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Pensions Under Attack

By MARK VORPAHL | CounterPunch | July 13, 2012

On Friday, July 6, President Obama signed into law a bill that would renew transportation programs and extend low interest rates on student loans for one year. While this minimal gesture resulted in, no doubt, sighs of relief from those burdened by student debt, tucked away within the bill’s pages was a little-noticed proposal to further erode the funding of workers’ pensions. The bill was a brilliant sleight of hand where what it appeared to be giving with one hand distracted the public from what it was taking away with the other.

Aside from the more publicly known parts of this bill, it also reduced the amount that corporations pay into an already grossly underfunded pension system. The way it achieved this is with a complex equation factoring in interest rates, changes in how businesses calculate what they must contribute to retirement premiums, and how these contributions are tax deductible. The end result of this opaque process of number crunching is that, according to the Society of Actuaries, employer pension contributions will be reduced overall from a mandatory $80 billion to $45 billion this year alone. Next year this amount will be slashed by $73 billion. (1)

While the amount of company pension contributions would increase afterwards, there is no guarantee that this can be counted on to make up for the short-term cuts. Without a fundamental change in the political climate, it can be assumed that this distant increase will be reversed.

Some have said that these employer pension payment deductions will not amount to much given the $1.9 trillion employers have already invested into these plans over the decades. Yet the political importance of this bill cannot be calculated by arithmetic alone. It is another example of a pattern of how politicians have enabled corporations to minimize their responsibility towards their employees’ pensions to the point where the entire system is in danger and the dream of a comfortable retirement is approaching collapse.

How far has the pension system fallen into disrepair? According to The Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation (PBGC), the quasi-government agency responsible for retirement funds, the public employees pension was being funded at 103 percent in 1999. The pension funds for the private sector were likewise robust.

By 2008, according to the Pew Center, the public sector pensions were short $452 billion. By 2009 the PBGC reported a funding shortfall of $355 billion and a shortfall of $407 billion for “single employer pensions.”

Why this dramatic change? The corporations, their politicians, and media lay the blame on growing pension costs (though many have been frozen) and an increased number of workers retiring. This is turning the reasons behind the pension system’s shortfall on its head. Fundamentally, the reason for the growing threats to retirement is corporate greed, backed up by their political power, as well as the effects of the economic crisis.

There are numerous examples of how big business and their two parties, the Democrats and Republicans, have colluded to erode their legal responsibility to fund pensions. The Pension Protection Act of 2006 enabled pension funds to partner with high-risk speculators, resulting in massive loses to the system in 2008-2010. Corporations have been allowed to declare phony bankruptcies in order to dump their pensions on the PBGC. They are also allowed to divert funds that should go into pension funds towards covering health care costs as well as buying back company stocks and making dividend payouts to stockholders. The list could go on for the ways the political system lets the corporations off the hook at the cost of threatening workers’ retirement. The effect of these measures is to starve the pension system in order to fatten corporate profits.

In addition, the Great Recession has also had a debilitating effect on pension funding. A jobless recovery means fewer workers able to contribute. If corporations were adequately taxed on the trillions they are hoarding to finance a real jobs program, this would not be a problem. Instead, the corporations and their politicians are pursuing the opposite course. They are using the bad economy to justify making the problem worse by cutting away at company obligations to their workers and their pensions.

The provision of the bill Obama signed into law on July 6th regarding pension funding demonstrates the bipartisan priorities geared towards benefiting corporations at the expense of workers. The public justification for this scheme is that the economy is bad and it wouldn’t help workers if these companies went broke as a result of trying to cover the pension shortfalls.

This is a variation of the same line of argument used to justify all austerity measures. Playing on the assumption of common cause between the economic elite and workers, corporations plead poverty and sermonize on the need for “shared sacrifice.” The truth, however, is that big business isn’t broke. There is plenty of money to assure a comfortable retirement for all workers, not to mention universal health care, social security, and full employment. The problem isn’t fiscal, it’s political. The corporations do not want to pay their fair share, and they own the political system.

Solutions to the pension crisis will not be found within the Democratic or Republican Parties. It will take the force of an independent social movement to make the rich pay. Such a social movement could start with the demands of “Jobs – Not Cuts” “Tax the Rich.” From this starting point, it could mature to take on other issues that unite workers such as a solution to the pension crisis.

What kind of solution could be proposed? A demand that a mass movement can get behind. In order for this to happen the demand would have to solve the crisis, be easily understood to inspire, and make a clear demarcation between the interests of the 99% and 1%. To do this a social movement around the pension crisis should call on the federal government to takeover pensions with a heavy tax on corporations that would ensure that they are fully funded and fine those who have willfully failed to properly pay into their pension funds. Then we could demand that Social Security be strengthened so that it could gradually replace the precarious pensions offered in both the public and private sectors. But demands around pensions should be linked to the more immediately pressing demand for most workers, namely a massive jobs creation program. In this way working people will be united and in a position to mount a massive campaign.

Mark Vorpahl is an union steward, social justice activist, and writer for Workers’ Action – www.workerscompass.org. He can be reached at Portland@workerscompass.org.

Notes.

(1) “New law gives US companies a break on pensions” by Alan Fram. http://www.dailytribune.com/article/20120709/FINANCE01/120709544/new-law-gives-us-companies-a-break-on-pensions&pager=full_story

July 13, 2012 Posted by | Corruption, Economics, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , , | Leave a comment

US threatens to cut all aid to Palestinian Authority

By Jack Muir | International Middle East Media Center | July 11, 2012

On Tuesday Khaled Mesmar, head of the Political Committee of the Palestinian National Council, reported that an official statement issued by Washington had been received demanding that if another membership bid was put to the United Nations, then all financial aid to the Palestine Liberation Office in Washington would be cut.

Mesmar stated that the threat was issued officially via the American Administration envoy which visited Ramallah recently and met with the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas.

The initial bid for membership was blocked in September 2011 when the UN Security Council was put under pressure by the American delegation not to vote for it.

Mesmar reported that the Palestinian leadership would withold its UN bid for statehood if Israel stopped building settlements and released the Palestinian prisoners that were detained before the Oslo’s agreement of the 1993.

Illegal settlements have been the major obstacle to all negotiations. Despite settlements being illegal under the fourth Geneva convention and being in defiance of UN resolutions and the world court, Israel refuses to halt their construction, making negotiations impossible.

The US is demanding that the Palestinian Authority resumes talks without pre-conditions. Mesmar stated that rather than the halting of settlement construction being a Palestinian pre-condition, it is a commitment that Israel must undertake in accordance with the rule of law.

The importance of a fresh UN bid has taken on huge significance since last October, when UNESCO voted to admit Palestine as its newest member. The US immediately cut off all aid to UNESCO. The chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee referred to the vote which passed with a 107 to 14 majority, as “reckless and anti-Israel”

July 11, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | , , , | 2 Comments

Jobs Crisis Denial

By SHAMUS COOKE | CounterPunch | July 9, 2012

Before any problem can be fixed it must first be acknowledged. The jobs crisis stays in the shadows, out of mind, and consequently unaddressed. This is allowed to happen because those in power – Republicans and Democrats – both have political reasons to remain silent.

When the jobs crisis is discussed, the word “crisis” is seldom used, and the conversation is conducted with hushed tones and minimizing vocabulary. Therefore, when the monthly national jobs report was announced for June, there was quiet grumbling instead of passionate oratory; passivity instead of mobilization and action.

In the last three months the country added an average of 75,000 jobs a month. But job creation per month must be over 100,000 to keep up with young workers entering the workforce; therefore the real number of unemployed has steadily increased, on top of the mountain of already long-term unemployed.

The ”real” unemployment rate – which includes those who gave up looking for work and those who want full-time work – rose to 14.9 percent in June, a total of 23 million people.

President Obama actually had the nerve to claim that the June jobs report was a “step in the right direction.” His election campaign chooses not to be interrupted by facts.

But the real story that the numbers tell in the jobs report is the trend that promises more unemployment. The economy has stalled, and threatens to slide backward again into recession. The “jobless recovery” that we have now is likely to evolve into a full-fledged depression.

Corporations already know this, which is why they refuse to hire more workers and are content sitting on their mountains of cash: why invest money in hiring or adding new machines if you think the economy may tank, spoiling the investment? Indeed, corporations have every right to believe the economy is headed downward. The New York Times explains:

“… ill [economic] winds are blowing in from both a contracting [recessionary] Europe [the biggest trading partner of the U.S.] and slowing growth in emerging markets [China, India]. Also, domestic lawmakers’ inaction on the upcoming ‘fiscal cliff’ creates uncertainty that is not conducive to hiring.”

What is this “fiscal cliff” that politicians and CEO’s talk about behind closed doors but rarely discuss on TV?  The New York Times continues:

“…the end of 2012 [the fiscal cliff] will also bring a torrent of federal tax increases [reducing consumer spending]… The government is also scheduled to lop off a huge chunk of federal spending [$500 billion in annual cuts] because of measures set in motion [the infamous “trigger cuts”] by Congress’s inability last December to come up with plans for longer-term fiscal restructuring.”

The reason these cuts are not being discussed – and the reason they are referred to as the “fiscal cliff” – is because after these measures are implemented, the already-stammering economy will be pushed “over the cliff” into recession.

Both parties are not talking about the fiscal cliff because they share the exact same solution: austerity -cuts to social programs (education, health care, safety net), government layoffs, and other measures to make working people pay for the nation’s debt instead of the rich and corporations.

The real state of the economy is also revealed by Wall Street’s clamoring for the Federal Reserve to again start printing massive amounts of money, called quantitative easing. This desperate move would never be considered in times of “relative stability” of the economy and threatens to create massive inflation at home and abroad.

Both Democrats and Republicans are aligned with the free market model of job creation, which amounts to massive state intervention to provide banks and corporations with bailouts, ultra-cheap/printed money, subsides, tax breaks, etc., in the hopes that these corporations will hire people. These ideas have already been thoroughly disproved by events, yet nobody in power can put forth an alternative, since doing so would change the landscape of American politics.

What America needs is what was done during the last depression: a massive dose of state intervention against these corporations and the wealthy, by demanding that their taxes be dramatically increased to fund a federal jobs program.

Until labor and community groups detach themselves from Obama’s election campaign, they will remain mum on this issue and will be forced to support a so-called corporate jobs creation plan that promises more unemployment. The reason that labor organizations are not fighting for a real jobs campaign is because they have opted to tape their mouths shut and campaign for the Democrats instead, a fact that exposes them in front of their membership, who will in turn demand a new policy from their leaders. If the leaders fail to respond positively, their membership will demand a new policy and a new leadership.

Shamus Cooke is a social service worker and trade unionist. He can reached at shamuscooke@gmail.com

July 9, 2012 Posted by | Economics, Progressive Hypocrite | , , | Leave a comment

On Second Thought, It Is All Nader’s Fault

By Arthur Sibler | Power of Narrative | July 06, 2012

One of the more pathetically transparent and easily refuted lies told by committed Democratic tribalists is that the outcome of the 2000 election was all Ralph Nader’s fault. The more idiotic Democratic partisans will proclaim that, if only that rotten Ralph hadn’t selfishly and stupidly siphoned votes from the messianic Albert of Gore, Saint Al would have ascended to the White House on gossamer wings, the U.S. never would have gone to war in Iraq, American dependence on oil would have been swept away by the windmills of our minds, we would have rediscovered and recommitted ourselves to “true” American values (which have nothing to do with anything the U.S. has actually done, mind you, but are to be found in the record of the fantasy United States brewed in the shallower pools of the stagnant minds of these professional delusionists), the world would have been born anew — and every single one of us would have our own adorable puppy dog along with a fucking rainbow.

Except…not.

I’ve made the arguments set forth in the linked article many times myself over the years, too many times over too many years. I’m not going to make them any longer.

For all I know, Nader himself may well believe he’s the reason Gore lost. Why do I say that? Because Nader believes several massive boatloads of unmitigated shit.

I am not going to be the only person who must spend half an hour cleaning vomit from his keyboard. So please accompany me on this brief tour of the tortured byways of what passes for Nader’s mind. He begins thusly:

If the Democrats in Congress were all drinking water from the same faucet, there might be a clue to their chronic fear of the craven and cruel corporatist Republicans who dominate them.

But they don’t, so we have to ask why their fear, defeatism, and cowering behavior continues in the face of the outrageous GOP actions as the November election approaches.

Keep in mind that the purpose of Nader’s column is to “save” the Democrats from what he perceives as self-immolation. One might wonder why he believes such a desultory group of gutless, fear-ridden maggots can be “saved” at all. The only reason that he offers is that they still call themselves “Democrats.” How marvelously subtle and unexpected.

Nader’s next paragraph might erroneously lead you to believe that he intends to get to the real problem:

The explanations go back some years. The Democrats have long receded from the Harry Truman days of “give ‘em hell, Harry”. But their political castration occurred in the late seventies when the Democrats were persuaded by one of their own, Congressman Tony Coelho (D-Calif.), to start aggressively bidding for corporate campaign cash.

Ah, so perhaps the Democrats began to pursue an agenda that was notably friendly to corporate interests? But Nader immediately abandons this line of inquiry, to return to the reliable theme of irredeemably loathsome Republicans who “torture” Democrats. No wonder the poor Democrats are dominated by fear and weakness: they’re “tortured daily”!

And then we read a paragraph that reduced me to open-mouthed astonishment. Nader intends the following as an indictment of “the unpopular agendas pitched by these Wall Street puppets” — by which he means “Republican leaders.” This is the paragraph:

One would think that politicians who side with big corporations would be politically vulnerable for endangering both America and the American people. These corrupt politicians promote corporate tax loopholes and side with insurance and drug companies on costly health care proposals. They defend the corporate polluters on their unsafe workplaces, dirty air, water and contaminated food, push for more deficit spending in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, neglect Main Street based public works-repair-America-jobs programs, support high-interest student loans, cover for oil industry greed at the pump, and are hell-bent on taking the federal cops off the corporate crime beats.

There is one slight problem with this analysis: it perfectly describes the Democrats’ program. The abominable — and now constitutional! — health “care” bill was championed not by Boehner or Cantor, but by Barack Obama. The wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, and on and on are prosecuted by the Obama administration. The same is true of every item in Nader’s list.

Moreover, the program of systematic assassination by secret decree is not the invention of George W. Bush, but of Barack Obama. As I have noted many times before, this program represents the assertion of absolute power. Absolute power has been claimed and is fervently supported by Democrats. For any semi-decent human being, this should kill the Democratic Party until such time as it renounces the murder program fully and repeatedly, and then acts over a period of years to demonstrate that its renunciation is genuine.

I consider it impossible that Nader just happens to miss these points. I am forced to conclude that either he is now willing to lie across the board, including on every matter of the gravest significance, or he has become the victim of his chosen self-delusions to a degree that renders his brain non-functional in any meaningful sense. See my recent post on self-made stupidity and blindness for more on the latter point.

The column is remarkably and childishly confused. Strewn among the formulaic denunciations of “extremist” Republicans is this admission: “Unfortunately, on military and foreign policy there isn’t much of a difference [between the parties]. So the bright line will have to be on domestic issues.”

But a few paragraphs later, Nader writes:

There are plenty of bright-line issues for the Democrats. Get tough on Wall Street and corporate crime, protect pensions, end the wars, tax the corporate and wealthy tax-escapees, launch community-based public works programs, provide full Medicare for all, expand health and safety programs, to name a few.

Given his own admission, why in the world does Nader include “end the wars” on this list? But it is equally delusional to believe the Democrats will adopt any of the programs he identifies. To the contrary: the Democrats have provided voluminous evidence demonstrating that they feverishly oppose all such programs.

In brief, and as I have also said many times before, the Democrats act as they do because they are pursuing the programs and goals they want to pursue. The evidence is all around us, in the mangled, bleeding bodies of countless victims abroad, and in the increasingly desperate lives of more and more Americans at home. All a person has to do is open his eyes and look at it.

This is precisely what Nader and all those who have similar beliefs refuse to do. Once again, from five goddamn years ago:

[The explanation] is very simple, and it goes to the progressives’ central articles of religious faith: The Democrats aren’t really like this, not in their heart of hearts. The Democrats don’t actually favor a repressive, authoritarian state. The Democrats are good, and they want liberty and peace for everyone, everywhere, for eternity, hallelujah and amen.

People who continue to believe this have evicted themselves from serious political debate, and they have willingly made themselves slaves to their enthusiastically embraced self-delusions. They confess a comprehensive ignorance of history, a stunning inability to understand the political developments of the last century, and a desire to place the story they have chosen, primarily because it flatters their own false sense of vanity and self-worth, above every relevant fact.

So you know what I think, Ralph? Not only do I now think it’s your fault that Gore lost the 2000 election, I think that every terrible thing that has happened in the last half century is your fault!

I also know that it’s your fault I can’t lose 20 pounds. You bastard.

From now on, when idiot Democrats blame you for what are manifestly their own failures, you can defend yourself if you choose to. Good luck with that. You’ll need it.

July 8, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Economics, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

How Zionists Occupy Two Nations: America and Palestine

By Mohamed Khodr • December 3rd, 2008

From America’s “Jewish Triangle” to Iraqi’s “Sunni Triangle” Government Job Notice: No Gentiles Need Apply

“The Modern Age is the Jewish Age, and the twentieth century, in particular, is the Jewish Century.”
–Yuri Slezkine, Professor of History at University of California, Berkeley, “The Jewish Century”; Princeton University Press (Russian Jewish immigrant to the U.S.)

No, America, there is no Zionist Conspiracy running our nation; just well funded organized Zionist Coincidences … From Truman, to Clinton, to Obama, to…

In a Nov. 10, 1945 meeting with American diplomats brought in from their posts in the Middle East to urge Truman not to heed Zionist urgings to recognize Israel, Truman bluntly explained his motivation:

“I’m sorry, gentlemen, but I have to answer to hundreds of thousands who are anxious for the success of Zionism: I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my constituents”
–Harry Truman, 33rd President

Clinton drew applause for his own commitment to Israel when he stated that should the Iraqis ever cross over the Israeli border for aggression,

“I would personally get in a ditch, grab a rifle, and fight and die.”
–President Bill Clinton, speaking at a Toronto Jewish Fund Raiser, July 30, 2002 (thestar.com) (BUT he avoided fighting for America)

Sixty years after Truman’s recognition of Israel, the 44th President Elect of the United States, Barack Obama, in true allegiance to the Flag of Israel, continues the expected, no, the demanded subservience and pandering to America’s Zionists.

Four Examples of Obama’s Allegiance to Israel at the expense of our national interest in the Middle East. This man of “hope” is nevertheless “hopelessly” devoted to Israel.

1. Obama Asks Shimon Peres (President of Israel):

“What can I do for Israel?”
Haaretz, November 17, 2008

2. Obama’s Letter to President Bush on Israel, June 25, 2008

“A fundamental principle of America’s Middle East policy must be our unshakeable commitment to Israel’s security. I believe that is a bipartisan commitment and I will work to continue and advance that consensus. …The Arab states should support the Palestinians and prepare their own people for peace by making gestures of normalization toward Israel.”

(OBAMA is uninformed: The Arab League did offer just such a Peace Plan to Israel three times, 1981, 2002, 2007); but Israel rejected it each time.

3. Obama’s conference call with 900 U.S. Jewish Rabbis: September 18, 2008 (Ynet.com)

“The senator spoke of his recent trip to Israel, and reaffirmed personal commitment to Israel’s security, calling it sacrosanct: “I think that it’s also important to recognize that throughout my career in the State Legislature and now in the US Senate I have been a stalwart friend of Israel. On every single issue related to Israel’s security, I have been unwavering, and will continue to be unwavering….”My belief is that Israel’s security is sacrosanct and we have to ensure that as the sole democracy in the Middle East, one of our greatest allies in the world, one that shares a special relationship with us and shares our values, we have to make sure that they have the support whether its financial or military to sustain their security and the hostile environment.”

As with all American politicians, Obama made the requisite pilgrimage to Israel to pay homage to the great democracy living in a constant existential threat from its impotent, incompetent, weak, illiterate, unproductive, and failed Arab neighbors, as well as his more important pledge of allegiance to AIPAC where political careers are made or destroyed. The path to the White House or Congress goes through AIPAC.

4. Obama’s Speech to AIPAC, March 2, 2007

“And I can tell you that as a candidate for the president of the United States and as a president of the United States, I vow to work as diligently and as consistently and as determinedly as possible with AIPAC and with the Great State of Israel to bring that vision about.”
–Obama’s Speech at AIPAC, March 2, 2007: Read full text to see the full fledged love fest replete with the lies, myths, and clichés provided by AIPAC to all political cowards and hypocrites seeking office.

Mr. Obama, you’re simply the last in a long line of American politicians who’ve never taken notice of Israel’s true contempt of the only “friend” it has in the entire world. Without our recognition, support and hundreds of billions of tax dollars of aid (Israel is the world’s 16th richest nation), there would be no Israel. Beware of Israel’s rabid bite of the hand that feeds it.

“Our American friends offer us money, arms, and advice. We take the money, we take the arms, and we decline the advice.” –Moshe Dayan, America’s hero of the 1967 Preemptive attack on Arab nations

When, in all our history, has anyone with ideas so bizarre, so archaic, so self-confounding, so remote from the basic American consensus, ever got so far? —Richard Hofstadter

Israel and its Jewish supporters around the world navigate the paradox oxymoronic paradigm between their boastful pride of Jewish “tribal” power that wields enormous political, economic, and military might around the world—the power to invade, massacre, occupy foreign lands at will with total impunity and immunity from world action; a power to silence and intimidate world governments, none more so than the “wag the tail superpower”, America; and between milking the image of eternal victimhood, weakness, and constant existential threat by a hate filled hostile world; a world genetically born and inbred with “Anti-Semitism”.

While in reality Israel is the military occupier and slum lord of Palestine, Southern Lebanon’s Shebaa farms, and Syria’s Golan Heights. It possesses between 200 – 300 nuclear weapons while Arabs/Iran have none. It has the second most powerful air force in the world (after the U.S.). It is the fourth largest exporter of military weapons and possesses the world’s latest spy technology including access to all U.S. Spy intelligence.

It has the might to destroy the entire world should it come under a doomsday attack.

“Prime Minister Golda Meir also told me, on-the-record during the course of an interview I did with her for the BBC’s Panorama programme, that in a doomsday situation Israel would be prepared to take the region and the whole world down with it. (Her full quote with its context is as set down on page xii of Waiting for the Apocalypse, the Prologue to Volume One of Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews). –Alan Hart, ICH, June 8, 2008.

Mr. Hart was a BBC correspondent, an author, his latest: “Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews”, Vol. 1 and 2, and a researcher.

BUT, it is also the little victim that may be extinguished by its “bad neighbors”.

“Looking at Zionism without taboos means seeing the hard reality of the domination and oppression it has created. Out of the original sins of the world against the Jews grew the original sins of Zionism against the Palestinians.”
–Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, “Original Sins”; An Israeli Scholar at Haifa University (Israel) and author of: “The Israeli Connection: Who Israel Arms and Why”

“The war’s seventh day, which began on June 12, 1967 (Six Day War) , and has continued to this day, is the product of our choice. We enthusiastically chose to become a colonial society, ignoring international treaties, expropriating lands, transferring settlers from Israel to the occupied territories, engaging in theft and finding justifications for all these activities. Passionately desiring to keep the occupied territories we developed two judicial systems: One—-progressive, liberal—in Israel; and the Other—cruel, injurious—-in the occupied territories. In effect, we established an APARTHEID regime in the occupied territories immediately after their capture. That oppressive regime exists to this day.” –Michael Ben-Yar, Israeli Attorney General in Yitzhak Rabin’s government in mid 1990’s. (Quoted in “Herzl’s Nightmare, One Land, Two Peoples” by Peter Rodgers, former Australian Ambassador to Israel, pg. 32 – 33)

“What struck me most about the biblical narrative was that the divine promise of land was integrally linked with the mandate to exterminate the indigenous peoples, and I had to wrestle with my perception that those traditions were inherently oppressive and morally reprehensible…. It was some shock to realize that the narrative presents “ethnic cleansing” as not only legitimate, but as required by the deity…. By modern standards of international law and human rights, what these biblical narratives mandate are “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity… Was there a way of reading the traditions which could rescue the Bible from being a blunt instrument of oppression, and acquit God of the charge of being the Great Ethnic-Cleanser?”
–Dr. Michael Prior, C.M., “Confronting the Bible’s Ethnic Cleansing In Palestine”; The Link, December 2000 (Americans for Middle East Understanding. http://www.ameu.org/)

Dr. Prior is Professor of Biblical Studies in the University of Surrey, England, and visiting professor in Bethlehem University, Palestine. He is a biblical scholar and author of “Zionism and the State of Israel: A Moral Inquiry” and “The Bible and Colonialism: A Moral Critique.”

World Jewry constitutes 0.0019% of the world’s population and less then two percent of the U.S. population. But despite their very small numbers they are without a doubt the richest, most educated, successful, organized, ambitious and motivated tribe in the world. Their intelligence, brilliance, and high education have given the world its most creative thinkers, inventors, artists, physicians, writers, and Noble Prize winners. The world owes a great deal to world Jewry for the enormous contributions they’ve made to this world. They’ve been in the forefront of civil rights, liberal causes, and justice.

No one should begrudge the extraordinary success and accomplishments of Jewish Americans. They worked hard and deserve the respect and admiration of all Americans.
BUT, and here’s the really big rub—organized Jewry has translated their enormous “Jewish Power” of wealth, political activism, media, Hollywood, and industry dominance to ensure that our government is willfully complicity in supporting Israel’s persecution of the Palestinians, refugees on their own land (living on only 18% of their original Palestine) while Israel defies all divine and human laws against its barbaric treatment and occupation of millions of Palestinians.

It is this “Jewish Power/Israel Lobby” that the entire world must have the courage to publicly and forcefully condemn and do all things necessary, sooner rather than later, to end its power and put Israel in its place.

Only when the western governments are free from the albatross of the Israel Lobby will Palestine, the Middle East and the Muslim world be free to cohabit this world in peace and good relations with the West.

Ending Israel’s political and military terrorism will end Muslim terrorism.

In Middle East politics:

Israel manipulates America—America manipulates Arab Dictators—therefore Israel manipulates Arab Dictators.

For almost twenty months Israel, with the full knowledge and support of our U.S. government, has besieged the lives and land of Gaza. Today Gaza is slowly dying without food, water, medicines, fuel, electricity and oxygen for its premature infants and sick elderly. Surgeons don’t have the lights, medicines, or equipment to remove the bullets and shrapnels from Palestinian children courtesy of the American taxpayer and Israeli soldiers. Poverty, mass unemployment, malnutrition, and disease are rampant in Gaza but thanks to decades of a Jewish dominated U.S. media that has dehumanized Palestinians, their lives are not newsworthy, easily ignored and deleteable from western consciousness. The only useful purpose Palestinian children serve is as target practice for the training of new Israeli soldiers.

The useless, incompetent, and inept Arab League lip synchs again to help the Palestinians while in reality their cry is —-with our souls, our blood, we sacrifice ourselves to thee O America.

Why are the Palestinians dying and suffering for decades amidst world silence?

Answer: Jewish Power and the Israel Lobby:

Which includes the Armageddon pushing Christian Fundamentalists; an oxymoronic group of the followers of the prince of peace who seek a world holocaust against Non-Christians; but as long as they support Israel, organized U.S. Jewry will accept them as partners.

“His name is Yusuf Samir, and he is a reporter for the Israeli Arabic service. He tells us….”The Palestinians are animals,” he says. “They are less than human. They are savage beasts. Israel is a land of love. People in Israel love one another. But the Palestinians do not love. They hate. They should be destroyed. We should put fire to them. We should take back Beit Jala, Bethlehem, take back all the land and get rid of them.”

Children have been shot in other conflicts I have covered—death squads gunned them down in El Salvador and Guatemala, mothers with infants were lined up and massacred….Serb snipers put children in their sights and watched them crumple onto the pavement in Sarajevo—but I have never before watched soldiers entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport.

It was in Gaza, where I lived for weeks at a time during the seven years I spent in the Middle East, that I came to know the dark side of the Israeli Defense Force”.
–Chris Hedges (former New York Times Middle East Bureau Chief), “A Gaza Diary”; Harper’s Magazine; October 2001

In East Jerusalem, Israel continues the Judaization of the Holy City to three faiths. As part of that official policy the Israeli police in an early morning raid on November 9 forcibly evicted Fawzia al-Kurd, 57, and her partially paralyzed wheel chair bound husband from their home of 52 years. They couldn’t collect any possession and Fawzia’s was still wearing her pajamas upon their eviction. Fawzia was forced to move into a tent while her very ill husband is living with relatives. Not satisfied with just evicting and confiscating their home, the Israeli soldiers chased Fawzia to her make shift tent and destroyed that too. Fawzia is cold, hungry, homeless and separated from her very ill husband. Why? According to Israel she set up the tent “without permission.” This is the democracy we as Americans are paying and dying for in absolute ignorance and silence.
Only Israel of all nations can literally get away with murder. As long as our government is held in the palms of the Israel Lobby; such murder is committed with regularity and impunity.

“New opinions often appear first as jokes and fancies, then as blasphemies and treason, then as questions open to discussion, and finally as established truths.” George Bernard Shaw

Thankfully, several prominent Jews have formed a new lobby, J Street, to oppose the influence of the Israel Lobby and its stranglehold on US foreign policy that emphasizes force over diplomacy. J Street supports a peaceful negotiated settlement of the Israeli Palestinian conflict and the formation of two independent states although it avoids delineating the borders of such states; for example, by supporting the 1967 borders.

The Iraq War: The “Jewish/Israel Lobby” Triangle

No greater example of the power of the “The Israel Lobby” and the mainly Jewish cabal in the Bush administration than this nation being forced into an illegal, immoral, and destructive war, the Iraq War, that has bankrupted this nation and shed the blood of our youth while killing over a million Iraqi’s. To this date and in our alleged democracy no one, not one single person, has been held accountable for this deliberately manufactured war and genocide against the innocent Iraqi’s; not for the lies, not for shredding our Constitutional system of government and guaranteed civil liberties, not for the trillions of wasted dollars, not for the rivers of blood, not for the torture, rape, murder, and crimes against humanity committed by the war criminals in Washington D.C. . All will or have left office to better financial careers and future book and movie deals.

America has forgotten Abeer Qasim Hamza, a 14-year-old Iraqi girl, gang raped by five U.S. soldiers then shot in the head along with her parents and her five year old sister, Hadeel. Abeer’s crime was that she was an Iraqi girl and a Muslim, thus fodder for the “liberators” for freedom. She is dispensable trash as no doubt thousands of other Iraqi girls and women both in and out of prison.

American and Israeli soldiers can kill in cold blood and gang rape at will in their respective occupied territories and know they won’t face prosecution as they simply were carrying their actions in self defense and according to terms of “engagement”, which obviously includes rape.

Would our government, media, Hollywood, think tanks, business leaders have reacted differently if this was a Jewish girl gang raped in Syria or Iran? Would there be hysterical cries for blood and wiping out the two nations?

When Daniel Pearl, Jewish journalist for the Wall Street Journal, was killed in Pakistan, the western media was in rage mode for weeks. Hollywood further enshrined this incident with a movie, “A Mighty Heart” that received endless press. However, most shockingly and as far as I know for the first time, our federal government provided free propaganda for this movie.

The Department of State, the nation’s premier diplomatic agency, had its tax funded website serve as a commercial billboard for this movie about a “Jewish” journalist. It posted a three-part video discussion on Daniel Pearl’s murder and the capture of his killers on its home page under the title “The Daniel Pearl Murder: A First Person Account.”

In an article in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, “White Man’s Burden”, (May 4, 2003), Ari Shavit wrote:

“The war in Iraq was conceived by 25 neoconservative intellectuals, most of them Jewish, who are pushing President Bush to change the course of history. ..Is the Iraq war the great neoconservative war? It’s the war the neoconservatives wanted, Friedman (Thomas Friedman of the New York Times) says. It’s the war the neoconservatives marketed… Oh boy, did they sell it. So this is not a war that the masses demanded. This is a war of an elite. I could give you the names of 25 people (all of whom are at this moment within a five-block radius of this office) who, if you had exiled them to a desert island a year and a half ago, the Iraq war would not have happened.”

An overwhelming majority of political, economic, military experts in the U.S. and around the world have documented in print and interviews that the Pro Israel mainly Jewish Neocons pushed for this war.

“With Iraq no threat, why invade a sovereign country? The answer: President Bush’s policy to secure Israel…. You don’t come to town and announce your Israel policy is to invade Iraq”.
–Former Senator Ernest Hollings May 6, 2004 Charleston Post and Courier

“The lack of public discussion about the role of Israel in the thinking of “President Bush” is easier to understand, but weird nevertheless. It is the proverbial elephant in the room: Everybody sees it, no one mentions it. The reason is obvious and admirable: Neither supporters nor opponents of a war against Iraq wish to evoke the classic anti-Semitic image of the king’s Jewish advisers whispering poison into his ear and betraying the country to foreign interests.”
–Michael Kinsley (Jewish journalist), “What Bush Isn’t Saying About Iraq. President Bush won’t discuss two big reasons he wants to invade Iraq”; Slate, October 24, 2002

“They are the so-called neo-cons, or neo-conservatives. A compact group, almost all of whose members are Jewish. They hold the key positions in the Bush administration, as well as in the think-tanks that play an important role in formulating American policy and the op-ed pages of the influential newspapers….Seemingly; all this is good for Israel. America controls the world, we control America. Never before have Jews exerted such an immense influence on the center of world power”. –Uri Avnery, “The Night After”, Counterpunch, April 10, 2003 (Mr. Avnery is a former Israeli soldier and Knesset Member)

“Jews hold stunningly powerful positions and clout in the United States. The combination of the American state’s power and the Jewish power in the areas of legislation, administration, media, law, business, culture, and entertainment have made the Jews a defining factor of contemporary America. Because Israel is inseparable from the identity of American Jews, Israel is inseparable from the American experience.” –Avraham Burg, in his book: “The Holocaust Is Over; We Must Rise From its Ashes”, (Oct. 2008) Served as Speaker of the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament, and Chair of the Jewish Agency and World Zionist Organization.

“How has the Zionist will been imposed on the American people?… It is the Jewish connection, the tribal solidarity among themselves and the amazing pull on non-Jews, that has molded this unprecedented power … The Jewish connection covers all areas and reaches every level. Most Americans may not even sense this gigantic effort, but there is scarcely a Jew who is not touched by its tentacles…The extent and depth to which organized Jewry reached – and reaches – in the U.S. is indeed awesome … The most effective component of the Jewish connection is probably that of media control … Jewish wealth and acumen wields unprecedented power in the area of finance and investment banking, playing an important role in influencing U.S. policy toward the Middle East … In the larger metropolitan areas, the Jewish-Zionist connection thoroughly pervades affluent financial, commercial, social, entertainment, and art circles.” –Alfred Lilienthal, The Zionist Connection (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1978), pp. 206, 209, 212, 218, 228, 229.

“We killed them out of a certain naive hubris. Believing with absolute certitude that now, with the White House, the Senate, and much of the American media in our hands, the lives of others do not count as much as our own… ”
–Ari Shavit, May 27, 1996 New York Times, (expressing sorrow and anger at Israel’s deliberate massacre of over 100 Lebanese civilians under U.N. protection in Qana, Lebanon; April 1996)

“Since the 1960s, Jews have come to wield considerable influence in American economic, cultural, intellectual and political life. Jews played a central role in American finance during the 1980s, and they were among the chief beneficiaries of that decade’s corporate mergers and reorganizations. Today, though barely two percent of the nation’s population is Jewish, close to half its billionaires are Jews. The chief executive officers of the three major television networks and the four largest film studios are Jews, as are the owners of the nation’s largest newspaper chain and the most influential single newspaper, the New York Times… The role and influence of Jews in American politics is equally marked.”
—Benjamin Ginsberg, The Fatal Embrace: Jews and the State (Univ. of Chicago, 1993), pp. 1, 103.

“The President of the United States, on issue after issue, has reflected the thinking of neoconservatives.”
– Richard Perle

This is NOT a discourse or criticism of Judaism or of Jews in general but of an elite of Jewish Americans who dominate the Tripartite triangle of power in this country, what is termed “Jewish Power”; centered in the triangle of Washington D.C. (Government); New York City (Financial/Banking Institutions), and Hollywood/Media.

Thus the power of the Jewish Triangle arising from their dominance in Government, the Financial/Banking Sector, and Hollywood/Media, forced this nation into a war of choice for the sake of Israel.

Coincidentally, Lieutenant General Jay Garner, a staunch supporter of Israel, was appointed after Iraq’s invasion in 2003 as Director of the Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, replaced later by Paul Bremer.

Harvard Professor of Law Noah Feldman (Jewish) was the man most responsible for writing Iraq’s constitution.

The most striking facet of the establishment Jewish American “elite” is their rotating political life cycle, playing musical chairs if you will, between top government positions and the private sector be it in business, academia, influential policy “think tanks”, the media and entertainment industry. This has given the Israel Lobby enormous knowledge, insight, and leverage to singularly ensure America’s foreign policy is dominated by Israel’s interests.

Examples of Outrageous Arrogance of Power by Jewish Americans and the Israel Lobby:

“In October 1980, Thomas Dine, became the new staff director of AIPAC…In a 1992 interview (he said):… I wanted APAC to have a much broader reach into the policy-making processes of our own government. And that meant both the Legislative and Executive branches”….Dine’s AIPAC (in addition to Congress would be)…working directly with officials in the executive branch to shape policy at the Departments of State, Defense, Commerce, and anywhere else Israel had business…Dine boasted of a “Jewish Political Power.”
–J. J. Goldberg; “Jewish Power” page 200-201

“Why didn’t Jimmy Carter speak from the podium at the Democratic National Convention? Alan Dershowitz said he had something to do with it…..In an interview with Shalom TV, the Harvard Law School professor says he “pushed” Barack Obama “very hard to make that decision,” Dershowitz said in an interview with Shalom TV. “Barack Obama had to make a choice between his Jewish supporters and his anti-Israel supporters like Jimmy Carter, and he did not choose Jimmy Carter. And that was an embarrassment for Jimmy Carter and a show of disrespect.”
–Alan Dershowitz, “I helped keep Carter Silent”, Jewish Telegraph Agency, November 13, 2008

“According to the Washington Times, November 4, 1992, AIPAC’s President David Steiner in a taped telephone conversation with AIPAC donor Howard Katz boasted that the lobbying organization was “negotiating” with Clinton over whom the Democratic candidate would appoint as secretary of state and as his national security adviser should he win the election. When asked if AIPAC would participate in the selection of the new secretary of state, Steiner said, “We’ll have access….We have a dozen people in (the Clinton) headquarters. And they are all going to get big jobs,” Steiner, a trustee of the Democratic National Committee, told Katz, who had said he wanted to donate $100,000 to AIPAC-supported candidates.

Katz told the Washington Times that he taped the conversation because “as someone Jewish, I am concerned when a small group has a disproportionate power. I think that hurts everyone, including Jews. If David Steiner wants to talk about the incredible, disproportionate clout AIPAC has, the public should know about it”
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs; “Jews and Israel, AIPAC President Resigns”
December/January 1992/93, Page 69

“In his [Powell’s] own State Department there was a keen awareness of the strength of the Jewish lobbyists. Secretaries of State did not usually meet with lobbyists, but both Jewish officials and Jews that did not officially represent specific groups from Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League to Ronald Lauder, could meet with Powell on short notice…. At the State Department, Foxman had an aura of omnipotence. He was held responsible for the appointment of Indyk as Undersecretary of State under Clinton, and was thought to have played a role in the appointments of Secretaries of State Christopher and Albright. Powell related to Foxman almost as if he were someone to whom he must capitulate. Once Foxman told one of his deputies that Powell was the weak link. When the Secretary of State heard this he began to worry. He knew that in Washington a confrontation with the Jewish lobby would make his life difficult. Once he arranged a meeting with Foxman, but the busy Foxman postponed the meeting three times. When they eventually met, the head of the Anti-Defamation League apologized to the Secretary of State [for the postponements]. “You call, we come,” replied Powell, paraphrasing a well known advertisement for a freight company. That statement had much more meaning than just a humorous polite reply.
–Raviv Drucker and Ofer Shelah, “Boomerang: The Failure of Leadership in the Second Intafada”, page 132-133

Let us analyze some aspects of the Jewish Triangle:

1. GOVERNMENT:

Jewish Americans usually dominate top government positions on economic and foreign policy, especially as it relates to the Middle East. During the Clinton Administration the National Security Advisor was Sandy Berger (followed by Anthony Lake) with James Steinberg as his Deputy. Dennis Ross, Aaron Miller, and Martin Indyk served as MidEast envoys. Madeleine Albright was Secretary of State with Stuart Eizenstat, Peter Tarnoff, and James Rubin (son of Robert Rubin) as top Under Secretaries and Deputies. Wililam Cohen was Secretary of Defense.

“The American people…understand the real gamble is having the same old folks doing things over and over and over again and somehow expecting a different result.” —Barack Obama

BUT: His appointees reflect the recycling of Jewish Americans most responsible for the deregulation of Wall Street that led to our economic meltdown. Not one of the 23 Senators or 133 members of the House of Representatives who voted against the Iraq War (his campaign hallmark) are on Obama’s transition team or been among the appointees thus far.

Examples of Top Positions held by Jewish Americans in Government:

White House Chiefs of Staff: Second most powerful position in the White House. All Jews.
–Reagan: Ken Duberstein
–Bush: Joshua Bolten
–Obama: Rahm Emanuel (who volunteered to serve in the Israeli army, not America’s)

–V.P. Cheney: I. Scooter Libby
–V.P. Joe Biden: Ron Klain (former Chief of Staff to V.P. Al Gore)
Additionally: V.P. Al Gore had Leon Fuerth, National Security Advisor

Treasury Secretaries:

–Bill Clinton: Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers
–Obama: Timothy Geithner, (President of the New York Federal Reserve: dealt with meltdown of Wall Street Banks, Insurance Companies, and Financial Service Companies). Served as Treasury Under Secretary under both Rubin and Summers.

Director, National Economic Council:
–Bill Clinton: Robert Rubin, Gene Sperling, Stephen Friedman
–Obama: Lawrence Summers

Federal Reserve Chairmen: All Jews
–Carter to Reagan: Paul Volcker
–Reagan (1987) to George W. Bush (2006): Alan Greenspan
–George W. Bush: Paul Wolfowitz; Ben Bernanke

Barack Obama has nominated Paul Volcker as Chariman of the newly created “Economic Recovery Advisory Board”.

Currently 5 out of the 12 Federal Reserve Bank Districts in the country are led by Jewish Americans. (Four others are reported to be Jewish, but couldn’t be confirmed) All Jews.
–Eric S. Rosengren (Boston); Timothy Geithner (New York City, now nominated as Treasury Secretary); –Jeffrey M. Lacker (Richmond); Gary H. Stern (Minneapolis); Janet Yellin (San Francisco)

World Bank:
Always headed by an American has enormous power over third world country’s political and economic stability. Seen as an extension of U.S. foreign policy.
–Recent World Bank Presidents: James Wolfensohn, Paul Wolfowitz, currently Robert Zoellick (Jews)

(Zoellick was previously a managing director of Goldman Sachs, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State, and Bush’s U.S. Trade Representative).

Congress:

Congress is the premier institution where the Jewish/Israel lobby has its most influence. It’s been called an “Israeli Occupied Territory” and “The Little Knesset”. In reality, it’s Congressmen who lobby the Jewish/Israeli Lobby for financial, political, and good public relation favors. It is the most damning shameful display of a superpower surrendering and pandering its dignity, and honor to a Pro Israel Lobby. When Congress has to choose between U.S. and Israel’s interests it adopts Israel’s interests.

One Example of Who Congress Really Serves:

June 11, 2008: Americans denied more Unemployment Benefits.

According to an Associated Press Report the House of Representatives defeated an attempt to give unemployed Americans an extra three months of jobless benefits, i.e. extending the average $300 a week benefit check for 13 weeks for all unemployed Americans.

June 27, 2008: Instead, Israel gets the money.

According to an A.F.P. report, just sixteen days later the Congress approved a 170 million dollar increase in security assistance to Israel as part of its new 10-year, 30 billion dollar defense aid commitment to the Jewish state. The legislation gained final approval in a 92-6 Senate vote.

Israel’s automatic access to our tax dollars began in 1948 with a $100 Million grant by President Truman, an extraordinary amount in those days.

While Israel sends Israel $30 Billion ‘EXTRA” in aid, that same amount was denied to expand America’s Children Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), to the 3 American automakers whose industry employs over 1.3 million Americans, and to extend unemployment benefits suffering American families during this Wall Street manufactured economic meltdown. But, in good government fashion Wall Street is getting trillions while Joe the Plumber has to sell his plunger to eat.

“Unbeknownst to most Americans, Israel’s westernmost settlement is not located in Palestine-Israel, but is 6000 miles away on the high ground overlooking Foggy Bottom in Washington D.C. This Capital Hill settlement of pro-Israel lobbies and think tanks strategically controls the high ground overlooking the United States’ Middle East policy landscape by having made kibbutzniks of most members of the executive and legislative branches of the government—including President-elect Obama, Vice President-elect Biden (a wannabe Zionist), and future Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel (a born Zionist).” –Robert Weitzel, “Israel’s Settlement on Capitol Hill, Counterpunch, November 28, 2008: MUST READ

“An attack on Israel is an attack on America, in my estimation. My No. 1 priority in foreign policy is to protect Israel.”–Richard “Dick” Armey, former House of Representatives Majority Leader (1995-2003), in an interview with Jake Tapper, New York Times, “The Way we live now 9-1-02: Questions for Dick Armey, Retiring, Not Shy”, September 1, 2002 –On MSNBC’s “Hardball with Chris Matthews”, May 1, 2001, Rep. Dick Armey called for the expulsion of Palestinians from the occupied territories.

“It’s almost political suicide . . . for a member of Congress who wants to seek reelection to take any stand that might be interpreted as anti-policy of the conservative Israeli government.” –President Jimmy Carter, “Palestine—Peace or Apartheid”

Former chief United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq, Scott Ritter, wrote in his 2006 book, “Target Iran”:

“Let there be no doubt: If there is an American war with Iran, it is a war that was made in Israel and nowhere else.”

“You can’t have an Israeli policy other than what AIPAC gives you around here,”
–Former Senator Ernest Hollings (D-SC) on Senate Floor upon leaving office, Congressional Record – Senate, May 20, 2004, pages S5921-S5925.

“The real cost of our so-called “strategic relationship” with Israel is not just in dollars but in American lives. AIPAC, as Israel’s chief representative in Washington, promotes an agenda that undermines U.S. credibility and threatens to draw us into more needless wars in Iran and Syria.”
–Former Congressman Paul Findley (R-IL): author of “They Dare to Speak”, and, “Deliberate Deceptions”; and Founding Chairman of the “Council for the National Interest” (http://cnionline.org/)

“The U.S. Congress is not even handed for “domestic political reason”; and, “Israeli leaders understand our system very, very well [and] because they understand our system they can exploit it.”
–Former Congressman Lee Hamilton, was ranking Democrat on the House International Relations Committee speaking at a Middle East Symposium October 22-23 on “Conflict and Peace in the Middle East at Carbondale, IL.

Mr. Hamilton was Vice Chair of the 9/11 Commission. In an article by Ivan Eland of the Independent Institute, 9/11 Commission Chairmen Admit Whitewashing the Cause of the Attacks, August 7, 2006; Mr. Eland wrote:

“As both the Bush administration and its client government in Israel, with their invasions of Arab states in Iraq and Lebanon, respectively, make the United States ever more hated in the Islamic world, a new book by the chairmen of the 9/11 commission admits that the commission whitewashed the root cause of the 9/11 attacks—that same interventionist U.S. foreign policy……Former Governor Tom Kean and former Congressman Lee Hamilton, chairmen of the 9/11 Commission—have written a tell-all book, Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission (Knopf, Aug. 15, 2006)… makes the shocking admission that some commission members deliberately wanted to distort an even more important issue. Apparently, unidentified commissioners wanted to cover up the fact that U.S. support for Israel was one of the motivating factors behind al Qaeda’s 9/11 attack. Although Hamilton, to his credit, argued for saying that the reasons al Qaeda committed the heinous strike were the U.S. military presence in the Middle East and American support for Israel, the panel watered down that frank conclusion to state that U.S. policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and U.S. policy on Iraq are “dominant staples of popular commentary across the Arab and Muslim world.”

111th Congress: 100 Senators: 435 House Representatives

Jews: 13 Senators; 32 Members of House of Representatives.

African Americans: 13% of Population: 0 Senators, 42 Members of the House of Representatives.

Hispanics: 14% of Population: 3 Senators, ~25 Members of House of Representatives.

In the Senate’s entire History only 5 African Americans have been Senators, including Obama.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee:

The most important Congressional Committee serving Israel’s interests is the Foreign Relations Committee in both the Senate and House. –Senate Chairs of Foreign Relations Committee: Joe Biden (I am a Zionist), to be followed by John Kerry (of Jewish descent), staunch Israeli supporter. –House Chairs of Foreign Relations Committee:

–Tom Lantos (deceased): Israel’s premier Congressman and sponsor/co-sponsor of every Congressional Resolution supporting Israel and attacking Arab nations.

–Howard Berman: In a Jerusalem Post interview, June 23, 2008, the following was reported: “Howard Berman likes to joke that he became a Zionist before he became a Democrat.. He has the helm of one of the most powerful bodies shaping US foreign policy, and he says his decision to run for Congress and focus on international relations while in office was intimately connected to his Jewish background and ties to the Jewish state. “Israel’s security and the US-Israeli relationship is for me an issue that shapes my whole agenda [in] Congress, and guides it,”. Senator Carl Levin (Jewish) is the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Armed Services.

–Oversee all Military budgets and policies (ensures military aid to Israel) Sub-Committee Chairs of House Foreign Relations Committee: (Below, Jews Chair 4 out of the 7 Sub-Committees). Notice the influence on the Middle East, Terrorism, and Western nations.

–Rep. Gary Ackerman: Sub-Committee on Middle East and Asia –Rep. Brad Sherman: Sub-Committee on Terrorism, Non-Proliferation, and Trade

–Rep. Eliot Engel: Sub-Committee on Western Hemisphere

–Rep. Robert Wexler: Sub-Committee on Europe Additionally Rep. Henry Waxman (Jewish) replaced Rep. John Dingell (Catholic, been Congressmen for 53 years) as Chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and Senator Joe Lieberman despite his opposition to Obama kept his Chairmanship of the powerful Homeland Security Committee. Do you think the Senate feared the Lobby’s backlash if they removed Joe “the traitor” Lieberman? The following officials are responsible for Homeland Security, Justice Department, Terrorism, and Financial Intelligence. They have access to the most sensitive intelligence, military, technology, and international financial transactions. All Jews.

–Michael Chertoff: Secretary of Homeland Security

–Sen. Joe Lieberman: Chair of Senate Committee on Homeland Security –Michael Mukasey: Attorney General of the Justice Department

–Stuart Levey: Under Secretary Treasury Department for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence. Man most responsible for closing most Muslim Charities in U.S. that assist Palestinians; accusing any Pro Palestinian individual or organization of Terrorism and imprisoning such persons for years (Dr. Sami Al Arian) without charges; and limiting the access and services of the Arab Bank in New York City. Two Jews who’ve served as Chairs of both the Democratic and Republican National Committees. (there have been others such as Gov. Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania, Chair of DNC in 2000) That’s Jewish power.

Steve Grossman (Jewish): Chair of Democratic National Committee Went from Chair of the Massachusetts Democratic Party (1990-1992)—to-Chairman of AIPAC (Israel’s powerful lobby; 1992-1997)—to—Chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC: 1997-1999). Only in America can the head of a lobbing group for a foreign nation become chair of one of the two major political parties. According to the Jewish Telegraph Agency , January 17, 1997 (AIPAC’s Steve Grossman takes Democratic Post), Grossman, in a phone interview, stated: “One part of my life will always be dedicated to grass-roots activism in the Jewish community….”My commitment to strengthening the U.S.-Israel relationship is unwavering.” Kenneth Mehlmen (Jewish). Chair of Republican National Committee Served as campaign manager for George W. Bush’s 2004 re-election campaign. Became Chairman of the Republican National Committee (2005-2007).

In addition: Rahm Emanuel (Jewish): Served as Chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (decides which candidates gets election funds: a controlling power) for the 2006 election. After the Democratic Party regained control of the House, he was elected as the next Chairman of the Democratic Caucus becoming the fourth highest-ranking Democrat in the House after the Speaker Nancy Pelosi Rep. Eric Cantor (Jewish): Within 2 years of being elected to the House of Representatives he was selected to serve as Chief Deputy Majority Whip, the highest appointed position in the House of Representatives. On November 19, 2008, he was elected to the position of Minority Whip for the 111th Congress becoming the second highest-ranking Republican in the House. He’s on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, which is the chief tax-writing committee of the House with broad responsibilities on several programs. He’s also the Chairman of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare. Additionally, Representative Sander M. Levin (Jewish) Chairs the Subcommittee on Trade of the Ways and Means Committee.

2. BANKING/FINANCE:

Referring to Vanity Fair’s 100 List of the world’s most powerful people, the Jerusalem Post reports:

“It’s a list of “the world’s most powerful people,” 100 of the bankers and media moguls, publishers and image makers who shape the lives of billions. More than half its members, at least by one count, are Jewish….Joseph Aaron, the editor of The Chicago Jewish News, thinks it’s a list his readers should “feel very, very good about….Talk about us being accepted into this society, talk about us having power in this society,”
–Jerusalem Post, Oct. 11, 2007, “Jewish Power Dominates at Vanity Fair”,

Wall Street Banks, Insurance Companies, and Financial Centers were mostly founded by Jews and usually have Jewish executives:

All institutions below are part of the Wall Street economic meltdown, either going bankrupt, failing, or restructuring. The U.S. taxpayer has poured over $8 Trillion into Wall Street’s financial institutions. It’s an enormous asset to these mainly Jewish firms that their executives rotate in and out of the Treasury Department, Federal Reserve, and Securities and Exchange Commission. Many sit on each other’s Board of Directors.

Goldman Sachs: (Jewish) founded in 1869 by German Jewish immigrant Marcus Goldman. Later joined by his son in law Samuel Sachs to form Goldman Sachs. Henry Paulson was Chair and CEO before leaving to become Bush’s Treasury Secretary. Robert Rubin was a Co Senior Partner.

Lehman Brothers: (Jewish) founded by Henry and Mayer Lehman. CEO: Richard S. Fuld, Jr. (Jewish) who also is a member of the New York Federal Reserve Bank along with Michael Geinther, Obama’s Treasury Secretary.

Citigroup: Robert Rubin served as Chairman and now is a Director and Senior Counselor. Served as Clinton’s Treasury Secretary. Was mentor to Obama’s economic team and is Obama’s financial advisor. Sanford A. Weill was CEO and later Chairman of Citicorp. He also was a Director of the N.Y. Federal Reserve Board…

AIG: (American International Group) Maurice R. Greenberg, Chairman for 35 years.

Bear Stearns: (Jewish), Alan D. Schwartz, President and CEO, Alan Greenberg, Chairm.

The quote below is from an article published in the Jewish Ledger March 19, 2008.

“Bear Stearns” will always be associated with financial failure rather than with its long history of success, a history from which the Jewish community was a major beneficiary….Through it all and until recently, Bear was also Wall Street’s quintessential Jewish firm. That says much in an industry that was distinguished by so many great Jewish names and fortunes: The Seligmans, Hallgartens, Goldman Sachses, Wertheims, Kuhn Loebs, Lehmans, Warburgs, Neubergers, Baches and many others had Jewish roots”.

Software and Internet: Below All Jews.

* Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft
* Sergey Brin and Larry Page, co-founder of Google
* Lawrence Ellison, founder of Oracle Corporation
* Philippe Kahn, founder of Borland

3. HOLLYWOOD/MEDIA: Jews founded all the Hollywood Studios and the 3 Major Television Networks.

Hollywood:

Hollywood has historically portrayed minorities in a negative often barbaric fashion beginning with Native Americans and ending with today’s Arab/Muslim villains. (Read Prof. Jack Shaheen’s “Reel Bad Arabs”). Arabs, Muslims, and Palestinians are constantly portrayed as terrorists, barbaric, evil, dirty, and oppressors of women. Dehumanizing a people legitimizes wars, invasions, colonialism, and occupation.

According to the historian Neal Gable, author of An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood, “Jews invented Hollywood”.

“Hollywood studios were founded by a few Jewish immigrants like Adolph Zukor and Jesse Lasky (Paramount Studios; Carl Laemmele (Universal); Louis B. Mayer, Samuel Goldwyn and the Schenks (MGM), Harry Cohn (Columbia); William Fox (Fox Film Corporation); Brothers Harry, Sam, Jack , and Albert Warner (Warner Brothers); Marcus Loew (Loew’s Theatres), along with a dominance of Jewish attorney’s and talent agents in Hollywood”.

“It makes no sense at all to try to deny the reality of Jewish power and prominence in popular culture,” acknowledges Michael Medved, a well-known Jewish author and film critic. “Any list of the most influential production executives at each of the major movie studios will produce a heavy majority of recognizably Jewish names.”
–Michael Medved (Jewish), “Is Hollywood Too Jewish?,” Moment, Vol. 21, No. 4 (1996), p. 37.

Jonathan J. Goldberg, editor of the influential Jewish community weekly Forward. in his 1996 book, “Jewish Power”, wrote:

“In a few key sectors of the media, notably among Hollywood studio executives, Jews are so numerically dominant that calling these businesses Jewish-controlled is little more than a statistical observation”.
–Jonathan Goldberg, Jewish Power: Inside the American Jewish Establishment (Addison-Wesley, 1996), pp. 280, 287-288. See also pp. 39-40, 290-291.

MEDIA:

Mostly owned, controlled, and run by Jewish publishers, executives, editors, and a plethora of Jewish journalists.

“In the world according to U.S. Media, the high moral ground in the Middle East belongs to Israel’s government—even when it slaughters Lebanese civilians as a matter of policy. In news coverage , Israeli casualties are apt to have names, faces, and bereaved relatives, while Arab victims are likely to be fleeting images: nameless, faceless, distant….Israel’s most crucial allies include the mass media of the United States. Together with top official in Washington, news outlets keep reinforcing the assumption that the Israeli government can do little wrong”.
–Norman Solomon & Jeff Cohen, “Wizards of Media Oz”; p. 243 (courageous Jewish journalists)

–Founders of the 3 Television Networks: All Jews
–William S. Paley: founder of CBS
–David Sarnoff: founder of NBC
–Leonard Goldenson: founder of ABC

“The uniformity of the US media has become much more complete since the days of the cold war. During the 1990s, the US government permitted an unconscionable concentration of print and broadcast media that terminated the independence of the media. Today the US media is owned by 5 giant companies in which pro-Zionist Jews have disproportionate influence. More importantly, the values of the conglomerates reside in the broadcast licenses, which are granted by the government, and the corporations are run by corporate executives—not by journalists—whose eyes are on advertising revenues and the avoidance of controversy that might produce boycotts or upset advertisers and subscribers. Americans who rely on the totally corrupt corporate media have no idea what is happening anywhere on earth, much less at home”
–Prof. Paul Craig Roberts, “What We Know and Don’t Know About 9/11”, Vdare.com, August 16, 2006 ~ Former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration

THE BIG FIVE Media Conglomerates:

Conglomerates are responsible for over 80% of all news, editorial, sports, and entertainment information in the U.S. Each conglomerate owns many television, cable and radio stations, movie studios, daily newspapers, weekly magazines, and publishing companies in the U.S. and around the world. Below is only a small list of the overwhelming Jewish executives in all facets of these Conglomerate Medias.

–Viacom (CBS): Sumner Redstone (Jewish), Chairman, 39 television stations, 185 radio stations, MTV, Nickelodeon, BET, UPN, Paramount Pictures, Simon & Schuster
–Les Moonves, (Jewish): CEO of CBS Television
–Zev Shalev (Jewish): Executive Producer of CBS “The Early Show” (daily morning show)
–60 Minutes: Don Hewitt (Jewish), Executive Producer for 36 years) followed by Jeff Fager, main Jewish Correspondents: Mike Wallace (retired), Leslie Stahl, Bob Simon, Morley Safer (attacked CBS for not showing Prophet Muhammad’s cartoons, called it cowardly): ALL Jewish
–Time/Warner (CNN): Jeffrey Lawrence Bewkes, President and CEO (Jewish) Time Warner Cable, Warner Bros. Pictures, TNN, HBO, Warner Music Group, Time Publishing (Time, People, Sports Illustrated, Fortune, and Money Magazine).
–Jonathan Klein (Jewish) President of CNN/U.S.
–Barry Meyer: (Jewish) Chairman and CEO, Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
–Richard Stengel (Jewish) Time Magazine’s Managing Editor.
–News Corporation: Rupert Murdoch, Chair and CEO (gentile, but some report Jewish mother)

Here’s what the editor in chief of the New Jersey Jewish News, May 5, 2007 said of Rupert Murdoch.

“Murdoch is popular in the pro-Israel community for his newspaper’s and network’s unflinching support for Israel, and he should be. The Journal’s editorial writers also tend to take Israel’s side. But opinion is opinion, and fact is fact. You can rely on the columnists and editorial writers at Murdoch’s New York Post for a rousingly pro-Israel take on the day’s news….. For years the Post’s Israel correspondent was Uri Dan, a right-hand man to Ariel Sharon”.

Murdoch:

Owns Fox Entertainment Group, includes Fox Television (owns 60 television stations with 188 affiliates), Fox Cable (sports, movie channels, National Geographic Channel, 20th Century Fox Movie Studio). World’s largest publisher of english language newspapers, including the New York Post, owns Harper Collins Publishers.

–Peter Chernin (Jewish) President, and Chief Operating Officers of News Corp.; Chair and CEO of Fox Group.
– Roger Ailes (Jewish). President of Fox News Channel and Chair of Fox Television Stations Group.

In an interview with the Vindicator paper of Youngstown Ohio, November 11, 2008, Roger Ailes was quoted as saying:

“I defend the United States, Israel and the Constitution.”

–“The Weekly Standard”: most influential right wing magazine is owned by Rupert Murdoch with a Jewish Neocon Editor, William Kristol

–General Electric: Jeff Zucker (Jewish); President & CEO of NBC Universal (NBC, MSNBC, CNBC)

NBC serves 220 affiliated TV stations, operates 28 TV broadcasting stations, four cable/satellite networks around the world, investments in the Internet, multimedia, cable television, Universal Studios, plus owns Telemundo, one of the two largest Hispanic broadcasting networks.

–Mark Hoffman, (Jewish): President of CNBC (Business channel):
–Ben Silverman, (Jewish): Co-Chair, NBC Entertainment and NBC Universal TV Studio
–Ron Meyer, (Jewish): President and Chief Operating Officer, Universal Studios
–Walt Disney Company: Robert Iger (Jewish): President and CEO Operates ABC Network with 226 affiliated stations, Cable TV including ESPN Sports Network, Movie Studios, International Stations, Retail Store, Internet, Music, Theatres, Theme Parks, ABC Radio Networks with the largest radio sports network in the country; also owns 10 television stations, 44 AM and 18 FM Radio Stations. Publishing, Magazines,
–David Westin (Jewish), President of ABC News
–George Bodenheimer, (Jewish): President of ESPN (Sports Network)

According to a research and network analysis done by Sonoma University on the Boards of Directors of the ten big media organizations, only 118 people comprise the membership of all ten boards. These 118 persons also sit on the corporate boards of 288 national and international corporations. In fact, eight out of the ten big media giants share common memberships on boards of directors with each other.

This is the greatest and purest monopoly of power, influence, and intimidation by a small cabal of men and women who run the world’s access to information. They formulate public opinion, create or destroy governments and careers, and regularly shape and influence government policy.

This is the greatest danger to democracy, not the terrorism of a few thousand murderous fanatics.

Jewish media power is not limited to the U.S. but is found in Europe, Canada, Australia, and other nations.

Major Jewish Newspapers: New York Times, Washington Post (Owns Newsweek), Wall Street Journal

–Tribune Company: Sam Zell (Jewish), Chairman, President and CEO
Owns the following papers: Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun, Sun Sentinel (South Florida), Orlando Sentinel, Hartford Courant, Morning Call and Daily Press (among others)

All three major News Magazines are owned or run by Jews:

TIME: Jewish Chairman of Time/Warner
Newsweek: Owned by the Washington Post, a Jewish owned Media Company
–U.S. News and World Report: Owned by Jewish billionaire, Mortimer Zuckerman; who also served as President of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations; a staunch supporter of Israel.

Special Mention:

1. Corporation for Public Broadcasting: Chair, Cheryl Feldman Halpern (Jewish)
–CPB was created by Congress in 1967 under the Public Broadcasting Act. It receives federal funding and in turn funds PBS and NPR (National Public Radio). Ms. Halpern was appointed by Bush to this post in 2005. Previously she was Chair of the Republican Jewish Coalition for eight years. As such she was a strong critic of NPR, accusing the public network of anti-Israel bias. Now America’s public radio networks are run by a Zionist. That’s power.

2. M.E.M.R.I.: Middle East Media Research Institute, headquartered in Washington D.C.
Founded in 1998 by former Israeli military intelligence officer, Yogi Carmon, and the Israeli born Dr. Meyrav Wurmser (left for the Hudson Institute), wife of David Wurmser, former Middle East Advisor to V.P. Dick Cheney and now Director of Middle East Studies at the American Enterprise Institute
–The sole purpose of this organization is to “translate” Arab and Persian media reports into English and other languages. It’s highly inflammatory, selective, wrong and biased translation is done deliberately to further antagonize western governments and peoples against Arabs and Muslims to further entrench Israel’s sole narrative as a victim of hate and violence. Expectedly MEMRI has received wide flung mention, praise, and free propaganda in the Jewish owned media such as the New York Times.

THINK TANKS

Jews, Neocons, and Pro Israel supporters dominate the landscape of Washington “think?” tanks that basically provides the “thinking” for the White House and Congress. Their policy papers, talking points, and dominance on television news programs as “experts” as well as columnists and opinion writers for the major papers is overwhelming. They’re funded by Jewish philanthropists and wealthy conservative foundations.

A review of their board of directors and advisors reads like a who’s who of the Executive, Legislative, Judicial branches of government; corporate America, media owners, editors, columnists, television broadcasters, academia, entertainment personalities, even foreign governmental officials.

As one example, let’s take the AIPAC founded (Martin Indyk) Washington Institute for Near East Policy:

Its Executive Director is Robert Satloff (Jewish), who served on Richard Perle’s Defense Policy Board in the Pentagon (reported to Paul Wolfowitz called the “Architect” of the Iraq War) that pushed for the Iraq War. Dennis Ross (Clinton’s Bush, and Obama’s Mideast Envoy) is a Consultant.

Shockingly, the Board of Directors of this AIPAC formed “think tank” has 4 (bipartisan) Former Secretaries of State: Warren Christopher, Lawrence S. Eagleburger, Alexander Haig, and George Shultz.

Plus Robert McFarlane, former National Security Advisor, R. James Woolsey, former CIA Director, Richard Perle, James G. Roche, former Secretary of Air Force, and Publisher Mortimer Zuckerman.

The same goes for other Pro Israel think tanks as well; like the American Enterprise Institute (AEI: Chairman Bruce Kovner, Jewish), the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA: Chair, Mark Broxmeyer, Jewish), Project for the New American Century (Chair, William Kristol, Jewish), Council on Foreign Relations (President: Richard Haass: Jewish); Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (President: Clifford May: Jewish); Center for Security Policy (President: Frank Gaffney, Jewish)

Obama, especially with Hilary “Zionist” Clinton as Secretary of State, will not be able to waver from the path of allegiance to Israel. He talks the talk but he walks the Zionist walk. He projects confidence but in reality has shown the same insecurity, lack of confidence, and willingness to sell his political soul and nation to powerful Pro Israel Jews who’ve surrounded him and built him up from the very beginning.

Given America’s propensity to avoid confrontation, to seek a happy medium, it’s general ignorance on all matters political, especially on “foreign affairs”; coupled with the high education, wordsmith eloquence, assertiveness and projection of confidence by the “Jewish” elite who swarm around every politician; Americans willingly surrender the purview of political “expertise” to such an elite trusting that they know what’s best for America. The Cabal Jews tell America—-trust us— we know money, and we know Arabs and Muslims, we know their violent faith, their addiction to terrorism, and the fact that they only understand power.

So trust us, America, we know what’s good for them and what’s best for you. Amen, Shalom.

“Until Israel’s hilltop settlement in our nation’s capital is dismantled, allowing for the possibility of a just and lasting peace in Palestine-Israel, its influence on both branches of our government and its insidious affect on US Middle East policy will continue to make willing—or unwitting—kibbutzniks of all Americans. We will be held as complicit, and as culpable, as the citizens of the country whose leaders sat in the dock at Nuremberg. The world will ask, “Why didn’t you do something to stop it?”
–Robert Weitzel, “Israel’s Settlement on Capitol Hill”, Counterpunch, November 28, 2008 (a must read)

America, our manufactured friend, a friend that loves us to death, that even wallows in the murder of 3,000 Americans on 9/11 as long as it benefits its interests—-with friends like these…. well you know the rest.

“We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq,”
–Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Haaretz, April 16, 2008, “Report: Netanyahu says 9/11 terror attacks GOOD for Israel (as quoted in Ma’ariv)

As an American who loves freedom and justice for all people I pledge to first work for the freedom of our nation from such foreign influence and betrayal by the few, the rich, the shameless, who commandeer our national interests to serve their allegiance to Israel, not America.

Americans have long endured in silence and ignorance the power of the few who’ve fostered in our psyche a herd mentality that absorbs their lies, myths, and propaganda without question causing this great nation to serve and further the political interests of a foreign nation with the blood and fortunes of our young generation.

In honoring the dead at Gettysburg, President Lincoln left a recording for history on this nation’s eternal vigilance for freedom, equality, and liberty: “that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

The time for Israel and its Lobby’s stranglehold on our government and future is soon to be over.

Can you hear the Liberty Bell ring again?

“Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be equally outraged by silence.” ~ Henri Amiel

MUST WATCH VIDEOS:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2451908450811690589 (MUST SEE DOCUMENTARY) “Occupation 101” on Israel’s Founding, Terrorism, and Ethnic Cleansing of Palestinians out of their land)

http://ahmedismailibrahim.wordpress.com/2008/06/17/for-those-who-want-to-see-the-ugly-truth-of-israel-you-gotta-see-this-video-shot-in-1950/ (A Moving Video of Palestinian ethnic cleansing filmed in 1950)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vWZTTrceV8
BBC’s “THE WAR PARTY—Zionism and Neocon Foreign Policy”

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20155.htm (Must watch Danish Video on: THE ISRAEL Lobby)

Sources:

http://www.wrmea.com/backissues/0591/9105017.htm (Truman on having Jewish, not Arab, Constituents)

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/moshe_dayan.html (Moshe Dayan Quote on American aid)

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20443.htm (jAlan Hart, ICH, June 8, 2008: Mr. Hart was a BBC journalist, an author, and researcher)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7729487.stm
Eviction in battle for East Jerusalem, November 15, 2008 (Fawzia al-Kurd)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20081119/wl_mideast_afp/mideastconflictexpulsionjerusalem
Tent of expelled Jerusalem Palestinian family torn down, November 19, 2008

http://www.ynetnews.com/Ext/Comp/ArticleLayout/CdaArticlePrintPreview/1,2506,L-3560118,00.html
(Obama ‘s Letter to Bush: Hamas must recognize Israel 6?25/08 )

http://www.ynet.co.il/english/articles/0,7340,L-3598462,00.html
(Obama in a Conference call with 900 Rabbis: Israel’s security is “sacrosanct”, Ynet, 9/18/08)

http://www.aipac.org/Publications/SpeechesByPolicymakers/Barack_Obama_-_AIPAC_Policy_Forum_2007.pdf (AIPAC: Barack Obama’s Speech: March 2, 2007)

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/rls/86530.htm (State Dept. Website and the Daniel Pearl Story)

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E05E7DB1E3CF932A3575AC0A9649C8B63 (Interview with Dick Armey, NYT, Sept 1, 2002: The Way We Live now, Questions for Dick Armey—‘an attack on Israel is an attack on America”)

http://www.counterpunch.org/armey0502.html
(Counterpunch: “Rep. Dick Armey Calls for Ethnic Cleansing of Palestinians, May 2, 2002)

http://www.csmonitor.com/specials/neocon/neoconQuotes.html
(Empire Builders: NeoConservatives and their Blueprint for U.S. Power: Almost all are Jewish)

http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2008/11/lets-dont-be-naive-about-obama-and-the-jewish-establishment.html (Avraham Burg Quote)

http://blogs.jta.org/politics/article/2008/11/13/1000960/ders
“Dershowitz: I Helped Keep Carter Silent”, Jewish Telegraph Agency; November 13, 2008

http://njdc.typepad.com/njdcs_blog/2007/12/steve-sheffey-g.html
(December 04, 2007; “DEMOCRATS & ISRAEL” A summary of Democrats pandering to Israel)

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=280279&contrassID=2&subContrassID=14&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y
(White Man’s Burden, Ari Shavit; Haaretz), May 4, 2003)

http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=648 (How the Jewish Lobby Pushed for the Iraq War)

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0410-34.htm
“Abraham Foxman and Intimidation of Colin Powell” Book by two Israeli Journalists: Drucker, Raviv and Shelah, Ofer, Boomerang…, Keter, 2005, pps. 132-133.

http://backissues.cjrarchives.org/owners/ (Columbia Journal Review) “Who Owns What” in Media)
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0624-25.htm
Big Media Interlocks with Corporate America, 6/24/08)
(Sonoma University Research: 118 people compost membership of boards of directors of 10 biggest media)

http://www.corp-research.org/ (Info on Top 5 Media Conglomerates)
http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Media-conglomerate
(Comprehensive Info on Media Conglomerates)

http://www.weeklystandard.com/
The Weekly Standard/ Owned by Rupert Murdoch, William Kristol, Editor

http://www.jewishsf.com/content/2-0-/module/displaystory/story_id/5306/edition_id/98/format/html/displaystory.html (On Steve Grossman)

http://www.njjewishnews.com/njjn.com/051007/edcolHowNow.html
(Editor of New Jersey Jewish News on Rupert Murdoch)

http://www.counterpunch.org/avnery04102003.html
Uri Avnery, “The Night After”, April 10, 2003

http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1785
“9/11 Commission Chairmen Admit Whitewashing the Cause of the Attacks, August 7, 2006;”

http://www.newamericancentury.org/ “Project for American Century”

(List of signatories of Letter to Clinton, June 3, 1997 to attack Iraq)

Elliott Abrams Gary Bauer William J. Bennett Jeb Bush

Dick Cheney Eliot A. Cohen Midge Decter Paula Dobriansky Steve Forbes

Aaron Friedberg Francis Fukuyama Frank Gaffney Fred C. Ikle

Donald Kagan Zalmay Khalilzad I. Lewis Libby Norman Podhoretz

Dan Quayle Peter W. Rodman Stephen P. Rosen Henry S. Rowen

Donald Rumsfeld Vin Weber George Weigel Paul Wolfowitz

http://www.washington-report.org/backissues/1292/9212069b.html
Washington Report on the Middle East, Jews and Israel, AIPAC President Resigns After Being Taped Boasting of negotiating “Sect of State” for Clinton”; December/January 1992/93, Page 69

http://jta.org/news/article/2008/11/05/1000795/the-chosen-jewish-members-in-the-111th-us-congress “The Chosen: Jewish members in the 111th U.S. Congress”, Jewish Telegraph Agency, Nov. 5, 2008
List of 13 Jewish Senators and 32 Members of House of Representatives

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1214132663714&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
“Time to Rethink”; Jun. 23, 2008 Interview with Rep. Howard Berman

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1191257286817
On Vanity Fair’s List of 100 most powerful men and women in the world (51% Jewish)
http://www.vanityfair.com/online/newestablishment/ (Vanity Fair 100)
http://www.jewishledger.com/articles/2008/07/17/editorials/edit930.txt (On Bear Stearns, Jews in Wall Street)
http://www.cjh.org/education/essays.php?action=show&id=10 Center for Jewish History)
“All That Glitters is not Goldwyn: Early Hollywood Moguls”

http://www.ochaopt.org/documents/Barrier_Report_July_2008.pdf (United Nations: The Humanitarian Impact of Israel’s Wall))

http://www.kibush.co.il/datapage.asp?lang=1%20&section=10
(Occupation Magazine: Articles, Maps, Stats)

http://jinsa.org/ (Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs)

http://aipac.org/index.asp “America’s Pro Israel LOBBY” (quote from its website)

http://adl.org/ (Anti Defamation League)

http://www.conferenceofpresidents.org/
“Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations” – See List of 50 Major Jewish Organizations; Malcolm I. Hoenlein, Executive Vice Chairman

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/01/clinton-obama-and-the-jews/
“Clinton, Obama and the Jews”, Feb. 1, 2008: “an embarrassment of riches for Jews to have both these candidates)

http://www.aei.org/ (Washington Institute for Near East Policy)

http://www.heritage.org/ Heritage Foundation: A Conservative Think Tank

http://www.cato.org/ Cato Institute: funded by two Jews: Charles Koch and Murray Rothbard

http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/1296.html
Good Search Site on Right Wing persons and organizations

http://www.defenddemocracy.org/
Center for Foundation of Democracies: President, Clifford May (Jewish)

http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2004/Republican-Propaganda1sep04.htm
“Tentacles or Rage: The Republican propaganda mill, a brief history”; MUST READ
Lewis Lapham / Harpers Magazine v.309, n.1852, September 2004 1sep04

http://www.vindy.com/news/2008/nov/11/fox-news-chairman-ailes-comes-home-discusses/ “Interview with Roger Ailes, Nov 11, 2008: “I defend…Israel”

http://www.vdare.com/roberts/060816_what_know.htm
Prof. Paul Craig Roberts, “What We Know and Don’t Know about 9/11)

http://www.jewishachievement.com/domains/ceos.html
Overview of Jewish CEO’s, past and present

http://jiw.blogspot.com/2008/11/good-news-about-obama-appointments.html MUST READ
(Jewish Issues Watchdog)
“Good News About Obama Appointments”. November 24, 2008
From Middle East Forum, by Steve Rosen, Wed, 19 Nov 2008:

Previous postings raised questions about potential nominees to Obama Administration positions regarding their views on Israel, Iran, the Palestinians, and other issues. Today, I focus on reasons to have confidence that the incoming team will do positive things in the Middle East. Many of the candidates already nominated or rumored to be likely appointees, are well known to and highly regarded by AIPAC and other pro-Israel organizations. My colleagues, and in some cases I, had contacts and dealings with each of these people over the years, and we had evidence that gave us confidence. This includes:

* Rahm Emmanuel, Chief of Staff to the President;
* Ron Klain, Chief of Staff to Vice President Biden;
* Jim Steinberg, likely to be Deputy National Security Adviser or National Security Adviser to Obama;
* Tony Blinken, likely to be National Security Adviser to the Vice President;
* Greg Craig, White House Counsel;
* Pete Rouse, White House adviser;
* Jim Messina, Deputy Chief of Staff to the president;
* Phil Schiliro, Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs;
* Dennis Ross, rumored for several top diplomatic positions;
* Jack Lew, rumored to head the National Economic Council;
* Jane Harman and Tony Lake, rumored for top intelligence positions;
* Janet Napolitano, who will head the Department of Homeland Security;
* Richard Danzig, probable Deputy Secretary of Defense;
* Richard Clarke, rumored for a ntational security post,; and many others.

Not to mention Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Barack Obama. That certainly doesn’t mean we never had disagreements or will never, but this looks like it will be an Administration full of people quite capable of making wise decisions in the Middle East.

That said, I will continue to look for potential problems among possible nominees and policy developments.

Steve Rosen, the former AIPAC foreign policy chief who now writes a blog hosted by the Middle East Forum. He has been under federal indictment since August 4, 2005 for alleged violations of the Espionage Act in the conduct of AIPAC’s work.

http://www.counterpunch.org/weitzel11282008.html
Robert Weitzel, Israel’s Settlement on Capitol Hill, Counterpunch, Nov. 28, 2008: MUST READ

http://www.masada2000.org/shit-list.html
List of Self Hating Israel Threatening Jews

~~~

All rights reserved by author

July 4, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | 1 Comment

US shuns Bahrain condemnation at UN

Al Akhbar | June 28, 2012

The United States and the United Kingdom on Thursday declined to sign a UN document condemning the ongoing human rights abuses in Bahrain.

The UN Human Rights Council document, which was signed by major European countries including Germany and France, calls on the Gulf state to do more to protect civil liberties in the country.

“We express our concern over the human rights situation in Bahrain, both the violations that took place in February and March 2011 as well as the related ongoing ones,” the document said.

“We are particularly concerned about the consequences faced by those who protested for democratic change in a peaceful manner,” it adds.

Bahraini forces, backed by Saudi troops, crushed a pro-democracy uprising in early 2011, but protests have reemerged in recent months despite repression.

The US has remained quiet on the human rights situation in the country, which is the host of its Fifth Fleet, while condemning government crackdowns in Syria and elsewhere.

Bahraini activists have accused global bodies such as the Human Rights Council of being pressured into silence on the issue.

Maryam Al-Khawaja, acting head of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, welcomed the ruling.

“This is the first step in showing that the Human Rights Council will not allow the implementation of double standards, although they have allowed it this long,” she said.

However she condemned the decision by the US and Britain to not sign the treaty as evidence of “double standards” on human rights.

“The thing that disappoints us most is the fact that the United Kingdom and the United States decided not to sign, which to us says a lot more about how they are insisting on implementing double standards when it comes to supporting or standing against human rights violations in different countries.”

June 28, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , , , | 3 Comments

China, Singapore to be exempted from Iran sanctions

By Jamie Crawford | Jeenyus Corner | June 28, 2012

China and Singapore will receive exemptions from U.S. sanctions scheduled to go into effect Thursday that would have cut off banks in those countries from the U.S. financial system for handling Iranian oil transactions, a source in the office of Sen. Robert Menendez, D-New Jersey, a source in the office of Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) tells Security Clearance.

Secretary of State Clinton called Senator Menendez earlier today to inform him.

Under legislation signed by President Barack Obama In December, the United States will take action against countries that continue buying large volumes of Iranian oil through Iran’s Central Bank by cutting off financial institutions engaged in those transactions from the U.S. banking system.

– State Department released a statement from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton:

Today I have made the determination that two additional countries, China and Singapore, have significantly reduced their volume of crude oil purchases from Iran. As a result, I will report to the Congress that sanctions pursuant to Section 1245(d)(1) of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2012 will not apply to their financial institutions for a potentially renewable period of 180 days.

A total of 20 world economies have now qualified for such an exception. Their cumulative actions are a clear demonstration to Iran’s government that Iran’s continued violation of its international nuclear obligations carries an enormous economic cost. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), Iran’s crude oil exports in 2011 were approximately 2.5 million barrels per day, and have dropped to roughly 1.5 million barrels per day, which in real terms means almost $8 billion in lost revenues every quarter. When the European Union oil embargo goes into effect July 1, Iran’s leaders will understand even more fully the urgency of the choice they face and the unity of the international community.

Today marks an important milestone in the implementation of the NDAA and U.S. sanctions toward Iran. Following the President’s determinations on March 30 and June 11 on the availability of non-Iranian supplies of oil, as of today, any foreign financial institution based in a country that has not received an NDAA exception is subject to U.S. sanctions if it knowingly conducts a significant transaction with the Central Bank of Iran for the sale or purchase of petroleum or petroleum products to or from Iran.

We have been clear all along that there is a path for Iran to fully re-join the global economy. Iran’s leaders have the opportunity to address international concerns by engaging seriously and substantively in negotiations with the P5+1. I urge Iran to demonstrate its willingness to take concrete steps toward resolving the nuclear issue during the expert-level talks scheduled in Istanbul on July 3. Failure to do so will result in continuing pressure and isolation from the international community.

June 28, 2012 Posted by | Economics, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , , | Leave a comment

US Sanctions Policy on a Collision Course against Iran; Increasing Tensions with China

By Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett | Race for Iran | June 27th, 2012

America’s policy on Iran-related secondary sanctions is on a collision course with itself as well as China.  Secondary sanctions violate the United States’ obligations under the World Trade Organization and are, thus, illegal.  (While a WTO signatory may decide, on national security grounds, to restrict its trade with another country, there is no legal basis for one state to impose sanctions against another over business that the second state conducts with a third country.)  If Washington actually imposed secondary sanctions on another state for, say, buying Iranian oil and the sanctioned country took the United States to the WTO’s Dispute Resolution Mechanism, the United States would almost certainly lose the case.

Given this reality, the whole edifice of Iran-related secondary sanctions is in reality a house of cards.  It rests on an assumption that no state will ever really challenge the legitimacy of America’s Iran-related extraterritorial sanctions—and this means that the United States cannot ever really impose them.  Instead, successive U.S. administrations have used the threat of such sanctions to elicit modifications of other countries’ commercial relations with the Islamic Republic; when these administrations finally reach the limit of their capacity to leverage other countries’ decision-making regarding Iran, the United States backs off.

The Obama Administration is bringing this glaring contradiction increasingly to the fore, by supinely collaborating with the Congress to enact secondary sanctions into laws that give the executive branch less and less discretion over their actual application.  This dynamic is now coming to a head in the Administration’s dealings with China.

We are currently in China, as Visiting Scholars at Peking University’s School of International Studies.  And that means we are here during the run-up to formal implementation of the United States’ newest round of Iran-related secondary sanctions, due to go into effect on June 28.

These new sanctions, at least as legislated, threaten to punish financial and corporate entities in countries that continue to purchase Iranian oil at their historic levels of consumption.  So far, the Obama Administration has issued sanctions waivers to all of the major buyers of Iranian oil, see here and here—all the major buyers, that is, except the People’s Republic of China.

Trade data indicate that China’s imports of Iranian oil declined significantly in the first quarter of this year.  It is unclear to what extent this reduction was intended as an accommodation to the United States and to what extent it was the product of a payment dispute with Tehran.  But, whatever the reason, the reduction prompted Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to note last week that “we’ve seen China slowly but surely take actions,” see here.  Clinton even seemed to hint that the Administration might be looking for an opening to waive the imposition of sanctions against China:  “I have to certify under American laws whether or not countries are reducing their purchases of crude oil from Iran and I was able to certify that India was, Japan was, South Korea was… And we think, based on the latest data, that China is also moving in that direction.”

Since the resolution of the payments dispute between China and Iran, however, China’s imports of Iranian oil have picked up once again, see here and here.  And the Chinese government continues to insist that the country’s purchases of oil from the Islamic Republic are “fully reasonable and legitimate,” see here.

Once June 28 comes the White House and State Department will be under enormous pressure from the Congress (Hill Democrats will provide the President no cover on the issue), the Romney campaign, and various domestic interest groups to sanction China over its continued oil buys from Iran.  The Administration’s alliance with Congress and the pro-Israel lobby on Iran sanctions, combined with its misguided assessment that the United States can somehow compel Iran’s “surrender” on the nuclear issue, have put the President and his team in a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” position.  This is very much a problem of the Administration’s own making.

June 27, 2012 Posted by | Economics, Progressive Hypocrite, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Obama’s Killer Drones

By MARJORIE COHN and JEANNE MIRER | CounterPunch | June 25, 2012

The Bush administration detained and tortured suspected militants; the Obama administration assassinates them. Both practices not only visit more hatred upon the United States; they are also illegal.  Our laws and treaties prohibit torture. The Constitution forbids the government from depriving any person of life without due process of law; that is, arrest and fair trial. Yet President Obama has approved the killing of people, many of whom were not even identified before the kill order was given.

Jo Becker and Scott Shane reported in the New York Times that Obama maintains a “kill list.” After consulting with his counterterrorism adviser John O. Brennan, Obama personally makes the decision to have individuals executed. Brennan was closely identified with torture, secret prisons, and extraordinary rendition during the Bush administration. The Times story, based on interviews with three dozen current and former Obama advisers, reports that “Mr. Obama has avoided the complications of detention by deciding, in effect, to take no prisoners alive. While scores of suspects have been killed under Mr. Obama, only one has been taken into U.S. custody” because he doesn’t want to add new prisoners to Guantanamo.

The leak of the kill list angered Republicans, evidently because they believe it demonstrates Obama’s “strength” in foreign policy. Some progressives who do not fully understand the profound illegality of drone attacks find them preferable to the United States’ all out invasions of more countries.  We all need to understand that the unlawful precedent the United States is setting with its use of killer drones not only undermines the rule of law; it also will prevent the United States from reasonably objecting when other countries that obtain drone technology develop “kill lists” of persons those countries believe represent threats to them.

On June 15, for the first time, Obama publicly acknowledged that his administration is engaging in “direct action” in Yemen and Somalia. Although the United States is not at war with either country, George W. Bush’s “War on Terror” has morphed into Obama’s “War on Al Qaeda.” Obama’s “war” has been used as an excuse to assassinate anyone anywhere in the world whenever the President gives the order.

But “there is not a distinct entity called Al Qaeda that provides a sound basis for defining and delimiting an authorized use of force,” according to Paul P. Pillar, deputy director of the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center from 1997 to 1999. The United States is not at war with Yemen and Somalia.   Even if Obama identifies certain people living in Yemen or Somalia as members of Al-Qaeda who are desirous of committing acts of terror against the people of the United States, there is no basis in law for our government to declare war on individuals it considers a threat. The United States has legal means to indict and extradite, both under U.S. and international law.

Since 2004, some 300 drone strikes have been launched in Pakistan. Twenty percent of the resulting deaths are believed to have been civilians. The Pakistan Human Rights Commission says U.S. drone strikes were responsible for at least 957 deaths in Pakistan in 2010.

In the three and one-half years since Obama took office, between 282 and 585 civilians have been killed, including more than 60 children. “The CIA’s drone campaign has killed dozens of civilians who had gone to rescue victims or who were attending funerals,” a new report by the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism found.

But, according to the Times article, Obama has developed a creative way to count civilian casualties. All military-age men killed in a drone strike zone are considered to be combatants, “unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.” As a result, Brennan reported last year that not one civilian had been killed during one year of strikes. An administration official recently claimed that the number of civilians killed by drone strikes in Pakistan was in the “single digits.” Three former senior intelligence officials told the Times that they couldn’t believe the number could be so low.

Obama, who has been targeting “suspected militants” (called “personality strikes”) in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, even killing U.S. citizens, has authorized expanded drone attacks – whenever there are suspicious “patterns of behavior” at sites controlled by a terrorist group.  These are known as “signature strikes.” That means bombs are being dropped on un-identified people who are in an area where suspicious activity has taken place. This goes beyond the illegal practice of “targeted killing.” People are being killed without even being an identified target.

The administration justifies its use of armed drones with reference to the Authorization for the Use of Military Force that Congress passed just days after the September 11 attacks. In the AUMF, Congress authorized force against groups and countries that had supported the terrorist strikes. But Congress rejected the Bush administration’s request for open-ended military authority “to deter and preempt any future acts of terrorism or aggression against the United States.” Deterrence and preemption are exactly what Obama is trying to accomplish by sending robots to kill “suspected militants” or those who happen to be present in an area where suspicious activity has taken place.

Moreover, in the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012, Congress specifically declared, “Nothing in this section is intended to . . . expand the authority of the President or the scope of the Authorization for the Use of Military Force [of September 2001].”

Drone attacks also violate well-established principles of international law. A targeted killing is defined as the “intentional, premeditated, and deliberate use of lethal force . . . against a specific individual who is not in the physical custody of the perpetrator,” according to Philip Alston, former UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary, or Arbitrary Executions. Targeted or political assassinations – sometimes known as extra-judicial executions – run afoul of the Geneva Conventions, which include willful killing as a grave breach.  Grave breaches of Geneva are punishable as war crimes under the U.S. War Crimes Act.

Christof Heyns, the current UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary, or Arbitrary Executions, expressed grave concern about the targeted killings, saying they may constitute war crimes. He called on the Obama administration to explain how its drone strikes comport with international law, specify the bases for decisions to kill rather than capture particular individuals, and whether the State in which the killing takes place has given consent. Heyns further asked for specification of the procedural safeguards in place, if any, to ensure in advance of drone killings that they comply with international law. He also wanted to know what measures the U.S. government takes after any such killing to ensure that its legal and factual analysis was accurate and, if not, the remedial measures it would take, including justice and reparations for victims and their families. Although Heyns’ predecessor made similar requests, Heyns said the United States has not provided a satisfactory response.

Heyns also called on the U.S. government to make public the number of civilians collaterally killed as a result of drone attacks, and the measures in place to prevent such casualties. Once again, Heyns said the United States has not satisfactorily responded to a prior query for such information.

Likewise, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay recently declared that U.S. drone attacks in Pakistan violate the international law principles of proportionality and distinction. Proportionality means that an attack cannot be excessive in relation to the anticipated military advantage sought.  Distinction requires that the attack be directed only at a legitimate military target.

The United States has ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The ICCPR states: “Every human being has the inherent right to life. This right shall be protected by law. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life.” The Covenant also guarantees those accused of a crime the right to be presumed innocent and to a fair trial by an impartial tribunal. Targeted killings abrogate these rights.

Self defense under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter is a narrow exception to the Charter’s prohibition of the use of force or the threat of force to settle international disputes.  Countries may engage in individual or collective self-defense only in the face of an armed attack.  To the extent the United States claims the right to kill suspected terrorists or their allies before they act, there must exist “a necessity of self-defence, instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation,” under the well-established Caroline Case. Obama’s drone attacks do not meet this standard.

The United States’ resort to ever increasing targeted killings is a direct result of the “War on Terror” the Bush administration declared after 9/11.  Bush declared a perpetual war on a tactic and claimed all Al-Qaeda and Taliban are terrorists who may be preemptively killed as a form of self defense, rather than being arrested and tried for criminal acts. Although he does not use the phrase “War on Terror,” Obama has continued and even extended this policy. It is the product of a powerful military industrial complex in the United States which sees the use of force as the first step to resolving disputes rather than a last resort, notwithstanding the strictures of the UN Charter.

This practice sets a dangerous precedent. Heyns opined that “any Government could, under the cover of counter-terrorism imperatives, decide to target and kill an individual on the territory of any State if it considers that said individual constitutes a threat.” Heyns also cited information that indicates “the attacks increasingly fuel protests among the population.” Heyns said the “lack of transparency” and “dangerous precedent” that drone attacks represent “remain of grave concern.”

Drone strikes are also counterproductive. They breed increased resentment against the United States and lead to the recruitment of more terrorists. “Drones have replaced Guantanamo as the recruiting tool of choice for militants,” Becker and Shane wrote in the Times article. They quoted Faisal Shahzad, who, while pleading guilty to trying to detonate a bomb in Times Square, told the judge, “When the drones hit, they don’t see children.” Pakistani ambassador Zamir Akram told the Geneva Forum last week that the drone attacks are illegal and violate the sovereignty of Pakistan, “not to mention being counter-productive.” He added, “thousands of innocent people, including women and children, have been murdered in these indiscriminate attacks.”

Becker and Shane noted, “[Obama’s] focus on strikes has made it impossible to forge, for now, the new relationship with the Muslim world that he had envisioned. Both Pakistan and Yemen are arguably less stable and more hostile to the United States than when Mr. Obama became president. Justly or not, drones have become a provocative symbol of American power, running roughshod over national sovereignty and killing innocents.”

Ibrahim Mothana, who wrote an op-ed in the Times titled “How Drones Help Al Qaeda,” agrees. “Drone strikes are causing more and more Yemenis to hate America and join radical militants; they are not driven by ideology but rather by a sense of revenge and despair,” Mothana observed.

It is time to halt this dangerous and illegal practice.

Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and past president of the National Lawyers Guild. Her most recent book is The United States and Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration, and Abuse.

June 25, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Obama Regime Files Midnight Brief Defending Secrecy Surrounding “Targeted Killing”

ACLU | June 21, 2012

Just before a midnight deadline, the Obama administration filed a 50-page brief this evening defending the secrecy surrounding the “targeted killing” program.  The administration writes: “Whether or not the CIA has the authority to be, or is in fact, directly involved in targeted lethal operations remains classified.”  The case concerns a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the ACLU last year for records concerning the targeted killing program generally as well as the killing of three American citizens in Yemen last year.

The following can be attributed to Jameel Jaffer, Deputy Legal Director of the ACLU:

“The notion that the CIA’s targeted killing program is still a secret is beyond absurd.  Senior officials have discussed it, both on the record and off.  They have taken credit for its putative successes, professed it to be legal, and dismissed concerns about civilian casualties.  If they can make these claims to the media, they can answer requests under the Freedom of Information Act.  The public is entitled to know more about the legal authority the administration is claiming and the way that the administration is using it.  The administration should release the legal memos that purportedly justify the targeted killing program, and it should release more information about the process by which individuals, including American citizens, are added to government kill lists.  It should also release the evidence that led the administration to kill three Americans, including a 16-year-old boy, last year.”

“We continue to have profound concerns with the power the administration is claiming and with the proposition that the President should be permitted to exercise this power without oversight by the courts. That the administration believes a power so sweeping should be exercised in secret is astounding.”

Today’s filing comes after the government sought several extensions to respond to the ACLU’s lawsuit.  In its last request for an extension, the government stated to the court that it needed further time to allow for “deliberations at the highest levels of the Executive Branch.”

The government’s brief can be found here:
www.aclu.org/files/assets/https___ecf.nysd_.uscourts.gov_cgi-bin_show_temp.pl_file10176016-0–17573.pdf

CONTACT: ACLU national, media@aclu.org

June 21, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , | Leave a comment

How the Obama Administration Is Stalling Its Way to War with Iran

Deep-Sixing the China Option

By Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett | TomDispatch | June 19, 2012

Since talks with Iran over its nuclear development started up again in April, U.S. officials have repeatedly warned that Tehran will not be allowed to “play for time” in the negotiations.  In fact, it is the Obama administration that is playing for time.

Some suggest that President Obama is trying to use diplomacy to manage the nuclear issue and forestall an Israeli strike against Iranian nuclear targets through the U.S. presidential election.  In reality, his administration is “buying time” for a more pernicious agenda: time for covert action to sabotage Tehran’s nuclear program; time for sanctions to set the stage for regime change in Iran; and time for the United States, its European and Sunni Arab partners, and Turkey to weaken the Islamic Republic by overthrowing the Assad government in Syria.

Vice President Biden’s national security adviser, Antony J. Blinken, hinted at this in February, explaining that the administration’s Iran policy is aimed at “buying time and continuing to move this problem into the future, and if you can do that — strange things can happen in the interim.”  Former Pentagon official Michèle Flournoy — now out of government and advising Obama’s reelection campaign — told an Israeli audience this month that, in the administration’s view, it is also important to go through the diplomatic motions before attacking Iran so as not to “undermine the legitimacy of the action.”

New York Times’ journalist David Sanger recently reported that, “from his first months in office, President Obama secretly ordered increasingly sophisticated attacks on the computer systems that run Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facilities, significantly expanding America’s first sustained use of cyberweapons” — even though he knew this “could enable other countries, terrorists, or hackers to justify” cyberattacks against the United States.  Israel — which U.S. intelligence officials say is sponsoring assassinations of Iranian scientists and other terrorist attacks in Iran — has been intimately involved in the program.

Classified State Department cables published by WikiLeaks show that, from the beginning of the Obama presidency, he and his team saw diplomacy primarily as a tool to build international support for tougher sanctions, including severe restrictions on Iranian oil exports.  And what is the aim of such sanctions?  Earlier this year, administration officials told the Washington Post that their purpose was to turn the Iranian people against their government.  If this persuades Tehran to accept U.S. demands to curtail its nuclear activities, fine; if the anger were to result in the Islamic Republic’s overthrow, many in the administration would welcome that.

Since shortly after unrest broke out in Syria, the Obama team has been calling for President Bashar al-Assad’s ouster, expressing outrage over what they routinely describe as the deaths of thousands of innocent people at the hands of Syrian security forces.  But, for morethana year, they have been focused on another aspect of the Syrian situation, calculating that Assad’s fall or removal would be a sharp blow to Tehran’s regional position — and might even spark the Islamic Republic’s demise.  That’s the real impetus behind Washington’s decision to provide “non-lethal” support to Syrian rebels attacking government forces, while refusing to back proposals for mediating the country’s internal conflicts which might save lives, but do not stipulate Assad’s departure upfront.

Meeting with Iranian oppositionists last month, State Department officials aptly summarized Obama’s Iran policy priorities this way: the “nuclear program, its impact on the security of Israel, and avenues for regime change.”  With such goals, how could his team do anything but play for time in the nuclear talks?  Two former State Department officials who worked on Iran in the early months of Obama’s presidency are onrecord confirming that the administration “never believed that diplomacy could succeed” — and was “never serious” about it either.

How Not to Talk to Iran

Simply demanding that Iran halt its nuclear activities and ratcheting up pressure when it does not comply will not, however, achieve anything for America’s position in the Middle East.  Western powers have been trying to talk Iran out of its civil nuclear program for nearly 10 years.  At no point has Tehran been willing to surrender its sovereign right to indigenous fuel cycle capabilities, including uranium enrichment.

Sanctions and military threats have only reinforced its determination.  Despite all the pressure exerted by Washington and Tel Aviv, the number of centrifuges operating in Iran has risen over the past five years from less than 1,000 to more than 9,000.  Yet Tehran has repeatedly offered, in return for recognition of its right to enrich, to accept more intrusive monitoring of — and, perhaps, negotiated limits on — its nuclear activities.

Greater transparency for recognition of rights: this is the only possible basis for a deal between Washington and Tehran.  It is precisely the approach that Iran has advanced in the current series of talks.  Rejecting it only guarantees diplomatic failure — and the further erosion of America’s standing, regionally and globally.

George W. Bush’s administration refused to accept safeguarded enrichment in Iran.  Indeed, it refused to talk at all until Tehran stopped its enrichment program altogether.  This only encouraged Iran’s nuclear development, while pollsshow that, by defying American diktats, Tehran has actually won support among regional publics for its nuclear stance.

Some highly partisan analysts claim that, in contrast to Bush, Obama was indeed ready from early in his presidency to accept the principle and reality of safeguarded enrichment in Iran.  And when his administration failed at every turn to act in a manner consistent with a willingness to accept safeguarded enrichment, the same analysts attributed this to congressional and Israeli pressure.

In truth, Obama and his team have never seriously considered enrichment acceptable.  Instead, the president himself decided, early in his tenure, to launch unprecedented cyberattacks against Iran’s main, internationally monitored enrichment facility.  His team has resisted a more realistic approach not because a deal incorporating safeguarded enrichment would be bad for American security (it wouldn’t), but because accepting it would compel a more thoroughgoing reappraisal of the U.S. posture toward the Islamic Republic and, more broadly, of America’s faltering strategy of dominating the Middle East.

The China Option

Acknowledging Iran’s right to enrich would require acknowledging the Islamic Republic as a legitimate entity with legitimate national interests, a rising regional power not likely to subordinate its foreign policy to Washington (as, for example, U.S. administrations regularly expected of Egypt under Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak).  It would mean coming to terms with the Islamic Republic in much the same way that the United States came to terms with the People’s Republic of China — another rising, independent power — in the early 1970s.

America’s Iran policy remains stuck in a delusion similar to the one that warped its China policy for two decades after China’s revolutionaries took power in 1949 — that Washington could somehow isolate, strangle, and ultimately bring down a political order created through mass mobilization and dedicated to restoring national independence after a long period of Western domination.  It didn’t work in the Chinese case and it’s not likely to in Iran either.

In one of the most consequential initiatives in American diplomatic history, President Nixon and Henry Kissinger finally accepted this reality and aligned Washington’s China policy with reality.  Unfortunately, Washington’s Iran policy has not had its Nixonian moment yet, and so successive U.S. administrations — including Obama’s — persist in folly.

The fact is: Obama could have had a nuclear deal in May 2010, when Brazil and Turkey brokered an agreement for Iran to send most of its low-enriched uranium abroad in return for new fuel for a research reactor in Tehran.  The accord met all the conditions spelled out in letters from Obama to then-Brazilian President Lula and Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan — but Obama rejected it, because it recognized Iran’s right to enrich.  (That this was the main reason was affirmed by Dennis Ross, the architect of Obama’s Iran policy, earlier this year.)  The Obama team has declined to reconsider its position since 2010 and, as a result, it is on its way to another diplomatic failure.

As Middle Eastern governments become somewhat more representative of their peoples’ concerns and preferences, they are also — as in Egypt and Iraq — becoming less inclined toward strategic deference to the United States.  This challenges Washington to do something at which it is badly out of practice: pursue genuine diplomacy with important regional states, based on real give and take and mutual accommodation of core interests.  Above all, reversing America’s decline requires rapprochement with the Islamic Republic (just as reviving its position in the early 1970s required rapprochement with the People’s Republic of China).

Instead, three and a half years after George W. Bush left office, his successor continues to insist that Iran surrender to Washington’s diktats or face attack.  By doing so, Obama is locking America into a path that is increasingly likely to result in yet another U.S.-initiated war in the Middle East during the first years of the next presidential term.  And the damage that war against Iran will inflict on America’s strategic position could make the Iraq debacle look trivial by comparison.

~

Flynt Leverett is professor of international affairs at Penn State. Hillary Mann Leverett is senior professorial lecturer at American University. Together, they write the Race for Iran blog.  Their new book, Going to Tehran: Why the United States Needs to Come to Terms With the Islamic Republic of Iran (Metropolitan Books), will be published in January 2013.

Copyright 2012 Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett

June 20, 2012 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

Top Ten Things That Have and Haven’t Changed In the Era of Obama

By Bruce A. Dixon | BAR | June 20, 2012

Black America’s median household wealth, compared to that of whites, has sharply declined under Barack Obama. That’s a change. Just not a good one.

This is a consequence of the foreclosure epidemic which began in 2007 and 2008 and has always been concentrated in black and poor neighborhoods. But the Obama administration has allowed the foreclosure wave to continue without any letup during its first three and a half years, rejecting demands for foreclosure moratoriums or other measures which would make it easier for large numbers of families to remain in their homes. Where the ratio of white to black household wealth four years ago was around 11 to one, today it is greater than 20 to 1.

African Americans still make up 12 or 13% of the nation’s population, remain more than 40% of its locked down and locked up, No change there at all…

Latinos, who make up another 13%, are about 30% of the nation’s prisoners and rising, a slight change, but distinctly for the worse. So seven of every ten US prisoners are from the one quarter of the nation that is black or brown, and that percentage is rising.

The fifty-year war on drugs continues. No change for the better at all there.

Like every president since Nixon, Barack Obama has thwarted states that wanted to decriminalize small amounts of drugs, refuses to treat drug use as a medical problem rather than a police one. Like its predecessors, the Obama administration has expanded the frontiers of the drug war into places like Mexico and Colombia, where the US demand for illegal drugs has given birth to vast industries which may be among the largest and most lucrative, and certainly the most deadly, in those countries.

“Too big to fail” banksters and other financial criminals are still above the law. No change here either.

Not a single person responsible for crashing the economy in 2007 has seen the inside of a prison. It’s just not going to happen. Wall Street insiders give as much, and often more to Democrats than they do to Republicans. So the Obama administration has protected banks and lenders and their co-conspirators from prosecution, and shoveled more than ten trillion more at banksters, including those based outside the US, than the Bush-Cheney gang ever did.

It’s worth remembering that when Bush could not pass his own bailout bill six weeks before the 2008 election, he called Barack Obama into town to spend the week on the phone with Congressional Democrats getting them to switch their votes. So the only change here has been the party in charge.

Although governments will create trillions of new dollars to give to banksters and borrow it back from them at interest in the name of “fixing the economy”, it still won’t create millions of jobs for the unemployed. No change:

In the 1930s, the federal government addressed the Depression by creating hundreds of thousands of jobs out of thin air. They built roads and subways, parks, recreational facilities, dams and bridges. They did theater and historical research like tracking down and interviewing the last living survivors of slavery. It was called the WPA, or Works Progress Administration, under the administration of Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The White House could do the same today, creating millions of new jobs, repairing and rebuilding infrastructure, building high speed rail, refitting millions of homes for energy efficiency. But Barack Obama disdains the heritage of his own Democratic party. He sounds more like Hoover than FDR today when he says that it’s the exclusive role of the private sector to create jobs.

It’s still almost impossible to organize a union and fight for your own rights on the job anywhere in the US. No change:

There are laws against firing workers who try, but employers are unafraid to break those laws, while working people are very much afraid to lose their jobs. Candidate Obama did promise to put on his comfortable shoes and walk a picket line. Maybe he just lied. President Obama has frozen the wages and pensions of government workers, and endorsed the traditionally Republican idea that public employee and private pensions and health plans cause economic distress to employes and the economy.

The bipartisan corporate-funded drive to “reform” education by breaking teachers unions, turning teachers into Wal-Mart style temps, hi-stakes testing, dissolving public schools and replacing them by privately owned charter schools, exempt from public accountability continues apace. No change there at all.

Bush’s Secretary of Education called teachers unions “terrorist organizations.” Obama’s Secretary of Education declared that Katrina was the best thing that could have happened to public education in New Orleans.

If anything, the Obama administration’s Race To The Top program pushed the envelope further than Republicans would have been able to without sustained resistance. It required states to compete for available federal education funds based upon how many teachers they can fire, how many public schools they can close, how many so-called “merit pay” schemes and similar atrocities they can inflict. Just as only a vicious warmonger like Nixon could have made the first presidential trip to China, only a black Democrat could have successfully pushed the education policy envelope this far in the anti-democratic directions of charters and educational privatization. If anything, Obama’s heinous education policies provide an even further rightward step-off point for Republicans like Mitt Romney. It didn’t have to be that way.

US troops are in more than 140 countries worldwide, and the US, with under 5% of the world’s people, spends more on the military than the other 95% of humanity combined. Not much change there.

On the other hand, in the first weeks of his administration, President Obama received a Nobel Peace Prize. So the pan-European elite, which feared and despised George Bush, loves Obama. That’s a kind of change they call a distinction without a difference.

The Afghan war drags on, apparently indefinitely. A hundred thousand US-paid mercenaries remain in Iraq, and the war there too is far from over. On the other hand, Barack Obama has been able to use cruise missiles and drones to kill black and brown civilians including children in Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan, among other places. US military forces took part in the invasion and overthrow of the African nation of Libya, and the White House has openly rather than covertly sent unknown numbers of US special forces into nobody knows how many countries of Central Africa. A Bush administration doing this would have been greeted with nationwide street demonstrations. But a black Democrat gets a near automatic pass. Is this what the real “race card” looks like?

A US president still orders torture, murder, indefinite imprisonment without trial, and lets corporations that commit crimes abetting those of government employees completely off the hook. But there has been a change here.

When the Bush-Cheney gang did all this stuff, they did it as scofflaws. The Obama Administration has rammed through legislation in Congress and asked for court decisions to cloak most of the previously illegal torture, murder, kidnapping, warrantless spying and similar crimes with thin veneers of legality. This is the all-important difference between having an MBA as president as opposed to a professor of constitutional law.

Black politics, at one time heavily influenced by what Martin Luther King called opposition to the triple evils of racism, militarism, and economic injustice, has shrunken and shriveled under the influence of a new class of corporate funded black political leaders like Corey Booker and Barack Obama. Deep, real and significant change here.

Black politics ain’t about fighting for decent housing or jobs any more. It’s not about diverting resources from the war machine to uplifting the downtrodden. It’s not about funding education or working for the end of the prison state. It’s certainly not about defying unjust laws in the pursuit of just ends, as the Freedom Movement once routinely did.

People forget that King was murdered in Memphis in the middle of a sanitation workers strike in which the National Guard had been called out to patrol the city, and students had stayed home from high school for days to participate in illegal mass actions.

21st century black politics is about electing black politicians, no more and no less. That, and observing Black History Month.

This is far from an exhaustive list, of course.

We could have mentioned the fact that big oil, big agribusiness, big insurance, and big pharma all continue to get whatever they ask for. We might have pointed out that local and state fiscal crises are constantly being provoked, to which the solutions are always “public private partnerships” a standard euphemism for privatizations of public assets like roads, waterworks, generation facilities and public services like payroll, parking and fleet management. We could have pointed out that medical costs are still factors in a majority of personal bankruptcies, and the FCC has essentially abandoned any pretense of regulating the cable and broadcast industries, preferring to simply lease out or auction off the electromagnetic spectrum and leave it all to the “free market”.

Some things have changed over the last four years, and some haven’t. One thing that seems never to change, as long as our choices are restricted to the two corporate parties, is that while you can squint hard enough to make distinctions between Republicans and Democrats, there are few important differences.

Bruce A. Dixon is managing editor at Black Agenda Report. He lives and works in Marietta GA, and is a state committee member of the Georgia Green Party. Contact him at bruce.dixon(at)blackagendareport.com.

June 20, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , | 1 Comment