Saturday, January 10, 2009
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Israeli shelling kills 42 at U.N. school: medics
By Nidal al-Mughrabi
GAZA (Reuters) - Israeli shelling killed more than 40 Palestinians Tuesday at a U.N. school where civilians had taken shelter, medical officials said, in carnage likely to boost international pressure on Israel to halt a Gaza offensive.
An army spokesman said troops fired mortars at the premises after gunmen mortared their positions from inside al-Fakhora school in Jabalya refugee camp. He gave no casualty figure.
People cut down by shrapnel lay in pools of blood in the street. Witnesses said two shells exploded outside the school, killing at least 42 civilians and wounding dozens among people who had taken refuge there and residents of nearby buildings.
It took the Palestinian death toll in 11 days of violence to over 600 and prompted U.S. President-elect Barack Obama to break his silence on the offensive, to say the loss of life among civilians was "a source of deep concern" for him.
A fourth day of a ground assault, launched after a week of air strikes, still failed to end Hamas rocket salvoes, which again caused damage and some injury in southern Israel.
A senior U.N. official in Gaza said 350 people had been sheltering at the Fakhora school and the United Nations regularly gave the Israeli army exact geographical coordinates of its facilities to try to keep them safe from attack.
Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, asked by reporters about the deaths, said she was "not familiar" with the incident.
"Unfortunately, (Hamas fighters) are hiding amongst civilians," she said, adding that Israel was trying to avoid civilian casualties. The army released video which it said showed gunmen firing from another U.N. school in Gaza in 2007.
In a separate attack earlier in the day, three Palestinians were killed in an air strike on another school run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.
The deaths in Gaza, home to 1.5 million people, raised to 77 the number of Palestinian civilians killed Tuesday alone, according to medical officials.
The spike in civilian casualties could prove to be a turning point in Israel's "Operation Cast Lead," launched on December 27 with the declared aim of removing the Hamas rocket threat.
The killing of 28 unarmed Lebanese in Israeli bombing in the village of Qana in the 2006 Lebanon war drained foreign support for its campaign against Hezbollah guerrillas. Israel said it had not known civilians were in the area.
DEATH TOLL
In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the United States "would like an immediate ceasefire" but one that is "durable, sustainable and not time-limited" -- comments that stopped short of a formal demand for a truce now.
International efforts already under way to end the fighting have focused on securing a deal that would meet Israel's demand that Hamas, an Islamist group in charge of the Gaza Strip, could not rearm once hostilities end.
"If there is an end to terror, an end to the smuggling of ammunition from Sinai to Gaza, the Israeli fighting will stop," Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said, referring to rockets and other weaponry Hamas obtains through tunnels under the Gaza-Egypt border.
In fighting Tuesday, Israeli forces pushed into the southern town of Khan Younis and battled Hamas militants on the outskirts of the city of Gaza. Palestinian medical officials said four militants were killed.
According to the Palestinian Health Ministry in the Gaza Strip, at least 631 Palestinians have been killed and more than 2,700 wounded since Israel began its offensive.
Ten Israelis, including three civilians hit by rocket fire, have been killed in the conflict. At least five rockets landed in Israel Tuesday, including one that hit the town of Gadera, 28 km (17 miles) from Tel Aviv. A three-month-old baby was hurt.
In Gaza, an infant of similar age was among children killed.
TRUCE EFFORTS
A senior Israeli official said French President Nicolas Sarkozy, on a Middle East visit and in partnership with Egypt, was pursuing "a serious initiative" for a ceasefire.
Commenting on the deaths at Jabalya school, Sarkozy said during a visit to French U.N. peacekeepers in south Lebanon: "It reinforces my determination for all this to stop as quickly as possible. Time is working against us. We must find a solution."
Talks were focusing, the Israeli official said, on the size of an "international presence" along the blockaded Gaza-Egypt border, where rockets and other weapons have reached Hamas through a network of tunnels.
Tony Blair, the Middle East envoy of major powers sponsoring Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, said Sarkozy, the European Union and the United States were all in agreement that new anti-smuggling measures would be needed to clinch a ceasefire.
"What is being talked about is a credible plan to stop the smuggling," Blair, a former British prime minister, told reporters in Jerusalem.
He said he hoped the plan could be completed quickly and that enhanced Israeli security would lead to "a significant advance in opening up Gaza to the outside world."
Hamas, which has rebuffed Western demands to recognize Israel, end violence and accept existing interim peace deals, has demanded a lifting of the blockade of the Gaza Strip in any future ceasefire. It seized the territory in 2007.
Most of the deaths reported by Gaza hospitals in recent days have been civilians.
The Israeli military said it killed 130 militants since it began a ground assault Saturday, a figure that suggested the total Palestinian death toll might be close to 750 and that bodies could still be on the battlefield.
Many of the Gaza Strip's 1.5 million people lack food, water or power. In southern Israel, schools remained closed and hundreds of thousands of people have been rushing to shelter at the sound of alarms heralding incoming rockets.
(Additional reporting by Adam Entous in Jerusalem, Writing by Jeffrey Heller and Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Jon Boyle)
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE5053R720090106?sp=true
Unconventional Weapons against The People of Gaza
Doctor Mads Gilbert is a member of a Norwegian triage medical team present in the besieged Gaza Strip. The team has exposed that Israel has used depleted uranium weapons in its war on the impoverished territory which is home to 1.5 million Palestinians. He described the conditions inside Gaza in an exclusive Press TV interview.
Press TV: What can you tell about the uranium findings?
Dr. Mads Gilbert:The findings about the uranium I cannot tell you much about, but I can tell you that we have clear evidence that the Israelis are using a new type of very high explosive weapons which are called Dense Inert Metal Explosive (DIME) and are made out of a tungsten alloy.
These weapons have an enormous power to explode.
The power of the explosion dissipates very quickly and the strength does not travel long, maybe 10 meters, but those humans who are hit by this explosion, this pressure wave are cut in pieces.
This was first used in Lebanon in 2006, it was used here in Gaza in 2006 and the injuries that we see in Shifa [Hospital] now, many many of them I suspect and we all suspect are the effect of DIME weapons used by the Israelis.
On the long term, these weapons will have a cancer effect on those who survive. They will develop cancer we suspect. There has been very little research on this but some research has been among other places in the United States, which show that these weapons have a high tendency to develop cancer. So they kill and those who survive risk having cancer.
Press TV: And what do you have to say about this?
Dr. Mads Gilbert: All that is happening in Gaza here now is against international law, it is against humanity and I think it is against what it means to be a decent person. You don’t treat other people like this. Even if you disagree with him… maybe even if you fight with them, you don’t treat civilians, children and women like this.
And I have an appeal to the Israeli doctors and nurses. They are my colleagues. We belong to the same international community, the medical community. I wish that the good doctors and nurses in Israel tell their government to stop these atrocities. We cannot continue with this. We may differ in opinions, but you cannot treat the civilian Palestinian population in Gaza in this way.
Today, they were bombing in Gaza City; we received 150 wounded and more than 50 killed.
Press TV: Only at Shifa?!
Dr. Mads Gilbert: Yes, here in Shifa. I treated a ten-year-old boy. He had his whole chest filled with fragments from the bomb. On his lap was another person’s leg that had been cut off. We resuscitated him and did everything we could do to save his life but he died between our hands.
This is such a terrible experience and behind the numbers that you report all the time, there are human beings, families, women, grandmothers, children. That is in fact the reality in this situation. Those who are paying the price for the Israeli bombardments now are the common people, the Palestinian people.
Half of the population in Palestine are below 15 years and 80 percent of the people in Gaza live below the level of poverty defined by the UN. Now they don’t have food, they don’t have electricity. It’s cold they don’t have warmth and in addition to that, they are killed.
This must be stopped.
Press TV How many people did you see that are effected by this weapon?
Dr. Mads Gilbert: Almost all of the patients we have received have these sever amputations. They seem to have been affected by this kind of weapon. Of course, we have many fragment injuries and burns but those who have got their limbs cut off, constitutes quite a large proportion.
You know we have a lot to do. Palestinian doctors, nurses and paramedics do an incredibly heroic job to save their people. Doctor Eric and I are just a small drip in the ocean, but we learn from them. Unfortunately, we don’t have the time to do research, we have to save lives, but this question should be researched by the international community.
Interview of Dr. Mads Gilbert
This report confirms that these attacks are quite deliberately directed against civilians, using new unconventional weapons.
This is a carefully planned humanitarian catastrophe. How can anybody in their right mind support the actions of the Israeli government.
Read this interview with a distinguished and courageous Norwegian doctor.
Dr. Mads Gilbert
Here are some of the highlights.
"The Israelis are using a new type of very high explosive weapons which are called Dense Inert Metal Explosive (DIME) and are made out of a tungsten alloy. These weapons have an enormous power to explode."
"these weapons will have a cancer effect on those who survive. They will develop cancer we suspect."
"All that is happening in Gaza here now is against international law, it is against humanity"
"Almost all of the patients we have received have these sever amputations. They seem to have been affected by this kind of weapon. Of course, we have many fragment injuries and burns but those who have got their limbs cut off, constitutes quite a large proportion.
You know we have a lot to do. Palestinian doctors, nurses and paramedics do an incredibly heroic job to save their people. Doctor Eric and I are just a small drip in the ocean, but we learn from them."
And then decide where do you stand.
We stand with the people of Palestine whose lives are being destroyed.
We stand in solidarity with their struggle.
We stand for humanity against the US-Israeli war criminals.
Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, January 5, 2009
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11636
Monday, January 5, 2009
Henry Kissinger on CNBC calling for a New World Order 1-5-09
"Hey listen to what this somewhat mobile tree stump had to say today" -f.f. 1/5/09
ABC News: Alien Blimps Over Salt Lake City
Spread the word people! It's gonna be some year. - F.F. 1/5/09
A Giant Blimp/UFO Over Salt Lake City? - video powered by Metacafe
ABC News wants you to believe we are being visited by aliens. In the video here, they say the residents of Salt Lake City are scratching their heads.
However, there is plenty of documentation these supposed alien blimps are in fact surveillance vessels manufactured for Homeland Security. From Engadget:
Lockheed Martin to build High Altitude Airship for homeland security:
Link: http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/22/lockheed-martin-to-build-high-altitude-airship-for-homeland-secu/
Darren Murph
January 22, 2007
by Darren Murph, posted Jan 22nd 2007 at 9:50AM
Although it’s not exactly shocking to hear of yet another homeland security application that seems to border on Big Brother, Lockheed Martin’s High Altitude Airship could keep an elevated eye on 600 miles of US countryside at any given time, and if all goes as planned, we’ll have 11 of these things floating over our everyday activities by the end of the decade. The HAA prototype is a ginormous airship that measures 17-times larger than the Goodyear rendition we’re all used to seeing above sporting events, and is designed to hover 12 miles above the earth in order to keep tabs on what’s happening below. The airship is slated to be solar-powered and should stay in a geocentric orbit for "up to a year," and if equipped with high-resolution cameras, a single one could cover everything "between Toledo, Ohio and New York City." While Lockheed Martin is thrilled with the $40 million project they’ve been awarded, it’s certainly understandable to get a little worried about how these blimps will actually be used, but a company spokesperson suggested then an entire fleet could actually be used for "border surveillance" — and hey, we need a little help down there anyway, right?
Brock N. Meeks
MSNBC
August 27, 2005
WASHINGTON - Blimps, they’re the next big thing in homeland security.
You’re laughing.That’s okay, a lot of people do, says George Spyrou, president of Airship Management Services, whose blimps are leased to the likes of Fuji Film and have been used as air surveillance and security platforms by the New York Police Department, the U.S. Secret Service and the Athens police during last year’s summer Olympic Games.
Although blimps have proven their worth in various security environments from the Super Bowl to presidential conventions, the huge airships aren’t widely deployed because they suffer from bad public relations.
“It’s a perception problem going right back to the Hindenburg disaster when she blew up in 1937,” Spyrou said. “The perception is that an airship is unsafe.” But that’s not true, he says. “They are filled with helium, not hydrogen.”
Link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9069787/
Purdue Team To Float High-altitude Airship For Weather, Security
ScienceDaily
April 1, 2005
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Researchers from Purdue University are working to develop a high-altitude, helium-filled craft that may hover over the same spot for up to a year for applications in areas such as surveillance, homeland security, missile defense and weather forecasting.
About 10 Purdue researchers are involved in the work, funded by the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory.
“The concept is to have an airship that flies above 65,000 feet and is geostationary, which means it stays in the same position over the Earth,” said Oleg Wasynczuk, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Purdue who is leading the project with John Sullivan, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics.
Engineers and scientists are working to develop solar cells and an advanced fuel cell to power the craft. They also are developing the aerodynamic design and a control system to help keep the airship steady amid high winds and computer simulations to show how the craft would perform given specific design characteristics.
“To stay geostationary, it must have motors onboard to provide thrust so that it can constantly be reoriented because the wind is blowing up there,” said Sullivan, who is in charge of the portion of the research focusing on developing the ship’s aerodynamic design.
Purdue researchers also are developing mathematical models to simulate the fuel cell’s performance.
Link: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/03/050329135943.htm
Or maybe there are little green men over at Blackwater International, the guys who are fond of clearing intersections with automatic gunfire.
Link: http://www.blackwaterusa.com/tech_inno/TI_aerial_vehicles.html
A Giant Blimp/UFO Over Salt Lake City? - video powered by Metacafe
ABC News wants you to believe we are being visited by aliens. In the video here, they say the residents of Salt Lake City are scratching their heads.
However, there is plenty of documentation these supposed alien blimps are in fact surveillance vessels manufactured for Homeland Security. From Engadget:
Lockheed Martin to build High Altitude Airship for homeland security:
Link: http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/22/lockheed-martin-to-build-high-altitude-airship-for-homeland-secu/
Darren Murph
January 22, 2007
by Darren Murph, posted Jan 22nd 2007 at 9:50AM
Although it’s not exactly shocking to hear of yet another homeland security application that seems to border on Big Brother, Lockheed Martin’s High Altitude Airship could keep an elevated eye on 600 miles of US countryside at any given time, and if all goes as planned, we’ll have 11 of these things floating over our everyday activities by the end of the decade. The HAA prototype is a ginormous airship that measures 17-times larger than the Goodyear rendition we’re all used to seeing above sporting events, and is designed to hover 12 miles above the earth in order to keep tabs on what’s happening below. The airship is slated to be solar-powered and should stay in a geocentric orbit for "up to a year," and if equipped with high-resolution cameras, a single one could cover everything "between Toledo, Ohio and New York City." While Lockheed Martin is thrilled with the $40 million project they’ve been awarded, it’s certainly understandable to get a little worried about how these blimps will actually be used, but a company spokesperson suggested then an entire fleet could actually be used for "border surveillance" — and hey, we need a little help down there anyway, right?
Brock N. Meeks
MSNBC
August 27, 2005
WASHINGTON - Blimps, they’re the next big thing in homeland security.
You’re laughing.That’s okay, a lot of people do, says George Spyrou, president of Airship Management Services, whose blimps are leased to the likes of Fuji Film and have been used as air surveillance and security platforms by the New York Police Department, the U.S. Secret Service and the Athens police during last year’s summer Olympic Games.
Although blimps have proven their worth in various security environments from the Super Bowl to presidential conventions, the huge airships aren’t widely deployed because they suffer from bad public relations.
“It’s a perception problem going right back to the Hindenburg disaster when she blew up in 1937,” Spyrou said. “The perception is that an airship is unsafe.” But that’s not true, he says. “They are filled with helium, not hydrogen.”
Link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9069787/
Purdue Team To Float High-altitude Airship For Weather, Security
ScienceDaily
April 1, 2005
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Researchers from Purdue University are working to develop a high-altitude, helium-filled craft that may hover over the same spot for up to a year for applications in areas such as surveillance, homeland security, missile defense and weather forecasting.
About 10 Purdue researchers are involved in the work, funded by the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory.
“The concept is to have an airship that flies above 65,000 feet and is geostationary, which means it stays in the same position over the Earth,” said Oleg Wasynczuk, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Purdue who is leading the project with John Sullivan, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics.
Engineers and scientists are working to develop solar cells and an advanced fuel cell to power the craft. They also are developing the aerodynamic design and a control system to help keep the airship steady amid high winds and computer simulations to show how the craft would perform given specific design characteristics.
“To stay geostationary, it must have motors onboard to provide thrust so that it can constantly be reoriented because the wind is blowing up there,” said Sullivan, who is in charge of the portion of the research focusing on developing the ship’s aerodynamic design.
Purdue researchers also are developing mathematical models to simulate the fuel cell’s performance.
Link: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/03/050329135943.htm
Or maybe there are little green men over at Blackwater International, the guys who are fond of clearing intersections with automatic gunfire.
Link: http://www.blackwaterusa.com/tech_inno/TI_aerial_vehicles.html
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Obama's, Clinton's, Quigley's, Pigley's
The Q-Man
Obama’s “middle of the road cabinet” consists of people hailing from the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, and the secretive Bilderberg group. Timothy Geithner, Obama’s pick to head up the Treasury, is head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and is the Fed’s main liaison with Wall Street. Obama’s so-called Economic Recovery Advisory Board will be chaired by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker. Obama has outlined his geopolitical plans in Foreign Affairs, the mainstay periodical of the Council on Foreign Relations, and his wife, Michelle Obama, is a member of a branch of the CFR in Chicago.
The CFR has only one purpose and that is to push for world government. Carroll Quigley, the Georgetown University history professor and historian for the CFR wrote the following: “The Council on Foreign Relations is the American Branch of a society which originated in England… (and) …believes national boundaries should be obliterated and one-world rule established.”
(Do some research on "Carroll Quigley" & his connection with Big Bill Clinton for all the Democrats clinging on to the idea that their party is not, (and will continue to be), part of the problem). -F.F.
Obama’s “middle of the road cabinet” consists of people hailing from the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, and the secretive Bilderberg group. Timothy Geithner, Obama’s pick to head up the Treasury, is head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and is the Fed’s main liaison with Wall Street. Obama’s so-called Economic Recovery Advisory Board will be chaired by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker. Obama has outlined his geopolitical plans in Foreign Affairs, the mainstay periodical of the Council on Foreign Relations, and his wife, Michelle Obama, is a member of a branch of the CFR in Chicago.
The CFR has only one purpose and that is to push for world government. Carroll Quigley, the Georgetown University history professor and historian for the CFR wrote the following: “The Council on Foreign Relations is the American Branch of a society which originated in England… (and) …believes national boundaries should be obliterated and one-world rule established.”
(Do some research on "Carroll Quigley" & his connection with Big Bill Clinton for all the Democrats clinging on to the idea that their party is not, (and will continue to be), part of the problem). -F.F.
Federal agents: Cindy McCain’s full tax returns will show war profits, pre-9/11 insider trading
Washington—June 18, 2008—TomFlocco.com—According to a high-placed federal agent actively based in Washington, DC who spoke with federal whistleblower Stewart Webb, Republican presidential candidate and Senate Armed Services Ranking Member John McCain’s wife Cindy Hensley McCain’s multiple undisclosed federal income tax returns will reveal millions in Iraq War military procurement contract profits involving Hensley & Co. (Hensley Beer), Mrs. McCain’s large Anheuser-Busch beer distribution firm.
In more shocking allegations which media and Democratic congressional leaders have failed to investigate, Thomas Heneghan, a U.S. intelligence authority with scores of federal contacts, said federal agents also know that Mrs. McCain made millions in insider short-sale profits involving Swiss re-insurance put option stock orders placed prior to the September 11 attacks—profits of death which have remained untaxed by the U.S. government and raise questions as to her 9/11 tip-off.
Heneghan alleges Cindy McCain’s complete 2001 tax return would also reveal that she has a secret offshore 1241 corporation set up with “private trust accounts established by Senator McCain’s late ‘Keating Five’ scandal and Bush 41 money launderer Leonard Millman who was also Stewart Webb’s father-in-law—all of which screams for a federal probe before the November 4 election.
Heneghan also alleged that Mrs. McCain has made millions from a joint business enterprise with both Hillary and Bill Clinton and Fox News billionaire Ruppert Murdoch which involves a pornographic website with its 1241 corporate headquarters in the Cayman Islands.
Using an arm’s length distance from his wife’s assets to shield himself from conflict of interest problems, McCain released only a two-page summary from his wife’s separate 2006 federal income taxes which were filed six months late via an IRS-approved extension, after which Mrs. McCain received a 2007 tax extension until October 15, 2008—just 19 days before the November 4 presidential election—unless she files for an additional extension to hide the profits until after the election.
Gaza: Life under bombardment
http://therealnews.com/id/3051/January 4, 2009/Gaza%3A+Life+under+bombardment
Lost souls of Afghanistan's heroin trade
http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=3013
Friday, January 2, 2009
Obama’s Deadly Silence
The truce Hamas had meticulously upheld was shattered when Israel attacked Gaza, killing six Palestinians, as The Guardian reported on 5 November. A blatant disregard for the facts, it seems, will not leave the White House with George W. Bush on 20 January.
“I would like to ask President-elect Obama to say something please about the humanitarian crisis that is being experienced right now by the people of Gaza.” Former Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney made her plea after disembarking from the badly damaged SS Dignity that had limped to the Lebanese port of Tyre while taking on water.
The small boat, carrying McKinney, the Green Party’s recent presidential candidate, other volunteers, and several tons of donated medical supplies, had been trying to reach the coast of Gaza when it was rammed by an Israeli gunboat in international waters.
But as more than 2,400 Palestinians have been killed or injured — the majority civilians — since Israel began its savage bombardment of Gaza on 27 December, Obama has maintained his silence. “There is only one president at a time,” his spokesmen tell the media. This convenient excuse has not applied, say, to Obama’s detailed interventions on the economy, or his condemnation of the “coordinated attacks on innocent civilians” in Mumbai in November.
The Mumbai attacks were a clear-cut case of innocent people being slaughtered. The situation in the Middle East however is seen as more “complicated” and so polite opinion accepts Obama’s silence not as the approval for Israel’s actions that it certainly is, but as responsible statesmanship.
It ought not to be difficult to condemn Israel’s murder of civilians and bombing of civilian infrastructure including hundreds of private homes, universities, schools, mosques, civil police stations and ministries, and the building housing the only freely-elected Arab parliament.
It ought not to be risky or disruptive to US foreign policy to say that Israel has an unconditional obligation under the Fourth Geneva Convention to lift its lethal, months-old blockade preventing adequate food, fuel, surgical supplies, medications and other basic necessities from reaching Gaza.
But in the looking-glass world of American politics, Israel, with its powerful first-world army, is the victim, and Gaza — the besieged and blockaded home to 1.5 million immiserated people, half of them children and eighty percent refugees — is the aggressor against whom no cruelty is apparently too extreme.
While feigning restraint, Obama has telegraphed where he really stands; senior adviser David Axelrod told CBS on 28 December that Obama understood Israel’s urge to “respond” to attacks on its citizens. Axelrod claimed that “this situation has become even more complicated in the last couple of days and weeks as Hamas began its shelling [and] Israel responded.”
The truce Hamas had meticulously upheld was shattered when Israel attacked Gaza, killing six Palestinians, as The Guardian reported on 5 November. A blatant disregard for the facts, it seems, will not leave the White House with George W. Bush on 20 January.
Axelrod also recalled Obama’s visit to Israel last July when he ignored Palestinians and visited the Israeli town of Sderot. There, Obama declared: “If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I’m going to do everything in my power to stop that. I would expect Israelis to do the same thing.”
This should not surprise anyone. Despite pervasive wishful thinking that Obama would abandon America’s pro-Israel bias, his approach has been almost indistinguishable from the Bush administration’s.
Along with Tony Blair and George W. Bush, Obama staunchly supported Israel’s war against Lebanon in July-August 2006, where it used cluster bombs on civilian areas, killing more than 1,000 people.
Obama’s comments in Sderot echoed what he said in a speech to the powerful pro-Israel lobby, AIPAC, in March 2007. He recalled an earlier visit to the Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona near the border with Lebanon which he said reminded him of an American suburb. There, he could imagine the sounds of Israeli children at “joyful play just like my own daughters.” He saw a home the Israelis told him was damaged by a Hizballah rocket (no one had been hurt in the incident).
Obama has identified his daughters repeatedly with Israeli children, while never having uttered a word about the thousands — thousands — of Palestinian and Lebanese children killed and permanently maimed by Israeli attacks just since 2006. This allegedly post-racial president appears fully invested in the racist worldview that considers Arab lives to be worth less than those of Israelis and in which Arabs are always “terrorists.”
The problem is much wider than Obama: American liberals in general see no contradiction in espousing positions supporting Israel that they would deem extremist and racist in any other context. The cream of America’s allegedly “progressive” Democratic party vanguard — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Howard Berman, New York Senator Charles Schumer, among others — have all offered unequivocal support for Israel’s massacres in Gaza, describing them as “self-defense.”
And then there’s Hillary Clinton, the incoming secretary of state and self-styled champion of women and the working classes, who won’t let anyone outbid her anti-Palestinian positions.
Democrats are not simply indifferent to Palestinians. In the recent presidential election, their efforts to win swing states like Florida often involved espousing positions dehumanizing to Palestinians in particular and Arabs and Muslims in general. Many liberals know this is wrong but tolerate it silently as a price worth paying (though not to be paid by them) to see a Democrat in office.
Even those further to the left implicitly accept Israel’s logic. Matthew Rothschild, editor of The Progressive, criticized Israel’s attacks on Gaza as a “reckless” and “disproportionate response” to Hamas rocket attacks that he deemed “immoral.” There are many others who do nothing to support nonviolent resistance to Israeli occupation and colonization, such as boycott, divestment and sanctions but who are quick to condemn any desperate Palestinian effort — no matter how ineffectual and symbolic — to resist Israel’s relentless aggression.
Similarly, we can expect that the American university professors who have publicly opposed the academic boycott of Israel on grounds of protecting “academic freedom” will remain just as silent about Israel’s bombing of the Islamic University of Gaza as they have about Israel’s other attacks on Palestinian academic institutions.
There is no silver lining to Israel’s slaughter in Gaza, but the reactions to it should at least serve as a wake-up call: when it comes to the struggle for peace and justice in Palestine, the American liberal elites who are about to assume power present as formidable an obstacle as the outgoing Bush administration and its neoconservative backers.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10097.shtml
“I would like to ask President-elect Obama to say something please about the humanitarian crisis that is being experienced right now by the people of Gaza.” Former Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney made her plea after disembarking from the badly damaged SS Dignity that had limped to the Lebanese port of Tyre while taking on water.
The small boat, carrying McKinney, the Green Party’s recent presidential candidate, other volunteers, and several tons of donated medical supplies, had been trying to reach the coast of Gaza when it was rammed by an Israeli gunboat in international waters.
But as more than 2,400 Palestinians have been killed or injured — the majority civilians — since Israel began its savage bombardment of Gaza on 27 December, Obama has maintained his silence. “There is only one president at a time,” his spokesmen tell the media. This convenient excuse has not applied, say, to Obama’s detailed interventions on the economy, or his condemnation of the “coordinated attacks on innocent civilians” in Mumbai in November.
The Mumbai attacks were a clear-cut case of innocent people being slaughtered. The situation in the Middle East however is seen as more “complicated” and so polite opinion accepts Obama’s silence not as the approval for Israel’s actions that it certainly is, but as responsible statesmanship.
It ought not to be difficult to condemn Israel’s murder of civilians and bombing of civilian infrastructure including hundreds of private homes, universities, schools, mosques, civil police stations and ministries, and the building housing the only freely-elected Arab parliament.
It ought not to be risky or disruptive to US foreign policy to say that Israel has an unconditional obligation under the Fourth Geneva Convention to lift its lethal, months-old blockade preventing adequate food, fuel, surgical supplies, medications and other basic necessities from reaching Gaza.
But in the looking-glass world of American politics, Israel, with its powerful first-world army, is the victim, and Gaza — the besieged and blockaded home to 1.5 million immiserated people, half of them children and eighty percent refugees — is the aggressor against whom no cruelty is apparently too extreme.
While feigning restraint, Obama has telegraphed where he really stands; senior adviser David Axelrod told CBS on 28 December that Obama understood Israel’s urge to “respond” to attacks on its citizens. Axelrod claimed that “this situation has become even more complicated in the last couple of days and weeks as Hamas began its shelling [and] Israel responded.”
The truce Hamas had meticulously upheld was shattered when Israel attacked Gaza, killing six Palestinians, as The Guardian reported on 5 November. A blatant disregard for the facts, it seems, will not leave the White House with George W. Bush on 20 January.
Axelrod also recalled Obama’s visit to Israel last July when he ignored Palestinians and visited the Israeli town of Sderot. There, Obama declared: “If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I’m going to do everything in my power to stop that. I would expect Israelis to do the same thing.”
This should not surprise anyone. Despite pervasive wishful thinking that Obama would abandon America’s pro-Israel bias, his approach has been almost indistinguishable from the Bush administration’s.
Along with Tony Blair and George W. Bush, Obama staunchly supported Israel’s war against Lebanon in July-August 2006, where it used cluster bombs on civilian areas, killing more than 1,000 people.
Obama’s comments in Sderot echoed what he said in a speech to the powerful pro-Israel lobby, AIPAC, in March 2007. He recalled an earlier visit to the Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona near the border with Lebanon which he said reminded him of an American suburb. There, he could imagine the sounds of Israeli children at “joyful play just like my own daughters.” He saw a home the Israelis told him was damaged by a Hizballah rocket (no one had been hurt in the incident).
Obama has identified his daughters repeatedly with Israeli children, while never having uttered a word about the thousands — thousands — of Palestinian and Lebanese children killed and permanently maimed by Israeli attacks just since 2006. This allegedly post-racial president appears fully invested in the racist worldview that considers Arab lives to be worth less than those of Israelis and in which Arabs are always “terrorists.”
The problem is much wider than Obama: American liberals in general see no contradiction in espousing positions supporting Israel that they would deem extremist and racist in any other context. The cream of America’s allegedly “progressive” Democratic party vanguard — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Howard Berman, New York Senator Charles Schumer, among others — have all offered unequivocal support for Israel’s massacres in Gaza, describing them as “self-defense.”
And then there’s Hillary Clinton, the incoming secretary of state and self-styled champion of women and the working classes, who won’t let anyone outbid her anti-Palestinian positions.
Democrats are not simply indifferent to Palestinians. In the recent presidential election, their efforts to win swing states like Florida often involved espousing positions dehumanizing to Palestinians in particular and Arabs and Muslims in general. Many liberals know this is wrong but tolerate it silently as a price worth paying (though not to be paid by them) to see a Democrat in office.
Even those further to the left implicitly accept Israel’s logic. Matthew Rothschild, editor of The Progressive, criticized Israel’s attacks on Gaza as a “reckless” and “disproportionate response” to Hamas rocket attacks that he deemed “immoral.” There are many others who do nothing to support nonviolent resistance to Israeli occupation and colonization, such as boycott, divestment and sanctions but who are quick to condemn any desperate Palestinian effort — no matter how ineffectual and symbolic — to resist Israel’s relentless aggression.
Similarly, we can expect that the American university professors who have publicly opposed the academic boycott of Israel on grounds of protecting “academic freedom” will remain just as silent about Israel’s bombing of the Islamic University of Gaza as they have about Israel’s other attacks on Palestinian academic institutions.
There is no silver lining to Israel’s slaughter in Gaza, but the reactions to it should at least serve as a wake-up call: when it comes to the struggle for peace and justice in Palestine, the American liberal elites who are about to assume power present as formidable an obstacle as the outgoing Bush administration and its neoconservative backers.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10097.shtml
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Former Army Employee Pleads Guilty to Acting as Israeli Agent
MANHATTAN — Lev L. Dassin, the Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced that Ben-Ami Kadish pleaded guilty earlier today to a one-count information charging him with participating in a conspiracy to act as an unregistered agent of the Government of Israel.
In summary, according to statements at Kadish’s guilty plea before U.S. Magistrate Judge Theodore H. Katz, the Information and other documents filed Manhattan federal court:
Kadish is a former employee of the U.S. Army’s Armament Research, Development, and Engineering Center at the Picatinny Arsenal in Dover, New Jersey ("the Arsenal"). On numerous occasions from about 1980 through 1985, Kadish provided classified documents relating to the U.S. military – including some relating to U.S. missile defense systems – to an agent of the Government of Israel, Yossi Yagur, who photographed the documents at Kadish’s residence.
Kadish, 85, faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a maximum fine of $250,000.
Kadish is scheduled to be sentenced in Manhattan federal court by U.S. District Judge William H. Pauley on February 13, 2009.
Mr. Dassin praised the investigative work of the New York and Newark Field Divisions of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and thanked the U.S. Army for their support in this case.
This prosecution is being handled by Assistant United States Attorney Iris Lan from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York and Trial Attorney Kathleen Kedian from the Counterespionage Section of the Justice Department’s National Security Division.
http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2008/December/08-nsd-1154.html
In summary, according to statements at Kadish’s guilty plea before U.S. Magistrate Judge Theodore H. Katz, the Information and other documents filed Manhattan federal court:
Kadish is a former employee of the U.S. Army’s Armament Research, Development, and Engineering Center at the Picatinny Arsenal in Dover, New Jersey ("the Arsenal"). On numerous occasions from about 1980 through 1985, Kadish provided classified documents relating to the U.S. military – including some relating to U.S. missile defense systems – to an agent of the Government of Israel, Yossi Yagur, who photographed the documents at Kadish’s residence.
Kadish, 85, faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a maximum fine of $250,000.
Kadish is scheduled to be sentenced in Manhattan federal court by U.S. District Judge William H. Pauley on February 13, 2009.
Mr. Dassin praised the investigative work of the New York and Newark Field Divisions of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and thanked the U.S. Army for their support in this case.
This prosecution is being handled by Assistant United States Attorney Iris Lan from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York and Trial Attorney Kathleen Kedian from the Counterespionage Section of the Justice Department’s National Security Division.
http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2008/December/08-nsd-1154.html
Some Things Americans Need To Learn
"Icelandic TV program featuring PM forced off air"
REYKJAVIK, Iceland (AP) — A nationally televised meeting between Iceland's prime minister and other political leaders was forced off the air Wednesday night when angry protesters disrupted the broadcast.
For more than two decades, the leaders of Iceland's political parties have met every New Year's Eve over champagne and spiced herring to talk about the year ahead on Iceland's Channel 2 television.
But this year's show with Prime Minister Geir Haarde was cut short 45 minutes into the program when a torch-wielding crowd stormed Reykjavik's Hotel Borg in an attempt to get to the studio.
Protesters inside and outside the hotel clashed with police, who fired pepper spray to disperse the 500-strong crowd. Some demonstrators threw water balloons, while others tossed firecrackers.
At one point, the broadcaster's television cables caught fire, interrupting the live broadcast. The program cut to commercials, followed by an announcement that Channel 2's equipment had been damaged and the show would be suspended.
Outside the hotel, a policeman hit on the head with a brick had to be hospitalized. Three protesters were arrested.
The disruption was the latest in a series of demonstrations that have rocked Iceland since the country's economy imploded this fall under a mammoth load of bad debt. Unemployment has increased and inflation has soared.
Demonstrations have been largely peaceful — some protesters were reportedly invited in for coffee when they showed up at President Olafur Grimsson's home earlier this month.
But other events have been violent. Icelandic authorities used tear gas for the first time since 1949 when a huge crowd tried to storm a police station in Reykjavik in November, and on Dec. 18, protesters smashed the windows of the country's financial watchdog agency.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5htieYqASzIvKOfKAGOO7BvxEjzsgD95DUANO0
REYKJAVIK, Iceland (AP) — A nationally televised meeting between Iceland's prime minister and other political leaders was forced off the air Wednesday night when angry protesters disrupted the broadcast.
For more than two decades, the leaders of Iceland's political parties have met every New Year's Eve over champagne and spiced herring to talk about the year ahead on Iceland's Channel 2 television.
But this year's show with Prime Minister Geir Haarde was cut short 45 minutes into the program when a torch-wielding crowd stormed Reykjavik's Hotel Borg in an attempt to get to the studio.
Protesters inside and outside the hotel clashed with police, who fired pepper spray to disperse the 500-strong crowd. Some demonstrators threw water balloons, while others tossed firecrackers.
At one point, the broadcaster's television cables caught fire, interrupting the live broadcast. The program cut to commercials, followed by an announcement that Channel 2's equipment had been damaged and the show would be suspended.
Outside the hotel, a policeman hit on the head with a brick had to be hospitalized. Three protesters were arrested.
The disruption was the latest in a series of demonstrations that have rocked Iceland since the country's economy imploded this fall under a mammoth load of bad debt. Unemployment has increased and inflation has soared.
Demonstrations have been largely peaceful — some protesters were reportedly invited in for coffee when they showed up at President Olafur Grimsson's home earlier this month.
But other events have been violent. Icelandic authorities used tear gas for the first time since 1949 when a huge crowd tried to storm a police station in Reykjavik in November, and on Dec. 18, protesters smashed the windows of the country's financial watchdog agency.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5htieYqASzIvKOfKAGOO7BvxEjzsgD95DUANO0
Monday, December 29, 2008
WAR PIGS
Israel Accused Of Massive War Crime Atrocities
A new IAF cockpit video shows an air strike targeted against an alleged rocket launching site located between two civilian homes, as UN Professor Richard Falk accused Israel of massive violations of international humanitarian law.
Falk, United Nations Special Investigator for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, listed numerous actions by Israel that clearly break the rules of engagement codified in the Geneva Conventions.
These include; collective punishment of the 1.5 million inhabitants of the Gaza Strip for the actions of relatively few militants; the indiscriminate targeting of civilians including school children and university students during air strikes, with hundreds now dead or injured; a disproportionate military response which has destroyed every police and security office of Gaza’s elected government.
Israel has also sealed off entry and exit points to the Gaza Strip, causing severe shortages of medicine, food and fuel and hampering efforts to treat victims of the bombing raids.“Certainly the rocket attacks against civilian targets in Israel are unlawful. But that illegality does not give Israel any right, neither as the occupying power nor as a sovereign state, to violate international humanitarian law and commit war crimes or crimes against humanity in its response. I note that Israel’s escalating military assaults have not made Israeli civilians safer; on the contrary, the one Israeli killed today after the upsurge of Israeli violence is the first in over a year,” writes Falk.
Reports of civilians being targeted on both sides continue to emerge. Hamas TV broadcast a video showing injured Israeli citizens being evacuated with the words “Let them taste violent death” superimposed over skulls dripping with blood.
But the majority of war crimes have obviously been committed by the might of the Israeli military, with one report accusing the Israelis of targeting school children who were making their way home with air strikes
Meanwhile, President elect Barack Obama’s reaction to Israel’s biggest military assault on Gaza in 20 years was a nonchalant “no comment,” while Democratic leader of the House Nancy Pelosi expressed her support for the carnage by stating “When Israel is attacked, the United States must continue to stand strongly with its friend and democratic ally.”
With at least 285 dead and over 800 injured so far, Obama and Pelosi’s terse approval for the indiscriminate slaughter of innocents reminds us that 2009 is unlikely to offer “change” of any kind but is likely to guarantee more war and bloodshed.
http://www.infowars.com/?p=6858
A new IAF cockpit video shows an air strike targeted against an alleged rocket launching site located between two civilian homes, as UN Professor Richard Falk accused Israel of massive violations of international humanitarian law.
Falk, United Nations Special Investigator for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, listed numerous actions by Israel that clearly break the rules of engagement codified in the Geneva Conventions.
These include; collective punishment of the 1.5 million inhabitants of the Gaza Strip for the actions of relatively few militants; the indiscriminate targeting of civilians including school children and university students during air strikes, with hundreds now dead or injured; a disproportionate military response which has destroyed every police and security office of Gaza’s elected government.
Israel has also sealed off entry and exit points to the Gaza Strip, causing severe shortages of medicine, food and fuel and hampering efforts to treat victims of the bombing raids.“Certainly the rocket attacks against civilian targets in Israel are unlawful. But that illegality does not give Israel any right, neither as the occupying power nor as a sovereign state, to violate international humanitarian law and commit war crimes or crimes against humanity in its response. I note that Israel’s escalating military assaults have not made Israeli civilians safer; on the contrary, the one Israeli killed today after the upsurge of Israeli violence is the first in over a year,” writes Falk.
Reports of civilians being targeted on both sides continue to emerge. Hamas TV broadcast a video showing injured Israeli citizens being evacuated with the words “Let them taste violent death” superimposed over skulls dripping with blood.
But the majority of war crimes have obviously been committed by the might of the Israeli military, with one report accusing the Israelis of targeting school children who were making their way home with air strikes
Meanwhile, President elect Barack Obama’s reaction to Israel’s biggest military assault on Gaza in 20 years was a nonchalant “no comment,” while Democratic leader of the House Nancy Pelosi expressed her support for the carnage by stating “When Israel is attacked, the United States must continue to stand strongly with its friend and democratic ally.”
With at least 285 dead and over 800 injured so far, Obama and Pelosi’s terse approval for the indiscriminate slaughter of innocents reminds us that 2009 is unlikely to offer “change” of any kind but is likely to guarantee more war and bloodshed.
http://www.infowars.com/?p=6858
Slaughter in Gaza
Israel is using U.S. munitions against the Palestinians. From the Jerusalem Post:
The Israel Air Force used a new bunker-buster missile that it received recently from the United States in strikes against Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip on Saturday, The Jerusalem Post learned on Sunday.
The missile, called GBU-39, was developed in recent years by the US as a small-diameter bomb for low-cost, high-precision and low collateral damage strikes.
The claim that Israel is employing the bomb because it minimizes “collateral damage” is sadistically absurd, to say the least — the Gaza Strip is incontestably the most populated tract of land on earth and any munition, even a “smart” one, will undoubtedly cause “collateral damage.” The 1.3 million Palestinians living on the Gaza Strip are little more than fish in a barrel due to the fact Israel controls Gaza’s airspace, coast and most of its borders.
Israel received approval from Congress to purchase 1,000 units in September and defense officials said on Sunday that the first shipment had arrived earlier this month and was used successfully in penetrating underground Kassam launchers in the Gaza Strip during the heavy aerial bombardment of Hamas infrastructure on Saturday. It was also used in Sunday’s bombing of tunnels in Rafah.
Yaakov Katz, writing for the Jerusalem Post, fails to mention that the tunnels are also used to smuggle food and medicine, items the Israelis have blocked from entering Gaza. “Merchants invented the system,” writes Amira Hass. “The tunnels are not only for weapons and drugs, but for medicine, basic food commodities and cigarettes, at prices much more suitable for poverty-stricken Rafah. They are a way to break an economic siege. The weapons in the hands of the armed men of Rafah prove that the tunnels are not being used to smuggle sophisticated weapons. Nonetheless, the tunnels have turned into a scarecrow that justifies every strike at civilian lives and civilian property.”
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1230456505080&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Palestinian protesters kneel behind a barricade as they hurl stones at Israeli troops, not seen, during clashes at a demonstration against Israel's military operation in Gaza, in the Shuafat refugee camp, on the outskirts of Jerusalem, Sunday, Dec. 28, 2008. More than 280 Palestinians have been killed and more than 600 people wounded since Israel's campaign to quash rocket barrages from Gaza began midday Saturday, according to Palestinian medical sources.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Laura Bush: Shoe-throwing 'was an assault'
The Story:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20081228/pl_politico/16887
Fred Face Editorial:
Well, lets see were do I start? Ok...how about...shut up you wretched c@nt!
Or wait. Ya. Shut up you wretched c@nt!
This "shoe-thrower" has got his brains bashed the fuck in. I'm sure a number of times after he threw a pair of nuclear anthrax shoes at you husbands dumb murdering head. Remember the days of trials, court procedures, before beatings and torture.
Your husband and his family are intrically involved with the mass murder, (genocide), of 1,305,837 Iraqi's due to the U.S. invasion. He should feel lucky that it was only a shoe. If the pendulum swings the way I think it will, (or the way it has to for the survivial of all mankind)...your husband will be facing much worse outcomes than a shoe off the side of the head. He will be looking at a death sentence for high treason in a U.S. court. So, Bush Lady... with those helpless beady little eyes...take your shoes and stick em' up your ass.
F.F. 12/28/08
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Big Government is a blunt force tool of coercion -- nothing more.
-It doesn't inspire so much as it intimidates.
-It is not the place of hopes and dreams; it is the place of power and grandiose pomposity.
-It exists by taking from one party, to earn the support of another recipient party.
-It is ultimately captured by the very interests it claims to regulate, in what alternates as a protection racket and a corporate welfare scheme.
-It's a drag on our productive economy.
-It rewards incompetence, and pensions sloth.
-It disdains the moral character of citizens because it believes it knows best how to care for the citizenry's children, aging parents, and neighbors.
And yes, it even kills people. Whether it's the more subtle damage done in the name of protecting us from bad drugs, or the more obvious carnage of war, Big Government is the deadliest disease on our planet.
-It is not the place of hopes and dreams; it is the place of power and grandiose pomposity.
-It exists by taking from one party, to earn the support of another recipient party.
-It is ultimately captured by the very interests it claims to regulate, in what alternates as a protection racket and a corporate welfare scheme.
-It's a drag on our productive economy.
-It rewards incompetence, and pensions sloth.
-It disdains the moral character of citizens because it believes it knows best how to care for the citizenry's children, aging parents, and neighbors.
And yes, it even kills people. Whether it's the more subtle damage done in the name of protecting us from bad drugs, or the more obvious carnage of war, Big Government is the deadliest disease on our planet.
"The search of an etymological dictionary reveals that the words 'peace,' 'freedom,' 'love,' and 'friend,' share some common origins. Perhaps they implicitly understood what we, in our overly-politicized world, can no longer grasp, namely, that 'friends' express 'love' for one another by respecting one another’s 'freedom,' and that a world so constituted enjoys 'peace.'" - Butler Shaffer, When the World Went Bankrupt
The Purpose Behind The Financial Crisis
Rich working to Bankrupt the Middle Class, world economic system now infected with toxic waste, golden parachutes for some and hyperinflation for others, a better plan would be to give a cheque to everybody, plans to help people wont really be implemented, credit problems thicken. We were hit with the greatest act of terror in our nation's history on 911, an intelligence failure of the highest magnitude, and no one got so much as a hand-slap while many even got promoted. Now we have the world's greatest financial failure, and not only do we not see anyone getting a hand-slap, we see each of the very people responsible for this debacle getting golden parachutes and bonuses in the tens of millions of dollars as they resign in disgrace, and few are fired other than the hard-working employees who had little or nothing to do with making the big decisions that brought about the ruination of their companies. There is no such thing as responsibility or accountability anymore for our leaders in government and business.
Perhaps this is the comeuppance of a society that teaches moral relativism. They did what was right in their own eyes, so who are we to condemn them? But the most cogent reason for this lack of accountability is that our governmental and business systems have been corrupted in their upper echelons by the Puppet Masters and their bootlicking, puppet sycophants. The satanic trillionaires, the Illuminati, who we just referred to as the Puppet Masters, such as the Rockefeller's, the Rothschild's and the Black Nobility of Europe, who run the world as everyone's shadow government, are rewarding the people who are responsible for causing these disasters because these people have done exactly as they were told. For these people to have done otherwise would have been very bad for their continued health and/or their reputations. They were all following orders and knew exactly what they were doing.
The many events surrounding 911 and the various forces and causes behind the current financial catastrophe have been carefully planned and implemented for many decades by the Illuminati.
The purpose of 911 was to scare sucker-dupe Americans into giving up their many precious Constitutional freedoms and protections, with the ultimate goal being to have Americans abandon the Constitution and give up their sovereignty in favor of global governance, with a regional arrangement such as the clandestine Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) sufficing as a stepping stone to a one-world Orwellian police state. As a bonus, via 911, they were able to shed more of our children's blood in yet another phony, false-flag war for profit so they could continue to line their pockets with trillions of dollars along the way to their precious one-world government. Then, as an added bonus, this pathetic group of satanic sociopaths and malefactors arranged for the staged election of the King of Abortion as our next President so that more innocent blood could be shed on the alter of world government. After all, we can't have a bunch of pesky new children running around, thus clogging up the system with too many serfs who the Illuminati could not easily control.
The purpose of the current financial catastrophe was to infect the entire world financial system with toxic waste and other unregulated derivatives, also known as financial weapons of mass destruction, to bring it crashing down so that a single world financial system with a single medium of exchange could be set forth as the suggested solution and then crammed down our throats in yet another nauseating and tiresome iteration of the Hegelian Dialectic.
The Illuminati will attempt to blame the resulting financial debacles on the cutthroat competition and rampant cheating that goes on between the various national economies, meaning that we have to have a single world financial system with centralized regulation and oversight to put an end to these shenanigans so we can all work together toward world financial prosperity. But in reality, it is the Illuminati themselves who are the root cause behind all those shenanigans, which they continually wage in furtherance of their plans to implement a global, corporatist, fascist police state of Orwellian feudality. And the only financial prosperity they intend to bring about will not be the world prosperity, which they will promise. The prosperity of the would-be masters of the universe is the only prosperity anyone will ever see if they are allowed to implement their one-world government and global financial system. The rest of us will live in Halliburton-built, slave-labor internment camps, enjoying our daily cup of gruel as we are worked into an early grave for Illuminist fun and profits, while our children are sent to centralized disinformation camps to be brainwashed and programmed into good, little, compliant serfs so they can serve their satanic masters with alacrity and enthusiasm.
Hence, the Illuminist henchmen-destroyers get their disgusting golden parachutes while the rest of us get hyper-inflated into oblivion. What you see happening at the corporate level is a microcosm of what these miscreants have in store for everyone on a global basis. They get the gold mine; you get the shaft -- the Illuminist plan in a nutshell.
If we are going to hyper-inflate our economy into oblivion, at least let's do it the right way. Throwing trillions at failed financial and business institutions saddled with moronic, outdated business plans aimed at bringing about the intentional destruction of these companies in order to bust unions, to ship our good-paying jobs overseas and to implement a centralized global economy and government, while simultaneously rewarding the morons who destroyed these institutions by continuing their employment, while throwing in hefty salaries and bonuses to boot, is, it would seem to us, hardly an intelligent use of the printing press. Let's at least give the sheople one final party before we send them to forced labor internment camps or draft them into compulsory cannon fodder service and send them overseas to meddle in everyone else's affairs as they get blown up by IED's. Let's give them a blindfold and one final cigarette before we execute them with hyper-stagflation.
It should be obvious that throwing hundreds of billions into a black hole of losses numbering in the tens, and perhaps even hundreds, of trillions (i.e. the Quadrillion Dollar Derivative Death Star), is like trying to empty the Pacific Ocean with a coffee can. Let's take ten trillion and buy out all the mortgages in the US, and then modify all the interest rates to a 5% fixed rate. We can float 10 year treasuries at 2% to fund the deal, and pocket the 3% spread of $300 billion, which we can use to shore up our budget deficit, to rejuvenate zombie corporations after we run them through Chapter 11, and to make loan workouts for those who can't even afford 5%, which would number in the millions, because fogging a mirror was the only qualification for getting a mortgage over the past five or so years. This will cure all real estate defaults and immediately convert the toxic waste into real AAA paper for the first time while everyone gets to buy a new house at 5% fixed also, thus saving the real estate market. The banks, now flush with cash, can start lending again because their balance sheets have been restored, and get back into the mortgage business by doing both refinances and purchases, while our foreign owners of agencies and treasuries rejoice, and while owners of what was once toxic waste start tap dancing on the ceiling. As the government-owned mortgages are paid off, we can use the proceeds to either float new mortgages at a 3% spread, or we can use the payoff money to pay down the ten trillion dollar treasury loan and let the banks take over again, this time with oversight and regulations that will put people in jail if they pull their cute little scams again.
We can then also float another ten trillion dollars in bonds at 2%, and give every American, young and old, $33,000, which they would have to use with the following pre-established priorities: (1) Cure any mortgage defaults, (2) pay off any credit cards and car loans, and (3) buy a hybrid car that gets 30+ miles per gallon from an American car manufacturer, or in the alternative, set up an IRA funded by gold and silver to protect against the upcoming hyperinflation, or for the younger citizens, set up a college fund if they can qualify for college. That will cure all the consumer loan defaults and restore value to all the derivatives associated with them, revive our manufacturing sector, solve our energy crisis, provide reliable transportation so everyone can get off welfare and go to work, get our kids educated, and set us all up for retirement with inflation-proofing through gold and silver, while pushing trillions in available loan funds back into the banking sector to totally re-grease the system. What the heck is $20 trillion when we already owe $100 trillion? Sure, it's certainly hyperinflationary, but what is the alternative? The alternative is a purging of the system and ultimate decade long depression for the world financial system with a major war as the cure, which the Illuminists will use to destroy our precious Constitutional rights and pave the way for a one-world government. The same will happen if we hyper-inflate, but much further down the line, and you at least get to have one final party together with some gold and silver protection, and who knows, we might figure a way out in the meantime.
You will never see such a plan implemented, because as should be obvious from the $700 billion Paulson Ponzi Plunder Plan, the idea is to bankrupt the middle class, and not to save it, by pumping taxpayer largesse into failed and insolvent banking and business entities so that the dollars are wasted and are used to destroy the middle class with hyper-stagflation, while Illuminist executives walk away with trillions in salaries, bonuses and stock dividends after buying up all the smaller fry in a fresh round of competition elimination. The Illuminists want to play god with your money and decide who lives and dies in the business world. Obviously it is their crony capitalist companies that will survive, while everyone else heads off to see the bankruptcy trustee, who will then auction off all their assets at pennies on the dollar to newly formed and nationalized Illuminist super-conglomerates that will swallow up all the old discarded, insolvent Illuminist companies that have sucked out the value of our money through their black hole of losses. These new super-conglomerates will form the backbone of our new corporatist, fascist, Orwellian police state. As we said, they get the gold mine; you get the shaft. Expecting the Illuminati to do anything that would benefit working Americans is a form of insane delusion.
We are told that the Federal Reserve may cut interest rates another ½% to 1% in December.
Normally, when the Fed cuts rates, credit-card issuers follow suit, resulting in lower monthly payments for cardholders. Rates have generally fallen slightly, but banks and retailers are trying to offset rising costs and loses by raising fees.
Those with less than perfect credit ratings and those with excellent credit ratings are having credit lines cut dramatically. They are raising rates on cash advances and overdraft protection. JP Morgan Chase will start charging a new monthly fee of $10.00 for cardholders who have been carrying large balances for at least two years, while raising their minimum monthly payments to 5% of their outstanding balance, from 2%. Citigroup’s Citibank and American Express will raise such rates 2% to 3%. Amex is raising its rates on cash advances, late payments and defaults, increasing its foreign-exchange fee to 2.7% from 2% on its consumer and small-business cards and eliminating ways to earn rewards on one of its popular cards.
Home Depot is reducing credit lines on its in-state cards. Nordstroms and Target are raising interest rates on in-store cards
In the third quarter credit card losses at issuer banks were over 5% of total credit card balances and are poised to deteriorate further. This is why interest rates are climbing and fees are rising. You get penalized because others do not pay their bills. Now you can better understand why we have been telling you for the past eight years to eliminate credit card and revolving debt. It is the most expensive of all debt.
Credit card use in the second quarter fell 5% from the first quarter to $663 million, the biggest drop in several years.
Promotional deals are being done away with or cut back as are reward programs. You will see them in next month’s mailing or you’ve already noticed some changes.
All we can say is pay off those balances monthly as they occur and get rid of debt balances ASAP.
http://www.theinternationalforecaster.com/International_Forecaster_Weekly/The_Purpose_Behind_The_Financial_Crisis
Friday, December 26, 2008
Louis Farrakhan On Central Banks
I know Farrakhan is not always well liked but sorry folks what he's saying about the central banks is true. I know this will be hard for all you Obama zombies to stomach but I trust someone like Farrakhan much more than say someone like Obama because one is speaking out against the root, (engineered), cause of this world economic meltdown and one is alighned with it. Brush up on your world economic history and you'll find the same conclusions.
-Fred Face 12/26/08
-Fred Face 12/26/08
Will the U.S. Break Up?
The larger and more complex a system, the more likely it is to break down. Something like a simple pendulum with few moving parts could last many years. But very large, complicated things like the Large Hadron Collider break down much more quickly.
America now has some 300 million people, 50 states, and more federal, state and local agencies than anyone can possibly list. It is hard to govern such a large, complex and populous system when anything goes seriously wrong.
And a lot is going wrong right now.
The U.S. military agrees that the chance of a break down in the system is real:
A new report from the U.S. Army War College [here is the report] discusses the use of American troops to quell civil unrest brought about by a worsening economic crisis.
The report from the War College’s Strategic Studies Institute warns that the U.S. military must prepare for a “violent, strategic dislocation inside the United States” that could be provoked by “unforeseen economic collapse” or “loss of functioning political and legal order.” [The report also warns of a possible "rapid dissolution of public order in all or significant parts of the US."]
International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn warned last week of riots and unrest in global markets if the ongoing financial crisis is not addressed and lower-income households are beset with credit constraints and rising unemployment, the Phoenix Business Journal reported.
Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma and Rep. Brad Sherman of California disclosed that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson discussed a worst-case scenario as he pushed the Wall Street bailout in September, and said that scenario might even require a declaration of martial law.***
The Defense Department has made plans to deploy 20,000 troops nationwide by 2011 to help state and local officials respond to emergencies.
In other words, the government is predicting that systems will break down. But instead of doing anything to actually fix the underlying problems which are leading to the break down (like making sure that politicians follow the Constitution and making sure that America’s manufacturing base is rebuilt, so that we can make something real, and our workers can make decent wages on a sustainable basis), the government is just planning on implementing police state measures to quell protests.
(Indeed, while most Americans don’t realize it, this already started happening years ago).
Will that help keep the U.S. together?
Maybe in the short-run. But I believe that - especially now that the illusions that we’re in an endless boom economy and that the U.S. is a true democracy following the wishes of its people have started to pop (see this and this) - within the next decade, America will break up, like the Soviet Union.
Note 1: One precipitating factor in the break up of the U.S. may be the bankruptcy of the states. California, Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, Ohio and Wisconsin are all in really big trouble, and on the verge of defaulting. The rest of the states won’t be that far behind as the financial crisis intensifies. If the federal government isn’t helping them in their most dire crises since the founding of the country, and if the feds impose the heavy hand of martial law without any benefit to the states, they will have less incentive to remain a part of the union.
Note 2: What would the break up of America mean for the dollar and for gold? It would likely be very bad for the former and very good for the latter. But remember, the U.S. might not break up for some time.
http://www.blacklistednews.com/news-2758-0-15-15--.html
America now has some 300 million people, 50 states, and more federal, state and local agencies than anyone can possibly list. It is hard to govern such a large, complex and populous system when anything goes seriously wrong.
And a lot is going wrong right now.
The U.S. military agrees that the chance of a break down in the system is real:
A new report from the U.S. Army War College [here is the report] discusses the use of American troops to quell civil unrest brought about by a worsening economic crisis.
The report from the War College’s Strategic Studies Institute warns that the U.S. military must prepare for a “violent, strategic dislocation inside the United States” that could be provoked by “unforeseen economic collapse” or “loss of functioning political and legal order.” [The report also warns of a possible "rapid dissolution of public order in all or significant parts of the US."]
International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn warned last week of riots and unrest in global markets if the ongoing financial crisis is not addressed and lower-income households are beset with credit constraints and rising unemployment, the Phoenix Business Journal reported.
Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma and Rep. Brad Sherman of California disclosed that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson discussed a worst-case scenario as he pushed the Wall Street bailout in September, and said that scenario might even require a declaration of martial law.***
The Defense Department has made plans to deploy 20,000 troops nationwide by 2011 to help state and local officials respond to emergencies.
In other words, the government is predicting that systems will break down. But instead of doing anything to actually fix the underlying problems which are leading to the break down (like making sure that politicians follow the Constitution and making sure that America’s manufacturing base is rebuilt, so that we can make something real, and our workers can make decent wages on a sustainable basis), the government is just planning on implementing police state measures to quell protests.
(Indeed, while most Americans don’t realize it, this already started happening years ago).
Will that help keep the U.S. together?
Maybe in the short-run. But I believe that - especially now that the illusions that we’re in an endless boom economy and that the U.S. is a true democracy following the wishes of its people have started to pop (see this and this) - within the next decade, America will break up, like the Soviet Union.
Note 1: One precipitating factor in the break up of the U.S. may be the bankruptcy of the states. California, Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, Ohio and Wisconsin are all in really big trouble, and on the verge of defaulting. The rest of the states won’t be that far behind as the financial crisis intensifies. If the federal government isn’t helping them in their most dire crises since the founding of the country, and if the feds impose the heavy hand of martial law without any benefit to the states, they will have less incentive to remain a part of the union.
Note 2: What would the break up of America mean for the dollar and for gold? It would likely be very bad for the former and very good for the latter. But remember, the U.S. might not break up for some time.
http://www.blacklistednews.com/news-2758-0-15-15--.html
“A Second 9/11„: An Integral Part of US Military Doctrine.”
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10767
Truth Is Stranger Than Shit..."Viagra lure' for Afghan warlords"
BBC News
America's CIA has found a novel way to gain information from fickle Afghan warlords - supplying sex-enhancing drug Viagra, a US media report says.
The Washington Post said it was one of a number of enticements being used.
In one case, a 60-year-old warlord with four wives was given four pills and four days later detailed Taleban movements in return for more.
"Whatever it takes to make friends and influence people," the Post quoted one agent as saying.
"Whether it's building a school or handing out Viagra."
'Silver bullet'
The newspaper said the use of Viagra had to be handled sensitively as the drug was not always known about in rural areas.
It quoted one retired agent as saying: "You didn't hand it out to younger guys, but it could be a silver bullet to make connections to the older ones."
In the case of the 60-year-old warlord - the head of a clan in southern Afghanistan who had not co-operated - operatives saw he had four younger wives.
The pills were explained and offered. Four days later the agents returned.
"He came up to us beaming," the Post quoted an agent as saying. "He said, 'You are a great man.'
"And after that we could do whatever we wanted in his area."
The pills could put chieftains "back in an authoritative position", another official said.
The paper said the CIA had a long line of inducements for the notoriously fickle warlords, including dental work, visas, toys and medicine.
It quoted one private security official as saying that simply handing over large sums of money would raise suspicions about newfound wealth.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7800549.stm
The Federal Reserve Abolition Act
On June 15, 2007, Ron Paul introduced HR 2755: Federal Reserve Abolition Act. There were no co-sponsors, no further action was taken, and the legislation was referred to the House Committee on Financial Services and effectively pigeonholed and ignored.
It’s a bold and needed measure to “abolish the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Federal reserve banks, to repeal the Federal Reserve Act, and for other purposes.”
The bill provides for management of employees, assets and liabilities of the Board during a dissolution period, and more as follows:
– it designates the Director of the Office of Management and Budget to liquidate Fed assets in an orderly and expeditious manner;
– transfer them to the General Fund of the Treasury after satisfying all claims against the Board and any Federal reserve bank;
– assume all outstanding Board and member bank liabilities and transfer them to the Secretary of the Treasury; and
– after an 18-month period, submit a report to Congress “containing a detailed description of the actions taken to implement this Act and any actions or issues relating to such implementation that remain uncompleted or unresolved as of the date of the report.”
On November 22, “End the Fed” protests were held in 39 or more cities nationwide (including New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington, DC), but you’d hardly know it for lack of coverage. Attendee demands were simple and emphatic:
– end a private banking cartel’s illegal monopoly control over the nation’s money supply and price;
– return that power to the US Treasury as the Constitution mandates;
– end a fiat currency system backed by the waning full faith and credit of the government; and
– return the country to a sound, hard currency monetary system.
“End the Fed! Sound Money for America!” is their slogan, and writer and US policy critic Webster Tarpley puts it well:
“….the privately owned central bank….has been looting and wrecking the US economy for almost a hundred years. We must end a system where unelected, unaccountable cliques of bankers and financiers loyal to names like Morgan, Rockefeller, and Mellon set interest rates and money supply behind closed doors, leading to de-industrialization, mass impoverishment, and a world economic and financial depression of incalculable severity.”
In theory, the Fed was established to stabilize the economy, smooth out the business cycle, manage a healthy, sustainable growth rate, and maintain stable prices. In fact, it failed dismally. It contributed to 19 US recessions (including the Great Depression) and significantly to the following equity market declines that accompanied them as measured by the Dow or S & P 500 average - the S &P’s inception was 1923; it became the S & P 500 in 1957:
– 40.1% (Dow) from 1916 - 1917;
– 46.6% (Dow) from 1919 - 1921;
– the 1929 (Dow) crash in two stages - 47.9% in 1929 followed by a strong, temporary rebound; then - 86%; an 89% peak to trough total from October 1929 to July 1932;
– 49.1% (Dow) from 1937 - 1938;
– 40.4% (Dow) from 1939 - 1942;
– 25.3% (S & P) from 1946 - 1947;
– 19.8% (S & P) in 1957;
– 26.8% (S & P) from 1961 - 1962;
– 19.3% (S & P) in 1966;
– 32.7% (S & P) from 1968 - 1970;
– 45.1% (S & P) from 1973 - 1974;
– 20.2% (S & P) from 1980 - 1982;
– 32.9% (S & P) in 1987;
– 19.2% (S & P) in 1990;
– 18.8% (S & P) in 1998;
– 49.1% (S & P) from 2000 - 2002; and
– about 50% (S & P) and counting (excluding a bear market rebound) from October 2007.
The Fed is also directly responsible for monetary inflation and the decline in the US standard of living since its year end 1913 inception and especially since the 1970s. From the late 18th century to 1913, virtually no inflation existed under the gold standard except during times of war. Using government data, it now takes over $2000 to equal $100 of pre-Fed purchasing power. In other words, a 1913 dollar is worth about a nickel today.
At that time, a dollar was defined as 1/20 of an ounce of gold or about an ounce of silver. The Fed then changed the standard away from precious metals to the full faith and credit of the government. Ever since (except for periods such as the 1930s) inflation eroded the currency’s value and (more than ever) continues to do it today.
It’s why one analyst calls the dollar “nothing more than a popular symbol for the tangible substances it once represented - gold and silver.” Its true value represents the world’s waning confidence in America’s ability to honor its debt obligations, and with good reason.
Under the Federal Reserve System (besides inflation), we’ve had rising consumer debt; record budget and trade deficits; a soaring national debt; a high level of personal and business bankruptcies; today, millions of home foreclosures; high unemployment; the loss of the nation’s manufacturing base; growing millions in poverty; an unprecedented wealth gap between the rich and all others; and a hugely unstable economy now lurching into crisis mode.
In a November 24 Wall Street Journal op-ed, Hong Kong-based author and equity strategist Christopher Wood believes “The Fed Is Out of Ammunition.” With trillions in personal wealth erased, “there is little doubt that we are witnessing a classic debt-deflation bust at work, characterized by falling prices, frozen credit markets and plummeting asset values.”
He notes how “over-investment and over-speculation” on borrowed money got us here. Today, the Fed can control the supply of money but not its velocity or the rate it turns over. The current collapse set it in reverse with no signs of an impending turnaround.
Wood believes monetary and fiscal measures won’t work. There are no easy solutions - “not as long as politicians and central bankers (won’t) let financial institutions fail,” and let market forces wash out excesses over time.
The Fed and Treasury will spend trillions of dollars to correct things, “but will merely compound (the problem) by adding debt to debt.” The current crisis will end up “discrediting mechanical monetarism - and with it the fiat paper-money system….The catalyst will be foreign creditors fleeing the dollar for gold. That will in turn lead to global recognition of the need for a vastly more disciplined global financial system” with gold very likely playing a part.
Absent a hard money currency has led to the kind of monetary madness that Nouriel Roubini calls “crazy” policy actions - an explosion of quantitative easing in the trillions with no end of it in sight.
Roubini: “The Fed Funds rate has been abandoned…as we are already effectively at (zero interest rates) that signal a liquidity trap….Even (a sharp) fall in mortgage rates….will be of small comfort to debt burdened households as only those (that) qualify for refinancing will be able to” net out a “modest” monthly mortgage saving of about $150.
The Fed’s “desperate policy actions….will eventually lead to much higher real interest rates on the public debt and weaken the US dollar (the result of a) tsunami of implicit and explicit public liabilities and monetary debt.” It will get foreign investors to “ponder the long-term sustainability of the US domestic and external liabilities,” and why not. They keep growing exponentially, and with nothing restraining a runaway Fed, dollar debasing may continue to the point where no one will want to hold them. It’s gotten some analysts to recommend moving a portion of savings out of them into gold - the ultimate safe haven in times of crisis.
Abolish the Fed and Return the Nation’s Money Creation Power to Congress Where It Belongs
Ron Paul has been in the vanguard of the Abolish the Fed movement, and on September 10, 2002 on the House floor said:
“Since the creation of the Federal Reserve, middle and working-class Americans have been victimized by a boom-and-bust monetary policy. In addition, most Americans have suffered a steadily eroding purchasing power because of the Federal Reserve’s inflationary policies. This represents a real, if hidden, tax imposed on the American people….”
“It is time for the Congress to put the interests of the American people ahead of the special interests. Abolishing the Federal Reserve will allow Congress to reassert its constitutional authority over monetary policy.”
“Abolishing the Federal Reserve and returning to a constitutional system (as mandated) will enable America to return to the type of monetary system envisioned by our nation’s founders: one where the value of money is consistent because it is tied to a commodity such as gold….I urge my colleagues (to co-sponsor) my legislation to abolish the Federal Reserve.”
Paul introduced his legislation in the 106th, 107th, 108th, and 110th Congresses. Each time, it died in committee. On November 22, he attended the End the Fed rally in Houston and addressed the crowd.
He called the current economic crisis as bad or worse than in the 1930s and said: “we know who caused it. It was the Federal Reserve that gave us all this trouble.” He explained that we had a “free ride for decades because we’ve had a system that was devised where the dollar could act as if it were gold.”
Not after August 1971 when Nixon closed the gold window, ended the 1944 Bretton Woods Agreement, and no longer let dollars be backed by gold or converted into it in international markets. A “new economic system” was created. It let us “spend beyond our means, live beyond our means, print money beyond our means,” and it caused our current dilemma.
We created “an appearance of great wealth. But it was doomed to fail,” and it became apparent in the past year: “the failure of the dollar reserve standard that was set up in August of 1971. It has ended. The only question” is what will replace it?
There’s all kinds of talk, including setting up a new international fiat currency “with the loss of US sovereignty in total. We have to stop this move towards one world government and a one world currency.” Otherwise our freedom and Constitution will be lost. When it was written, it contained prohibitions.
Article I, Section 8 gives Congress alone the right to coin (create) money and regulate the value thereof. The founders also wanted gold and silver to be legal tender, not fiat money, nor should there be a central bank. In 1935, the Supreme Court ruled that Congress cannot constitutionally delegate this power to another body. By creating the Federal Reserve System in 1913, Congress violated the Constitution it was sworn to uphold and defrauded the American public. Today’s crisis is the fruit of its action, but watch out.
“The writing is on the wall, and the end of this system” approaches. “They cannot patch it up, they can’t up it back together again. They know it and we know it. The only argument is what is it going to be replaced with?”
For now, “Central banks in the West especially have been dumping gold to artificially lower (its price) to pretend the dollar is of great value. They’re still doing it, but they’re running out of time (and) out of gold.” It’s shifting to stronger economic powers, ones who’ve been saving money, loaning it back to us, “and are ready to buy up America if we continue to do this. So it is a contest (between fiat) money and hard money, and that is such an important issue.” It reflects what Daniel Webster once said:
“There can be no legal tender in this country….but gold and silver. This is a constitutional principle….of the very highest importance.” Gold, however, wasn’t the original monetary system standard. Silver was, the silver dollar, and only a constitutional amendment can change it.
Paper currency as well, whether backed by gold or not, wasn’t the hard money authorized by the Constitution. Honest money is honest weights and measures of silver and gold. Federal Reserve Notes are paper fiat debt obligations. Fiat currency of any kind is a mechanism of wealth transference from the public to a privileged elite - through inflation and loss of purchasing power. It creates debt for the many and wealth for the few, especially when a private banking cartel controls it.
Our existing monetary system combines money, credit and debt into a dishonest system of empty promises in exchange for future ones. There is no eventual payment, only unfulfillable assurances to new generations that will be forced to pay for the debt now accumulated. It’s a moneychangers dream - ever-expanding debt and a continuing interest rate stream, masquerading as wealth creation for the people. It’s in fact a system of bondage and indebtedness benefitting the few at the expense of the many, a modern-day feudalism. It’s how an elite 1% got to own 70% of the nation’s wealth.
In the 1920s, Josiah Stamp, Bank of England president said:
“Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin. Bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create deposits, and with a flick of the pen (today a computer keyboard) they will create enough deposits to buy it back again. However, take it away from them, and all the great fortunes like mine will disappear, and they ought to disappear, for this would be a happier and better world to live in. But if you wish to remain the slaves of Bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create deposits.”
Creating the Federal Reserve System to let bankers and not the government control the price and amount of fiat money debased the currency and is the root cause of today’s financial problems. A return to honest gold and silver weights and measures is needed. The Constitution states that nothing but these metals are money and that paper bills of credit (like Federal Reserve notes) aren’t allowed. Even ones backed by gold as the Constitution doesn’t grant Congress the power to be bankers. It may only coin (create) and borrow money, not loan it out or give it away - and certainly not to bankers at the expense of the public interest.
Further, the Constitution contains no provision allowing Congress to enact legal tender laws. Article I, Section 10 forbids the individual states from making “anything but gold and silver coin a legal tender in payment of debts.” However, US Code, 31 USC 5103, establishes US coins and currency, including Federal Reserve notes, as legal tender and has been used to debase the currency ever since - the way Gresham’s Law works: bad (or debased) money drives out good (the kind with little difference between its nominal and commodity values).
For example, until 1964, US coins (except pennies and nickels) contained 90% silver. Starting in 1965, dimes and quarters were converted to their current nickel - copper composition. Half-dollars (now produced in limited quantities) had 90% silver. It then dropped to 40% in 1965 and by 1971 all US coins (except pennies and commemorative mintings) contained nickel and copper and no silver - a good example of debasing. As for paper currency, it’s just paper.
Under a private banking cartel’s control, it’s been misused, stolen, and corrupted the way New York Times columnist Floyd Norris suggests in his November 24 article headlined: “Another Crisis, Another Guarantee.” First the banks, then the auto companies, and who knows who’s next in line for theirs. “As the nation’s obligations rise into the trillions, at some point investors (and the public) may begin to question whether a government running huge deficits can also credibly promise that the dollar will not lose its value.” How can there be any faith and credit left when it’s vanishing and the Fed and Treasury operate like giant hedge funds.
It got UK-based Eclectica Asset Management chief investment officer, Hugh Hendry, concerned enough to say: “All (US) financials will be owned by the government in a year. I bet you. It’s not good,” but it’s coming. US taxpayers will be “paying for this for a long time,” and it’s deeply concerning considering the amount of money creation - with no end in sight as problems keep mounting and limitless amounts keep being thrown at them.
On November 25 the Financial Times associate editor, Wolfgang Munchau, also worries about the Fed’s “weapon of mass desperation” (so-called quantitative easing); focusing only on deflation and risking a currency crisis. He calls it a flawed, dangerous and shocking oversight - the possibility of “a mass flight out of dollar assets (at some point) and a large rise in US market interest rates, followed by a huge recession.”
A Bloomberg.com November 24 headline highlights the problem: “US Pledges Top $7.7 trillion to Ease Frozen Credit,” and it might as well have said there’s plenty more where that came from if needed. With another $800 committed to two new loan programs the total reached $8.5 trillion, according to Bloomberg or nearly 60% of US 2007 GDP of $14 trillion, and the numbers keep rising exponentially because the problems continue to mount.
Bloomberg puts it in perspective saying “the (current) commitment dwarfs (TARP and puts) Federal Reserve lending last week (at) 1900 times the weekly average for the three years before the crisis,” and with the added $800 billion it’s about 2100 times pre-crisis levels.
In addition, the Fed refuses to identify recipients of about $2 trillion of emergency handouts or what troubled assets (if any) it’s accepting as collateral. Call it lending or spending. They’re public tax dollars being spread around like confetti and debasing it all as a result.
The Free Lakota Bank
On November 21, this writer discussed how Lakotahs are treated in an article titled “Fate of Lakotahs Highlights America’s Failed Native American Policies.” On November 24, the following press release and follow-up information announced:
“People of Lakota Launch Private Bank for Only Silver and Gold Currencies.” All deposits are “liquid, meaning they can be withdrawn at any time in minted rounds. Some may confuse our economic system with isolationism….which it is not. Since we currently produce much more than we consume, we have the right to decide what medium of exchange to accept for our effort. And so we accept only value for value. Across our great land, over thousands of tribes and merchants participate in our system of trade. We invite others to trade with us and bring value back into our transactions.”
This is the world’s first non-reserve, non-fractional bank that accepts only silver and gold currencies for deposit. The Lakotas “invite people of any creed, faith or heritage to unite in an effort to reclaim control of wealth. It is our hope that other tribal nations and American citizens recognize the importance of silver and gold as currency and decide to mirror our system of honest trade.”
The bank states that it issues, circulates and accepts for deposit “only AOCS - Approved silver and gold currencies.” It calls paper not real money but “merely a promise to pay - a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Since we deal only in real money, we do not participate in any central bank looting schemes.” When corruption is rewarded and “honesty becom(es) self-sacrifice….you may know that your society is doomed.” Even as victims of adversity, Lakotas are working to prevent it.
End the Fed
Privatized money control is the single greatest threat to democratic freedom. As former lawyer, economist, academic, and Canadian prime minister (from 1935 - 1948) William Lyon Mackenzie King once said:
“Until the control of the issue of currency and credit is restored to government and recognized as its most conspicuous and sacred responsibility, all talk of sovereignty of Parliament and of democracy is idle and futile….Once a nation parts with control of its credit, it matters not who makes (its) laws….Usury once in control will wreck any nation,” and indeed it has, far more now than ever.
It worried Thomas Jefferson enough to call banking institutions “more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies” at a much simpler time in our history. The right to create and control money belongs to the people through their elected representatives. For the past 95 years, powerful bankers accountable to no one have had it. They effectively run the country (and own it), and unless We the People change things, we’ll continue to be victimized by economic tyranny and the eventual political kind that’s coming.
Stephen Lendman
Global Research
December 25, 2008
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11490
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