Israeli State Terror:A Policy of "Might, Force, and Blows"

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By Naseer Aruri

The U.S. and Israel have an interesting perspective on the meaning of "terrorism." President Reagan often describes terrorism as an international conspiracy (similar to his definition of communism) directed against the United States and its "way of life." The State of Israel uses a similar definition when justifying its repression of Palestinian aspirations. While Israel and the U.S. share a similar definition of "terrorism," how they use the term depends very much upon to whom they are referring.

In his 1984 speech before the Jonathan Institute, Secretary of State Shultz quoted the words of the late Senator Henry Jackson, who addressed the same forum in 1979. Senator Jackson had said:

The idea that one person's "terrorist" is another's "freedom fighter" cannot be sanctioned. Freedom fighters or revolutionaries don't blow up buses containing non‑combatants; terrorist murderers do. Freedom fighters don't set out to capture and slaughter school children; terrorist murderers do. Freedom fighters don't assassinate innocent businessmen, or hijack and hold hostage innocent men, women, and children; terrorist murderers do. It is a disgrace that democracies would allow the treasured word "freedom" to be associated with the acts of terrorists.

However, in his personal diary, which was published against the wishes of the Israeli establishment, former Israeli Prime Minister Moshe Sharett reveals that Israeli military operations against Arab civilian populations were designed to terrorize them and create fear, tension and instability.[iv] Sharett's documentation shows that Israel's territorial expansion (such as in the Suez in 1956) was facilitated by Israeli acts of provocation, which generated Arab hostility and created pretexts for intervention. For example, the attack by Israeli Army Unit 101 led by Ariel Sharon on the Palestinian village of Kibya in October 1953, causing numerous civilian casualties and destruction of homes, was condemned by Sharett. He writes, "[In the cabinet meeting] I condemned the Kibya affair that exposed us in front of the whole world as a gang of blood‑suckers, capable of mass massacres regardless it seems, of whether their actions may lead to war."


Israeli State Terrorism


More recent accounts by Israeli writers show how earlier acts of terrorism provided a historical background to adoption of a policy of state terrorism by Israel.[vi] Benny Morris's explanation of the Palestinian exodus in 1948,. based on state, military and Zionist archives, refutes the official Israeli version that the Palestinians bear responsibility for their own expulsion. An earlier work by Irish journalist Erskine Childers demonstrated that, contrary to the official Israeli version, there were no Arab radio broadcasts ordering the Palestinians to leave.[vii] And Israeli journalist Tom Segev reveals in his book how instrumental was Zionist terrorism in the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem. Sixteen months after 250 Arab civilians were massacred in the village of Deir Yassin (April 9,1948) by the combined forces of ETZEL (known as Menachem Begin's Irgun) and LEHI (known as Yitzhak Shamir's Stern Gang) there was a debate in the Israeli set in which, according to Segev, a member of Begin's Herut Party had boasted: "Thanks to Deir Yassin, we won the war,"

Another account by Lenny Brenner[ix] reveals that Israeli Prime Minister Shamir was a convert to the pre‑Mussolini Betar (Zionist Brownshirts) in the late 1930s and that his Stern Gang had attempted to strike a deal with the Nazi regime in Germany in 1941 in which the establishment of a Jewish state, in Palestine on a "totalitarian basis" would be bound by a treaty with the German Reich.

Shamir's commitment to rightwing causes and to terrorism was unmistakably revealed in an article he wrote in the LEHI journal Hehazit (The Front) in the summer of 1943. This excerpt stands in contrast to Shamir's constant moralizing and condemnation of what he calls "PLO terrorism:"

Neither Jewish ethics nor Jewish tradition can disqualify terrorism as a means of combat.... [T]errorism is for us a part of the political battle being conducted under the present circumstances, and it has a great part to play: speaking in a clear voice to the whole world, as well as to our wretched brethren outside this land, it proclaims our war against the occupier.
Shamir's cabinet colleague Yitzhak Rabin who, as Defense Minister in charge of the occupied territories, proclaimed the policy of "might, force, and blows" in January 1988 (which has so far resulted in an estimated 281 deaths, more than 50,000 injuries and 30,000 detentions) has also had a consistent record of terrorism for more than forty years. As the deputy commander of Operation Dani, he, along with the late former Prime Minister David Ben‑Gurion and the late former Deputy Prime Minister Yigal Aflon, were responsible for the expulsion of between 50,000 and 70,000 people from the towns of Lydda and Ramleh in July 1948. The town of Ramleh had surrendered without a fight after the withdrawal of the Jordan Army but the inhabitants were rounded up, expelled and told never to come back. Benny Morris characterized that as the "biggest expulsion operation of the 1948 war." Rabin expressed empathy with "the great suffering inflicted upon" his men who caused the expulsion!


One of those expelled was a 13‑year‑old boy by the name of Khalil al‑Wazir, later known as Abu Jihad. Yitzhak Rabin, who was responsible for that act as a member of the Zionist militia, was one of the inner cabinet decision makers who decided; forty years later, to assassinate al‑Wazir far away from his home in Ramleh. The man who headed the inner cabinet, Yitzhak Shamir, told an inquirer who wanted to know who killed Abu Jihad, "I heard about it on the radio."
It was typical of the official response to the killing; claims of ignorance, broad hints that Abu Jihad's responsibility for the Palestinian uprising could only trigger that kind of response, and the usual reference to a factional conflict within the Palestinian movement as being responsible for the assassination. In fact, the murder of Abu Jihad is the latest incident in a continuous pattern of Israeli assassinations of Palestinian leaders and intellectuals among whom are Karmal al‑Adwan, Ghassan Kanafani, Kamal Nasser, Majid Abu Sharar, AbuYurif and many others.
In a New York Times article summarizing the official Israeli interpretation of its own policies, Thomas Friedman maintains that Israel endeavors to "turn terror back on the terrorists." This strategy has gone through several different stages. For the period of 1948‑1956 the strategy was described as "counterterrorism through retaliation or negative feedback" and was employed against Egypt and Jordan to prevent border crossings by Palestinian refugees attempting, in the main, to check on the conditions of their former homes."[xi] By 1972, Israel was striking against "the nerve centers and the perpetrators themselves" using letter bombs, exploding cars and telephones, and quiet assassinations of Palestinian leaders and intellectuals on the back streets of Europe. Later acts of terrorism including the destruction of entire villages in Lebanon, raids on Beirut, Baghdad, and Tunis have become typical of Israeli policy towards Arab non‑acceptance of its regional hegemony. Such acts have rarely evoked U.S. condemnation. In fact the Reagan administration characterized Israel's raid on the PLO headquarters in Tunis as an act of self‑defense.

U.S. and Israel ‑"Special" Relationship


Strategic cooperation between Israel and the U.S. was consummated between 1982 and 1988 and has dramatically elevated Israel's role in U.S. global strategic calculation. By 1983, the Reagan administration had accepted the Israeli view that the Palestine question was not the principal cause of instability in the Middle East. Henceforth, it would not be allowed to interfere in the "special relationship" between a superpower and its strategic ally.


In the special relationship between the United States and Israel, the latter is considered a "unique strategic asset".[xii] In the crucial Middle East, Israel is viewed as the cornerstone of American policy, which is perceived as a bulwark against the Soviet Union and radical revolutionary transformation. Outside the Middle East, Israel has emerged as the most important supplier of the technology of repression, anti‑guerrilla training, and infrastructure to combat revolution, all euphemistically phrased "counterterrorism." Israel ranks as the fifth largest exporter of arms in the world, according to CIA estimates, and it has become an es­sential component of the global counterinsurgency business. "Hit lists" used by the death squads in Guatemala have been computerized with Israeli assistance and the Uzi machine gun is the standard weapon of the death squads. The special relationship between the U.S. and Israel is a two‑way street. Israel is the largest recipient of U.S. economic and military aid and in return Israel has much to offer the U.S. The Reagan administration has publicly declared that Israel's substantial experience and "success" in coping with terrorism should provide guidance for the United States. When George Shultz spoke at a New York synagogue in 1984 he said:
No nation has more experience with terrorism than Israel, and no nation has made a greater contribution to our understanding of the problem and the best way to confront it. By supporting organizations like the Jonathan Institute, named after the brave Israeli soldier who led and died at Entebbe, the Israeli people have raised international awareness of the global scope of the terrorist threat.... [T]he rest of us would do well to follow Israel's example. [xiii]
The fact that the U.S. and Israel are so closely allied and use the same criteria for defining who are "terrorists" and who are not, necessarily makes the U.S. a dubious participant in mediating the Israeli‑Palestinian conflict and brings into question the possible results of U.S.‑sponsored negotiations with George Shultz behind the wheel.

When Secretary of State Shultz became the Reagan administration's chief proponent of close strategic cooperation with Israel he went far beyond the initiatives of his predecessor Alexander Haig. Haig's framework for U.S. Mid­dle East policy was the "consensus of strategic concerns," which would bring together a conservative constellation of regional powers that would include Israel. Shultz's framework, however, promoted Israel to the center of U.S. policy and assigned it a global role in addition to its regional duties on behalf of the status quo. Thus with Shultz in power, the United States conducted its Middle East policy on the basis of the "consensus of strategic concern" plus the special relationship with Israel.

With all the attention George Shultz received on his five trips to the Middle East in the last six months, and with the outcome never in question, it is important to ask, "What were the real objectives behind the 'Shultz shuttles?' "

Reagan's Commitment to Peace American involvement in the Middle East since the 1967 war reveals a number of precedents for unimplementable peace plans actually designed to justify U.S. obstruction of the global consensus and to contain Palestinian nationalism. An example was the Reagan plan of September 1, 1982 which denied sovereignty over the West Bank and Gaza to Israel and the Palestinians. Its territorial and confederal aspects evoked a swift yet predictable rejection from the Israeli cabinet.


The principal spur for the Reagan plan was the seige of Beirut, which tarnished Israel's image and at the same time provided a catalyst in the world community for linking PLO withdrawal to Palestinian statehood. To justify its virtual sole dissent from the international will, the Reagan administration felt obliged to launch its own initiative based on "the Jordan option," which proved to be a non‑option.

More recently, Reagan has sent his premier ambassador of peace, George Shultz, to the Middle East to again make a public press for a settlement. However, knowing that Israel will not meet even the minimum requirements for a territorial settlement, what then does Mr. Shultz hope to accomplish in view of the fact that his initiative lacks any means of pressuring Israel?

The U.S. has three objectives:

1. The Shultz plan is an attempt to contain the Palestinian uprising and prevent its extension to U.S. allies and clients in the region. It is also designed to repair Israel's tarnished image in the United States.

2. The United States would like to set the terms before any other actor emerges with a plan for settlement. The Soviet Union, which has been trying to broaden its options in the region, is one such actor. The Arab states or the PLO are also possible sources of peace initiatives. The Shultz Plan repre­sents a reaffirmation of U.S. custodianship over the Middle East. It serves as a reminder that the area is U.S. turf and hence it is designed to elbow out or preempt any genuine proposals for a settlement.

3. The plan also attempts to bridge the gap between the re­quirements of public opinion and those of public policy in the United States. The U.S. has broken barriers for the first time in the Middle East. The public mood in this country has changed and the people seem ready for a political settlement. Yet Palestine has never been high on the official agenda. There is no sense in Washington that the Palestine question is urgent. Unless it becomes urgent, there will be no movement towards peace.

America's policy objectives in the region center on oil and containment of Soviet influence as well as contairnnent of the natives. As long as Palestine does not interfere with these objectives, the administration feels no compulsion to initiate peace proposals. But given that the public mood has changed in this country, the Shultz plan offers the U.S. public a rejectable plan, which would absolve Washington of responsibility for the impasse.

The Reagan administration clearly perceives the uprising as a political threat to its hegemony in the region and would like to check its potential for extension beyond the occupied territories into Arab countries ruled by conservative regimes. The administration is also concerned about Israel's repressive image‑perhaps more than Israel itself‑in the United States. Washington's strategic relationship with Israel must continue to have the blessings of American public opinion.


Hence, Shultz's sudden awakening to the fact that the unresolved Palestine‑ Israel conflict is a threat to the status quo and his embarking upon a mission to save Israel in spite of itself. The erosion of U.S. public support for Reagan's policy towards Israel is seen as a dangerous strategic step backward, and his administration is desperately trying to counter the bad publicity.
Shultz's endeavor turned out to be a series of diplomatic shuttles not only between Arab capitals and Israel but also between the two heads of the Israeli government. His diplomacy seems to operate on the assumption that the crucial choices are between Israel's Likud preference for functional autonomy (which keeps "Greater Israel" intact as the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are enfranchised in the Jordanian state), and Labor's "territorial" autonomy, which is a diminutive version of the Jordan option. His diplomacy also assumes that the only choices are between Labor's cosmetic international conference and Likud's direct negotiations.

The fact that the Jordan option is dead, that the concept of a Palestinian‑Jordanian delegation is unacceptable, and that the Camp David formula is discredited throughout the Arab World seems to have escaped Mr. Shultz's attention. The outcome of Shultz's diplomacy has so far worked for the benefit of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir. Shamir's visit to the U.S. in March 1988, ostensibly to discuss peace with the Reagan administration, enabled him to respond to U.S. critics of Israeli repression in the occupied territories, to raise funds in the American Jewish community and to solidify and upgrade the U.S. strategic alliance. In his visit, Shamir repeated the Israeli position that the Palestinian uprising was not a demonstration of civil disobedience but a war waged "against Israelis, against the existence of the State of Israel;" hence, he declared the media coverage unfair and non‑contextual. This theme was dutifully repeated by prominent American Jewish figures such as Morris Abram, chairman of the Council of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, and New York Mayor Edward Koch, among others.
"Elder statesman" Henry Kissinger, who had erected the principal barrier to a Palestinian‑Israeli settlement back in 1974, and who was willing to bomb Vietnam back to the stone age, was already on record one week prior to Shamir's visit as saying, "Israel should bar the media... accept the short term criticism ... and put down the insurrection as quickly as possible‑overwhelmingly, brutally, and rapidly."'

The recent dramatic ascendancy of the far right in the Israeli body politic, and the rampant anti‑Arab racism sweeping the country, provide a fertile environment for the kind of state terrorism witnessed today on the West Bank and in Gaza.


The orientation of this rapidly growing group toward brute force and its contempt for debate is partly the cause for the sharp increase in repression against Palestinian civilians under occupation. Worse yet is the tendency of members of the political and religious establishment to encourage such acts of terrorism. [xvi] Given the close and special relationship between the U.S. and Israel, given the fact that no prominent U.S. politician is willing to condemn Israel publicly for its repression of the Palestinians and given that the U.S. and Israel share the same understanding of what terrorism is, it seems likely that if peace is to come to the Middle East it will be in spite of what the U.S. and Israel do.


Naseer Aruri is Professor of Political Science at Southeastern Massachuetts University in North Dartmouth. His most recent book is entitled: Occupation Israel over Palestine.
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The final act of mythology’s ‘Samson’

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By Straight


For many years, the rhetorical tool in efforts to probe the self-destructive side of Israel’s political reflexes has been the refrain: “Israel has a ‘Samson Complex.’”

We can find no other explanation for a dawn assault on a flotilla challenging Israel’s blockade of traumatized Gaza. The killing of as many as 19 activists with reports that the count could climb is inexcusable, unnecessary and of such political folly that it boggles the mind as it shocks the world.

These few moments of violence will bury far into the future whatever fragile hopes remained for a Turkish-Israeli reconciliation over the two countries’ differences of late. More profoundly, it completes the transformation in recent decades in the basic narrative of the Jewish state.

Once the struggling story of a devastated people seeking to build a home from the ashes of the Holocaust, Monday’s actions complete and seal the new narrative in the international mind: an arrogant and vindictive nation that blindly tramples on any innocent who questions its power.

So let’s return to the story of Samson. A mythical figure in the first century AD, his story appears in the “Book of Judges” of the Jewish Bible as well as the Christian Old Testament. A Herculean figure, Samson can wrestle with lions or single-handedly slay an entire army of “Philistines.” His end comes when, captured by his pursuers and chained between two pillars of a temple, Samson pulls the two pillars from their foundations. He perishes along with his enemies.

Samson played a role in early Zionism and in the reconstruction of a collective Jewish memory.

The image of the invincible fighter leading a people from the helplessness of exile was part of the national myth-building that resulted in the founding of Israel in 1948.

More recently the imagery has drawn from a different side of Samson’s character; elite commando units have been dubbed in the Israeli media as “Samson units” and Israel’s nuclear weapons capacity is often labeled the “Samson option.”

That the aid flotilla is an act of provocation is beyond dispute. That among the ranks of activists there is no small number of publicity-seeking European sycophants is well known. That a sincere effort to ease Palestinian suffering might have sought accommodation we will concede. That a few knives or even guns might be found on the aid ships is a possibility. But all of this is meaningless in the face of the events of the last few hours.

No serious observer can argue that Israel lacked better alternatives at its disposal. But the trigger-happy Likud-led government responded with an all-too-familiar reflex of maximum and brutal force.

This time, it pulled down the temple.

It is a tragedy for those activists who have lost their lives. It is a tragedy for the Palestinians of Gaza. Above all it is a tragedy for the people of Israel, victims too of a vain and foolish government.

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What If Iran Had Carried Out The Gaza Carnage?

So, Now What? Now Who?

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By Stephen Pizzo


November 2010 looms a mere six months off. November 2012 another twenty-four months away. For eight years I counted the months, then the weeks, then the days when I could go to the polls and vote corrupt Bushies out of office and out of our lives.

Now I dread the polls. Such great hope dashed is more than just a betrayal, it's an emotional headshot. Maybe I was foolish to allow myself to wallow in such uncritical joy and anticipation. After all, I've been around Washington and politicians for decades and I should have known better I guess.

Well, I don't have guess, I guess. Because here we are, 18 months later and the "Change We Can Believe In" bumper stickers have faded or been peeled off by despondent Obama fans like me.

Where do I go now, after such a monumental betrayal? I feel like an abused spouse who breaks free of one abuser only to discover I've married another one.

Oh, I know... DNC beltway insiders will rush to assure me that the change I voted for is still on the table but that Big O has to play the game; compromise, posture and cut "good deals" with bad people. And that progressives like me are being naïve and unfair when we b*tch and gripe about not getting our way, right away.

Maybe. But I'll be 65 this summer and I didn't just roll into town in the back of a turnip truck. I've seen-em come, and I've seen-em go. I've sat in Capitol Hill offices and heard Senate staffers refer to their bosses as "rental cars" for special monied interests and industry.

One hot, muggy summer afternoon I sat on a stool among the stacks of books in the House library and listened to a moderate two-term House Democrat explain, in tears, why he would not run for re-election.


"I came here thinking I could change this place," he said. "But no one can change this place. I'm going back home where I can raise my kids and be with my wife and work in my community where I can really affect change."

Now I fully understand those tears; tears of frustration, tears for hope dashed, tears for a nation on a path to mediocrity and decay.

Barack, you let me down man. You let all of us down. Thanks to you, I don't know what I will do -- not this November, not the November 2-years later. You not only snuffed out my hope, but my last vestiges of trust as well. Like a repeatedly abused stray dog, I now shy away from every politician outstretched hand.

Because you can't sell hope without trust -- at least not to me, not again, notever again.

And that's your fault Barack Obama. And it's rapidly shaping your legacy.


Stephen Pizzo is the author of "Inside Job: The Looting of America's Savings and Loans|" was nominated for a Pulitzer.

The Rise and Fall of Empires Under Jewish World Rule

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by Christopher Jon Bjerknes

Judaism teaches the Jews to rule the World, destroy all nations other than their own, steal all wealth, and kill off the best Gentiles in preparation for killing off all Gentiles. How do the Jews achieve these ends, and why have they been expelled from so many nations?

In their foundational myths, the Jews suck the wealth out of Egypt and depart to steal the lands of the Canaanites. The Jews lament in their mythology that the Egyptians loved them so much they loaned them their gold and jewels and that the Egyptian ruler would not let the Jews go. The Jews tell a story of how they taught the Egyptian ruler to rob and enslave his own people.

Our time has come, America. Jewish aristocracy are crying out to the US, let my people go! The Jews here have it very good, a little too good, and so must depart with full purses and wet asses.

Throughout history, the Jews have always been relatively few in number. Being extremely aggressive parasites, they need a powerful nation to use as a weapon to destroy other nations. For a really big calamity, they need several powerful nations in conflict with one another so that the Jews can severely cripple the human race they so hate.

At first glance, this might appear to be dilemma, for if the Jews sponsor the rise of an empire, that empire, not the Jews, rules and its people prosper, but the Jews want no one to prosper but themselves and no one to rule other than the Jews.

The Jews long ago figured a way out of this apparent dilemma. The Jews learned to ensure that the empires would collapse from wars and vain consumption, and that their cultures would disappear through the importation of the conquered into the homeland. The entire process of Jewish empire building is one of destruction.

That "great" French Revolution provides us with an example of the death merchants' modus operandi. The initial "revolution" produced mass murder which was intended to eliminate a substantial majority of the French population and the absolute destruction of the best French families with the attendant destruction of French culture and the gross diminution of French genetics.

Though it was bloody, the French Revolution was not anywhere near so bloody as the Jews had planned. Then the Jews placed their puppet messiah Napoleon Bonaparte in power who brought France into several wars, killing off the best of the French yet again and importing foreign culture into France, while exporting French culture and genes abroad so as to bastardize other cultures and bloodlines. Many wars later, France has now lost much of its sovereignty to Jewish World government in the form of the European Union. Its colonialism has diminished its culture. It is a comparatively weak and uninfluential country.

The Jewish sponsored empire is created to destroy other nations, but also to destroy itself. How much of the destruction of the Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Persian, Catholic, Spanish, Chinese, Indian, Polish, Dutch, English, French, Turkish, Russian, German, Japanese and now American empires was due to natural forces and how much was planned and pursued is perhaps difficult to say, but the Jews were behind each empire and the Jews brought them all down.

In the process of their parasitic consumption of other nations, the Jews build up a nation economically and then lead it into war after war destroying other nations and cultures, then the Jews cut off the tap, consume the roots of the empire as it were, economically, culturally, spiritually and genetically. In the end, not only has the empire destroyed other nations, it has destroyed itself never to reappear again in its original uncorrupted form. Whether we pretend these are natural consequences of empire building, or recognize the design, the Jew was behind them all and all ended in ruin and the blending and grafting of the different branches of the human family into a mongrel slave race, without any unique roots or culture, serving the Jews.

Though it appears at first glance that the Jews are violating their religious tenets when they build up a nation, especially when they build a nation into an empire, history has proven that in every instance the Jews only do so to use the empire to destroy other nations and ultimately itself. Many of the expulsions of the Jews were created by the Jews themselves to "let their people go" to Palestine and steal the land of the natives. As the Jews suck the last blood out of America, they will want the Jews segregated and expelled. This we ought not to do, for they will raise another empire to place its boot over our heads. At all costs, we should isolate Jews from one another, not concentrate and unite them.

The White Nationalists' plans to segregate and concentrate the Jews are wrongheaded at best and probably originate from the Jews, themselves. Such schemes as Harold Covington's Northwest Republic and David Lane's fantasy of KD Rebel actually would place American Whites at a huge disadvantage, by landlocking or placing European American Whites as far from Europe as possible. They would concentrate future enemies, give them territories and give that enemy every strategic advantage, taking from Whites enormous tracts of land, the important ports of both coasts, and placing them in radiation contaminated zones prone to volcanic action and without energy reserves in inclement regions. Farming and industry are difficult in these areas, and Autarky would be infinitely more difficult to achieve.

The White Nationalists' plans fulfil the Jews' dream of destroying America by making it an empire then imploding the empire and continuing the process of destruction by creating severe threats and disadvantages for Whites in a balkanized America. Latin Americans would flood in as never before, as would Asians.

Is not history filled with wars and who would these forces seek to attack if not White Americans? Imagine the danger of the Chinese having open ports in California and all across the Gulf and Atlantic coastlines? Imagine Latin America invading from the south by the tens of millions per month. What chance would a Northwest Republic, which would consume its meager resources merely trying to feed and clothe itself, have against such an invasion? Where would winter food come from, in the event of a war? How could trade be conducted when the Whites had little to offer and the Asians could exploit the best of the Americas? It is difficult to imagine a worse predicament for Whites. Is it not easier to exercise political power over the entirety of the nation than to kill ourselves by hiding in the dark corner of our vast nation?

US considering attack on Pakistan

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The US military is reportedly weighing all possible options to attack Pakistan, in the event that it manages to link the country with a disastrous attack on the US soil.

The US military officials believe that at under such extreme circumstances President Barack Obama would be convinced that the CIA drone attacks in Pakistan are not working, The Washington Post reported on Saturday

Military officials in the US have used the failed bomb attempt on New York's Times Square on May 1, to accuse Pakistan of harboring terrorists.

The incident was also used to urge the Obama administration to review how it would respond to a successful attack on US soil.

Since August 2008, drone strikes have killed nearly a thousand people, mostly civilians, in rural areas in Pakistan.

The attacks have caused anti-American sentiment among the Pakistani people. PressTV
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Obama's Watergate: The Sestak Affair

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By Douglas J. Hagmann

Members of congress demand criminal probe

“This is punishable by prison. This is a felony.” – Rep. Darrell Issa

Due to the recent equivocations from the Obama White House and the apparent unwillingness by the mainstream media to investigate this matter, the majority of Americans are unaware of the seriousness of the Obama administration’s alleged actions involving Joseph Sestak. If proven, the reported actions of the Obama administration are clear violations of three federal laws[i]. The impact and fallout from documented violations, as well as the refusal of the Holder Justice Department to appoint a Special Counsel to investigate this matter, have the potential to eclipse the Watergate scandal of the early 1970’s – it is that serious.

The crime

In an attempt to retain as much political control over Congress during the 2010 midterm elections, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel dispatched William Clinton and lawyer Doug Band to meet with senatorial candidate Joseph Sestak who was running against Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania. In exchange for dropping out of the race, Sestak was offered a position with the administration. It was reasoned that should Sestak accept, Specter would be unopposed in the primary and have a much better chance of retaining his senatorial seat. The meetings reportedly took place in June and July of last year.

Based on open source reports stemming back to February, it is apparent that Sestak had no idea that such overtures are illegal as he readily admitted the meeting and job offer in a February 18, 2010 interview with Philadelphia TV newscaster Larry Kane (documented here).

The overture made to Joseph Sestak is not the first time the Obama administration attempted to alter this year’s Senate races by promising employment to opponents posing serious challenges to Obama allies. It is, however, garnering the most attention. The first known incident involves Andrew Romanoff, a Democratic challenger from Colorado running against Senator Michael Bennet. The Obama administration offered Romanoff a position in the administration if he canceled plans to run for the Democratic nomination against incumbent Senator Bennet as detailed in this Denver Post article dated September 27, 2009. As in all cases involving possible criminal activity, such documented multiple instances show a continuing course of conduct and intent.

The cover-up

Recalling the days of Watergate, it is important to understand that it was obstruction of justice charges that ultimately brought down the Nixon administration. Obstruction of justice can take on different forms, including but not limited to obfuscations, equivocations, denials, as well as lack of cooperation with investigative bodies. So far, the White House has failed to cooperate or provide any specific answers to questions posed by lawmakers. The Holder Justice Department has also declined to investigate.

The Timeline

June/July 2009: White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel dispatched William Clinton and lawyer Doug Band to meet with senatorial candidate Joseph Sestak who was running against Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania. In exchange for dropping out of the race, Sestak was offered a position with the administration. It was reasoned that should Sestak accept, Specter would be unopposed in the primary and have a much better chance of retaining his senatorial seat.

February 18, 2010: Sestak interviewed by Philadelphia, PA TV newscaster Larry Kane, admits job offer by White House in exchange for dropping out of Senate race.

March 10, 2010: Rep. Darrell Issa, the top Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee sends letter to White House Counsel Robert Bauer to inquire about the details of the Sestak matter. Specific questions included: (1) who on the White House staff communicated with Sestak about the 2010 race for the Senate; (2) what position, if any, was offered in exchange for the commitment to not run; (3) what, if any investigation did your office undertake to determine whether the criminal activity described by Rep. Sestak occurred?; and (4) Do you expect to make a referral to the United States Department of Justice in this matter? Rep. Issa issued a March 18, 2010 deadline for a reply.

March 16, 2010: Under pressure from reporters, White House Press Secretary issues the following statement during a press conference: “I’ve talked to several people in the White House. I’ve talked to people who have talked to others in the White House.” I’m told that whatever conversations have been had, are not problematic. I think Congressman Sestak has discussed that this is – whatever happened is in the past and he is focused on this primary.”

March 18, 2010: No response from the White House counsel.

March 22, 2010: Second request sent, with advisory that that if no satisfactory answers from the White House were forthcoming, Rep. Issa would ask Holder to appoint a special prosecutor; Bauer was also asked for more information about who Gibbs spoke with in the White House about this matter. A deadline set for April 5, 2010

April 5, 2010: No response from White House. It was during a press conference that CNS News asked Gibbs if the White House would support a special prosecutor investigating the issue, citing the deadline of April 5. Gibbs did not answer the question, instead referred to his March 16, 2010 comment.

May 18, 2010: Pennsylvania primary; Specter defeated.

May 26, 2010: Seven republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee requested the Holder Justice Department to appoint a special prosecutor to probe the allegations (Letter – PDF format).

May 28, 2010: Letter from 14 Congressmen to FBI Director Robert Mueller requesting FBI probe of criminal conduct. Official White House memo released.

[i] 18 U.S.C. § 600: Whoever, directly or indirectly, promises any employment, position, compensation, contract, appointment, or other benefit, provided for or made possible in whole or in part by any Act of Congress, or any special consideration in obtaining any such benefit, to any person as consideration, favor, or reward for any political activity or for the support of or opposition to any candidate or any political party in connection with any general or special election to any political office, or in connection with any primary election or political convention or caucus held to select candidates for any political office, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.

18 U.S.C. § 211: Whoever solicits or receives, either as a political contribution, or for personal emolument, any money or thing of value, in consideration of the promise of support or use of influence in obtaining for any person any appointive office or place under the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both. Whoever solicits or receives anything of value in consideration of aiding a person to obtain employment under the United States either by referring his name to an executive department or agency of the United States or by requiring the payment of a fee because such person has secured such employment shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned not more than one year, or both. This section shall not apply to such services rendered by an employment agency pursuant to the written request of an executive department or agency of the United States.

18 U.S.C. § 595: Whoever, being a person employed in any administrative position by the United States, or by any department or agency thereof, or by the District of Columbia or any agency or instrumentality thereof, or by any State, Territory, or Possession of the United States, or any political subdivision, municipality, or agency thereof, or agency of such political subdivision or municipality (including any corporation owned or controlled by any State, Territory, or Possession of the United States or by any such political subdivision, municipality, or agency), in connection with any activity which is financed in whole or in part by loans or grants made by the United States, or any department or agency thereof, uses his official authority for the purpose of interfering with, or affecting, the nomination or the election of any candidate for the office of President, Vice President, Presidential elector, Member of the Senate, Member of the House of Representatives, Delegate from the District of Columbia, or Resident Commissioner, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.

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Lawmakers demand investigation of Obama White House
Lawmakers are asking the following questions regarding a job offer made to Rep. Joe Sestak of Pennsylvania if he would drop out of his primary race against Senator Arlen Specter. According to Rep. Darrell Issa, some questions submitted to White House counsel Robert Bauer included:

* Who on the White House staff discussed the 2010 Senate race with Sestak? More

Central Banking vs. The Republic and the World

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'Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms' - Aristotle

By Damon Varbel

A couple of days ago in Japan, Ben Bernanke said that the benefits of low interest rate policies that politicians want “are not sustainable and will soon evaporate, leaving behind inflationary pressures that worsen the economy’s long-term prospects…...thus political interference in monetary policy can generate undesirable boom-bust cycles that ultimately lead to both a less stable economy and higher inflation.”

[pause inserted so you have time to pick your jaw up off the floor]

We are now in the midst of one of the biggest boom-busts in history, all under the Fed’s watch, caused by its multi-decade low interest rate policy among other things, yet that is the scenario he says government oversight would cause! So what’s really going on here beneath Ben’s Harvard veneer?

He is trying to scare us with a fabricated boogie man—the idea that your elected leaders might do in some imaginary future what the Fed has already done in the unimaginable present. He wants you to be scared of this republic’s legislature reclaiming some power back from the financial empire that runs the global corporate system, and the US government from behind closed doors (article: Wall Street Empire). In other words, he wants you to continue submitting to financial dictatorship rather than rediscovering the principles of freedom, distributed power, and effective government. Will you choose submission or discovery? As more and more people are realizing, we are now in one of the most critical moments “in the course of human events.”

We have seen this moment before, especially from Hollywood. It is the WALL-E moment when the captain of the starship Axiom (our elected leaders) finally wrestles power back from Auto (the Fed cartel on Wall Street) and restores life by saving humanity from its TV programming (our media). It is the Gladiator moment when General Maximus wakes up to the imperial enemy and commits himself to restoring the republic. It is the Star Wars moment when Darth Vader chooses life for his son and the republic by throwing the emperor to his death. Which will you choose? Will real life turn out as well as fiction? Or will Ben’s scare tactics keep you in fear?

The Ben Bernanke Survey

I’m curious for your opinion about why Ben is doing this. Reply in the comments below with your answer to this multiple choice question: Who is Ben Bernanke?

1. Honest – he actually believes what he says. He’s still a Harvard kid getting gold stars on his homework as he repeats the fraudulent load of crap known as neoclassical economics.
2. Dishonest – he knows he’s just protecting the powers behind the Fed system and furthering their global restructuring plan by threatening the politicians with more boom-busts if they try to serve the people.
3. Insane – he’s not in touch with reality.

Folks like Jim Rogers, Marc Faber, and Peter Schiff promote #1, the idea that he’s a clueless theoretician repeatedly making mistakes. No doubt there was a time when he was just a bright-eyed overachiever being pumped full of theory disconnected from reality. But these guys ignore Ben’s comments in Japan. He makes it clear that he knows exaggerated low interest rate policies cause major problems, i.e. he’s not ignorant, but he engages in them anyway! So again I ask what’s really going on?

Feel free to disagree, but #2 is my answer, which means we need to stop believing Rogers, Faber, and Schiff that he’s a pedantic bureaucrat. That’s pure spin that reinforces the idea there’s no strategic plan behind what the G20, IMF, BIS, and Fed are doing in response to the coordinated actions of Rubin, Summers, Paulson, Geithner, Greenspan, AIG, JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, etc. Those who promote #1 are suggesting that these folks, all part of the elite Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), are basically randomly screwing up a kids’ game of checkers. No chance. The fact is we are in the mist of a global chess game being played above the heads of national governments in which debt and leverage are used to restructure the world under a new global money and banking system (video: Emerging Global Empire). I suggest Bernanke’s sole purpose is to hide the real role the Federal Reserve has played in this game while also helping to keep Congress from asserting its power.

Central Banking: Pro or Con?

The media likes to claim that voicing opposition to the Fed is lower class populism. But of course the media doesn’t think. It just promotes left or right groupthink for the few corporate powers that own the media. They don’t want you thinking about the question of a central bank. If they did, we might better understand the pros and cons.

The pro is that without a central body regulating the value of currency, thousands of banks across the country would be randomly cranking credit up and down resulting in economic turmoil. True. Some of the founders understood that without a controlled currency, private banking institutions could profit massively off whipsawing the people, which is why Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution says the government should regulate the value of the currency. But of course we know this pro doesn’t apply to the Fed structure because the most extreme periods of economic turmoil have happened since it was created.

The problem with this pro is the first con of the Fed’s form of central banking—it puts currency control in private hands. Rather than the Fed having power over the banks, its structure actually gives the primary dealer banks (mega firms like JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, and many foreign banks) significant power to tell it what to do. Entrenched powers behind these firms working together in cartel groups like the New York Fed and CFR have far more leverage than the president, i.e. an individual with no financial experience who rotates into office for a short period of time completely surrounded by bankers and their allies. The entire purpose of the Constitution and having a republic, despite its flaws, was to put power in the hands of the public vs. a concentrated private oligarchy. But the Fed system creates such an oligarchy, as many Americans now see since the crash of 2008.

Mathematical con: Basing a currency on nothing but interest-bearing debt as the Fed system does creates the need for perpetual exponential growth (video: Culture of Empire part 1). This feels like a good thing at first, but eventually the accompanying perpetual inflation becomes clear (Bernanke admitted this in Japan by also saying central banks target 2% inflation—a huge indicator economists ignore that the system is unsustainable—a stable system would target zero). The perpetually increasing debt eventually becomes shocking (look around the world). The perpetually increasing scale and velocity of the system starts causing profound harm (Part 2 and 3). Exponential systems are guaranteed to crash. The eventual reckoning with the impossibility of exponential math is not pretty, and we are now entering the reckoning phase for our system (Chris Martenson video on Exponential Growth).

Economic con: Oligarchic monetary systems tend toward a 2-tiered society, money pushing rulers vs. money using servants who scramble to pay the rulers back plus interest. The ruling financial class eventually takes over the productive economy and then parasitically destroys the host upon which it lives as gambling and speculation replace savings and production as the engine of growth. Such is the power of a monetary system based on nothing but debt (Michael Hudson video).

Moral con: A debt-based monetary system enshrines usury, i.e. living off the backs of others by doing nothing but subjugating a population to systemic interest-bearing debt. So the foundation of our monetary system under the Federal Reserve is built upon immorality (article: Usury and the Coming Crash).

Philosophical con: Related to the moral and economic cons is the philosophical ideal of freedom. An oligarchic monetary system forces the great mass of the population into servitude. It effectively creates a predator/prey structure in society. In a system based purely on debt, the banking powers are able to super-inflate the system to drive up asset prices, and then deflate the system sucking value and assets up the pyramid to consolidate power. We saw this over the last 10 years. This is the biggest and brightest example of why Jefferson said “banking institutions are more dangerous than standing armies.” It’s also the best example of why the Constitution demands that government regulate the currency.

Solution

So how can we get the one pro of a central monetary authority regulating the value of the currency without any of the cons above? Do precisely what Ben says we shouldn’t do—reestablish the republic by putting currency regulation in the hands of public officials as the Constitutions says. If a country doesn’t have a sovereign currency, it doesn’t have a sovereign government. We are learning that painful lesson now as we see Greece being attacked and taken over by financial institutions. The same thing has happened to many countries in the past and it will happen in the future if governments don’t take charge. At that point everyone will know the truth—governments are held hostage by private financial interests. But more and more Americans are realizing the truth now and pushing for change.

However, the change is not as simple as ending the Fed. Without a transition plan, that would cause a disaster since it is the basis for the money supply. The key is to nationalize the Fed, and possibly its primary dealers during the transition phase, to keep them from holding us hostage with the threat of collapse. Then with honest public officials in Treasury and other agencies that don’t represent Goldman Sachs and the rest of the financial cartel—people like William Black, Brooksley Born, Janet Tavakoli, Michael Hudson, Eliot Spitzer, Harry Markopolos—it will be possible to restructure the monetary system. Other components of the solution involve the US Treasury printing sovereign US notes, state banking systems like North Dakota to restore state power, etc. (see details at Freedom’s Vision)

Just a short time ago things felt hopeless because, as Martin Luther King warned, “One of the great liabilities of history is that all too many people fail to remain awake through great periods of social change.” But the republic has heeded his call. It is awakening. Restoration is on the horizon, and that’s a good thing for America and the rest of the world.

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Wall Street Propaganda: Blame Social Security

Ordinary Workers Would Be Fired in a Second If They Screwed Up Anywhere Nearly as Bad as the Bankers Have

MoD 'gags Iraq criticism report'

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A report by a senior army officer criticising the planning for the invasion of Iraq has been suppressed by defence chiefs for being too harsh, according to newspaper reports.

Lieutenant General Chris Brown's report on the lessons to be learned from the circumstances surrounding the invasion of Iraq is apparently so critical of UK planners that Chief of the Defence Staff Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup and other officials have intervened to suppress it, banning its release even within the Ministry of Defence.

Lt Gen Brown was the last Senior British Military Representative in Baghdad in 2009, but would not be the first military commander to criticise Britain's handling of the war. Senior military figures giving evidence to the Iraq Inquiry have repeatedly expressed frustration at the secrecy, delays and failures experienced in the run up to the invasion and the lack of planning for its aftermath.

Major General Sir Richard Shirreff, commander of British forces in southern Iraq in late 2006, said the failure to provide enough equipment and UAVs for British troops 'beggared belief'.

Lieutenant General Frederick Viggers, the senior British Army commander in Iraq told the inquiry that post-war operations in Iraq suffered from a "lack of a sense of direction from the outset" and were lacking in "intellectual horsepower".

The Guardian newspaper suggests that Brown's report is being kept away from the Chilcot inquiry over fears that its use as evidence would result in its contents being made public.

In November 2009, several shorter "overall lessons learnt" papers were leaked and published online by The Daily Telegraph. The reports were said to show that planning for the invasion began in February 2002 and that the need to conceal the planning resulted in a rushed operation "lacking in coherence and resources" causing "significant risk" to troops and "critical failure" after the war.

An MoD spokesman told the Guardian: "Lt Gen Chris Brown has led a small team in the production of an internal, classified MoD paper examining the Iraq campaign for the purpose of learning lessons for the future. As part of the routine staffing of such an important piece of work, a variety of military officials and civil servants have provided input during the paper's development."

A spokesman for the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq war said the inquiry was confident it would be given access to "all relevant government documents".

http://www.defencemanagement.com/news_story.asp?id=13087
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From darkness to Light

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A truly fascinating account of a former Christian Youth Minister.

Joshua Evans started asking his mentors deeper questions about his Christian faith but the answers he got soon convinced him to leave and seek truth elsewhere. A little book about Islam in the library put him off that religion...

Welcome to Obama’s Jewish America

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By Ron Kampeas

Picture rense.com

The athletes, the astronauts, the alternative music, the black rabbi, the white dress uniforms and, above all, the left-handed baseball giant: Welcome to Barack Obama's Jewish America.

The first-ever Jewish America Heritage Month celebration at the White House on Thursday underscored the Obama administration's determination not to be locked into Washington's conventional notions of Jewish leadership.

President Obama did not exactly snub the usual suspects who have peopled similar events for decades. There was Lee Rosenberg, the president of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and there was Alan Solow, the chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. Both also happen to have been major fund-raisers for Obama’s campaign, as were several others among the 250 or so in attendance.

But the image that the White House sought to convey was one of Jewish America not necessarily bound to the alphabet soup of the Jewish organizational world and of pro-Israelism. Instead, Obama presented an array of Jewish heroes and celebrities who pronouncedly defied Jewish stereotypes. In addition to the major givers, the entrepreneurs and the communal leaders, there were also sports heroes -- including Sandy Koufax -- veterans, non-profit innovators, journalists, actors and organizers.

Obama referred also to "the countless names that we don't know -- the teachers, the small business owners, the doctors and nurses, the people who seek only to live honestly and faithfully and to give their children more than they had."

The reception was in the works for months, and planning predated the tensions between Israel and the United States precipitated in early March when Israel announced a major housing start in eastern Jerusalem during an official visit there by Vice President Joe Biden, who also was at Thursday’s reception.

Still, the White House’s message was timely: Obama would not be second-guessed by his pro-Israel critics on his friendship to the Jewish community and to Israel. The reception included a traditional reference to the "unbreakable" Israel-U.S. alliance dating back to within minutes of Israel's establishment.

Jewish values, Obama said, "helped lead America to recognize and support Israel as a Jewish homeland and a beacon for democratic values -- beginning mere minutes after its independence was declared. In fact, we have the original statement by President Harry Truman on display here today."

Obama also made it clear, however, that he sees the alliance as part of America's strategy of outreach to the world.

"My administration is renewing American leadership around the world -- strengthening old alliances and forging new ones, defending universal values while ensuring that we uphold our values here at home," he said. "In fact, it’s our common values that leads us to stand with allies and friends, including the State of Israel.”

The dual message -- closeness to Israel coupled with global outreach -- has characterized the recent "charm offensive" launched by the White House in the wake of the recent tensions with Israel. Obama is hosting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu next Tuesday, and the signs are that it will be a higher-profile reception than the thief-in-the-night encounter the two had when tensions were at their highest in March.

But the president is also hosting Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on June 9, and in both cases Obama has made it clear that he wants to advance the "proximity" talks currently underway to direct Israeli-Palestinian talks.

It's a message that his administration is taking to Jewish audiences, and aggressively. His top Middle East negotiator, George Mitchell, this week chose a fund-raiser for the Jewish Primary Day School of the Nation's Capital to delicately advance a subtle but substantial shift in U.S. policy. Mitchell, who rarely addresses such forums, likened Hamas, the terrorist group controlling the Gaza Strip, to Irish Republican hardliners during his five years negotiating the Northern Ireland peace. Like Hamas, the hardliners did not accept the fundamental principles of the peace talks, but Mitchell eventually broke down their resistance through incentives.

"Everyone is welcome as long as they are prepared to accept" the principles of recognizing Israel and swearing off terrorism, Mitchell said. He did not say what incentives, if any, he had to offer Hamas, but the expectation that he could wear Hamas down is new. Bush administration policy was to theorize that Hamas would be welcome if it changed colors, but to operate on the practical assumption that it was incapable of doing so and to instead machinate Hamas’ replacement with Palestinian moderates.

Mitchell was just part of what seems a never-ending effort in recent weeks to simultaneously stay on message but to win over the Jewish community: Laura Rozen of Politico this week reported that Robert Wexler, a former Florida congressman who has a high Jewish establishment profile and whose views on peace coincide with Obama's, is under consideration to be the U.S. ambassador to Israel. Jewish federation leaders who flew in from across the country for a Jewish Federations of North America briefing got meetings with some of Obama's closest advisers, including Mitchell and Dennis Ross, the top Iran policy official at the White House.

The administration's Jewish Heritage Month festivities amounted to a bald emotional appeal to Jewish soft spots: The National Archives ran a session on stereotype-defying Jews in the military during the Civil War. The Library of Congress celebrated Jewish comediennes.

Nowhere were the emotions more in evident -- yet more controlled -- than at the White House reception.

The Heritage Month was established after legislation passed in 2006 by Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), then a freshman in Congress. In subsequent years, Jewish Democrats fumed that President George W. Bush did nothing more to mark the month than issue a proclamation. After such griping, it raised eyebrows last year when Obama did not mark the month, so Thursday's reception was seen as inevitable. When Obama pronounced this the "first-ever" such reception, Wasserman Schultz leaned back in her chair and beamed at her congressional colleagues.

Rabbi Alyssa Stanton of Greenville, N.C., the first black woman rabbi, read the poem by Emma Lazarus inscribed on the Statue of Liberty. When she smiled and raised her arm to pronounce, "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free," there was a gasp: A descendant of immigrants brought to America in chains was celebrating those who fled bondage and sought its freedom.

Regina Spektor, the "anti-folk" singer who performed on a grand piano, presented a similar contrast: An alternative music favorite of New York cosmopolitans who refuses to shake off her provincial roots as the little 9-year old refusenik who came here in 1989 and who famously told New York magazine when her career was taking off: "The Jewish question -- it still exists."

Spektor had to breathe deep before starting. Prodded by a nod and a grin from Michelle Obama, she attacked her first song, "Us," with lyrics suggestive of Jewish frustration at coping with how others define Jews: “They made a statue of us and put it on a mountaintop/ Now tourists come and stare at us, blow bubbles with their gum, take photograph, have fun."

There were military veterans, guided to their seats by servicemen in white dress uniforms. There were athletes, including Darra Torres, the five-time Olympic gold medalist swimmer whose son snapped a photo of her with Obama. ("Can you beat your mom yet?" Obama shouted at the strapping teenager, who murmured "No.")

Jewish astronauts were invited, a White House official said, but none could make it -- although one, Garrett Reisman, carried Obama's proclamation into space aboard the last mission of space shuttle Atlantis, which returned to Earth this week.

There were establishment journalists, like Roger Cohen and Thomas Friedman of The New York Times, but there was also Heeb publisher Josh Newman, and Doug Bloomfield, an irreverent Democrat who has for years been excoriating conservatives in Jewish weeklies. There was Michael Adler, the Florida philanthropist and vice chairman of the board of trustees of the Jewish Federations of North America, but there was also Eli Winkelman, the college student who founded Challah for Hunger, which brings students together to bake challahs which are sold to raise funds for Darfur.

The star of the afternoon was Koufax, the legendary Dodger southpaw who made baseball history by pitching four no-hitters and who made Jewish history by bailing on a World Series game because it fell on Yom Kippur.

"We've got senators and representatives, we've got Supreme Court justices and successful entrepreneurs, rabbinical scholars, Olympic athletes -- and Sandy Koufax," Obama said. "Sandy and I actually have something in common -- we are both lefties. He can't pitch on Yom Kippur; I can't pitch.”

"Hope-and-Change," A Hoax

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By Michael Rectenwald and Lori Price

In our encounters on various social networking sites and political blogs, we consistently encounter the faithful remnants of the “hope-and-change” believers. To combat the onslaught of evidence and opinion that leads one to the conclusion that Obama is a fraud at best and represents a hoax at worst, they point to lists of his accomplishments and the ways he has delivered on his campaign promises. Such lists, we believe, are generally misrepresentations and fail to rise to the level of credibility. They are misleading because they represent minor deeds that might very well have been accomplished otherwise. We have characterized them as delivering on promises to “sharpen the pencils in the White House --mission accomplished.” There are some notable changes, but are they commensurate with Obama’s euphuistic campaign rhetoric? We think not. We believe that Obama’s rhetoric was a complete fabrication aimed at diverting real energy for change into a cul de sac of Democratic apologetics. It was, in short, a hoax.

By “hoax” we mean that it represents a corporate takeover the dissent that bubbled up in the country against the Bush administration, including his economic but mostly his imperialist agenda in Iraq and Afghanistan. Presenting Obama as a candidate of amorphous “hope-and-change,” the corporate sponsors of Obama intended to divert this dissent into acceptable (Democratic) channels. Some if not most of it had, indeed, arisen from Democratic channels, but the meaning of this dissent far exceeded anything that the Democratic Party represented either in its stated platform, or its actual practices, especially the consistent and over-riding support of the wars. The corporate and military backers of Obama bet on Obama’s oratorical skill and civil-rights-sounding rhetoric to effect a prestidigitation of incredible proportions. The intention of the magic was to fool tens of millions of voters, small-scale individual contributors, and campaigners into believing that Obama was the genuine article, that he represented change from the very policies and practices that had made Bush so virulently despised and vehemently opposed. These policies include first and foremost the war.

While Obama maintained that Al Qaeda was best fought in Afghanistan, he nevertheless left a distinct impression that his intention was to end all of the wars as soon as possible, and to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq on “day one.” Troops have indeed been moved around, repositioned outside of predefined “combat zones.” But Obama missed his own deadline for troop withdrawal from Iraq, and the message of Obama was anti-Bush doctrine, anti-war escalation, and anti-pre-emptive intervention. Nonetheless, after taking office, Obama proceeded to keep most of the Bush military team, including General David Petraeus and Bush’s last Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates. During Obama’s first full year in office, a record number of civilians were killed in Afghanistan. The number of troops killed in Afghanistan in the first three months in 2010 doubled that of the same period a year before.

Obama has embraced the Bush “surge” policy, adopted from the Iraqi “surge” and implemented in Afghanistan. The effect has not been the victory supposedly desired (a premise we utterly reject—the intention is not to “win” but to maintain occupation), but rather continued embattlement in territories continually under siege. Again, as in Iraq under Bush, the enemy in Afghanistan has changed under Obama. The troops admittedly fight the Taliban and not al-Qaeda, as promised. Furthermore, evidence points to the fact that we are actually funding the enemy that we are supposed to be fighting: The US is funding the Taliban militants via contractors. The bounty being offered by the Taliban for NATO troops killed is, in other words, being paid from the U.S. Treasury. Under Obama, the dreaded drone bombings in Pakistan, which kill thousands of civilians, have increased considerably.

Another major area of Obama’s hope-and-change rhetoric has to do with domestic surveillance. Where domestic surveillance is concerned, Obama actually has morphed into a more draconian form of Bush, extending domestic surveillance to the web. The USA PATRIOT Act has been extended under Obama -- although he campaigned against its renewal during his presidential campaign -- with no new added protections for civil liberties. The Obama Administration is seeking to weaken Miranda rights for terror suspects, venturing deep into territory on which George W. Bush did not tread.

In the area of treatment of “enemy combatants,” which Obama renamed “unprivileged enemy belligerents,” Obama has also maintained and extended the Bush policies. In May of 2010, the Obama Administration secured a legal victory from the D.C. Circuit Court. The Court ruled, “Foreign nationals held at a U.S. military prison at Bagram airbase outside of Kabul, Afghanistan, do not have a right to challenge in U.S. courts their continued imprisonment.”

In early May 2010, an article in The Sydney Morning Herald revealed, ‘The CIA received secret permission to attack a wider range of targets, including suspected militants whose names are not known, as part of a dramatic expansion of its campaign of drone strikes in Pakistan's border region… The expanded authority, approved two years ago by the Bush administration and continued by Barack Obama, permits the agency to rely on what officials describe as ‘pattern-of-life’ analysis, using evidence collected by surveillance cameras on the unmanned aircraft and from other sources about individuals and locations. The information was used to target suspected militants, even when their full identities were not known, the officials said. Previously the CIA was restricted in most cases to killing only individuals whose names were on an approved list.’ Such de-facto ‘death squads’ represent a breathtaking expansion of executive power and provide clear evidence that Obama’s oratorical pleadings for ‘change' were fueled by a desire to garner votes rather than a wish to implement actual change.

On the environment, Obama has been a complete disaster. Need one mention that Obama has utterly failed to respond to the oil gusher crisis in the Gulf of Mexico? More than a month after the disaster began, Obama has still not responded with federal direction of containment and clean-up efforts, leaving such to the very criminal culprits who caused the gusher that spews an estimated 70,000 barrels of oil into the Gulf daily. Just yesterday, the Obama administration once again defended BP’s containment and clean-up efforts, and refused to take charge of the disaster response, a disaster affecting four states directly, major fishing industries, thousands of jobs, and the health of tens of thousands if not the entire U.S. population. The damage to the Florida the wetlands and to other coastal areas surrounding the Gulf may be irreversible. This is a U.S. crisis affecting the U.S. continent and its citizens. Obama has utterly and miserably denied this fact and completely failed the U.S. population. His environmentalism is a complete fraud.

An earlier report published on this site pointed to the Obama’s support of the financial oligarchy over the people of the United States--of Wall Street over Main Street (“I’m Barack Obama and I approve this bailout.”) We are told now by Obamaphiles that the phrase is now irrelevant. It is called irrelevant because it represents a major breach of campaign promises -- the implication of which was that Obama would enact policies that favored the workers over the bankers and brokers on Wall Street and elsewhere in the financial oligarchy. This is nothing like the truth. After more than tripling Bush’s bailouts, Obama has done nothing but chide Wall Streeters verbally, while doing nothing substantial to reform their behavior. He defended the payout of bonuses for executives of the very companies that caused the financial meltdown of 2008. The financial “reform” recently passed has given Wall Street a “sigh of relief” because it is so favorable to them and does nothing to stem the tide of corruption, greed and the potential damage to the economic well-being of the vast majority.

The health care reform was apiece with this sort of reformism --a reformism that actually favors the corporations over the individuals supposedly protected. Rather than a public option that he campaigned on, the reform amounts to a bailout for the health care and pharmaceutical industries, funneling as it does coerced payments under penalty of fines from millions of the uninsured into corporate coffers. According to the CBO, an estimated four million of the uninsured will pay fines.

Have we missed anything? Most definitely, we could continue to point to Obama’s “out-Bushing” of Bush. We provide a list of stories to support our case.

Now, why and how is the Obama presidency a hoax? The litany of “failures” and “betrayals” is just too long to maintain another narrative. The attempt is a vain endeavor continued only by the most recalcitrant of the Obama orthodoxy. In fact, we believe that a majority has implicitly accepted the fact that the word hoax best describes the Obama presidency. We see this position growing in the cyber sphere. It is the position of the most wizened political observers we know. But if the serious evidence is not enough, we point to a joke as an illustration.

We refer to Obama’s joke during the White House Correspondents' Dinner regarding the use of predator drones to attack the boy band, the Jonas Brothers. Jokes always reveal a kernel of truth. Every joke contains a parcel of latent seriousness. This joke reveals the true tenor of Obama’s thinking, or rather an admission of his real function. He is the leader of a military machine that kills without conscience. Unmanned drones represent the evacuation of human presence, cognition, and decision-making from the battlefield itself. Without review or visual recognition of an enemy from a human standpoint in the air or field, unmanned drones nevertheless kill. This is not indiscriminate killing, but it is indirect and undirected to an unconscionable degree. And it is not as accurate as to be able to target and kill particular individuals without “collateral damage,” as Obama seemed to suggest. With this joke, Obama recognized and confessed the truth of his presidency. He is a leader of an imperialist financial and military oligarchy that has no conscience and no objective but profit and gain, no matter the cost in human misery and death. There is no “hope” for “change” under these conditions. The Obama hoax was to suggest that there was.

Let’s no longer refer to the Obama administration as a “failure,” or his failures as “betrayals.” To fail you have to intend to succeed, and Obama never intended to succeed at matching rhetoric and reality. The point was in fact to make rhetoric replace reality and to “hope” that the rhetoric would continue to work as such for about four years. At that point, the corporate oligarchy may continue on the current tack, or it may adopt another tactic. Our feeling is that the country is set-up for reactionary retrenchment, based on the mistaken opposition to the Obama presidency from the right. This will be the subject of a future report.

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Another Hoax: Barack Obama declares the 'War on Terror' is over

Financial Markets A Bigger Terrorist Threat Than Al Qaeda?

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By Girish Menon


In 2004, after the Congress coalition won an unsurprising win over 'India Shining's' BJP, the stock market operators began pounding the Sensex and the incoming government's hand was forced to appoint Manmohan Singh and P Chidambaram to key positions in the Indian government. This calmed the stock markets and the Congress coalition was forced to dilute if not abandon it's more redistributive economic manifesto. This is one of the many instances when the interests of the financial markets assumed greater importance than the will of the majority.

We have in the last few years also witnessed government bail outs of banks all over the world. There was unprecedented hysteria stirred up all over the world and hitherto governments who were dogmatically opposed to nationalisation or subsidies were opening up their treasuries to bail out the stock market crooks and gamblers.

In Europe, governments who were forced to increase their spending to get their economies out of recession are now being warned by the same crooks and gamblers that if their books are not balanced their credit ratings would be lowered. Concerted attacks on stock markets and the Euro are the weapons used to get EU governments to impose economic policies that support financial markets and against the interest of the majority. The Greek example probably followed by the threat to Spain and Portugal are examples of governments being bullied by financial markets.

We as ordinary citizens have been repeatedly told that Islamic terrorists among others are undemocratically trying to undermine the mandate given to elected governments. Hence democratic governments need to use force to defeat them. However, especially in the last few years financial markets operators have been dictating government policy by threatening a collapse of the stock market or the currency. The owners and managers of financial market firms have no democratic mandate and yet seem to have a free run of the public purse. Tax money has been diverted from welfare programmes to prop up stock markets and currencies which are continuously being hammered. These government bailout expenditures may even be higher than government expenditure on 'fighting terrorists'.

Al Qaeda and the Taliban appear small fry as compared to the movers in the world of finance in their ability to make democratic governments implement anti democratic policies. So will I be wrong in concluding that financial market terrorists are a bigger threat to economies than Al Qaeda, Taliban et al?

Ezra Pound on Money By Carolina Hartley We're never far from money. We spend most of our time and energy in quest of money. But how did this thing become an intermediary between us and the world around us? Before money, we bartered. Why did money supplant barter and who is custodian of the money system? These questions are dangerous: they cost Ezra Pound twelve years. Pound was a victim of political persecution at the behest of financiers and their minions like Franklin Delano Roosevelt. These people feared Ezra because he asked “what is money for,” and came up with an inconvenient answer. Pound understood that money is ticket for exchange. People who make things can trade more easily with other people who make things using money. There should only be as much money as there are things to trade. Another way of saying this is: money supply should increase and decrease along with the change in economic output. Here's the rub. If money supply grows faster than the amount of things made, then theft is taking place. The thief creates extraneous dollars and spends them first: at the time when the rest of us expect a dollar to be worth a certain amount. By the time the thief's dollars have been absorbed into the economy, we notice our dollars are buying less. This is inflation. The thief has dipped into our savings and traded with shoddy bills. What happens when money supply shrinks compared to things made? Then a new characteristic of money emerges. Things made don't always last — take bread for instance. A baker must sell his bread in a matter of days, otherwise it's lost. Money isn't bound by such considerations. A thief can horde money until the baker's goods rot, then buy his bakery at a huge discount. The “thief” in both these examples holds a special place in society: he controls the supply of money and “future money” called credit. Controlling money supply is economic power; it is a sovereign privilege. The people who really control a nation control its money supply. [1] Pound's criticism of the financial class was that they were bad sovereigns. They managed money supply for their own benefit: they were thieves. In contrast, the Founding Fathers were good rulers because they designed a system where Congress managed the money supply; and Congress was answerable to a large swathe of the population. Pound identified the grasping, vampire-like nature of international finance, and the venal nature of its supporters in national governments.[2] He was interested in finding ways to systematically limit their power: perfecting what the Founding Fathers started in Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution. This is why Pound studied in the work of Silvio Gesell. One of Gesell's ideas was to eliminate the disparity between money and perishable goods. A way to do this is to discount large bills over time: holders of large bills would need to get them stamped every month, each stamp representing a decrease in their value. This way, hoarders bear the cost of their behavior and investment is encouraged. Small denominations would not be discounted. Gesell recognized that the economy is like a body and money is like its blood. If blood builds up systematically in any one place, a disease results. His discounted script discouraged people from taking advantage of others' simple lack of cash. (Note: this is very different than being forced to lend to people who aren't creditworthy.) Saving in the form of investment was systematically encouraged. Pound notes that Gesell's system worked imperfectly in Alberta, Canada mostly due to planning errors that could easily be fixed. The system worked very well in the Austrian village of Wörgl, and it was promptly closed down by mainstream financial interests. These financial interests were trying to preserve their privilege: they benefited from the increasing productivity of the societies they milked. Pound didn't see how being born into a banking family; or buying the latest politician; should give them the right to those benefits. Ezra liked the ideas of Major Clifford Douglas: the people who worked should accrue those benefits. This is the essence of Social Credit. The text of the 1933 version of Major Douglas' book Social Credit, can be found here. Pound appreciated Maj. Douglas' ideas, but thought they needed further exploration. What Pound really felt passionate about was fixing the money problem. Ezra wrote during the Great Depression when, much like now, people were captivated by the supposed security of gold. Pound was never an advocate of gold-backed money. He understood how easily such systems can be subverted by controlling the supply or the clearing market for the backing commodity. Much of Britain's power during the 19th century came from the fact that London was the clearing market for gold; and other nations used a gold-standard currency. They had to go to England to manage their money! In Ezra's words: The trick is simple. Whenever the Rothschild and other gents in the gold business have gold to sell, they raise the price. The public is fooled by propagandizing the devaluation of the dollar, or other monetary unit according to the country chosen to be victimized. The argument is that the high price of the monetary unit is injurious to the nation's commerce. But when the nation, that is, the people of that nation own the gold and the financiers own the dollars or other monetary units, the gold standard is restored. This raises the value of the dollar and the citizens of “rich” nations, as well as citizens of other nations, are diddled. Preventing nations from being “diddled” is why Pound supported Fascism in Italy. He saw Fascism as the only system available to the Italians that was likely to deal with the threat from international finance. Mussolini's Fascism let Italy be ruled in an Italian fashion — and until Anglo-American banking interests were threatened, things worked better in Italy than they had in a long time. Pound never supported Fascism in America. We have our Constitution, which describes a government for Americans run in the American fashion. If it ain't broke, don’t fix it. Pound realized that America's challenge was implementing the laws we already have. Read Jefferson and/or Mussolini for his whole argument. [3] Ezra was a true economic historian. He explained his analysis in the following way: “The definition of an idea, as observed by someone who understands the events of the day, may shed more light on the historical process than many volumes.” “History, as seen by a Monetary Economist, is a continuous struggle between producers and non-producers, and those who try to make a living by inserting a false system of book-keeping between the producers and their just recompense.” “The usurers act through fraud, falsification, superstitions, habits and, when these methods do not function, they let loose a war. Everything hinges on monopoly, and the particular monopolies hinge around the great illusionistic monetary monopoly.” Pound's analysis identified the canker in American life: the cooperation between government and finance to defraud the public — the “monetary monopoly.” Monopolies don't exist without tacit government approval. Beneficiaries of the financial monopoly have collaborated with venal officials against producers for a long time. The history of the largest American fortunes, since the Civil War at least, have followed this trend. Historically, banking was begun by families as private businesses. As these businesses grew and issued receipts for gold and silver deposits, they gradually developed “fractional reserve” banking by issuing more notes than they had gold on deposit. Although kings would mint coins of gold and silver they owned at their royal mints, fractional reserve banking was a dangerous business, and Kings did not want to gamble with their sovereign power by going into that business. Rather, kings and especially parliaments, became dependent upon these fractional reserve bankers for loans, and would grant monopoly charters to a group of private bankers to create a national or central bank which would then have the power to regulate the size of the money stock through its fractional reserve activities, as it collected taxes, issued the national paper currency and sold sovereign debt on behalf of the government. These national or central banks conferred significant advantages on the private banks that organized and owned them. Private banks were allowed to borrow at the discount window at special rates provided that they posted reserves with the central bank. Of course, the real advantage of the central bank for its owners and organizers was inside information. During the years of the gold standard, having a seat on the board of a central bank meant that the insider would know when emergency borrowings ticked up, telegraphing the probable start of a bank crisis and stock market crash. In the case of war, it was an easy task for a private bank with seats in several different national banks to calculate the deposits and income of the contesting states and the loans they secured to raise their armies, thus allowing the privileged few to bet on the probable winner. The gold standard was popular among bankers for the simple reason that the supply of gold increased irregularly but on average more slowly than the increase in population, meaning that the value of loans would gradually increase over time as would the burden of repayment. Debtors resented the power of gold, hence William Jennings Bryan’s political appeal and his famous “Cross of Gold” speech. Coincidentally the gold standard was finally abandoned in 1971, six years after the birth control pill descended upon the civilized world. Pound recognized two very important threats to the international banking community that arose out of the Third Reich. First, Hitler abandoned the gold standard, meaning that Nazi Germany suddenly had the power to prevent defaulting on its future debt simply by printing money — a power that the U.S. copied from Germany just as it copied the autobahns. Second, and much more important, the Reich took back the power of central banks by financing infrastructure projects directly, issuing notes in payment to the laborers, contractors, and suppliers rather than first borrowing the money from a central bank at interest. (See here and here.) If this practice had spread, bankers would be no more powerful than plumbers. Furthermore, as long as the supply of this newly printed money in the form of notes matched the increase in GNP and future productivity from these new highways, rails, and factories, the printing of money would not necessarily produce inflation. The Reich also issued debt directly to German citizens and businesses to finance Hitler’s economic miracle, but the central banks lost control over the money supply and lost the ability to trigger banking panics and depressions inside the Reich. It was a mortal threat, and it had to be stopped. Pound was right. Hitler’s experiment in freedom from banking was broken, and the finance/government partnership was preserved at the cost of millions of lives in World War II. This finance/government collaboration explains the American elites' love affair with international socialism. They don't know how to make money any other way. Competition is a sin. Government organized monopolies are profitable when you control the government. If there are no national restrictions on moving profits around, they can hide their loot offshore. The perfect crime. Pound recommended the writings of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and Martin Van Buren[4] for a practical explanation of how the young Republic wrested itself from London finance. He recommended Classical study (Aristotle's Politics and the works of Demosthenes) for understanding the tricks financiers use. Nationally-controlled money was popular politics until the Civil War; when Pound notes a collective amnesia took the mind of the American public. Tragedy and forgetfulness. This is also the time when Lincoln let the bankers back in with the National Banking Act. Ezra didn't revel in victimhood. The “monetary monopoly” was made possible by voters' laziness. In his ABC of Economics, Pound castigates the American public for letting its money fall into the hands of enemies and irresponsible men. Americans circa 1930 were ignorant about money and banking; the situation now is even worse. It is a national tragedy that we have been lazy enough to let Congress sell its responsibilities; and let hostile elites control our credit. The way to fix the situation is to dissolve the Federal Reserve; force Congress to manage money supply as described in the Constitution; and vote the venal or incompetent out of office. The revolutionary patriots gave us the tools; we need to step up to the plate and use them. Our amnesia and laziness have had a lot of help. Pound pointed out that hostile elites were overrepresented in academia and the media — a situation which has worsened with time. Now we are reaping the harvest: schools devoid of the Classics; universities teaching castrated Economics; and Gloria Vanderbilt's boy on TV. Ezra saw it coming, and he told us how to fix it. Carolina Hartley (email her) has a degree in Finance and Economics from the University of Chicago. She is also student of aesthetics and social history, though not from the orthodox perspective. [1] Pound's repeated recommendation of Christopher Hollis' work The Two Nations is based on the book’s excellent explanation of British economic power over the centuries. Return to text. [2] "Ezra Pound Speaking": Radio Speeches of World War II. Edited by Leonard W. Doob. Greenwood Press, 1978. Return to text. [3] Pound recommended the correspondence between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson and the writings of Van Buren for the economic history of the United States. Pound's Pamphlets on Money are excellent; the first “An Introduction to the Economic Nature of the United States” and “A Visiting Card” are particularly useful. (Published by Peter Russell, London. 1950.) Return to text. [4] The Works of John Adams: Second President of the United States: with A Life of the Author, notes and illustrations, by his Grandson, Charles Francis Adams. Little, Brown and Co. Boston 1850–56. The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Memorial Edition, XX Volumes, Washington, 1903-04. The Autobiography of Martin Van Buren, written in 1854 and remaining in manuscript until its publication as Vol. II of the “Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the year 1918,” Government Printing Office, Washington 1920. Pound also recommends Jefferson and Hamilton by Claude G. Bower. Return to text. Permanent URL: http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/authors/Ezra-Pound-on-Money.html