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FDA Antibiotic Guidance Is Gift To Big Pharma and Big Meat

By Martha Rosenberg | Dissident Voice | December 23, 2013

This month’s FDA guidance for reducing livestock antibiotics will actually make things worse, animal welfare and food activist groups are saying. “The FDA is using a garden hose on a forest fire,” says Farm Sanctuary Senior Policy Director Bruce Friedrich. The guidance is a “diversion” that pretends to address the problem of factory farm-driven antibiotic resistance while accomplishing nothing. Antibiotic resistant infections, widely seen as driven by factory farming, sicken 2 million a year in the US and kill 23,000, says the CDC. By asking drug makers to voluntarily renounce the use of antibiotics for livestock growth on their labels, the guidance “won’t cost the industry a penny” or reduce antibiotic use at all, says Friedrich. The reason? Factory farm antibiotics are also used to treat sickness which the crowded conditions tempt — a use that is still allowed under the guidance. Only the wording will change, says Friedrich.

In a December 11 conference call, the FDA’s Michael (“Monsanto”) Taylor, deputy commissioner for foods and veterinary medicine, William T. Flynn, deputy director for science policy and USDA’s Thomas J. Myers, associate deputy administrator, told reporters that the government is asking drug makers to voluntarily restrict the uses on their antibiotic labels –yes, asking – in a shocking gift of self-regulation. Similar honor systems exist at slaughterhouses since Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) was instituted in 1998 in which industry creates its own safety plan which the government simply cosigns. A similar honor system called the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point-Based Inspection Models Project (HIMP) is imminent for poultry slaughterhouses.

Why are the FDA and USDA allowing industry to write its own ticket? (And why would industry write itself out of its own profits?) Because to mandate the changes would require “hundreds of separate regulations” and actions, whined government officials on the conference call. It is easier to just say please to industry.

To many reporters on the conference call, the plans sounded like fluff. If the changes are voluntary, “what will enforce” them and serve as an “incentive” asked an ABC reporter? Food producers and drug companies need no incentive retorted Michael Taylor because they are starting to phase out antibiotics “for their own reasons” — citing McDonald’s and KFC. Right.

If factory farmers actually phased out antibiotics (which prevent animals from becoming sick in high density-farming) won’t livestock producers “have to move to different buildings” asked a reporter from Reuters. That’s why we are giving industry three years to comply replied William Flynn.

Will you release the identifies of drug companies who do not comply asked another reporter? No, replied Flynn. We will give an “overview” of  the level of “engagement” of  industry but not individual company names. (USDA has also protected the identities of US ranches that released mad cows into the US food supply and restaurants who served them according to newspaper and government sources.)

Animal welfare groups like Farm Sanctuary, American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the Animal Legal Defense Fund are not the only ones calling the FDA guidance toothless and a serious capitulation to industry. Congresswoman Louise M. Slaughter, the only microbiologist in Congress, called the guidance “an inadequate response to the growing antibiotic resistant crisis caused by overuse of antibiotics on the farm.” Industry has spent over $17 million to block a bill Rep. Slaughter developed, in conjunction with the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, called the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act (PAMTA), says a press release from her office.

This is not the first time government has caved to drug makers over the regulation of livestock antibiotics. In 2008, the FDA had announced that there was “evidence that extralabel use of these drugs [cephalosporins] in food-producing animals will likely cause an adverse event in humans and, as such, presents a risk to the public health,” and called for their prohibition. Notice the FDA says “will likely cause” not “could likely cause” and “presents a risk” not “could present a risk”?

But by the time hearings were held two months later and lobbyists had worked their magic, the “Cephalosporin Order of Prohibition” had somehow become a “Hearing to Review the Advances In Animal Health Within The Livestock Industry.” Prohibition — advances, same idea, right?

At the hearings, the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA), the Animal Health Institute, a Big Pharma trade group and the egg, chicken, turkey, milk, pork and cattle industries whined that they could not “farm” without antibiotics because more feed would be required and the animals would get sick from being immobilized over their own manure.

Afterwards, W. Ron DeHaven, DVM, who was the USDA’s top vet before leaving for industry and helming the AVMA, penned a rambling, almost incoherent 18-page letter with 62 footnotes to the FDA. Cephalosporin resistant “human pathogens” aren’t increasing, says the letter, and even if they are, they’re not affecting human health, and even they’re affecting human health, how do you know it’s from the livestock drugs, and even if it’s from the livestock drugs, the FDA has no legal authority to ban cephalosporin. Got that?

Alternately maudlin and accusatory, the letter plays on terrorism fears by calling a cephalosporin ban a “food security issue” affecting “the number of animals available for the food supply.” It also plays on humanitarian sentiments by claiming a ban would impede veterinarians’ ability “to relieve the pain and suffering of animals” as if cephalosporins are pain killers and other drugs aren’t available. (And as if antibiotics are given for animals’ welfare instead of revenue welfare!) But less than a month after the letter was sent, on November 25 the FDA quietly revoked the prohibition. Good hire, AVMA!

It is no surprise that factory farm operators fight to keep their antibiotics says Farm Sanctuary’s Bruce Friedrich. Without them, in their profit-driven “filth chambers,” the animals would simply die.

December 26, 2013 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Economics, Environmentalism | , , , | 1 Comment

AIPAC’s Fed Candidate Stanley Fischer on a Warpath against Iran

Dual-citizen nominee’s lifetime benefit to Israel comes at a heavy cost to America

By Grant F. Smith | Dissident Voice | December 26, 2013

The rushed campaign to insert Stanley Fischer straight from his position leading Israel’s central bank into the number two spot at the Federal Reserve has allowed little time for research into the appointee’s career or for informed public debate about his record. Like the failed recent Obama administration-Israel lobby pincer move to ram approval for U.S. military strikes on Syria through Congress, avoiding such due diligence through velocity may actually be the only means for successful Senate confirmation.

Some of Fischer’s accomplishments – from co-authoring a seminal textbook on macroeconomics to handling economic crisis at the IMF have – not surprisingly – been recalled by his many supporters. Other doings that shed light on Fischer’s controversial attributes – such as overhauling how U.S. aid and trade packages are delivered to Israel – have been mostly ignored. Appointing an openly dual Israeli-American citizen into the most important central bank in the world could be a watershed moment. While the doors of federal government have long swung open for Israel-lobby appointees focusing most – if not all – their energies on advancing the interests of a foreign state, any who were actually Israeli dual citizens have traditionally kept that a closely-guarded secret. Fischer’s long-term boosters, including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), likely want to accustom Americans to openly dual citizens circulating between top roles in the U.S. and Israeli governments. A closer examination of Fischer reveals that average Americans have good reason to oppose his appointment, because his lifelong achievements for Israel have imposed high costs and few benefits to the United States while making peace more difficult to achieve.

Economics

Stanley Fischer was born in Northern Rhodesia in 1943. He studied at London School of Economics and received a PhD in economics from MIT. He taught and chaired the MIT economics department and co-authored a leading macroeconomics textbook with Rudiger Dornbusch. Fischer joined the World Bank in 1988 and became the first deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 1994. He oversaw emergency bailout lending and austerity programs over Mexico, Thailand, Indonesia, Russia, Brazil and Argentina. High flying Citigroup – under the helm of Sanford “Sandy” Weill – recruited Fischer in 2002. There he rose to become vice president with a seven-figure pay package.

Israel

Fischer has not only been an ardent supporter of Israel, his professional efforts began when he took sabbatical leave to Israel in 1972 and 1976-1977. He was a visiting scholar at the Bank of Israel in 1980. More importantly for Israel, Stanley Fischer won an appointment to the Reagan administration’s U.S.-Israel Joint Economic Discussion Group that dealt with Israel’s 1984-1985 economic crisis. In October of 1984, Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres arrived in Washington asking an initially reluctant Reagan Administration for an additional $1.5 billion in U.S. emergency funding – over and above the already-promised aid $5.6 billion aid package.1 The help amounted to U.S. taxpayers funding each Israeli citizen $1,650. Another key component of the plan called for a largely unilateral lowering of U.S. tariffs and trade barriers to Israel, a program initially called “Duty Free Treatment for U.S. Imports from Israel” but later repackaged and sold as America’s first “free trade” agreement. Over time the FTA reversed a previously balanced U.S.-Israel trading relationship for one that has produced a cumulative deficit to the U.S. that passed $100 billion in 2013. Seventy American industry groups opposed to the give-away in 1984 were disenfranchised when Israeli Economics Minister Dan Halpern and AIPAC illegally obtained a classified compendium of their industry, market and trade secrets to use against them in lobbying and public relations. An FBI espionage and theft of government property investigation was quashed before it could narrow in on those inside the U.S. government who delivered the secrets to Halpern.

The U.S.-Israel Joint Economic Discussion Group fundamentally transformed U.S. aid to Israel forever. Before the Reagan administration, most U.S. aid to Israel took the form of loans that had to be repaid with interest. After the input of Fischer’s team, subsequent U.S. aid was delivered in the form of outright grants paid directly from the U.S. Treasury – never to be repaid or conditioned when Israel took actions the U.S. opposed.

Like many of Fischer’s later IMF austerity programs, the Joint Discussion Group initially announced that strings attached to the aid would make it temporary. Secretary of State George Shultz insisted during a 1985 address to AIPAC that “Israel must pull itself out of its present economic trauma …. No one can do it for them … our help will be of little avail if Israel does not take the necessary steps to cut government spending, improve productivity, open up its economy and strengthen the mechanisms of economic policy. Israel and its government must make the hard decisions.”1 Shultz wanted to make the huge American cash transfer conditional on major Israeli economic reforms, but intense AIPAC lobbying in Congress threatened to make the State Department influence irrelevant. In the end, Congress delivered aid without Israeli sacrifices, such as selling off bloated state-owned industries and spending belt-tightening. The proposed privatization of $5 billion in state enterprises threatened too much bureaucratic “turf” and too many jobs, so Israel put them on hold. Fischer apologetically characterized the Likud years as a “wasted opportunity by a government that should have known better.”2 Not until 1996 were Fischer’s proscribed economic remedies adopted by American neoconservative consultants to Benjamin Netanyahu as minor points in the “Clean Break” manifesto for Israeli regional hegemony. They remain among the few unimplemented tasks in a plan that called for military action against Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon.

Despite the absence of any real economic reforms that would take Israel off the American taxpayer dole, Fischer co-wrote a blustering 1986 article for the Wall Street Journal called “Israel Has Made Aid Work” that AIPAC circulated widely as an official memorandum of its achievements. “Israel is the largest single recipient of economic aid from the U.S. This is partly because the economic stability of Israel is uncertain and is important to U.S. national interests. Therefore a report on the progress of the Israeli economy is relevant to policy decisions to be made here.” Fischer never bothered to substantiate his premise, that U.S. national interests were somehow served by the bailout or that any aid given to Israel produced tangible benefits. Instead Fischer delivered a fusillade of dry and all but unreadable statistics about Israel’s temporary economic performance. Issues of long-term importance to most Americans, such as returning U.S. aid to the traditional format of loans to be repaid and the likely impact of the FTA on U.S. jobs went unaddressed by Fischer. Fischer’s core achievement – that the transformation of aid from loans to outright taxpayer give-aways – has been unchanged since 1986. The premises behind this ever-increasing entitlement and one-sided FTA performance are likewise never reexamined by Congress – despite the fact that a majority of polled Americans have come to oppose aid increases to Israel. Fischer’s rare admonitions that Israel be held to account, unlike like the economies he transformed through biting IMF austerity programs, have remained nothing more than lip service.

At the end of 2004 Israel’s U.N. ambassador recruited Fischer to become the head of Israel’s central bank, asking, “Why not be our governor?”3 Fischer accepted and initially provided endless amusement to reporters by insisting on speaking Hebrew during press conferences and refusing to speak English. Initial concerns that Fischer’s global stature and experience would overshadow and chafe the relevant players in Israel proved unfounded as Fischer moved energetically into his new role. AIPAC continued to trumpet Fischer’s accomplishments steering Israel through the global financial crisis, though beneath the surface he was performing far more serious tasks for Israel and its global lobby.

Iran Sanctions

As Bank of Israel governor, Stanley Fischer played a central role in coordinating the implementation of AIPAC-generated sanctions against Iran – ostensibly over its nuclear program. Stuart Levey, the head of the U.S. Treasury Department’s division for “Terrorism and Financial Intelligence,” an office created after heavy AIPAC lobbying, met often with Fischer in Israel alongside the Prime Minister, Foreign Minister and chiefs of both the Mossad and Shin Bet to explore how to “supplement” UN sanctions and end-run Russian and Chinese opposition.4 The Levey-Fischer strategy was “to work outside the context of the Security Council to engage the private sector and let it know about the risks of doing business with Tehran” particularly against European banks that had only partially drawn back their business dealings with Iran. In 2010, Israel dispatched Fischer to meet with Chinese and Russian “counterparts” in order to financially isolate Iran.5

Fischer’s final official duties for the Israeli government included drilling for “big crisis” scenarios – specifically, Fischer told an Israeli television station – the unavoidable financial fallout of a military attack on Iran.6 “We do plans, we do scenarios, we do exercises about how the central [bank] will work in various situations.”7 After years targeting Iran, Fischer became convinced in his final months in Israel that sanctions alone were not enough to collapse its economy. Fischer reluctantly concluded that even as Iranian economic prospects “continue to go down” the country would likely “find a way to continue to keep economic life going.”7

Fischer suddenly resigned and left the Bank of Israel on June 30, before completing his second five-year term.

Israelis into the Fed and then where?

The last time Fischer’s name was floated to lead a major organization was during a rushed Bush administration attempt at damage control. In 2007, the controversial architect of the Iraq invasion and later World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz was engulfed in an ethics scandal over his pay and promotion package for Shaha Ali Riza. In two short years leading the institution, Wolfowitz catalyzed the alienation of most divisions within the bank and the distrust of economics ministries around the world. Fischer, along with Robert Zoellick and Robert Kimmitt and a handful of others, was considered as an emergency replacement while the administration and stakeholders strategized on how to ease Wolfowitz out with a minimum of scandal.8 In the end, Fischer stayed put in Israel.

It came as a surprise to many when the Wall Street Journal and Israel’s Channel 2 news simultaneously reported in early December 2013 that the White House was “close to nominating” Fischer to be appointee Janet Yellen’s second-in-command at the U.S. central bank.9 Media reports initially indicated that Fischer’s candidacy-to-Senate-confirmation would proceed on greased skids – with no Senate debate – taking only a week so that the pair could quickly take over the Fed in January. However, the Senate concluded its 2013 business without taking up the matter. The earliest date the measure could be put up for a vote is January 6, 2014. Even that date might slip since Senator Rand Paul and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell plan to delay the vote unless a long-languishing measure to “Audit the Fed” is also put up for a vote.

This rushed approach has meant relatively little reporting on the deeper implications of having an openly dual Israeli-American citizen a heartbeat away from Fed chairmanship. That is unfortunate, since Israel and its U.S. supporters have many hidden reasons for wanting stronger influence at the Fed that they would likely prefer not to discuss.

That the Fed is a key player in Iran sanctions implementation is certainly no secret. The Fed has been an equal partner in levying hundreds of millions in fines against foreign banks such as R.B.S, Barclays, Standard and Chartered and H.S.B.C. which were charged with violating the Iran sanctions regime. Although AIPAC never mentions it, American exporters have been seriously hurt by sanctions on Iran and the punitive secondary boycott. A coalition representing the US Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, Coalition for American Trade, the National Foreign Trade Council and others urged Congress not to enact sanctions provisions they estimated would cost $25 billion and 210,000 American jobs. (pdf) Keeping such a costly regime in place despite thawing relations and any hard evidence of an Iranian nuclear weaponization program has therefore required immense ongoing efforts by Israel lobbying groups.

An equally important target for Fischer and Israel may be – somewhat ironically given their pro-boycott programs – anti-boycott activities. In the 1970-80s the Federal Reserve played an active “moral suasion” role chastising and corralling U.S. banks away from any activity that Israel construed as compliant with the Arab League economic boycott. An expert with deep experience enforcing the international boycott of Iran, Fischer is likely aware of the many active American grass-roots campaigns aimed at ending the Israeli occupation of Palestinians through targeted boycotts. These boycotts range from efforts to get retailers to stop carrying manufactured goods produced in the occupied West Bank (Ahava and Soda Stream), to overturning contracts with firms providing services in occupied territories (Veolia), to academic boycotts and even efforts to get labor union pensions to divest from Israel bonds. Working more closely with Israel and AIPAC, the Fed could become a vital node for reinterpreting and enforcing old or new laws aimed at outlawing and punishing groups organizing such grass-roots activities by targeting U.S. bank accounts and freezing their financial flows.

Fischer may also want to launch “exercises” to prepare the U.S. financial system for the fallout of Israeli military attacks on Iran. New bills in Congress drafted by AIPAC call not only for additional sanctions aimed at thwarting a fledgling deal on Iran’s nuclear program (favored 2-to-1 by Americans). AIPAC’s bill forces the U.S. to “have Israel’s back” in the event of a unilateral Israeli strike. If Israel has already decided to attack Iran, it would benefit immensely from having Fischer inside the Fed, protecting the financial flows Israel now regards as all but a birthright from its primary global underwriter. Less well-known is the Fed’s authority to authorize foreign bank acquisitions. Any future Israeli campaign to further entwine its banks into the U.S. financial system through acquisitions would likely find a much more welcoming regulator in Fischer.

Whatever the real motivation for Fischer’s sudden, inexplicably rushed insertion into the Federal Reserve, it is also worthwhile to note longstanding Fed policies have correctly considered U.S. citizenship to be preferable for at least one key position, “because of the special nature of the supervisory function, the need to ensure confidentiality of information, and the delegated nature of the function.” Unfortunately, that policy preference covers only Fed bank examiners rather than top leadership – the Federal Reserve Act is silent on the wisdom of installing a revolving door for returning U.S. citizens who took on dual citizenship as a condition of serving a foreign government.

AIPAC, Fischer’s co-author of harmful U.S. economic policies on behalf of Israel, likely sees the Fischer appointment as an important test case to assess American tolerance for openly dual Israeli-American citizens running key U.S. federal agencies. In 2009 former AIPAC research director Martin Indyk, who was at the center of AIPAC’s research division during the FTA push, said that “the US-Israel Free Trade Agreement served as a wedge that opened up the Congress to free trade agreements across the world, including the NAFTA agreement.” Likewise, if Fischer can be “wedged” into the Fed, it begs the question of why former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. and historian Michael Oren could not someday lead the Near East division of the State Department. From AIPAC’s perspective, having qualified Israelis directly run key divisions of the U.S. Treasury such as Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, rather than indirectly through AIPAC-vetted appointees such as Stuart Levey and his hand-picked successor David Cohen, could probably boost the volume of taxpayer give-aways while improving coordination with Israel. Given AIPAC and Israel’s overly large influence on U.S. military initiatives in the region, the lobby may now feel the moment is right for appointing Israeli generals into the Joint Chiefs at the Department of Defense. This, AIPAC may well reason, would be much more convenient than constantly arranging visiting Israeli military and intelligence delegations that increasingly serve as sole briefers (rather than DoD or the American intelligence community) of members of the US Congress.

Soon after word of his Fed nomination spread, Fischer again made uncharacteristically harsh statements about Israel at an NYU Law School forum. As reported in The Jewish Week, Fischer told the audience that Israel is not seeking peace “to the extent that it should” and that it is “divided between those who want to settle the West Bank and those who seek peace.” Fischer – who had every chance to pull U.S. and Israeli financial levers that could have forced Israel out of occupied territories or forced compliance with International law – never did. Adding to suspicion that the statement was simply more empty “lip service” aimed at building popular support among Americans tired of war, was the reporter of the quote – former AIPAC lobbyist Douglas Bloomfield. In 1986 Bloomfield was grilled as a key suspect (pdf) in the 1985 FBI investigation of AIPAC for espionage during the FTA negations

If Americans were ever polled on it – and they never are – the majority who now object to increasing aid to Israel would also likely object to quasi-governmental and governmental positions being staffed by people who – by citizenship or sheer strength of identity politics – are primarily occupied with advancing Israeli interests rather than those of the United States. It is obvious that the real reason AIPAC and its economic luminaries such as Fischer never substantiate any of the advertised benefits the U.S.-Israel “special relationship” delivers to America in return for all of the costs is simple – there simply aren’t any. As greater numbers of Americans become aware that the entire “special relationship” framework is sustained by nothing more than Israel lobby campaign-finance and propaganda networks, the harder the lobby will have to work to forcibly wedge operatives like Fischer into positions where they can thwart growing public opposition – whether it takes the form of boycotts or grassroots opposition to the U.S. fighting more wars for Israel. In the very short term, Americans can only fight such undue Israel lobby influence by again – like during the drive to attack Syria – staging a mass action to demand their senators reject Stanley Fischer’s nomination.

  1. Oberdorfer, Don “Will U.S. Dollars Fix Israel’s Economy?” Washington Post, June 9 1985.
  2. Passell, Peter “Need Zionism Equal Socialism?” New York Times, July 2, 1992.
  3. Maital, Shlomo “Stanley Fischer: the man and the plan,” Jerusalem Report, February 7, 2005.
  4. BBC Monitoring Middle East, March 5, 2007.
  5. Keinon, Herb “Russia won’t back crippling sanctions.” Comment comes day before high-level US-Israel meeting on Iran. Jerusalem Post, February 25, 2010.
  6. Williams, Dan “Iran Stepping Up Its Atomic Efforts,” The Gazette, August 13, 2012.
  7. “Bank of Israel governor: Sanctions won’t collapse Iran economy.” Islamic Republic will likely find way to ‘keep economic life going,’ says Fischer in interview with CNBC, Jerusalem Post, October 24, 2012.
  8. Weisman, Steven R. “Wolfowitz Said to Push for Deal to Let Him Quit,” New York Times, May 17, 2007.
  9. “Fischer set to be tapped as vice chair of US Federal Reserve,” Times of Israel, December 11, 2013.

~

Grant F. Smith is the author of America’s Defense Line: The Justice Department’s Battle to Register the Israel Lobby as Agents of a Foreign Government.

December 26, 2013 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , | 1 Comment

Obama regime tries to stop courts from ruling on constitutionality of warrantless spying

By Noel Brinkerhoff | AllGov | December 24, 2013

Even after months of stories exposing the breadth and depth of National Security Agency (NSA) spying on Americans’ communications, the Obama administration insists federal courts should stop hearing cases challenging the agency’s warrantless surveillance on grounds that they might expose the existence of this spying.

Last week, federal lawyers asked a judge, Jeffrey S. White, in Northern California to dismiss cases that could lead to a ruling on the constitutionality of warrantless surveillance programs authorized during the George W. Bush administration.

The Obama administration contends the cases are just too dangerous to continue if they wind up jeopardizing state secrets.

“Disclosure of this still-classified information regarding the scope and operational details of N.S.A. intelligence activities implicated by plaintiffs’ allegations could be expected to cause extremely grave damage to the national security of the United States,” James Clapper Jr., director of national intelligence, wrote in one of the filings. In June, Clapper was exposed for having lied to Congress about the existence of programs that spied on Americans.

Cindy Cohn, legal director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is representing the plaintiffs in the cases, told The New York Times that the government’s assertion was “very troubling.”

She added that despite the revelations by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, the administration was essentially saying, “We can’t say whether the American people have been spied on by their government.”

The lawsuits in question were brought by Carolyn Jewel and Virginia Shubert, who claim the NSA’s spying violated their constitutional rights.

Jewel is suing on behalf of all AT&T customers, and Shubert is suing on behalf of all Americans.

The NSA has refused to confirm or deny that either plaintiff’s communications were targeted.

“The American people know they’re being surveilled,” Cohn told The Washington Post. “The government is trying to reset the clock in order to avoid an open judicial determination about whether that surveillance is legal.”

To Learn More:

White House Tries to Prevent Judge From Ruling on Surveillance Efforts (by Charlie Savage and David Sanger, New York Times)

U.S. Government Moves To Block Further Litigation In NSA Surveillance Cases (by Marc Ferranti, IDG News Service)

U.S. Reasserts Need To Keep Domestic Surveillance Secret (by Ellen Nakashima, Washington Post)

Jewel v. NSA (Electronic Frontier Foundation)

NSA Phone Data Collection Made No Difference to National Security (by Noel Brinkerhoff and Danny Biederman, AllGov)

Obama Asks U.S. Supreme Court for Stamp of Approval on Warrantless Cell Phone Searches (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)

Should National Intelligence Director Clapper be Charged with a Felony for Lying in Sworn Senate Testimony? (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)

December 26, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite | , | 1 Comment

Drone-spotting: Survival guide informs on new breed of aerial predators

RT | December 25, 2013

A Drone Survival Guide with hints and tips on how to thwart the “robotic birds” has been published on the internet. With over 30,000 drones expected to be flying over the US by 2030, the Guide urges readers to familiarize themselves with the craft.

In light of the growing number of drones, the Guide advises a number of techniques to evade and scramble drones. The document is available online and has been translated into 17 different languages.

“Our ancestors could spot natural predators from far by their silhouettes. Are we equally aware of the predators in the present-day?” writes the Guide.

It contains the silhouettes and measurements of all of the most widely-used drones, from the ‘Killer Bee’ to ‘The Sentinel’ as well as information on where they are currently operational. It goes on to detail ways you can hide from a drone.

“Most drones are equipped with night vision, and/or infrared vision cameras, so-called FLIR sensors. These can see human heat signatures from far away, day or night. However there are ways to hide from drones.”

Among the tactics it advices for eluding the aerial craft are: hiding “in thick forests,” wearing space blankets to confuse heat sensors, not using wireless communication, and the use of mannequins or human-sized dolls as decoys.

“Wait for bad weather. Drones cannot operate in high winds, smoke, rainstorms or heavy weather conditions.”

As well as avoidance strategies to escape from the craft, the document also gives advice on how to hack into a drone’s systems. The Guide gives the assurance that as long as a drone’s communications are not encrypted then they can be hacked. It describes how to intercept and interfere with the workings of a drone and also details a process called “spoofing”.

“Small, portable GPS transmitters can send fake GPS signals and disrupt the Drones navigation systems. This can be used, for example, to steer drones into self-destruction flight paths or even hijack them and land them on a runway.”

The US’ use of drones for surveillance as well as military strikes has drawn global recognition. Last week the Yemeni parliament passed an anti-drone motion because of the civilian lives lost in the US strikes on Al-Qaeda militants in the country. Pakistan has also condemned the US for its use of the craft, decrying the strikes as an affront to its sovereignty.

Moreover, the Obama Administration has come into the firing line for increasing the amount of drones operating in American air space.

December 26, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel Has Been “Singled Out” in the US for a Very Long Time

By Thomas S. Harrington | Common Dreams | December 25, 2013

As has been widely reported, the American Studies Association, the umbrella organization of academics devoted to the study of US literature, history and culture, recently voted to join the movement to boycott Israeli academic institutions.

In the days since that historic vote numerous high-profile US supporters of the Jewish state have vehemently decried the scholarly association’s historic decision.

The first to do so was Lawrence Summers, one-time Harvard president and prime architect–in his as deregulator-in-chief- of the finance industry–of the recession that has robbed millions of Americans of their jobs, savings and homes. He has been followed by numerous such as Leon Wieseltier of the New Republic and by Michael Roth president of Wesleyan University in Connecticut.

Reading these reactions to the democratically determined posture of the ASA one particular argument appears with almost metronomic predictability. It goes something like this:

“Considering all the countries in the world where human rights abuses are rife, why in the world is the ASA so concerned about Israel, the only “democratic state” in the Middle East? Why is this organization along with the millions of others who support the BDS movement “singling Israel out” for such punitive treatment?”

One is left to wonder. Do these gentlemen always treat the intelligence of their audience with such contempt? Do they always assume that those to whom they speak are deeply ill-informed about the structural realities of contemporary politics and incapable of the most basic logical inductions in regard to the nature of Israel’s relationship to the US?

As anyone who has not been living under a rock for the last 50 years knows, Israel has, it is true, long been “singled out” in America…. for extraordinary levels of financial, military and diplomatic support from the United States government.

Indeed it could be said without exaggeration that no small and putatively sovereign nation in modern history has ever been the object of such lavishly favorable treatment from a Great Power. There is nothing remotely comparable to the US indulgent treatment of Israel in Spain’s or Great Britain’s long historical runs as the world’s unquestioned hegemon.

But don’t take my word for it. Listen to the current US President who declared quite famously that the US and Israel must “work in lockstep” within the theater of international politics. Or we could listen to the current Vice-President and current Secretary of State who frequently remind audiences that there is “no daylight” between the US and Israel when it comes to strategic goals in the world.

Is there any historical precedent—within a political establishment that constantly talks about how partisan politics must “stop at the water’s edge”– for the pledge made by house minority leader Eric Cantor to the Israeli Prime Minister in November 2010 that he would “serve as a check” on his own country’s presidential administration should it begin to consider policies that he deemed detrimental to Israel?

Is there another country that could purposely [attempt to] sink a US warship, the USS Liberty in 1967, and never suffer any sanction or recognizable alteration in bilateral relations for doing so?

Is there any other country that could assassinate an unarmed US citizen in an act of piracy on the high seas–Furkan Dogan in 2010–and not only not be called on the carpet for it, but also have the operation–patently illegal under the international laws of the sea–that led directly to the death be met with virtual silence by US State Department spokespersons and the vast majority of the US Congress?

Can we imagine a situation where a person from another country who had become a billionaire working mostly in US industry could go on national TV in his native land and brag openly and without apparent fear of consequence about how he had helped steal nuclear secrets from the United States? This is exactly what happened a month ago with the Israeli film producer Arnon Milchan.

Is there another country (besides perhaps certain members of the so-called Five Eyes Group of English-speaking countries) that has direct access to the raw data from US citizen communications currently being swept up by the NSA?

Can we imagine the US allowing analysts in any of those “other” countries–whose situations everyone is now supposed to critique before ever deigning to critique Israel–to scrutinize virtually without limits and for their own particular purposes the private communications of American citizens?

And these are only a few of the many examples of extraordinary US indulgence of Israel that could be adduced here.

No, for at least 46 years and arguably more, the US-Israel relationship has not been “normal” at all, which is to say, in any way comparable to any other bilateral relationship (with the possible exceptions of those it maintains with the UK and Canada) maintained by the US.

Summers, and the small army of people echoing his message on letters-to-the-editor sections around the country know this quite well.

So why are they pretending that is not the case, and that, correspondingly, any systematic critique of Israeli behavior must first pass the test of comparability to that of various and sundry countries around the world?

Because, they are interested in doing what many people do when they find themselves with a largely untenable long-term position: try to steer the conversation from going where they don’t want it to go.

And where is that?

Away from the matter of Israeli behavior, and more specifically, how the fundamental legal design and international comportment of the Israeli state corresponds (or not) to the democratic values most Americans claim to believe in.

If you can ball people up talking about the issue of the Israeli human rights record in relationship to other places that have nothing remotely approaching the privileged, 51st State treatment accorded to Israel–and thus clearly unable to be compared to it in any meaningful way–you can avoid having people talk about things like the following.

  • That, despite the New York Times’s and much of the mainstream media’s attempts to convince Americans of the contrary, the only uninspected, which is to say, completely rogue and unaccountable nuclear program in the Middle East belongs to Israel. And it is not a small one, having, according to most reports, around 200 warheads.Therefore, the only country really capable of “wiping” some other country “off the map” or coercing it to obeisance through nuclear threat in the eastern Mediterranean, the Mashriq and Iran is Israel.

    And no amount of talk (are you picking up on the pattern of argumentation yet?) about Iran’s completely non-existent nuclear bomb program–the assessment of the Directorate of National Intelligence of the US, not mine–can change this fact.

  • That Israel is an ethno-state, which is to say, a place where one must possess certain blood lines to accede to the fullest possible level of citizenship. Those who do not meet these requirements can live there, but in a decidedly second-class status.Israel is, of course, not alone among nations in offering citizenship on the basis of blood rights or jus sanguinis.

    Where it does stand out in the international context, however, is in the way it does this while simultaneously denying full civic rights to millions of its native inhabitants. This means that a Jew from the USA or Russia can move to Israel and be granted that highest level of citizenship almost instantaneously. This, while the Palestinian whose family has lived in the territory now controlled by Israel for centuries is forced to inhabit a relative civic limbo in the same place, with all that that entails in terms of the potentially capricious encroachments of the state in his or her life.

    As part of this approach to citizenship Israel forcibly prevents its already second-class but quite native Arab citizens from living as united families within the borders of Israel after marrying fellow Palestinians from the occupied territories or any other place in the world.

    So pervasive is the emphasis on ethnic belonging that security officials at Ben-Gurion Airport blithely slot passengers into differing security protocols–and here I speak from personal experience—according to how they answer the following thinly veiled question regarding one’s pertinence to the most legally favored group: “Are you an Israeli or do you have family in Israel?

    I don’t think that most Americans I know would associate this model of state and these behaviors (and this is a very small sample) with any system they would be happy or proud to live in or being what they understand to be truly democratic.

    And no army of spinmeisters repeating the mantra that “Israel is the only Democracy in the Middle East” can change this salient fact.

  • That Israel has a large and growing population of religious citizens that is not only every bit as intolerant and backward-looking as the worst Muslim fanatics in Arab countries or the worst Christian fundamentalists in the US, but that has a considerably larger control over the political institutions of the country than is the case here or, for that matter, in the great majority of Islamic countries.Yet, this is hardly ever talked about in our press or by self appointed spokesmen for Israel such as those mentioned above. Rather, Israel’s most fervent supporters in the media constantly tell us (there’s that pattern argumentation again) about all those terrible Arabs— that want to impose sharia law on the world. Nary a word about how the haredim are encroaching daily upon the democratic freedoms of secular Israelis.
  • That the current President of Israel, apparently unaware that he was on camera, openly bragged in 2001 about his ability to manipulate the very same Americans that, in no small measure, have funded his political career and generally support his government’s efforts at ethnic cleansing (that is my understanding of what it is called in other parts of the world when you take over lands by force, displace the autochthonous inhabitants and place settlers of a different ethnic or national background on the seized territory) as well how he actively undermined the Oslo peace accords to which his government was a signatory and were brokered by the US.All this from a man, and from there, a government apparatus, that constantly tells the US and the world (there’s that pattern or argumentation once again) that there is “no partner for peace” on the Palestinian side, no person of demonstrable good will ready to talk in serious and reasonable terms about the future of the region.

What Summers and those that echo his words want most of all is to avoid an honest and wide-ranging conversation among Americans about how, and to what degree (if at all), our joined-at-the-hip relationship with Israel benefits the average citizen of this country.

If they were really the great friends of Israel they claim to be, they would repeatedly, indeed doggedly, say to their friends living in the Jewish state, as well as those living here for whom it is a prime object interest, what an old Jesuit, channeling the Gospel of Luke, once told me at the height of my youthful self-absorption:

“To whom much is given, much is expected”.

This is essentially what the ASA is doing.

It is a shame that instead of using their well-placed voices to second the call to have Israel live more fully within the parameters of its publicly proclaimed moral codes (you know, the only “democracy” in the Middle East) such prominent opinion leaders insist on throwing rhetorical smoke bombs designed to obscure most important issues at play in the country’s present-day drama.

December 26, 2013 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Israel doesn’t do retaliation, just more of the same

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By Ibrahim Hewitt | MEMO | December 25, 2013

Once again we hear that Israel has bombed the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip “in retaliation” for something that they’ve done against Israelis. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that his country will “respond”. Many people would agree that a person in his position has a duty to protect his citizens. Certainly, those in the White House and Downing Street do, which is why Israel gets away with murder, quite literally. It’s all down to legitimate self-defence; or so we are led to believe.

What, though, is the reality? Why is that right of self-defence never extended to the people of Palestine? After all, it is their land which is under occupation; it is their land which is being stolen and colonised; it is their land from which they are being excluded in a decades-long act of ethnic cleansing that its proponents hope will never end.

If retaliation and responses are the effects, then the occupation and colonisation of Palestine have to be the causes. There is no other way to look at the asymmetric conflict in the Holy Land. Despite what Israel and its apologists would have us believe, this is not a clash of equals, nor is it a case of a defenceless state struggling for its very existence in the face of overwhelming odds. It is, in fact, a nuclear-armed state, backed by the word’s superpowers and armed to the teeth with conventional weapons, most of them self-produced (and sold to the world for a staggering $7 billion a year boost to Israel’s economy), occupying, colonising and threatening a largely civilian population armed, at best, with AK47s and other small arms.

Israel is an occupying power; its occupation of somebody else’s land is the cause, and the resistance to the occupation by the Palestinians is the very legitimate effect; Israel doesn’t do retaliation, it is merely continuing to do what it has done for sixty-five years and counting, killing Palestinians and taking their land. That is the ugly reality of the situation. It is all very well for Netanyahu to say that his country will “respond” to acts of resistance by the Palestinians, but it is much more valid and legitimate for Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh to say that action from Gaza is his people’s response to Israel’s brutal military occupation. That is a more accurate narrative for us to follow and accept.

Should anyone still doubt this, it is worth looking to history for further confirmation. It is reasonable, I think, to start not with Theodor Herzl’s The Jewish State, published in 1896, as he did not advocate a state in Palestine, but with the infamous Balfour Declaration of 1917. This letter sent from the then British Foreign Secretary, Arthur James Balfour, to Zionist leader Lord Rothschild was a “declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to and approved by the Cabinet”. The issue was never discussed and approved by parliament and it has no legal status, then or now. Balfour told Rothschild that the British government “view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people… it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine…” It was written a month before the British army entered Jerusalem during the First World War and does not mention a state, just a “national home”. Such ambiguity was quite possibly deliberate. In any case, it is interesting that the Palestinians are described by what they are not (“non-Jewish”) rather than what they are; a typically-demeaning imperialist tactic to describe the Other as not being of Us.

In 1919, the US-established King-Crane Commission determined that “a national home for the Jewish people is not equivalent to making Palestine into a Jewish State; nor can the erection of such a Jewish State be accomplished without the gravest trespass upon the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.” That has to be one of the most accurate of political prophecies of all time.

A year later, on 1 July 1920, the first British High Commissioner for Palestine, Sir Herbert Samuel, a Jew openly sympathetic to the Zionist cause, read a message from King George “to the people of Palestine”. In it, the king assured the Palestinians that despite the existence of the Balfour Declaration and “measures” to be taken to put it into practice, such measures “will not in any way affect the civil or religious rights or diminish the prosperity of the general population of Palestine”.

Samuel went on to say, in 1921, that the British government would never consent to a policy which takes Palestinian-owned land and gives it to “strangers”. HM Government, he insisted, “would never impose upon [the people of Palestine] a policy which that people had reason to think was contrary to their religious, their political and their economic interests.”

The Zionists had other ideas and the result is that there is now a state in Palestine whose founders declared it to be a “Jewish State” in 1948 and which insists that the Palestinians, upon whose land the state was built, recognise it as such as a precursor to any meaningful peace agreement. What will happen to the 20 per cent of Israeli citizens who are Palestinians in such a “Jewish State” has never been explained; some on the Israeli right want to expel them to Jordan, completing the ethnic cleansing started in 1948. Whatever happens, they certainly won’t be treated with justice as Israeli apartheid sinks its roots ever deeper in occupied Palestine.

Cause and effect; action and reaction; decide for yourself: whose land was taken from them and given to another people? Whose land has been colonised? Whose land is being stolen from them on a daily basis? Who are the aggressors and who are more justified in asserting their right of self-defence; Israelis or Palestinians?

By any reasonable legal and moral yardstick, it is the Palestinians who are responding to Israeli aggression; Israel cannot claim with any justification whatsoever that when it bombs an overcrowded refugee camp, as it did this week, and kills Palestinians, it is merely “retaliating” for something done by Palestinians resisting the occupation. Israel doesn’t do retaliation, it never has. It just does more of the same and what it has been doing for more than 65 years: taking Palestinian land and lives through violent and illegal means. The sooner that journalists and politicians acknowledge this and start to deal with the conflict in a fair and balanced way the sooner that a just and lasting peace may be possible.

Until then, we will no doubt continue to see Israel’s aggressive and expansionist colonialism dressed-up as the acts of a democratic state desperate for peace with its unreasonable neighbours. Nothing could be further from the truth.

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December 26, 2013 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Why Do So Many Jews Hate Black People?

By Alcibiades Bilzerian | February 18, 2012

Dov Lior, a popular chief rabbi in Israel, recently called Obama a Kushi, which is Israel’s equivalent to nig*er. Most Americans are completely unaware of the general contempt that many Jewish people have towards blacks, as Max Blumenthal found out when he interviewed dozens of young people in Israel who reiterated the Rabbi’s sentiments about Obama. Blumenthal’s video titled Feeling the Hate in Israel was removed from YouTube, Vimeo, and the Huffington Post shortly after going viral.

In order to understand the nature of this hatred we need to understand the historical context, which dates back hundreds of years. Although Jews were just a tiny percentage of the European population, they dominated the African slave trade. Jewish historians were so proud of this accomplishment that they bragged endlessly about their involvement and dominance of the industry in their historical texts. In Jews and Judaism in the United States: A Documentary History, prominent Jewish Historian Marc Raphael wrote “Jewish merchants played a major role in the slave trade. In fact, in all the American colonies, whether French, British, or Dutch, Jewish merchants frequently dominated. This was no less true on the North American mainland, where during the eighteenth century Jews participated in the triangular slave trade that brought slaves from Africa to the West Indies and there exchanged them for molasses….”

Jewish historical records show that Jewish involvement in the North American slave trade was so dominant that slave posts were frequently closed on Jewish holidays. Arnold Wiznitzer, a Jewish historian, wrote, “the buyers who appeared at the auctions were almost always Jews, and because of their lack of competitors they could buy slaves at low prices. If it happened that the date of such an auction fell on a Jewish holiday the auction had to be postponed” In The United States Jewry 1776-1985 Jacob Marcus wrote, “all through the eighteenth century, into the early nineteenth century, Jews in the North were to own black servants. In 1820 over 75% of all Jewish families in Charleston, Richmond, and Savannah owned slaves. Almost 40% of all Jewish householders in the United States owned one slave or more.” In the South, which had a much higher ratio of slave ownership than the North, only 5% of white people owned slaves.

White Europeans would have ended the morally corrupt practice of slavery in North America much sooner if it weren’t for powerful Jewish businessmen lobbying to keep their profitable industry alive. As Rabbi and historian, Bertram Korn said, “many Southern Jews believed slavery to be indispensable to their happiness and security. “The road to social and economic advancement and acceptance [for the Jews] was made easier by the institution of slavery.”

The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan discovered these facts and published the book: The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, which quotes Jewish historical records such as the aforementioned to prove the case. The Anti-Defamation League, mainstream media, and many other Jewish American organizations slandered Farrakhan for publishing the book, even calling him anti-Semitic for merely assembling a collection of Jewish historical records.

This racism has not abated in recent times unfortunately. For example, when black African Jews returned to Israel in 1969 under the Right of Return Act, the government ruled that they were not real Jews and therefore did not qualify for citizenship or any legal status. The black Hebrews were also denied state benefits and work permits. It wasn’t until 2003 that black Hebrews were granted permanent residency, but not the automatic citizenship granted to all other races returning on the exact same provision. If it wasn’t for a group of Americans who shamed the Israeli government into granting black African Jews some legal status, they would probably never have received it. To this day black Jews are still not accepted by the Jewish community in Israel. Racial slurs, insults, and discrimination in housing rentals are commonplace. This treatment has reached such an unbearable level that Ethiopan Jews have taken to the streets to protest. In response, Sofa Landver, the Israeli Immigrant Absorption Minister, smugly replied that they should be grateful for all that Israel has done for them. This is reminiscent of white supremacist rhetoric in the America, which claims that Africans should be grateful their ancestors were brought to America. Israel was clearly created under the premise of future safety for all Jews, not just white European Jews. Therefore, black African Jews should have the same rights and entitlements to Israel as any other Jews.

The Israeli government has even been caught attempting to sterilize Ehtiopan Jews by giving them the controversial birth control, Depo-Provera, without warning them of the potential side effects. Ethiopian Jews are less than 1% of Israel’s population, but yet account for 60% of the women on Depo-Provera. The side effects are quite severe, including pain in the hands and back, heavy bleeding, and in some cases permanent sterilization. Around 10% of the women taking this drug develop substantial side effects. In 2004, the FDA warned against the dangers of the drugs. Unfortunately, many Ethiopan Jews fear being deported if they speak up about these types of human rights abuses.

In an effort to “preserve the Jewish character of the country,” Israel now plans on deporting immigrant workers and their children; even in cases where the children were born in Israel, speak Hebrew, and have spent their entire lives as Israeli residents. In 2012, massive riots broke out in Israel protesting the presence of African refugees. The crime rates of African refugees were half the rate of the Jewish population in Israel, yet the local population claimed to live in fear of the black immigrants. A member of the Jewish Knesset (Parliament) name Miri Regev said that the Africans are “a cancer in the body.”  The Jewish Interior Minister said Israel, “belongs to the white man.” A survey of Jewish Israelis by the Israeli Democracy Institute found that a majority of Israelis agreed with Mr. Regev, and 33% supported anti-African violence against the refugees.

Israeli racism is so great that when the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) took a poll in 2007 they found that 66% of Israeli teens believe Arabs are less intelligent, uncultured, and violent. Fifty percent of the Israelis taking the poll said they would not share an apartment with an Arab, befriend an Arab or let their kids befriend Arabs, or even let Arabs into their homes. A poll taken by the ACRI in 2008 found that these trends were increasing. Another poll taken in 2007 by the Center Against Racism found that 75% of Israeli Jews did not approve of Jews living in the same apartment buildings as Arabs, and that more than 50% of Jews would not have an Arab boss and thought that marrying an Arab was tantamount to national treason. Fifty percent of Israelis also thought Arabs should not be allowed in the same entertainment sites and 40% wanted Arab’s voting rights rescinded. Yuval Diskin, the former head of the Israeli Security Agency (Shin Bet), recently admitted that Israel has become “more and more racist.”

Now imagine how much higher those percentages would have been if they were asked about black people. In Israel, it is against the law for a gentile to marry a Jew, which is presumably directed at preventing black immigrants and Arabs from marrying white Jews. Amnesty International has condemned their marriage policy as discriminatory.

Sheldon Adelson’s newspaper, Israel Hayom, recently published a column which stated, “It is not uncommon to see 13 or 14-year-old girls dating members of ethnic minorities…. You see them sitting together on street benches and out on the town. Dating a member of an ethnic minority no longer carries a stigma. They come along with money, a car, buying her things that her parents can’t give her, spoiling her. There are a million stories like this around here.” There are enough statistics on exploitation, seduction and coercion of young girls, but when it comes to ‘members of ethnic minorities’ – shhh! Don’t awaken the beast, or you might be considered a racist. The words ‘danger of assimilation’ are also kept out of our clean and enlightened lexicon.”

In a 2012 ynet article, a Jewish journalist claimed that she spent 15 of the most terrifying minutes of her life because lots of African refugees were around. She said that Tel Aviv was turning into the Harlem of the 80′s, and therefore black people should be deported from Israel.

In 2010, the leader of the Sephardic community and founder of the Shas party, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, stated that the sole purpose of non-Jews was to serve Jews. He also said in a television interview that “gentiles need to die… goyim have no place in this world.” Many of the top Israeli Rabbis issued a religious edict saying, “a thousand non-Jewish lives are not worth a Jew’s fingernail.”

Even though Israel takes a great deal of money from US in terms of direct foreign aid, “scrapped” military equipment that is really worth billions, one-sided contracts, and even charitable donations from Jews and Christians, according to Official Direct Assistance (ODA) Israel is one of the stingiest developed countries in the world. Israel is one of the richest countries on the planet with more than 10,000 millionaires, but gives nearly 10 times less than the world average and gives the 4th least of any developed nation per capita, only barely beating out much poorer countries like Poland, Hungary, and Turkey. So while Israel took in $3 billion from America in direct aid and tens of billions in the other aid measures mentioned above, they only gave $141 million in foreign aid to nations in need of assistance in 2010. While Bill Gates and Warren Buffet were pledging billions to Africa, the 40% of American billionaires who are Jewish, focused their charitable contributions on Jewish causes, which arguably need the money the least.

Unfortunately, Jewish Americans seem to have mimicked their Israeli counterparts’ prejudice. In 1993, San Francisco newspapers broke a story that the Jewish Anti-Defamation League, which has close ties to Israel, was supporting South African apartheid by paying police officers for confidential information, illegally wire-tapping phones, and even dumpster diving to acquire private information on anti-apartheid activists. The Anti-Defamation League later sold the information to the South African government.

The American media, which is predominately controlled by Jewish Americans (see this article for the names, pictures and titles, to prove this fact), spends a ridiculous amount of airtime focusing on racial strife in America in order to cause a divide between blacks and whites. The truth of the matter is that there is very little inequality between whites and blacks when Jewish people are subtracted from the white column. Although Jewish people represent only 2% of the American population, they comprise 33% of the Supreme Court, 12-35% of the Ivy League student population and nearly 80% of the top administrative positions, 64% of the Federal Reserve including the top two spots, 13% of the Senate, 6.5% of the House of Representatives, and the top positions of the IRS and SEC. In addition, 10.25% of America’s millionaires, 36% of America’s billionaires, and 45% of Forbes’ 40 richest Americans are Jewish. Given these figures, it is statistically impossible for white gentiles to be over-represented in many of these positions. What is really taking place is that Jewish tribalism and nepotism keeps black people from positions of power and influence, but uses their media to blame the inequality on white racism.

The American media also spends vast amounts of airtime on Israel and Middle East, but little to no airtime on Africa, even though America has just as much strategic and humanitarian interest in the continent. America gets more oil from Nigeria than Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Libya, and Iran combined. The media has fooled the American people into believing that they get their oil from the Middle East so they continually intercede on Israel’s behalf. The reality is that America produces half of its own oil and gets the vast majority of the rest from Canada, Mexico, Venezuela, and Nigeria. And given the history, Americans certainly owe much more to Africa than to Israel and the greater Middle East. Miraculously the Jewish controlled media ignored the Rwandan genocide, which killed nearly one million Africans; most likely because they didn’t care about the black people they once enslaved and didn’t want to take away from the sympathy of the Jewish holocaust. There are dozens of Jewish lobbies in America that have secured vast aid to the Middle East, but there are no Jewish lobbies for black African countries.

Even to this day the Jewish community is yet to apologize or acknowledge any role in the African slave trade. In fact, they even deny it, and crucify anyone who discusses it, which is similar one would think to holocaust denial. The denial of Jewish involvement in the slave trade, considering all the Jewish documentation, is equally as preposterous as denying the Jewish holocaust.

Update: In 2012, Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai deported hundreds of black families from Israel to Sudan for not being Jewish, despite universal opposition from human rights groups. Many of the deported children had been born and raised in Israel and spoke fluent Hebrew. The Israeli government decided not to ship the deportees’ belongings with them back to Sudan, and instead left the refugees’ possessions to sit around in a warehouse for months while Israeli immigration officials were reported to have stolen what few valuable possessions were contained within. A week after the deportation, many of the refugee children began to die due to disease, in large part because their medicine was held back with their luggage in Israel.

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December 26, 2013 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Supremacism, Timeless or most popular | , , , | 20 Comments