Israel’s Tehran connection

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/richard_silverstein/2008/04/israels_tehran_connection.html

Israel, while supposedly observing an ironclad boycott of all things Iranian, is happily buying Iranian oil

If you’ve ever wondered about the definition of hypocrisy you’ll find the answer right here.

Last month the Swiss foreign minister visited Iran and, together with President Ahmadinejad, attended the signing of a multi-billion euro contract for Iran to supply Switzerland with large amounts of natural gas over the next 25 years.

The US State Department immediately condemned the deal and said it would be investigating whether it breached the Iran Sanctions Act. Israel complained too, describing the Swiss minister’s visit to Tehran as an “act unfriendly to Israel”. Various Jewish groups also joined in the protests, including the World Jewish Congress.

This righteous indignation was entirely predictable but more than a little odd nevertheless. On March 30, the Swiss newspaper Sonntag retaliated with the revelation that Israel, supposedly observing an ironclad boycott of all things Iranian, has been buying Iranian oil for years.

The story is in German but Israeli journalist Shraga Elam has provided me with a translation which I’ll quote from here.

“Israel imports Iranian oil on a large scale even though contacts with Iran and purchasing of its products are officially boycotted by Israel. Israel gets around the boycott by having the oil delivered via Europe. A reliable Israeli energy newsletter, EnergiaNews, reported this last week [March 18] …

“EnergiaNews got the information about the Iran trade from sources with ties to the management of Israeli Oil Refineries Ltd … According to EnergiaNews the Iranian oil is liked in Israel because its quality is better than other crude oils.

“The report by EnergiaNews editor Moshe Shalev states that the Iranian oil reaches various European ports, mainly in Rotterdam. It is bought by Israelis and the necessary European bill of lading and insurance papers are supplied. Then it is transported to Haifa in Israel. The importer is the Eilat-Ashkelon Pipeline Co (EAPC), which keeps its oil sources secret.”

EAPC was established in 1968 as a joint Israeli-Iranian company to transport oil from Iran to Europe. After the fall of the Shah, Iran ceased to play an active role in its affairs and there are ongoing legal disputes between the two partners.

The Swiss report continued:

“It is not clear if the Iranian exporters know about Israeli purchases of their oil. At the other end, the Israeli buyers and governmental offices are well aware of where the high-grade oil comes from, although it is a blatant defiance of the boycott. The EnergiaNews article even made it through Israeli censorship, which asked only for some changes in the text. The fact that the report cleared the censors increases the credibility of the information. In the past, such reports were forbidden.

“When questioned by Sonntag, an energy expert of one of the leading Israeli papers confirmed the EnergiaNews report: Israel has been importing Iranian oil for many years. The expert stressed, however, that the purchases were made on the free market and not directly from Iran.”

Sonntag quoted a spokesman for Oil Refineries Ltd as denying that his company imports and processes Iranian oil. However, Sonntag pointed to a report in Haaretz newspaper last October which said that an Israeli energy company called Paz would be refining Iranian oil and supplying it to the Palestinian Authority from the start of this year.

This begs the question: if Iran is, as Bibi Netanyahu argues, an existential threat to Israel, why does the government allow such trade? Would Israel have the US attack Iran’s nuclear programme and provoke a potential region-wide conflict while it cannot seem to wean itself from high quality Iranian crude? You’d think if Israelis are cowering in fear from an Iranian bomb and the arch antisemite Ahmadinejad, they wouldn’t want to trade with such an enemy.

When is a boycott not a boycott? When it’s in your naked economic interest to circumvent it, apparently. But one should ask: if Israel doesn’t honour its self-declared boycott of Iran, why should the rest of the world honour its boycott of Hamas and Gaza? If Israel doesn’t honour its own boycott, then why should members of Congress vote with AIPAC when it proposes a measure that even Israel honours only in the breach?

It’s interesting to note from a discussion (in Hebrew) on the Kedma website that Israel does not formally define Iran as an “enemy nation” and therefore in a strictly legal sense such trade is permissible. Ironically, Iran too has a boycott against Israel in place and is violating its own measures in that regard. Furthermore, the same commenter notes that Israel last week dismissed attempts to engage Syria in a diplomatic process as a failure because Syria refuses to renounce its ties with Iran. Do I hear the word “hypocrisy”?

New study shows US lawmakers have as much as $196 million invested in defense companies

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/04/03/america/NA-GEN-US-Congress-Defense-Investments.php

The Associated Press

Published: April 3, 2008

WASHINGTON: Members of the U.S.Congress have as much as $196 million (€126.2 million) collectively invested in companies doing business with the Defense Department, earning millions since the start of the Iraq war, according to a new study by a nonpartisan research group.

The review of lawmakers’ 2006 financial disclosure statements, by the Washington-based Center for Responsive Politics, suggests that members’ holdings could pose a conflict of interest as they decide the fate of Iraq war spending. Several members who earned the most from defense contractors have plum committee or leadership assignments, including Democratic Sen. John Kerry, independent Sen. Joseph Lieberman and House Republican Whip Roy Blunt.

The study found that more Republicans than Democrats hold stock in defense companies, but that the Democrats who are invested had significantly more money at stake. In 2006, for example, Democrats held at least $3.7 million (€2.3 million) in military-related investments, compared to Republican investments of $577,500 (€372,000).

Overall, 151 members hold investments worth $78.7 million (€50.6 million) to $195.5 million (€125.9 million) in companies that receive defense contracts that are worth at least $5 million (€3.2 million). These investments earned them anywhere between $15.8 million (€10.1 million) and $62 million (€39.9 million) between 2004 and 2006, the center concludes.

It is unclear how many members still hold these investments and exactly how much money has been made. Disclosure reports for 2007 are not due until this May. Also, members are required to report only a general range of their holdings.

According to the report, presidential hopefuls Barack Obama and John McCain did not report any defense-related holdings on their filings; Hillary Rodham Clinton did note holdings in such companies as Honeywell, Boeing and Raytheon, but sold the stock in May 2007. All three are members of the Senate.

Not all the companies invested in by lawmakers are typical defense contractors. Corporations such as PepsiCo, IBM, Microsoft and Johnson & Johnson have at one point received defense-related contracts, the report notes.

“So common are these companies, both as personal investments and as defense contractors, it would appear difficult to build a diverse blue-chip stock portfolio without at least some of them,” wrote the center’s Lindsay Renick Mayer.

Still, earning dividends from companies tied to the military “could be problematic” for members that oversee defense policy and budgeting, Mayer adds.

Kerry, a Democrat, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is identified as earning the most — at least $2.6 million between 2004 and 2006 from investments worth up to $38.2 million (€24.6 million).

Spokesman David Wade said Kerry, who staunchly opposes the war in Iraq, is one of many beneficiaries of family trusts which he doesn’t control. Wade also noted that Kerry does not sit on the Appropriations Committee, which has direct control of the defense budget.

“He has a 24-year Senate record of working and voting in the best interests of our men and women in the military, not of any defense contractors,” Wade said.

Lieberman, an independent and chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and a member of the Armed Services Committee, held a considerably smaller share at $51,000 (€32,848.13).

A spokesman for Blunt, a senior member of House Republican leadership who held at least $15,000 (€9,660) in Lockheed Martin stock in 2006, said the insinuation that lawmakers’ votes might be affected by their portfolios is “offensive.”

“I don’t pretend to speak for other offices, but I am fairly certain that no member would consider their personal finances when voting on issues as important as sending our men and women in uniform into harm’s way,” said Blunt spokesman Nick Simpson.

Ritter says White House preparing for war in Iran

Ed Barna – Rutland County Herald April 4, 2008

Scott Ritter, former head of weapons inspection in Iraq who protested there were no weapons of mass destruction to justify an invasion, believes the same is true for Iran.

But there is an 80 percent chance of war with Iran, he told about 200 people Wednesday at Middlebury College as part of a series of talks facilitated by the Vermont Peace and Justice Center.

The pattern of preparations for such a conflict has been steadily developing and involves Congress as well as the Bush-Cheney administration, he said.

Scott Ritter

People ask him if he feels vindicated by the absence of WMDs in Iraq, he said, but “there isn’t any vindication in being right about this one.” A war with Iran would hasten the ongoing decline of American standing in the world, and afterward Russia and China would be ready to take advantage of the resulting power vacuum, he said.

Among the war clouds Ritter cited were:

· Preemptive strikes against the two groups most likely to erupt if the United States invaded Iran, Hezbollah (unsuccessfully attacked by Israel) and Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army (unsuccessfully attacked in Basra by Iraq’s central government).

Ritter predicted a similarly disappointing showing if the American forces attacked Iran, a country 2-1/2 times as large and populous as Iraq that is much more unified culturally and did not have its army destroyed in a previous war with the United States.

· Recent visits to Middle Eastern allies by high officials, ostensibly for other purposes, but really to prepare them for the effects of such a war.

· The appearance of the “miracle laptop,” as Ritter called it, a thousand pages of technical documents supposedly from a stolen Iranian computer, which dubiously had just the sort of information the administration needed to support a hard-line stand on Iran.

· Congressional supplementary funding for more “bunker-busting” bombs, with a contract completion deadline of April.

· Congressional supplementary funding for the extra bombers to carry those bombs, with a contract completion date of April.

· Cheney’s order to send a third aircraft carrier battle group close to the Persian Gulf, a necessary bolstering of forces for a war with Iran.

Admiral William Fallon, the first admiral to be head of Central Command, said that level of naval forces was unnecessary and blocked the move. Ritter said that was “a heroic thing.”

The main target of Ritter’s criticisms was an American public that couldn’t pass a test on the Constitution and understands little of international history and politics, and refuses to believe the life of an Iraqi is worth as much as the life of an American.

He began his talk, not by trumpeting the danger of war, but by talking about spring, and the birds that will soon have babies in their nests. Mother birds will forage, come to the nests, see open mouths begging for food, and puke into each one, he said.

Just so, Ritter said, people sit in front of their televisions every night and wait to be stuffed with mushy phrases like “The surge has been successful” and “Baghdad is 70 percent secure” and “We have apparently won the war.”

“The reality of Iraq is that it is a broken nation,” Ritter said. Groups like the Kurds and Shia are not unified groups, there is already a civil war, and most of the opposition to our presence comes from our being the invaders, he said.

“It is far too easy to look for people to blame,” he said. For instance, “we blame the media, but the media simply give us what we’re asking for.”

Everyone needs to start understanding and caring about their Constitutional rights, and everyone needs to start finding the facts for themselves and taking strong individual stands, Ritter said. If you do nothing but take in what the TV and newspapers tell you, “all you’re going to get in return is puke.”

Fed’s interest rate games could destroy the dollar

By  Tim O’Brien

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has reduced the key federal funds rate six times in as many months — reducing the cost for major borrowers significantly. This combines with providing $270 million in funding, plus $30 billion in additional guarantees, for JP Morgan Chase to buy Bear Stearns Cos.

“Helicopter Ben” is living up to the nickname he earned after he remarked in a 2002 speech that he would stave off a recession even if he had to drop money from helicopters to do it.

The results of these policies have been destructive. The dollar is collapsing not only against foreign currencies — we’re now at par with the Canadian dollar and rocketing toward a 2-1 deficit against the Euro — but also against commodities. Gold was passing the $1,000-an-ounce landmark, silver $20. Even industrial metals like copper and zinc are fetching record prices.

Now, a spike in a particular commodity — say, for instance, $100-per-barrel oil — can be attributed to a shortage. But when they all move dramatically and simultaneously, it’s the purchasing power of our money that has gone down.

In fact, the increasing cost of even the base metals recently prompted Edmund Moy, director of the United States Mint, to propose further debasing the copper and nickel-plated, zinc slugs we call coins by substituting color-coated steel.

“Never before in our nation’s history has the government spent more money to mint and issue a coin than the coin’s legal tender value,” he claimed in testimony at a recent hearing before the House Financial Services Committee’s panel on monetary policy. But the U.S. mint continues to issue 1-ounce Gold Eagle coins currently worth about 18 times their $50 legal tender value.

The beginning of the end for money “as sound as a dollar” was the creation of the Federal Reserve less than a century ago. The final blow came during the Nixon administration when our money’s last tie to anything of intrinsic worth was severed with the decree that even Silver Certificate currency would no long be redeemable in specie.

Why would Bernanke, Moy, et al., want to degrade our money? Who benefits?

The answer is: those who are at the head of the line. Creating an additional $270 million in U.S. currency to give JP Morgan Chase provided that company the means to acquire Bear Stearns. Then the owners of Bear Stearns spend the money on something else, albeit at slightly reduced purchasing-power value.

The effects will continue to ripple outward, gradually diminishing. The amount of goods and services that can be bought with that $270 million must inevitably decline until the nominal value of the currency reaches equilibrium with the actual wealth available in the economy to purchase.

And who will pay? You will — in the future when you go to draw out the money you put into your 401(k) in today’s dollars. Your investment won’t be worth as much as it should.

What is amazing is that the public has acquiesced in this money-debasing. It ought to be self-evident that it is impossible to create wealth by making entries in a computer.

One Nevada businessman may have found a way to bring the system crashing down — he has begun paying employees in those $50 Gold Eagle coins, making their annual salaries well below the threshold for even having to file tax returns. So far, the IRS is helpless to stop it.

Tim O’Brien is executive director of the Small Government Alliance, an Allen Park-based political action committee.

The Destructive Rise of Big Finance

By Kevin Phillips, Huffington Post. Posted April 4, 2008.

The unfettered expansion of the finance industry has led to debt, inflation, the oil crisis, and an eroding dollar — and there may be no way out.

Economic, financial and regulatory issues should dominate politics and government in the United States for the next two or three years, which is important enough. National discourse may also have a new and deserving bogeyman. Franklin D. Roosevelt had Big Business, Ronald Reagan had Big Labor, and my guess is that the new president inaugurated next January will have Big Finance.

True, finance has been whupped by presidents before. Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, for example. But that was in the quill-pen era when the financial sector was a pup. Today’s financial services sector, by contrast, is a grasping, gargantuan combination of banks, stockbrokers, insurance men, loan sharks, credit-card issuers, hedge fund speculators, securitization mavens and mortgage operators. Over the last five years, financial services has reached a swollen 20-21% of U.S. GDP — the largest sector of the private economy.

Manufacturing led financial services by 2:1 back in the 1970s, but by 2006 beaten goods production had shrunk to just 12% of GDP.

Do most Americans understand this? Of course not. Newspaper front pages have shunned any discussion; 60 Minutes has not even spared the transformation sixty seconds, despite its vast implications. This upheaval is probably “the greatest story never told” about the two decades between, say, 1986 and 2006.

Nor was it an economic accident. Computerization was a prequisite, as was the rise of financial mathematics. However, I would say that the two most important underpinnings of financialization lay in the rise of public and private debt as a mainstay of American culture and economics and the perpetual liquidity and bail-out support of the Federal Reserve Board under Alan Greenspan. During Greenspan’s 1987-2005 tenure, the sum of public and private debt in the United States quadrupled from just over $10 trillion to $43 trillion. Finance became the industry that was not allowed to fail but was permitted to enlarge and metastasize its behavior almost at will. Regulation was minimal. Favoritism was omnipresent.

The result, alas, has been all over recent headlines. America’s biggest ever housing bubble, with 57 varieties of exotic mortgages and home prices now plummeting at rates unseen since the 1930s. The United States turned Credit Card Nation, with a citzenry in thrall to plastic, 20% interest rates and late fees for just about everything. Huge banks like Citigroup feel no shame in paying billion-dollar fines for colluding with Enron’s tax and accounting deceits. And since mid-2007, national and world credit markets have been panicked and paralyzed by hitherto obscure instruments — the stand-outs are collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) — that not even their designers and packagers can explain.

Adolescent versions of Frankenstein finance became a crash and a disaster for Americans in 1929 when the industry was new and represented only 10-15% of the economic weight of American manufacturing. Now, by contrast, the unraveling of a second financial sector-turned casino involves literally the biggest force in the American economy. Who knows how much of this hubris and malfeasance is going to unwind unpleasantly or how long that will take?

In fact, phony Washington statistics and warped market measurements make it doubly hard to tell. The federal Consumer Price Index is already regarded by many Americans as a con job, and the press periodically quotes investors who state their belief that current U.S. inflation is really 6 to 9 percent a year, not the 2-4 percent the government alleges. I agree. On top of which, because the value of the dollar has dropped so far, the Dow Jones Industrial Average at the end of March was not really 12,200, a number barely up from its 11,700 peak in 2000. If you measure the Dow in Swiss francs or euros, two strong currencies, it has already lost some forty percent of its 2000 value. Too many Americans live in a dream-world of economic misinformation.

I began writing about these matters with a 1990 book entitled The Politics of Rich and Poor, and in several other volumes since then. Today, the economic negligence of Washington and Wall Street, more than two decades in the making, has led to a multi-dimensional crisis in which this country faces an unprecedented convergence of problems: unprecedented debt, tumbling home prices, reckless money supply expansion, growing inflation, insufficient and expensive oil, and an eroding dollar. Sadly, there may no longer be a plausible way out.

Sanitizing The War On Terror

Joe Quinn
Sott.net
Thu, 03 Apr 2008 16:23 EDT

Michael Hayden – loves a good conspiracy

For years “conspiracy theorists” have suffered the ignominy of exile on the fringe of political debate, not to mention social acceptance. “Conspiracy” was not necessarily a ‘dirty word’, but form the phrase “conspiracy theory” and you could almost hear the shutters coming down on already closed minds. Stories of the lies and secret machinations of the political military and corporate elite were ridiculed as fantasy and a virtual impossibility. Indeed, the very existence of a political, military and corporate elite was widely disavowed. Changes are afoot however – big changes. The lies and abuses of the directors of the American empire project and their associates in collective Western government over the past few years have become so egregious, so flagrant, that it is now virtually impossible for the average citizen to accept the official version of reality and still lay claim to their own sanity.

Got Sanity? If so, you have “soundness of judgment or reason”.

Tell me then, what’s your judgment on the “war on terror”? What does your reason say about the mythical yet somehow ubiquitous “al-Qaeda”? You have, after all, had almost 7 years to get comfortable, in one way or another, with these ideas. By now your sanity, if you possess it, should have told you some very specific things about those two hot topics. If however you are insane, take heart because you don’t even need to be compos mentis to grasp this truth, just your eyes and ears. Got those? Then let’s begin.

For many years now millions of people around the world, including former members of the US and other governments, academics and professionals have known and spoken about the fact that “al-Qaeda”, far from being a modern Islamic terror group was the name given to a small grouping of extremist and deluded nut-jobs that the US and British governments hired and trained to fight the Russians in Afghanistan in the late 70’s and early 80’s. Also widely accepted is the fact that, after that particular conflict, Pakistani intelligence, in league with the CIA, continued to handle and groom these extremists and stage-manage their sporadic attacks around the world in order to conjure up the modern “Islamic terror threat”.

Several mainstream media outlets and US government officials have stated that Osama bin laden was a CIA asset who was used to funnel money to these extremists and oversee the establishment of militant training camps, all under the control of Western agents.

A French intelligence report, carried by the mainstream press, stated that Osama Bin Laden met with a CIA agent in the American hospital in Dubai two months before the 9/11 attacks.

Everyone knows, (or should) that the Bush government escorted members of Bin Laden’s family out of the US on September 11th 2001. We have all even been treated to a well-researched movie about the long standing ties between Bush senior and the US oil cartels and the bin laden family.

And finally, several mainstream media outlets, quoting official government sources, have reported that Osama bin Laden probably died many years ago.

Given just these basic facts, the tip of the iceberg of the evidence, how can anyone still believe that the US is actually fighting a “war on terror” to “safeguard our freedoms” rather than a war of conquest and empire expansion, and still lay claim to their sanity? I mean, is the proposition so hard to digest? Remember history class? It’s not like this is the first time a group of power mad Westerners got together and tried to conquer as much of the world as possible. Really, the only way the “war on terror” as described by the Bush government et al could appear any more ridiculous is if Ronald McDonald were to start giving White House press briefings. Then again, if a Mr Magoo look alike has sufficed over the past 8 years to convince many people of the reality of a “worldwide Islamic terror threat”, then maybe Ronald isn’t such a bad idea, at least from the Bush government’s perspective.

Speaking of Mr Magoo, his ideological (and possibly body) double in the CIA Director Michael Hayden, seems to have understood that the US government’s Islamic terror threat fable is beginning to wear a little thin. To forestall the social unpleasantries that might accompany any further break down in belief, Hayden, citing no evidence whatsoever, recently warned that the American people faced a new and unprecedented threat – “Western-looking” Islamic terrorists. Yes indeed, the once simple check-list for IDing a “terrorist” – medium dark skin, fuzzy beard, speaking funny, white thing on head and sandals – has become infinitely more complex. Look around you. Do you see a white male or female of European descent? Better contact the FBI, your freedoms may be in danger.

You see, there is no limit to the nonsense that these “reality creators” will attempt to pass off on the general public. If they think you’ll buy it, they’re gonna try and sell it to you, and with the tripe that you’ve swallowed for the past 8 years, who can blame them? Still, while we await the debut of the “Western-looking Arab terrorists”, we can continue to tune our reality reading instruments on the “Arab-looking” ones, like Mr. Magoo for example. Recently, BBSC (British BS Corporation), along with their ideological counterparts throughout the bordello that is the mainstream media, treated us to one of several missives from the much loved cartoon character:

Al-Qaeda deputy calls for attacks

An audio message attributed to al-Qaeda’s deputy leader, Ayman Zawahiri, has called for attacks on American and Israeli interests.

The voice, not confirmed as Zawahiri’s, urged retaliation for Israeli raids on the Gaza Strip. [...]

No specific targets are mentioned, but the voice accuses Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan for forming a “satanic alliance” with Israel and the US to blockade the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

So let’s break this one down. The title attempts to get us all worked up: “Al-Qaeda deputy calls for attacks”. That’s pretty categoric. Then we read a little further and realise that the “al-Qaeda deputy” could not spare his entire body for this latest transmission, just a small part of him, only his voice to be precise. But wait, did we say it was Ayman Zawahiri’s voice? What we meant to say was that it was a voice that has been attributed, by parties unknown, to Ayman Zawahiri (who himself has never been confirmed).

Even the BBSC appears less than committed on this one, and ends up referring only to “the voice”. Maybe Zawahiri should take his cue from the BBSC here and officially change his name to “The Voice”. He would definitely garner more respect (even from me) if all future transmissions were described as coming from “The Voice”. “The Voice today threatened to smite the infidels…”, that kind of thing. Anyway, even if their report was a little weak, the BBSC made sure to add a nice picture of the person to whom “the voice” is attributed, yet not confirmed (and never will be) just in case anyone starts to suspect this particular voice doesn’t have a face. It does, it’s just that the voice and the face have never been attributed to each other, and neither have been confirmed as existing independently of each other. That’s just the way it is in the crazy world of Islamic terrorism. So what we have here, despite the categoric title, is a disembodied voice that someone has attributed to a person called Ayman Zawahiri and which says things that, strangely enough, dovetail nicely with the claims of the war on terror mongers in the US, Israeli and British governments, and that’s the main point anyway. Now, your sanity should be telling your something here, but hold off on the judgment just yet.

The problem is that this is but one example of the repeated “core evidence” presented to you over the past 8 years for the reality of a “world wide Islamic terror network” that is determined to attack all infidels. Of course, no one can deny the reality of the murderous attacks of 9/11, London in 1995 and Madrid in ‘94, but what is very clearly in question here is the identity of the authors of those attacks, because evidence presented by “a voice” (or a clearly faked video tape) on the internet is no evidence at all.

In fact, when you look at it, the people who proclaim the reality of the “Islamic terror threat” have presented very little in the way of verifiable evidence to back up their claims. Ever. The main body of their evidence takes the form of the “terror attacks” that have and continue to be carried out on civilians in Western and Middle Eastern countries, attacks that are however never fully or impartially investigated and invariably leave many troubling questions.

“No-one has claimed to have carried out the attack, but Iraqi and US security officials are blaming al-Qaeda in Iraq.”

Assuming you listen to or read the mainstream news, how often have you heard or read this phrase over the past 7 years? And how often did you accept it as fact? This and other mysterious attributions of blame have come to define and underpin the entire war on terror, not merely in Iraq but in the other US and Israeli dominated “theaters of conflict” such as Afghanistan and Israel/Palestine.

On the 8th March 2008, yet another bomb exploded in a crowded market place in Baghdad killing 68 civilians and wounding many more, and yet again we were told that “al-Qaeda in Iraq” was to blame. As in every other “al-Qaeda” attack, no evidence was provided for this claim, and the US military itself has stated that the foreign fighters of which “al-Qaeda in Iraq” is allegedly comprised do not exist.

You see, even the US government and military realise that the bombings and murders in Iraq that have claimed the lives of more than 1 million Iraqis over the past 4 years cannot reasonably be ascribed to any real Iraqi insurgency, because the real Iraqi insurgency is made up of the very civilians that are being murdered in the bombings! Hence the need for a shadowy group called “al-Qaeda in Iraq” on which to pin the blame, a group that never speaks except in the form of anonymous internet postings or crassly faked video tapes. So if “al-Qaeda in Iraq” does not in fact exist, who is carrying out the bombings?

Before we get to that, allow me to get a little personal.

Ask any intellectually challenged Western citizen (of which there are many, particularly in America) what the capital of Greece is and they are likely to say “France”, but ask him for the name of the war being fought by the US and its allies and he will give you the correct answer – “the war on terror”. This is due to the knowledge, or lack thereof, that the capital of Greece is not and never has been understood as necessary to the average Joe’s survival or honor, despite the fact that he may well have come across it many times in his life. Such information is not processed by or held in that part of the brain that deals with simplistic black and white, fear-based fight or flight responses. The “war on terror” and what it means to the average Joe infidel however is.

The phrase is useful to our warmongering psychopathic leaders because it provokes a knee-jerk response from Joe, and also extracts his “permission” to pursue a no holds barred war on a concept – terrorism. The political elite are sure that the average Joe is too stupid to consider the concepts behind a war on terrorism. The political elite manipulate him into accepting the simplistic, false reality and Joe unwittingly accepts the more deviant reality.

When he is threatened (or is made to be believe so), Joe’s response is predictable, “If Bin Laden were here I’d kick his ass and bury him at ground Zero and go every day to take a piss on his grave,” as one New Yorker quipped.

Joe does not like the idea that he is being screwed over in any way, by anyone. That state of mind is certainly useful to the agenda of the Empire builders to present the current threat as being posed by foreigners, and as a ‘reaction machine’ Joe will vent his spleen in an uncompromising way at anyone he believes to be a threat to all he holds dear. For Joe, being told that someone is stealing his beer and being told that some foreign country is threatening his way of life provokes the same reaction (possibly because a large part of Joe’s way of life is beer).

This predictable fear-based reaction from ordinary people is the substance that has driven America’s imperial expansion for many years. The architects of empire have milked it mercilessly.

Yet this tendency of the man in the street (and I include here all levels of Western society regardless of whether or not they know that the capital of Greece is in fact Germany) to get all Pavlovian can work both ways and is therefore a dangerous game for the psychopathic elite to play.

The day that the average Joe realises that he has been lied to, that, horror of horrors, his own government has lied to him, stolen his liberties and cynically squandered the lives of his fellow countrymen and women, Joe’s basic fear-based reaction will be redirected, the lack of fuzzy beards and sandals will be irrelevant. All that is needed is for someone to explain to Joe, in simple black and white terms, the facts of the matter. This time no deceit or withholding of information will be necessary. The Truth is always best served pure and simple.

So, let’s get pure and simple…

Part II tomorrow.

Time to Break the Silence

Katrina vanden Heuvel
The Nation
Wed, 02 Apr 2008

In these few excerpts from his remarkable speech, Dr. King painted a picture of a society that looks remarkably, starkly, like the one we live in today. —

Since 1865, when it was founded by Northern abolitionists, The Nation has always believed in the liberating power of truth, of conviction, of conscience, and of fighting for causes lost and found. And like our founders, the magazine has an abiding belief that there is no force so potent in politics as a moral issue.

Since 1865, when it was founded by Northern abolitionists, The Nation has always believed in the liberating power of truth, of conviction, of conscience, and of fighting for causes lost and found. And like our founders, the magazine has an abiding belief that there is no force so potent in politics as a moral issue.

One of the great moral figures of our country’s history, Martin Luther King Jr. was a correspondent for The Nation–traveling the South in the early 1960s and filing annual dispatches for the magazine on the state of civil rights. In 1967, Dr. King traveled to Los Angeles under the auspices of The Nation and The Nation Institute to give the speech that would align the armies of the Civil Rights Movement with the rapidly expanding national protest against the Vietnam War. It was at this gathering, before an overflow crowd at the Beverly Hills Hilton on February 25, that Dr. King first came out, courageously, eloquently and unequivocally, against the war. Two months later, on April 4th, King delivered his famous antiwar sermon at Riverside Church in New York City.

Today we are again mired in an intractable and monstrous war overseas. It is a moment to listen to Dr. King’s words about the broader casualties of another war–casualties that go beyond the carnage of battle to the devastating costs of war at home–the damage to social justice and racial equality, and the unbearable cost to free speech and dissent.

In these few excerpts from his remarkable speech, Dr. King painted a picture of a society that looks remarkably, starkly, like the one we live in today.

“….This confused war has played havoc with our domestic destinies, despite feeble protestations to the contrary. And promises of Great Society have been shut down on the battlefields of Vietnam in pursuit of this widened war which has narrowed domestic welfare programs, making the poor white and Negro bear the heaviest burdens at the front and at home. While the anti-poverty program is cautiously initiated, zealously supervised and evaluated for immediate results, billions are liberally expended for this ill-considered war. Recently revealed mis-estimates of the war budget amount to $10 billion for the single year. This error alone is more than five times the amount committed to antipoverty programs. The security we profess to seek in foreign adventures we will lose in our decaying cities. The bombs in Vietnam explode at home. They destroy the hopes and possibilities for a decent America. If we reversed investments and gave the armed forces the anti-poverty budget, the generals could be forgiven if they walked off the battlefield in disgust.“

“….At this moment in history, it is irrefutable that our world prestige is pathetically frail. Our war policy excites pronounced contempt and aversion virtually everywhere. Even when some national governments, for reasons of economic and diplomatic interest do not condemn us, their people in surprising measure have made clear they do not share the official policy. We are isolated in our false values. In a world demanding social and economic justice, we must undergo a vigorous reordering of our national priorities..”

” All of this reveals that our nation has not yet used its vast resources of power to end the long night of poverty, racism, and man’s inhumanity to man. Enlarged power means enlarged peril. That is not concomitant growth of the soul. Genuine power is the right use of strength. If our nation’s strength is not used responsibly and with restraint, it will be following Lord Acton’s dictum, power that tends to corrupt and power that corrupts, an absolute power that corrupts absolutely. Our arrogance can be our doom. It can bring the curtains down on our national drama. Ultimately a great nation is a compassionate nation. We are challenged in these turbulent days to use our power to speed up the day when every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked places shall be made straight, and the rough places plain.”

“I do not wish to minimize the complexity of the problems that need to be faced in achieving disarmament and peace. But I think it is a fact that we shall not have the will, the courage, and the insight to deal with such matters unless in this field we are prepared to undergo a spiritual and mental reevaluation, a change of focus which will enable us to see that the things which seem most real and powerful are, indeed, now unreal and have come under the sentence of death. We need to make a supreme effort to generate the readiness, indeed, the eagerness, to enter into the new world which is now possible. We will not build a peaceful world by following a negative path. It is not enough to say ‘We must not wage war.’ It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it. We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war but on the positive affirmation of peace….In short, we must shift the arms race into a peace race”

“…Let me say, finally, that I oppose the war in Vietnam because I love America. I speak out against it not in anger but with anxiety and sorrow in my heart, and above all with a passionate desire to see our beloved country stand as the moral example of the world. I speak out against this war because I am disappointed with America, and there can be no great disappointment when there is no great love. I am disappointed with our failure to deal positively and forthrightly with the triple evils of racism, extreme materialism and militarism…“

“Those of us who love peace must organize as effectively as the war hawks. As they spread the propaganda of war, we must spread the propaganda of peace. We must combine the fervor of the civil rights movement with the peace movement. We must demonstrate, teach and preach until the very foundations of our nation are shaken. We must work unceasingly to lift this nation that we love to a higher destiny, to a new plateau of compassion, to a more noble expression of humaneness.”

“…There is an element of urgency in our re-directing American power. We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now…..”

Today, 41 years later, we are once again, as Dr. King told us, “in an unthinkable position morally and politically…” Who of sane mind can look out over the current landscape in America and breathe easily. At The Nation, we recognize that when it comes to the future of our democracy, of our country and the world, we are in the fight of our lives–confronted by failed policies, wanton destruction, false promises, rampant corruption, metastasizing financial pain, and the downward spiraling of America’s standing in the world.

In the spirit of Dr. King, The Nation stands with our readers, our community, our writers, and with the millions of Americans who demand public accountability and an end to this catastrophe. We are determined to end this unjust and self-destructive conflict –as we continue to work passionately to speak truth and build a better nation and world.

Senate drops bankruptcy aid from housing plan

Judges could have altered mortgages of homeowners facing foreclosure

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23944893/

The Associated Press

updated 5:19 p.m. PT, Thurs., April. 3, 2008

WASHINGTON – Republicans and business-friendly Democrats on Thursday scuttled a plan to give people threatened with losing their homes more leverage in winning favorable loan terms from their lenders in bankruptcy courts.

The Senate killed the bankruptcy plan by a 58-36 vote on the first full day of debate on a bill designed to boost the slumping housing market.

The Democratic-backed bankruptcy law changes, opposed by banks and their GOP allies and a handful of Democrats, would have given judges the power to cut interest rates and principal on troubled mortgages to help desperate borrowers trapped in subprime mortgages keep their homes.

The idea was to give borrowers duped into abusive mortgages leverage in getting their loan terms adjusted. Such power, said the plan’s chief proponent, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., would have helped “more people than all of the provisions combined” in the rest the bill.

But Republicans and 10 Democrats, along with Connecticut independent Joe Lieberman, voted to scuttle the bankruptcy provision. Opponents argued that, despite modifications by Durbin, the proposal would hurt more than it would have helped by leading mortgage lenders to ratchet up interest rates and thereby put another drag on the soft housing market.

The defeat of the bankruptcy plan highlighted a weakness that many people find with the bill _ that it showers generous tax breaks on money-losing businesses like home builders but does little to help people facing foreclosure.

The measure is advertised as helping people keep their homes and injecting demand into the teetering housing market. But its most costly provision simply gives tax cuts worth $25 billion over the next few years to businesses like home builders and banks.

Meanwhile, it provides just $3 billion in tax relief to homeowners over the same period, according to an estimate by the Joint Tax Committee, which explores for lawmakers the effects of tax legislation on the Treasury.

The benefits to businesses also dwarf the $4 billion in the measure that would be provided to cities and towns to buy up and refurbish foreclosed and abandoned homes. That provision is aimed at stabilizing communities and preserving values of neighboring homes.

Homeowners would benefit from $100 million to provide counseling to people threatened with foreclosure and help them in negotiating with their lenders. The measure also would provide new authority for states to issue $10 billion worth of bonds to be used to refinance subprime mortgages.

The bill opened to unenthusiastic reviews among many Democrats. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., promised improvements when the House takes up the measure and negotiates a final bill with the Senate.

“Hopefully the balance will swing more in favor of the families in danger of losing their homes,” Pelosi said.

The tax provisions in the measure enjoy sweeping support but deliver the bulk of their benefits to businesses _ regardless of whether they’re involved in the housing market _ that are losing money in the current downturn.

Such businesses would be allowed to deduct current losses against taxes paid up to four years ago, when times were profitable. The current limit is two years of such operating loss “carrybacks.”

The tax breaks, said Jerry Howard, the chief executive at the National Association of Home Builders, would provide smaller home builders with an infusion of capital that would allow them to stay in business.

The home building lobby has great power on Capitol Hill, but plenty of detractors as well, as do the banks who are currently suffering losses and also stand to benefit.

“Our goal ought to be preventing foreclosures, not just propping up home builders and big lenders,” Durbin said.

“It’s just a giveaway,” said Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H.

The four tax provisions would cost $28 billion through the end of 2010, but would deliver just $1 billion in immediate relief this year.

“When they unveiled the package, the main theme was … ‘help families keep their homes,’” said Bob Greenstein, who heads the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal think tank. “Three of the four provisions would do little or nothing to accomplish that goal.”

The bill also would provide a temporary $7,000 tax credit awarded over two years to people buying foreclosed homes in the year after the bill is enacted. It would cost about $1.6 billion, which assumes about 240,000 home buyers would benefit from the credit.

The bill attracted several amendments to cut taxes further, including a plan by Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., to give a temporary $7,000 credit to first-time home buyers and a plan by Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., to let homeowners who are late on their mortgage payments withdraw money penalty-free from their retirement accounts to avoid foreclosure.

The measure contains a broader rewrite of Federal Housing Administration law that would permanently raise the dollar limit on mortgages that FHA can insure to $550,000 in the most costly real estate markets. The economic stimulus bill approved by Congress in February temporarily raised the limit from $362,790 to $729,750.

But Republicans rebuffed efforts by Democrats and the White House to reduce down payments on FHA-insured loans. Instead, the down payment requirement would be raised to 3.5 percent from 3 percent. Democrats sought to lower it to 1.5 percent.