Caught in his own web

Perhaps the biggest mistake Conrad Black made was to remove those boxes from his office.  Of course, we still don’t know what kind of incriminating material was in them – there must have been considerable motivation to get Conrad to move the boxes personally! – and he may have felt he had no choice.  Shinan Govani, the National Post gossip columnist (!), writes about an upcoming article on Black by Peter C. Newman, who has written about Canadian rich people, in a creepily fawning way, for decades (emphasis in red):

“One of the more interesting things about the piece is the news that Newman breaks about the infamous security camera tape showing Black removing boxes at the office. The media baron, he says, had the security cameras installed, but he didn't hook them up. For whatever reason, the cameras were on when he came (unexpectedly) to remove the boxes. The whirring of the cameras must have surprised him, then, because he keeps pointing at them, palpably confused. He had no idea he was being watched, but he went through the motions of having the security camera installed, and then he got caught.” 

Who turned the cameras on?  Does Black have a traitor in his midst?

Pipes for Giuliani

Giuliani signing up Daniel "brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and maintaining different standards of hygiene" Pipes (!) as a foreign policy advisor is the ultimate sign that he is the official Likud candidate for American President, and a complete antidote to the qualms that the Christian Zionists have to his perceived moral failings.  The fruitcakes will vote for anybody that they think will lead them to the Apocalypse, and crazy Rudy fits the bill.  This is superb power politics by Giuliani, and a real tragedy for both the United States and the Middle East.

The 'Perps'

Via The Home Page of J. Orlin Grabbe, a guide on how ‘targeted individuals’ can avoid the ‘perps’.  Just because you are paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.  The ‘Actions to Avoid’ and ‘Helpful Actions’ are good common sense.  Take comfort in the fact that you are probably not important enough for anybody to waste the time and effort on you.

Surgers

Philip Weiss notes, following the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, that four of the five board members of the latest pro-‘surge’ propaganda apparatus, ‘Freedom's Watch’, are all Jews (in fact, as I would put it, all JBC members), with the fifth being married to a Jew.  The JTA also helpfully tells us that of eight major donors listed in the political newspaper Politico, four are JBCers (including “Sheldon Adelson, chairman of the Las Vegas Sands Corp. and ranked by Forbes magazine as the third-wealthiest American”).  Of course, this must just be a coincidence, and anyone who says otherwise is an anti-Semite.

Going back to first principles, the JBC are still following Wurmser’s playbook, the Zionist Plan for the Middle East.  That requires the break-up of Iraq into three small and non-threatening (to Israel) statelets.  The ‘surge’ is required to attempt to finalize the break.  If the break doesn’t happen, the Zionists are left with the terrible ScareJew of a unified and (eventually) wealthy Iraq, without sanctions and no-fly zones, allied with Iran, and with a total hate on for Israel.  Unlike the Americans, the Iraqis can’t afford to lie to themselves, and know exactly who to blame for their current predicament, the Zionists following the Likudnik lead.  Americans are still wringing their hands over 2500 or so killed on September 11.  Just think how mad Americans would be over a number of dead roughly equivalent on a per capita basis to what the Zionists have caused to be done to Iraq:  that would be somewhere between ten and twenty million dead Americans.  And I’m not even getting into the dispossessed, the terrified, the refugees, etc.  There is enough hate against Zionism and Israel to last for generations.  Hence the JBC preoccupation with continuing the hopeless ‘surge’, something that is obviously not in real American interests.

Meanwhile, John Edwards, the only ‘mainstream’ Democrat candidate for president who sounds even remotely like a Democrat, is attacking “corporate Democrats”.  Although he protects himself by giving some misleading examples, we all know who funds the Democrats.  We also know that Hillary is the candidate of the JBC, which is why Edwards has no chance (and why the Jew-controlled media only writes about Edwards when describing how much he spends on haircuts).  Is Edwards using code to say what all thinking Americans know but no ‘reputable’ American can say?

What is so compelling about this issue, at least from the standpoint of a conspiracy theorist, is the Emperor’s New Clothes aspect to it.  The ‘surge’ lobby group could have disguised its membership and support, but they didn’t even try.  Why not?  No ‘reputable’ American commentator would dare point out the Jewish Billioniares Club connection.  It’s no joke.  If you mentioned it, you would immediately be branded an ‘anti-Semite’, and would lose all credibility on all subjects.  Therefore, no one will mention what is obvious to all thinking Americans, and the JBC did not need to make any efforts to disguise their involvement.  From a conspiracy theorist’s point of view, this kind of official deaf-dumb-and-blindness is wonderfully entertaining.  Shame about it wrecking the United States.

The Anti-Hit List

John Sakamoto has been writing a weekly column in various Toronto newspapers for years now called ‘The Anti-Hit List’ (it is now in the Toronto Star:  list of this and his other light-as-a-feather – beautox! – eclectic columns here; most recent Anti-Hit List here; and example of an earlier version here)  It is a top-ten list of new popular music of a type which doesn’t make big station radio playlists.  He finds all kinds of obscure stuff, often identifying up-and-coming artists before they become widely known, and he has good taste.

Between a rock and a hard place

The Quebec police continue their dance of the seven veils, and are conceding more and more.  Now they admit that one of their disguised agents had a rock, but have an explanation:

“One of the extremists gave the rock to one of our police officers and he had a choice to make.  He was asked by extremists to throw the rock at the police, but never had any intention of using it."

Public Security Minister Stockwell Day is as embarrassing as always (the first sentence appears to be mangled):

“The thing that was interesting in this particular incident, three people in question were spotted by protesters because were not engaging in violence.  They were being encouraged to throw rocks and they were not throwing rocks, it was the protesters who were throwing the rocks. That's the irony of this.  Because they were not engaging in violence, it was noted that they were probably not protesters. I think that's a bit of an indictment against the violent protesters.”

This is quite clearly a series of lies.  The ‘extremists’ weren’t the ones challenging the officer, and if someone had given him a rock (unlikely), he could easily have dropped it prior to getting near the police line.  Anybody would know that approaching a police line with a rock in hand is asking for a violent police attack.  Dave Coles, the union leader who challenged the police agents, said:

“I would testify in a court of law that these guys were lying. They were pushing me around. They had rocks. They were trying to incite violence. They were trying to get others to throw rocks at the store. It’s just a fabrication."

The man who videotaped the incident said:

“Other protesters were saying, 'These guys are cops they're trying to get us to do things we shouldn't be doing.’"

He also said he is now concerned for his own safety because of the attention he's received since videotaping the incident, and that "I've never felt so insecure in my own country."

Unless the Canadian government is forced hold a full, public investigation of this travesty, they will note that they can make a few alterations to their strategy and get away with it.  They will do it again.  Thus ends the right to political protest in Canada.

The single worst crime that can be committed in a constitutional democracy

I was going to do a long summary of all the evidence pointing to the use of agents provocateurs at Montebello, but the Quebec police beat me to it and partly owned up.  I say ‘partly’, because they still refuse to admit they used agents provocateurs.  They went from denial, to specific denial of the use of agents provocateurs, to specific admission that they did in fact use informants.  Unfortunately, their admission contains a lie, as they claim the police infiltrators were discovered when they refused to throw rocks at the police, a silly claim as the surrounding protestors were old lefties and union leaders, who in fact were alarmed by the fact that one of the fake protestors had a rock.  The barefaced police lie provides the evidence of guilt I referred to yesterday, that the infiltrators had to be agents provocateurs as one of them was so obviously holding a rock near the police.

The police made a big strategic mistake.  They thought they would be able to mingle with the younger crowd, the people they would call ‘anarchists’, lob the rock from this crowd, and provoke the police attack which would lead to young people being maimed or killed by the vicious police attack.  Instead, the old lefties and union leaders were at the head of the crowd.  When the police agents provocateurs made it to the police line, they hesitated, as a police attack would have resulted in a lot of injured older people and union leaders, hardly the stuff of the nightly news.  The police hadn’t counted on the successful counter-strategy of the protestors, to put the people you can’t beat up next to the police!  The hesitation and indecision led directly to the police being uncovered, at which point they fled behind the police lines.

The use of agents provocateurs to provoke a riot is, along with vote fraud, the single worst crime that can be committed in a constitutional democracy.  The police, and the politicians who instruct them, were attempting to deprive Canadians of their constitutional right to protest and to assemble.  They were attempting to do so in such a way as to denigrate the causes that the protestors stood for.  Even worse, through the use of provoked violence, they were attempting to make people afraid to protest anything in the future.  This is the beginnings of a police state.  There should be a specific crime for this sort of thing, extending to anyone in the police or bureaucracy or political world who even knew of an intention to commit these most heinous acts.  We should reserve our strongest criminal penalties, which should include immediate dismissal and forfeiture of all employment rights including pensions, a massive fine, and decades of imprisonment.  These crimes against democracy are worse than murder, and should be treated as such.

60%

From a long and detailed review published last year by Stephen Lendman of James Petras’ book “The Power of Israel in the United States” (for the book, see here):

“He notes what author JJ Goldberg reported in his book Jewish Power: Inside the Jewish Establishment. Goldberg wrote in the early 1990s that 45% of the Democrat Party’s fundraising and 25% of that for the Republicans came from Jewish-funded Political Action Committees (PACS). Petras then updates the numbers using the ones Richard Cohen published in the Washington Post showing them now at 60% and 35% respectively, and that this funding relates to a single core issue – unconditional US support for Israel’s agenda including those parts of it human rights activists and observers of conscience judge most egregious and illegal. Petras stresses that no other single US lobby including Big Pharma, Big Oil, agribusiness, or any other one has this kind of dominant influence over the political process here.”

Bill Clinton actually had a lot to do with this.  Fearing that the Democrats were going to be a permanent opposition party due to their inability to source the massive amount of funds available to the Republicans from Wall Street, Clinton went looking for money wherever he could find it.  Where else are you going to find ‘liberal’ billionaires other than in what is generally called the ‘Entertainment Industry’ (which includes Hollywood, the media, advertising, and that part of ‘high tech’ that relates to media or advertising)?  The big advantage of these donors is that their sole issue means that you don’t have to worry about the usual give and take of political horse trading.  Haim Saban, the man who, according to Terry McAuliffe “saved the Democratic Party”, said:

“I'm a one-issue guy and my issue is Israel."

As long as you toe the Likudnik party line, they will leave you alone.  This makes their political donations even more powerful than donations from ordinary donors, who have a range of issues, and are often looking for conflicting results.

The other issue which makes the Jewish money so important is that there is no countervailing lobby to speak of advocating sane policies towards the Middle East.  Along with the single view expressed in the American media – and thoughtful Americans might want to ask themselves why Likudnik policies, alone amongst all policies and political issues debated in the debate-loving United States, are the only view, at least until very recently, expressed in the American media – the lack of any opposing lobby, even a ‘lobby’ representing real American interests, means that it is very easy for politicians to go with the flow, now matter how immoral or how dangerous to real American interests. 

Any dissenters are dealt with by using the anti-Semitism slur, which cuts such a wide swath through American political debate that it prevents most people from even entering the discussion.  That’s why anybody who stoops to use the anti-Semitism slur is the moral equivalent of the guy in the Israeli bulldozer burying the Palestinian grandmother under the remains of her illegally demolished home, and why truth tellers have a strict moral obligation to treat the anti-Semitism slur with all the lack of respect it deserves.  Petras and Lendman are very brave for even discussing the issue.

Canadian police state

Canadian police were caught red-handed attempting to use agents provocateurs at the ‘Three Amigos’ meeting at Montebello in order to provide the pretext for a violent police reaction, a reaction which would have resulted in grievous bodily harm (which is what happened when similar techniques were used in Genoa), or perhaps death, to innocent, and constitutionally-protected, protestors.  There is piles of evidence for this, but two items are conclusive:

1. The police issued a non-denial denial, saying they did not use agents provocateurs, but leaving open the issue whether they employed police informants.


2. One of the police agents was spotted, near the police lines, with a rock in his hand (with, significantly, no reaction from the police), a rock which had no legitimate use for an informant but could have been used to start the police attack when it was lobbed in the general direction of the police.

I’ll have more to say about this, but we need to see police and others charged with conspiracy to commit any one of a large number of crimes.

The most easily solved problem in the world

I think that the Israel-Palestinian problem is the most easily solved problem in the world.  It is only Zionist control over the American government and media, together with similar developments in Europe, that are blocking a complete and almost instantaneous settlement.  Henry Siegman does an excellent job of describing the Israeli strategy, which is to continue to refuse to negotiate while establishing its ‘facts on the ground’.  Some excerpts:

“In fact, all previous peace initiatives have got nowhere for a reason that neither Bush nor the EU has had the political courage to acknowledge. That reason is the consensus reached long ago by Israel’s decision-making elites that Israel will never allow the emergence of a Palestinian state which denies it effective military and economic control of the West Bank. To be sure, Israel would allow – indeed, it would insist on – the creation of a number of isolated enclaves that Palestinians could call a state, but only in order to prevent the creation of a binational state in which Palestinians would be the majority.

The Middle East peace process may well be the most spectacular deception in modern diplomatic history. Since the failed Camp David summit of 2000, and actually well before it, Israel’s interest in a peace process – other than for the purpose of obtaining Palestinian and international acceptance of the status quo – has been a fiction that has served primarily to provide cover for its systematic confiscation of Palestinian land and an occupation whose goal, according to the former IDF chief of staff Moshe Ya’alon, is ‘to sear deep into the consciousness of Palestinians that they are a defeated people’.”

and (another good Zionist quote in red):

“Israel’s disingenuous commitment to a peace process and a two-state solution is precisely what has made possible its open-ended occupation and dismemberment of Palestinian territory. And the Quartet – with the EU, the UN secretary general and Russia obediently following Washington’s lead – has collaborated with and provided cover for this deception by accepting Israel’s claim that it has been unable to find a deserving Palestinian peace partner.

Just one year after the 1967 war, Moshe Dayan, a former IDF chief of staff who at the time was minister of defence, described his plan for the future as ‘the current reality in the territories’. ‘The plan,’ he said, ‘is being implemented in actual fact. What exists today must remain as a permanent arrangement in the West Bank.’ Ten years later, at a conference in Tel Aviv, Dayan said: ‘The question is not “What is the solution?” but “How do we live without a solution?”’ Geoffrey Aronson, who has monitored the settlement enterprise from its beginnings, summarises the situation as follows:

Living without a solution, then as now, was understood by Israel as the key to maximising the benefits of conquest while minimising the burdens and dangers of retreat or formal annexation. This commitment to the status quo, however, disguised a programme of expansion that generations of Israeli leaders supported as enabling, through Israeli settlement, the dynamic transformation of the territories and the expansion of effective Israeli sovereignty to the Jordan River.

In an interview in Ha’aretz in 2004, Dov Weissglas, chef de cabinet to the then prime minister, Ariel Sharon, described the strategic goal of Sharon’s diplomacy as being to secure the support of the White House and Congress for Israeli measures that would place the peace process and Palestinian statehood in ‘formaldehyde’. It is a fiendishly appropriate metaphor: formaldehyde uniquely prevents the deterioration of dead bodies, and sometimes creates the illusion that they are still alive. Weissglas explains that the purpose of Sharon’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, and the dismantling of several isolated settlements in the West Bank, was to gain US acceptance of Israel’s unilateralism, not to set a precedent for an eventual withdrawal from the West Bank. The limited withdrawals were intended to provide Israel with the political room to deepen and widen its presence in the West Bank, and that is what they achieved. In a letter to Sharon, Bush wrote: ‘In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population centres, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949.’”

and (heavy-duty analysis; emphasis in red):

“Given the vast power imbalance between Israel and the Palestinians – not to mention the vast preponderance of diplomatic support enjoyed by Israel from precisely those countries that one would have expected to compensate diplomatically for the military imbalance – nothing will change for the better without the US, the EU and other international actors finally facing up to what have long been the fundamental impediments to peace.

These impediments include the assumption, implicit in Israel’s occupation policy, that if no peace agreement is reached, the ‘default setting’ of UN Security Council Resolution 242 is the indefinite continuation of Israel’s occupation. If this reading were true, the resolution would actually be inviting an occupying power that wishes to retain its adversary’s territory to do so simply by means of avoiding peace talks – which is exactly what Israel has been doing. In fact, the introductory statement to Resolution 242 declares that territory cannot be acquired by war, implying that if the parties cannot reach agreement, the occupier must withdraw to the status quo ante: that, logically, is 242’s default setting. Had there been a sincere intention on Israel’s part to withdraw from the territories, surely forty years should have been more than enough time in which to reach an agreement.

Israel’s contention has long been that since no Palestinian state existed before the 1967 war, there is no recognised border to which Israel can withdraw, because the pre-1967 border was merely an armistice line. Moreover, since Resolution 242 calls for a ‘just and lasting peace’ that will allow ‘every state in the area [to] live in security’, Israel holds that it must be allowed to change the armistice line, either bilaterally or unilaterally, to make it secure before it ends the occupation. This is a specious argument for many reasons, but principally because UN General Assembly Partition Resolution 181 of 1947, which established the Jewish state’s international legitimacy, also recognised the remaining Palestinian territory outside the new state’s borders as the equally legitimate patrimony of Palestine’s Arab population on which they were entitled to establish their own state, and it mapped the borders of that territory with great precision. Resolution 181’s affirmation of the right of Palestine’s Arab population to national self-determination was based on normative law and the democratic principles that grant statehood to the majority population. (At the time, Arabs constituted two-thirds of the population in Palestine.) This right does not evaporate because of delays in its implementation.

In the course of a war launched by Arab countries that sought to prevent the implementation of the UN partition resolution, Israel enlarged its territory by 50 per cent. If it is illegal to acquire territory as a result of war, then the question now cannot conceivably be how much additional Palestinian territory Israel may confiscate, but rather how much of the territory it acquired in the course of the war of 1948 it is allowed to retain. At the very least, if ‘adjustments’ are to be made to the 1949 armistice line, these should be made on Israel’s side of that line, not the Palestinians’.”

and:

“Underlying Israel’s efforts to retain the occupied territories is the fact that it has never really considered the West Bank as occupied territory, despite its pro forma acceptance of that designation. Israelis see the Palestinian areas as ‘contested’ territory to which they have claims no less compelling than the Palestinians, international law and UN resolutions notwithstanding. This is a view that was made explicit for the first time by Sharon in an op-ed essay published on the front page of the New York Times on 9 June 2002. The use of the biblical designations of Judea and Samaria to describe the territories, terms which were formerly employed only by the Likud but are now de rigueur for Labour Party stalwarts as well, is a reflection of a common Israeli view. That the former prime minister Ehud Barak (now Olmert’s defence minister) endlessly describes the territorial proposals he made at the Camp David summit as expressions of Israel’s ‘generosity’, and never as an acknowledgment of Palestinian rights, is another example of this mindset. Indeed, the term ‘Palestinian rights’ seems not to exist in Israel’s lexicon.”

and (in a Chomskean world, a rare attempt at a real solution):

“What is required for a breakthrough is the adoption by the Security Council of a resolution affirming the following: 1. Changes to the pre-1967 situation can be made only by agreement between the parties. Unilateral measures will not receive international recognition. 2. The default setting of Resolution 242, reiterated by Resolution 338, the 1973 ceasefire resolution, is a return by Israel’s occupying forces to the pre-1967 border. 3. If the parties do not reach agreement within 12 months (the implementation of agreements will obviously take longer), the default setting will be invoked by the Security Council. The Security Council will then adopt its own terms for an end to the conflict, and will arrange for an international force to enter the occupied territories to help establish the rule of law, assist Palestinians in building their institutions, assure Israel’s security by preventing cross-border violence, and monitor and oversee the implementation of terms for an end to the conflict.”

Simplest thing in the world.

 

What did Henry the K say to Pootie-Poot?

Remember when the American Establishment was so panicked by Putin’s anger after he met with Bush at Kennebunkport that they sent an elite delegation, led by Henry Kissinger, on an emergency trip to Moscow to try to smooth things over?  What did Kissinger promise Putin?  We have a hint from the recent warning given by the Russians to the Czech Republic concerning the building of American missile defense installations.  The Russians are strongly suggesting that the Czechs wait until after the next American Presidential election (and the Czechs are listening).  General Yuri Baluyevsky said:

“I and my Russian colleagues simply ask that [the decisionmaking] process continue through to October-November of 2008, and I think you can all guess why.”

Kissinger must have told Putin that the American Establishment would ensure that the next American President would stop trying to rebuild the Cold War using missile defense as a provocation.  That is some promise, as Hillary lives in the pocket of the Jewish Billionaires Club, and Rudy has appointed the most blood-dripping-from-the-fangs Zionists as his advisors on foreign policy.  Of course, there are Americans who want to re-start the Cold War.  They’re called neocons, rabid Likudnik Zionist expansionists who want to use the new Cold War to improve Israel’s chances for expansion (I still intend to write more about this).  Despite what you may read from the ‘experts’, the American Establishment doesn’t want a new Cold War.  Missile defense is just a boondoggle to extract hundreds of billions of dollars from American taxpayers.  It doesn’t work, and everybody knows it never will.  They never intended that it be used, and especially not to start a Cold War that is the opposite of their plans.

If Rudy and Hillary are owned by the Zionists, but the Establishment intends for the United States to back off on the missile defense provocation, something’s gotta give.  I wonder who the running mates will be?  Will we be seeing a Presidential assassination shortly after the inauguration?

Mearsheimer and Walt can't talk

I love the Lobby argument with respect to the Mearsheimer and Walt book:

1. the book is so contentious that it would be improper to allow Mearsheimer and Walt to speak at any public venue without the opportunity for the other side to present a rebuttal at the same venue;


2. but the other side considers the book to be “shoddy scholarship that doesn't really present anything new”, and it is thus not worth sending somebody to rebut it.

Therefore, Mearsheimer and Walt must not be allowed to speak anywhere.  We’re told that Foxman was actually invited to appear at the forum, but had to wash his hair that night, or something, so couldn’t make it.  I wonder if the usual representatives of Israeli interests – Foxman, Dershowitz, Ledeen, Pipes, etc, – would accept the idea that whenever they speak, or write anything, the American side must be allowed a rebuttal?

Embarrassments of 'Save Darfur'

Now that there is going to be an African peacekeeping force sent to Darfur, you would think that the ‘Save Darfur’ crowd – the Zionists who wish to ‘save’ Darfur by sending American and British troops to Sudan to remove the Islamist government and kill Muslims – would shut the fuck up.  We’ve already covered the first set of embarrassments, the false claim that various real humanitarian organizations supported the ‘Save Darfur’ Campaign, a lie rendered even more lovely by the fact that the ‘Save Darfur’ campaign advocates the kind of ‘no fly zone’ which would make the delivery of humanitarian aid by the real aid organizations impossible.  It has also been noted that the campaign has millions of dollars, not one cent of which has actually been used in providing aid to human beings.  The embarrassments continue:

1. Britain's Advertising Standards Authority has criticized the campaign for exaggerating the number of deaths in Darfur.  Besides fudging the numbers, they misleadingly state that all the dead people are as a result of being slaughtered on the orders of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who is, of course, the real target of the campaign.


2. The Israelis themselves can’t even follow the party line.  They are now turning back refugees from Darfur.  Even better, from the Guardian (emphasis in red):
   

   “Ephraim Zuroff, of the Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal centre, said the Jewish people could not be expected to right every wrong just because of their past. ‘Israel can't throw open the gates and allow unlimited access for people who are basically economic refugees.’
   Asylum seekers found sanctuary from mass murder by going to Egypt, Mr Zuroff said, and the desire to enter Israel was ‘motivated primarily by the difficult living conditions and bleak economic prospects in that country’.”

   But what if they intended to go to Israel all along, based on Israel's offer to take in Darfur refugees, but had to go through Egypt to get to Israel?  The Zionists can’t have it both ways:  either there is a refugee-producing cause in Darfur, or there is not.

Perhaps the worst part of this evil campaign is that the conspirators are attempting to sanctify their motives by claiming that it is part of the special mandate of the Jewish people to look after the politically oppressed due to the special – or unique, if we might follow the trials and tribulations of the ADL over the Armenian genocide, an issue connected, of course, to the relationship between the Jewish Billionaires Club and the Turkish Deep State (a connection which also explains why Waxman won’t hold a hearing on the allegations of Sibel Edmonds) – Jewish experience with violent political oppression.

 

Quotes from Zionists

There are some pretty choice quotes from shockingly honest Zionists.  You can find them in places like here and here.  A few samples (emphasis in red; if you wonder about my continuing concerns about the Zionist Empire, see 12 to 16; 11 is so accurate a statement of Israeli negotiating procedure it is almost funny):

1. "We came here to a country that was populated by Arabs and we are building here a Hebrew, a Jewish state; instead of the Arab villages, Jewish villages were established. You even do not know the names of those villages, and I do not blame you because these villages no longer exist. There is not a single Jewish settlement that was not established in the place of a former Arab Village."  –  Moshe Dyan, March 19, 1969, speech at the Technion in Haifa, quoted in Ha’aretz, April 4, 1969.


2.  "Among ourselves, it must be clear that there is no place in the country for both peoples together.                       With the Arabs we shall not achieve our aim of being an independent people in this country. The only solution is Eretz-Israel, at least the west part of Eretz-Israel, without Arabs . . . And there is no other way but to transfer the Arabs from here to the neighbouring countries. Transfer all of them, not one village or tribe should remain . . ."  –Joseph Weitz, entry in his diary for 1940 (quoted in his article: ‘A solution to the Refugee Problem: An Israeli State with a small Arab Minority’, published in Davar, 29 September, 1967.


3. "I gathered all of the Jewish mukhtars, who have contact with Arabs in different villages and asked them to whisper in the ears of some Arabs that a great Jewish reinforcement has arrived in Galilée and that it is going to burn all of the villages of the Huleh. They should suggest to these Arabs, as their friends, to escape while there is still time . . . The tactic reached its goal completely. The building of the police station at Halsa fell into our hands without a shot. The wide areas were cleaned . . ."  – Yigal Allon, Ha Sepher Ha Palmach, Vol. 2, p. 268, 1948.


4. "...as uncontrolled panic spread through all Arab quarters, the Israelis brought up jeeps with loudspeakers which broadcast recorded 'horror sounds'. These included shrieks, wails and anguished moans of Arab women, the wail of sirens and the clang of fire-alarm bells, interrupted by a sepulchral voice calling out in Arabic: ‘Save your souls, all ye faithful: The Jews are using poison gas and atomic weapons. Run for your lives in the name of Allah'.”  – Leo Heiman, Israeli Army Reserve Officer who fought in 1948. Marine Corps Gazette, June 1964.


5. "Because we took the land this gives us the image of being bad, of being aggressive. The Jews always considered that the land belonged to them, but in fact it belonged to the Arabs. I would go further: I would say the original source of this conflict lies with Israel, with the Jews – and you can quote me."  – Yehoshofat Harkabi, former Israeli Chief of Military Intelligence, in ‘Peace Won't be a Plane Ticket to Cairo,’ International Armed Forces Journal, October 1973, p.30.


6. "It is unacceptable that nations made up of people who have only just come down from the trees should take themselves for world leaders . . . How can such primitive beings have an opinion of their own?" – Yitzhak Shamir, in reference to the black African nations who voted in support of the 1975 U.N. resolution, which denounced Zionism as a form of racism, in Yediot Ahronot, November 14, 1975.


7. "The thesis that the danger of genocide was hanging over us in June 1967 and that Israel was fighting for its physical existence is only bluff, which was born and developed after the war." – Israeli General Matityahu Peled, Ha'aretz, 19 March 1972.


8. "Let us not today fling accusations at the murderers. Who are we that we should argue against their hatred? For eight years now they sit in their refugee camps in Gaza, and before their very eyes, we turn into our homestead the land and the villages in which they and their forefathers have lived."  – Moshe Dyan, 1953, quoted by Uri Avneri in Israel without Zionists, p. 134.


9. "I don't understand your optimism. Why should the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country." – David Ben Gurion, 1956, quoted by Nahum Goldmann in The Jewish Paradox, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1978, p.99.


10. "We take the land first and the law comes after."  – Mr. Palmon, Arab affairs adviser to the Mayor of Jerusalem, quoted in The Guardian, 26 April 1972.


11. "We must define our position and lay down basic principles for a settlement. Our demands should be moderate and balanced, and appear to be reasonable. But in fact they must involve such conditions as to ensure that the enemy rejects them. Then we should manoeuvre and allow him to define his own position, and reject a settlement on the basis of a compromise solution. We should then publish his demands as embodying unreasonable extremism." – General Yehoshafat Harkabi, Ma'ariv, 2 November 1973.


12. "To maintain the status quo will not do. We have to set up a dynamic state bent upon expansion." – David Ben Gurion, Rebirth and Destiny of Israel, The Philosophical Press, New York, 1954, p. 419.


13. "During the last 100 years our people have been in a process of building up the country and the nation, of expansion, of getting additional Jews and additional settlements in order to expand the borders here. Let no Jew say that the process has ended. Let no Jew say that we are near the end of the road."  – Moshe Dyan, Ma'ariv, 7 July 1968.


14. "Palestine is a territory whose chief geographical feature is this: that the river Jordan does not delineate its frontier but flows through its centre." – Vladimir Jabotinsky, at the 16th Zionist Congress (1929), quoted by Desmond Stewart in The Middle East: Temple of Janus, p.304.


15. "Take the American Declaration of Independence for instance. It contains no mention of the territorial limits. We are not obliged to state the limits of our State." – Ben Gurion's diary, 14 May 1948, quoted by Michael Bar Zohar in The Armed Prophet, p.133.


16. "The Achilles heel of the Arab coalition is the Lebanon. Muslim supremacy in this country is artificial and can easily be overthrown. A Christian State ought to be set up there, with its southern frontier on the river Litani. We would sign a treaty of alliance with this State. Thus when we have broken the strength of the Arab Legion and bombed Amman, we could wipe out Transjordan; after that Syria would fall. And if Egypt still dared to make war on us, we would bomb Port Said, Alexandria and Cairo. We should thus end the war and would have but paid to Egypt, Assyria and Chaldea on behalf of our ancestors." – Ben Gurion's Diary, 21 May 1948, quoted by Michael Bar Zohar in The Armed Prophet, p.139.


17. "I shall not be ashamed to confess that if I had the power, as I have the will, I would select a score of efficient young men – intelligent, decent, devoted to our ideal and burning with the desire to help redeem Jews – and I would send them to the countries where Jews are absorbed in sinful self-satisfaction. The task of these young men would be to disguise themselves as non-Jews, and plague Jews with anti-Semitic slogans such as 'Bloody Jew', 'Jews go to Palestine' and similar intimacies. I can vouch that the results in terms of a considerable immigration to Israel from these countries would be ten thousand times larger than the results brought by thousands of emissaries who have been preaching for decades to deaf ears." – Davar, 1952, Editor Sharan, quoted by Alfred Lilienthal in The Other Side of the Coin, Devin-Adair, New York, p.47.


18. "We declare openly that the Arabs have no right to settle on even one centimeter of Eretz Israel . . . Force is all they do or ever will understand. We shall use the ultimate force until the Palestinians come crawling to us on all fours."  – Rafael Eitan, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defense Forces – Gad Becker, Yediot Ahronot 13 April 1983, New York Times 14 April 1983.


19. "We must do everything to ensure they (the Palestinian refugees) never do return." – David Ben-Gurion, in his diary, 18 July 1948, quoted in Michael Bar Zohar's Ben-Gurion: the Armed Prophet, Prentice-Hall, 1967, p. 157.


20. "We walked outside, Ben-Gurion accompanying us. Allon repeated his question, What is to be done with the Palestinian population?' Ben-Gurion waved his hand in a gesture which said 'Drive them out!'" – Yitzhak Rabin, leaked censored version of Rabin memoirs, published in the New York Times, 23 October 1979.


21. "There are some who believe that the non-Jewish population, even in a high percentage, within our borders will be more effectively under our surveillance; and there are some who believe the contrary, i.e., that it is easier to carry out surveillance over the activities of a neighbor than over those of a tenant. [I] tend to support the latter view and have an additional argument: . . . the need to sustain the character of the state which will henceforth be Jewish . . . with a non-Jewish minority limited to 15 percent. I had already reached this fundamental position as early as 1940 [and] it is entered in my diary."  – Joseph Weitz, head of the Jewish Agency's Colonization Department. From Israel: an Apartheid State by Uri Davis, p.5.


22. "Everybody has to move, run and grab as many hilltops as they can to enlarge the settlements because everything we take now will stay ours . . . Everything we don't grab will go to them." – Ariel Sharon, Israeli Foreign Minister, addressing a meeting of militants from the Tsomet Party, Agence France Presse, November 15, 1998.


23. "Spirit the penniless population across the frontier by denying it employment . . . Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly." – Theodore Herzl, founder of the World Zionist Organization, speaking of the Arabs of Palestine, Complete Diaries, June 12, 1895 entry.


24. "We will establish ourselves in Palestine whether you like it or not . . .You can hasten our arrival or you can equally retard it. It is however better for you to help us so as to avoid our constructive powers being turned into a destructive power which will overthrow the world." – Chaim Weizmann, in Judische Rundschau, No. 4, 1920.


25. “The Palestinians are like crocodiles, the more you give them meat, they want more.” – Ehud Barak, current Israeli Minister of Defense, in the Jerusalem Post, Aug. 30, 2000.


26. "One million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail." –  Rabbi Yaacov Perrin, Feb. 27, 1994 in N.Y. Times, Feb. 28, 1994, p. 1.


27. "I'm a one-issue guy and my issue is Israel." – mega-political donor, mostly to the Democratic Party, Haim Saban explaining how to make your political donations go further in NYT, September 5, 2004.

 

Some of the forms of 'doubling'

More on Marwan.  The last sentence is interesting.  It is theoretically possible for Marwan to have betrayed Israel by leading it to believe that an attack was not imminent, but then saved Israel by giving it warning.  Thus, an embarrassing war for Israel, but not its destruction (thanks to Marwan’s almost-too-late warning).  The most cynical amongst us might see how the Egyptians might take the longer view.  Egypt, or rather the Egyptian ruling class, has done very well by the continued existence of Israel.  Billions of dollars of American money now flows to Egypt, or rather to the Egyptian ruling class, that would not be flowing had Israel been wiped off the map.  The Egyptians have every reason to see Marwan as some kind of hero, even if he seemed to betray the interests of his country.  They can rationalize the warning as the article does:  Marwan intended it to preserve his cover with the Israelis, planning for the warning to be too late.  This doesn’t really make sense, for if it were really too late, Marwan would have had no need to preserve his cover, as Israel would have been destroyed.  Given the huge benefits to the Egyptian ruling class, the niceties of the logic of betrayal might be forgotten.  Conspiracy theorists often think conflict itself is the goal of the world’s ruling classes, rather than winning.  Is it possible that Marwan was working for Egyptians so prescient that they realized that the continued existence of Israel would be useful to Egypt?  The ‘patriotic acts which it is not time yet to reveal’ may have been to start the process of sucking American taxpayers into sending billions of dollars to Egypt.

Anwar Sadat, Yitzhak Rabin and Ashraf Marwan are all dead.  Sadat and Rabin were assassinated and Marwan probably was.  Rabin got into power as Meir had to resign as a direct result of the 1973 war, and immediately started the process of trading land for peace, an idea which appears to have led to his assassination.  Sadat had been assassinated for the same reason, by the Muslim Brotherhood (sometimes aka ‘al Qaeda’).  Marwan’s book publishing plans probably were the direct cause of his death.  If you are very cynical, and see the big war as the collectivity of intelligence agencies against the rest of us, with intelligence agencies disliking any revealing of how they work, it may not matter which intelligence agency killed him.  Nobody wants us to see that it is all a game.

Through the eye of a needle

There’s a great cartoon (by whom?) at the top of the Home Page of J. Orlin Grabbe.

Fire the rogue university presidents

McMaster Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights weighs in on the hypocrisy of McMaster University President Peter George in his rejection of the academic boycott against Israel on the grounds of academic freedom, while again forgetting to mention all the academic freedom denied to the Palestinians through actions of the Israelis.  There is no way these chattel-slave Presidents can wiggle out of this:  the hypocrisy is obvious, and outrageous.  Since the academic freedom issue is bogus, the real reason for the rejection of the boycott is entirely political, and seems invariably to have been done without consulting the wider university community, for the good reason that the wider community would not have approved it.  This sounds like good grounds for dismissal of these rogue presidents.

In more boycott news, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is considering a boycott of goods made in Israeli settlements in the West Bank.  The tidal wave continues to rise, ever higher.  Trying to part the seas just makes it worse.

Self-centered, much?

Americans are being kicked out of their homes and are facing financial ruin, and the American economy, and thus the world economy, is about to implode, but The Forward is kind enough to put it all into perspective.  It’s a tragedy, ‘shocking’ even, because the financial repercussions mean that the Americans have had to slightly reduce this year’s tithe to the IDF, meaning that the IDF will have to squeak by on only 90% of the arms it was going to use to kill Palestinians.  There’s the real tragedy (of course, the newest $30 billion is still safe).  Self-centered, much?

Pepe Escobar and 'Likudstan'

Pepe Escobar is one of the few writers on geopolitics who makes any sense (emphasis in red):

“The Bush-friendly ‘new Europe’ of the current Sarkozy-Merkel vintage of course knows that voracious US Treasuries buyer China de facto controls US interest rates, so China literally pays for Bush's war on Iraq. ‘New Europe’ also knows it's absolutely unlikely China would ever finance a Bush war on Iran – which would be a direct attack on Asia. More power thus to a negotiated European-brokered solution to the Iranian nuclear dossier.

It all goes back to the Middle East. The original plan in essence boiled down to borrowing from China to invade and occupy Iraq. Controlling a vital source of oil, Washington would then control the Beijing bull by the horns. The problem is the Bush administration has (mis)managed to control virtually nothing in Iraq, while China can always get the oil it needs from somewhere else (Iran, Kazakhstan, Venezuela, anywhere in Africa). So the winner of the war on Iraq is ... Halliburton.”

Of course, that’s not quite the plan (I still owe you what the real American Establishment plan is; the key is to always remember that the American Establishment and the Chinese Establishment are on the same side:  the new head of Chrysler is a guy from Home Depot who is an expert at doing business in China, and Chrysler’s Chinese manufacturing ally, Chery, is about to start making cars . . . in Iran), though Escobar is typically completely correct about the ‘deep finance’ reasons why the United States won’t be attacking Iran.  To put it rather bluntly, China has the American economy by the balls, and has an absolute veto on whether the United States wrecks its main source of energy.  It isn’t complicated to figure out that the United States won’t be attacking Iran, no matter what Bush or Cheney think.  More delights from Escobar, riffing on the Yinon-inspired Gelb version of the Zionist Plan for Iraq:

“The whole of Baghdad, meanwhile, already languishes in prison – a gulag at 53 degrees Celsius with no water and electricity. An ATol reader from California, born in the Middle East, has come up with as good a definitive solution as any to the oil and water wars in the region. Instead of moving millions of Shi'ites and Sunnis to a ‘Shi'iteistan’ and a ‘Sunnistan’, he suggests moving all Iraqis to Israel, and all Israelis – including Likud Party members – to Iraq, and rename the new country ‘Likudstan’, with an adjacent body of water (the Likud Gulf) with its own Brookings Institution.

‘The big bonus for all of us,’ he writes, is that ‘Likudstan (formerly Israel) will be Iran's next-door neighbor; it will be much easier to ask the Likudies to drop nukes on Iran. We don't even have to send brother [Donald] Rumsfeld to supply them with weapons of mass destruction, since the Likudies are self-sufficient.’ Maybe Iraq-war-eraser Sarko could discuss this one with Bush the next time they meet under a Chinese-owned Eiffel Tower.”

David Shayler's cigars

David Shayler has managed to do what years of frantic activity by the British security establishment has never managed, completely undermine his credibility.  Shayler is a British intelligence whistleblower with some embarrassing things to say.  Now, he claims to be the Messiah.  He hears voices, sees hallucinations, consumes pot and magic mushrooms. He’s trippin’.

British intelligence efforts to stifle him have failed, and they can’t just kill him, as that would just add to his credibility.  Amongst the many CIA plots against Castro:

“Among early attempts devised by the CIA to discredit Mr Castro was a plan to place chemical powders on his boots that would cause his beard to fall out when he was in New York to speak at the United Nations in 1960.

When that failed, the CIA planned to slip him a box of cigars tainted with LSD so that he would burst into fits of laughter during a television interview, said Mr Escalante, author of a book that documents 167 plots against Castro.”

What better way to destroy Shayler’s credibility than to slip him some drugs, the kind of drugs that make you see hallucinations and think you are the Messiah?  I think Shayler should get a new dealer.

 

 

 

'Academic freedom' as a weapon

A lot of North American university presidents and officials have come out with public pronouncements against the academic boycott of Israel, all on the phony pretense of protection of ‘academic freedom’.  Why do I say phony?  How about almost unbelievable restrictions on Palestinian academic freedom over the years that have elicited not one peep of disapproval from these hypocrites.  Of course, even if it is not polite to say it, we all know the real reason why the North American university presidents have suddenly discovered ‘academic freedom’.  Yes, it’s the infamous Jewish Billionaries Club, massive donors to the endowments of universities.

Now these chattel-slave presidents are finally being called out on it.  From the Toronto Star (emphasis in red; poorly-designed Coalition website here):

“The head of Queen's University is being accused of ‘hypocrisy’ on her home campus for condemning a proposed British boycott of Israel's universities over its treatment of Palestinians.

Principal and vice-chancellor Karen Hitchcock was told her anti-boycott position, matched by several other university presidents in Canada and globally, is a ‘mischaracterization and defamation of Queen's community members ... who strongly oppose your stance,’ the Queen's Coalition against Racial and Ethnic Discrimination advised her in a letter this week.

Calling her statement ‘blatantly political,’ English literature professor Margaret Pappano said yesterday her QCRED group is angry that it was posted on the Queen's website without prior debate, contrary to the principles of healthy academic discourse.

‘There's great hypocrisy in all this,’ said Pappano. ‘You can't be silent for years about what's gone on to Palestinian academic freedom and suddenly issue a statement of support for Israeli academic freedom without it having political connotations.’”

Bingo!  The deadly combination of Zionist human rights abuses, Zionist lies, and blatant Zionist abuse of economic power, including dragging the university presidents around by the nose, is slowly catching up with them.

More on the death of Ashraf Marwan

The curious story of the death of Ashraf Marwan is made even more curious by the claim from his family that the only copy of the manuscripts of his autobiography (together with the tapes from which the manuscripts were transcribed), which were in his flat before he died, have gone missing, and in fact disappeared on the day that he died.  The obvious conclusion is that he was murdered by some intelligence agency to suppress whatever was in those manuscripts.  Marwan had made extensive future plans inconsistent with suicide, and was physically incapable of putting himself in a position where he could have accidentally fallen out of the window.  The Israelis have boasted that he was an Israeli agent during the Six Day War.  He claims that he was an Egyptian agent feeding them disinformation, and proof of that would have been very embarrassing to the Israelis, particularly at this time when we continue to learn more and more of the real truths behind Zionist lies and mythology. 

Lucy, Charlie Brown, and the football

Every fall for decades Charles Schulz would draw a cartoon with Lucy enticing Charlie Brown to kick a football she promised to hold for him.  Every year, when he was just about to kick it, she would pull it away, and he would end up on his back on the ground, wondering how he could be so gullible to be fooled again.

Lucy is Israel, Charlie Brown is the Arabs, and the football is Palestinian statehood.  Every year or so, some Middle Eastern leader, concerned about the rising anger caused by the plight of the Palestinians, will apply to the Americans for relief.  The Americans will phone Tel Aviv, and request another football kicking session.  The Israelis will meet with the Palestinians, promise much (rumors and hints, but with impossible catches), and then  . . . pull the football away.  Sometimes, Israel’s American agents will help to snatch the football out of harm’s way.  A year or so later, after the embarrassed old Palestinian leadership has been replaced (and Israel again lacks a ‘negotiating partner’), the Arabs will be fooled again.  It’s a trick that never stops working.

The Israeli negotiating posture reminds me of another cartoon, this time “Dilbert”.  It is well described here:

“In the first panel, the pointy-haired boss leans into Dilbert's cubicle and says, ‘Let's have a little premeeting to prepare for the meeting tomorrow.’ Dilbert turns around in the next panel and says, ‘Whoa! Do you think it's safe to jump right into the premeeting without planning it?’ In the final panel, Wally and Dilbert are sitting at the meeting table and the point haired boss says, ‘Okay, Let's get this preliminary premeeting meeting going.’ Wally is turned to Dilbert saying, ‘You think you're funny but you're not.’”

Here is the cartoon (for most cartoons, see here, and for all of them, see here; this is useful for searching).  The parallels are obvious.

The Israelis won’t agree to any kind of real Palestinian state as it would require them to fix their borders, thus forever ending the dream of Greater Israel.  As long as the Likudniks continue to have the unwaivering and mindless support of the Americans, the dream survives, and any kind of peace is impossible.  That is why the Lobby power has to be defeated before Middle East peace is possible.

Insanity also affects eyesight

Apparently, insanity also affects eyesight.  I wrote:

“This is in the context of the Cannonfire attempted defense of the indefensible Democratic Party support for the new unconstitutional FISA law.”

For this, I’m called a “fucking liar. Provably.”  Note that none of the three points that ‘prove’ this have anything to do with what I wrote (warning:  following is a “strained rationalization”).  I didn’t say the author of Cannonfire would have voted for it; it is undeniable that the Democratic Party, as a party, did support the law as they could have stopped it and didn’t (you can quibble about this all you want but voters know what is going on and why they voted for the Democrats, and are getting mad); and I am really getting sick and tired of these end runs around the constitution, where legislators deliberately pass legislation they know to be unconstitutional in the knowledge that the victims of this legislation won’t have practical recourse to the courts because of the expense and time involved.  Even if it is struck down, the damage will have been done.  I think it should be a crime to pass or enforce legislation which you know, or ought to have known, was unconstitutional. 

By the way, pretending that Democrat shit smells and tastes delicious isn’t fooling anybody (14% popular support for Congress reflects what the majority is doing, and not doing).  You have to hold their feet to the fire, as pressures that we can’t speak about – what John Conyers called the ‘facts of life’ in the Moore movie – are forcing them to disaster.

Insanity

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe cites the leader of the free world in shredding the civil rights of the people of his country.  Unlike the United States, however, where shredding the Constitution is apparently the cause of great joy (got to fight Bibi’s ‘War on Terror’!) there is actually some opposition to the move.

From Cannonfire:

“Bad things are happening in the ‘progressive’ community. Bad things. You may not be able to see the true scope of the danger yet, but you soon will.”

This is in the context of the Cannonfire attempted defense of the indefensible Democratic Party support for the new unconstitutional FISA law.  What’s on for next week – the case for torture?  Being in an Empire truly makes people insane.

I’m reminded of Juan Cole’s short-lived campaign in favor of bombing civilians in Iraq in order to get American troops out while keeping the oil (yes, that was the argument!).  The original posting – thanks, Wayback Machine! – was ‘clarified’ with the addition of the words in square brackets after step 3, but the meaning is clear, especially with the reference to Afghanistan (where a similar type of campaign has resulted in immense civilian casualties).  The same type of arguments were actually made in Vietnam!  No matter how ‘smart’ the bombs, you simply cannot carry out any kind of aerial anti-insurgency campaign without the great brunt of the attack falling on civilians.  Living in an Empire actually seems to cause brain damage, and the same type of brain damage over and over again.  For Empire, otherwise reasonable people are willing to destroy both international law and their own constitutional protections.  Insanity!

Perseid bust

I was just flipping round the internet, wondering if anyone else is reporting what a big bust the Perseid meteor shower was – there’s four hours of my life I’m never getting back – and I saw this.  “For the sake of his family.”  If he’s not coming back at all, the plan must be for Hillary to win. 

Publicity stunt?

The Chicago Council on Global Affairs has canceled an announced speech on the Lobby by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt.  We’re informed, from a letter by Mearsheimer and Walt, that this was done under pressure from critics who were uncomfortable with their arguments.  Do you think that the Lobby would be that stupid?  The ‘Court Jews’ wouldn’t be that obvious, would they?  Mearsheimer and Walt are arguing that the Lobby uses its inordinate power to censor discussion of its inordinate power, a thesis again proved by the actions of the Lobby in pressuring for more censorship.  Is it possible that this odd cancellation is a publicity stunt by the publishers of the Mearsheimer/Walt book?  Can’t you just see the dust-jacket blurb:  “The book the J-o-o-o-o-s don’t want you to read . . .”?

Liquidity crisis

French bank BNP Paribas said:

“The complete evaporation of liquidity in certain market segments of the U.S. securitization market has made it impossible to value certain assets fairly, regardless of their quality or credit rating.”

Rather backasswards, n’est-ce pas?  It is the worthlessness of huge chunks of securitized American mortgages which has made large American hedge funds insolvent – though no one has looked closely for fear of what they might find – which in turn is affecting the perceived solvency of large American financial institutions, so much so that the Europeans are balking at making even extremely short term loans to them.  The evaporation of liquidity is not the cause of the inability to value the underlying assets; it is the worthlessness of the underlying assets which is leading to the evaporation of liquidity.  No bank wants to be left holding the bag when the whole mess comes crashing down.  There is a good comment from ‘bookie’ on a Metafilter thread.  It is an open issue whether the regulators can sort this thing out before the disaster.

Of course, late capitalism thrives on making huge profits by taking huge risks, secure in the knowledge that the taxpayers will have to bail everyone out when the shit hits the fan.

Low expectations

Via Robot Wisdom auxiliary, another excellent piece from the Onion:  “Minimum-Wage Hike Celebrated With Name-Brand Ketchup”.

Half way to the Messiah

The United States is responsible for the deaths of three million people in Iraq and Iran over the last thirty years.

Jokes

From the Onion:  “Report: Iran Less Than 10 Years Away From 2016”.  Related:

1. “Former President Carter To Be Tried For Peace Crimes” (a little too kind to Jimmy, and manages to avoid mentioning his book on Palestine!)


2. “Olmert: There won't be war with Syria, but let's prepare for possibility”


3. “Body Of Missing Mad Magazine Reporter Found In Blecchistan” (the quote at the end makes this dangerously close to a parody of the Daniel Pearl death).

Iran's new friend

The new meme is that the United States will go around both Israel and the obstreperous Sunni states to make a deal directly with Iran.  I don’t see this happening with Bush and Cheney around, or even under President Rudary Clintoniani (a good name for them, as they are indistinguishable, wearing matching Jewish leashes and collars), but the following American President, desperate to save the Republic from complete ruin, will have to deal with Iran in order to deal with Iraq, and Israel and the Sunni states who march to Israel’s drum will just get in the way.  By this very late point, the crisis will be so desperate that it will be time for the Americans to cry ‘sauve qui peut’, and take any step to save themselves from utter ruin at the hands of Zionism. 

The paradox of the current situation is that the American subservience to Israel has made it so weak that the Iranians have lost much of their incentive to do a deal, particularly as long as the ‘surge’ is ongoing.  The obvious purpose of the ‘surge’ is to exacerbate sectarian strife in Iraq, all as part of the Zionist plan to break up the country.  Contrary to what you see in the Jew-controlled American media, Iran has a real interest in cooling such strife, as Sunni-Shi’ite trouble has started to leak over into Iran itself.  Thus the interests of Iran, and the real, non-Zionist interests of the United States, are exactly the same with respect to Iraq, leading, once the Americans come to their senses, to the real possibility of an American-Iranian entente centered around Iraq.  Unfortunately for Americans, the United States will be completely fucked by the time saner heads prevail.

How not to run a prison system

The statistics in this article by Glenn C. Loury on racism and the American prison system are simply amazing.  Some examples (emphasis throughout in red and green):

“Crime rates peaked in 1992 and have dropped sharply since. Even as crime rates fell, however, imprisonment rates remained high and continued their upward march. The result, the current American prison system, is a leviathan unmatched in human history.

According to a 2005 report of the International Centre for Prison Studies in London, the United States – with five percent of the world’s population – houses 25 percent of the world’s inmates. Our incarceration rate (714 per 100,000 residents) is almost 40 percent greater than those of our nearest competitors (the Bahamas, Belarus, and Russia). Other industrial democracies, even those with significant crime problems of their own, are much less punitive: our incarceration rate is 6.2 times that of Canada, 7.8 times that of France, and 12.3 times that of Japan. We have a corrections sector that employs more Americans than the combined work forces of General Motors, Ford, and Wal-Mart, the three largest corporate employers in the country, and we are spending some $200 billion annually on law enforcement and corrections at all levels of government, a fourfold increase (in constant dollars) over the past quarter century.”

and:

“One simple measure of punitiveness is the likelihood that a person who is arrested will be subsequently incarcerated. Between 1980 and 2001, there was no real change in the chances of being arrested in response to a complaint: the rate was just under 50 percent. But the likelihood that an arrest would result in imprisonment more than doubled, from 13 to 28 percent. And because the amount of time served and the rate of prison admission both increased, the incarceration rate for violent crime almost tripled, despite the decline in the level of violence. The incarceration rate for nonviolent and drug offenses increased at an even faster pace: between 1980 and 1997 the number of people incarcerated for nonviolent offenses tripled, and the number of people incarcerated for drug offenses increased by a factor of 11. Indeed, the criminal-justice researcher Alfred Blumstein has argued that none of the growth in incarceration between 1980 and 1996 can be attributed to more crime . . . .”

and:

“The punitive turn in the nation’s social policy – intimately connected with public rhetoric about responsibility, dependency, social hygiene, and the reclamation of public order – can be fully grasped only when viewed against the backdrop of America’s often ugly and violent racial history: there is a reason why our inclination toward forgiveness and the extension of a second chance to those who have violated our behavioral strictures is so stunted, and why our mainstream political discourses are so bereft of self-examination and searching social criticism. This historical resonance between the stigma of race and the stigma of imprisonment serves to keep alive in our public culture the subordinating social meanings that have always been associated with blackness. Race helps to explain why the United States is exceptional among the democratic industrial societies in the severity and extent of its punitive policy and in the paucity of its social-welfare institutions.”

and:

“In his fine study Punishment and Inequality in America (2006), the Princeton University sociologist Bruce Western powerfully describes the scope, nature, and consequences of contemporary imprisonment. He finds that the extent of racial disparity in imprisonment rates is greater than in any other major arena of American social life: at eight to one, the black-white ratio of incarceration rates dwarfs the two-to-one ratio of unemployment rates, the three-to-one ration of non-marital childbearing, the two-to-one ratio of infant-mortality rates and one-to-five ratio of net worth. While three out of 200 young whites were incarcerated in 2000, the rate for young blacks was one in nine. A black male resident of the state of California is more likely to go to a state prison than a state college.

The scandalous truth is that the police and penal apparatus are now the primary contact between adult black American men and the American state. Among black male high-school dropouts aged 20 to 40, a third were locked up on any given day in 2000, fewer than three percent belonged to a union, and less than one quarter were enrolled in any kind of social program. Coercion is the most salient meaning of government for these young men.  Western estimates that nearly 60 percent of black male dropouts born between 1965 and 1969 were sent to prison on a felony conviction at least once before they reached the age of 35.”

Whether it is fighting wars for Zionism, the health care system, or the penal system, the United States can always be counted on as a cautionary example.

Paying the costs of Zionism

The war in Iraq is costing the United States more per month than the Vietnam war cost per month on average over its eight-year term.  In real dollars, adjusted for inflation.  In a country that has recently deindustrialized itself, and has gone from being the world’s biggest creditor nation to being the world’s biggest debtor nation.  In a country that borrows money to pay for consumer goods and not for productive equipment that might pay the costs of borrowing.   Trillion-dollar bill (on the rosiest assumptions).  Mostly to pay the operating costs of the war (wait for when the Pentagon demands that all its worn-out equipment be replaced).  A war that increases the costs of fighting Bibi Netanyahu’s ‘war on terror’.  The generals can’t say when it will be over, and no prominent politician of either party is prepared to even discuss a meaningful withdrawal.  It is bad manners to officially admit that fighting a war for Israel might be dumb, especially a war that is destabilizing the world’s largest source of hydrocarbons.  Both likely Presidential candidates are gung-ho for years more of fighting.  The big secret about the strange American devotion to paying the costs of Zionism is that the United States simply can’t afford it.  Nixon had to end gold backing for the dollar in order to keep the United States from becoming insolvent over the costs of Vietnam.  President Giuliani won’t have anywhere near the same bargaining position when he has to try the same sort of trick.  Of course, the right-wingers will use the economic crisis as yet another excuse for belt-tightening, i. e., cutting social programs.  What happens when there are no programs left to cut?

Karen Carlin

It remains curious that as we get nowhere fast on September 11 (in fact, we seem to be drifting further from the truth; more here on September 11 soon), new information continues to come out on the JFK assassination.  Here’s a thread discussing an important witness named Karen Carlin (aka “Little Lynn”) who went into hiding in fear for her life, was mistakenly included on the list of mysterious deaths by Penn Jones, Jr., and is possibly still alive. 

The love that dare not speak its name

Ed Martin wonders out loud why Nancy Pelosi won’t even consider the one thing that should be at the top of her agenda, the impeachment of George Bush.  The politics taken by the Democratic Party on impeachment and Iraq withdrawal are the single biggest mystery in American politics, absolutely inexplicable and bizarre unless you figure in the malign influence of the money provided by the Jewish Billionaires Club.  Pelosi is between a rock and a hard place, and is praying that the hatred of Bush will carry her party over its complete betrayal of the interests of the American people.

Black conspiracy theory

Conrad Black went to court in Chicago to have his bail conditions amended to allow him to live in Canada.  His application was turned down, apparently as the judge feared problems in bringing him him back if he decided to use the Canadian legal system to fight extradition.  As Black can play the courts in Canada like Paganini played the violin, the judge was very wise in not allowing him to go to Canada.  He could have drawn extradition proceedings out for the rest of his life.  Black’s sudden desire to live in Canada, a place he holds in great disdain, is highly suspicious.

There was a very peculiar angle to the position taken by the prosecution.  They submitted an affidavit concerning Black’s hidden assets, claiming that Black had 40 million Euros in wealth stashed through banks in the Channel Islands, Caribbean and Gibraltar, wealth which he had not disclosed to the court.  The judge appeared to give the affidavit short shrift (although Black would be a fool of he hasn’t hidden a lot of money somewhere), but the deponent is very interesting.  His name is Juval Aviv (aka Yuval Aviv), who runs a security/anti-terrorism business and was engaged by Hollinger to investigate the state of Black’s assets.  Juval Aviv is an ex-Mossad agent (as if you can ever really be an ‘ex’ Mossad agent), and claims to have been Golda Meir’s bodyguard.  He also says he was involved in the murder operations that formed the basis of the infamous Spielberg movie ‘Munich’.  That movie was in fact partly based on a book on the life of Aviv (which the Mossad claims is nonsense).  That book was written by George Jonas, who is one of the list of Barbara Amiel’s ex-husbands (as if you can ever really be an ‘ex’ husband of Barbara Amiel).  Aviv is conspiracy central, claiming knowledge about the death of Robert Maxwell and the story behind the Promis software.

Black, under the influence of his wife, was a great supporter of ultra-Zionism.  He turned the Jerusalem Post strongly to the right, and made the Telegraph the Zionist Telegraph (the Telegraph, at least, has largely recovered since Conrad lost control of it).  It seems very odd that the Mossad would be participating in an attempt to prevent Black from staying out of jail.  On the other hand, Lady Black still has considerable pull with the Zionists, and a connection to Juval Aviv through George Jonas.  Is Lady Black attempting to sabotage Conrad’s freedom?  Now that Conrad has lost much of his money, and is a pariah amongst the international elites, she needs a new husband, and fast (even though plastic surgery makes her look about 40, she’s actually about 106, which, coincidentally, is about the age Conrad will be when he gets out of jail).  She thus must block his attempts at escape, so she can divorce him and find a new sugar daddy.  Why else would the Mossad be attacking such a great friend of the Jews?