lowey Lungren, Daniel E. Mahoney (FL) Maloney (NY) Markey Marshall Matsui McCarthy (NY) McCollum (MN) McCrery McDermott McGovern McHugh McKeon McNerney McNulty Meek (FL) Meeks (NY) Melancon Miller (NC) Miller, Gary Miller, George Mollohan Moore (KS) Moore (WI) Moran (VA) Murphy (CT) Murphy, Patrick Murtha

Nadler Neal (MA) Oberstar Obey Olver Pallone Pelosi Perlmutter Peterson (PA) Pickering Pomeroy Porter Price (NC) Pryce (OH) Putnam Radanovich Rahall Rangel Regula Reyes Reynolds Richardson Rogers (AL) Rogers (KY) Ross Ruppersberger Ryan (OH) Ryan (WI) Sarbanes Saxton Schakowsky Schwartz Sessions Sestak Shays Simpson Sires Skelton Slaughter Smith (TX) Smith (WA) Snyder Souder Space Speier Spratt Tancredo Tanner Tauscher Towns Tsongas Upton Van Hollen Velázquez Walden (OR) Walsh (NY) Wasserman Schultz Waters Watt Waxman Weiner Weldon (FL) Wexler Wilson (NM) Wilson (OH) Wilson (SC) Wolf

FINALLY Someone Said “No”

by Richard C. Cook

FINALLY, someone said “No” to the criminal gang that runs the U.S. economy when the House voted down the Bush-Paulson $700 billion Wall Street bailout plan by a vote of 228-205.

Shame on the Democrats! Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, and Majority Whip Rahm Emanuel delivered “yea” votes from 60 percent of Democratic House members and thereby gave the bill the only chance of passage it had.

Hooray for the Republicans! The bill went down to defeat only because 67 percent of House Republicans voted against it.

The bailout bill is one of the most critical ever brought before Congress. The Republicans who defied President George W. Bush, Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson, and the House leadership did so because their constituents demanded it. Ideologically, they acted to let the free market do its work. If overextended financial institutions which had invested recklessly go bankrupt, so be it.

For Democrats who voted against the legislation, the rationale was more complex—not enough taxpayer protection and too little help for homeowners facing foreclosure who would lose their homes even with the bill. But they also bucked the leaders of a party which, since pro-business Democrat Bill Clinton won the presidency in 1992, has completely sold out to the financier elite. Since then, Wall Street investment firms have been the principal bankrollers of a party that in recent years has totally betrayed its New Deal roots.

However it happened, the result of today’s vote was momentous. After rolling over and playing dead for the financial elite that has held the U.S. economy in a death grip due to the deregulation of the last quarter-century, a majority in Congress stood up and said, “Enough,” even after the two parties’ presidential candidates, Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain discredited themselves by voicing support.

Of course the financiers and their many political lackeys attempted to blackmail the country by claiming the economy would seize up and the stock market crash without the legislation, and, in a self-fulfilling prophecy, the Dow-Jones went down 777.68 points today. Traders interviewed on CNN said that if a bill were not passed before the session ended in a week, the fall could amount to 2000 points.

But so what? Everyone knows that the peak of the stock market last year—over 14,100 points—was the result of the bubble economy. Now that the bubble is bursting why shouldn’t the stock market find out where it really belongs, along with the prices of houses, as well as the worth of the banks and stock brokerages that got us into the mess?

So now what happens? It is unclear whether the House leadership will try to revive the bill or just let the voters decide in November who they want to step in to fix an economy which Bush, Greenspan, and their enablers in Congress have ruined.

What then can be done? Well, no one in government has much of an idea, and the huge number of commentators writing about the debacle in print and on the internet and talking about it on TV have offered literally thousands of suggestions. These range from returning to the gold standard to another New Deal. But few of these suggestions really get to the heart of the matter.

We do know one thing—unfettered finance capitalism as a national economic engine, which was the solution offered by Ronald Reagan and his supply-side, trickle-down “revolution,” has totally, dismally, hysterically failed. And we might suspect the same thing of a return to New Deal Keynesianism—i.e., more federal deficit spending—which is what the progressives are offering in an infinite number of disguises.

In discussing the Keynesian alternative, we should remember that it wasn’t until World War II that the Roosevelt administration was able to use Keynesian economics to produce full-employment. So do the new New Dealers want a World War III for the same ends?

They wouldn’t admit it, but let’s be honest. No nation on earth has yet implemented a stable industrial economy. In fact, there is one honest man writing about the crisis. His name is Robert Samuelson, and he is the economics writer for the Washington Post. What Samuelson is saying is absolutely true. This is that no one knows what is going on and no one knows what to do.

He writes:

“What we are witnessing, in the broadest sense, is the bankruptcy of modern economics. Its conceit has been that we had solved the problem of stability. Oh, there would be periodic recessions, but the prospects of a major economic collapse were negligible because we knew how the system worked and could take steps to prevent it. What’s been so unsettling about the present crisis is that it has not conformed to the standard model of business cycles and has not submitted to familiar textbook solutions.”

He goes on to point out the major economic issue of the industrial age is not “supply” as the monetarists—a.ka. Reaganite trickle-downers—said ad nauseum, but demand:

“The word that best epitomizes mainstream ‘macroeconomics’ (the study of the entire economy, not individual markets) is demand. If weak demand left the economy in a slump, government could rectify the situation by stimulating more demand through tax cuts, higher spending, or lower interest rates. If excess demand created inflation, government could suppress it by cutting demand through more taxes, less spending, or higher interest rates.”

“Demand” means, quite simply, “purchasing power.” The trouble is that a modern industrial economy does not produce enough purchasing power through wages, salaries, and dividends to buy what is produced at prices that must be charged to keep the system running. There is a gap, which was Keynes’ main point. The gap exists because of savings, or “retained earnings,” needed for reinvestment to keep the system operating and innovating. Without this savings, the system runs down due to entropy, or the law of diminishing returns.

Few of the writers commenting on the current economic situation—including most professional economists I’ve read on the subject—understand this basic point of Keynes’ thesis. That’s why none of their solutions ever work.

As I said, Keynes wanted to fill the gap through government deficit spending—pump priming. Supply-siders want to fill it by, well—by nothing. They don’t recognize the gap. They think that if more is produced, more will be bought, and there will be more income to do it. This is because they believe in “Say’s Law,” an early 19th century formulation that worked for medieval village economies—as did Adam Smith’s free-market ideas—but not modern industrial ones.

Still, the gap has been filled, except it has been filled by debt, by consumer borrowing, and by the hundreds of different kinds of exotic debt instruments dreamed up by Wall Street firms since Reagan took office in the 1980s. This debt pyramid is what is crashing today.

And behind all the exoticism is the debt-based monetary system run by the banks who own the Federal Reserve, because it is these banks that provided the leverage for it all to happen. It’s the banks that leveraged the bubbles—the merger-acquisition bubble, the dot.com bubble, the housing bubble, the commercial real estate bubble, the equity bubble, the hedge fund bubble, the derivative bubble, the commodity bubble, and on it goes.

So this is what deregulation has done for us. It may very well destroy the U.S. economy. It is already destroying democracy, because the social stress the system has produced is a hot-bed for every type of illness and social break-down and also feeds the anxiety that sees a terrorist under every bed and leads to wars and international crises as well.

It’s the big banks that have been the winners, at least so far. Citibank is eating Wachovia. Bank of America ate Merrill Lynch. J.P. Morgan Chase is eating Bear Stearns and WaMu. They are paying $1.9 billion for WaMu which has assets of $310 billion. Of course the latter is the bank of David Rockefeller and his family, so they are not doing too badly. The Rockefellers also own much of Exxon-Mobil, which continues to run record profits due to the oil price run-up.

But then the system was set up to benefit people like the Rockefellers and their ilk in the first place. That’s why we got the Federal Reserve System, because the bankers of the world already knew in 1913 that if they could control the currency and introduce money into circulation only through public and private debt they would be the big winners when the incredible productivity of modern industry became manifest.

And what is a real solution? It’s a dividend-based economy, as I have written many times, and as the Social Credit movement in Great Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand have known for decades. What we should do is monetize savings and retained earnings by issuing a corresponding dividend to the consuming population to balance production and be able to purchase what industry can produce through a non-inflationary production-based monetary system.

This is how credit really should be used. You can read about it in the many articles I have written over the past year or in my forthcoming book: We Hold These Truths: The Hope of Monetary Reform (Tendril Press, 2008). Among many other benefits, we would have a rebirth of local and regional economies as well as family farming, all of which the banks, under the global monetarist regime, have wiped out.

So that’s what happened today in Washington. But just remember, it’s the big banks that are really the ones behind the bailouts. They are the ones who call the shots with the Bush administration and the leadership of both the Republican and Democratic parties.

But thank God a few real “mavericks” in Congress left the reservation today. Will they have the guts to continue to “just say no” and make a real change in U.S. politics? Was this the day the revolution began? Or just a final rear-guard action in the death of American democracy?

Copyright 2008 by Richard C. Cook

911 False Flag, German Documentary

IAEA ‘puts Israeli nukes on agenda’

NEW YORK, Sep. 29 (Agencies) The UN nuclear watchdog has unanimously agreed to put the issue of the Zionist entity’s nuclear capabilities on the agenda of its annual meeting.

After requests by the Non-Aligned Movement and the Arab League, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) agreed to put the issue of the apartheid regime’s nuclear capabilities on the agenda of the 52nd annual meeting of the UN body.

The move was initially met with protests by the US and Canada but the two countries had to back down from their position after they realized that other member states of the IAEA meeting’s presidential board would not support their stance, an informed source told Fars News Agency as saying on Monday.

The Zionist entity is believed to possess the only nuclear arsenal of the Middle East but it has so far refused to allow IAEA inspectors to visit its nuclear sites.

Look What WE Are Doing To Other People’s Babies

House Rejects Bailout Package, 228-205; Stocks Plunge

House Rejects Bailout Package, 228-205;

Stocks Plunge

By CARL HULSE and DAVID M. HERSZENHORN

WASHINGTON — In a moment of historic import in the Capitol and on Wall Street, the House of Representatives voted on Monday to reject a $700 billion rescue of the financial industry. The vote came in stunning defiance of President Bush and Congressional leaders of both parties, who said the bailout was needed to prevent a widespread financial collapse.

The vote against the measure was 228 to 205, with 133 Republicans turning against President Bush to join 95 Democrats in opposition. The bill was backed by 140 Democrats and 65 Republicans.

Supporters vowed to try to bring the rescue package up for consideration again as soon as possible, perhaps late Wednesday or Thursday, but there were no definite plans to do so. A former Treasury Department official predicted that the administration would try to get another House vote before the end of the week, and with only “tiny tweaks” to the package, given the relative closeness of the vote.

Stock markets plunged as it appeared that the measure would go down to defeat, and kept slumping into the afternoon when that appearance became a reality. By late afternoon the Dow industrials had fallen more than 5 percent, and other indexes even more sharply. Oil prices fell steeply on fears of a global recession; investors bid up prices of Treasury securities and gold in a flight to safety.

The vote was a catastrophic political defeat for President Bush, who had put the full weight of the White House behind the measure and had lobbied wavering Republicans in intensely personal telephone calls on Monday morning.

“We put forth a plan that was big because we got a big problem,” the president said afterward. “And we’ll be working with members of Congress, leaders of Congress on the way forward. Our strategy is to continue to address this economic situation head on.”

The president was described as “very disappointed” by a spokesman, Tony Fratto. Mr. Bush’s disappointment may have been deepened by the fact that members of his own party voted against the package by more than 2 to 1.

Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., appearing at the White House late Monday afternoon, warned that the failure of the rescue plan could dry up credit for businesses big and small, making them unable to make payrolls or buy inventory. Vowing to continue working with Congress to revive the rescue plan, Mr. Paulson said it was “much too important to let fail.”

Supporters of the bill had argued that it was necessary to avoid a collapse of the economic system, a calamity that would drag down not just Wall Street investment houses but possibly the savings and portfolios of millions of Americans. Moreover, supporters argued, a lingering crisis in America could choke off business and consumer loans to a degree that could prompt bank failures in Europe and slow down the global economy.

Opponents said the bill was cobbled together in too much haste and might amount to throwing good money from taxpayers after bad investments from Wall Street gamblers.

House leaders pushing for the package kept the voting period open for some 40 minutes past the allotted time at mid-day, trying to convert “no” votes by pointing to damage being done to the markets, but to no avail.

The former Treasury Department official who predicted another House vote this week, and who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that before there could be another vote, he would expect Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the California Democrat, and Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the Republican minority leader, to approach members with seats in safe districts and tell them, in effect: “You’ve got to do this. The fate of the country hangs on your vote.”The United States Chamber of Commerce vowed to exert pressure of another kind, warning in a letter to members of Congress that it would keep track of who votes how. “Make no mistake,” the letter said. “When the aftermath of Congressional inaction becomes clear, Americans will not tolerate those who stood by and let the calamity happen.”

Immediately after the vote, many House members appeared stunned. Some Republicans blamed Ms. Pelosi for a speech before the vote that disdained President Bush’s economic policies, and did so, in the opinion of the speaker’s critics, in too partisan a way.

“Clearly, there was something lacking in the leadership here,” said Representative Eric Cantor, Republican of Virginia.

Democrats, meanwhile, blamed the Republicans for not coming up with enough support for the measure on their side of the aisle.

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The Creation of the Second Great Depression

By Ron Paul

Whenever a Great Bipartisan Consensus is announced, and a compliant media assures everyone that the wondrous actions of our wise leaders are being taken for our own good, you can know with absolute certainty that disaster is about to strike.

The events of the past week are no exception.

The bailout package that is about to be rammed down Congress’ throat is not just economically foolish. It is downright sinister. It makes a mockery of our Constitution, which our leaders should never again bother pretending is still in effect. It promises the American people a never-ending nightmare of ever-greater debt liabilities they will have to shoulder. Two weeks ago, financial analyst Jim Rogers said the bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac made America more communist than China! “This is welfare for the rich,” he said. “This is socialism for the rich. It’s bailing out the financiers, the banks, the Wall Streeters.”

That describes the current bailout package to a T. And we’re being told it’s unavoidable.

The claim that the market caused all this is so staggeringly foolish that only politicians and the media could pretend to believe it. But that has become the conventional wisdom, with the desired result that those responsible for the credit bubble and its predictable consequences – predictable, that is, to those who understand sound, Austrian economics – are being let off the hook. The Federal Reserve System is actually positioning itself as the savior, rather than the culprit, in this mess!

* The Treasury Secretary is authorized to purchase up to $700 billion in mortgage-related assets at any one time. That means $700 billion is only the very beginning of what will hit us.

* Financial institutions are “designated as financial agents of the Government.” This is the New Deal to end all New Deals.

* Then there’s this: “Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.” Translation: the Secretary can buy up whatever junk debt he wants to, burden the American people with it, and be subject to no one in the process.

There goes your country.

Even some so-called free-market economists are calling all this “sadly necessary.” Sad, yes. Necessary? Don’t make me laugh.

Our one-party system is complicit in yet another crime against the American people. The two major party candidates for president themselves initially indicated their strong support for bailouts of this kind – another example of the big choice we’re supposedly presented with this November: yes or yes. Now, with a backlash brewing, they’re not quite sure what their views are. A sad display, really.

Although the present bailout package is almost certainly not the end of the political atrocities we’ll witness in connection with the crisis, time is short. Congress may vote as soon as tomorrow. With a Rasmussen poll finding support for the bailout at an anemic seven percent, some members of Congress are afraid to vote for it. Call them! Let them hear from you! Tell them you will never vote for anyone who supports this atrocity.

The issue boils down to this: do we care about freedom? Do we care about responsibility and accountability? Do we care that our government and media have been bought and paid for? Do we care that average Americans are about to be looted in order to subsidize the fattest of cats on Wall Street and in government? Do we care?

When the chips are down, will we stand up and fight, even if it means standing up against every stripe of fashionable opinion in politics and the media?

Times like these have a way of telling us what kind of a people we are, and what kind of country we shall be.

Dr. Ron Paul

Israel should quit nearly all occupied land: Olmert

Israel should quit nearly all occupied land: Olmert

By Jeffrey Heller

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel should withdraw from nearly all territory captured in the 1967 Middle East war in return for peace with the Palestinians and Syria, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was quoted on Monday as telling a newspaper.

Olmert, in a caretaker role since quitting on September 21, said he was breaking new ground in calling for a broad pullback from the occupied West Bank, where Palestinians hope to establish a state, and in the annexed Golan Heights, which Syria wants back.

“(I am saying) what no previous Israeli leader has ever said: we should withdraw from almost all of the territories, including in East Jerusalem and in the Golan Heights,” Olmert, who resigned over corruption allegations, told Yedioth Ahronoth.

The Israeli daily called it a “legacy interview,” published on the eve of the Jewish new year, in which Olmert went further in making offers for peace than he ever did publicly when he was in active office, with greater power to see them carried out.

“We wish we had heard this personal opinion … (before) he resigned,” said Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki. “It is a very important commitment but it came so late. We wish this commitment can be fulfilled by the (next) Israeli government.”

According to Western and Palestinian officials, Olmert has proposed in peace talks with the Palestinians an Israeli withdrawal from some 93 percent of the occupied West Bank, plus all of the Gaza Strip, from which Israel pulled out in 2005.

Olmert has said repeatedly that Israel intends to keep major Jewish settlement blocs in the West Bank in any future peace deal with the Palestinians.

A peace agreement, Olmert has said, would mean Israel would have to compensate the Palestinians for the land it hopes to retain by “close to a 1-to-1 ratio.”

In exchange for the settlement enclaves, Olmert has proposed about a 5 percent land swap giving the Palestinians a desert territory adjacent to the Gaza Strip, as well as land on which to build a transit corridor between Gaza and the West Bank.

The negotiations, which Olmert has vowed to continue until he leaves office when a new government is formed, have shown few signs of progress and both sides acknowledge chances are slim of meeting Washington’s target of a deal by the end of the year.

VIABLE STATE

Palestinian chief negotiator Ahmed Qurie, speaking before Olmert’s interview, said annexation of settlements would prevent the Palestinians from creating a viable and contiguous country.

“We can’t have a state with settlements dividing the land,” Qurie said.

Another senior Palestinian negotiator said tracts Olmert proposed to exchange in a peace deal “are lands we don’t want.”

Olmert has also engaged Syria in indirect negotiations with Turkish mediation. In the interview, he said peace would be impossible “without eventually giving up the Golan Heights.”

He has so far put off talks on sharing Jerusalem and ruled out a so-called “right of return” for Palestinian refugees, a central Palestinian demand. On both issues, there is strong opposition in Israel to significant concessions.

Olmert, who could face criminal indictment in a corruption investigation, will remain prime minister until a new government is approved by parliament. Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni is trying to form a coalition.

British Negotiate With Real Taliban, While US Uses Fake Taliban to Undermine Pakistan

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Secret Taliban peace bid revealed

Updated at

Monday, September 29, 2008 KABUL: The Taliban have been engaged in secret talks about ending the conflict in Afghanistan in a wide-ranging “peace process” sponsored by Saudi Arabia and supported by Britain, The Observer has revealed.s The unprecedented negotiations involve a senior former member of the hard-line Islamist movement travelling between Kabul, the bases of the Taliban senior leadership in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and European capitals. Britain has provided logistic and diplomatic support for the talks — despite official statements that negotiations can be held only with the Taliban who are ready to renounce, or have renounced, violence. Sources in Afghanistan confirmed the controversial talks, though they said that in recent weeks they had “lost momentum.” According to Afghan government officials in Kabul, the intensity of the fighting this summer has been one factor. Another is the inconsistency of the Taliban’s demands. “They keep changing what they are asking for. One day it is one thing, the next another,” one Afghan government adviser with knowledge of the negotiations said. One aim of the initiative is to drive a wedge between Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Last week, the French Prime Minister, Franois Fillon, referred indirectly to the talks during a parliamentary debate on Afghanistan. “We must explore ways of separating the international Jihadists from those who are acting more for nationalist or tribal motives. Efforts in this direction are being led by Sunni [Muslim] countries such as Saudi Arabia,î he said. This summer’s fighting season in Afghanistan has been the most violent since the invasion of 2001. The deterioration of the situation has provoked a major review of strategy among the 40-nation international coalition pitted against an increasingly confident and effective insurgency. Although, there have been low-level contacts with individual Taliban commanders at district level before, the Saudi initiative is the first attempt to talk to the Taliban leadership council based in or around Quetta, known as the Quetta Shura. The talks started in the summer and have been brokered by Saudi Arabia at the invitation of the Afghan government. The go-between has spent weeks ferrying lists of demands and counter-demands between the Afghan capital, Riyadh and Quetta. He has also visited London to speak to Foreign Office and MI6 personnel. A delegation from Saudi intelligence has also visited Kabul. The Taliban are understood to have submitted a list of 11 conditions for ending hostilities, which include demands to be allowed to run key ministries and a programmed withdrawal of western troops. In Kabul, President Hamid Karzai’s national security adviser Zalmay Rasul has been in charge of the negotiations. It is understood that Karzai has yet to make a formal response to the demands, leading to frustration among some western officials. The Observer has also learnt of a separate exchange of letters in the summer between Karzai and the Taliban ally Gulbuddin Hikmatyar. The dialogue proved fruitless. Late last year Karzai said he would welcome the chance to speak directly to Hikmatyar and to Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban’s leader and one of the most wanted men in the world, promising that if the Taliban demanded a ìdepartment in this or in that ministry or a position as deputy ministerî in exchange for ending violence, he would give them the posts. Previously, Taliban spokesmen have said that only the departure of foreign troops, the institution of a fiercely rigorous interpretation of Sharia law and a share of government would be acceptable to them as the basis for any deal. A Foreign Office spokesman said yesterday that he had no knowledge of the ‘Saudi initiative,’ as it is known in diplomatic circles, but that the British government ìactively supported the Afghan government’s reconciliation process,î which was ìpart and parcel of the counter-insurgency campaign.î In another development, The Observer has learnt that the British government is considering increasing the length of tours served by troops in Afghanistan. The Ministry of Defence confirmed last week that tours for senior soldiers in key command positions were set to be extended from six months to a year. îWe are looking at increasing tour lengths for a small number of headquarters posts with the aim of creating greater continuity in key positions,î an MoD spokesman said. Although, the MoD denied any plans to extend other service personnel’s combat tours in Afghanistan, the idea of troops deployed to the area serving nine months was raised recently by the army’s director of infantry, Brigadier Richard Dennis, in a speech to senior commanders. Washington is putting pressure on Nato allies such as Britain to match American troop increases.

Bush Proves Karl Marx Right About ‘Capitalism’

Unfairly, a bailout price tag of some 700 billion dollars will be picked up by the American middle and poorer classes. None of those actually bearing the brunt of this transfer of wealth will benefit from it directly. The beneficiaries are those among some one percent of the nation who own about 99 percent of its total wealth.

According to US wealth distribution data compiled by ‘The State of Working America’, ‘Wealth distribution in the U.S. is extremely concentrated at the top –even more so than income.’

These statistics, on the other hand, only hint at the L-Curve phenomenon because the top 1% isn’t scrutinized in sufficient detail. Still, compare the net worth of the top half of the top 1% with the bottom half of the top 1%! If you add them together and proportion them out, 3/4 of the wealth in the top 1% is actually in the top 0.5%.–US Wealth Distribution Data

Only a tiny group of Americans –Bush’s ‘base’ –will benefit from the bailout directly.

The top and bottom halves of the top 0.5% would undoubtedly show even greater disparity if the data were presented with enough resolution. Note that nothing on this page even mentions billionaires. The largest fortunes are in the $100-billion range. The statistics on billionaires are diluted by lumping them in with mere millionaires. –op cit,

I have a better idea. Let’s plot US wealth on a curve. Pro-rate the bailout. Let those getting the bigger share on the back-end bear the burden proportionally gong in. It is absurd to expect someone earning only $40,000 per year to cough up the same amount of money as, say, Bill Gates. I’m told Bill has given most of his money away. But, as he was once the richest man in the world, he is as good an example as anyone. Anyone whose ‘net worth’ is some $60 billion dollars shuld be expected to pay proportionally or between 10 and 15 percent of the total bailout.

AMERICAN POLICE STATE – the First Combat Troops Hit the Streets In 3 Days

Here to Stay, 14,000 Strong, and Armed

With Non-Lethal Weapons – America,

Meet Your New Local Military

by davidswanson

There are times when certain headlines fly through the news that make your heart drop. Sometimes, it’s a simple headline that can do the trick. Other times, it takes a bit more research before things start to get scary. Follow me as I play connect the dots and introduce you to the military unit that will be stationed near you, in America. To answer your first question: yes they will be available to be used to control civil disobedience. To answer your next question: as long as the military wants them to stay. Perhaps your last question: October, 2008.

A few days ago, small reports were coming out about a new military unit that was going to be stationed within the United States of America. I first heard the report from a friend and suddenly I found myself dizzied by the amount of curse words flying through my head.

The original story that I read was in a blog that included a small excerpt. The title was enough to get me started:

“Army Unit to Deploy in October for Domestic Operations”

The excerpt left a lot to be desired on the information front. So, I decided to start doing my own research into the subject. Ladies and gentleman, I am not comfortable with what is going to be happening in our country in the next couple of years relating to this. It’s sickening and frightening. But, here goes.

First, you need to familiarize yourself with the organization that we are going to be talking about. From my research, it appears that since 1999, the Department of Defense has been actively seeking a solution to quick responses in times of crisis for the country. Whether it be from terrorism, natural disaster, they wanted to have a way to quickly deploy “aid” to places in need. This search was exacerbated by the 9/11 attacks, Katrina, and the various other catastrophic failures of the administration.

There are a few acronyms that you now need to familiarize yourself with:

* CBRNE – Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear or high-yield Explosive
* CCMRF – CBRNE Consequence Management Response Force – also (possibly originally) pronounced “sick-merf” it has been changed to a more friendly pronunciation of “sea-smurf”
* JTF-CS – Joint Task Force – Civil Support
* USNORTHCOM (informally NORTHCOM) – United States Northern Command

Now that you have been introduced to the players, you need to understand how they relate to each other. CBRNE is a generic term used to describe the type of work and not an organization. CCMRF is the focus of this post. The JFT-CS is under command of the United States Fifth Army. As I understand it, the CCMRF falls under the JTF-CS category. However, the CCMRF unit is under the command of NORTHCOM.

First and foremost is the fact that the CCMRF will be divided into three forces: CCMRF-1, CCMRF-2, CCMRF-3. These forces are from the Marines, Army, Navy, Air Force and National Guard. This is to encompass the vast array of duties this unit will be responsible for carrying out. Each CCMRF force will consist of approximately 4,500 troops. In an interview conducted by the Air Force Times, Army Lt. Col. Rob Cunniff, head of NorthCom’s Future Operations revealed a lot of detail about what the force will be. He envisions that the forces will be split up in thirds as the country would be: 1 force for the West, 1 for the East and 1 in the middle. The first unit would be the greatest mix of forces while the 2nd and 3rd would be made up of mostly Guard units.

One of the larger forces that will be part of CCMRF-1 has been training since at least 2007. More on that later, however. The large force is the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team. They have spent 35 of the last 60 months in Iraq. Army Col. Louis Vogler, another chief of NorthCom future operations:

“Right now, the response force requirement will be an enduring mission. How the [Defense Department] chooses to source that and whether or not they continue to assign them to NorthCom, that could change in the future. Now, the plan is to assign a force every year.”

A new force, every year. I have yet to find any plans or mentions of this operation ever ceasing.

One striking piece of information is that this unit will be equipped with the Army’s first ever non-lethal arsenal of weapons. Not just beanbag guns but tasers, batons, shields, etc. I’ll let the Army speak for itself here again. 1st BCT commander Col. Roger Cloutier:

“…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.”

The package includes equipment to stand up a hasty road block; spike strips for slowing, stopping or controlling traffic; shields and batons; and, beanbag bullets.

“I was the first guy in the brigade to get Tasered,” said Cloutier, describing the experience as “your worst muscle cramp ever — times 10 throughout your whole body.

“I’m not a small guy, I weigh 230 pounds … it put me on my knees in seconds.”

The first time the Army has deployed this is going to be within the country intended for use on it’s own citizens? Are you serious? Couldn’t they have tested some non-lethal equipment somewhere else? Anyway, the rabbit hole gets deeper and deeper.

Although the unit is supposed to be for Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear or high-yield Explosive (at least according to the acronym), it has been slated for other causes. This includes assisting with local officials against civil disobedience, hurricanes, anthrax and really a whole slate of other things that could possibly go wrong.

So, now you know you can expect around 15,000 troops to be stationed in the country with tasers that can drop a 200+ lb. man and training with batons, shields and roadblocks. If that isn’t scary enough, the head of NORTHCOM will be sufficient.

On March 23, 2007 a new head of NORTHCOM was appointed. Victor E. Renuart Jr. is a highly decorated man that is the commander of NORTHCOM and he also happens to be the head of NORAD. So the person in command of determining whether there is a threat anywhere in the country is also the person in command of the units that will be able to respond to the “threat.” Doesn’t it seem like there should be one someone to check the authority here? Apparently, that’s just a bit too logical.

Now then, I have respect for an officer in the military. However, I cannot say that this guy’s credentials are what I want when I’m looking for a commander of a military deployed within this country. Why is that? Well, according to Wikipedia, Mr. Renuart:

“oversaw the planning and execution of all joint and allied combat, humanitarian assistance and reconstruction operations for Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom.”

So, the person who oversaw all of the completely chaotic, ineffective, dangerous, and terrible “operation” in Iraq, is the one who is going to be in command of the unit deployed in this country? Please tell me this is a dream so I can wake up.

So, how can this unit be deployed? Someone has to give the go ahead, correct? I was able to find the manual dealing with CCMRF and found this gem:

“(e) USARNORTH accomplishes its CBRN CM mission in strict adherence of public law and DOD policies. Deployment of USARNORTH, at the direction of the USNORTHCOM commander and on the authority of the Secretary of Defense, occurs only after a governor requests federal assistance from the President, and after the President issues a Presidential Disaster Declaration. In any DSCA setting, USARNORTH remains in support of the lead federal agency throughout the CBRN CM operation.”

Did anyone else just read that it takes a governor to ask for this authorization? Can anyone recall a governor suddenly becoming a prominent public figure for no apparent reason?

Oh that’s right. Governor Sarah Palin from Alaska. Quite possibly the least capable or experienced candidate to ever run for the position.

Alaska you say?

Allow me to introduce AKS/NE ’07. Alaska Shield/Northern Edge training mission. This would be one of the first large-scale training missions that would be done in conjunction with other states. However, the Alaskan operation was a huge one involving multiple types of training.

I don’t think it’s possible that the Governor of Alaska would have not been involved in this in some way.

It seems fair to say that it’s possible that Sarah Palin has a more intimate knowledge and familiarity with CCMRF because of this exercise. Wouldn’t a candidate, who’s already comfortable with a military deployment in the country, be a perfect running mate for John McCain? Suddenly, it’s likely there may actually be a reason that they would have chose her. Given the secessionist background, it seems both Sarah and her “first dude” would be pleased as punch with a military unit installed in the country that can be called on by a governor.

Obviously there is a lot of additional information out there on all of these subjects. So please, go out and do your own research and let’s see what is really going on here.

To recap:

* 3 forces, around 4,500 strong will be deployed in the East, West and middle of the country
* They will be replaced every year
* They are under the command of the person who oversaw Operation Iraqi Blunder
* They will be armed with the Army’s first non-lethal weapons package
* They can be deployed by the governor of a state
* The last state they had a big training operation in was Alaska
* The governor of Alaska was surprisingly chosen as the Vice Presidential candidate for John McBush

We’re gonna have a problem here.

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digg_bodytext = “I Love Bonnie\r\n\r\nThere are times when certain headlines fly through the news that make your heart drop. Sometimes, it’s a simple headline that can do the trick. Other times, it takes a bit more research before things start to get scary. Follow me as I play connect the dots and introduce you to the military unit that will be stationed near you, in America. To answer your first question: yes they will be available to be used to control civil disobedience. To answer your next question: as long as the military wants them to stay. Perhaps your last question: October, 2008.\r\n\r\nA few days ago, small reports were coming out about a new military unit that was going to be stationed within the United States of America. I first heard the report from a friend and suddenly I found myself dizzied by the amount of curse words flying through my head.\r”;

digg_skin = ‘standard’;

The US, India and Fake Talebans: Brothers in Arms

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By AHMED QURAISHI

Baitullah Mehsud

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—One telephone call seven years ago was enough for Islamabad to accommodate Washington’s entire wish list. But United States pressure tactics will not work now. Pakistan’s army chief, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, is leading a military and a nation that is determined to resist Washington’s plan to bring to Pakistan the ethno-civil wars of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Pakistani military’s brisk response is not just a reaction to the deliberately humiliating and outrageous unilateral American decisions to include Pakistan in the Iraq/Afghanistan war theater.

There is a bigger problem here. Pakistani policy analysts are convinced that United States has been a duplicitous ally during the past seven years, using the sincere Pakistani cooperation on Afghanistan to gradually turn that country into a military base to launch a sophisticated psychological, intelligence and military campaign to destabilize Pakistan itself.

The objective is to weaken the control of the Pakistani military over geographical Pakistan and ignite an ethnic and sectarian civil war leading to changing the status of Balochistan and NWFP, possibly even facilitate the break up of both provinces from the Pakistani federation.

The defeatist stance of Pakistan’s elected government in the face of U.S. belligerence is discussed later in this paper. But it is worth noting that President Zardari has refused to publicly back the military’s warning to U.S. He also delayed his China visit to go to London to hunker down with Gordon Brown. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Yousaf Reza Gilani, in a statement that deprives Pakistan of strategic advantage and dampens the psychological effect of army chief’s warning, has said that ‘Pakistan can’t wage war with U.S.’ In comparison, the governor of NWFP, Mr. Owais Ghani, has become the only government official to publicly state the truth.

On Sept. 12, the governor’s office issued the following statement: “Foreign forces based in Afghanistan and militants are working on the same anti-Pakistan agenda and both are following the same strategy to weaken the country […] while the coalition troops were threatening to extend their war to Pakistan, the militants are also attacking the country and creating a war-like situation. It appeared that both the forces were working on the same agenda to weaken Pakistan.”

(al qaeda and americans allied who would have thought we would see this day. it would have been funny if it wasnt so dangerous and sinister)

In one sign of the grand double game, despite the poor relations with Iran, Washington has encouraged Karzai and the Indians to complete the construction of a road that links Afghanistan to an Indian-built Iranian seaport. The purpose is to end the dependence of both U.S. army and the Karzai regime on Pakistan for access to sea(are the iranians in on it as well, i find that hard to believe). U.S. military officials have also been seeking permission to use Russian air space for military cargo to replace Pakistani facilities.

These American actions show a degree of long term planning and are not connected to the recent American grievances against Pakistan and its intelligence agencies.

A segment of the U.S. policy establishment had decided to take the war to Pakistan from the outset in 2001. Washington first used Islamabad to occupy Afghanistan and then used the Afghan soil to start series of insurgencies inside Pakistan. The strategy was an alternative to a direct confrontation with a nuclear-armed country. A weak Pakistani state with a neutered military was envisaged as an ideal situation to protect U.S. interests with regards to China, Russia and India.

It is not clear how much the rest of the departments of the U.S. government knew about the destabilization plans for Pakistan. If the entire U.S. political and military strategy on Pakistan since Sept. 11, 2001 was based on consensus, then Pakistanis have been massively deceived by their American allies.

The anti-Pakistan lobby in Washington found willing allies in the Indians and the Northern Alliance component of the Karzai regime in Kabul.

The idea to destabilize Pakistan appears to have started with simple and clear thoughts. The U.S.- and India-backed Kabul regime proposed reviving Pashtun nationalism and the secession of Pashtun regions from Pakistan. The Indians offered their decades-old experience in penetrating Pakistani territories for espionage. The Indians offered something else too: The revival of the so-called Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA). The Soviets and Indians together created this terrorist organization in the 1970s and used Afghan soil to foment an ethnic-based civil war inside Pakistan. The idea died out naturally, until the Indians offered the Americans to revive it after 9/11 as a punishment for Pakistan.

Pakistan’s tribal belt, Balochistan and Swat were peaceful until early 2005. Since then, series of insurgencies have erupted led by shady ethno-religious characters. One of them, a tribal thug who stayed in American and Karzai custody for several years, was released only to enter Pakistan and begin targeting Chinese citizens in the country. Another thug in Balochistan was convinced by handlers in Afghanistan that he would be made the head of an independent Balochistan with U.S. help if he agreed to launch an insurgency and help recruit young Pakistanis to get training to fight their own country.

Between 2005 and now, the entire western Pakistan from the Arabian Sea to the border with China has turned into a cocktail of ethnic and religious insurgencies focused on fighting the Pakistani state and the Pakistani military.

On July 12, 2008, when U.S. Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen and CIA Deputy Director Stephen R. Kappes were in Rawalpindi on a secret visit, Gen. Kayani, former President Musharraf and Pakistani intelligence officials confronted the American duo with conclusive evidence that showed U.S. complicity in feeding and sustaining a terrorist movement in Balochistan, where China is building a strategic seaport.

Pakistanis now also have damning evidence that shows that Karzai’s security apparatus, which is heavily infested with Indian security and intelligence advisers, has been directly supplying weapons and money to clusters of thugs masquerading as ‘Pakistani Taliban’.

The main assignment for these fake ‘Taliban’ is to target and kill Pakistanis – military and civilians – and kidnap Chinese citizens in Pakistan. Which is surprising because the Afghan Taliban, the real Taliban, are focused on targeting U.S. occupation forces in Afghanistan and not on spreading fear and chaos among Pakistanis. This is more like someone is trying to punish Pakistan through a planned effort.

In the latest incidents, over 25 worshippers perished when unknown terrorists lobbed hand grenades inside a mosque in northern Pakistan. The real Taliban would never indulge in such senseless violence targeting Pakistani citizens. Moreover, two Chinese engineers have been kidnapped. It is strange that the Chinese are the only foreigners being targeted in Pakistan, while citizens of United States and other NATO member countries are spared.

The de facto Pakistani interior minister, Rehman Malik, in an interview to CNN on Sept. 11, stopped short of accusing U.S. and India of using Afghan soil to target Pakistan. He said these unknown insurgents emerged from nowhere in 2005 and since then the quality of their weapons and equipment has dramatically improved. “Where are they getting support from? Not Pakistan,” he said.

Even if U.S. officials deny that parts of the U.S. government are privy to this destabilization effort, there is no question that the U.S. military is inexplicably ignoring the Karzai-Indian export of terrorism into Pakistan.

The U.S. role is certainly suspicious. Starting in early 2007, the U.S. media unleashed an organized demonization campaign against Pakistan that was unprecedented in the history of Pak-U.S. relations. U.S. media made a concerted effort to create world hostility against Pakistan and spread ‘anti-Pakistanism’ globally. Washington’s media managers were apparently trying to prepare the world public opinion for a possible American military intervention in Pakistan on the pretext of either saving the country’s nukes or to fight al-Qaeda.

Besides India, the United States is the only other country in the world busy in this deliberate creation of hostility against Pakistan. Take the example of this quote from an article that appeared in the conservative, pro-Bush magazine, The Weekly Standard, in Nov. 2007:

“A large number of ISI agents … should be thrown in jail or killed. What I think we should do in Pakistan is a parallel version of what Iran has run against us in Iraq: giving money [and] empowering [anti-state] actors. Some of this will involve working with some shady characters.”

On Feb. 1, 2008, New York Times, published an op-ed piece that discussed in detail the division of Pakistan into three independent states. The article was an example of malicious fear-mongering but the real surprise was that a prestigious paper carried it. NYT is the same paper that allowed itself to be used by Bush administration spin masters to promote fake stories about WMD and Iraq before U.S. invaded that country. Pakistan’s ace diplomat, Mr. Munir Akram, who has recently been removed by the Zardari government from his job as Pakistan’s envoy to the U.N., saw the NYT article and sent a letter to the paper’s editor, although it was not his job to do so but the responsibility of the press attaché in the Pakistan Embassy in Washington.

Mr. Akram wrote: “[The op-ed] will confirm the belief of many Pakistanis that there is an international conspiracy to destabilize and disintegrate Pakistan […] The orchestrated campaign against President Pervez Musharraf, the denigration of the Pakistani Army, calls for the capture of Pakistan’s nuclear assets, the string of suicide bombings and terrorism in Balochistan are all seen as aimed at this malevolent design.”

This American media campaign against Pakistan continues unabated. Last month, Mr. Harlan Ullman, a Washington columnist with strong ties to U.S. military, visited Islamabad and returned to float this stunning idea: “Pakistan should create integrated and joint operations centers at ISI or Army GHQ with U.S. military, State Department, law enforcement and intelligence officers in residence.”

This U.S. media campaign has been going hand in glove for the past eighteen months with a wave of terrorism inside Pakistan targeting Pakistani civilians and government. The blame for these acts was laid at the doors of something called ‘Pakistani Taliban’ which is, in major part, a creation of Indian and Karzai intelligence setups inside Afghanistan.

It is highly suspicious that U.S. military attacks inside Pakistan in recent weeks have targeted pro-Pakistan tribesmen. Somehow the U.S. drones and spy satellites are unable to target the shady rebel leaders who are exclusively fighting Pakistan and never attack U.S. soldiers across the border.

Also, the American war strategy neatly fits in with the secessionist campaign that seeks to turn Pakistani Pashtuns against their own country. With every U.S. attack that kills women and children, Pakistani Pashtun are becoming convinced that their country, Pakistan, is either unwilling or incapable of defending its citizens. The military operations conducted by Pakistani military to kill these shadowy terrorists are indirectly sending the message that Islamabad is also party to spilling Pashtun blood. All of this is strengthening the case of those who are promoting a secessionist propaganda that the NWFP and the Pashtun areas must secede from Pakistan.

This is the first time in decades that the idea of Pashtuns, the real liberators of Azad Kashmir, turning against Pakistan is appearing to be a possibility.

Military Speaks,

Politicians Silent

There is no question that Pakistan’ military waited for a cue from the country’s elected leadership to respond to U.S. violations of Pakistani territory.

On Sept. 6, marked as Pakistan Defense Day in memory of a failed Indian invasion of Pakistan in 1965, the Pakistani air force chief tried to send a message to the elected government. He told reporters that the Pakistani air force was ready to respond if the government made a policy decision.

The Zardari-Gilani government chose to ignore U.S. attacks. In fact, the defense minister, Mr. Ahmed Mukhtar, made statements on multiple occasions that raised eyebrows. At one point he said U.S. drones flew too high for Pakistani military to respond. At another point he justified U.S. attacks inside Pakistan by saying ‘there must be a reason’ for Washington to violate the border.

Then came Hamid Karzai to plant a misleading story in the Pakistani media when President Zardari invited him to his oath-taking ceremony on Sept. 9. After his arrival, Karzai called some journalists and leaked to them that Arabs were killed in the Sept. 8 U.S. attack on the house of the veteran Afghan commander Jalaluddin Haqqani in Miramshah.

This was a perfect justification for the violation of Pakistani territory and it helped the Americans tell their reluctant European allies that attacking Pakistan was justified. Karzai leaked the information, complete with names and numbers of the dead Arabs.

The sinister part of this exercise was that ‘sources close to the Haqqani family’ were cited to confirm the report. Major Pakistani news organizations picked up the story and made it their lead for several hours. This was the height of cynicism. The Haqqani family was in mourning, with several members of the family, women and children dead while a disinformation campaign was using their name to confirm the existence of foreign fighters in their house.

The truth was that Haqqani’s house was never a secret hideout. His family maintained a house in Pakistan since the 1980s. Haqqani lived and operated in Afghanistan and the people in the house where his extended family relatives, ordinary people with no link to the war in Afghanistan. This is like Afghan resistance groups deciding to target Mr. Karzai’s extended family members who have nothing to do with Karzai’s activities just to get back at him. The Afghan resistance has never done it. But Karzai and his American allies have no problem in resorting to this method.

The devastated Haqqani family corrected the story later and questioned the source of the story since there were no Arabs or foreign or any fighters at all in the house. The U.S. attack was a deliberate act of terrorism to cause maximum pain to the Afghan commander.

Pakistani military quietly watched the Zardari-Gilani government take no position on the U.S. attacks. Then came the bombshell when, last week, Bush and his military chief, Adm. Mullen, said Pakistan was now part of the Iraq-Afghanistan ‘war theater’ and New York Times published a leak that said Bush had authorized attacks inside Pakistan without Islamabad’s consent.

The purpose behind the leak was to put Pakistan on notice and somehow force the issue down on Islamabad in the hope that Pakistan will grudgingly accept it.

Zardari’s Strange

Silence

After Gen. Kayani’s tough-worded counter statement, an embarrassed Prime Minister Gilani said the statement reflected his government’s policy.

But the biggest question mark is the silence of President Zardari. He did not endorse Gen. Kayani’s statement. Even more shocking for Pakistanis was that Mr. Zardari reneged on his promise that China will be his first foreign visit as President. Instead he left for London after a call from British Prime Minister Gordon Brown ‘inviting’ him to London to discuss the new U.S. strategy.

It is clear that President Zardari supports the new U.S. policy and does not agree with the Pakistani military’s warning that it will defend against attacks on Pakistan’s at all costs.

Mr. Zardari is in power thanks to the arrangement – known as the ‘deal’ – that Washington and London forced Pakistan to accept. His assets are mostly in United States and Britain. There is no way he can risk alienating his backers.

The deal originally envisaged the return of Benazir Bhutto to power in Pakistan. Former President Musharraf was forced to – or he personally accepted to help – make Mrs. Bhutto the new prime minister. Mrs. Bhutto accepted U.S. help in bringing her back to power in return for her commitment that she will allow Washington to do all or most of the things that Musharraf was not willing to do: mainly permit U.S. boots on the ground in Pakistan.

There is every possibility that President Zardari has been convinced by close advisors, especially Ambassador Husain Haqqani in Washington, to tacitly accept U.S. operations inside Pakistan and not allow the Pakistani military to dictate its terms.

Ambassador Haqqani is strongly sympathetic to Washington’s position(practically their servant). Last year, he played a major role in convincing Benazir Bhutto to make public statements accepting U.S. boots on Pakistani soil and American access to Dr. A. Q. Khan. Before his present assignment, Mr. Haqqani has been closely linked to the same hawkish U.S. think tanks that are the biggest advocates of U.S. military intervention in Pakistan. The elected government’s soft position on U.S. attacks has a lot to do with the work of Ambassador Haqqani and another American figure—Zalmay Khalilzad, President Zardari’s ‘secret’ American adviser.

It is a foregone conclusion; based on Ambassador Haqqani’s intrusive record at the Pakistan Foreign Office in the past four months, that he has a direct link to the bizarre statement by Prime Minister Gilani [“Pakistan can’t wage war with U.S.”-Sept 12] and the series of statements made by Defense Minister Ahmed Mukhtar that justified U.S. attacks against Pakistan [“U.S. drones fly too high, we can’t attack them” and “If U.S. attacks, there must be a reason.”].

Pakistan’s Options

If Pakistani military tries to block U.S. military violations, there is a possibility of limited armed conflict between Pakistani and American soldiers on the Afghan border.

Gen. Kayani’s warning of retaliation did help NATO make a public statement that it does not share Washington’s idea of taking the war to Pakistan. However, no one in Islamabad is convinced that NATO will remain neutral in the event that U.S. military tries to engage Pakistan in a conflict.

In case of conflict, Washington is expected to signal to India to open a front in the east in order to divert Pakistani military resources. Intelligence assets that have been planted inside Pakistan with links in Afghanistan will be activated and will possibly try to ratchet up the campaign of public terror in order to spread chaos and exert pressure on Pakistan military. More Chinese targets can be attacked or killed in order to strain ties between Beijing and Islamabad.

But Pakistan is not without options. In fact, the Pakistani position is stronger than what it appears to be. Islamabad can activate old contacts with a resurgent and rising Afghan Taliban inside Afghanistan. The entire Pakistani tribal belt will seize this opportunity to fight the Americans. The attempts to divide Pakistanis along sectarian lines have failed and the Americans cannot expect to repeat what they did in Iraq in March 2003. Pakistanis will fight and resist. There is a possibility that Pakistani tribesmen could cross the border in large numbers using secret routes to dodge aerial bombardment and join the Afghan Taliban and find their way to Kabul.

The misguided ‘Pakistani Taliban’ who appear to be operating as an extension of U.S. military in Afghanistan will also come under pressure of the tribesmen and will be forced to target the occupation forces instead of fighting the Pakistani government.

Washington might be tempted by the idea of signaling to the Indians to engage Pakistan from the east. But the fact is that the Indian army has a dangerous rebellion on its hands in the valley. By opening a front with Pakistan, Indian soldiers will have to protect their front and rear simultaneously. The Pakistani military has contingency plans for dealing with hostilities on two fronts.

U.S. soldiers also will not have it easy if they enter a conflict. This is why the Americans are hoping they will scare Pakistanis into submission. Pakistan’s economic crisis is being exploited. Pakistani officials say that IMF and World Bank have received U.S. instructions to go hard on Pakistan. Washington is also trying to convince Gulf Arabs not to support Pakistan this time.

But the situation between Islamabad and Washington does not have to come to this. Islamabad can help tip the scales in Washington against the hawks who want a war with Pakistan. Not all parts of the U.S. government accept this idea and this must be exploited. Pakistan must make it clear that it will retaliate. Statements like that of Prime Minister Gilani must be stopped. His statement virtually damaged the psychological effect of army chief’s warning.

U.S. military posturing aside, Washington has recently seen a string of diplomatic defeats. Russia has cut American meddling in Georgia to size. In Iraq, a coalition of Shiite parties is forcing the Americans to leave the country. And both Bolivia and Venezuela have expelled U.S. ambassadors, and, in Bolivia’s case, the world has suddenly become alert to Washington’s intrusive meddling in that country’s domestic politics and the role of the U.S. ambassador in fueling separatism. Which is not very different from the U.S. role inside Pakistan, where U.S. diplomats have created political chaos by directly engaging the politicians, coupled with creating and feeding insurgencies to weaken the country.

The only way to entrap Pakistan now is to either orchestrate a spectacular terrorist attack in U.S. and blame it on Pakistan, or to assassinate a high profile personality inside Pakistan and generate domestic strife that will make it impossible for the military to resist U.S. attacks.

© 2007-2008. All rights reserved. AhmedQuraishi.com.

Meet Pakistan’s most feared militant Baitullah Mehsud

Meeting Pakistan’s most feared militant

Baitullah Mehsud, who heads the loose grouping of militants known as the Pakistan Taleban, has given a rare press conference to invited journalists. They included the BBC’s Syed Shoaib Hasan.

Baitullah Mehsud ‘holds to ceasefire’ In pictures: The Taleban’s stronghold in Pakistan

“I hope your trip has been enjoyable so far,” our host asks us.

Ordinary garden tea party talk except for two things – the venue and the host.

We are in Pakistan’s tribal region of South Waziristan. Our host is the region’s top Islamic militant, Baitullah Mehsud.

Commander Mehsud has recently been named in Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world. Newsweek has labelled him “more dangerous than Osama bin Laden”.

President Pervez Musharraf accused him last year of being responsible for dozens of suicide attacks which led Pakistan into emergency rule.

The CIA says he was the brains behind the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minster Benazir Bhutto.

With such a reputation, it is not surprising that there is a sense of awe as this short, plump, bearded man greets us.

Breakneck speed

We are part of a group of journalists invited by Mr Mehsud to his stronghold to see for ourselves “the atrocities committed by the Pakistan army in its recent campaign in the area”.

Pakistan’s army and pro-Taleban militants led by Baitullah Mehsud have recently agreed to a ceasefire after being locked in battle for most of 2007.

Baitullah Mehsud is reluctant to be photographed

The ceasefire is part of attempts to secure a lasting peace in the area.

Earlier this month the army brought in journalists to show their successes against the militants in January.

Now it’s the militants’ turn to have their say.

Our journey with the Taleban had begun with a long wait for them at a petrol station in the town of Mir Ali, just inside North Waziristan.

A caravan with over half a dozen vehicles took off, travelling at breakneck speed through beautiful valleys and towering mountains.

Our escorts were on their guard, the speed is as much for security as for safety.

We saw very little of the heavy presence of troops in the area that the government talks about.

We did see plenty of abandoned check posts and bunkers destroyed by the Taleban.

In the town of Makeen in South Waziristan we switched to four-wheel drives.

Our destination was the district of Sararogha, very much the heart of Taleban territory.

Havoc

It was dark when we finally arrived at a madrassa (religious school) high up on the mountains where we stayed in a nearby house for the night.

The next morning we headed down to the valley below to be shown the damage caused by bombing raids carried out by military aircraft.

The villages were a scene of havoc, with almost all the houses having suffered some damage.

Some have been completely destroyed, leaving their owners homeless.

Buildings damaged by air force bombing

“I have no money left now,” says Ali Khan, a local of Golrama village in the Kotkai area.

Mr Khan’s house was bombed by jets after he had fled the fighting with his family.

“I worked in the UAE since 1980 to build this… all my life’s savings.”

“There are no Taleban in my house, why did the government do this?”

Many families who fled during the intense fighting have been coming home to similar scenes.

Our last stop was Spinkai market which is now a mile long stretch of rubble.

Angry shopkeepers and irate locals line up to express their anger.

“The place they said was used to train suicide bombers is, in fact, a flour mill,” says Haji Khan, whose shop was also destroyed.

“We were all traders here and now our means of earning a living is gone.”

As he complains, a line of vehicles passes us on its way back to the nearby hamlets and villages.

The ceasefire, it seems, is already starting to take effect.

No choice

But will it last, or go the way other deals have gone before?

The army says it has dismantled the Taleban’s capacity in the region

In our garden meeting, “Amir Sahib” (honoured leader) – as Baitullah Mehsud is affectionately called by his men – smiles and shakes his head when this query is raised.

Around us, dozens of militants armed to the teeth listen intently to their leader.

“The Taleban are committed to their word,” he says.

“The onus is now on the government – whether they hold to their word, or remain in the alliance with the US.”

If that persists, Commander Mehsud says, the militants will have no choice but return to their path of resistance.

“We do not want to fight Pakistan or the army. But if they continue to be slaves to US demands, then we our hands will be forced.

“There can be no deal with the US.”

journalist Syed Saleeem Shazhad of Asia Times online propaganda exposed

journalist Syed Saleeem Shazhad of Asia Times online

propaganda exposed

Recently journalist Syed Saleeem Shazhad of Asia Times online released a video, the video shows Syed Saleem Shazhad interviewing a person who is claiming to be a commander of Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, for the provinces of Nooristan and Kunar. Theunjustmedia forwarded this video to the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan official spokesperson, Zabihuallah Mujahid, after watching the video this is what he had to say.

“In Nooristan and Kunar provinces, we do not have any commander with Ziaur Rahman name, nor do we identify the person in this video, who is alleging to be a commander of Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Islamic Emirate commander for the provinces of Nooristan and Kunar is Malvi Abdul Raheem. Before, any commander or fighter of Islamic Emirate speaks to a journalist, he must first get permission from the Media department of Islamic Emirate, also any journalist who enters Afghanistan must first get permission from the Islamic Emirate, cause more than sixty percent of Afghanistan in under the control of Islamic Emirate.

Syed Saleeem Shazhad who is claiming in this video to have travel in different parts of Afghanistan, Islamic Emirate, rejects this claim of his. The fake commander in this video also claims that there is money on his head, here we like to clear out that all commanders of Islamic Emirate on who’s heads the American invaders and its allies have put up money, Islamic Emirate has their name list and this fake commander name is not on that list.” Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan official spokesperson Zabihuallah Mujahid

Theunjustmedia is puzzled at why would this journalist make a video and then tell the world that it is the Taliban, what is he trying to achieve with this lie, who is paying him to lie to the world about the Taliban and to spread information which is not true. We advice the concern citizens of this world to be aware of Syed Saleeem Shazhad who is a deceitful journalist, who’s actions are tarnishing the noble profession of journalism.

Please forward this information to as many people as you can, also those websites and forums which posted this fake Taliban video, please let your readers know that this video is not of the Taliban movement but a propaganda. Thank You

SEE VIDEO HERE

A shattering moment in America’s fall from power

The global financial crisis will see the US falter in the same way the Soviet Union did when the Berlin Wall came down. The era of American dominance is over

John Gray

Our gaze might be on the markets melting down, but the upheaval we are experiencing is more than a financial crisis, however large. Here is a historic geopolitical shift, in which the balance of power in the world is being altered irrevocably. The era of American global leadership, reaching back to the Second World War, is over.

You can see it in the way America’s dominion has slipped away in its own backyard, with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez taunting and ridiculing the superpower with impunity. Yet the setback of America’s standing at the global level is even more striking. With the nationalisation of crucial parts of the financial system, the American free-market creed has self-destructed while countries that retained overall control of markets have been vindicated. In a change as far-reaching in its implications as the fall of the Soviet Union, an entire model of government and the economy has collapsed.

Ever since the end of the Cold War, successive American administrations have lectured other countries on the necessity of sound finance. Indonesia, Thailand, Argentina and several African states endured severe cuts in spending and deep recessions as the price of aid from the International Monetary Fund, which enforced the American orthodoxy. China in particular was hectored relentlessly on the weakness of its banking system. But China’s success has been based on its consistent contempt for Western advice and it is not Chinese banks that are currently going bust. How symbolic yesterday that Chinese astronauts take a spacewalk while the US Treasury Secretary is on his knees.

Despite incessantly urging other countries to adopt its way of doing business, America has always had one economic policy for itself and another for the rest of the world. Throughout the years in which the US was punishing countries that departed from fiscal prudence, it was borrowing on a colossal scale to finance tax cuts and fund its over-stretched military commitments. Now, with federal finances critically dependent on continuing large inflows of foreign capital, it will be the countries that spurned the American model of capitalism that will shape America’s economic future.

Which version of the bail out of American financial institutions cobbled up by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke is finally adopted is less important than what the bail out means for America’s position in the world. The populist rant about greedy banks that is being loudly ventilated in Congress is a distraction from the true causes of the crisis. The dire condition of America’s financial markets is the result of American banks operating in a free-for-all environment that these same American legislators created. It is America’s political class that, by embracing the dangerously simplistic ideology of deregulation, has responsibility for the present mess.

In present circumstances, an unprecedented expansion of government is the only means of averting a market catastrophe. The consequence, however, will be that America will be even more starkly dependent on the world’s new rising powers. The federal government is racking up even larger borrowings, which its creditors may rightly fear will never be repaid. It may well be tempted to inflate these debts away in a surge of inflation that would leave foreign investors with hefty losses. In these circumstances, will the governments of countries that buy large quantities of American bonds, China, the Gulf States and Russia, for example, be ready to continue supporting the dollar’s role as the world’s reserve currency? Or will these countries see this as an opportunity to tilt the balance of economic power further in their favour? Either way, the control of events is no longer in American hands.

The fate of empires is very often sealed by the interaction of war and debt. That was true of the British Empire, whose finances deteriorated from the First World War onwards, and of the Soviet Union. Defeat in Afghanistan and the economic burden of trying to respond to Reagan’s technically flawed but politically extremely effective Star Wars programme were vital factors in triggering the Soviet collapse. Despite its insistent exceptionalism, America is no different. The Iraq War and the credit bubble have fatally undermined America’s economic primacy. The US will continue to be the world’s largest economy for a while longer, but it will be the new rising powers that, once the crisis is over, buy up what remains intact in the wreckage of America’s financial system.

There has been a good deal of talk in recent weeks about imminent economic armageddon. In fact, this is far from being the end of capitalism. The frantic scrambling that is going on in Washington marks the passing of only one type of capitalism – the peculiar and highly unstable variety that has existed in America over the last 20 years. This experiment in financial laissez-faire has imploded.While the impact of the collapse will be felt everywhere, the market economies that resisted American-style deregulation will best weather the storm. Britain, which has turned itself into a gigantic hedge fund, but of a kind that lacks the ability to profit from a downturn, is likely to be especially badly hit.

The irony of the post-Cold War period is that the fall of communism was followed by the rise of another utopian ideology. In American and Britain, and to a lesser extent other Western countries, a type of market fundamentalism became the guiding philosophy. The collapse of American power that is underway is the predictable upshot. Like the Soviet collapse, it will have large geopolitical repercussions. An enfeebled economy cannot support America’s over-extended military commitments for much longer. Retrenchment is inevitable and it is unlikely to be gradual or well planned.

Meltdowns on the scale we are seeing are not slow-motion events. They are swift and chaotic, with rapidly spreading side-effects. Consider Iraq. The success of the surge, which has been achieved by bribing the Sunnis, while acquiescing in ongoing ethnic cleansing, has produced a condition of relative peace in parts of the country. How long will this last, given that America’s current level of expenditure on the war can no longer be sustained?

An American retreat from Iraq will leave Iran the regional victor. How will Saudi Arabia respond? Will military action to forestall Iran acquiring nuclear weapons be less or more likely? China’s rulers have so far been silent during the unfolding crisis. Will America’s weakness embolden them to assert China’s power or will China continue its cautious policy of ‘peaceful rise’? At present, none of these questions can be answered with any confidence. What is evident is that power is leaking from the US at an accelerating rate. Georgia showed Russia redrawing the geopolitical map, with America an impotent spectator.

Outside the US, most people have long accepted that the development of new economies that goes with globalisation will undermine America’s central position in the world. They imagined that this would be a change in America’s comparative standing, taking place incrementally over several decades or generations. Today, that looks an increasingly unrealistic assumption.

Having created the conditions that produced history’s biggest bubble, America’s political leaders appear unable to grasp the magnitude of the dangers the country now faces. Mired in their rancorous culture wars and squabbling among themselves, they seem oblivious to the fact that American global leadership is fast ebbing away. A new world is coming into being almost unnoticed, where America is only one of several great powers, facing an uncertain future it can no longer shape.

Pakistan Emulating US, Tribals Their “Blackwater”

Pakistan Emulating US,

Tribals Their “Blackwater”

Continuous making of new factions

Now since last month Pak Army has adopted same strategy which US adopted in Korea and Vietnam, provide arms and divide local peoples, locals are pushed to burn homes and kill their brethren Pushtoon’s. It is another mistake which army is doing after creating war lords in Afghan war, look with another angle in opinion of liberal fascists and PPP that entire population of that area is Deobandi, Ahle Hadis or Wahabi, and Wahabi doctrine is biggest danger for neo-Imperialism, it means one group of Wahabi’s is removed from the list but bigger Wahabi group is emerging with sophisticated weapons.

It mean army is again using proxy warriors for their safety, Pakistan army and PPP along with ANP are not silly that those did not understand tribal culture, blood is blood, an unending war is being ignited. It will suit to state till victims will keep dyeing on the name of Pakistan, (their sons, daughters, mothers and children’s are dying in barbaric actions), so humans have limit to tolerate and there is a limit of patriotism.

See reports of only September 27, 2008 how army is creating new war lords. (Please search reports of previous days on internet)

1. 600-strong lashkar assisting police in rural Peshawar

2. Kalla Khel lashker to impose Rs 5 million fine, demolish houses of Taliban backers
The Kalla Khel tribes in the Khyber Agency formed a 300-strong lashkar against the Taliban in the Bara area.

3. A Zakha Khel tribe jirga announced to form a lashkar against the Taliban after Eid separately.

4. The political administration warned the tribesmen it would block the Ziarai Road if they fail to stop the militant group Lashkar-e-Islam from using the road

1. Another tribe takes up arms against militants
   BARA: Another tribe in Khyber Agency Friday raised lashkar (armed volunteer squad) to purge the area of miscreants. Elders of the Kalakhel decided to raise an armed lashkar to assist security forces in maintaining law and order in the area, also decided to demolish the houses of those found sheltering the militants. The jirga also decided to impose a fine of five millions on those violating the agreement.
   It is decided that the volunteers would patrol the area alongside security forces. They also decided that the personnel of the armed lashkar would also be deployed at the security check posts. (1)
2. Shafeerullah Khan, political agent, Bajaur Agency, briefed the media about the role of tribal Lashkars of Salarzai and Utmankhel tribesmen against the militants. The elders of Salarzai and Utmankhel tribes also informed the media about the activities of their respective armed Lashkars against the militants. (2)
3. Gen Tariq claimed that over 1,000 militants had been killed in the operation so far, in which five were important foreign and local militant commanders. The foreigners killed in the operation belonged to various countries, including Egypt, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and other Arab states, he added. (2)
4. A tribal Lashkar comprising more than 3,000 armed volunteers on Thursday set all the three main Taliban hideouts on fire after chasing the militants associated with the banned Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) out of their area in Jamrud Tehsil of the Khyber Agency. The elders leading their sub-tribes were Malak Imdad, Malak Fazle Mullah, Haji Bacha Gul, Rozi Gul and Haji Aziz. (3)

So this is storey of “our on war’ and “proxy warriors” of PPP and Pak army. When Pak army was going to involve in civil war all leading scholars requested them not to do so, now those are using tanks, helicopters and jets on unarmed civilians, if Pak army claims that strength of TTP is only 1000 then it a matter of laugh that three division army is fighting with them, it looks that after 1965 by passing 30 years army has forget meanings of war, so it is their equivalent to second world war. Proxy warriors who are protecting them are a sign of private army operating at Iraq or Afghanistan under protection of war lords.

We will wait for new war lords when those will be declared Wahabi and Lashkar e Jhangvi or Saudi financed. It will not take so long to wait. PPP is nothing except a bunch of beneficiaries who were waiting since long to fill their stomach, however their leaders separately saved looted money, but it is duty of Pak army to think patiently whether current genocide of Pushtoon’s and Baloch’s is justifiable.

THE CABLE CUTTERS HAVE RETURNED

Damage to fibre optic cable affects Internet

LAHORE: Internet services throughout Pakistan were affected on Saturday after an undersea fibre optic cable, connecting Pakistan to the rest of the world, was cut near Egypt, Geo News reported. The channel quoted sources as saying Internet traffic was temporarily moved to a SMW 3 cable. Internet users faced hours of disruption. Ali Qadir Gilani, a spokesman for the Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited, told the channel later that the submarine cable had been restored and the system was fully operational now. daily times monitor

TIME FOR A NEW CIA BOGEYMAN? Baitullah Mehsud seriously ill.

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Baitullah again seriously ill

Updated at

Sunday, September 28, 2008 By Mazhar Tufail PESHAWAR: Baitullah Mahsud, the head of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), has once again fallen seriously ill, leading to convergence of the top leadership of the TTP at Makeen area of South Waziristan Agency, sources told The News on Saturday evening. The sources said Baitullah Mahsud, who is suffering from high level of diabetes, had once again suffered a serious attack, causing a lot of concerns among the TTP leaders. “This time also he seems to have gone into coma,” the sources said. “Militant commanders have rushed to Makeen after receiving the information about bad health condition of their top commander (Amir). Last time the TTP Shura meeting was called after Mahsud went into coma. His condition was reportedly so bad that the meeting was about to nominate a new Amir. However, he regained consciousness and made a swift recovery,” the sources further said. �This time, however, his condition may be more serious as his kidneys have failed because of the high level of sugar.�

Digesting the Marriott blast

Some facts about the Marriott Hotel blast are coming out gradually as the scene of destruction is carefully examined and videos from the security cameras are scrutinised. More and more people are put off by the concept of suicide-bombing and are criticising it. The fifty-odd clerics who had issued the fatwa against it in 2005 — but were made to cower later by more aggressive clerics — are making their voice heard again. The Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) of Baitullah Mehsud in South Waziristan is reluctant to own it because of this change in public opinion.

But there is a difference of media opinion, mostly mutually intolerant, over the direction of the war to which the blast points. Unfortunately, the side that refuses to face reality is the one which says “it is not our war”, and relies on the now quite old and unacceptable pan-Islamist position that whatever Muslim extremists do is not “action” but “reaction” to some perceived injustice. What these people want everyone to believe is that the real unjust “action” is undertaken by someone else. This approach is supposed to decide the moral question of what is or isn’t “wrong doing”. Their argument is: what Muslims undertake is “reaction” and therefore doesn’t come in the category of “doing” something wrong, therefore there can be no moral judgement made on it. In this line of thinking, under all moral and criminal codes there is either absolution or mitigation for “reaction”. The question of looking for “causes” comes next. Since the Muslims have not “acted”, the argument goes, they have not caused anything to happen, hence the West and the United States have to sit down and admit to the criminality of their actions, and once they have done so, and properly compensated the Muslims for their past actions, the problem of violence and terrorism will go away automatically. Thus all moral obligations on the part of Muslims are dispensed with nicely.

But the blast at the Marriott has jolted this catechism and caused a rift. This rift undermines the unity among those who say “it is not our war”. The message behind this slogan is not a simple one. It has many ramifications and each has to be studied separately. On the face of it, the slogan gained strength after the “land invasion” of the CIA in South Waziristan earlier this month which caused the Pakistan Army and the PPP government to react in severe protest. The first message is that innocent Pakistanis die because the government is involved in the wrong war. The message has been repeated so much that most Pakistanis now believe that if Pakistan were to pull out of the “American war on terror”, innocent Muslims will no longer be killed.

But let us ask what will happen if Pakistan pulls out of the “war on terror”. The presumption, which is not spelled out, is that once this happens there will be no contradiction between Al Qaeda and its foot soldiers in FATA on the one hand and the state of Pakistan on the other. But what about the well established fact that Al Qaeda has a programme of “Islamic reform” that is global and which will start by converting Pakistan into a state based on Al Qaeda’s radical caliphate which will be the base area of its declared war on the US and the West? If we accept the assumption that our military capacity is not equal to engaging Al Qaeda in a civil war-like conflict, the unspoken assumption is that the Muslims of Pakistan will and should accept the Al Qaeda philosophy as “true faith” and allow the transformation of the state to Al Qaeda’s liking and standards. Of course, the “liberals” will be eliminated in the new order and this “wish” is apparent from the term “liberal fascists” that is being used these days in some reactionary Urdu columns.

This “it-is-not-our-war” group is clueless about what the Americans and their European allies — and others stretching as far eastward as Japan — can and may do after they no longer have to regard us as an ally but face as an ally of their enemies. Why doesn’t this group make any reference to the alternative strategy — “eat grass honourably?” — in the presumed post-pullout phase? Who will face up to the trespasses made by the NATO-ISAF forces into Pakistan? How will trespasses by Al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban in safe havens in FATA violate our sovereignty any less? Are we ready to trust the security of the state to Al Qaeda who will, if all goes according to its plan, of course be in charge of the armed forces and will control our nuclear capability? In fact it is this thought about nuclear weapons that inclines the “it-is-not-our-war” club to pre-emptively allege that the Americans are in Afghanistan to “grab our nuclear weapons”. But surely the global consensus on taking out the nuclear weapons acquired by Al Qaeda will develop much more dangerously than it is developing now.

Abandoning the war against terrorism is no solution to the problem of Al Qaeda and its radical global agenda. Those who propose it are now faced with the growing objection to the killing of innocent citizens. And they cannot convincingly argue that, after we have pulled out, either the Americans will stop attacking Al Qaeda or Al Qaeda will stop attacking us if the state of Pakistan does not capitulate to it. *

Six years in Guantanamo

Robert Fisk

Sami al-Haj, an Al Jazeera cameraman, was beaten, abused and humiliated in the name of the war on terror. He tells our correspondent about his struggle to rebuild a shattered life Thursday, 25 September 2008 Sami al-Haj walks with pain on his steel crutch; almost six years in the nightmare of Guantanamo have taken their toll on the Al Jazeera journalist and, now in the safety of a hotel in the small Norwegian town of Lillehammer, he is a figure of both dignity and shame. The Americans told him they were sorry when they eventually freed him this year – after the beatings he says he suffered, and the force-feeding, the humiliations and interrogations by British, American and Canadian intelligence officers – and now he hopes one day he’ll be able to walk without his stick. The TV cameraman, 38, was never charged with any crime, nor was he put on trial; his testimony makes it clear that he was held in three prisons for six-and-a-half years – repeatedly beaten and force-fed – not because he was a suspected “terrorist” but because he refused to become an American spy. From the moment Sami al-Haj arrived at Guantanamo, flown there from the brutal US prison camp at Kandahar, his captors demanded that he work for them. The cruelty visited upon him – constantly interrupted by American admissions of his innocence – seemed designed to turnal-Haj into a US intelligence “asset”. “We know you are innocent, you are here by mistake,” he says he was told in more than 200 interrogations. “All they wanted was for me to be a spy for them. They said they would give me US citizenship, that my wife and child could live in America, that they would protect me. But I said: ‘I will not do this – first of all because I’m a journalist and this is not my job and because I fear for myself and my family. In war, I can be wounded and I can die or survive. But if I work with you, al-Qa’ida will eliminate me. And if I don’t work with you, you will kill me’.” The grotesque saga began for al-Haj on 15 December, 2001, when he was on his way from the Pakistani capital Islamabad to Kandahar in Afghanistan with Sadah al-Haq, a fellow correspondent from the Arab satellite TV channel, to cover the new regional government. At least 70 other journalists were on their way through the Pakistani border post at Chaman, but an officer stopped al-Haj. “He told me there was a paper from the Pakistani intelligence service for my arrest. My name was misspelled, my passport number was incorrect, it said I was born in 1964 – the right date is 1969. I said I had renewed my visa in Islamabad and asked why, if I was wanted, they had not arrested me there?” Sami al-Haj speaks slowly and with care, each detail of his suffering and of others’ suffering of equal importance to him. He still cannot believe that he is free, able to attend a conference in Norway, to return to his new job as news producer at Al Jazeera, to live once more with his Azeri wife Asma and their eight-year old son Mohamed; when Sami al-Haj disappeared down the black hole of America’s secret prisons the boy was only 14 months’ old. Al-Haj’s story has a familiar ring to anyone who has investigated the rendition of prisoners from Pakistan to US bases in Afghanistan and Guantanamo. His aircraft flew for an hour and a half and then landed to collect more captives – this may have been in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital – before flying on to the big American base at Bagram. “We arrived in the early hours of the morning and they took the shackles off our feet and pushed us out of the plane. They hit me and pushed me down on the asphalt. We heard screams and dogs barking. I collapsed with my right leg under me, and I felt the ligaments tearing. When I fell, the soldiers started treading on me. First, they walked on my back, then – when they saw me looking at my leg – they started kicking my leg. One soldier shouted at me: ‘Why did you come to fight Americans?’ I had a number – I was No 35 and this is how they addressed me, as a number – and the first American shouted at me: ‘You filmed Bin Laden.’ I said I did not film Bin Laden but that I was a journalist. I again gave my name, my age, my nationality.” After 16 days at Bagram, another aircraft took him to the US base at Kandahar where on arrival the prisoners were again made to lie on the ground. “We were cursed – they said ‘fuck your mother’ – and again the Americans walked on our backs. Why? Why did they do this? I was taken to a tent and stripped and they pulled hairs out of my beard. They photographed the pupils of my eyes. A doctor found blood on my back and asked me why it was there. I asked him how he thought it was there?” The same dreary round of interrogations recommenced – he was now “Prisoner No 448” – and yet again, al-Haj says he was told he was being held by mistake. “Then another man – he was in civilian clothes and I think he was from Egyptian intelligence – wanted to know who was the “leader” of the detainees who was with me. The Americans asked: ‘Who is the most respected of the prisoners? Who killed [Ahmed Shah] Massoud ([the leader of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance Afghan militia]?’ I said this was not my business and an American soldier said: ‘Co-operate with us, and you will be released.’ They meant I had to work for them. There was another man who spoke perfect English. I thought he was British. He was young, good-looking, about 35-years-old, no moustache, blond hair, very polite in a white shirt, no tie. He brought me chocolate – it was Kit Kat—and I was so hungry I could have eaten the wrapping.” On 13 June, al-Haj was put on board a jet aircraft. He was given yet another prison number – No 345 – and once more his head was covered with a black bag. He was forced to take two tablets before he was gagged and his bag replaced by goggles with the eye-pieces painted black. The flight to Guantanamo took 12 to 14 hours. “They took us on a boat from the Guantanamo runways to the prison, a journey that took an hour.” Al-Haj was escorted to a medical clinic and then at once to another interrogation. “They said they’d compared my answers with my original statement and one of them said: ‘You are here by mistake. You will be released. You will be the first to be released.’ They gave me a picture of my son, which had been taken from my wallet. They asked me if I needed anything. I asked for books. One said he had a copy of One Thousand and One Nights in Arabic. He copied it for me. During this interview, they asked me: ‘Why did you talk to the British intelligence man so much in Kandahar?’ I said I didn’t know if he was from British intelligence. They said he was. “Then after two months, two more British men came to see me. They said they were from UK intelligence. They wanted to know who I knew, who I’d met. I said I couldn’t help them.” The Americans later referred to one of them as “Martin” and they did not impress al-Haj’s senior interrogator at Guantanamo, Stephen Rodriguez, who wanted again to seek al-Haj’s help. “He said to me: ‘Our job is to prevent “things” happening. I’ll give you a chance to think about this. You can have US citizenship, your family will be looked after, you’ll have a villa in the US, we’ll look after your son’s education, you’ll have a bank account’. He had brought with him some Arabic magazines and told me I could read them. In those 10 minutes, I felt I had gone back to being a human being again. Then soldiers came to take me back to my cell – and the magazines were taken away.” By the summer of 2003, al-Haj was receiving other strange visitors. “Two Canadian intelligence officers came and they showed me lots of photos of people and wanted to know if I recognised them. I knew none of them.” In more than 200 interrogations, al-Haj was asked about his employers the Al Jazeera television channel in Qatar. In one session, he says another American said to him: “After you get out of here, al-Qa’ida will recruit you and we want to know who you meet. You could become an analyst, we can train you to store information, to sketch people. There is a link between Al Jazeera and al-Qa’ida. How much does al-Qa’ida pay Al Jazeera?” “I said: ‘I will not do this – first of all because I’m a journalist and this is not my job. Also because I fear for my life and my family.'” Many beatings followed – not from the interrogators but from other US guards. “They would slam my head into the ground, cut off all my hair. They put me into the isolation block – we called it the ‘November Block’ – for two years. They made my life torture. I wanted to bring it to an end. There were continual punishments without reason. In interrogations, they would tighten the shackles so it hurt. They hadn’t allowed me to receive letters for 10 months – even then, they erased words in them, even from my son. Again, Rodriguez demanded I work for the Americans.” In January of last year, Sami al-Haj started a hunger strike – and began the worst months of his imprisonment. “I wanted my rights in the civil courts. The US Supreme Court said I should have my rights. I wanted the right to worship properly. They let me go 30 days without food – then I was tied to a chair with metal shackles and they force-fed me. They would insert a tube through my nose into my stomach. They chose large tubes so that it hurt and sometimes it went into the lung. They used the same tube they had used on other prisoners with muck still on it and then they pumped more food into me than it was possible to absorb. They told us the people administering this were doctors – but they were torturers, not doctors. They forced 24 cans of food into us so we threw up and then gave us laxatives to defecate. My pancreas was affected and I had stomach problems. Then they would forbid us from drinking water.” Al-Haj says he completed 480 days of hunger strike by which time his medical condition had deteriorated and he was bleeding from his anus. That was the moment his interrogators decided to release him. “There were new interrogators now, but they tried once more with me. ‘Will you work with us?’ they asked me again. I said ‘no’ again – but I thanked them for their years of hospitality and for giving me the chance to live among them as a journalist. I said this way I could get the truth to the outside world, that I was not in a hurry to get out because there were a lot more reporters’ stories in there.” They said: ‘You think we did you a favour?’ I said: ‘You turned me from zero into a hero.’ They said: ‘We are 100 per cent sure that Bin Laden will be in touch with you…’ That night, I was taken to the plane. The interrogators were watching me, hiding behind a tennis net. I waved at them, those four pairs of eyes.” The British authorities have never admitted talking to Sami al-Haj. Nor have the Canadians. Al Jazeera, whose headquarters George Bush wanted to bomb after the invasion of Iraq, kept a job open for Sami al-Haj. But Prisoner No 345 never received an official apology from the Americans. He says he does not expect one.

The Capitalist Conspiracy by G. Edward Griffin

The Capitalist Conspiracy: An Inside View of International Banking

by G. Edward Griffin

CFR Council Foreign Relations – 9/11 New World Order by 2012

The Capitalist Conspiracy – Conclusion

ISRAEL’S SACRED TERRORISM E-BOOK

By Livia Rokach,  – Third Edition

A study based on Moshe Sharett’s Personal Diary

WARNING: GRAPHIC! Controlled Demolition IN PROGRESS

WARNING: GRAPHIC! Controlled Demolition

IN PROGRESS —

WaMu implodes, JPMorgan devours carcass

As part of the most far-reaching and spectacular controlled demolition the world has ever seen, one of the biggest banks in America just collapsed as JPMorgan Chase meticulously picks the meat off its rotting carcass.

As the debate over a $700 billion bank bailout rages on in Washington, one of the nation’s largest has collapsed under the weight of its enormous bad bets on the mortgage market.

Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. seized WaMu on Thursday, and then sold the thrift’s banking assets to JPMorgan Chase Co. for $1.9 billion.

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JPMorgan Chase said it was not acquiring any senior unsecured debt, subordinated debt, and preferred stock of WaMu’s banks, or any assets or liabilities of the holding company, Washington Mutual Inc. JPMorgan also said it will not take on the lawsuits facing the holding company.

Notice that they say NOTHING about WaMu’s senior SECURED debt, which Chase is no doubt devouring whole like the rapacious vultures that they are…

JPMorgan Chase said the acquisition will give it 5,400 branches in 23 states, and that it plans to close less than 10 percent of the two companies’ branches.

Let this sink into your brain for a moment.

They’re aquiring none of its liabilities and all of its assets for a mere $1.9 billion dollars.

$1,900,000,000 divided by 5400 branches is approximately $351, 851.85.

That’s an entire fucking branch of a commercial bank for less than the price of a one family semi-attached home in a middle class neighborhood in NYC! PLUS – they’re most definitely getting all their secured assets for pennies on the dollar as a bonus – no doubt worth billions!

But that’s not all – they get all of WaMu’s deposits!!!

They get EVERYTHING worth anything and to top it off – they’re “buying” all this using OPM (other people’s money)!

After all, Chase is a BANK too!

Their so-called money is OUR deposits! that they force US to guarantee!!! (see the FDIC!!!)

What does this all mean?

This comes as no surprise to those of us who understand what the game is all about.

If on the other hand, your head is spinning from watching these so-called ‘financial giants’ drop like flies one after another, the following sentence goes a long way to explain it all…

The seizure by the government means shareholders’ equity in WaMu was wiped out. The deal leaves private equity investors including the firm TPG Capital, which gave WaMu a cash infusion totaling $7 billion this spring, on the sidelines empty handed.

The moneylenders have won again.

Anyone and everyone who assumes risk in the market – i.e., the average working Joe – gets wiped out, while moneylenders get their money PLUS interest (ten times over) GUARANTEED.

Herein lies both the problem and its solution.

Nothing will change unless and until Americans and the world learn that the misallocation of risk created by the private creation of fiat dollars and the accompanying extortion of interest on this monopoly money is the root cause of our financial problems.

China banks told to halt lending to US banks

BEIJING, Sept 25 (Reuters) – Chinese regulators have told domestic banks to stop interbank lending to U.S. financial institutions to prevent possible losses during the financial crisis, the South China Morning Post reported on Thursday.

The Hong Kong newspaper cited unidentified industry sources as saying the instruction from the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) applied to interbank lending of all currencies to U.S. banks but not to banks from other countries.

“The decree appears to be Beijing’s first attempt to erect defences against the deepening U.S. financial meltdown after the mainland’s major lenders reported billions of U.S. dollars in exposure to the credit crisis,” the SCMP said.

A spokesman for the CBRC had no immediate comment.

Tribesmen chase Taliban out of Jamrud area

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Friday, September 26, 2008 By Qaiser Khan Afridi PESHAWAR: A tribal Lashkar comprising more than 3,000 armed volunteers on Thursday set all the three main Taliban hideouts on fire after chasing the militants associated with the banned Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) out of their area in Jamrud Tehsil of the Khyber Agency. The Mullagori tribesmen claimed to have taken control of the hideouts after an exchange of fire, in which they also arrested five Taliban, three of them who were wounded. They also captured three vehicles of the militants, torching one of them and handing over the other two vehicles to the political administration. The decision to burn down militant positions was taken in the second round of Jirga headed by Haji Abdul Manan at Marble Chowk where armed tribesmen from all the sub-tribes of the Mullagori were present. The elders leading their sub-tribes were Malak Imdad, Malak Fazle Mullah, Haji Bacha Gul, Rozi Gul and Haji Aziz. “Yes, we successfully purged the area of the militants. Had we not evicted them from the area, the military would have launched an operation which would have taken the lives of hundreds of innocent people, as is the case in other areas,” Haji Abdul Manan, the head of the Jirga, told The News. He said they had torched all the three hideouts, Murad Danda, Zaga mountain and Tora Topai, after a gun-battle for almost one-and-a-half hour. “There were some 80 armed militants who could not face our 3,000 armed volunteers,” he said and vowed that in future, such elements would not be allowed to carry out activities in Mullagori area. He went on to say that the Jirga had warned the local tribesmen against sheltering Taliban and those violating the Jirga decision would be expelled from the agency and their homes would be demolished. Further, he said the Jirga had also decided to impose Rs 1 million fine on those found violating the verdict. During the gun-battle, the tribesmen had to suffer loss of millions of rupees, he said, adding that now they would provide support to the government against the militants. “It is our moral and religious obligation to defend our area and not to let anyone sabotage the peace of Mullagori,” Manan asserted. Meanwhile, 15 police vehicles cordoned off the settled area from Shagai to Warsak to prevent the movement of Taliban. Reports said some of the Taliban moved to the Mohmand Agency, while others shifted to Mathra village in city suburbs. On Wednesday, the Mullagori tribe gave an ultimatum to the militants to vacate the area in order to avoid military operation and shedding blood of innocent people, but that could not bore positive results.

HAVE THE PEOPLE FINALLY BEEN HEARD? House Dems Shelve Iran ‘Naval Blockade’ Bill

HAVE THE PEOPLE FINALLY BEEN HEARD?

DID WE MAKE THIS DIFFERENCE?

House Dems Shelve Iran ‘Naval Blockade’ Bill for Now

According to the Washington Times the Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives has shelved H.R. 362, fearing that the resolution would provoke a war with Iran.

The bill, authored by Rep. Gary Ackerman (D – NY), urged the President, among other things, to prevent Iran from importing any refined petroleum products and demanded that he initiate an international effort to inspect “all persons, vehicles, ships, planes, trains, and cargo entering or departing Iran.” Though non-binding, the resolution is essentially urging a naval blockade against Iran – an act of war according to international law.

The bill was introduced on May 22, one day after the story broke that then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had urged House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D – CA) to impose a naval blockade on Iran as a way of stopping its uranium enrichment program. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee has endorsed the bill as a way to “stop Iran’s nuclear program.”

Rep. Ackerman claims the bill “is a way to avoid war by using diplomatic, political and economic tools.” He also intends to resubmit the bill for the next Congress, and vowed to have even more signatures then. The current incarnation of the bill had 270 co-sponsors, but the Washington Times reports that several of the original co-sponsors have since withdrawn their signatures.

Why is a U.S. Army brigade being assigned to the “Homeland”?

Glenn Greenwald

(updated below – Update II)

Several bloggers today have pointed to this obviously disturbing article from Army Times, which announces that “beginning Oct. 1 for 12 months, the [1st Brigade Combat Team of the 3rd Infantry Division] will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North” — “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.” The article details:

They’ll learn new skills, use some of the ones they acquired in the war zone and more than likely will not be shot at while doing any of it.They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack. . . .

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.”

The package includes equipment to stand up a hasty road block; spike strips for slowing, stopping or controlling traffic; shields and batons; and, beanbag bullets.

“I was the first guy in the brigade to get Tasered,” said Cloutier, describing the experience as “your worst muscle cramp ever — times 10 throughout your whole body”. . . .

The brigade will not change its name, but the force will be known for the next year as a CBRNE Consequence Management Response Force, or CCMRF (pronounced “sea-smurf”).

For more than 100 years — since the end of the Civil War — deployment of the U.S. military inside the U.S. has been prohibited under The Posse Comitatus Act (the only exceptions being that the National Guard and Coast Guard are exempted, and use of the military on an emergency ad hoc basis is permitted, such as what happened after Hurricane Katrina). Though there have been some erosions of this prohibition over the last several decades (most perniciously to allow the use of the military to work with law enforcement agencies in the “War on Drugs”), the bright line ban on using the U.S. military as a standing law enforcement force inside the U.S. has been more or less honored — until now. And as the Army Times notes, once this particular brigade completes its one-year assignment, “expectations are that another, as yet unnamed, active-duty brigade will take over and that the mission will be a permanent one.”After Hurricane Katrina, the Bush administration began openly agitating for what would be, in essence, a complete elimination of the key prohibitions of the Posse Comitatus Act in order to allow the President to deploy U.S. military forces inside the U.S. basically at will — and, as usual, they were successful as a result of rapid bipartisan compliance with the Leader’s demand (the same kind of compliance that is about to foist a bailout package on the nation). This April, 2007 article by James Bovard in The American Conservative detailed the now-familiar mechanics that led to the destruction of this particular long-standing democratic safeguard:

The Defense Authorization Act of 2006, passed on Sept. 30, empowers President George W. Bush to impose martial law in the event of a terrorist “incident,” if he or other federal officials perceive a shortfall of “public order,” or even in response to antiwar protests that get unruly as a result of government provocations. . . .It only took a few paragraphs in a $500 billion, 591-page bill to raze one of the most important limits on federal power. Congress passed the Insurrection Act in 1807 to severely restrict the president’s ability to deploy the military within the United States. The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 tightened these restrictions, imposing a two-year prison sentence on anyone who used the military within the U.S. without the express permission of Congress. But there is a loophole: Posse Comitatus is waived if the president invokes the Insurrection Act.

Section 1076 of the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007 changed the name of the key provision in the statute book from “Insurrection Act” to “Enforcement of the Laws to Restore Public Order Act.” The Insurrection Act of 1807 stated that the president could deploy troops within the United States only “to suppress, in a State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy.” The new law expands the list to include “natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition” — and such “condition” is not defined or limited. . . .

The story of how Section 1076 became law vivifies how expanding government power is almost always the correct answer in Washington. Some people have claimed the provision was slipped into the bill in the middle of the night. In reality, the administration clearly signaled its intent and almost no one in the media or Congress tried to stop it . . . .

Section 1076 was supported by both conservatives and liberals. Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the ranking Democratic member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, co-wrote the provision along with committee chairman Sen. John Warner (R-Va.). Sen. Ted Kennedy openly endorsed it, and Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), then-chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, was an avid proponent. . . .

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, warned on Sept. 19 that “we certainly do not need to make it easier for Presidents to declare martial law,” but his alarm got no response. Ten days later, he commented in the Congressional Record: “Using the military for law enforcement goes against one of the founding tenets of our democracy.” Leahy further condemned the process, declaring that it “was just slipped in the defense bill as a rider with little study. Other congressional committees with jurisdiction over these matters had no chance to comment, let alone hold hearings on, these proposals.”

As is typical, very few members of the media even mentioned any of this, let alone discussed it (and I failed to give this the attention it deserved at the time), but Congressional Quarterly‘s Jeff Stein wrote an excellent article at the time detailing the process and noted that “despite such a radical turn, the new law garnered little dissent, or even attention, on the Hill.” Stein also noted that while “the blogosphere, of course, was all over it . . . a search of The Washington Post and New York Times archives, using the terms ‘Insurrection Act,’ ‘martial law’ and ‘Congress,’ came up empty.”Bovard and Stein both noted that every Governor — including Republicans — joined in Leahy’s objections, as they perceived it as a threat from the Federal Government to what has long been the role of the National Guard. But those concerns were easily brushed aside by the bipartisan majorities in Congress, eager — as always — to grant the President this radical new power.

The decision this month to permanently deploy a U.S. Army brigade inside the U.S. for purely domestic law enforcement purposes is the fruit of the Congressional elimination of the long-standing prohibitions in Posse Comitatus (although there are credible signs that even before Congress acted, the Bush administration secretly decided it possessed the inherent power to violate the Act). It shouldn’t take any efforts to explain why the permanent deployment of the U.S. military inside American cities, acting as the President’s police force, is so disturbing. Bovard:

“Martial law” is a euphemism for military dictatorship. When foreign democracies are overthrown and a junta establishes martial law, Americans usually recognize that a fundamental change has occurred. . . . Section 1076 is Enabling Act-type legislation—something that purports to preserve law-and-order while formally empowering the president to rule by decree.

The historic importance of the Posse Comitatus prohibition was also well-analyzed here.As the recent militarization of St. Paul during the GOP Convention made abundantly clear, our actual police forces are already quite militarized. Still, what possible rationale is there for permanently deploying the U.S. Army inside the United States — under the command of the President — for any purpose, let alone things such as “crowd control,” other traditional law enforcement functions, and a seemingly unlimited array of other uses at the President’s sole discretion? And where are all of the stalwart right-wing “small government conservatives” who spent the 1990s so vocally opposing every aspect of the growing federal police force? And would it be possible to get some explanation from the Government about what the rationale is for this unprecedented domestic military deployment (at least unprecedented since the Civil War), and why it is being undertaken now?

UPDATE: As this commenter notes, the 2008 National Defense Authorization Act somewhat limited the scope of the powers granted by the 2007 Act detailed above (mostly to address constitutional concerns by limiting the President’s powers to deploy the military to suppress disorder that threatens constitutional rights), but President Bush, when signing that 2008 Act into law, issued a signing statement which, though vague, seems to declare that he does not recognize those new limitations.

UPDATE II: There’s no need to start manufacturing all sorts of scare scenarios about Bush canceling elections or the imminent declaration of martial law or anything of that sort. None of that is going to happen with a single brigade and it’s unlikely in the extreme that they’d be announcing these deployments if they had activated any such plans. The point is that the deployment is a very dangerous precedent, quite possibly illegal, and a radical abandonment of an important democratic safeguard. As always with first steps of this sort, the danger lies in how the power can be abused in the future.

— Glenn Greenwald

‘Militants Are Not Taliban, We Are’

by Ashfaq Yusufzai

PESHAWAR – The world knows the Taliban as armed fighters who have unleashed a wave of violence in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan including devastating suicide bomb attacks, the most recent on the luxurious Marriot Hotel in high-security Islamabad last week. But not all Taliban wield guns. In seminaries scattered over the restive, northern parts of Pakistan, students or Taliban – a word in Pashto, the language of Pakistan’s Pakhtoons and Afghanistan’s Pashtuns – study the Quran and swear by peace. “Yes. I’m proud to be a Talib. Because being Taliban I am able to study Quran and teach it to others,” says 21-year-old Rahimdad from the Darul Uloom Islamia seminary in Khairabad village of Mardan district, 120 kms north of this border city, when asked if he was a Talib (student). He says he came here from Herat province in Afghanistan a year ago and intends to return when he graduates. “I don’t believe that Taliban are terrorists,” he asserts. “We want to spread the message of love and fraternity among the people of the world.” His religious teacher, maulvi Zakirullah, also from Afghanistan’s Kunar province, too denies these students are terrorists. “We are against killing of anyone. We don’t favor killing the Americans. Our aim is to spread the message of love among people of all religions,” he tells IPS. According to Peshawar-based political analyst Khalid Khan, Pakistan’s secretive military intelligence, ISI or Inter Services Intelligence, cobbled together an army by the name of Taliban in 1994, which went on to replace the bitterly-divided and corrupt mujahideen government in Kabul. Most leaders of the Taliban government were graduates of seminaries in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province (NWFP). They brought most of Afghanistan under their control. But they were toppled by US-led forces in end-2001 in the wake of the World Trade Center bombings on Sep. 11 that precipitated the so-called “war on terror” launched by US President George W. Bush against Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. Seven years after, Osama bin Laden is still at large, and a resurgent Taliban has defied both the Pakistan and Afghan government, the latter propped up by 70,000 mainly western troops including US soldiers. The Taliban in Pakistan’s religious schools say the “terrorist” label is unfortunate. “We don’t understand why the government calls the militants Taliban. Militants are not Taliban, we are,” says Shumaila Bibi, 19, who is veiled from head to toe. A student of Ummi Hafsa Darul Uloom, in Nowshera district, NWFP, she says they are taught to love humanity regardless of religion, caste and social status. Says 17-year-old Nawaz, an Afghan who studies at Kosar seminary near Peshawar: “We condemn the blast in Marriot Hotel. Islam is against killing people. Those who do it will be held accountable on judgement day.” Senator Maulana Samiul Haq is chancellor of Darul Uloom Haqqania, the biggest religious seminary in Pakistan. He says there are 3,500 students in the seminary and “they are peaceful and apolitical. It is incidental that some of the former graduates of my school have held top posts in the Taliban government in Kabul.” Even the NWFP Information Minister, Iftikhar Hussain, backs the students. “The present crisis is not the handiwork of Taliban, but of secret agencies, that present the militants and criminals as Taliban,” he tells IPS. “Taliban don’t know guns, they are preoccupied with their studies, and examinations. They are so simple.” Local communities support these students. Meals and clothes are given in charity. They are invited to people’s homes for religious festivities. Wali Shah, a college student in Dir, says: “Taliban play football, cricket and other local games in the evenings. Lots of people turn up to watch!” According to a 2007 report compiled by the School and Literacy Department, there were 287 religious schools in Dir district with 8,421 students, both from Pakistan and Afghanistan. “We have 700 Taliban, who are studying jurisprudence, Quran and Hadith. They attend classes in the morning and then go back to different mosques where they reside,” says Maulana Mohammad Shakoor. The number of religious schools countrywide has risen from 245 in 1947 to 6,741 in 2007. The province of Punjab accounts for 3,153 seminaries; NWFP 1,281, Sindh 905, Balochistan 692, Azad Kashmir 151, Islamabad 94, Northern Areas 185 and FATA 300. The same report says only 22 percent of the schools were registered with the government. The NWFP has 3,795 male and 885 female teachers in 1,281 religious schools, 30 percent of whom are Afghans. “Taliban are entirely apolitical. They neither listen to news nor read newspapers,” says Amjad Iqbal of Village Development Foundation, a non-governmental organization in Bannu district. He says the Taliban also give religious lessons to local children in the mosques for which they are paid a nominal amount. Saira Bibi, a school teacher in Swabi district, which has 253 religious schools, tells IPS Taliban are highly respected by the local population. “We give free food, clothes, shoes and cash amounts to seek the blessings of Allah. Taliban are the messengers of Islam. They are the harbingers of peace,” she explains.

“The Pyramid collapse will set you free!”

Fabulous piece by Israel Shamir.

Reminds me of a piece I wrote way back…

Instead of spelling disaster, the financial collapse offers a unique opportunity to fix all of America’s ills.

Hang ‘Em High!

By Israel Shamir

Seven years after 9/11, we witness another, greater and even more enjoyable collapse, that of the American financial pyramid. It took some twenty years in building; its collapse took only a few weeks. Let us cut the hypocritical crap: this was a wonderful show, no ifs, ands or buts. The US stock markets boomed when they bombed Baghdad and Belgrade, they prospered when they robbed Moscow and squeezed sweat from Beijing. When they had it good, they had plenty of money for invading Iraq, threatening Iran and strangling Palestine. In short, when it was good for them, it was bad for us. Let them have a taste of their own medicine!

“They” are not the Americans, and “we” are not the rest of the planet. “They” are a small sliver of the American population, the get-rich-quick crowd from the East Side of Manhattan and similar places. The last twenty years witnessed a great shift of money upwards, to a smaller and smaller pack of greedy beasts. While the majority of Americans lost the ability to send their children to universities, these fat cats bought themselves villas in Florida and houses in Tel Aviv. Worse, they spent their billions buying up the media in order to subvert American democracy and send American soldiers to fight wars in far-away places. A big part of the stolen money was siphoned off to Israel, where apartment prices went through the roof and are still rising.

They had it good; they were proud that the financial charts of the US and of the world were drawn up in a small room by Henry Paulson of the Treasury, Ben Bernanke and Alan Greenspan of the Federal Reserve, by Maurice Greenberg of A.I.G. They built their world surrounded by Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Marc Rich, Michael Milken, Andrew Fastow, George Soros, et al. Their exciting new world of Lexus and Nexus was glorified by Tom Friedman of the New York Times. They gave the Nobel Prize in Economics to Myron Scholes and Robert C. Merton, proud board directors of the now infamous Long Term Capital Management hedge fund that was bailed out by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to the tune of $3.6 billion. President Bush rewarded them for their unaccountability by releasing them from the burden of taxation. Let them pay now for all the fun they had.

They took your real dollars and turned it into funny money — “unredeemable, non-interest-bearing promissory notes of the Fed, that are not backed by anything other than the confidence of the credulous”, in the words of one Internet wit. The ruination of the American working class and even its middle class is unavoidable The fears about the Large Hadron Collider creating a big black hole in place of Earth were based on this sinking feeling that the incredible riches of the US are disappearing into their own black hole.

This is not the first confidence trick in US history: Jay Gould and Joseph Seligman caused the ‘Black Friday’ stock market crash in the late 19^th century, while Jacob Schiff caused the notorious ‘Black Thursday’ panic that led to a nationwide economic depression[1]. Seligman was also the mover behind the Panama affair, a stock market swindle that became proverbial in France. The swindle was set up by two Jews of German origin, Jacques Reinach and Cornelius Herz who bribed parliamentarians. While Reinach was working on the right wing, the ‘Republicans’ of his day, Herz was working on the ‘Democrats’. Wikipedia quotes Hannah Arendt, who wrote that the middlemen between the business sector and the state were almost exclusively Jews. This warm embrace between the state and the business sector was a recipe for disaster.

Obviously things have changed since then, and now the Mammonites are of various persuasions, even of Christian Science, like Hank Paulson, whose net worth is estimated at $700 million and whose career at Goldman Sachs (Chairman 1998-2006) made him the obvious choice for the position of secretary of the treasury. Only their devotion to the god of Greed remained constant. In the world of ideal capitalism (“market economy”) they so glorified, they would have paid a price. In Glen David Gold’s vastly entertaining novel Carter Beats the Devil, their spiritual ancestor was tarred and feathered by strong-willed Connecticut folk circa 1670, for he had bought a whole boatload of imported products with the criminal intent of getting rich quick by cornering the market and ripping off his fellow men. Nowadays such a criminal would get a medal from the neo-liberal Milton Friedman Fund, a citation from JINSA and be taught as a positive example by the Harvard Business School.

Now they intend to use their control over the government in order to shift their losses onto ordinary Americans. Whether this act is called ‘nationalisation’ or ‘privatisation’ or ‘bailout’, the bottom line is that many Americans will find themselves poor, and all Americans will have a huge tax burden to bear. But the perpetrators of the pyramid will get off scot-free; they will retire to their castles and to their sure and protected investments as they have always done before.

The Americans were played for suckers; they were cleaned out as easily as were the unsophisticated Albanians a few years ago. Even worse: the Albanians took out their guns and pursued the robbers; the Americans take it all lying down. But the device was the same.

The Americans are entitled to know who robbed them and their children: these are the men who became so ostentatiously rich during last two decades. They should pay the price of their crime. And if the government, the President, the Congress and Senate, the Democrats and the Republicans are reluctant to enforce it, the ordinary Americans may do as their Connecticut Yankee ancestors did: apply tar and feathers liberally. If this does not help, hang the bastards on the lamp posts.

This is exactly the time to remember why America’s Founding Fathers enshrined the people’s right to own and bear arms in the Second Amendment to the Constitution. Thank God the ADL did not cancel it yet. These arms are not for robbers: they are given to enforce justice when all other means fail. Aux armes, to arms, as the French said when giving this treatment to their tricksters. America has a great tradition of instant direct justice enforcement, this Hang’em High call of the Westerns. Heed it now!

Let US soldiers come back from unneeded wars and remote bases all over the world: their real enemy is in their own country. In the ringing, still relevant words of Lenin, let us turn the imperial war into a civil one, against the greedy bastards. Instead of charging taxpayers, turn the US into a billionaire-free zone! The billionaires, these greediest rats, gained most from the Great Pyramid; pauperise them. Nullify their bank accounts. The disappearance of trillions of dollars from their electronic bank accounts will drive the value of the greenback up; your salary will become real money again!

If we assume that more than half of all billionaires are proud members of the Israel Lobby, it will also solve the Middle Eastern problem. To be on the safe side, confiscate all the assets of the Pyramid-builders: of Paulson and Bernanke, of Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs executives, and of President Bush who allowed it all to happen. Peace will come to Palestine, Afghanistan and Iraq; Americans will again become proud of their country. Such mass confiscation will restore democracy in the US: the next candidates for the Presidency will not go hat in hand to AIPAC to declare their fealty. The defeat of Greed will turn people back to God; the eliminated ballast will allow for national medical care, social security and free education for all. Instead of being a disaster, the financial collapse offers a unique opportunity to fix all America’s ills. Do not miss it!

Speaking for the wide world outside America, I’ll tell you this: do not throw good money after bad. Reject the seductive purring from Washington. Consider your funds in the US already lost. If you can still get something, good; but do not waste money and efforts to regain what is gone. There is a most valuable asset you may get for the lost ones; that is your freedom and independence. An undermined dollar means your economy will be safe. The Pyramid collapse will set you free!

[1] Benjamin Ginsberg, The Fatal Embrace: Jews and the State, University of Chicago Pres, Chicago 1993, p 73

Pakistan, China to further boost ties

NEW York: China and Pakistan said on Thursday they would strengthen relations. President Asif Ali Zardari met Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao at the United Nations General Assembly session. The Chinese premier congratulated President Zardari on assuming office, and invited him to visit China. Zardari expressed the hope the two countries would explore new avenues of co-operation, and welcomed Chinese investment in Pakistan. Former US secretary of state Madeleine K Albright also met Zardari on behalf of Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama, and discussed US-Pakistan relations. Zardari underlined the need to effectively combat terrorism.

Russia ready to bolster Pak counter-terror capabilities

Russia ready to bolster Pak counter-terror capabilities

Associated Press of Pakistan

ISLAMABAD: Foreign Minister Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Qureshi Thursday held meetings with foreign ministers of Russia and New Zealand on the sidelines of the 63rd UN General Assembly session in New York. In his meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei V Lavrov, Qureshi discussed significant political developments taking place in the region which necessitated a common understanding between Pakistan and Russia. He observed that the two countries could cooperate in a number of sectors such as energy, communications, steel production and defence. The Russian foreign minister said his country was keen on enhancing bilateral relations with Pakistan and was looking forward to the meeting of the Inter Governmental Commission. Russian gas company Gazprom, he added, was interested in the IPI project, while Russia was also willing to provide equipment to bolster Pakistan’s counter terrorism capabilities. In his meeting with Foreign Minister of New Zealand Phil Goff, the foreign minister highlighted the significant potential for cooperation in the field of education. He added that there was a lot of scope for cooperation in the area of dairy farming. The foreign minister of New Zealand said his country was willing to cooperate in education, which was also a good way of promoting people-to-people contact. He noted that his country was contributing towards bringing peace to Afghanistan and reconstruction efforts. He said the current situation did not simply demand a military solution and that development was also essential. Qureshi said Pakistan was positively engaged with Afghanistan and the two countries were thinking of evolving a joint counter terrorism strategy. Pakistan had adopted a comprehensive approach to deal with terrorism and extremism, which included political engagement in addition to the use of force, he said. Meanwhile, Qureshi announced on Thursday in New York that Pakistan will host the 10th ECO Summit next year. Speaking at an informal meeting of ECO Council of Ministers held in New York on the sidelines of the 63rd session of the UN General Assembly, Qureshi said the summit would be preceded by the Council of Ministers’ meeting. The dates for the summit will be decided through normal diplomatic channels. The foreign minister said Pakistan looked forward to participation of ECO member states in the summit at the highest political level. He said that hosting the tenth ECO summit would be a special privilege for the democratic government led by Pakistan People’s Party, recalling the third ECO summit hosted by Pakistan in March 1995 was chaired by Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto Shaheed. The council of the ministers’ meeting, chaired by the foreign minister of Afghanistan, was attended by foreign ministers and senior officials of the ECO member states.

U.S., Pakistani troops exchange fire

By David Morgan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. and Pakistani ground forces exchanged fire across the Afghanistan-Pakistan border on Thursday, the latest in a string of incidents that has ratcheted up diplomatic tension between the two allies.

No casualties or injuries were reported after Pakistani forces shot at two U.S. helicopters from a Pakistani border post. U.S. and Pakistani officials clashed over whether the American helicopters had entered Pakistan.

The incident follows a U.S. campaign of attacks on militant targets inside Pakistan, including a Sept. 3 U.S. commando raid on a village compound in South Waziristan. Islamabad has protested those strikes and warned it would defend itself.

“Just as we will not let Pakistan’s territory be used by terrorists for attacks against our people and our neighbors, we cannot allow our territory and our sovereignty to be violated by our friends,” Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari said in New York on Thursday.

But in Washington, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman insisted the helicopters had not entered Pakistan. He described the incident as “troubling” and called on Islamabad for an explanation.

“The flight path of the helicopters at no point took them over Pakistan,” he said. “The Pakistanis have to provide us with a better understanding of why this took place.”

According to Pakistan’s military, its soldiers fired warning shots at two U.S. helicopters after they intruded into Pakistani airspace. The U.S. military said the helicopters were protecting a patrol about one mile (1.6 km) inside Afghanistan when Pakistani forces opened fire.

UNCERTAIN BORDER

“The (helicopters) did not return fire but the ground forces fired suppressive fire at that outpost. The Pakistani forces then returned that fire. The whole exchange lasted about five minutes,” said an official with U.S. Central Command, which oversees American military operations in Afghanistan.

The U.S. forces were operating under NATO command.

Thursday’s confrontation followed a dispute earlier this week over reports of a downed U.S. drone in Pakistan. Pakistani officials said a small unmanned American aircraft crashed in Pakistan, but U.S. officials denied it, saying a drone went down in Afghanistan and was recovered.

The rugged border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan is seen by Washington as critical to its fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban. The Bush administration considers Pakistan an ally in counterterrorism but U.S. officials say Islamabad has not done enough against militants there.

The uncertain border also complicates efforts, making it difficult for forces to determine when they are in Afghanistan or Pakistan, both U.S. and Pakistani officials concede.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, after meeting Zardari on Thursday, said she believed he was strongly committed to fighting militants.

“We talked about how we might assist Pakistan in doing what it needs to do, but I think there is a very strong commitment. And after all, it is the same enemy,” she said in New York on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly.

The Capitalist Conspiracy

The Capitalist Conspiracy

by G. Edward Griffin

Transcription by Zahir Ebrahim

Project Humanbeingsfirst.org

September 23, 2008.

The purpose of this presentation is to show that the conspiratorial view of history, particularly of recent history is the correct view. That there is a secret and powerful combine at work today; that it constitutes the unseen government of the United States; and that it properly can be identified, as, The Capitalist Conspiracy!

During the past 200 years, while the peoples of the world, gradually, were winning their political freedom from monarchies, the major banking families of the world, were nullifying the trend toward representative government, by setting up new dynasties of political control. But behind the scenes, in the form of international financial Combines.

These banking dynasties had learned that all governments, whether they be monarchies or democracies, must borrow money in times of emergency. And that by providing such funds from their own private resources, with strings attached of course, gradually, they could bring both kings and democratic leaders, under their control. (01:14)

Dr. Quigley believes that people should be more familiar with the identities of these clever banking dynasties. They include such names as Barring, Hambros, Lazzard, Erlanger, Warburg, Schroder, Selingman, The Speyers, Mirabauld, Mallet, Fould, Rothschild, & Morgan.

It should be noted that while the Rothschilds and other Jewish families cooperated together in these ventures, this was by no means a Jewish monopoly as some have alleged. Men of finance of many nationalities and many religious and non-religious backgrounds, collaborated together to create this super-structure of hidden power.

Its essence was not race nor religion nor nationality. It was simply a passion for control over other human beings. (2:05)

The net effect is to create money out of nothing. Lend it to the government, and then collect interest on it. A rather profitable transaction, to say the least.

For example, in 1694, International Banker, William Patterson, obtained the charter of the Bank of England, and the power over England’s money system fell into private hands.

In a boastful mood, Patterson said: “The bank hath benefit of interest of all monies which it creates out of nothing.”

230 years later, Reginald McKenna, British Chancellor of the Exchequer, said: “The banks can, and do, create money; and they who control the credit of the nation, direct the policy of governments, and hold in the hollow of their hands, the destiny of the people.”

In the United States, it was inevitable that the international banking interests, would attempt to establish the same kind of private monopoly over the money system, that they had achieved in England, France, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland. (03:10)

The same formula would be used: make it look like a government operation, but keep the control in private hands.

John D Rockefeller had purchased the Chase Bank, and his brother William, bought the National City Bank of New York. The Rockefeller Chase Bank was later merged with Warburg’s Manhattan Bank, to form the Chase Manhattan, one of the most powerful financial combines in the world today!

Acting in concert with the Morgan Banking dynasty, they spent untold millions of dollars to promote legislation that would grant to them, a private franchise over this nation’s money system.

To sell this scheme to the voters, the monopolists created the propaganda line, that the proposed banking law some how would work against the monopolies. Politicians took up the cry “banking reform”, and “down with Wall Street”.

And then, to make it look convincing, the financial tycoons publicly pretended to oppose the measure, all the while financing it behind the scenes. (04:12)

On December 22, 1913, the Federal Reserve Act, finally was passed into law. Something known as the Federal Reserve System came into being, and with it, total control over the nation’s money, fell into private hands!

The CFR from behind the scenes has dominated this nation for decades.

CFR members include top executives and journalists for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Chicago Daily News, Harpers, Look, Time, Life, Newsweek, US News and World Report, CBS, NBC, MGM.

They include directors of the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Carnegie Endowment Fund.

They include Presidents Hoover, Eisenhower, Johnson and Nixon; Secretaries of States Titinius, Acheson, Dulles, Hurder, and Rusk; a fantastic percentage of the President’s Cabinet, Under Secretaries, the Federal Reserve Board, Ambassadors to other countries, Supreme Court Justices, and presidential advisors.

The average American has never heard of the CFR. Yet it is, the unseen Government of the United States. (05:25)

After a man has far more money than he possibly can spend for pleasures, what is left to excite him?

For those with the ruling class mentality, the answer is power – raw power over other human beings. Money can buy such power only to a point, beyond that, politics is the sport, and world politics is the ultimate game.

These men are striving to create a world super-state, with the expectation that from behind the scenes, they will be the ones who will rule. Not free enterprise capitalism, but big government is the conspiracies’ life force.

World government is its ultimate goal.

But what is the best way to sell big government, and then world government, to a people like ours, historically devoted to an independent republic of limited powers?

The answer is simple. Deliberately create problems. And then offer only those solutions that result in the expansion of government. Create conditions so frightful at home and abroad, that the abandonment of personal liberties and national sovereignty, will appear as a reasonable price for a return to domestic tranquility and world peace. (06:40)

If those who seek world dominion can stimulate leftist mobs into violent confrontation with local law enforcement, and also provide exhaustive news coverage, so that the entire nation can see and tremble, then the peaceful and freedom loving majority can be programmed to accept a vast expansion of government powers, and even a national police force, offered supposedly to end the violence.

If those who seek world dominion can raise the spectre of an enemy, armed to the teeth with superior atomic weapons on the verge of launching a nuclear holocaust, and also offer world-government as the prevention, then millions of Americans can be programmed to accept the loss of national sovereignty, as our last best hope for peace.

This is the meaning of pressure from above and below. To put over police state measures at home, they need chaos, crime, and anarchy in the streets. To sell the idea of world-government, they need the constant threat of nuclear war! (7:44)

In Bavaria, the year 1786, acting on a tip from an informer, police raided the home of a prominent attorney named Vanswack. They seized documents and letters revealing that he was a high ranking member of an extensive conspiracy called “The Order of The Illuminati”.

Over the centuries, forms of the word “Illuminati”, meaning the enlightened ones, have been used by many secret sects and occult organizations. Most prominent among these, were the Illumbrados of Spain, Guerinets of France, and the Roshaniya of Afghanistan. But these were concerned primarily with psychological and spiritual objectives, a proclaimed inner wisdom, and mind-mastery of the secrets of the universe.

The conspiracy exposed in Bavaria was of an entirely different order. (08:36)

The Illuminati was founded on May 1, 1776, by Adam Wiesop, a Professor at Inglestaff University. Wiesop obviously had been a serious student of the occult, for many of its bizarre features and symbols were incorporated into his organization.

The destruction of all religion, replaced by the worship of reason or humanism, and the destruction of all independent governments, replaced by a new world order, a world government, ruled from behind the scenes by the illuminated ones!

No conspiracy can stand the light of exposure. No conspiracy can rule the masses without the tool of an extensive government bureaucracy. And certainly no capitalist conspiracy can long survive without control over the nation’s money.

Expose the conspiracy, reduce the size of government, return our money to a standard that cannot be manipulated. This must be our response. (09:37)

Yes the hour is late. But it is not too late if we are realistic in our efforts.

As Americans we can still speak-out with fear of imprisonment.

We can still join together into patriotic groups to multiply our effectiveness.

We can still challenge the establishment’s candidates.

We still retain that remnant of power to regain control of own government. (10:11)

Has the West Reached Its Limits?

by Richard C. Cook

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“Train-wreck” doesn’t even begin to describe what is starting to happen to the U.S. today with the financial crisis, an onrushing depression, and the failure of George W. Bush’s war policy as he is faced down by Iran and the Russian bear. But in an even broader sense, the West, as a civilization, after a century of world war and the utter failure of global finance capitalism, may have reached its limits. Those with a vested interest in the status quo dismiss any suggestion that something is wrong. This includes Donald Luskin, author of an article in the Washington Post on Sunday, September 14, titled: “A Nation of Exaggerators: Quit Doling Out That Bad Economy Line.” Luskin writes, “The relentless drumbeat of pessimism in the media and on the campaign trail” is “a virus.”

He continues: “Sure, there are trouble spots in the economy, as the government takeover of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and jitters about Wall Street firm Lehman Brothers, amply demonstrate. And unemployment figures are up a bit, too. None of this, however, is cause for depression — or exaggerated Depression comparisons.”

Continue reading, and you find out who Luskin is: a campaign adviser to John McCain.

We know that “where you stand depends on where you sit”—and who pays you for advice. So is a catastrophic meltdown coming?

If so, probably a majority of the people in the world are thinking: “Serves them right.” For the last 500 years, the West has been striding across the globe, armed to the teeth with firearms, warships, bombers, and—more recently—depleted uranium, enforcing the “white man’s burden” by enslaving nations and peoples and confiscating everything of value—ranging from art objects to gold to oil—that can be carried away.

The financiers behind it all have also used the diabolically clever practice of creating money “out of thin air” to put the natives everywhere into debt, and, when that has proven insufficient, of doing the same to their own populations.

All this is rationalized by various brands of racism, cultural superiority, social Darwinism, historical determinism, “dominion of the Elect,” “God’s chosen people,” etc. Or, simply, “might makes right.”

Some call it “The New World Order.”

So today, we Americans, denizens of the “land of the free and the home of the brave,” victors in two world wars, bearers of “democracy” to Afghanistan and Iraq, allies of the brave Israelis who hold high the banner of Judeo-Christian values among the ungrateful Palestinians—well, we Americans owe our own bankers almost $70 trillion at most recent count. With the government takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, we owe holders of bad housing loans, including the governments of China, Korea, and Japan, another few trillion.

The bluster of Kissinger, Brzezinski, the Kristols, the Christian fundamentalists, and their paid-off politicians and media millionaires notwithstanding, America—indeed, the entire West—has been found out, perhaps even checkmated on the world stage.

The Bush/Cheney wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have blackened America’s name forever. Iran has called our bluff. In Israel the gap between rich and poor is increasing as much as in the U.S. According to an article by Ian S. Lustick, the Palestinians have stood up to the Israelis to the point where more Jews are emigrating from that country than are moving in, and where those who remain are increasingly huddling around Tel Aviv as a safe haven. (Ian S. Lustick, “Abandoning the Iron Wall: ‘Israel and the Middle Eastern Muck’,” Middle East Policy, Vo. XV, No. 3, Fall 2008.)

In the 1990s, the European bankers used U.S. and NATO forces to dismember Yugoslavia so George Soros and the Rothschilds could gobble up Balkan resources. But that strategy is failing in the Caucasus, where the Russians fought back against the genocidal attack by Dick Cheney’s poodle, Mikheil Saakashvili, the New York-trained attorney the CIA got elected as the president of Georgia.

And now the people of Ukraine, the “Little Russians,” realizing what the West has in store for them, are rushing back into the Slavic fold and may be only a year or so away from reuniting with their “Great Russian” cousins across the border.

What is telling is to watch the Western financier press, chiefly the Washington Post and the New York Times, fume about Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin and his “authoritarian” manner. An example is the article by Times correspondent Ellen Barry on Putin’s September 11 press conference in Moscow. She wrote, “In three-and-a-half hours, in tones that were alternatively pugilistic and needy, Vladimir V. Putin tried to explain himself.”

I’m sorry, Ms. Barry. You and your editors may think your writing is cute, but Vladimir Putin is the foremost figure on the world stage today. He will remain so after George W. Bush leaves the White House disgraced.

Putin is heir to an epochal movement of patriots who began in the 1970s to take back Russia from within. It started with a base of operations within the KGB and the Orthodox Church, led to Gorbachev’s glasnost in the 1980s, and culminated in the Second Russian Revolution of 1991. At that point, the Western financiers gleefully rushed in to support an assault from the Russian “oligarchs” who were looting Russia of everything it owned.

The oligarchs were the shock troops of a financier assault that had already begun to overlap in the West with the Russian Mafia. Cheered on by the Washington Post and aided by academic advisors from places like Harvard, this international syndicate nearly destroyed Russia during the 1990s. But when Putin was appointed interim president by Boris Yelstin in 1999, and after winning the presidential election of 2000 in his own right, he began to fight back.

From the mid-1970s to today, thousands of Russian gangsters, along with many hard-line Bolsheviks/Stalinists, were allowed to emigrate. Many settled in the U.S. and are here today, and many more settled in Israel. In fact, one reason the price of condos in New York, Miami, Tel Aviv, and elsewhere has inflated so much reportedly is the flood of cash from racketeering.

The crooks have allied themselves with the Colombian drug cartels and have heavily infiltrated the world’s financial systems, even setting up their own banks for laundering money and speculating in the commodities markets.

Today, Putin is cleaning out the remaining gangster class. His efforts reached a milestone in January with the arrest in Moscow of Semion Mogilevich, called “the world’s most dangerous man.”

Putin has declared that the world will not be governed in a “unipolar” manner; i.e. by the U.S. military as the police force for the global financiers. This does not mean Russia has to be our enemy. In fact the world would be much better off, and much safer, if we joined with Russia as allies in keeping the peace.

But to do that our system would have to change, because finance capitalism is far too unstable to coexist with other nations as equals. It must either grow or die, because it always needs new victims to pay the interest on its usury practices and to finance its speculative balloons. As a last resort, it needs the kind of financial institution bailouts being engineered by Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson, where the only remaining stopgap is borrowing from public funds and adding to the national debt.

Once economic growth stops, as has now happened, and all the bubbles to restart it have blown up, as has also happened, the end really is nigh. Especially if the host—the U.S.—is bankrupt.

What is coming at us today isn’t just another downturn. If people like McCain adviser Donald Luskin doubt it, maybe, instead of writing campaign propaganda, they should ask the fired CEOs of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the stockholders of Lehman Brothers, whose shares have dropped ninety percent in less than a year, and the millions who are losing their homes.

Presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain are calling for “change.” Well, if I were standing on a beach with a 100-foot tsunami roaring in my direction, I would call for change too. Except I would not be standing around arguing about the meaning of the words “lipstick on a pig.”

Full text of President Ahmadinejad’s speech to the UN General Assembly

Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s speech to the United Nations General Assembly early Wednesday morning, as translated by the Presidency of the Islamic Republic of Iran News Service

Mr. President, Excellencies,

I am grateful to the Almighty for granting me another opportunity to be present in this world Assembly.

In the last three years, I have talked to you about great hopes in the bright future of human society, and some solutions for achieving sustainable peace and expanding love, compassion, and cooperation.

I have also talked about unjust systems governing the world; pressures exerted by some powers seeking to trample the rights of other nations, oppression imposed on the majority of the global community, especially on the people of Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon, Africa, Latin America, and Asia; about challenges we are faced with, such as efforts to shatter the sanctity of families, destroy cultures, humiliate lofty values, neglect commitments, expand the shadow of threats, as well as about the arms race and the unfairness and inability of the systems governing world affairs in reforming the status quo.

With the occurrence of various new developments, the debility of existing mechanisms has been revealed even more. However, at the same time, an encouraging trend, which has originated in the thoughts and beliefs of peoples, has blossomed and become stronger. Posed against the despairs caused by the new developments, this trend has ignited the ray of hope for a brilliant, desirable and beautiful future in the hearts of men.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Dear Colleagues,

Today I would like to talk to you about the main reasons behind the conditions ruling the world and the means to tackle them. Of course, you are already aware of what I am talking about, but I think it is necessary to remind ourselves.

It seems that the roots of problems lie in the way one views and perceives the world and humankind, as well as in the important issues of freedom, obeisance to God, and justice. The world, humankind, freedom and obeisance to God, and justice, have been of utmost importance to humans throughout history.

1. The World:

God Almighty purposefully created the world. This world is the bedrock for the evolution and growth of a creature called man, and the laws governing the world and all other creatures are at the service of man’s quest for loftiness. The world should provide the needed opportunities for the fulfillment of the purpose behind man’s creation. No phenomenon, creature, or indeed anything has been created in vain. Together they all pave the ground for the flourishing of mankind in a complex and purposeful system, and they are, each, one of the signs of God Almighty. All are His creations and He is the sole creator and ruler of the world. All existence including power, knowledge and wealth come from Him.

2. Humankind:

God created the world for humans and humans for Himself. He created humans from mud and in the soil, but He did not want them to remain in the soil and with animal instincts. He kindled the light of guidance in their souls and asked them to rise from the soil to the heavens and to Him with the help of wisdom, prophets and perfect men.

The world will ultimately disappear, but God has created man for eternity and has made them a manifestation of Himself. Creativity, mercifulness, kindness, knowledge, wisdom, zeal, concealment of sins, splendor, justice, bounteousness, generosity, greatness, love, glory, dignity, forgiveness, insight, kingship and all other goodness and beauty are attributes of God.

God has not created humans for aggression, bloodshed, rancor, selfishness and destruction. He made humans His vicegerents on earth and has asked them to, on the one hand, make earth prosper by using their God-given potentials and to prepare the ground for the growth of divine attributes in all humans, and to provide all with a life full of beauty, amity, freedom, justice and goodness; and on the other hand in pursuance of this path, to prepare for a prosperous, everlasting life endowed by God’s mercy.

God has obligated humans to live divinely and socially, for it is only through social life and interactions with others that divine attributes may emerge.

3. Obeisance to God:

God Almighty has tied their perfection and true freedom of humans to their devotion and obedience to Himself. True freedom and obedience to God are in balance and in fact are two sides of the same coin.

Obeisance to God means confessing to monotheism and obeying His commands, and to be free from ungodly worship.

Obeisance to God means the acceptance of the absolute truth, the absolute light, and the absolute beauty.

Obeisance to God means abandoning selfishness and animal instincts, power-seeking and aggression, surrendering to righteousness, justice, love, and perfection.

And in this way, humans can achieve their true freedom and flourish, they can grow and manifest divine attributes, have affection for others, stand up for justice, and fear no power or threat, and defend the oppressed. In such an environment, one’s freedom will not impinge on any others.

Contention and conflict are characteristic of materialistic freedom and animal instinct. The essence of all divine religions and obeisance to God and true freedom is disassociating from oppressors and instead obeying and worshiping God, for:

– God is omniscient and knows all that is revealed or kept secret, and He is kind and merciful.

– All creatures are humble before Him and resign to His will.

– God is alive and is the Creator of the universe and all life.

– God loves His creatures and desires nothing but goodness, blessings, and perfection for them, and is against bullying, injustice, selfishness and domination.

4. Justice:

Justice is the foundation of the creation of humankind and the whole universe. Justice is tantamount to placing every phenomenon in its own place, and providing humans with opportunities to actualize all their divine capabilities. Without it, the order of the universe will collapse and the opportunity for perfection will fade away. Without justice, it would be impossible for human society to taste real peace, beauty, joy and happiness. Justice is the main pillar of social life and without it, social life cannot continue or grow.

Humans need to know God in order to realize a prosperous society in this world as well as to strive for a beautiful eternal life, and to this end they first have to know themselves and strive for loftiness in themselves and their societies. However:

– as long as the world is construed as closed, limited and aimless,

– as long as eternal life is considered imaginary and illusory and afterlife and the Judgment Day as well as reward and punishment are thought of as fictional and unreal,

– as long as morals and commitment to them are called backwardness, and immorality, lies, deceit and selfishness are considered desirable, and humans are limited to a materialistic life in this world,

– as long as attempts are made to replace obedience to God and following His prophets and true freedom with servitude to materialistic tendencies and animal instincts and servitude to oppressing human beings, and contention reaches its pinnacle,

– as long as the aggressors, because of their financial, political and propaganda powers, not only escape punishment but even claim righteousness,

– and as long wars are started and nations are enslaved in order to win votes in elections,

not only will the problems of the global community remain unsolved, but they will be increasingly exacerbated.

Friends and Colleagues,

Let’s look at the situation of the world today:

Iraq was attacked under the false pretext of uncovering weapons of mass destruction and overthrowing a dictator. The dictator is toppled and WMDs are not uncovered. A democratic government is established by the votes of the people but, after 6 years, the occupiers are still there. They insist on imposing colonial agreements on the people of Iraq by keeping them under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter. Millions of people have been killed or displaced, and the occupiers, without a sense of shame, are still seeking to solidify their position in the political geography of the region and to dominate oil resources.

They have no respect for the people of Iraq and disregard any dignity, rights or status for them. The UN is not capable enough to solve the problems and to remove aggression, occupation and imposition.

In Palestine, 60 years of carnage and invasion is still ongoing at the hands of some criminal and occupying Zionists. They have forged a regime through collecting people from various parts of the world and bringing them to other people’s land by displacing, detaining, and killing the true owners of that land.

With advance notice, they invade, assassinate, and maintain food and medicine blockades, while some hegemonic and bullying powers support them. The Security Council cannot do anything and sometimes, under pressure from a few bullying powers, even paves the way for supporting these Zionist murderers. It is natural that some UN resolutions that have addressed the plight of the Palestinian people have been relegated to the archives unnoticed.

In Afghanistan, production of narcotics has multiplied since the presence of NATO forces. Domestic conflicts continue. Terrorism is spreading. And innocent people are bombarded on a daily basis in streets, markets, schools and wedding ceremonies. The people of Afghanistan are the victims of the willingness of NATO member states to dominate the regions surrounding India, China, and South Asia. The Security Council cannot do anything about it because some of these NATO members also happen to be the major decision makers in the Security Council.

In Africa, efforts are made to re-establish the relationships of the colonial era. By starting civil wars in large countries including Sudan, disintegration of those countries is planned in order to serve the interests of some corrupt powers. In case there is a national resistance, the leaders of the resistance are put under pressure by legal mechanisms created by the very same powers.

In Latin America, people find their security, national interests and cultures to be seriously endangered by the menacing shadow of alien domineering governments, and even by the embassies of some empires.

The lives, properties and rights of the people of Georgia and Ossetia and Abkhazia are victims of the tendencies and provocations of NATO and certain western powers, and the underhanded actions of the Zionists.

The never-ending arms race and the proliferation and stockpiling of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction and the threats to use them, and the establishment of missile defense systems, have made the situation unstable.

With regard to Iran’s peaceful nuclear program, despite the inalienable right of all nations including the Iranian nation, in producing nuclear fuel for peaceful purposes, and despite such facts as the transparency of all Iranian activities and our country’s full cooperation with the inspectors of the IAEA and the Agency’s repeated confirmation of the fact that Iran’s activities are peaceful, a few bullying powers have sought to put hurdles in the way of the peaceful nuclear activities of the Iranian nation by exerting political and economic pressures against Iran, and also through threatening and pressuring the IAEA.

These are the same powers that produce new generations of lethal nuclear arms and possess stockpiles of nuclear weapons that no international organization is monitoring; and, the tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were perpetrated by one of them.

Indeed, they are not against weapons, but they oppose other nations’ progress, and tend to monopolize technologies and to use those monopolies in order to impose their will on other nations. But it is very natural that the great Iranian people, with their trust in God, and with determination and steadfastness and with the support of its friends, will resist the bullying and has defended and will continue to defend its rights.

The Iranian nation is for dialogue. But it has not accepted and will not accept illegal demands. The time has come for the IAEA to present a clear report to the international community on its monitoring of the disarmament of these nuclear powers and their nuclear activities, and for a disarmament committee to be established by independent states to monitor the disarmament of these nuclear powers.

The theories of development that are in line with the hegemonic system and not in accordance with the true needs of humankind and human societies, have turned into repetitive and bland tools for assimilation of economies, expanding hegemonic domination, destroying the environment and destroying the social solidarity of nations. There is no end in sight to this. Poverty, hunger and deprivation are hurting more than one billion of the world’s population and have dashed their hopes for a decent life.

The dignity, integrity and rights of the American and European people are being played with by a small but deceitful number of people called Zionists. Although they are a miniscule minority, they have been dominating an important portion of the financial and monetary centers as well as the political decision-making centers of some European countries and the US in a deceitful, complex and furtive manner. It is deeply disastrous to witness that some presidential or premiere nominees in some big countries have to visit these people, take part in their gatherings, swear their allegiance and commitment to their interests in order to attain financial or media support.

This means that the great people of America and various nations of Europe need to obey the demands and wishes of a small number of acquisitive and invasive people. These nations are spending their dignity and resources on the crimes and occupations and the threats of the Zionist network against their will.

Friends and Colleagues,

All these are due to the manner in which the immoral and the powerful view the world, humankind, freedom, obeisance to God, and justice.

The thoughts and deeds of those who think they are superior to others and consider others as second-class and inferior; who intend to remain out of the divine circle, to be the absolute slaves of their materialistic and selfish desires, who intend to expand their aggressive and domineering natures, constitute the roots of today’s problems in human societies.

They are the great hindrances to the actualization of material and spiritual prosperity and to security, peace and brotherhood among nations. I explicitly state that the Iranian people and the overwhelming majority of peoples and governments are against those deeds and perspectives of the world- domineering powers. Establishment of justice requires people who have achieved moderation and justice inside themselves, and have restrained their domineering attitudes and actualized their attributes of self-sacrifice and are at the service of humanity. The complete and full-scale manifestation of such characteristics can happen only under the rule of the righteous and perfect human being who is obedient to God and who is promised by the divine Prophets.

Dear Colleagues,

Of course with the grace of God Almighty a hopeful trend is flourishing in the heart and soul of human societies. The universal eagerness for justice, purity, and love for others, monotheism and the quest for perfection is clearly and increasingly on the rise. A universal resistance against the acquisitiveness, aggression and selfishness of the bullying powers is being formed.

Today, the bullying powers’ thoughts, practices and strategies are rejected by nations and governments, and all are seeking to establish new human relations based on justice with a view to attain prosperity, perfection, security, and sustainable welfare. This is the very auspicious phenomenon that all the traditions of creation and the ruling laws of the universe emphasize and support.

Today, the Zionist regime is on a definite slope to collapse, and there is no way for it to get out of the cesspool created by itself and its supporters. The Islamic Republic of Iran, while fully respecting the resistance of the oppressed people of Palestine and expressing its all-out support for it, submits its humane solution based on a free referendum in Palestine for determining and establishing the type of state in the entire Palestinian lands to the distinguished Secretary General of the UN.

American empire in the world is reaching the end of its road, and its next rulers must limit their interference to their own borders. Today, the thought of hegemony quickly becomes a demerit.

And now a few words with the expansionist governments ruling global relations:

Be aware that living with obedience to God and carrying out His orders, compassion for people and striving for the fulfillment of justice is to your advantage too. I invite you to return to the path of God, the Prophets and to the path of the people of the world and to the truth and justice.

The only route to salvation is a divine straight path. Otherwise, God’s hand of power will emerge from the sleeve of oppressed nations and will make your life difficult, and will put an end to your hegemony.

Let’s love the people of the world and respect their rights. Rectify past behavior. This will benefit you and the human community. The Iranian people are prepared, along with other nations, to help you be rescued from your current situation and to establish peace and prosperity.

My Friends,

Fortuitously, opportunities are accessible. With the grace of God Almighty, the existing pillars of the oppressive system are crumbling. Great developments in favor of humankind as well as its true and real rights are on the way. A golden and brilliant future is awaiting mankind.

A global community filled with justice, friendship, brotherhood and welfare is at hand, as I have elaborated.

A community which will tread the path of beauty and love under the rule of the righteous and perfect human being, the One promised by all divine prophets and the One who is the true lover of humanity. A community that will be devoid of any fear, despair and privation. Such a community will soon be ours. The community promised by the great divine Prophets Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus Christ and Mohammad (PBUH) is about to materialize.

Let us, hand in hand, expand the thought of resistance against evil and the minority of those who are ill-wishers. Let’s support goodness and the majority of people who are good and the embodiment of absolute good that is the Imam of Time, The Promised One who will come accompanied by Jesus Christ, and accordingly design and implement the just and humanistic mechanisms for regulating the constructive relationships between nations and governments.

Oh great Almighty, deliver the savior of nations and put an end to the sufferings of mankind and bring forth justice, beauty, and love.

Friends;

Let’s have a proper share in the establishment of that illuminated and promised divine age

The Architecture of Terror

The Blueprint of Zion

Voltaire

The investigative journalist, Christopher Bollyn, has devoted an incredible number of hours to exposing, in all its sordid details, the true background of the attacks on the two World Trade Centers. Suffice it to say that the stamp of Zion is everywhere. Whether one asks: Who benefited from the attacks? (Cui buono?) or whether one asks who profited immensely, to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, by insuring against a “terrorist attack” which no reasonable person would have imagined, the answer always turns up the not-so-hidden hand of Zion. Mr. Silverstein, the owner of the two towers, was a Zionist Jew. Mr. Chertoff, in charge of the investigation, is a Zionist Jew. Mr. Mukasey, in charge of the 09/11 civil litigation, is a Zionist Jew. Mr. Zelikoff, in charge of the “Warren Commission” on 09/11, is a Zionist Jew. The American army, currently in occupation of Iraq for Israel’s benefit, is overseas because of 09/11. The evidence is more overtly damning than the bloody glove in O.J. Simpson’s yard.

Mr. Bollyn has gathered an immense amount of evidence on the incredibly detailed Zionist connections behind 09/11. The reader can go to “The Architecture of Terror” on bollyn.info and read all about it. There he will discover all the computer software which the Zionists delivered to the US government to make all the remote control to the two planes possible. He will learn of the suspicious contacts between the Zionists in the New York Port Authority and high officials in the Israeli secret service He will see the connections between the Israeli secret service and Jews high in the . “American” government. He will see the common ethnic interests and the common loyalty to a foreign state which would make two obsolete towers in New York City utterly expendable. He will see the vast, trans-continental power which would make a plot like 09/11 possible-and also provide the media distortion to camouflage what really happened. Christopher Bollyn is the George Morgenstern of the Pearl Harbor in New York. He has not uncovered every fact proving that the Zionists did it, but he has provided material so vast and so convincing as to remove every conceivable doubt. “The Architecture of Terror” is the blueprint of Zion.

The Architecture of Terror:
Mapping the Israeli Network behind 9-11

By Christopher Bollyn
Copyright © Bollyn Books 2008
All Rights Reserved

“But now, nearly seven years since 9/11, it’s past time to be moving on.”
– “Only Dust Remains,” New York Post, July 9, 2008

There is no reason good can’t triumph over evil, if only angels will get organized along the lines of the Mafia.
– Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country, 2005

These are the times that try men’s souls.  The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.  Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered.
– Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, 1776

Thomas Paine was the most popular and inspirational writer of the American Revolution. “The cause of America,” Paine wrote in Common Sense (1776), “is in a great measure the cause of all mankind.”

In 1787, having “stood out the storm of one revolution,” i.e. the American, and with “no wish to embark in another,” Paine returned to Europe and wound up playing a role in the French Revolution – and nearly losing his head.

To the Citizens of the United States is a series of letters written by Paine in 1802-03, when he returned to America after an absence of almost 15 years.  In the first letter, Paine wrote: “But while I beheld with pleasure the dawn of liberty rising in Europe, I saw with regret the lustre of it fading in America. In less than two years from the time of my departure some distant symptoms painfully suggested the idea that the principles of the Revolution were expiring on the soil that produced them.”

“A faction, acting in disguise, was rising in America; they had lost sight of first principles,” Paine wrote.  “They were beginning to contemplate government as a profitable monopoly, and the people as hereditary property.”

Two hundred years later, as an American student of history, I made the same observation:  A faction, acting in disguise, was rising in America.  This faction also viewed government as a profitable monopoly, which they sought to control.  The rising faction I noticed taking control in the 1980s was primarily Jewish by ethnicity and Zionist by ideology.

LIVING IN JEWISH TIMES

Ariel Sharon with the kabbalistic hexagram,
the symbol of the Zionist state of Israel.
Sharon, a known terrorist and war criminal,
became prime minister in 2001.

“I want to tell you something very clear.  Don’t worry about American pressure on Israel.  We, the Jewish people, control America and the Americans know it.”
– Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, October 2001

(read more here)

US Targets Peacemakers While Pakistan Battles American-Taliban

By: Peter Chamberlin

Is it really necessary that we let Bush and Cheney destroy another innocent country before they pretend to leave the stage after Nov. 4? Does this Nation, which fancies itself as a great defender of freedom and democracy, intend to allow them do to our ally Pakistan what they have done to Iraq and Afghanistan? If we do not feel extreme shame for what is being done in our names there then perhaps it is true that we are something less than human, merely thinking cattle.

It sickens me to see the terror and slaughter being rained down upon the heads of our Brothers and Sisters, the Pakistani people. The hotel terror bombing is merely the latest and greatest act of violence, coming after Predator attacks, kidnappings and assassinations, all are just a portion of our gifts to the people of Pakistan. It is not a people-to-people kind of gift, but something that only a corrupt failing government would do. How can the American people restrain this runaway Leviathan? How do we get between this Beast and the Pakistani people?

In the Marriott terror-bombing, which immediately became known as “Pakistan’s 911” because of the unusual evidence which points to foreign sources, the people and government were given notice of their vulnerability to terrorism.In this suspicious bombing, as in all these Oklahoma City type bombings, the government almost immediately blames “al Qaida linked groups.”A new group, Fidaeen-e-Islam [translated as “Freedom Fighters of Islam” or “Guerillas of Islam”] also linked to A.Q., claimed responsibility.

This effectively ties this bombing, like the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, to the “official” US version of events. All attacks linked by association with al Qaida are immediately tied to their Pakistani patron, “public enemy number one,” Baitullah Mehsud.

Mehsud is the perpetual enemy denounced at every opportunity by US and Afghan officials, particularly when discussing reasons to invade Pakistan’s FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas). In reality, contrary to government charges, US forces never seem to target Baitullah Mehsud or his terrorist associates with their premier tool for targeted assassinations, the Predator terminator-drone.

Pakistan is now furiously engaging the US-linked terrorists of Baitullah Mehsud’s ally Maulana Fazlullah (“Radio Mullah”) in the Swat Valley region. The US is not participating in this fight to eliminate the enemies of the government and the people of Pakistan with its Predator terminator drones.The last known US incursion into the Swat battle zone was the disastrous attack upon the Gora Prai outpost on June 10, which killed 11 Pakistani troops.On that fateful day, the US drone was called-in to support troops that had allegedly been attacked by Mehsud’s forces.Other reports claim that the US forces tried to seize the Pakistani outpost, which is the high point overlooking the area and the main Kabul to Peshawar Highway, but were repelled.Were the militants using American air power to eliminate their Army opposition, or were the militants being used by the US as an excuse to set Pakistan up for the kill?

This fierce battle near the legendary Khyber Pass will determine the fate of US supply routes into Afghanistan.This is not the war or the location that the American side wants Pakistan to fight in.Until Pakistan turns its guns one-hundred fifty miles to the south, pointed at the heads of the local Taliban leaders who have been supporting Army peace efforts, signing treaties with the government, it won’t be in compliance with US demands.

The following information on the most recent Predator attacks confirms the US focus on pro-government Pashtuns:

“‘All the militants that the Pakistani Army is fighting in FATA – how come America never targets them’ with missile strikes? Ikram Sehgal, editor of Defence Journal, asks.

While the targets of the missiles fired from American drone aircraft are not confirmed, reports suggest that there is indeed a divergence between who America is targeting and who Pakistan would like them to target…

Similarly, the US appears to be targeting Taliban leadership long ignored by Pakistan – something it ‘never did before,’ says Ahmed Rashid, author of ‘Taliban.’”

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0924/p01s03-wosc.html

In a series of Predator attacks since early August, the targets have been the associates of pro-government “Taliban,” like Waziri leader Maulvi Nazir, or old jihadists Jalaluddin Haqqani and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar (who were formerly aligned with the US against the Soviets). The town of Wana in S. Waziristan is the epicenter of the recent Predator incursions into Pakistan, which have been targeting the local leaders who are friendly to the government. These are the guys who want peace, the ones who recently joined and raised a militia of 20,000 fighters, vowing to repel any invading forces, standing with the Army to defend Pakistan.

This is the problem – the US is waging war with the Pakistani government’s decision to negotiate peace.To that end, American Predators are terror-bombing the most reasonable locals, turning entire families towards the path of retribution. Local networks and agents of foreign intelligence services are attacking government forces and sowing terror among the civilian population, while attacking the Shiite minority trying to ignite a sectarian war.

This is the “tickling” referred to recently by CIA Director Michael Hayden, the means to prod the peaceful locals into taking-up arms and reacting violently.Every terrorist act and the way it is reported by the Western media is intended to provide the justification for a major escalation of military action.

Fifty-three people died when one of these dark players “tickled” the citizens of Islamabad by dumping an extremely powerful bomb into the Marriott hotel entrance.

It has been reported that Pakistan’s new government had intended to break Ramadan that evening with a feast at the hotel, but changed locations after receiving a warning. If the object of the attack was to decapitate the government, then this attack with an extremely powerful, extremely sophisticated bomb was an act of war that probably required state support from one or more foreign governments.

A series of editorials in Pakistani newspapers are laying the blame for the hotel bombing and sponsorship of TTP (Tereek e-Taliban Pakistan) the “local Taliban” on the CIA and the Afghan, Indian and Israeli intelligence agencies.

“General Kayani Must Not Blink and Pakistan’s Taliban Are CIA” Islamabad accuses US of backing terror against Pakistan

Indian RAW attacks Pakistan through proxy Mehsuds TTP

“In repect of Pakistan Political Analysts and Intellectuals”

Another Terrorist Attack in Pakistan by U.S and India

These revelations started surfacing when Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani confronted Washington about CIA sponsorship of the terrorist group, in response to US charges of ISI (Pakistani intelligence) complicity with the Taliban.

But the newspapers of Pakistan are slow to catch-up to the accumulated wisdom of local citizens, who are unfortunate enough to live in the “wild west” zone of conflict.I have been contacted by various concerned Pakistani readers of some of my previous articles about the reality of America’s terror war in that region.

These assorted witnesses who have come forth have witnessed the growth of the ongoing American psy-op there for several years, as the neocon war next door was pushed into Pakistan itself, through the introduction of “new Taliban” forces into the local fight. This group has always enjoyed the best weapons, communications gear, training, financing and satellite-accurate intelligence on Pakistani troop positions. The US command has repeatedly refused to target Mehsud when given exact coordinates, even allowing him to conduct an open press conference with Western media.

Their testimony follows with this note from “Haq,” the man who did a lot of legwork for me, connecting me with retired Lieut General Ayaz Ahmed:

“If I were in the Nobel Prize Committee, for your article, I would have given you 100% marks. You, by writing such a splendid article ‘Tickling’ has won the hearts of those Pakistanis who have read it and those who will read it. I know revered air force and army generals. As per your desire, I am relaying your article to the generals, friends and politicians.

You have made my day. If you were here I would have given you a dinner and loaded you with garments of rare flowers. We, Pakistanis, have very few friends in the American media. You stand out like the morning star. Please continue writing such splendid pieces and earn our gratitude.

Thank you again,

Regards,

Haq”

Lieut General Ayaz Ahmed.

“Firstly, let me clarify, the phrase Taliban has been coined by the
CIA, to give the Afghan freedom fighters a bad religious extremist bad
connotation. The fighters in Afghanistan are freedom fighters pure and simple.
They are fighting the invaders i.e. USA and their toadies. They are
mostly Afghans with a smacking of foreigners, mostly Muslims from all
over who had been encouraged and brought to Afghanistan by the
Americans when they wanted the Soviets out. Some of the foreigners
have stayed on because their own countries have disowned them. So
they too have joined the Afghans in fighting the invaders as they
have no other option. These operate purely in Afghanistan.
Occasionally, when too much pressure builds up on them, they slip
into the wild areas of FATA for temporary refuge.

Those, this side of the border in FATA and the settled
areas, are basically Indian and CIA trained and funded Indians as well
as Afghans and some misguided Pakistan nationals. They are basically
following the directions from RAW and CIA. Their task is to
destabilize the Law and Order situation in Pakistan, damage the economy
and thus bare Pakistan Government to US manipulations. Thereby the US
aim to convince the West that Pakistan govt is unstable and there is
risk of its nuclear assets falling into the hands of extremists, and
therefore must be removed by force for the ‘safety of the world’.

Re Targets. Since most of the terrorists in FATA are American agents,
they are not targeted by the US forces. Only those elements in FATA
are targeted who are friendly to Pakistan and want the American
influence out. Even when Pakistan asks for satellite info re the
miscreants in FATA, so that we take them on, the Americans do not
provide the information. In fact in some cases they have been informing the
Terrorists in FATA of the Peccary convoys for ambushes.
So much for the ally of allies of US!
Yes the US is also hitting Beitullah Mahsuds opponents too, as he is their man.

I have been saying that the trouble in this region started after the
Americans came. It will go away only when the Americans are driven out.

Right now THE AMERICANS ARE THE PROBLEM.
I hope this answers your questions.”

Here are two more representing the Pakistani Army point of view:

“ To stress the point that the ISI is not subservient to CIA, let me quote one instance I know personally.

When one of the Director Generals was posted in, the sitting CIA boss in Islamabad came to visit him, and during the course of talks praised some of the officers of the ISI. When he left, the DG ISI immediately fired all those recommended by the CIA boss. After a few days, the CIA buffoon came again and named a few other officers as doing a good job. The moment he left, the DG fired those officers also. The fool of a CIA fellow did not even know the fate of the officers he had recommended the last time!

The man was recalled to America and replaced!

So much for CIA’s control on ISI.

.

ISI is the best professional SS organization in the world toady. The CIA is not only totally ill informed, it deliberately misleads its country, and is the cause of most botch ups in the history of SSs.”

Here is another from a 3 star general.

“ I fully agree with your assessment.

As for Peter’s view, no, the ISI was never taking orders from CIA. In fact that is one reason why the CIA is trying to do down ISI, and show it up as a rogue org. If there is any rogue org in the world today, it is CIA, which is above government orders. That is primarily because it generates its own funds through drugs and the mafia connections. At times it actively undermines the government’s writ in the US and abroad.”

“I am delighted Peter, to read such candid and true views, very difficult to believe that there are still brave people like you, to call spade a spade. I fully endorse the marks of my friend. Please organize support for the betterment of humanity we need to act now and act fast if we have to save the peace in the Global Village.

Best Regards

The very best wishes”

Syed

“My fear is that, with the U.S going for unilateral strikes, is an extremely unwise move, and whatever the purpose and aim, this action will backfire and badly.

It is true that the unknown factor in this situation will be the people. With bomb blasts having become a routine affair here, well that is going to take its toll.

What scares me really is the fact that the Mullah’s will eventually take over..and the Americans are helping though unwittingly, to speed up the process. The clerics’ interpretation of Islam is very different than what it really is..and being a woman living here, is a scary thought.

So whatever they think they can achieve here, will not be possible..unless of course they blow the whole country to kingdom come !

Keep up the good work. It’s not a matter of taking sides..but of speaking the truth.

Regards and best wishes,”

Huma

Here are a couple from a from a very reasonable sounding young radical lawyer:

“I’m a 29 year old lawyer from Pakistan. I’m deeply conservative ( Extremist, Alqaeda, Talibani, Terrorist to your government) yet vehemently anti-taliban and pro-peace. I may be anti-Israel, anti-India and definitely anti-US “POLICY” but definitely not against your country. Having visited your great country in my childhood, I can say that the ordinary “average joe” Americans are by nature courteous, loving, and above all, fair people. However, by reading your article on the CIA, I must say I’m scared to death of what these remorseless murderers are up to. Yesterday’s Marriott hotel blast bears all the hallmarks of a CIA-RAW terrorist operation. In my opinion, a case is slowly being made to capture Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. Our Nukes are exclusively anti-India and solely meant to protect our territorial integrity, however I do feel that nuclear weapons imperil security not guarantee it. I’m, for all intents and purposes, a supporter of a nuclear-free South-Asia but your Government’s legalized “nuclear proliferation” to India and Israel is promoting a new arms race in the region. This is a recipe for a monumental disaster which could end up over-seeing a genocide of 2 billion people just for the sake of wealthy psychopathic Neo-Cons’ lust for more power, money and of course, us unfortunate Muslim country’s natural resources. Sir, I ask you, can’t we, for the sake of love of God and humanity, peacefully co-exist, live and let others live? Can’t we? Why must we die for no fault of ours’- both you in the West and us in the Muslim world. Just for a moment, forget who we are and where we come from. Can’t we, while keeping our reservations about each other in a dignified and civilized way, learn to appreciate each other’s faith and way of live and live peacefully as HUMAN BEINGS? Is this too much to ask?
Self-accountability, tolerance is the way to go. Again, I must thank your article and calling Pakistan a friend.

Best regards,”
Ali.

“Thanks for the reply. When we talk about terrorism, it is not only perpetrated by your government but ours as well. Our so-called democratic leaders are actually uneducated feudal lords and corrupt military elite who terrorize innocent citizens for the sake of making a few dollars and I’m doubly ashamed of my government’s wrong doings as well. This whole war on terror bullshit is nothing but an excuse to making lots and lots of money at the cost of human dignity and life. We need to defeat it. War is not the solution. Only negotiation is. It has happened in Ireland, South Africa and in many other countries. We can also do it provided we have the will to do it. Once again many thanks for speaking the truth.

Best regards,”
Ali.

The point is this, the Pakistani people know the truth about American intentions for them, shouldn’t we as well? It is vital that we make the American people understand what is being done to innocent people who have been allied with the terror war.The “Taliban,” or those Pashtun defenders who have been labeled “enemies” of the United States, like the Afghans and Iraqis before them, are defending themselves from US invasions and terrorism.

Instead of supporting Bush as he launches another full-scale terror war into Pakistan on the pretense of “winning” in Afghanistan, we should be stopping all Bush’s aggression.The Bush neocon war plan is doing to America and to the world the same thing that his economic polices have done to the American and world economies.

If the US pulled-out of these countries and stopped trying to “tickle” them into submission then there would be peace.Since real peace is not something Bush and Cheney are after, then this is something that must come from the people themselves.Will anything aggravate America’s conscience enough to motivate the people to take this stand?Perhaps if the angry Americans who are protesting Bush’s economic failure would only join together with the angry protesters of the failed war then we would form an unstoppable force.

Will the people ever sue for peace?

peter.chamberlin@hotmail.com

Video of Marines’ arrival at Marriott secured

Presence of undercover FBI/CIA agents, US Marines suspected

Wednesday September 24, 2008 (1032 PST)

ISLAMABAD: The intelligence agencies probing the Marriott blast suspect the presence of under cover FBI/CIA agents in the hotel a few days before it was reduced to rubble by the most horrific terrorist attack in the capital`s history.

The authorities are trying to ascertain the reason for the terrorist attack at the Marriott, Islamabad and whether it has any connection with the stay of American Marines and CIA/FBI agents there.

While sharing the names of the two US marines, killed in the same attack, Roel Rodriguez and Mathew Vryany, the source disclosed that the video recording of the September 16 arrival of a dozen Marines along with a truckload of steel cases has already been secured. The video proves that the steel cases were shifted inside the hotel without checking as has already been reported by The News.

The hotel record also shows that most of these Marines, suspected to be undercover CIA/FBI agents, had already left the hotel before the D-day. Two fresh Marines, again suspected as US spies, arrived in the hotel on the 19th of this month and left on the 20th several hours before the terrorist attack shook the whole world.

The source revealed that both the Marines stayed in the rooms at opposite directions of the building. “One stayed in room 444, located at the right corner of floor 4, while the second officer resided in room 340, located in the extreme left corner of floor 3”, the sources said.

It is worth mentioning here that Ansar Abbasi, Editor Investigation The News, who broke the news, has raised the question of whether the hotel was used by the US spies. But the American authorities denied the report. While, the owner of the hotel, Sadar-ud-Din Hashwani had denied that the hotel administration had been receiving threats from terrorist outfits not to provide space to the American spies.

The US embassy insisted the activity witnessed was a team of support personnel that often precede or accompany certain US officials. However, the government authorities probing the matter have already got most of the facts ascertained as mentioned in The News story.

The US embassy spokesperson, however, when asked if the US embassy had hired several rooms in the Marriott Hotel for years, said in his written reply that the US embassy has been a frequent customer of the Marriott Hotel for many years.

About the Marines and the steel cases which were reported to have been shifted to the hotel between the night of 16 and 17 September and whether these Marines and the suitcases were in the hotel on the day of the blast or evacuated before, he said, “A team of support personnel often and routinely precede and/or accompany certain US government officials. They often carry communication and office equipment required to support large delegations, such as high-level administration officials and members of the US Congress.”

The US embassy spokesman had confirmed that the Marriott rooms, which were in use of the US officials, had the communication and office equipment, which were transported for use by Admiral Mullen.

End.

Pak Tribune

The Israeli lobby and the Iraq War

Connecting the dots: IRAQ & PALESTINE

The Israeli lobby and the Iraq War

Mazin Qumsiyeh

Over 80% of Iraqis want the US to leave Iraq and 60% support attacks on US soldiers and mercenaries (aka “contractors”). A large majority of the US public also want withdrawal (not redeployment and not the fake “winning” strategies of politicians who are always behind the curve).  Get out of Iraq is what most of teh world wants the US to do.  Polls show Bush with the lowest approval ratings ever (in the twentys).  Some call it Bush’s war but is there it is also becoming clearer (at least on the internet though not in mainstream media) that the war was conceived, planned and managed by a neoconservative cabal that has taken full control of the US executive branch.   Their inspiration is the right wing elements in Israel and their goal is nothing short of subverting the US 100%^ serve what they perceive as Israeli interests.  There is overwhelming evidence of an organic links between the war on Iraq and the war on Palestine (evidence suppressed in the media by those who believe Israel must continue to dominate and oppress Palestinians and deny their internationally recognized rights including the right of refugees to return to their homes and lands).

To me the most interesting misinformation disseminated both among some in the left and the right is that US foreign policy in Iraq and in supporting Israel’s destruction of Palestine are merely related to US “strategic interests.” They may differ in their formulation of the main US “interests”, but you hear the same argument from leftists like Noam Chomsky and Stephen Zunes and rightists like Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle.  This mistaken notion in fact was pushed and articulated by the Israeli lobby and Israeli apologists in the media for decades well before neocons and some leftists adopted it.  The Israeli lobby in Washington was never monolithic and new that to be effective it had to get into both major parties in the US.  The lobby knew that the best way to advance closer working relationship with the right would be that Israel is a good and willing “tool” for advancing US interests.  Such a formulation helps deflect criticism from patriotic Americans who worry about the growing influence of this lobby.  On the other side, left leaning Zionists wanted to work with a democratic left that occasionally complained  about “US Imperialism” and corporate interests.  In that case, it was easier to claim Israel helps US public interests or that Israel is a democratic ally.  When push comes to shove, even Zionists on the left would deflect any critique of the Zionist lobby claiming that criticism should be solely directed to the masters (corporate or other elites) who merely “use” Israel as a tool.

Senator Fullbright, Congressman Paul Findley, Jesse Jackson, Admiral Moorer, Jeff Blankfort, Alison Weir, and hundreds of others have articulated in books and articles why the Israeli lobby’s formulation (whether cast in left or right angles) is at best misleading and at worse false and dangerous.   Clearly, those conscientious critics come at it from very different angles.  Some argued that elites and those in power in the US can and have used Israel occasionally as a gopher but that this was a net loss for US elite interests.  Israel’s role as intermediary in the Iran Contra scandal is now well known even though at the time, congressional record referred simply to a “third country”.  It is also well known that Congressional prohibition on assassination and other basic human rights violations by US forces are “bypassed” by the executive branch relying on Israel to do so.  But could such tasks have been accomplished by other puppet countries even cheaper and without hurting US interests in the Arab and Islamic world?

Other critics argued that the US showed it was very adept at finding other puppets when they need them: after the fall of the Shah’s regime in Iran, the US supported Baathist Iraq and Saddam Hussain.  And this was very profitable since most of the money for Saddam did not come directly from eth US but from US other puppet regimes in the oil rich Arab Gulf States.   But then Saddam wanted to support the Palestinians and wanted to build a strong country (the rest as you know is history).   They argued that history shows that the return on investment simply would not bode well for the disingenuous argument of people like Noam Chomsky that Israel is simply a wholly owned subsidiary of US imperialism.

Yet other critics pointed out to the alienation of 1.3 billion Muslims and hundreds of millions of Christians engendered by US support of Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Christians and Muslims.  Clearly this can’t be in the interests of any segment in American society.  Two thirds of the nine million Palestinians are now refugees and displaced people.  Defending this indefensible behavior is difficult.  Supporting it with billions of taxpayer money and US diplomatic and military power is even more difficult.  So a concerted media campaign and strategy was needed to create the illusion that
Israel is a strategic asset to US “interests”.

The elephant in the room that is being hidden by this fig leaf is same pervasive Zionist lobby in the US that has pushed the argument for the fig leaf.  According to Haaretz, Israel was really the only country to whole-heartedly push for the war in Iraq.  Since the Israeli lobby is the most powerful foreign lobby in the US and is rated as among the top 5 most powerful lobbies in DC overall, it would be a legitimate question to ask what this lobby was doing in the months and years leading up to the Iraq war and what (if any) influence does it have.  I think even a cursory review of the articles written in newspapers or “studies” done by think tanks would be sufficient to answer that question. Israeli apologists in these influential think tanks and in major editorial and columnist positions in mainstream media pushed for the war.  But there were few Israeli apologists who either stayed silent on the war or even opposed it.  This latter group became active in the anti-war movement but wanted to make sure that there is no linkage between Iraq and Palestine.  They reacted vociferously and sometimes violently when writers brought up the role of the Israeli lobby and its extensions in pushing for the war on Iraq.

There are attempts to hide the evolution and increasing strength of this lobby in the US (and before that in British imperial designs in the Middle East). So let us review a few example of how this lobby operated over the years and even challenged imperial interests on some occasions.

1) In 1930 after career British diplomats issued a governmental backed white paper suggesting tying Jewish immigration to Palestine to Palestinian economic interests not just the Yishuv capacity, all hell broke lose.  Weissman and other British Zionist mobilized their forces en masse and the effort succeeded in reversing this policy quickly (well discussed in Tom Segev’s excellent book on this period).

2)  When there was strong sentiment in the US to help European Jews fleeing Nazi Germany, the Zionist lobby both in Britain and the US lobbied to limit Jewish immigration to the west and keep the door open only for one destination: Palestine (see Naeim Giladi’s book “Ben Gurion Scandals” and Lenni Brenner’s “51 Documents: History of the Nazi-Zionist collaboration).

3) When the State Department, the Pentagon, and all major career diplomats in the US stood against support for establishment of Israel, President Truman explained his decision to his cabinet (privately) very clearly as relating to the lobby and voting adding that “I have no Arab constituency” (Truman papers and many history books).  The US went on to twist the arms of other countries to support partition and imposing of a Jewish state on Palestine.
4) When Israeli forces attacked the USS Liberty in International waters in 1967, the white house aided by Congress pushed the Navy to hide the facts.  Senior Navy officers (and all survivors of the attack) were angry but could do nothing in the face of a consorted media silencing campaign.   Even in 2003 when new evidence emerged little is reported on it (see http://www.ussliberty.org/)

5) When George Bush 41 received a barrage of media questions in a Press conference in 1991 (after Baker earned the ire of the lobby by suggesting linking expending in growing settlements with foreign aid), Bush uttered his famous line“I am only this little guy in the white house …. there are these thousands on Capital Hill…” so much for the grand leader of the Military/Industrial complex.  Bush and Baker backed down and building went on to increase the number of  colonists/settlers on occupied Palestinian areas from <200,000 in 1991 to over 450,000 in 2000. This was the main reason for collapse of the peace process and increased resentment and anger in the world.

6) President Clinton brought to high office people who were previously employed by the various Israeli lobby groups. Dennis Ross who worked for WIMEP then appointed as US Envoy to the Middle East and then returned to work for WINEP (see http://www.activistsreader.com/articles%20folder/thinktankwatch-winep2.html).   Martin Indyk worked for AIPAC and to my knowledge is the only lobbyist for a foreign country ever appointed ambassador to that same foreign country.   These folks and many others made clear their interest in merging US policy and Israeli policy.  Thus it was not surprising that Clinton issued assurances saying that if the Camp David meetings fail, no one will be faulted.  But even as negotiations continued in Taba, Ross, Clinton, and Indyk blamed Arafat.   The Clinton administration under influence of these lobbyists continued to support aggressive policy in Iraq and tried valiantly to thwart the International community (and US businesses) who pushed for letting go of the sanctions that were killing 6000 children every month.

7) When GWB 43 appointed people like Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, Douglas Feith, and Richard Perle to high offices, there was no questioning the affiliation of those folks to the Zionist lobby.  Cheney was for example in the board of the so called “Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs” (JINSA).  Perle and Wolfowitz were active in Zionist think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute.   Those are the folks who pushed for war on Iraq and their paper records show their rationing includes supporting Israel (http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/706/op60.htm ).

There is a myth that weapons and oil industries support Israel.  The fact is that most of the time Israeli/Zionist interests and those interests of weapons/oil companies are completely divergent See http://www.ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/
In fact many argue that without the lobby, there would not be support for Israeli colonization nor for an illegal and illegitimate war on Iraq and certainly not from companies that are suffering because of this close relationship.  Israel in fact is now directly competing with US Weapons manufacturers in exporting high tech weapons (most of it made possible by US transfer of military technology and money to Israel).  Congress and the White House frequently have had to interfere to protect Israel from any repercussions by its violations of US and international laws regarding proliferation, arms export, use of arms against civilians etc.

There were rare times when the lobby was not as powerful in pushing the myth of equivalency of US and Israeli interests.   In 1956 President Eisenhower listened to career diplomats and US elites, and pressed for Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza and Sinai despite rumblings from Congress (itself influenced by the lobby). But any such minor resistance vanished after 1967 when the lobby pushed the idea that US weapons in Israeli hands are keeping the Soviets/Communism out of the Middle East (a lie because communism could never get a hold in Arab society).  Now do not misunderstand anything I said.  It is misleading to say that Israel rules US foreign policy.  But it would be even more misleading to ignore the central role of this lobby in shaping US foreign policy in the Middle East and in building support by various means.  Nor would it be fair to ignore the PR aimed at exaggerating the “strategic use” argument to outright misinformation about threats and responses to promoting a particular and false view of Christianity (“Christian Zionism”).  For those of us interested in freedom and equality (i.e. human rights), it is simply not correct to try to ignore history and facts and accept the language of our oppressor.  It is playing into both Zionist and Imperial hands by accepting their claim that the reason for support of Israel (and for the war on Iraq) is a “strategic relationship” directed to serving only US elite interests (oil, military, and other corporate interests).

The hypocrisy in US foreign policy is now visible to most people around the world and even here in the US with a self-censoring media it is hard to avoid it.  Take this simple Israel has WMD, has violated 65 UN Security Council Resolutions and was shielded from 35 others by a US Veto (because of the strong lobby), discriminates against people based on religion and the US supports it.   Iraq violated very few UN SC resolutions by invading Kuwait and the US bombed Iraq to a pre-industrial age (destroying water purification, sewage, electrical, transportation and other critical facilities), subjected it to sanctions (even after the withdrawal from Kuwait) that killed over 1 million civilians, and then bombed and occupied Iraq intending to build 14 permanent military basis in Iraq and installing a new Israel-friendly regime!! Is it any wonder that people ask why we have such hypocrisy and question the given answers formulated in Tel Aviv.  After all, Iraq will continue to be a magnet of resistance fighters pouring in from other Arab and Islamic countries as long as Israel is supported in its continued ethnic cleansing of Palestinians (i.e. As long as this hypocrisy is evident).

Some democrats believe the attack on Iraq was for corporate profits.  Some republicans believe it was WMD, defeating terrorism, and most lately bringing “democracy” and freedom.  Many US TV and newspapers consider a discussion outside this permissible duality as taboo.  But people are getting facts about the Israeli lobby from international media, books, and most importantly the Internet.  This explains why an increasing number of democrats, republicans, greens, and independents in the US asking some serious questions that go beyond this duality that misses so much.  More people are realizing that without explaining the role of the Israeli lobby in pushing for this war, the story would be very incomplete at best and misleading at worse.

Many within the lobby are also finally seeing the light and leaving that destructive work.  Thousands of Jews are now openly speaking about the destructive power of the lobby.  The ground is shifting as Jews, Christians, Muslims, and others who believe in human rights and do not support Zionism join hands not only to point out the elephant in the room but also to take the old elephant out of the room and to an overdue retirement.

Fiat Government By Presidential Proclamation

Fiat Government By

Presidential Proclamation

Jim Kirwan

Democracy is a time-consuming affair because the governed need to be involved in every major decision; this was designed to take place in open hearings throughout the congress, with input being filtered from the pubic through their ‘representatives. Not any longer! Since we became a fascist police state, all of that has become passé.

Apparently all that is needed is for the Dictator to give a televised lecture, followed by immediate action from the congress that is totally out-of-sync with the population-then everybody in Washington gets to go home and campaign to get re-elected to the same do-nothing jobs all over again!

What happened to holding open hearings, the presentation of the “facts” behind the supposed “needs”! Listening to our resident alcoholic leader, even though he appeared to be semi-sober tonight; hardly constitutes proof of anything as the man is a congenital liar, a proven international criminal and perhaps the single most disastrous president the Republic has ever had.

The point being: just because Bush says something does not mean that there is any truth whatever to his statements-he’s lied too many times about everything he’s gone to the microphones for. Have we no collective memory at all! This is not a national TV game show where a topic can be trotted out, without national discussions, and then “voted on” within 24 to 48 hours, before we leap to the next crisis! Is this a nation with depth or a circus that’s trying to run a side-show on television. The ramifications of this potential

crime that we’re watching unfold on television is just too great to by-pass the congressional requirement for sober and intelligent partisan debate: partisan because ostensibly not everyone in the country agrees with our very own idiot leader: hence there ought to be discussions as to the veracity of his view!

“Bi-partisanship (everyone in government’s favorite term of late) is government-speak for one-party rule, because it cannot symbolize anything else. What by-partisanship stands for is the death of a true democracy and the end of the Republic-it has nothing to do with coming to the best decision on any topic that is treated to this misconstrued concept of governance!

The list of government miscalculations and outright colossal failures should have automatically disqualified anyone from the sitting administration, or the congress; and especially the heads of the SEC, the Treasury, or the FED to speak on behalf of “what should be done to fix this problem,” if there is indeed an urgent crisis: as this has not yet been proven.

So what’s the rush all about, could it be tomorrow’s demonstrations on Wall Street, complete with pitchforks and torches: “There is no central group organizing this event. But as the call to action that began circulating Monday afternoon noted, “Do whatever you can ­ make and distribute your own flyers, contact all your groups and friends. This crime is without precedence and we can’t be silent! What’s the point of waiting for someone else to organize a protest two months from now, long after the crime has been perpetrated?”

ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THURSDAY’S PROTEST

When: 4pm Thursday, September 25!

Where: Southern end of Bowling Green Park, in the plaza area

What to bring: Banners, noisemakers, signs, leaflets, etc.

Why: To say we won’t pay for the Wall Street bailout.” (1)

There is so much more about all of this that the public is not being told, and so much more that will radically alter everything else in our lives: We cannot afford to trust the congress, the courts or the administration to level with us on this one: because this is a FUNDAMENTAL change in the way everything is done by government, to the people they are supposed to be protecting.

There is a huge amount of history here that is being ignored: these knuckle-draggers have been “in-charge totally” for the last nearly eight years, and they broken virtually everything in our way of life: they’ve desecrated the constitution suspended the entire Bill of Rights, spied upon us since seven months before 911, declared two unilateral and illegal wars, bankrupted the nation and passed their debts down to at least the next five generations!

“The U.S. government has been turned into an engine that accelerates the wealth upwards into the hands of a few. The Wall Street bailout, the Iraq War, military spending, tax cuts to the rich, and a for-profit health care system are all about the acceleration of wealth upwards. And now, the American people are about to pay the price of the collapse of the $513 trillion Ponzi scheme of derivatives. Yes, that’s half a quadrillion dollars.” (2)

What does it take for Americans to finally say: “Hell No I’m not going to take this anymore!” Where’s the anger, where’s the outrage: these inhuman incompetent politicians blindsided the nation with this bogus ploy to steal the way profits and losses are divided, along with any remaining semblance of integrity at any level of this thoroughly corrupted criminal-enterprise that masquerades as what used to be the government of the United States of America.

Do you not know a con-game when you see one; are you so brain-dead that you have forgotten that the only people to blame for all of this are the same people that are demanding that you give them everything else they now say they “must have immediately!” These people are not professionals, they’re criminals-all of them- can you not see that! You sit there night after night and passively swallow their brand of Kool-aid, as though it was the only drink in the world: WHY!

These are the same people that lied to you about Weapons of Mass Destruction, about 911, about spying on us all: they have also lied about the costs of everything they’ve undertaken to ‘accomplish,’ and we let them get away with it.

The USA P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act was rushed through, just like this nightmare, and look what that piece of trash has wrought: have YOU read it! That gives the government the right to empty your bank account without any proof of any wrong-doing on your behalf. And if that wasn’t enough they then added Patriot Act II, neither was read by the criminals in congress, they just did as they were told and passed it; in terror no doubt of what the Dictator was saying might be true. Cowards have no place in government, and this most recent crop of cowards is not willing to protect the public any more than were the previous cowards that have consistently failed us all, miserably!

A people no longer willing to stand up for themselves has no business calling themselves either free or independent, because the truth is they are cowards that deserve neither the freedom they say they seek, nor the security they obviously believe their silence will buy them! Burn up the phone lines and do something visible this time, because you’re running out of time alright: but it doesn’t have to do with revamping the rules of finance; rather this is about whether or not you will have a future at all.

Remember the Income tax, that too was supposed to be “temporary,” just like this ‘adjustment is supposed to be ended within a very short time.’ If you believe that then you deserve these creatures! Just look at McCain and his most recent dodge to avoid a debate: “Too important to hold a debate,” well if it’s that important why didn’t he or Obama leave the senate, and take their chances before deciding to run for president? If ever there was a NEED for a debate then it ought to be now: ON THIS TOPIC! Yet both these half-baked fools have decided to “do what’s best for the country” (translation: capitulate to the direct orders of the Dictator and his owners), and get this “deal” wrapped up quickly- so that the money begins to flow unimpeded back into the overstuffed pockets of all their favorite sponsors!

None of those “in-charge” gives a damn about ordinary Americans, except to force us to pay for all of their totally obscene mistakes: that’s all you and I are good for-to bail them out- even if it bankrupts us all!

kirwanstudios@sbcglobal.net

1) Get out the pitchforks and lighted torches http:// http://www.indypendent.org/2008/09/23/get-out-the-pitchforks-and-lighted- torches-protest-at-wall-st-this-thursday-at-4-pm/

2) The Double-Standard is Stunning

http:// mparent7777-1.livejournal.com/1879002.html

Frankenstein the CIA created

Mujahideen trained and funded by the US are among its deadliest foes,

Jason Burke

When Clement Rodney Hampton-el, a hospital technician from Brooklyn, New Jersey, returned home from the war in Afghanistan in 1989, he told friends his only desire was to return. Though he had been wounded in the arm and leg by a Russian shell, he said he had failed. He had not achieved martyrdom in the name of Islam.

So he found a different theatre for his holy war and achieved a different sort of martyrdom. Three years ago, he was convicted of planning a series of massive explosions in Manhattan and sentenced to 35 years in prison.

Hampton-el was described by prosecutors as a skilled bomb-maker. It was hardly surprising. In Afghanistan he fought with the Hezb-i-Islami group of mujahideen, whose training and weaponry were mainly supplied by the CIA.

He was not alone. American officials estimate that, from 1985 to 1992, 12,500 foreigners were trained in bomb-making, sabotage and urban guerrilla warfare in Afghan camps the CIA helped to set up.

Since the fall of the Soviet puppet government in 1992, another 2,500 are believed to have passed through the camps. They are now run by an assortment of Islamic extremists, including Osama bin Laden, the world’s most wanted terrorist.

Bin Laden arrived in Afghanistan from Saudi Arabia in 1979, aged 22. Though he saw a considerable amount of combat – around the eastern city of Jalalabad in March 1989 and, earlier, around the border town of Khost – his speciality was logistics.

From his base in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, he used his experience of the construction trade, and his money, to build a series of bases where the mujahideen could be trained by their Pakistani, American and, if some recent press reports are to be believed, British advisers.

One of the camps bin Laden built, known as Al-Badr, was the target of the American missile strikes against him last summer. Now it is used by Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, a Pakistan-based organisation that trains volunteers to fight in Kashmir.

Some of their recruits kidnapped and almost certainly killed a group of Western hostages a few years ago. The bases are still full of new volunteers, many

Pakistanis. Most of those who were killed in last August’s

strikes were Pakistani.

A Harkut-ul-Mujahideen official said last week that it had Germans and Britons fighting for the cause, as well as Egyptians, Palestinians and Saudis. Muslims from the West as well as from the Middle East and North Africa are regularly stopped by Pakistani police on the road up the Khyber Pass heading for the camps. Hundreds get through. Afghan veterans have now joined bin Laden’s al-Qaeda group.

Some have returned to former battlegrounds, like the university-educated Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri, a key figure in the Egyptian al-Jihad terrorist group. Al-Zawahiri ran his own operation during the Afghan war, bringing in and training volunteers from the Middle East. Some of the $500 million the CIA poured into Afghanistan reached his group. Al-Zawahiri has become a close aide of bin Laden and has now returned to Afghanistan to work with him. His al-Jihad group has been linked to the Yemeni kidnappers.

One Saudi journalist who interviewed bin Laden in 1989 remembers three of his close associates going under the names of Abu Mohammed, Abu Hafz and Abu Ahmed. All three fought with bin Laden in the early Eighties, travelled with him to the Sudan and have come back to Afghanistan. Afghan veterans, believed to include men who fought the Americans in Somalia, have also returned.

Other members of al-Quaeda remain overseas. Afghan veterans now linked to bin Laden have been traced by investigators to Pakistan, East Africa, Albania, Chechnya, Algeria, France, the US and Britain.

At least one of the kidnappers in Yemen was reported to have fought in Afghanistan and to be linked to al-Quaeda. Despite reports that bin Laden was effectively funded by the Americans, it is impossible to gauge how much American aid he received. He was not a major figure in the Afghan war. Most American weapons, including Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, were channelled by the Pakistanis to the Hezb-i-Islami faction of the mujahideen led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

Bin Laden was only loosely connected with the group, serving under another Hezb-i-Islami commander known as Engineer Machmud. However, bin Laden’s Office of Services, set up to recruit overseas for the war, received some US cash.

But according to one American official, concentrating on bin Laden is a mistake. ‘The point is not the individuals,’ he said last week. ‘The point is that we created a whole cadre of trained and motivated people who turned against us. It’s a classic Frankenstein’s monster situation.’

Others point out that the military contribution of the ‘Arabs’, as the overseas volunteers were known, was relatively small. ‘The fighting was done by the Afghans and most of them went back to their fields when Kabul fell to the mujahideen,’ said Kamaal Khan, a Pakistani defence analyst. ‘Ironically, the bulk of American aid went to the least effective fighters, who turned most strongly to bite the hand that fed them.’

IRAQ AND VIETNAM WAR VETERANS OCCUPY NATIONAL ARCHIVES BUILDING

IRAQ AND VIETNAM WAR VETERANS OCCUPY

NATIONAL ARCHIVES BUILDING

“We take this action as a last resort,” their statement added. “For years we have pursued every avenue open to good, vigilant citizens to bring these men to justice, to re-establish the rule of law, and to restore the balance of power described in our Constitution. We are not disturbing the peace; we are attempting to restore the peace. We are not conducting ourselves in a disorderly manner; our action is well-ordered and well-considered. We are not trespassing; we have come to the home of our Constitution to honor our oath to defend it.” – Veterans for Peace

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IRAQ AND VIETNAM WAR VETERANS OCCUPY NATIONAL ARCHIVES BUILDING

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

September 23, 2008

Contacts: Elliot Adams 518-441-2697
Ellen Barfield 410-948-8023
Tarak Kauff 845 249-9489

“Arresting Bush and Cheney for war crimes will honor our oath to the Constitution,” vets say.

On Tuesday morning, September 23, 7:30am, at the front of the National Archives Building on Constitution Ave. in Washington, D.C., five military veterans will risk arrest as they climb a 9-foot retaining fence and occupy a 35-foot high ledge to raise a 22×8 foot banner stating, “DEFEND OUR CONSTITUTION. ARREST BUSH AND CHENEY: WAR CRIMINALS!”

The group, which includes Vietnam and Iraq War veterans, has declared its intention to stay on the ledge, fasting for 24 hours “in remembrance of those who have perished and those still suffering from the crimes of the Bush administration,” according to a written statement. With a portable PA system, they will broadcast recorded statements from prominent Americans for the impeachment and/or arrest of George W. Bush and Richard Cheney. “Citizens Arrest Warrants” will be distributed to people waiting in line to enter the National Archives.

The veterans emphasized they are taking this action because “Bush and Cheney’s serial abuse of the Law of the Land clearly marks them as domestic enemies of the Constitution…they have illegally invaded and occupied Iraq, deliberately destroyed civilian infrastructure, authorized torture, and unlawfully detained prisoners. These actions clearly mark them as war criminals…accountability extends beyond impeachment to prosecution for war crimes even after their terms of office expire.”

“We take this action as a last resort,” their statement added. “For years we have pursued every avenue open to good, vigilant citizens to bring these men to justice, to re-establish the rule of law, and to restore the balance of power described in our Constitution. We are not disturbing the peace; we are attempting to restore the peace. We are not conducting ourselves in a disorderly manner; our action is well-ordered and well-considered. We are not trespassing; we have come to the home of our Constitution to honor our oath to defend it.”

Those participating are all members of Veterans For Peace and include Elliott Adams: 61, NY, VFP President and former Army paratrooper in Viet Nam; Ellen Barfield: 52, MD, former U.S. Army Sgt., full-time peace and justice advocate; Kim Carlyle: 61, NC, mountain homesteader, former Army Spec 5, 828-626-2572; Diane Wilson: 59, TX, shrimp boat captain, former Army medic, 361-785-4680; Doug Zachary: 58, TX, VFP staff, former USMC LCpl discharged as a conscientious objector, 512-791-9824; and Tarak Kauff (ground support) 67, NY, painting contractor, former U.S. Army Airborne.

Founded in 1985, VFP has 120 chapters throughout the country and has actively protested the Afghanistan and Iraq wars since their inception. Membership includes men and women veterans of all eras and duty stations spanning the Spanish Civil War, WWII, Korea, Vietnam and Iraq. VFP is an official Non Governmental Organization (NGO) represented at the UN.

###

“May the innocent find peace; may the dead find grace; may the wounded find healing; may the homeless find shelter; may America find forgiveness; and may justice find the guilty.” – Veterans For Peace Ch 39

Forecast: U.S. dollar could plunge 90 pct

A financial crisis will likely send the U.S. dollar into a free fall of as much as 90 percent and gold soaring to $2,000 an ounce, a trends researcher said.

“We are going to see economic times the likes of which no living person has seen,” Trends Research Institute Director Gerald Celente said, forecasting a “Panic of 2008.”

“The bigger they are, the harder they’ll fall,” he said in an interview with New York’s Hudson Valley Business Journal.

Celente — who forecast the subprime mortgage financial crisis and the dollar’s decline a year ago and gold’s current rise in May — told the newspaper the subprime mortgage meltdown was just the first “small, high-risk segment of the market” to collapse.

Derivative dealers, hedge funds, buyout firms and other market players will also unravel, he said.

Massive corporate losses, such as those recently posted by Citigroup Inc. (NYSE:C) and General Motors Corp. (NYSE:GM), will also be fairly common “for some time to come,” he said.

He said he would not “be surprised if giants tumble to their deaths,” Celente said.

The Panic of 2008 will lead to a lower U.S. standard of living, he said.

A result will be a drop in holiday spending a year from now, followed by a permanent end of the “retail holiday frenzy” that has driven the U.S. economy since the 1940s, he said.

Still Alive In Outlaw Territory

Still Alive In Outlaw Territory

Jim Kirwan

For nearly eight years now this country has been Outlaw Territory, the Badlands of the planet where law and order have been left to die of neglect in the West Texas sun of Crawford, and all across America as well as in the Halls of Congress where ‘Justice’ has not shown her face since December 12, 2000.

No regulation, no oversight, no investigations, no criminal justice, no civil justice; nothing here but outlaws living and killing under the international rules of power and greed, namely: “There are no rules, only the winners shall profit, and they shall take it all!”

The Judicial branch brought us here but the Congressional branch is the one that has condoned everything that the executive branch of government has demanded from every citizen, over all this time!

Contrary to what most Americans might think, the world has been watching what “we’ve” been doing in Outlaw Country since we first began to live in this Twilight Zone with our new Barbarians that claim absolute rule over the country now, and the world tomorrow!

“. . .a comprehensive and malicious assault upon the integrity of the international and domestic legal orders by a group of men and women who are thoroughly Machiavellian and Straussian in their perception of international relations and in their conduct of both foreign policy and domestic affairs. Even more seriously, in many instances specific components of the Bush administration’s foreign policies constitute ongoing criminal activity under well-recognized principles of both international law and U.S. domestic law, and in particular the Nuremberg Charter, the Nuremberg Judgment, and the Nuremberg Principles, as well as the Pentagon’s own U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10 on The Law of Land Warfare (1956), all of which apply to President Bush himself as Commander-in-Chief of United States Armed Forces under Article II, Section 2 of the United States Constitution.

Depending upon the substantive issues involved, those international crimes typically include but are not limited to the Nuremberg offenses of crimes against peace: For example, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and perhaps their longstanding threatened wars of aggression against Iran and now Pakistan. Their criminal responsibility also concerns Nuremberg crimes against humanity and war crimes as well as grave breaches of the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and of the 1907 Hague Regulations on land warfare: For example, torture at Guantanamo, Bhagram, Abu Ghraib, and elsewhere; enforced disappearances, assassinations, murders, kidnappings, extraordinary renditions, “shock and awe,” depleted uranium, white phosphorous, cluster bombs, Fallujah, and the Gitmo kangaroo courts.” And there’s much more (1)

From War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity, this “government” has now ‘moved-on’ to insisting that they must be allowed to totally restructure the entire financial system of this country, by turning the whole thing over to the Federal Reserve and the Securities Exchange Commission. In reality what they really want to do now is to convert the US Treasury with guidance from a private central bank called the Federal Reserve; into the world’s largest Hedge Fund!

“With capital of $700 billion and the authority to buy and sell any highly leveraged financial instruments, the Treasury will become one gigantic hedge fund that can and may well act to move multi-trillions.

If such an entity makes one wrong move, it can bankrupt its owners within a few hours.” (2)

Maybe we should take a step back and think about this obscenity a bit more. Secretary Paulson has implied that if we don’t do exactly what he says ‘then the economy will most certainly crash.’ But is that true and who exactly is Paulson really:

“Paulson is a ruthless and brutal eco-freak usurer who learned his trade at the Goldman Sachs stock-jobbing operation. He is now the leading member of the committee of public safety which rules in Washington and which includes Gates, Rice, and Mullen. He now demands the astronomical sum of 700 billion dollars for the bailout of mortgage-backed derivatives, collateralized debt obligations, credit default swaps, and other poisonous derivatives. Make no mistake — this is not a bailout of homeowners who are threatened with foreclosure; it is a bailout of the lunatic house of cards which desperate bankers have built on these mortgages using derivatives. The entire crisis is not a crisis of subprime mortgages, it is a crisis of the derivatives bubble which was launched by Wendy Gramm of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission and Greenspan of the Fed with the connivance of Robert Rubin of Goldman Sachs and Citibank, and others in the Clinton administration, some 15 years ago.” And there is also this clarification about the difference between money-centers and traditional banks:

“when we look at institutions like J.P. Morgan Chase, Citibank, and Bank of America, we become aware that these large money center institutions have become detached from any conceivable connection to the world of production, wages, transportation, and all other useful and productive activities. These institutions are not commercial banks any more in any meaningful sense of the term. Ten years ago, in the midst of the Asian financial crisis and the aftermath of the Russian GKO state bankruptcy collapse, the boss of JP Morgan Chase went on television to announce that his bank was specialized in the “risk business.” The risk business meant that JP Morgan Chase had simply given up on the traditional activity of commercial banks, which was primarily to provide loans to corporations for productive investment in plant and equipment that would also create well-paid industrial jobs. J.P. Morgan Chase decided long ago that that activity was nowhere near profitable enough to be continued.” (3)

The Markets created this crisis, they were the ones that made massive and obscene amounts of money, and now that they’ve failed, they’re demanding that the public which they have screwed for decades must bail them out! This BAILOUT at the point of a financial gun is a rotten idea all round!

After eight years of virtually no oversight at all, and no effective legal constraints, this is how the private mega-giants of finance chose to manage themselves, after all the regulations were lifted in order for them to rake in obscene profits; with an investment-to-reserve ratio of roughly between 80 or 100 to one: This debt crisis was inevitable, but the solution to it is not!

These barbarians first took everything into the realm of private profits where they hid all the facts from government and public alike: then they proceeded to run rampant over whatever remaining rules there might have been-until the lid blew off the whole stinking mess and all of them were staring straight into bankruptcy and ruin! Now they are demanding that we simply take the word of the same people that are about to be charged with War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity, coupled with the word of the same crowd that created this mess in the first place on Wall Street and in Congress-in order to save these houses of ill-repute which they insist on calling “institutional pillars of this society”! Classic crap!

These ‘institutions’ are nothing but another bunch of private- thieves with privatized-licenses to steal, without oversight, and without any social conscience. They’re like teenage vandals that were left alone in a government house for eight years and now they’ve set the place on fire, but they don’t want to be blamed for any of the damage that this will no doubt cause to the US Economy! And on top of that outrage they want to tell us: Those who actually own this economy; not only what to do about the fires and the crash that’s coming-because of their actions-but they are not even willing to put up with oversight, by the courts or the public, in how they plan to go about fixing this national disaster which they created! Jail would be too good for them all-but whatever happens they can not be allowed to run “the fix” or dictate how it should be dealt with, under any circumstances!

This entire economy runs on credit: Credit depends upon paying your debts; Apparently these clowns were betting that the debts would never come due ­ and anyone that stupid should not be allowed anywhere near the US Treasury or the government. These are private independent contractors who have been issued a private-contract to control and deprive the public of the means we need to survive. If we want to live we need to remove these private contractors from any position of authority, anywhere in government but especially from the financial-markets they have nearly destroyed!

To do this right, we really need to come together at least on this problem!

kirwanstudios@sbcglobl.net

1) The Bush Administration is an ongoing criminal conspiracy . . .

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10036

2) The Treasury Morphs into a Hedge Fund

http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m47444&hd=&size=1&l=e

3) NO to the Paulson-Bernanke Derivatives Scam Bailout

http://www.rense.com/general83/deriv.htm