November 3, 2008
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November 24, 2008
The Pennsylvania attorney who challenged the Democratic presidential candidate's "natural birth" has claimed victory in his federal suit because the defendants, Sen. Barack Obama and the Democratic National Committee, have failed to answer the suit within the required 30 days, thereby losing by default.
On October 21, Berg announced that Obama and the DNC "admitted" to, by way of failure of timely response to "requests for admissions," the specific requests in the federal lawsuit. "Obama is not qualified to be president, and therefore he must immediately withdraw his candidacy for president, and the DNC shall substitute a qualified candidate," Berg told AFP.
The case is Berg v. Obama. Within the 56 counts to which Obama has now legally admitted are: My mother gave birth to me at the Coast Province Hospital in Mombasa, Kenya; the Certification of Live Birth posted on the website "Fightthesmears.com" is a forgery; I was not born in Hawaii; I am not a "natural born" U.S. citizen who satisfies the requirement to run for president, and my senior campaign staff knows this. Neither am I a "naturalized" citizen; also: I am a citizen of Indonesia; In 1981, I traveled on my Indonesian passport to Pakistan, a nation that did not allow Americans to enter [except on official business]; I obtained $200 million in campaign funds by fraudulent means.
Berg, a former deputy attorney general in Pennsylvania, lists 27 other counts to which the DNC has now admitted guilt.
These include:
1.) The DNC did not verify Barrack Obama's eligibility to serve as president by performing a background check. 2.) The DNC admits Obama is not a "natural born" U.S. citizen. 3.) The Credentials Committee, along with Chairman Howard Dean, has been aware of this lawsuit since Aug. 22, 2008, when the lawsuit was faxed to its Washington D.C. office, but failed to verify the credentials of Obama. 4.) Plaintiff and all Democratic citizens of the United States have been personally injured as a result of not having a qualified Democratic presidential nominee to cast their votes upon. 5.) The Democratic National Committee has been promoting Obama's presidential election knowing he was ineligible to serve as president.
Seeing the apparent stonewalling by the federal court in Pennsylvania since August, Steven Marquis of Fall City, Wash. has taken state action with the Obama birth certificate battle by filing suit in Washington State Superior Court against Secretary of State Sam Reed, demanding verification of Obama's citizenship status.
The complaint demands that the Washington secretary of state verify and certify that Obama is or is not a "natural born" citizen by producing original or certified verifiable official documents. The lawsuit argues that this certification should take place before the election to preclude a constitutional crisis and likely civil unrest should such certification, after the election, prove that Obama was not qualified for office.
The complaint argues that the secretary of state has the duty to not only certify the voters but also the candidates and in so doing prevent the wholesale disenfranchisement of voters who would have had an opportunity to choose from qualified candidates had the certification preceded the election process. He also has the power to remove Obama from the ballot should his certification be questionable.
Obama has not allowed independent or official access to his birth records nor supporting hospital records. The Hawaii Health Department has violated federal law by ignoring Freedom of Information requests.
However, the federal judge in Pennsylvania has been delaying the case, stonewalling as election day 2008 approached.
Obama's grandmother, still alive in Kenya, has asserted that she remembers the boy's birth in that country in 1961 and that his mother moved him to Hawaii shortly thereafter. The Pennsylvania suit maintains that even if Obama was born in Hawaii, he lost his citizenship when he was adopted by his Indonesian stepfather six years later.
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Slippery are the roads of Carinthia in Austria but the politics of healthy nationalism are more difficult to negotiate. Joerg Haider was an outspoken, successful politician in Austria for decades before he took the short drive that ended his life on October 12, just after midnight.
Some question the official finding of "accident." His unique, personable and open approach made him a successful politician in Austria who carried his Freedom Party to great success in 1999. In a sudden outburst of support his party received 30 percent of the votes, opening Haider's way into mainstream politics and cabinet positions.
The reaction of the European Union and the U.S. was swift and radical. It was made clear that Haider and his fellow Austrians had reached the natural limits of "democracy" and the voters made a mistake. Austria was openly threatened with political and economic boycott.
Haider was forced from the helm of his own party but he remained a successful politician—the governor—in his home province of Carinthia.
Haider was a leading character in European populist, nationalist politics. He had a major role in the process that resulted in the loss of full domination of the establishment, neo-con parties in the UK, France, Hungary, Ireland, etc.
Haider kept working for the greater good of his country and in September of 2008 his new party, Alliance for the Future of Austria, received 11 percent of the votes in the parliamentary elections. At the same time the Freedom Party received 17.5 percent, giving the two of them a voice in the formation of the new government.
Josef Proell, head of the People's Party with 25.61 percent of the votes, stated that the close cooperation of the three parties was a possibility and the creation of this bloc could be a dominant force in Austrian politics.
The reaction was swift: "We are very concerned about the increased power of people who promote hatred of foreigners and holocaust denial and support neo-Nazis," said Israel's Foreign Ministry spokesman, Yigal Palmor. "We consider this a disturbing development and are following the matter with great attention."
At the same time the worldwide financial disaster was erupting. Haider, as always, clearly recognized that the Achilles heel—the most vulnerable point of the NWO is the central bank system. Sixteen days before his death, on a TV interview, he called the various central banks of the Western World a "mafia," a criminal gang. The writing was on the wall: It was clear what was coming to the "mafia" in a government where Haider would operate from the inside.
Haider's whole political career was bumping along from road block to road block. There were always forces hiding in the dark, trying to push him off the road. One of his own top aides, Peter Sichrovsky, a member of the Austrian Jewish community, said he had been a Mossad informant for five years until retiring from politics in 2002.
"I wanted to help Israel and certainly did not do anything wrong," said Sichrovsky, who was secretary-general of Haider's Freedom party and a member of the European Parliament. Austria opened an investigation, stating that Sichrovsky's services could bring him several years in jail.
On the night of Oct. 11 while he was driving home on a wide, almost straight road his top-of-the-line VW Phaeton (Sun Chariot) momentarily left the road on the right side, nicked a concrete road marker and was steered back on the road. About 300 feet later the car left the road again, broke a road sign and was steered back, and continue on the road with no serious damage. Three hundred or 400 feet later the car left the road—a third time—at a high speed and was overturned, killing the driver.
The fact that Haider was able to bring the car back to the road a second time shows that he was an able driver at the time. Even if he was intoxicated (as many reports suggested) he must have stepped on the brakes, this is an automatic, human reflex. There was easily two times the space he needed to stop his car before it started to roll—if his brakes were working properly.
On the other hand, the car's speed if anything increased although there were no signs of rolling or sliding on the road. The only logical conclusion seems to be that Haider was not in full control of the car he was driving.
The automobile had a top rated brake system. Peter Thul, a spokesman from VW, said they will investigate the car as soon as possible and the only way somebody could have manipulated the car's computer was if he had possession of the key. (The car was in service less than 24 hours before the incident.)
The only witness to the accident is a woman of mystery who disappeared; nobody was able to contact her. She was driving in a separate car that was passed by Haider prior to his death.
The state apparatus stepped in and declared that the investigation of the car was finished after two days. As one a civil servant said: "The specter of thousands, or even tens of thousands, of his supporters marching on Carinthia to say farewell to him would be as unwelcome as it would be dangerous."
At the funeral of Joerg Haider 30,000 people paid their respects in Klagenfurt. He left his two adult daughters, his wife, and his 90-year-old mother. He was told: "Rest in peace Joerg Haider, your work will be carried on by others.
The Political Career of Joerg Haider:
Outspoken Nationalist Joerg Haider (1950-2008) was a nationalist and populist Austrian politician. He was governor of Carinthia and chairman of the "Alliance for the Future of Austria" (Buendnis Zukunft Oesterreich, BZO).
Haider was a long-time leader of the Austrian Freedom Party (FPO). Although he stepped down as the FPO's chairman in 2000, he remained its major figure until he founded the BZO in April 2005. He was subsequently expelled from the FPO by its interim leader, Hilmar Kabas.
He was controversial within Austria and abroad for his alleged "provocative praise of the Nazi era," and the United States State Department criticized Haider for comments that "could be interpreted as xenophobic or anti-Semitic."
Haider died in a car accident shortly after leading the BZO in the Austrian parliamentary elections. Austrian President Heinz Fischer said of Haider's death that it was a "human tragedy." Reactions in the press were mixed. Wolfgang Fellner, publisher of Oesterreich, wrote: "I have fought bitterly" with Joerg Haider, but "finally, Haider became a gentle, considerate, almost wise politician." Haider "died as he lived: always full-throttle," Fellner concluded.
But Ernst Trost pointed out in the Kronen Zeitung that Haider had "ever again . . . provoked opposition." The chief editor of Kurier, Christoph Kotanko, wrote that ". . . Haider's criticism of the dominant conditions of the 1980s and 1990s was partly also justified," and he had "named, fought and in part also changed" those conditions.
SOURCE: WIKIPEDIA
George Kadar is a Hungarian national living in England. He acts as one of AFP's European bureau chiefs. He has long been an activist for global freedom of speech and an advocate for imprisoned "thought criminals."
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Recent reports that, in the second week of October, U.S. financial institutions borrowed on average $437.5 billion a day from the Federal Reserve have reinvigorated debate over whether the U.S. central bank is overextended—in other words, broke.
The unprecedented amount of loans made by the Fed during the week that ended Oct. 15 was only slightly higher than the week before when Fed loans to cash-strapped banks averaged $420.16 billion per day.
The Federal Reserve is playing a dangerous game of risk, gambling that its roll of the dice will end well— meaning that bankers will be able to pay back these huge loans and all of these cheap dollars will not feed inflation.
Bankers are unique among businessmen, as they log loans—debt—as assets, not as liabilities, on their balance sheets. This is important, because, while the Fed's balance sheet is still "positive" on paper, it has changed significantly since the financial crisis began.
Before the collapse of the credit markets, the Federal Reserve had approximately $868 billion in assets on its balance sheet, over 90 percent of which was in Treasury bills and bonds. As of today, its balance sheet has exploded to over several trillion in "assets," with approximately 25 percent of these in T-bills and bonds. The Fed's assets now mostly comprise loans it has made to other banks, investment firms, insurance giant AIG and foreign banks.
The problem here stems from the fact that the Fed, known as the lender of last resort, has expanded what it normally would accept as collateral for the loans it makes. These include bank equity, other loans including those from troubled banks and the very securities that caused all of these financial troubles in the first place.
Theoretically, the Fed could keep the printing presses running day and night, offering trillions of dollars more to banks that would otherwise collapse without these cash infusions. But with true inflation—as opposed to core inflation, which excludes energy and food prices—at 13 percent to 14 percent, the Fed risks crushing businesses and homeowners under hyperinflation.
The other problem for the Fed is, if all of those banks it continues to loan money to eventually fail, the central bank would be stuck with trillions of dollars in bad loans, which would break it.
Americans should not necessarily look to all of this as bad news. A collapse of the Fed would herald the end of this great experiment in debt-based dollars brought about by the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 and would fuel calls for a new constitutional fiscal paradigm of debt-free dollars issued by the Treasury or backed by precious metals.
Christopher Petherick is a journalist and publisher based in Maryland. For more information, see his website at www.brandywinehouse.us or write directly to BRANDYWINE HOUSE BOOKS AND MEDIA, P.O. Box 638, Cheltenham, MD 20623. Petherick encourages all readers with Internet access to sign up for AFP's free weekly email newsletter. It's loaded with house news and special offers available only to newsletter recipients and AFP web site users. See AmericanFreePress.net.
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SAN ANTONIO, Texas – William Molina, an award-winning Texas film maker, has produced a sequel to his widely watched Truth Be Tolled documentary series on the Trans-Texas Corridor. It debuts Oct. 30 in San Antonio.
The sequel focuses on the Texas Department of Transportation's (TxDOT) "illegal lobbying and ad campaign that advocated toll roads and the Trans Texas Corridor on the taxpayer dime," said Terri Hall, who heads the San Antonio Toll Party and Texans Uniting for Reform and Freedom (TURF). The two groups are in the forefront of the battle against the proposed TTC supertollway and the tolling of freeways.
These groups, which support candidates for public office and file lawsuits to challenge official misdeeds, are especially concerned that gas-tax revenue is not being properly set aside for freeway maintenance and repairs, fueling concerns that politicians will seek to convert Texas freeways into tollways, even as the TTC branch of the NAFTA Superhighway network is envisioned to be the largest mega-tollway ever built.
"TxDOT is still actively engaged in lobbying despite the taxpayers' lawsuit [through TURF] to halt such activities," Hall added.
The new film will debut Thursday, Oct. 30, at the Palladium Theater, 17910 West Interstate 10 in San Antonio. Moviegoers can meet the cast and crew at 6 p.m. (central time), with the screening to begin at 7 p.m.
Molina's previous edition of Truth Be Tolled, "won the top award in the documentary category at the Houston Film Festival in April 2006. Molina is an Emmy-nominated film maker and has done work for the History Channel and the Discovery Channel as well as for Hollywood features," Hall noted in a news release.
Those interested can RSVP to info@truthbetolled.com, or call Hall at (210) 275-0640. Visit the web site at TexasTURF.org.
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A secretive, well-funded Israeli propaganda unit has flooded the mailboxes of 28 million Americans—in key election battleground states—with anti-Muslim propaganda designed to promote Republican John McCain and defeat his Democratic challenger, Barack Obama.
The mysterious Clarion Fund is estimated to have spent as much as $50 million to produce and distribute a 60-minute DVD film entitled Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West through mass mailings and other endeavors.
The producer of the film is an Israeli, Raphael Shute, a corporate officer of the Clarion Fund. Shute and two others who, until just recently, served as officers of the fund—Rabbi Henry Harris and Rebecca Kabat—are employed by an Israeli-based operation, Aish HaTorah International, that, according to the Washington Post, "focuses on national security issues in Israel."
Although federal election and tax laws prohibit non-profit organizations (such as the Clarion Fund) from engaging in promoting political candidates, a Clarion Fund website implicitly endorsed McCain over Obama, saying, "McCain's policies seek to confront radical Islamic extremism and terrorism and roll it back while Obama's, although intending to do the same, could in fact make the situation facing the West even worse."
Amazingly, the Obama campaign has refused to comment on the activities of the fund and its distribution of the film, probably because the support of pro-Israel voters is critical to Obama's success, particularly in a number of key states where those voters historically have turned out in record numbers, effectively doubling their electoral impact.
Even though the fund has removed the assertions favoring McCain from its website, the site still contains links to what the Washington Post described as "a vast network of sites that promote McCain."
Despite the fact that the Clarion Fund has clearly spent vast sums of money in this campaign, since the fund is a nonprofit group it is not required, by law, to disclose the names of its financial supporters. Clarion refuses to disclose those names.
Those versed in political financing say that the estimated $50 million in expenditures by Clarion could well constitute one of the most expensive (and expansive) propaganda efforts ever carried out (in such a short amount of time, and particularly during an election season) by an "independent" group seeking to influence public policy and, ultimately, the course of an American election.
The effort has clearly come right out of Israel and from the ranks of those operating on American soil who have a vested interest in inflaming Americans against the people of the Muslim world.
In a related matter, a former high-ranking Pentagon official—who was a central player in a propaganda drive by the Israeli lobby to promote the theme that there are "Islamo fascist sympathizers" (meaning critics of Israeli influence on U.S. policy-making) embedded in the upper levels of the Pentagon and the U.S. intelligence community—has been charged with defrauding the U.S. government of more than $300,000.
The Navy Times reported on October 15 that Navy Commander Charles Coughlin is the target of a civil action by the U.S. attorney's office in Washington, charging that the retired officer falsely claimed to have suffered severe injuries in the Sept. 11, 2001 attack on the Pentagon that made it impossible for him to perform simple tasks or to turn his head or raise his left arm above his shoulder. He claimed more than $300,000 in compensation from the September 11 Victim Compensation Fund.
However, according to the Navy Times, "Coughlin kept playing basketball and lacrosse and ran the New York Marathon in under four hours two months after the attacks." Prosecutors are moving to seize Coughlin's $1 million home, a Mercedes-Benz and a minivan that Coughlin purchased with funds he procured through his deception.
A journalist specializing in media critique, Michael Collins Piper is the author of The High Priests of War, The New Jerusalem, Dirty Secrets, The Judas Goats, The Golem, Target Traficant and My First Days in the White House All are available from AFP.
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A Department of Justice news release noted: "The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit affirmed a four-year prison sentence for tax defier crimes committed by Sherry Peel Jackson, a former Internal Revenue Service employee." The DOJ also emphasized a relatively new program called the National Tax Defier Initiative (NTDI).
The initiative—while claiming to provide First Amendment exemption for those who speak out on tax issues—targets those who attack the "foundation" of the income tax.
A tax "defier" is defined as "someone who rejects the legal foundation of the tax system, despite decades of legal precedent upholding the system's constitutional and statutory validity, and who takes specific and concrete action to violate the law. It is this . . . conduct, which results in fraudulent claims, frivolous returns and bogus schemes, that threatens the foundation of our tax system and must be vigorously countered," a separate DOJ online legal brief explains.
In October 2007, a jury found Miss. Jackson—a noted tax activist from Stone Mountain, Ga. who appeared in the late Aaron Russo's America: From Freedom to Fascism film—"guilty on four counts of failure to file income tax returns," says the DOJ. Miss Jackson was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Orinda D. Evans to four consecutive prison terms of 12 months each. She evidently is seen as just the kind of "defier" envisioned under the NTDI, given the inclusion of the NTDI in the same news release about Jackson's harsh sentence.
"This clear affirmation of such a strong sentence should be a sign to tax defiers across the country that frivolous arguments and bogus schemes do not work and can land them in prison for years," Nathan J. Hochman, assistant attorney general of the Justice Department's Tax Division, said in the release. "Under the [NTDI], the Tax Division continues to vigorously enforce federal tax laws against tax defier conduct throughout the nation."
Noted attorney Tommy Cryer, who himself was on the receiving end of the IRS but triumphed in court, called this development: "deplorable—shameful . . .when they can't show that she was liable for it [the income tax] in the first place."
In the wake of his "Truth Attack" conference held in Houston Oct. 11, where the IRS was a hot topic in an organized plan to put big government back in its cage, Cryer, of Shreveport, La., said, "How do you defy something that does not exist?"
He echoed a growing consensus that the Internal Revenue Code is exceedingly vague and does not establish an actual tax liability for working Americans, but instead operates on guile and the threat of imprisonment to hoodwink Americans into believing the liability exists without ever finding out for themselves if it does.
Cryer noted at the Houston program that, among a number of contemplated actions, there will be a concerted effort to report rogue IRS agents to the Treasury/IRS Office of the Inspector General.
Cryer also observed that the DOJ is supposed to be an impartial party, yet the DOJ news release on affirming Jackson's sentence seems anything but impartial:
"There is an air of retribution to this thing," he said. "They should also be looking at every possible defense and taking it seriously." Instead, the DOJ is like an "extension of the IRS," he said, adding that the DOJ should act as a "filter" and should be just as interested in the law that the IRS bases its actions on, and in the conduct of its agents.
You can write to: Sherry Peel Jackson, 59085019, FCC Coleman Camp F2, P.O. Box 1027, Coleman, FL 33521-1027.
The main Treasury Department Office of Inspector General hotline for reporting IRS agent misconduct and other complaints is: (800) 359-3898 (a live person answers during the day); fax, (202) 927-5799. Regular mail: Treasury Hotline, Office of Inspector General, 1500 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Washington, D.C. 20220. Another IRS/Treasury hotline can be reached at (800) 366-4484.
Reach Mark at truthhound2@yahoo.com. Mark Anderson is a corresponding editor for American Free Press.
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In August, Pennsylvania attorney Philip Berg sued Barack Obama and the Democratic National Committee, demanding proof that Obama is a natural-born American citizen. Rather than simply producing the birth certificate that would be satisfying proof of eligibility, the defendants cowered and hid behind legal technicalities, claiming that Berg had no "standing" to challenge such a thing.
In October, only days after Berg had claimed victory by default because the defendants had not answered the suit, U.S. District Court Judge R. Barclay Surrick dismissed the suit, saying Berg had no standing to challenge Obama's citizenship. Surrick did not define what would constitute the proper "standing," only to say in his 33-page order that Congress can make this determination.
If a U.S. citizen and voter has no "standing" to question a candidate's qualifications, who does? Surrick did not say. The behavior of Barack Obama the past six months has greatly increased the doubt that he is a "natural born" American. Some backers went so far as to produce a phony "Certification of Live Birth" from Hawaii and post it on a website.
However, in addition to other discrepancies, the form upon which the data appeared, showing Obama's birth as August 4, 1961 in Honolulu, was printed on a form "revised 11/01." The certificate's number was blocked out (upper right).
His paternal grandmother has sworn that she was present at his birth in Kenya.
"At this point," Berg said, "the nation just needs to know that Mr. Obama is not eligible to serve as president of the United States and that he has so far hidden behind procedure, and that we could very well be headed toward a constitutional crisis if this is not addressed."
Lawsuits in eight states—Hawaii, Washington, California, Florida, Georgia, Pennsylvania, New York and Connecticut—are seeking judicial authority to force the certifying or decertifying of Obama's qualification to run as a candidate for president as a natural born U.S. citizen. The governor of Hawaii sealed his records and ordered that no one other than Obama may see them before the election.
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International bankers and speculators are calling for a global gathering of the world's top moneymen and policymakers along the lines of the meeting in Bretton Woods, N.H., in 1944, which spawned three powerful global financial organizations, the International Monetary Fund, the International Trade Organization and the World Bank.
Already, critics have come out against the proposed "BrettonWoods II," saying it will do little to help working-class Americans, who have seen their life savings vanish as a result of the collapse of financial markets.
Most Americans recognize that the economic crisis in the United States is largely due to unbridled capitalist greed on Wall Street. The world's leading financial institutions, seeking to maximize profits, exploited loose fiscal and regulatory policies in the United States to create a complicated system of investment vehicles.
As AFP has reported, a shadow banking system was built where so-called financial derivatives totaling an estimated $1 quadrillion were repeatedly traded without any protection or oversight from federal regulators. For over a decade, Wall Street rode high on these huge profits before the whole system collapsed under the enormity of its high-risk investments and massive debt.
So far, no country has been immune from these troubles. From Iceland to Pakistan to New Zealand, overwhelming debt and profligate ways have forced governments to reach out to unlikely sources for cash infusions, including China, in order to protect their citizens' investments and prevent the total collapse of banking systems.
Main Street has seen pensions fail, businesses close and life savings evaporate. Now, European and American leaders, backed by top financial institutions and media outlets, want to formulate a new international framework to bring markets, including those in the United States, under a single global authority.
"We must create a new international financial architecture for the global age," said British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. "We must have a new BrettonWoods—building a new international financial architecture for the years ahead."
To his credit, President Bush was at first reluctant to toss aside the Constitution and hand over American sovereignty to the world's leading moneymen. However, in late October, Bush recanted and announced his support for the meeting of global banking authorities that is scheduled to take place in Washington on Nov. 15.
Since its founding, the United States has benefited from respected public figures, who vociferously opposed ceding control of the nation's money supply to the banking establishment. Many of these individuals, including Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson and Wright Patman, established legacies for themselves by warning the country of the dangers posed by private banks.
America's Founding Fathers were so dead set against giving private bankers control over the country's means of exchange that they explicitly named the Treasury in the Constitution as the government agency that should dictate fiscal policy for the new country.
Unfortunately, with the passage of the Federal Reserve Act in 1913, the banking establishment solidified its control over U.S. money supply and quickly began erecting the modern system of "creditalism," where international banking cartels can create money—and manufacture booms and busts—with the stroke of a pen.
Right around the time of the enactment of the Federal Reserve Act, Sen. Robert L. Owen of Oklahoma, the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, put pen to paper to voice his opposition to private control of money:
"It is remarkable, and a fact of surpassing importance, that the provision of the Constitution of the United States authorizing Congress exclusively to coin money and regulate the value thereof has been overlooked by American statesmen. Their failure to perceive the deep significance of this language of the Constitution has resulted in the indefensible expansion and contraction of money by private persons, bringing on monetary depressions periodically."
American taxpayers, who are now stuck with bailing out Wall
Street, would be wise to take these words to heart and hold their
elected and appointed officials in Washington accountable for
forcing Main Street America to pay the cost of its own financial
slavery to bankers.
Christopher Petherick is a journalist and publisher based in Maryland.
For more information, see his website at www.brandywinehouse.us
or write directly to BRANDYWINE HOUSE BOOKS AND MEDIA, P.O. Box
638, Cheltenham, MD 20623. Petherick encourages all readers with
Internet access to sign up for AFP's free weekly email newsletter.
It's loaded with house news and special offers available only
to newsletter recipients and AFP web site users. See AmericanFreePress.net.
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In your nearly two-year presidential campaign, the words "hope and change," "change and hope" have been your trademark declarations. Yet there is an asymmetry between those objectives and your political character that succumbs to contrary centers of power that want not "hope and change" but the continuation of the power-entrenched status quo.
Far more than Senator McCain, you have received enormous, unprecedented contributions from corporate interests, Wall Street interests and, most interestingly, big corporate law firm attorneys. Never before has a Democratic nominee for President achieved this supremacy over his Republican counterpart. Why, apart from your unconditional vote for the $700 billion Wall Street bailout, are these large corporate interests investing so much in Senator Obama? Could it be that in your state Senate record, your U.S. Senate record and your presidential campaign record (favoring nuclear power, coal plants, offshore oil drilling, corporate subsidies including the 1872 Mining Act and avoiding any comprehensive program to crack down on the corporate crime wave and the bloated, wasteful military budget, for example) you have shown that you are their man?
To advance change and hope, the presidential persona requires character, courage, integrity-- not expediency, accommodation and short-range opportunism. Take, for example, your transformation from an articulate defender of Palestinian rights in Chicago before your run for the U.S. Senate to an acolyte, a dittoman for the hard-line AIPAC lobby, which bolsters the militaristic oppression, occupation, blockage, colonization and land-water seizures over the years of the Palestinian peoples and their shrunken territories in the West Bank and Gaza. Eric Alterman summarized numerous polls in a December 2007 issue of The Nation magazine showing that AIPAC policies are opposed by a majority of Jewish-Americans.
You know quite well that only when the U.S. Government supports the Israeli and Palestinian peace movements, that years ago worked out a detailed two-state solution (which is supported by a majority of Israelis and Palestinians), will there be a chance for a peaceful resolution of this 60-year plus conflict. Yet you align yourself with the hard-liners, so much so that in your infamous, demeaning speech to the AIPAC convention right after you gained the nomination of the Democratic Party, you supported an "undivided Jerusalem," and opposed negotiations with Hamas--the elected government in Gaza. Once again, you ignored the will of the Israeli people who, in a March 1, 2008 poll by the respected news- paper Haaretz, showed that 64% of Israelis favored "direct negotiations with Hamas." Siding with the AIPAC hard-liners is what one of the many leading Palestinians advocating dialogue and peace with the Israeli people was describing when he wrote "Anti-Semitism today is the persecution of Palestinian society by the Israeli state."
During your visit to Israel this summer, you scheduled a mere 45 minutes of your time for Palestinians with no news conference, and no visit to Palestinian refugee camps that would have focused the media on the brutalization of the Palestinians. Your trip supported the illegal, cruel blockade of Gaza in defiance of international law and the United Nations charter. You focused on southern Israeli casualties which during the past year have totaled one civilian casualty to every 400 Palestinian casualties on the Gaza side. Instead of a statesmanship that decried all violence and its replacement with acceptance of the Arab League's 2002 proposal to permit a viable Palestinian state within the 1967 borders in return for full economic and diplomatic relations between Arab countries and Israel, you played the role of a cheap politician, leaving the area and Palestinians with the feeling of much shock and little awe.
David Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator, described your trip succinctly: "There was almost a willful display of indifference to the fact that there are two narratives here. This could serve him well as a candidate, but not as a President."
Palestinian American commentator, Ali Abunimah, noted that Obama did not utter a single criticism of Israel, "of its relentless settlement and wall construction, of the closures that make life unlivable for millions of Palestinians. ...Even the Bush administration recently criticized Israeli's use of cluster bombs against Lebanese civilians [see www.atfl.org for elaboration]. But Obama defended Israeli's assault on Lebanon as an exercise of its 'legitimate right to defend itself.'"
In numerous columns Gideon Levy, writing in Haaretz, strongly criticized the Israeli government's assault on civilians in Gaza, including attacks on "the heart of a crowded refugee camp... with horrible bloodshed" in early 2008.
Israeli writer and peace advocate--Uri Avnery--described Obama's appearance before AIPAC as one that "broke all records for obsequiousness and fawning, adding that Obama "is prepared to sacrifice the most basic American interests. After all, the US has a vital interest in achieving an Israeli-Palestinian peace that will allow it to find ways to the hearts of the Arab masses from Iraq to Morocco. Obama has harmed his image in the Muslim world and mortgaged his future -- if and when he is elected president," he said, adding, "Of one thing I am certain: Obama's declarations at the AIPAC conference are very, very bad for peace. And what is bad for peace is bad for Israel, bad for the world and bad for the Palestinian people."
A further illustration of your deficiency of character is the way you turned your back on the Muslim-Americans in this country. You refused to send surrogates to speak to voters at their events. Having visited numerous churches and synagogues, you refused to visit a single Mosque in America. Even George W. Bush visited the Grand Mosque in Washington D.C. after9/11 to express proper sentiments of tolerance before a frightened major religious group of innocents.
Although the New York Times published a major article on June 24, 2008 titled "Muslim Voters Detect a Snub from Obama" (by Andrea Elliott), citing examples of your aversion to these Americans who come from all walks of life, who serve in the armed forces and who work to live the American dream. Three days earlier the International Herald Tribune published an article by Roger Cohen titled "Why Obama Should Visit a Mosque."
None of these comments and reports change your political bigotry against Muslim-Americans -- even though your father was a Muslim from Kenya.
Perhaps nothing illustrated your utter lack of political courage or even the mildest version of this trait than your surrendering to demands of the hard-liners to prohibit former presidentJimmy Carter from speaking at the Democratic National Convention. This is a tradition for former presidents and one accorded in prime time to Bill Clinton this year.
Here was a President who negotiated peace between Israel and Egypt, but his recent book pressing the dominant Israeli superpower to avoid Apartheid of the Palestinians and make peace was all that it took to sideline him. Instead of an important address to the nation by Jimmy Carter on this critical international problem, he was relegated to a stroll across the stage to "tumultuous applause," following a showing of a film about the Carter Center's post-Katrina work. Shame on you, Barack Obama!
But then your shameful behavior has extended to many other areas of American life. (See the factual analysis by my running mate, Matt Gonzalez, on www.votenader.org). You have turned your back on the 100-million poor Americans composed of poor whites, African-Americans, and Latinos. You always mention helping the "middle class" but you omit, repeatedly, mention of the "poor" in America.
Should you be elected President, it must be more than an unprecedented upward career move follow-ing a brilliantly unprincipled campaign that spoke "change" yet demonstrated actual obeisance to the concentration power of the "corporate supremacists." It must be about shifting the power from the few to the many. It must be a White House presided over by a black man who does not turn his back on the downtrodden here and abroad but challenges the forces of greed, dictatorial control of labor, consumers and taxpayers, and the militarization of foreign policy. It must be a White House that is transforming of American politics--opening it up to the public funding of elections (through voluntary approaches) -- and allowing smaller candidates to have a chance to be heard on debates and in the fullness of their now restricted civil liberties. Call it a competitive democracy.
Your presidential campaign again and again has demonstrated cowardly stands. "Hope" some say springs eternal." But not when "reality" consumes it daily.
Sincerely,
Ralph Nader
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President-elect Barack Obama prioritizes passage of the freedom-stealing Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act. High-level Democrats are also eager to limit free speech in media with the Fairness Doctrine. Earlier liberals, especially during the 60s and 70s, championed unbridled freedom of speech and expression. But Obama and "new liberals" encourage the opposite: hate and bias laws which restrict and even criminalize criticism of federally protected groups such as Jews and homosexuals. (1)
Should there be limits on freedom of speech? Or do the ethical foundations of America, the Bible and the Constitution allow us to say virtually anything we want? To answer these and other questions about this now controversial subject, we must define "free speech."
What is Free Speech?
Our right to free speech comes from our identity as free will beings, created in God's image. Freedom to make moral choices is given every person at conception and is part of the eternal soul or spirit of man. The first instinct of our free will is to speak our desires and opinions. Speech naturally proceeds from the innermost thoughts of our minds and souls. Natural law also argues for freedom of speech. If animals can bark, sing, chirp at their pleasure and without restraint, shouldn't human beings made in God's image have at least as much right to speak? Our free speech, like our free will, is our most precious birthright from our Creator.
Yet this freedom must not be abused. In the Old Testament, God did command execution for those who abused their freedom of speech through blasphemy, advocating idolatry, or inciting rebellion. Yet He gave each person the freedom to commit those sins, if they chose.
God has authority to end verbal discord to Himself and His law whenever He pleases. He would not be God if He didn't have that privilege. He is not required to bear with sin for any length of time, and the eternal law of a holy God is that any discord to Him must be instantly annihilated. Yet He doesn't incinerate all sinners; even demons are given freedom to continue. God forbears, in love, to give mankind time to repent and become His friends.
In fact, God does much more than just forbear judgment. Jesus came down and died on a cross to bear our just punishment. When we trust in Christ, our Sin-bearer, He becomes our bridge of justification and reconciliation to a holy God.
When Speech Should Not Be Free
Just as there were some limits to freedom of speech for the Hebrews, so American law sets some limits. No one is allowed to shout "Fire!" in a crowded theater or to incite riot, or to libel or slander. American law does not tolerate speech that threatens public safety with "imminent harm," and I believe speech that is blatantly corruptive should also be restricted. Scripture provides precedent for such limits, especially in the Old Testament. Young people should be legally protected from expression that is overtly pornographic, solicitous of pedophilia, sexually traumatizing or sadistically violent.
But we should not prohibit speech that is merely politically incorrect. This includes what the Anti-Defamation League decries as "anti-Semitic conspiracy theories." ADL counsels libraries and schools to block such "hate speech" from computers. (This has included the National Prayer Network's website, <http://www.truthtellers.org/>Truthtellers.org.) In reality, politically incorrect ideas are often true. They bear no resemblance to speech that actually traumatizes, degrades and corrupts youth.
Despite potential abuses, free speech is a much more redeeming influence than a threat. In the area of expression, we should always err on the side of freedom rather than restriction. The greatest blessing of freedom of speech is that it allows new and truthful ideas that can strengthen and morally orient the confused or misled. Is our problem today too much unbridled, unauthorized speech and discussion? Hardly. Our problem is highly concentrated power in mass media, which shuts down true discussion and non-mainstream voices. The dissenting voices that do exist are threatened by fierce efforts, primarily led by ADL, to restrict freedom with hate, bias and speech laws. ADL ceaselessly searches for a way to outlaw criticism of matters Jewish as well as homosexuality on the internet. We need much, much more total truth-telling, not less.
Big Brother Obama
Media already portrays Obama as another Martin Luther King Jr. with a dream of freedom for all. Don't believe it. Obama's new brand of liberalism stands for ending freedom of speech for critics of federally protected groups. Obama will attempt to pass the federal hate bill and pro-homosexual ENDA as well as "lobby reform" bills meant to cripple and penalize Christian/conservative and pro-life activist groups. He will almost certainly allow Democrats to also pass the freedom-stealing Fairness Doctrine that will run conservative media off the airwaves.
Obama wants to sweep America into hate law bondage as in Canada. Last year, a prominent Canadian hate law bureaucrat commented that Canada tolerates free speech but is not in love with it. Freedom-loving Americans must fall even more deeply in love with God and His priceless gift of free speech!
We must also act. With the Senate and House now overwhelmingly empowered to pass Orwellian legislation, lovers of freedom must be ready to protest as never before. Calls must flood the House of Representatives just as soon as the new hate bill arrives there, probably in early January.
Are the odds against freedom now insurmountable? Again and again they seemed that way over the past nine years when hate bill forces always commanded a numerical majority in Congress. But God repeatedly intervened, creating disarray in the hate bill ranks and defeating it five times.
Can we do it again? Yes! Exactly the same way we succeeded earlier.
Call first to God. Then call Washington!
-------------------------------------
(1) The original 1968 federal hate
law, upon which present federal hate bills greatly expand, criminalizes
speech. It says that if anyone's public speech encourages another
to an act of hate-motivated violence, the original speaker can
be tried as a federal hate criminal along with the active offender
whom he has influenced.
Title 18, U.S.C., Sec. 2a says: (a) Whoever commits an offense
against the United States or aids, abets, counsels, commands,
induces or procures its commission, is punishable as a principal.
-------------------------------------
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Those familiar with the pro-Zionist politics of John McCain breathed a sigh of relief at his defeat. With Barack Obama there's a possibility of change where change is most needed: in U.S.-Israeli relations. The prospects, however, are not bright for several reasons.
First, he faces major hurdles in Congress where pro-Israelis chair key committees and subcommittees. Obama hails from Chicago, a major node in the node-and network system of organized crime. His senior in the Illinois delegation is Richard Durbin, a lawyer recruited by the Israeli lobby in 1982 to oppose 11-term Rep. Paul Findley who challenged the Israelification of U.S. foreign policy. First elected to the Senate in 1996, Durbin serves as assistant majority leader.
Durbin shares a house in Washington with Charles Schumer, a pro-Israeli senator from New York and third ranking in the Senate leadership. Both men are junior to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of mobbed-up Nevada.
Reid is a Zionist-inclined Mormon (aka the Lost Tribe of Israel). His assessment of the Israel lobby: "I can't think of a policy organization in the country as well organized and respected."
Obama proved on the campaign trail how readily he could yield to pressure from pro-Israelis. Malcolm Hoenlein, head of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, cited Obama's promise of change as "an opening for all kind of mischief."
To please and appease, Obama delivered a series of pro-Israel speeches. Though it was U.S. national security that was put at risk in pursuit of Israel's agenda in the Middle East, Obama spent much of his spring campaign pledging his allegiance to Israel and portraying its security as "sacrosanct."
Obama takes office in the midst of a perfect storm raging in a nation targeted by those skilled at waging war "by way of deception," the Israeli Mossad's operating motto. Those complicit are skilled at displacing facts with what people can be deceived to believe—whether a false belief in Iraqi WMD and mobile biological weapons laboratories, or a misplaced faith in the infallible wisdom of unfettered financial markets.
Though Americans know they were deceived, they do not yet know how, by whom or to what purpose. Those anticipating change need only watch who staffs an Obama administration.
When he convened his foreign advisory team, he placed pro-Israeli Madeleine Albright at the head of the table. She was secretary of state for President Bill Clinton.
When he convened his economic policy team, Lawrence Summers
took
the lead. Recently forced out as president of Harvard University,
former Treasury Secretary Summers handpicked the pro-Israeli advisory
team that oversaw the oligarchization of Russia. The largest fraud
in history, Mikhail Gorbachev estimated that the financial pillage
exceeded $1 trillion. Eight of the top nine oligarches qualify
for Israeli citizenship.
Obama will be sworn in on the 100th anniversary of the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The NAACP was established six months after the Springfield race riot of 1908 that resulted in seven deaths in Abraham Lincoln's hometown. From its outset, the NAACP leadership was dominated not by African-Americans but by Jewish-Americans. Not until 1975 did it have a black president.
By allying with those genuinely oppressed, the Jewish-American community enjoyed extraordinary economic and social progress, particularly when compared to blacks. Advancement in the financial arena was especially pronounced where 25 percent of the Forbes 400 richest Americans are now Jewish, compared to 1.7% of the U.S. population. Blacks, on the other hand, continue their disproportionate representation in the lower tiers of both wealth and income.
The subprime mortgage meltdown is the third financial "pump and dump" over just the past two decades. The savings and loan fraud of the late 1980s cost taxpayers $124 billion. The far more expensive "dotcom" bust of 2000 will be dwarfed by this latest financial fraud. Those who skimmed the financial cream as markets rose have routinely been well placed to buy assets at reduced prices as markets fell.
With foreign policy and economic policy the key challenges, watch who Obama picks for those areas. In this handoff from one party to another, the same pro-Israeli bias appears likely to remain intact. Unable to manipulate him with sex (as with Clinton) or beliefs (as with Bush), race may well come into play.
As the U.S. enters the most challenging period in its 232-year history, this president could determine whether freedom survives or oppression triumphs. If President Obama grasps the all-pervasive influence of the U.S.-Israeli relationship, he could become a transformational leader—by transforming that relationship. Should he continue on the course set by previous leaders of both parties, it would be wrong to charge "the fix is in" when the facts confirm that the fix never left.
Jeff Gates is a Washington political insider and the author of the book Guilt by Association available from FIRST AMENDMENT BOOKS, 645 Pennsylvania Avenue SE, #100, Washington, D.C. 20003. Softcover, 287 pages, indexed, #GA. $28 for AFPRC members; $32 for all others. Free S&H inside U.S. Call toll free 1-888-699-NEWS to charge or order online here.
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While Israel braces for violence from West Bank settlements, which it has allowed to expand in contravention of international agreements, the EU has privately warned its members to take action to halt the flow of settler-produced goods into European markets.
The potential threat of violence from Jewish settlers became apparent recently after fierce clashes between the Israeli police over what were called illegal outposts on the West Bank. There was also a warning by Yuval Diskin, head of the country's internal security agency, Shin Bet, that there was a pressing danger the conflict with settlers could spiral out of control in coming months. His remarks were made at a cabinet meeting and led to speculation in news outlets that he thought extremists were planning to assassinate the prime minister or a leading political figure to make their case.
It would not be the first time something like that has happened. Years ago, the Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, was assassinated because he was perceived to be a peacemaker. Diskin said future violence would be worse because extremist settlers were not only well armed but were prepared to use violence to prevent any change in their status.
His concerns were not only about the West Bank, where Israel has continued to flout international appeals to halt settlement expansion, but about the broader community of messianic Jewish settlement supporters throughout the country. Israel has a heavily armed "militia" at the core of its society—a potent enemy within. The Shin Bet chief believes there are hundreds of extremists whom Shin Bet and the military may have to deal with.
Israel has created a problem it may find difficult to resolve. It has a large section of its police force already in the West Bank and does not have the capacity to send more. Its armed forces—the IDF—have border duties and in the past have shown a reluctance to deal effectively with settlement-based extremists. One solution would be to issue detention orders for the most dangerous extremists on security lists. The Knesset, the country's ruling body, has refused to contemplate such a move even though it is happy to have over 700 Palestinians presently being held on detention orders.
On the settlement issue, the EU adopts a position the U.S. refuses to publicly support: that Israel has broken promises it made at the Middle East peace conference in Annapolis, Md. in November 2007. At the Annapolis summit, held to discuss a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, Israel agreed to halt all settlement building. In fact the wording of an agreement the Israeli delegation signed was that it would "freeze all settlement activity."
In the view of the EU, Israel has done the opposite of what it promised. In Britain, major retailers have been encouraged by government to carefully examine all goods marked West Bank because many of them are being produced in Jewish settlements and then labeled West Bank as if to indicate they are of Palestinian origin.
The major retail outlet, Marks & Spencers, no longer sells what are labeled West Bank goods. The British government is also at the center of a EU plan to curb settler exports as a means to deny settlements the money they need to exist. EU concerns about settler products began after investigations revealed that foods produced in Jewish settlements in the West Bank were flooding into European markets marked as "Israeli origin" in order to get around EU tariffs. It was a tactic designed to exploit trade arrangements between Israel and the EU.
Now, it may have to deal with an enemy within that could be as dangerous as any outside threat it faces.
Richard Walker is the nom de plume of a former mainstream newswriter who now writes for AFP .
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WHILE AMERICANS' EYES were firmly focused on the election and the economy, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Ver.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, was waging a quiet battle against the Department of Justice (DOJ) over its secret policies on the torture and detention of revolutionary fighters and foreign soldiers labeled as "terrorists."
Over the summer, Leahy subpoenaed Attorney General Michael Mukasey, demanding that agency officials hand over documents from the DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel that provided legal analysis and advice to the Bush administration. Leahy followed that subpoena up recently with a public letter demanding to know why it has taken DOJ so long to respond.
"There is no legitimate argument for withholding the requested materials from this committee," wrote Leahy in his letter to Mukasey. "The executive branch should not obstruct Congress from conducting its constitutional oversight and lawmaking duties by making sweeping assertions of secrecy and privilege."
Leahy has fought an ongoing battle with the White House over its torture and arbitrary detention policies. During Mukasey's confirmation hearings, Leahy took the opportunity to blast the Bush administration for its unconstitutional policies:
"America needs to be certain and confident of the bedrock principle—deeply embedded in our laws and our values—that no one, not even the president, is above the law."
Some Congress watchers have further speculated that any documents
Leahy obtains could show that Bush administration officials knew
their actions were illegal. This could be used as evidence against
them should they ever face war crimes hearings over the torture
and arbitrary detention of foreign nationals.
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For Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke, it's the stuff that dreams are made of. The Federal Reserve is now acting as the central bank to the world, loaning billions of U.S. dollars to foreign banks and propping up the entire global system of debt.
It's no secret that bankers around the world meet periodically to coordinate their efforts and keep the private banking industry booming. Almost every month, high-level meetings take place under the cover of organizations such as the Aspen Institute, the Group of Seven, the World Bank and the Bilderberg Group.
In this time of severe economic turmoil, however, "the Fed" has been accused of putting the entire U.S. economy at risk by loaning billions of dollars to shaky foreign central banks in an effort to keep them solvent.
Known in banker parlance as a "currency-swap arrangement," or CSA, the Fed has so far made an estimated $30 billion in direct loans to foreign banks in South Korea, Mexico, Brazil and Singapore purportedly to protect the countries from slash-and-burn currency speculators, who are moving hundreds of billions of dollars out of foreign currencies and into the U.S. dollar and Treasury bills.
Federal Reserve officials say they are simply coming to the aid of what they call "emerging markets." The foreign banks are purportedly being overrun as currency traders seek a hedge against failing currencies. But what the Fed is really doing is trading U.S. greenbacks for pesos, wons, reals—and any other currency out there no matter what it is worth.
What is more troubling is that these supposed temporary reciprocal CSAs are not just going to Third World countries. For example, New Zealand, which up to this point had a stable economy, is looking at $15 billion in loans from the Federal Reserve. In addition, the Fed has lifted loan limits on swap arrangements with the European Central Bank, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan and the Swiss National Bank. It is also maintaining unlimited lines of credit with the central banks of Canada, Norway, Australia and Sweden.
There are many problems associated with CSAs both for the countries that receive them and for the United States. The risk for smaller countries is that they are forced to saddle themselves with short-term loans in order to stave off the collapse of their currencies and to keep their banks from going insolvent. And while these loans are meant to be temporary, the reality is Third World countries will likely be paying interest on them for decades to come.
For the United States, the usual risks apply: Inflation, higher consumer prices and a weakening of the dollar as the Fed turns on the printing presses, churning out more dollars in an effort to keep already-failing economies on life support.
More troubling still is that these sorts of fiscal policies, which further dollar hegemony, also intertwine the U.S. economy with those that are currently on life support—a dangerous prospect that could take down the whole financial house of cards.
For Main Street America, the bottom line is that the Fed's actions will only cheapen the dollar and risk its collapse. At this point, the question Americans should be asking themselves is why should they have to bail out the entire world, while the big banks, which created this mess in the first place, exploit the dollar to ensure their profits for years to come?
Christopher Petherick is a journalist and publisher based in Maryland. For more information, see his website at www.brandywinehouse. us or write directly to BRANDYWINE HOUSE BOOKS AND MEDIA, P.O. Box 638, Cheltenham, MD 20623. Petherick encourages all readers with Internet access to sign up for AFP's free weekly email newsletter. It's loaded with house news and special offers available only to newsletter recipients and AFP web site users. See AmericanFreePress.net.
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Patriots, get us out of this Zionist nest! We were warned by our wise forefathers of the danger of becoming beholden to a partner in our government. President Washington showed us the light but our government blew it out and now are paying a dear price, in blood and treasure, to keep our beloved America from being sucked down the proverbial Zionist drain of no return.
America is not at a crossroad. We are way beyond that and have been for 41+ years. The Six Day War in June of 1967 was the path to our prosperity and the joy of real freedom but our bought and paid for government, from LBJ to the congress and courts took the road of a snake's forked tongue and the snake has all but devoured all that this great land is endeared for, such as our dignity, fairness, love of family, friends, love of country and our planet, and, most of all, God. We have given until we can't give anymore. The greedy Jewish Zionist bankers have bankrupt this country from Wall Street to your street, to your house, to your farm, your land, your car, your boat, and your life.
We cannot and must not fight anymore wars for Israel. If they want to fight Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, or anywhere else, let them fight their own fights. Let them pay with their own lives, their own treasures, not with America's sons and daughters, not one more day! Enough is enough! Israel, you are on your own. No more aid for you, period! No more aid for any other country. America, we must cut the head off of the snake that is devouring us or we Will never see this country the same ever again. It's up to you, patriots, to raise your voices and your pen and demand freedom from the Israeli leaches before America's blood is sucked dry.
If Israel would have been slapped down and punished, fiercely, for the murders of American sons on the high seas on June 8, 1967 aboard the USS LIBERTY, this country would not be in the shape it is in today. The saddest part of all is this country is under the Zionists' thumb now more than ever before in history. Wake up, American patriots!! You are the only ones that can save us. Put country before self for the sake of our children and their children, for God's sake!!
Patriots, I beg you as a combat wounded patriot. I have seen the Zionist sword slay my fellow Americans like cattle. We can't allow anymore of our blood and treasure to be stolen by the Zionist State of Israel with the rubber stamped approval of this corrupt Zionist run government called the good ole USA.
The elections we all just went through changes nothing. Our new president chose as his chief of staff Roam Israel Emanuel, an Israeli IDF officer, an Israeli firster, no doubt. God save our nation!
PHILLIP F. TOURNEY is a survivor of the USS Liberty, three-time president of the USS LIBERTY Veterans Association and the co-host of THE LIBERTY HOUR, which airs on Saturdays at 11 a.m. eastern time on republicbroadcasting.org
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The new TV show Life on Mars features a cop thrown back in time to 1973. On a recent episode, the cop from 2008 calls an assault a "hate crime." His buddy, a cop from 1973, retorts, "As opposed to an "I really, really like you crime?" His witty comeback points out the commonsense response to the idea of a "hate crime:" all violence comes from evil emotions. We should not classify some rapes as more hateful or some assaults as more biased. This belittles individual survivors; it categorizes them based on their group identity, not their personal rights as a human being.
In New York State, seven teens have been accused of a "hate crime" after a 38-year-old immigrant from Ecuador, Marcello Lucero, was attacked and stabbed to death. The assistant district attorney claims that the teens said, "Let's go find some Mexicans to -- -- up." She accuses them of a "well thought out crime targeting Hispanic males."
Say she's right. Say these seven teens murdered Marcello Lucero because he was the first Latin-looking man they saw and their agenda was to kill a Hispanic. That's appalling. But would Marcello's death be less horrible if the boys killed him because they wanted to gang-rape his wife? Would it be less hateful if they'd stabbed him to death so they could have a joy ride in his car? If they hadn't hated his race but had hated his wealth or his job or his resemblance to a man who had molested one of them—would the crime have been less evil?
"Anti-hate" laws say yes. These laws segregate society into groups and say bias and hatred of some groups, like minorities, is worse than against others. A crime against a member of a protected group is punished more harshly than a crime against an individual not of those groups. This is identity politics at its worst.
As we warn time and again, these laws are ultimately dangerous not just because they further splinter society into separate social groups but because they criminalize bias, which is held in beliefs, thoughts and speech. There is no freedom more precious than the freedom to believe, think and speak as you choose, even if you choose racism or nationalism or to worship aliens. Hate crime laws shatter this precious freedom, invading the most personal space of thought and belief to legislate what are acceptable beliefs and biases and what are not.
An Associated Press article about Marcello Lucero's stabbing reviews a few other assaults on Hispanic immigrants and quotes leaders of Long Island Immigrant Alliance; they blame the public debate on immigration for fostering a culture of hate. A local pastor and immigrant advocate even charged that "some of the highest leaders of our community also have blood on their hands." Wow, now political commentators on illegal immigration are responsible for this brutal killing?
That kind of rhetoric is precisely what happens when prosecutors parse the "bias" behind a crime and prosecute beliefs, not just actions. Soon the realm of ideas and public debate is picked apart. Legitimate political speech is blamed for "inciting hate." Soon government regulates ideas and speech. Bloggers are arrested for writing about immigration. Social scientists face jail time for taboo (but possibly true) theories about race. Pastors are put in handcuffs for quoting from the Bible about sexual immorality. Sound like a draconian dictatorship that could never happen in the USA? I wish it were. This kind of crackdown has already happened in Canada, Europe and Australia. It will happen here, too, if we continue to march to the steady beat of hate crime arguments. It is a natural path: you stiffen penalties for the thoughts behind a crime; soon you prosecute the thoughts if they are said aloud, whether or not an actual crime has been committed. The speech and the thoughts become the crime. And then we live in Orwell's world.
In Burma, a 28-year-old poet and blogger has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for publishing an online poem mocking the country's dictator. The lines of his poem formed an acrostic calling the dictator "power crazy." He was arrested the day after publishing the poem. The blogger-now-prisoner owns three internet cafes in Burma's capitol. His mother was not allowed to attend his hearing, and as a detainee he was deprived of food and water during the proceedings.
Unfortunately, no American can view Burma's actions with indifference, as the fascist tactics of an outpost of civilization. Hardly. "Anti-hate" laws empower the most "civilized" governments of the world to imprison their citizens for online political and social speech. Just ask David Irving or Ernst Zundel, who served jail time for challenging establishment history of the Holocaust. As much as we might like to believe an American will never face a policeman's fist on his door for critiquing the government—or Judaism, or homosexual practices, or religion—on his blog—it can and will happen.
And it will happen through the seemingly righteous move of defining and prosecuting violent "hate crimes"—as if some crimes were based in kindness.
Harmony Grant is a prolific writer who is regularly featured on Rev. Ted Pike's web site, truthtellers.org.
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The top brass in the Republican Party that the public blames the most for perpetual wars, the next Great Depression, and trying to give Amnesty to millions of illegal aliens that they let into the country in the first place are circling the wheel of the GOP ship with their rapiers out.
Blue-collar and middle-class Republicans are advancing on the once proud captains of the GOP hoping to see Bush, McCain, and their most ardent supporters walk the political plank, in an effort to save the party from decades of fallout. Let's face the truth. Bush, McCain, Senators Graham and Martinez have not only led the GOP to destruction, they have run the great ship called America upon the rocks, with their brand of 'leadership' in the US Senate and the White House.
The GOP lost any real chance of retaining the White House the day John McCain won the primary. Due to election dynamics, a Ted Kennedy loving, Amnesty pushing, Free Trade pushing, Globalist, Democrat in Republican clothing named John McCain won. On election day, the resounding message and historical example became "You can't screw over the conservative base and still win as President!"
The turnout level for the 2008 elections was nowhere near the created media hype massive turnout forecast by the pro-Obama media. In fact, according to the American University's Center for the Study of the American Electorate, Democratic turnout was only up a few percent points. The problem for McCain was that less Republicans showed up than in 2004's presidential race and many of those Republicans either voted for Obama, voted third party, or left his race blank.
McCain was counting on GOP voters to march into the booths at the last minute, hold their noses and elect him out of fear of Obama. While many Republicans reluctantly made that choice, a significant group withheld their support or voted in opposition to McCain.
The greatest example of conservative voters rejection of McCain is seen in his campaign's inability to raise adequate funds for his campaign. The RNC had similar troubles and both McCain and the RNC were massively outspent by Democrats. Looking back in recent history, their inability to raise enough funds began when the RNC fired their fundraising phone bank employees, after donations fell through the floor immediately following Bush, McCain, and Kennedy's push for Comprehensive Immigration Reform Amnesty. The phone bank employees reported massive donor unrest due to the amnesty legislation and were promptly fired! Republican fundraising never recovered after that paradigm shift.
Some of McCain's campaign employees have quickly thrown Sarah Palin under the political bus hoping the angry crowds will tear her apart, instead of McCain and crew! I can tell you as a prior employee of many campaigns, staffers do not engage in this kind of activity, without expressed behind the scenes authorization from their employers (such as McCain) or they will lose their jobs and probably their careers.
No, Sarah Palin was not McCain's downfall. In fact, the only time in the final months of the campaign that McCain was ahead in the race was when he announced Sarah Palin as his running mate. McCain's problem was not with swing voters, you can't get anymore 'swing' than McCain. McCain tried to run left of the Democrat and tried to out racial politic a black Democrat.
Sarah Palin energized the true conservative base which initially reacted with glee to see someone, anyone, that was not a US Senator at the start of this race come on to the field. Palin was an unknown and many Republicans immediately projected their hopes on Palin. But the effect wore off quickly. In fact, after the Palin announcement, McCain's polling numbers plunged beneath Obama's for the final time, when he promised a "path to citizenship" for illegal aliens, during campaign stops in Pennsylvania.
McCain's support for the Bush administration's Comprehensive Immigration Reform Amnesty knocked him out of the first place spot and into fourth place early on in the primary. Each time Bush or McCain has pushed their unpopular immigration plans to the media and public, their poll numbers dive. Soon, they had Sarah Palin imitating McCain on every issue, including Amnesty so the 'Palin Effect' was gone and McCain's die was cast.
Now that the elections are over, McCain's proxies such as his campaign staffers, Senators Lindsey Graham and Mel Martinez, are blaming all of the GOP voters and members of Congress who opposed their amnesty plans for McCain's loss! The notoriously biased and pro-amnesty McClatchy newspapers are eager to broadcast their finger pointing and blame games.
You heard that right folks! McCain and his right-hand men are blaming the opposition to their Comprehensive Immigration Reform AMNESTY bills for the GOP losses by saying that Republicans alienated Hispanic voters.
What a load of horse hockey.
Like a thief who immediately points the finger at someone else to deflect blame, McCain and his crew are attacking others in the party, in an act of psychological projection. They are attacking immigration because they know they lost the race on immigration issues. Many Republicans felt more betrayed by McCain's support for Amnesty than Obama's because they would expect a Democrat to take that position. McCain's alignment with Obama and Bush on the issue deprived voters of a choice for President on the issue of amnesty for illegals.
McCain and his failed crew are promoting multiple myths about the Hispanic voters. First, according to many polls and actual voting behavior observations in states like Arizona, a majority of America's legal Hispanic voters are not supportive of the La Raza and Univision political agenda. They vote for more immigration enforcement and for English as our national language.
Our best case and point is that only two pro-illegal alien ballot initiatives in the nation failed on Election Day in states with top levels of Hispanic voters. Voters in Arizona rejected Proposition 202 with 59% of voters saying No to the deceptively named "Arizona Stop Illegal Hiring Act", which would have gutted most of Arizona's new state level immigration enforcement efforts. Arizona is the state with the fourth largest Hispanic population.
In Florida, which has the ninth highest percentage of Hispanic voters, Amendment 1 was soundly defeated.
The claim that Hispanic voters are unified in support for Comprehensive Immigration Reform Bush, McCain, or Obama style is a lie.
It is also racist and defamatory towards Hispanic voters to make the false claim that a majority of them support McCain's attempt to change America's current laws to accommodate millions of illegal aliens because most are Hispanic. How detached from reality can McCain be, considering the Zogby poll that showed only 3% of Americans approved of how Congress was handling immigration issues in the midst of his failed push for Amnesty last year?
McCain and his inner circle are engaging in more unethical behavior by trying to blame Palin and those who stopped them from passing Amnesty for illegal aliens. Hispanic voters have been voting Democratic at 65% levels for years and Obama only picked up a few percent points there. McCain's Comprehensive Immigration Reform Amnesty is political suicide for the GOP and national suicide for America.
Republicans now face an important choice. The GOP can further fracture and descend into oblivion as McCain and Graham march back to Washington to vote with Obama on many issues, including Amnesty for illegal aliens. Or the GOP can clean house and sweep these traitors like McCain, Bush and their inner circles onto the political scrap heap of history. The American public has spoken and has firmly rejected Bush and the GOP top brass. It is time for a new political battle cry within the Republican Party and that cry should be for Change! Let the way forward and needed changes begin by discarding McCain and crew on the political plank of this sinking ship.
WILLIAM GHEEN is president of Americans for Legal Immigration PAC, which can be found on the Net at alipac.us.
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Few will deny that the victory of Barack Obama is the direct result of the Republican Party's and George Bush's maladministration for the past eight years. Not only readers of this newspaper but the general public yearned for change. And now they surely have it, both good and bad.
The most important and basic change we anticipate is that no more will Israel and the international Zionist movement be able to dictate America's political, domestic and spending policies - and this will be the greatest boon to ourr suffering nation imaginable.
In fact, we have a right to expect:
• An end to America's disastrous intervention in Iraq and
Afghanistan within 16 months;
• No attack on Iran;
• A cut in defense spending;
• An even-handed policy toward Israel.
We believe this to be so because the Zionist were backing John McCain and apparently had no special relationship with Obama. Thus, assuming that Obama does not establish a corrosive relationship with this unwelcome and aggressive pressure group, we believe we will not be fighting more wars on behalf of Israel.
But Obama holds wrong positions on major issues and Americans must pressure their senators and congressmen to reject his proposals to "redistribute the wealth," increase taxes, provide taxpayer-financed abortion on demand, homosexual :rights,: gun control and amnesty for illegal immigrants.
There is an obvious reason Obama toadied to illegal immigrants. More than two million illegal immigrants cast illegal votes, according to the Social contract Press in Petoskey, Mich. Estimates range up to 2.7 million illegal votes. More than 90 percent of the illegal voters supported Obama.
The very survival of our culture is at stake. The Census Bureau says the United States will become "majority minority" in coming years. Whites will be outnumbered by blacks, Hispanics and Asians. Our European and Christian heritage will be lost. That's why it is critical that we seal our borders solidly and chase fown illegal immigrants.
When the Statue of Liberty welcomed the "down-trodden: more than a century ago, it was a different world. The Europeans coming to our shores were, as the late President Ronald Reagan said, "looking for a hand up, not a handout." there was no welfare or public health service. Today, immigrants illegally cross the border and jump in line for welfare and free medical care. When a president Obama sends his "comprehensive immigration reform" proposal to Congress, warn your lawmakers to kill it. No bill is better than a bad bill.
Obama will also try to stomp on the Second amendment and seize your gun. He lied when he said he opposes gun control. Obama has supported a complete ban on handguns, voted to allow persecution of individuals who use handguns for self-defense in their homes, favors reckless lawsuits intended to force gun dealers out of business, voted against confirming Second Amendment advocates to the Supreme Court, and the list goes on.
This brings us to another huge threat to the Constitution. Obama is likely to fill at least on Supreme Court vacancy, since Justice John Paul Stevens is 88 years old. Stevens is a left-winger who did not want President Bush to fill his seat. That one appointment will guarantee a court that writes legislation according to its social whims rather than interpreting the Constitution as intended by the Founding Fathers.
Obama wants to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, which denies federal recognition of same-sex "marriages" and gives the states the right to refuse to recognize such "marriages." Obama supports "civil unions."
Obama advocates taxpayer-funded abortion on demand, including the ghoulish procedure known as "partial birth abortion." He promised to sign the Freedom of Choice Act, aimed at overturning state restrictions on abortions, including parental notification and Medicaid funding bans. Rarely, if ever, is partial-birth abortion the result of a defective fetus or the mother's health, many physicians have told Congress. In this procedure, the physician turns the baby around in the birth canal so it comes out feet first. When all of the baby except the head is out of the womb, the physician reaches among the flailing arms and legs and stabs the baby in the head, squeezing the skull down. He then pulls the baby completely out and throws it into a trash can. This is cosmetic; the mother requires fewer stitches.
Is Obama a patriotic American? For more than 20 years, Obama listened to his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, scream "God damn America" and say their first loyalty is to the "mother continent" of Africa. Americans of European descent say their first loyalty is to the United states. Obama has a long and continuing friendship with Bill Ayers, a bomb-throwing communist. Ayers celebrated the 9-11 terrorist attacks.
We must fight for our country with the same determination our
forefathers demonstrated at Valley Forge. Theyfought with muskets,
our weapons is truth, and we must win this great battle of ideas.
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It occurred to me that I acted brashly when I said, "The thriving responsible middle class must come out of its coma and move quickly to assert themselves" (AFP, Oct. 27, 2008). Indeed the middle class has always been asserting itself only to be rebuffed and beaten down by the plutocratic class. Yet despite the bully tactics of the "upper classes" the resilient middle class manages to stay alive and literally hold the country together.
When I was a kid in elementary school "middle class" was always a term up for definition. The same held true in high school and college. Who was in the middle class? What exactly was this group to which just about everyone belonged? Ask your friends and neighbors (forget the millionaires you know) what "class they consider themselves to be. "Middle class" is usually their response.
Of course, even the middle class is subject to being subdivided into high, middle and lower. Yet this is the class that has to find a top-flight accountant to wade through the 66,000 pages of the IRS tax code to find them the best deal they can so they will pay the lowest amount possible.
However, that tax code is loaded with deductions written for specific individuals and corporations - the folks with the dough to hire the best lobbyists money can buy.
It sorely behooves the middle class to urge their representatives and senators, especially the new House members who will be sworn in come January, that they work for "We the People" and not for themselves.
All freshmen House members of Congress are on trial, so to speak, and must prove themselves to the voters so that when it comes time for reelection in 2010 he or she will be the right person for the job.
In fact, that holds especially true for those "senior" representatives who have lost touch with their constituents and take them for granted.
One major problem today is the matter of the growing debt. As the size of the government continues to grow, so does the fast-growing $7-trillion debt and the runaway interest on that debt.
The Roman Empire found itself with a government so far-flung that it could not pay its debt. What the U.S. has to do to recover is cut the budget by cutting spending. There is no way to balance such a budget by spending the country deeper into debt by borrowing more and more money from the friendly bankers.
Congress and "We the People" should watch the president to make sure he moves in the right direction ad makes no false steps. According to some economists, a wise rule for the chief executive to follow is to take a big dose of good, old-fashioned common sense.
But that obvious approach has always eluded most wily politicians who prefer to continue their game of the art of the possible which gives them plenty of leeway to talk out of both sides of their mouths.
Keep in mind that preservation of a vital and thriving middle class should be No. 1 on the list of "musts" for every one in government, elected and appointed. Monstrous taxpayer-funded "bailouts" to fix broken, antiquated and mismanaged companies and organization have only contributed to hastening the demise of the middle class with the advent of a major recession.
But foremost in the minds and hearts of all public servants should be their oaths to defend and protect the Constitution.
If they don't, how are there any true winners, let alone the
middle class?
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More sinister than Karl Rove and potentially deadlier than Dick "Darth Vader" Cheney, his name is Rahm Emanuel, and he was recently appointed chief of staff in the president-elect's White House. This first official act should send waves of alarm through people because Barack Obama promised change, but what we're getting is the exact same cabal that brought us 9-11 and endless war in the Middle East.
Initial media reports described Emanuel as a vulgar, Chicago-based enforcer who had an aggressive, in-your- face, pit-bull style. Others painted him as a partisan Washington insider with strong ties to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).Although these labels seem harsh, the reality is far worse.
Rahm Emanuel, nicknamed "Rahmbo," is a pro- Israel Orthodox Jew who was educated in a Talmudic yeshiva and served as a volunteer in the Israeli Defense Force (IDF). He is a dual citizen of Israel, which his office refused to deny when AFP inquired. Israel is the only nation where Americans can apply for and obtain citizenship without automatically renouncing U.S. citizenship.
Some Americans are unilaterally proclaimed citizens of other countries, as when an American GI marries a French girl and becomes an automatic citizen of France. But if the GI applied for and obtained French citizenship, he would lose his American citizenship. It is impossible to be a 100 percent loyal American and have an ounce of loyalty to another country; there is no #101 percent and the interests of Israel and the United States are not always synonymous.
Those familiar with the 9-11 terrorist attacks know that the IDF was instrumental in training the Dancing Israelis who—from a rooftop in Weehawken, N. J.—had the foreknowledge to videotape both WTC towers being struck by kamikaze jetliners, then celebrate afterward.
Mentored by members of Chicago's corrupt party machine like convicted Congressman Dan Rostenkowski, Emanuel gravitated to Washington in 1991 after becoming Bill Clinton's campaign finance committee director. His star rose even higher when he served as one of the primary NAFTA architects and pushed strict anti-gun legislation. After leaving his post as a policy aide for the Clintons, he used his influence as an investment banker to rake in millions during the late 1990s. With this money, Emanuel won a congressional seat in 2002, became the fourth ranking House Democrat by 2006, and is now the most powerful member of Obama's executive office team.
FAMILY HISTORY OF VIOLENCE
What truly makes Emanuel dangerous is that his Israeli-born father Benjamin was an integral member of the Zionist terror group known as Irgun during the 1940s. Along with another notorious terror outfit—the Stern Gang—Irgun bombed Jerusalem's King David Hotel in 1946 where 96 people were killed; while also instigating the 1948 Deir Yassin Massacre.
Rahm Emanuel is the son of a terrorist who directly plotted the assassination of Count Bernadotte, a Swedish diplomat and United Nations envoy who tried to broker peace in Palestine. But Irgun didn't seek treaties. It instead sought racial cleansing and genocide. According to Elisabeth Bumiller in The New York Times, Benjamin Emanuel passed secret codes to Shin Bet bomber and future Prime Minister Menachem Begin. These very same Jewish terrorists eventually became the recognized Israeli government in 1948, as well as predecessors to Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing Likud Party.
OBAMA'S SVENGALI
Rahm Emanuel likes to brag about his role in discovering Barack Obama. "Six years ago, people on the North Side of Chicago took a bet on a young kid," reporter D.H. Williams writes of their symbiotic relationship.
"Rahm and Barack have a deep history together in Chicago politics. Emanuel has been instrumental in the rise of Barack Obama from neophyte senator to the next president of the United States. Getting virtually no media attention, Rahm Emanuel has been by Obama's side during most of the last two years on the campaign trail."
If Karl Rove was George W. Bush's architect, the same can be said of the Emanuel connection. When Obama bowed and groveled at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) convention on June 4, 2008, it was Emanuel who escorted him to meet the executive board afterward.
Emanuel has been the operative who, according to the Chicago Tribune, "remade the Democratic Party in his own image." Illinois Rep. Ray LaHood (R) seconded this notion. "He legitimately can be called the golden boy of the Democratic Party today. He recruited the right candidates, found the money and funded them, and provided issues for them. Rahm did what no one else could do."
Worst of all, Emanuel is a rampant warmonger who takes his cues from the neo-cons. In his book The Plan: Big Ideas for America, he wrote, "We need to expand the U.S. Army by 100,000 more troops."
What will America's next target be under an Obama presidency? Sources close to Emanuel say that he has a "Zionist obsession with Iran."
To get a final idea of what we're dealing with, consider this quote from U.S. war journalist Pat Dollard:
Let me tell you right now, no exaggeration. Rahm Emanuel is the devil. He is . . . a Goebbels, a Mengele, a perfect Cromwell who would, without the faintest evidence of hesitation washing across his face for even a millisecond, order and even personally execute each and every human being he or Obama perceived to be an enemy of the regime. And if you ever personally offended him, and he had the opportunity to kill you, he would probably do it by starting with your children as you were made to watch. He is a bad guy.
Some researchers have gone so far as to claim that Emanuel was the notorious "Mega" spy deep inside the Clinton administration who passed top-secret documents about Iran on to the Israeli government, causing a great deal of chaos among the various intelligence agencies. Be very wary of this man. Like the "Prince of Darkness" Richard Perle and Michael Chertoff before him (both of whom hold dual U.S.-Israeli citizenships), it may well be proven that his loyalties rest more with a fabricated little state in the Middle East than they do with us.
Victor Thorn is a hard-hitting researcher, journalist and the author of many books on 9-11 and the New World Order. These include 9-11 Evil: The Israeli Role in 9-11 and Phantom Flight 93.
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George Washington warned Americans about the high cost of permanent alliances. Cautioning future generations against the "illusion of a common interest," he advised in his farewell address of September 1796 that the costs were particularly acute when an alliance is accompanied by a "passionate attachment" to that foreign nation.
A change in presidencies offers a timely moment to tally the costs of America's six-decade alliance with Israel in terms of both blood and treasure. But for that alliance, would the U.S. military be waging two wars in the Middle East? The 9-11 Commission reported that the mastermind of that mass murder was motivated by his outrage at U.S. support for Israel.
With 4,195 (and counting) Americans dead, 30,000- plus grievously wounded and hundreds of billions spent, are those costs traceable to the passionate attachment that Zionists—both Christians and Jews—have for Israel? Joe Stiglitz, a Nobel prize-winning economist, projects that the long-term costs of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will exceed $3 trillion.
Other economists include in the cost of this lengthy alliance the expense of the Arab oil embargo 35 years ago. When Arab nations sought to recover land taken by Israel in the Six-Day War of 1967, Richard Nixon resupplied the Israel Defense Forces. In response, Arab oil producers hiked the price of oil, igniting a recession that cost the U.S. an estimated $420 billion in foregone economic output.
But for that alliance, higher priced energy would not have cost Americans $450 billion, according to economist Thomas Stauffer, writing in the Christian Science Monitor in December 2002. Should those embargo related costs be included? Are they rightly part of the "but for" tally? How about the $134 billion for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve established as a hedge against Arab nations again using their oil clout?
What about the $117 billion given to Egypt and $22 billion to Jordan as foreign aid in return for signing peace treaties with Israel? Those costs raise the tally to $4.3 trillion. But for this alliance, would the U.S. have incurred those costs?
If not, then all or a substantial portion of that $4.3 trillion should be included when weighing the costs and benefits of what is routinely described as the U.S.-Israel "special relationship."
Should we include the expense of keeping oil-shipping lanes open in a volatile region that would be less volatile but for Israel's expansionist policies in the region?
Though debates rage about how best to tally the indirect "but for" costs, little dispute surrounds the expense of direct outlays. The cumulative direct aid since 1948 was put at $113.85 billion in the November 2008 issue of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (found at wrmea.com).
Direct outlays are often hidden in obscure sections of the federal budget by Israel's allies in the congressional appropriations process. No one disputes that Israel has been the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. aid since World War II. In 2007, U.S. lawmakers committed American taxpayers to pay an average $3 billion to Tel Aviv each year over a 10-year period—for another $30 billion. Those direct costs omit a 2005 defense appropriations commitment authorizing the transfer to Israel of "surplus" military equipment. The amount and cost of that equipment was not specified.
How does one tally the cost in U.S. jobs due to trade sanctions enacted at the urging of the Israel lobby that reduce U.S. exports to the Middle East? Unlike other recipients, Tel Aviv is allowed to spend in-country 26.3 percent of each year's U.S. military aid. Israel's defense industry now ranks ninth in global arms exports. What is the cost of that policy in U.S. jobs?
Absent from this partial tally is any mention of the strategic costs of this alliance. How does one compute the "but for" costs of an avowed ally that routinely dispatches spies who compromise U.S. national security?
What costs did Jonathan Pollard impose on American interests when he stole more than one million classified documents? Or when sensitive technologies were leaked to China? Or when officials of the Israel lobby gave Tel Aviv classified information on Iran?
In a governing system based on informed consent, the opinions of informed Americans should be surveyed before more funds are committed to this special relationship:
* Should Israel remain first-ranked as a recipient of U.S. foreign aid?
* Should Tel Aviv receive $8.5 million per day in U.S. military assistance?
* Should Americans pay for Israel's armed occupation of Palestinian land?
* Should the U.S. military be deployed to wage war in Iran on Israel's behalf?
After six decades, perhaps a newly elected president should heed our first president's advice: "It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world."
Jeff Gates is the author of Guilt By Association—How Deception and Self-Deceit Took America to War available through AMERICAN FREE PRESS. (See an ad for Guilt By Association in the Christmas book insert found in the center of this issue of AFP.)
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Birmingham, Ala. is discussing filing for bankruptcy after struggling to pay the interest on more than $3 billion of debt, the London Daily Telegraph has reported. Jefferson County, which contains the city, borrowed billions of dollars via complicated financial instruments devised by Wall Street investment banks in recent years. The city, which is home to more than 650,000 people, is set to become one of the biggest victims yet of the global credit crisis.
There are growing fears that the threat of bankruptcy from the credit crisis could now spread to public bodies and governments around the world. Investment banks targeted local authorities across America with complicated finance schemes—many of which are now unraveling—over the past few years.
In Europe, Iceland is already facing potential bankruptcy and is likely to receive emergency funding from the International Monetary Fund. Several eastern European countries and Pakistan are also facing serious economic trouble tied to the reckless behavior of global moneylenders.
Concern has also been raised over the economic position of the Italian government with some experts predicting it may fail to make interest payments on its debt. Britain is to borrow tens of billions to finance Gordon Brown's banking bailout and may have limited scope to fund rescue packages for other industries if this becomes necessary.
Birmingham ran into difficulty after borrowing $3.2 billion to fund a new sewage system in the late 1990s. It then refinanced this debt using sophisticated financial schemes. Allegations of corruption and wasteful spending involving the deal are being investigated. The credit crisis means that the county is now unable to refinance the debt again at an affordable level.
Sewage rates have already quadrupled but the local authority is unable to pay its interest repayments on the debt. Retail sales taxes are now at 10 percent in Alabama's major cities of Birmingham and Montgomery, and last year Birmingham doubled its cost of business licenses.
Local officials decided not to apply for bankruptcy protection immediately. However, it may be put to a referendum of local voters next month. President Bush and other senior Washington officials have also been involved in rescue talks.
If Birmingham goes bankrupt it will be one of the biggest public sector collapses in more than 20 years. New York narrowly avoided going bankrupt in the 1970s and took more than a decade to recover. A decade ago, Orange County, Calif. was on the ropes and attempted to postpone its debts with bills of credit but was stopped by a constitutional mandate in Article One, Section 10.
Birmingham was regarded as a vital industrial center in America until the 1970s. Although it suffered from a sharp economic downturn, was until just recently a thriving city with big healthcare and banking industries.
It has relatively low unemployment but local residents are likely to face very steep tax increases as a result of the financial turmoil. It's a predicament that is being closely followed by other local authorities in America and around the world.
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Will Boy Bush order a U.S. attack on Iran before the end of his term? Or will the incoming Obama administration do it under the prodding of the new chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel?
Doubtless, if the Neo-Con Israel firsters order either to attack Iran, he will hasten to do so. And the fact that such an attack would be the worst foreign policy disaster in American history—even worse than our gratuitous interventions in the European wars of 1914 and 1939 making them "world" wars—makes no difference. An American attack on Iran would be:
* Undeclared by Congress and unconstitutional.
* Another no-win war— one we could not win, And it would lead to:
*A cost of over one trillion dollars, (adding to the national debt of over ten trillion), making the bankers and munitions makers deliriously happy but adding to the misery of taxpayers;
* The destruction of the buying power of the dollar and horrendous inflation;
* The end of U.S. political influence around the globe;
* Probable terrorism inside the U.S. sponsored by Iran and its Muslim allies;
* With terrorism, the imposition of federal martial law and the overriding of local government;
* With martial law, the summary arrest of antigovernment white native Americans charged with supporting terrorism and their detention in one of the eight concentration camps set up and waiting;
* The creation of revolutionary conditions inside the country.
* Either a federal tyranny and dictatorship or the breakup of the United States into separate sovereign geographical areas.
The above sounds far-fetched but the destruction of this constitutional republic is very much on the agenda of "our traditional enemies," to use the apt phrase of British revisionist historian, David Irving.
For the past 50 years, Willis A. Carto has been active in the nationalist movement, publishing hundreds of books and pamphlets considered "must reading" by tens of thousands of patriots worldwide. He is presently the publisher of THE BARNES REVIEW historical magazine and a consultant for American Free Press. To get a sample copy of THE BARNES REVIEW, a bimonthly history magazine dedicated to bringing history into accord with the facts, send $3 to TBR, P.O. Box 15877, Washington, D.C. 20003.
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In order to solve the financial mess, who could Barack Obama appoint to better direct the operations than those who helped create it? Such as Franklin Raines, the former chairman of the Fannie Mae fiasco.
Raines was chairman and chief executive officer at Fannie Mae when the government - sponsored enterprise started to offer mortgages to low - and no-income Americans.
After serving as budget director under President Bill Clinton, Raines served as CEO at Fannie Mae went deep into the practice of buying mortgages based on tiny down payments or even no money down given to borrowers who could not afford them.
During this time he received bonuses and salary over $90 million. In 2004, he was offered early retirement after the accounting practices used at Fannie during his tenure to secure top executive bonuses were shown to be fraudulent. Civil charges were filed against Raines and two other former executives seeking $110 million in penalties and $115 million in returned bonuses from the three accused.
On April 18, 2008, the government announced a settlement with Raines together with J. Timothy Howard, Fannie's former chief financial officer, and Leanne G. Spencer, Fannie's former controller. The three executives agreed to pay fines totaling about $3 million, which will be paid by Fannie's insurance policies.
When pressed by the Bush administration to tighten regulations on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, members of Congress - Republicans and Democrats alike - in positions to pass such regulations, did nothing.
As the world now knows, Fannie Mae was a large part of the (attempted) $850 billion bailout, owning and/or guaranteeing over half of America's $12 trillion mortgage market. The current credit crunch, housing slump and crashing economy were brought on in large part by government-backed Fannie Mae going down this dangerous credit slop under Raines.
Raines is now chief economic advisor to president-elect Barack Obama.
Tim Howard is also a financial advisor to Obama and was chief financial officer of Fannie Mae. Howard was a strong internal proponent of using accounting strategies that would ensure a "stable pattern of earnings" at Fannie. In street talk, he was "cooking the books."
The government investigation determined that, "Chief Financial Officer Tim Howard failed to provide adequate oversight to key control and reporting functions within Fannie Mae."
On June 16, 2006, Rep. Richard Baker (R-La.) Asked the Justice Department to investigate his allegations that two former Fannie Mae executives lied to Congress in October 2004 when they denied manipulating the mortgage finance giant's income statement to achieve management pay bonuses. Investigations by federal regulators and the company's board of directors since concluded that management did manipulate 1998 earnings to trigger bonuses. Raines and Howard resigned under pressure in late 2004.
Howard's golden parachute was estimated at $20 million.
Jim Johnson is a former executive at Lehman Brothers who was later forced from his position as fannie Mae Ceo. Investigators found that Fannie Mae had hidden a substantial amount of Johnson's 1998 compensation from the public, reporting that it was between $6 million and $7 million when in fact it was $21 million. Johnson is currently under investigation for taking illegal loans from Countrywide while serving as DEO of Fannie Mae. His golden parachute was estimated at $28 million.
Johnson was hired as a senior Obama finance advisor and was
selected to run Obama's Vice Presidential Search Committee.
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