911-War Promises
Millions of people believe that evidence proves that Western intelligence services organized the hideous attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September 2001. Even the mainstream media have stopped defending the official version and now prefer to ignore the issue altogether.
Distrust in Western governments grows as the wars of aggression waged by the USA and NATO continue to be justified with these “false flag” operations. Ever harsher domestic laws are being passed to crush all outrage and resistance in Western populations; at the end of the day they aim to unleash the German military on German civilians, instead of allowing morality and ethics to flow into day-by-day policy-making.
That morality and ethics long ago stopped playing a part in political decision-making is shown by the use of internationally outlawed weapons in all the wars NATO has started. At best, one has heard of “depleted uranium” after seeing the film “Deadly Dust” by award-winning Frieder Wagner. But even that film is systemically blocked out and banished, although, or perhaps because, it shows the horrific consequences of the use of these uranium weapons.
Among those aghast at the actions of NATO and the complicity of Germany in such internationally illegal wars of aggression is Christoph Hörstel, for many years foreign correspondent and editorial head of the German public broadcasting network ARD. Of like mind is Giullietto Chiesa, a Member of the European Parliament, who slams the ignorance and disinterest of most of his fellow Members.
What they don’t know is explained in the film “War promises” by insiders and whistleblowers. Annie Machon was a spy with the British MI5 and reports on false flag operations, as do Andreas von Bülow and Jürgen Elsässer, who possess enormous insider knowledge from their membership of the parliamentary committee supervising the secret services, and want to bring it to the public.
Eight years after 9/11 millions of people have linked up through the Internet to jointly rebel against this criminal system. What was still dismissed as a wild conspiracy theory until just a few month ago is now regarded as proven, raising the question how we, the people, handle this situation, in which those who govern us have on their minds anything but our well-being.
Making Friends with Israel
By Gilad Atzmon
December 12, 2009
In case you want to learn how to appeal to the Jews, British diplomat Matthew Gould gives a free lesson. Haaretz reported yesterday that Gould, the newly appointed British Ambassador to Israel, wasn’t too connected to his Jewish roots until he served in Tehran. Seemingly, now he knows where he belongs.
“Being posted in Iran made me go to shul more regularly”, says the new Ambassador. “I did it to reach out to the Jewish community in Iran and to show that Western embassies were watching out for its welfare,” Gould explains. “I was determined to go to shul to show both the Jewish community and the Iranian authorities that I was Jewish and not embarrassed of it.”
Gould says that his two-year stint through 2005 in Tehran as deputy head of mission has given him “a real expertise in an issue of profound security importance to Israel.”
The religious process that began in Tehran continued in Britain. “I got more active [with Judaism] and over the last couple of years I’ve spent a lot more time and a lot more thought on my Jewish identity and what it means to be Jewish,” says Gould.
Haaretz reports that Gould and his wife go to shul every week at the West London Synagogue. As a child, Gould recalls going to Middlesex New Synagogue in Harrow with his parents, who still live in London as “proud but inactive” members of the Jewish community.
In Israel, Gould says he and his wife “will keep a Jewish household,” and “bring up their kids in the Jewish tradition, when those children are born.” Gould knows some parts of Israel, from his visits there as a child, when he would occasionally go to the Liberal Movement’s Kadima summer camps. He also has family – second and third cousins – in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. What can we say, he is not only a Jew but a product of a typical Zionist upbringing.
Considering Israel’s crimes against humanity in general and Palestinians in particular, one would expect Britain to send an impartial ambassador to the Jewish state. Judeo centric by admission and Zionist by education, Gould is certainly not the man for the job. As Gould himself admits, “the fact that I’m Jewish means I will come with a particular insight and sympathy and understanding, because the story of my family is in certain respects the story of the people of the State of Israel.”
A month ago British TV Channel 4 broadcasted an exposè of the UK Jewish Lobby. It revealed also that 50% of MPs in the shadow cabinet are Conservative Friends of Israel members. The Jews in Britain or at least their rich are drifting away from the Labour party. They gamble on the Tories. Consequently David Miliband, the foreign minister is doing whatever he can to bring the Jewish fund raisers back home to his Labour party.
At the end of October Miliband accused the Conservative Party over their new alliance with the far right in Europe and with a Polish Politician with an Antisemitic past. Some prominent British Jews were not impressed. They knew exactly what Miliband was up to, they realised that Miliband, himself a Jew, was attempting to destabilize the Jewish new alliance with the Conservatives.
Fatigue is not exactly one of Miliband’s characteristics. As we learn from Haaretz, he is now sending the Jewish State a kosher ambassador, one who ‘goes to the Shul every Sabbath’, one who vows to keep a “Jewish household”. One who understands and is ‘sensitive to Israeli security matters’.
Ambassador Gould maintains that he is going as “the British ambassador, to pursue British policies and advance British interests.” So here are two simple questions to the new British Ambassador to Israel. How are you going to act when the British interests and the Jewish ones oppose each other? How will you act when you notice a clear discrepancy between Israeli actions and humanism?
Experts voice doubt about efficacy of Tamiflu
Press TV – December 9, 2009 13:43:15 GMT
While Tamiflu has been used to ward off swine flu and its complications in the current pandemic, an expert panel has voiced doubts about its efficacy.
The use of the antiviral drug, also known as oseltamivir, has increased by a huge number since the onset of the A/H1N1 flu in April, as the drug is considered as the most effective treatment against the flu.
According to a study published in the British Medical Journal, there is no clear evidence regarding the efficacy of Tamiflu in preventing swine flu complications such as pneumonia in healthy individuals.
A review of published studies revealed that Tamiflu reduces flu symptoms in less than a day; it, however, has no dramatic influence on reducing the complications of the flu.
“We now conclude there is insufficient evidence to describe the effects of Tamiflu on complications of influenza or the drug’s toxicity,” said lead researcher Tom Jefferson.
“Governments around the world have spent billions of pounds on a drug that the scientific community now finds itself unable to judge,” said BMJ’s editor-in-chief Fiona Godlee.
Roche, the manufacturer of the drug, stressed that there are sufficient studies reporting the benefits of Tamiflu in protecting individuals against the fatal swine flu.
“We fully stand behind the robustness of the data and the integrity of that data, particularly the efficacy and safety of Tamiflu, the conduct of our clinical studies and the publication process,” said David Reddy, Roche’s pandemic taskforce leader.
Propaganda disguised as academic inquiry at the University of Illinois
David Green, The Electronic Intifada, 4 December 2009
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| Former University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Chancellor Richard Herman |
Chancellor Richard Herman of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign recently resigned due to his cooperation with political influence-peddlers seeking to gain admission for less qualified but privileged applicants. But Herman also participated in a more acceptable form of political corruption — publicly displayed with the invocation of high principle — in his cooperation with the Israel lobby in opposition to the British boycott of Israeli academics, and in the funding of the Israel Studies Project at the Urbana campus.
The Israel Studies Project, jointly funded since 2005 by the chancellor’s office and the Jewish United Fund of Metropolitan Chicago, has had nothing to do with the serious study of Israel, and everything to do with promoting support for its criminal political behavior. Its guests, in residence for two weeks during the fall or spring of each year, have included propagandists Yossi Klein Halevi and Hillel Halkin; and, most recently, writer and talk show host Irit Linur, described below. There have been no invitations to Israeli dissidents, and none to Palestinian citizens of Israel. The unquestioned assumption that the study of Israel excludes the voices of 20 percent of its citizens is consistent with the state-sponsored racism of the Israel Studies Project, implicit and explicit.
Under what ethical code should a partisan political interest group (no less a venal one) be permitted to buy its own program at a public university with which to promote its agenda?
A 26 July 2007 letter to Herman captures the flavor of Herman’s relationship with the Israel lobby. It was signed by Jay Tcath, Executive Director of the Jewish Community Relations Council, and Joel Schwitzer, Executive Director of Hillel at the Urbana Campus, with a copy to Michael Kotzin, Executive Vice President of Jewish United Fund and the promoter with Herman of the Israel Studies Project. In it they profusely thanked Herman for his opposition to the academic boycott promoted by the UK’s University and College Union, and for declaring himself, “in effect, an Israeli academic.” They also thanked him for exploring a resumption of study abroad programs between the University of Illinois and Israel.
After a visit to Israel sponsored by the American Jewish Committee’s Project Interchange, Herman stated in a letter published on 16 August 2007 in the St. Louis Post Dispatch that the Israel Studies Project “promotes and supports the academic study of Jewish culture and society in the spirit of free and open inquiry.” He referred both to Israeli and Palestinian higher education in asserting that “change will only come through collaborations.”
Referring to the UK University and College Union boycott, Herman concluded: “The irony is hardly lost on me.”
Indeed there is abundant irony not to be lost in considering the Israel Studies Project in light of Herman’s effort to occupy the high moral ground — even barring the admissions scandal that was his downfall. Needless to say, Herman never lifted a finger during his tenure to either criticize any Israeli action, or to ensure that Palestinian perspectives be represented on campus. He said nothing in response to Israel’s invasion of Gaza last winter nor has he criticized Israel’s blatant and repeated violations of the right of Palestinians to an education and academic freedom.
Instead, the Israel Studies Project and Herman’s advocacy for it point to the ironies of racism and corruption rather than the principles of academic freedom. Its purpose is the promotion of Israeli policies (as well as American support for those policies) and the sanitization of Israeli culture. Appropriately, Israeli writer Irit Linur spoke about “Making TV Drama in Israel” on 17 November.
Linur has a well-known political reputation in Israel. In 2002, Linur used her radio program to call for a boycott of Israel’s Haaretz newspaper “until it fires journalists Amira Hass and Gideon Levy.” Hass and Levy are the most courageous and incisive Jewish Israeli journalists critical of the Israeli occupation, and it is therefore inconceivable that either would receive an invitation from the Israel Studies Project, as did the (ironically) boycott-advocating Linur.
Earlier this year, after the organization Breaking the Silence in Israel published soldier testimonies about Israeli military crimes in Gaza, the Israeli director of the New Israel Fund released a statement critical of Linur and her co-host for threats to “break the bones” of Breaking the Silence. Israeli commentator Itay Ziv subsequently wrote in the local Tel Aviv paper Ha’Ir: “Irit Linur is a dangerous person. She behaves on her program like a quick thinking intellectual to give the impression of intellectual integrity. She gives violence an aesthetic wrapping.”
During Israel’s 2006 invasion of Lebanon, Keshev, the Center for the Protection of Democracy in Israel, accused Linur of “racist messages and comments, which often turn into an all-out incitement, urging the killing of innocent civilians.” They quote Linur: “I say, let us bomb Ramallah [the demonstrators there] … and before [Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah] fires a stray rocket at them, we can already declare them martyrs. They are the enemy.”
Prior to Linur’s presentation, members of the Urbana chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine distributed a flier based on Keshev’s documentation of Linur’s incitements to violence. In its 18 November story on the event, the student newspaper emphasized these complaints. However, any such discussion was absent from the talk itself, which centered on Linur’s anecdotal tales of TV writing in Israel.
The Israel Studies Project is administered by the Program for Jewish Culture and Society (PJCS). The Director and Assistant Director of the PJCS expressed their obliviousness to Linur’s political background, as well as to the existence of Students for Justice in Palestine on campus to the Daily Illini.
In sharp contrast, on 10 November, the distinguished Israeli historian Ilan Pappe spoke to a packed hall of 250 to 300 at Illinois State University in Normal (50 miles west of Urbana) on “Palestine: The Historical Lessons for Our Time.” In 45 minutes, Pappe summarized what has been his life’s work, research into the Zionist movement’s and Israel’s colonization of Palestine, resulting in the expulsion of the Palestinian people. Pappe’s The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine is a seminal work. But as a dissident, he lives and works in the United Kingdom rather than Israel, where severe pressure is placed on academics who challenge Israel’s policies — by people like Irit Linur. One must finally acknowledge that as the ironies mount, the pattern of blatant hypocrisy is revealed.
Yet the topic of the Linur event indicates that even for the Israel Studies Project, pro-Israeli political rhetoric/propaganda is perhaps no longer routinely acceptable in official venues on the Urbana campus. It is to be hoped that in the near future, cultural sanitization will give way to a serious consideration of historical and political truths.
David Green is a 59-year-old Jewish-American who lives in Champaign, Illinois, and works for the University of Illinois. He has been writing about Israel/Palestine for the past 12 years. He can be reached at davegreen84 A T yahoo D O T com.
DuPont Accused of Massive Water Pollution
December 2, 2009
By SONYA ANGELICA DIEHN
COLUMBUS, Ohio (CN) – DuPont has been covering up and refusing to take responsibility for its toxic pollution of the Ohio River for a quarter of a century, and the poisons it uses to make Teflon stay in the environment for 2,000 years, a nonprofit water association claims in Federal Court.
The Little Hocking Water Association says that air and water emissions of perflourinated compounds from DuPont’s Washington Works Plant have been polluting its wellfields since 1984.
These chemicals, which DuPont uses to make Teflon products, stay in the environment for up to 2,000 years, and accumulate in the tissue of living things, causing developmental and immunological problems, the water group says.
It claims at least four wells on 45 acres along the Ohio River were polluted by DuPont’s disposal of hazardous waste in landfills, injection wells and burn pits.
The water association claims that DuPont hid the threats of perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, despite knowing of its risks – including the birth of deformed babies to its employees in 1981.
DuPont allegedly acknowledged the contamination by buying out one local water supplier, but refused to extend such an offer to Little Hocking. DuPont for many years also refused to allow the single laboratory with the ability to test for such substances to do so, the group says.
Little Hocking claims that in 1991 DuPont set a “community exposure guideline” for the chemical, a liver toxin, at 1 part per billion. Sampling from the water association’s wellfields in 2001 showed levels of 7.69 ppb, the complaint states. Current tests put that figure as high as 78 ppb.
A March 2009 level of .4 ppb, set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, is not enough to protect the water association’s 12,000 consumers, it says, due to their chronic exposure and potential “synergistic” effects with other perflourinated compounds in the water.
The group cites a 2003 class action in which the court determined that DuPont’s release was active and intentional. Little Hocking says that an EPA consent order does not adequately protect its customers.
The Water Association says it has suffered financial hardship since 2001, when it began to address the problem on its own. This includes funding a bottled water program, for which it claims DuPont promised to it; it says DuPont stopped doing so in 2007.
The water association wants DuPont ordered to stop polluting, clean up what it has done, and conduct a scientific study on the effects of PFOA. It is represented by David Altman of Cincinnati.
Stop Trying To ‘Save’ Africa
By Uzodinma Iweala
July 15, 2007
Last fall, shortly after I returned from Nigeria, I was accosted by a perky blond college student whose blue eyes seemed to match the “African” beads around her wrists.
“Save Darfur!” she shouted from behind a table covered with pamphlets urging students to TAKE ACTION NOW! STOP GENOCIDE IN DARFUR!
My aversion to college kids jumping onto fashionable social causes nearly caused me to walk on, but her next shout stopped me.
“Don’t you want to help us save Africa?” she yelled.
It seems that these days, wracked by guilt at the humanitarian crisis it has created in the Middle East, the West has turned to Africa for redemption. Idealistic college students, celebrities such as Bob Geldof and politicians such as Tony Blair have all made bringing light to the dark continent their mission. They fly in for internships and fact-finding missions or to pick out children to adopt in much the same way my friends and I in New York take the subway to the pound to adopt stray dogs.
This is the West’s new image of itself: a sexy, politically active generation whose preferred means of spreading the word are magazine spreads with celebrities pictured in the foreground, forlorn Africans in the back. Never mind that the stars sent to bring succor to the natives often are, willingly, as emaciated as those they want to help.
Perhaps most interesting is the language used to describe the Africa being saved. For example, the Keep a Child Alive/” I am African” ad campaign features portraits of primarily white, Western celebrities with painted “tribal markings” on their faces above “I AM AFRICAN” in bold letters. Below, smaller print says, “help us stop the dying.”
Such campaigns, however well intentioned, promote the stereotype of Africa as a black hole of disease and death. News reports constantly focus on the continent’s corrupt leaders, warlords, “tribal” conflicts, child laborers, and women disfigured by abuse and genital mutilation. These descriptions run under headlines like “Can Bono Save Africa?” or “Will Brangelina Save Africa?” The relationship between the West and Africa is no longer based on openly racist beliefs, but such articles are reminiscent of reports from the heyday of European colonialism, when missionaries were sent to Africa to introduce us to education, Jesus Christ and “civilization.”
There is no African, myself included, who does not appreciate the help of the wider world, but we do question whether aid is genuine or given in the spirit of affirming one’s cultural superiority. My mood is dampened every time I attend a benefit whose host runs through a litany of African disasters before presenting a (usually) wealthy, white person, who often proceeds to list the things he or she has done for the poor, starving Africans. Every time a well-meaning college student speaks of villagers dancing because they were so grateful for her help, I cringe. Every time a Hollywood director shoots a film about Africa that features a Western protagonist, I shake my head — because Africans, real people though we may be, are used as props in the West’s fantasy of itself. And not only do such depictions tend to ignore the West’s prominent role in creating many of the unfortunate situations on the continent, they also ignore the incredible work Africans have done and continue to do to fix those problems.
Why do the media frequently refer to African countries as having been “granted independence from their colonial masters,” as opposed to having fought and shed blood for their freedom? Why do Angelina Jolie and Bono receive overwhelming attention for their work in Africa while Nwankwo Kanu or Dikembe Mutombo, Africans both, are hardly ever mentioned? How is it that a former mid-level U.S. diplomat receives more attention for his cowboy antics in Sudan than do the numerous African Union countries that have sent food and troops and spent countless hours trying to negotiate a settlement among all parties in that crisis?
Two years ago I worked in a camp for internally displaced people in Nigeria, survivors of an uprising that killed about 1,000 people and displaced 200,000. True to form, the Western media reported on the violence but not on the humanitarian work the state and local governments — without much international help — did for the survivors. Social workers spent their time and in many cases their own salaries to care for their compatriots. These are the people saving Africa, and others like them across the continent get no credit for their work.
Last month the Group of Eight industrialized nations and a host of celebrities met in Germany to discuss, among other things, how to save Africa. Before the next such summit, I hope people will realize Africa doesn’t want to be saved. Africa wants the world to acknowledge that through fair partnerships with other members of the global community, we ourselves are capable of unprecedented growth.
Uzodinma Iweala is the author of “Beasts of No Nation,” a novel about child soldiers.
Source
Bhopal water still toxic 25 years after deadly gas leak, study finds
December 02, 2009
Groundwater found near the site of the world’s worst chemical industrial accident in Bhopal is still toxic and poisoning residents a quarter of a century after a gas leak there killed thousands, two studies have revealed.
Delhi’s Centre for Science and the Environment said that water found two miles from the factory contained pesticides at levels 40 times higher than the Indian safety standard.
In a second study, the UK-based Bhopal Medical Appeal (BMA) found a chemical cocktail in the local drinking water – with one carcinogen, carbon tetraflouride, present at 2,400 times the World Health Organisation’s guidelines.
Around 5,000 people were killed when clouds of toxic gas escaped from Union Carbide’s pesticide plant at midnight on 3 December 1984. 15,000 more died in the following weeks, and activists say that the disaster is still poisoning a new generation of victims.
The Sambhavna clinic, a charity campaigning in Bhopal, has conducted a survey of 20,000 people and says it has found alarmingly high rates of birth defects. A preliminary study suggests as many as one child in 25 is born with a congenital defect.
“We are seeing birth defects at 10 times the incidence at national levels,” said Satinath Sarangi, of the Sambhavna clinic.
“The government have been trying to say that the factory is safe and open for the public to tour it. But these results show how polluted the site has become.”
Earlier studies have also pointed out that boys who were either exposed as toddlers to gases from the Bhopal pesticide plant or born to exposed parents were prone to “growth retardation”.
Survivors in Bhopal have received meagre compensation: most of them got a Rs 25,000 cheque (£310) for a lifetime of suffering caused by damage to their lungs, liver, kidneys and the immune system.
Mohini Devi, 52, spent three months in hospital after inhaling the gas. For 25 years she has had difficulty breathing and suffered shooting pain through her abdomen. Her children have all been affected – one died from “gas complications” 15 years ago.
“My real worry is my grandchildren. Already some have been born without eyes. Why is nobody doing anything for us?” she said.
In Bhopal the legacy of the city’s night of death is there for all to see. The disused Union Carbide factory remains a rusty symbol of bureaucratic indifference, legal actions and rows over corporate responsibility. Not only did the government wind up research into the after effects of the poison gas in 1994, it failed to gather evidence of culpability in the case against the US company.
Campaigners say the site now contains about 8,000 tonnes of carcinogenic chemicals that continue to leach out and contaminate water supplies used by 30,000 local people. Union Carbide says it is no longer responsible for the factory and pointed out it has already made a settlement of $470m (£284m).
The company’s chief executive at the time, Warren Anderson, was briefly arrested after the leak 25 years ago but was released and fled India. He has been declared “untraceable” by Indian consular authorities although his address in a New York suburb is publicly listed.
The Indian government has also drawn fire for trying to pass the disused factory off as a tourist spot – with local politicians last month proposing to build a Hiroshima-like memorial there depicting a detailed account of the disaster. Adding insult to injury, India’s environment minister, Jairam Ramesh mocked activists on a visit to the city by picking up a fistful of waste and saying “see, I am alive”.
Sarangi says the government has been trying to tempt Union Carbide’s successor, Dow Chemical, back to India and to secure $1bn of investment.
In return, say campaigners, the government plans to let Dow evade its responsibility to clean up the Bhopal plant site. “This is all about the money. Politicians in India would rather do this than fight for people who suffered,” Sarangi said.
Swiss Daily: Israel Eavesdropped on UN Sessions over Hariri’s Assassination
December 02, 2009
Al – Manar TV
30/11/2009
A Swiss newspaper said that a number of UN employees in Geneva have concluded that Israel is eavesdropping on UN court sessions. The Neue Zuericher Zeitung (NZZ) added that bugging devices have been found in the organization’s deliberations room in the Swiss capital.
The newspaper pointed out that during regular maintenance procedures on the electrical network, three years ago, two bugging devices were found in a room set for the UN Disarmament Committee meetings. It added that ‘secret’ meetings were also held in the room over the Second Gulf War and the assassination of former Lebanese PM Rafik Hariri. NZZ revealed that other spying devices have also been found in other parts of the building, including courtrooms. The daily quoted UN employees as saying that Israel was behind planting the devices. UN security experts estimate that the planting process might have taken at least two days with the collaboration of UN employees. An expert in intelligence affairs told NZZ that the “technical level of the [spying] system and the great danger inherent in it, indicates that the planting decision was taken at the highest [Israeli] level.” The Neue Zuericher Zeitung said that only seven countries could have been behind the incident: The United States, Britain, France, Chinaa, Russia, North Korea, and Israel. “If I had to estimate which country was behind it, I would say Israel,” an intelligence officer told NZZ.
A European diplomat supported the conclusion saying: “I’ve always been amazed at the level of good information the Israeli mission posses.”
The Israeli newspaper, Yedioth Aharonoth, quoted Israeli diplomats as denying any connection to the issue.
Lithuanian Govt. Investigation Confirms News Report on Secret CIA Prison
December 02, 2009
By MATTHEW COLE and MARK SCHONE
11/30, 2009
A Lithuanian government investigation has confirmed an exclusive ABC News report that the CIA operated a secret black site prison in the country, according to a report on Lithuanian television.
According to Lithuania’s LNK TV, sources have told investigators that state security was involved in coordinating the construction of the prison, and have also provided the code name of the operation to transport terror detainees to the prison.
Arydas Anusauskas, head of the parliamentary committee investigating the prison, told ABC News he would not comment on the investigation until it is completed. He has previously said the results of the probe will be made public Dec. 22.
Background:
VIDEO: CIA Secret ‘Torture’ Prison Found at Fancy Horseback Riding Academy
Arming Goldman Sachs With Pistols Against the Public
December 01, 2009
By Alice Schroeder
(Bloomberg) — “I just wrote my first reference for a gun permit,” said a friend, who told me of swearing to the good character of a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. banker who applied to the local police for a permit to buy a pistol. The banker had told this friend of mine that senior Goldman people have loaded up on firearms and are now equipped to defend themselves if there is a populist uprising against the bank.
I called Goldman Sachs spokesman Lucas van Praag to ask whether it’s true that Goldman partners feel they need handguns to protect themselves from the angry proletariat. He didn’t call me back. The New York Police Department has told me that “as a preliminary matter” it believes some of the bankers I inquired about do have pistol permits. The NYPD also said it will be a while before it can name names.
While we wait, Goldman has wrapped itself in the flag of Warren Buffett, with whom it will jointly donate $500 million, part of an effort to burnish its image — and gain new Goldman clients. Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein also reversed himself after having previously called Goldman’s greed “God’s work” and apologized earlier this month for having participated in things that were “clearly wrong.”
Has it really come to this? Imagine what emotions must be billowing through the halls of Goldman Sachs to provoke the firm into an apology. Talk that Goldman bankers might have armed themselves in self-defense would sound ludicrous, were it not so apt a metaphor for the way that the most successful people on Wall Street have become a target for public rage.
Pistol Ready
Common sense tells you a handgun is probably not even all that useful. Suppose an intruder sneaks past the doorman or jumps the security fence at night. By the time you pull the pistol out of your wife’s jewelry safe, find the ammunition, and load your weapon, Fifi the Pomeranian has already been taken hostage and the gun won’t do you any good. As for carrying a loaded pistol when you venture outside, dream on. Concealed gun permits are almost impossible for ordinary citizens to obtain in New York or nearby states.
In other words, a little humility and contrition are probably the better route.
Until a couple of weeks ago, that was obvious to everyone but Goldman, a firm famous for both prescience and arrogance. In a display of both, Blankfein began to raise his personal- security threat level early in the financial crisis. He keeps a summer home near the Hamptons, where unrestricted public access would put him at risk if the angry mobs rose up and marched to the East End of Long Island.
To the Barricades
He tried to buy a house elsewhere without attracting attention as the financial crisis unfolded in 2007, a move that was foiled by the New York Post. Then, Blankfein got permission from the local authorities to install a security gate at his house two months before Bear Stearns Cos. collapsed.
This is the kind of foresight that Goldman Sachs is justly famous for. Blankfein somehow anticipated the persecution complex his fellow bankers would soon suffer. Surely, though, this man who can afford to surround himself with a private army of security guards isn’t sleeping with the key to a gun safe under his pillow. The thought is just too bizarre to be true.
So maybe other senior people at Goldman Sachs have gone out and bought guns, and they know something. But what?
Henry Paulson, U.S. Treasury secretary during the bailout and a former Goldman Sachs CEO, let it slip during testimony to Congress last summer when he explained why it was so critical to bail out Goldman Sachs, and — oh yes — the other banks. People “were unhappy with the big discrepancies in wealth, but they at least believed in the system and in some form of market-driven capitalism. But if we had a complete meltdown, it could lead to people questioning the basis of the system.”
Torn Curtain
There you have it. The bailout was meant to keep the curtain drawn on the way the rich make money, not from the free market, but from the lack of one. Goldman Sachs blew its cover when the firm’s revenue from trading reached a record $27 billion in the first nine months of this year, and a public that was writhing in financial agony caught on that the profits earned on taxpayer capital were going to pay employee bonuses.
This slip-up let the other bailed-out banks happily hand off public blame to Goldman, which is unpopular among its peers because it always seems to win at everyone’s expense.
Plenty of Wall Streeters worry about the big discrepancies in wealth, and think the rise of a financial industry-led plutocracy is unjust. That doesn’t mean any of them plan to move into a double-wide mobile home as a show of solidarity with the little people, though.
Cool Hand Lloyd
No, talk of Goldman and guns plays right into the way Wall- Streeters like to think of themselves. Even those who were bailed out believe they are tough, macho Clint Eastwoods of the financial frontier, protecting the fistful of dollars in one hand with the Glock in the other. The last thing they want is to be so reasonably paid that the peasants have no interest in lynching them.
And if the proles really do appear brandishing pitchforks at the doors of Park Avenue and the gates of Round Hill Road, you can be sure that the Goldman guys and their families will be holed up in their safe rooms with their firearms. If nothing else, that pistol permit might go part way toward explaining why they won’t be standing outside with the rest of the crowd, broke and humiliated, saying, “Damn, I was on the wrong side of a trade with Goldman again.”
(Alice Schroeder, author of “The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life” and a former managing director at Morgan Stanley, is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.) To contact the writer of this column: Alice Schroeder at aliceschroeder@ymail.com.
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- Israelis Invaded Lebanon And Then Cried Victim When Their Soldiers Got Killed
- FARA Docs: Israel is Spying On Millions Of Christian Americans In Their Churches
- Why US presidents from both parties end up cursing Benjamin Netanyahu
- Israel Asked Facebook to Censor Iran War Content, Internal Documents Show
- Deaths in Gaza undercounted, possibly by 100s of thousands; “Psychopath” Ben-Gvir talks trash – Daily Update
- UNICEF: “Trauma is woven into the very fabric of childhood in Gaza”
- 15 articles a day: The extent of the Israeli army’s media interference
- No Tricks Zone
- THE TRANSCEIVER PARADOX: Why Organoid Intelligence (OI) Could Become Our Ultimate Alien Predator
- German Wind Turbines Face Regulatory Shutdown Due To Excessive Noise
- New Study: Chile’s Relative Sea Level Was 3.2 Meters Higher Than Today During The Mid-Holocene
- Beyond The Pitch: Why FIFA’s World Cup Is One Of Humanity’s Best Investments
- Climate Alarmists Now Using Natural Phenomena To Support Their Claims
- New Study: Significant CO2 Fluxes From Non-Volcanic Sources Are Largely Neglected In Carbon Budgets
- Women Climate Scientists Being Harassed, Insulted By Skeptics, Claims Berkeley Earth Researcher
- Germany’s Longterm Spring Climate Data Show “No Climate Trend”
- New Study: Solar Photovoltaic, Wind Power Fail To Meet Annual Energy Demands 62% Of The Time
- Germany’s Die Welt: “Too Much Is Too Much” … Green Energies Are Cannabalizing Each Other!
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