Most of America's largest publicly traded corporations -- including several that are receiving billions of dollars from U.S. taxpayers to finance their recovery -- have set up offshore operations that could help them avoid paying U.S. taxes on their profits, a government study released yesterday found.
Read more @ Washington Post
1.19.2009
GiveMeLiberty.org
The U.S. Government has abandoned
the Rule of Law as defined by the People
via the Constitution.
The numerous crises currently confronting our Republic are not the result of poor political policies. These evils are the direct result of decades of violations of the U.S. Constitution by our servant Government.
In defiance of the natural Sovereignty of the People,
the Government has steadfastly, and repeatedly, ignored the Petitions of the People seeking Redress for these most egregious violations of their Fundamental Rights and cherished Freedoms.
The tide of history is upon us. Our Liberty may soon be forever lost unless the People rise quickly, peacefully and forcefully to restore Constitutional Order to the Republic.
Thankfully, our Founders left us a powerful, but little-known weapon in the Law to peacefully secure Redress without relying upon fixed elections, corrupted courts or resorting to the exercise of the Right of Revolution embodied by the Second Amendment.
It's time to get organized and exercise this profound Constitutionally protected Right.
Acta non verba.
Visit website
the Rule of Law as defined by the People
via the Constitution.
The numerous crises currently confronting our Republic are not the result of poor political policies. These evils are the direct result of decades of violations of the U.S. Constitution by our servant Government.
In defiance of the natural Sovereignty of the People,
the Government has steadfastly, and repeatedly, ignored the Petitions of the People seeking Redress for these most egregious violations of their Fundamental Rights and cherished Freedoms.
The tide of history is upon us. Our Liberty may soon be forever lost unless the People rise quickly, peacefully and forcefully to restore Constitutional Order to the Republic.
Thankfully, our Founders left us a powerful, but little-known weapon in the Law to peacefully secure Redress without relying upon fixed elections, corrupted courts or resorting to the exercise of the Right of Revolution embodied by the Second Amendment.
It's time to get organized and exercise this profound Constitutionally protected Right.
Acta non verba.
Visit website
1.18.2009
Devastation has always been a goal for Israel
Read about the intentional destruction of Gaza as a military goal. Think about it as part of the plan to internationalize the situation there -- get other countries involved. Once that happens, think about the pretexts now available to accuse other countries, like Iran for instance, of smuggling weapons into Gaza along with concrete and other materials for rebuilding the destroyed infrastructure. Think how easy it will be to create new reasons for enmeshing other countries in the conflict and expanding the war. Think how easy it will be to make the Palestinians suffer endlessly because of these suspicions.
This is all done on purpose: the destruction, the carnage, the outrage....to draw the world into the Zionazi NWO trap, baited with the lives of innocent civilians in Gaza, in order to bring on WW III. If by some miracle it does not end in WW III, the alternative will be the world, and especially the US, paying restitution to the Palestinians on behalf of "poor" Israel, who was only ever trying "to defend itself." That is their backup plan. The CFR has recently written about it, as noted here. You can pay in blood and money, or just money; but you will pay. The Palestinians, of course, always have to pay in blood, as they have no money. And I suppose when we're out of money (soon), then we will be forced to pay in blood, too, just like the Palestinians.
Who will stand up to these monsters? Who will pry their vicious claws off the throat of humanity? Read this story, and then read the following post by Peter Chamberlain, and understand what is happening. - Ed.
by Jonathan Cook
JERUSALEM // While Hamas and Israel were edging tentatively towards acceptance of a ceasefire late last week, Israel upped its assault on Gaza, driving its troops deeper into Gaza City, intensifying its artillery bombardment and creating thousands more displaced people.
Israel’s military strategy in Gaza, even in what is likely to be the “final act” as officials are calling it, is following a blueprint laid down during the Lebanon war more than two years ago.
Read more @ The National
This is all done on purpose: the destruction, the carnage, the outrage....to draw the world into the Zionazi NWO trap, baited with the lives of innocent civilians in Gaza, in order to bring on WW III. If by some miracle it does not end in WW III, the alternative will be the world, and especially the US, paying restitution to the Palestinians on behalf of "poor" Israel, who was only ever trying "to defend itself." That is their backup plan. The CFR has recently written about it, as noted here. You can pay in blood and money, or just money; but you will pay. The Palestinians, of course, always have to pay in blood, as they have no money. And I suppose when we're out of money (soon), then we will be forced to pay in blood, too, just like the Palestinians.
Who will stand up to these monsters? Who will pry their vicious claws off the throat of humanity? Read this story, and then read the following post by Peter Chamberlain, and understand what is happening. - Ed.
by Jonathan Cook
JERUSALEM // While Hamas and Israel were edging tentatively towards acceptance of a ceasefire late last week, Israel upped its assault on Gaza, driving its troops deeper into Gaza City, intensifying its artillery bombardment and creating thousands more displaced people.
Israel’s military strategy in Gaza, even in what is likely to be the “final act” as officials are calling it, is following a blueprint laid down during the Lebanon war more than two years ago.
Read more @ The National
Israel's Hands Around Our Throat Are Showing
by Peter Chamberlain at There Are No Sunglasses
In the closing days of the Bush disaster Israel is moving to consolidate gains it has made over the past eight years toward its ultimate goals of “Greater Israel” and the Zionist-dominated new world order. The urgency of the hour for Israel can be seen in the open display of Jewish/Israeli political muscle-flexing in Washington. The normally invisible Israeli hand around America’s throat has been clearly visible lately, as America moved to take four specific actions on Israel’s behalf which will probably prove to be harmful to America’s interests, forcing a major expansion of the war on terror.
Beginning with House and Senate actions, quickly followed by Olmert’s restraint of Condoleeza Rice at the UN, then the hurried signing of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), our government has been very busy lately representing the state of Israel, in direct opposition to the will of the American people (judging by anti-Israel –vs- pro-Israel protests).
The two Congressional resolutions (H. Res. 34 and S. RES. 10) were watered-down versions of the prior chicken-hearted attempt, intended to show support for the coming MOU. Their main purpose was to put both houses on record in unanimous support of Israel’s butchery of Gaza, endorsing the lie that this conflict was started by Hamas rockets breaking a working truce and that Iran was responsible for those rockets.
“Whereas Hamas has increased the range and payload of its rockets, reportedly with support from Iran.”
The MOU is a eleventh hour end run, stealthily enacting enforcement measures upon Iran that were in the original “Iran War Resolution” but the cowardly Democrat sponsors were afraid to challenge the people with.
Secretary Rice signed the articles of surrender yesterday and the Israeli security cabinet intends to ratify the agreement today. When Bush signs the MOU, its weight, added to that of two very similar Congressional resolutions will allegedly bind Obama’s hands to continuing the failed policies of Bush and Olmert, including supporting the anticipated strike against Iran. The Israeli lobby and its Jewish-American supporters have really done their homework on this one.
The principle planners of the terror war have really done their homework as well, negotiating preparatory arms agreements and military alliances, but, more importantly, the requisite preparatory brainwashing (thanks to the Western media). They have studied the Goyim mind very well, testing our reactions periodically with their previous accidentally-planned wars. They really believed that this time, they could roll over us, forcing us to contribute the weapons and the manpower to enforce Israeli mandates upon the region.
Our only hope is that public anger over the rising situation multiplies faster than the unfolding military/diplomatic scenario, allowing democratic forces to corral the forces of global dictatorship. This means that if there is ever to be a public uprising, it will have to be now. But we all know that nothing like that will occur, at least not until Americans start to suffer from our government’s misdeeds.
We will see the scenario unfold slowly in some areas and more rapidly in others. The Israeli war on the human race will continue to snowball until it overtakes the real targets, Hezbollah and Iran. Israel couldn’t defeat Hezbollah without the American Air Force, which Bush denied them until now. Israel cannot hope to take-on Iran without both our Air Force and our Navy.
The Navy is key to this new plot to force Iran into taking steps which the US/British media can portray as aggression or acts of terrorism. The Navy will create the embargoes and blockades to target Iran as the supplier of Hamas arms and technical know-how (clear acts of war), intended to cause confrontations at sea, which Iran’s small navy will surely lose. Using the same old tired but trustworthy formula for starting wars perfected by Obama’s guru Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national bureau of war-starting (CIA) is trying to bait Iran, just like they baited the Russian bear.
The Israel-US Memorandum of Understanding signed by the Commander-In-Chief’s hit-woman (like the resolutions produced by AIPAC’s henchmen in the Congress) makes its case based on the outright distortion of truth that the conflict was precipitated by homemade Qassam rocket fire breaking the truce and not by the Nov. 4 IDF invasion of the Gaza Strip which left six Palestinians dead. The MOU tries to portray the rape of Gaza as an act of “self-defense,” in order to justify what comes next, the creation of an international force to eradicate terrorist smuggling, or more precisely, the alliance to start a war with Iran and to reinforce Israeli positions.
“to prevent the supply of arms and related materiel to terrorist organizations that threaten either party, with a particular focus on the supply of arms, related materiel and explosives into Gaza to Hamas and other terrorist organizations.”
[The document mentions unspecified actions to limit this arms traffic, specifically naming] the Mediterranean, Gulf of Aden, Red Sea and eastern Africa, [under command of] relevant components of the U.S. Government, such as U.S. Central Command, U.S. European Command, U.S. Africa Command, and U.S. Special Operations Command.
international and coalition naval forces and other appropriate entities to address weapons supply to Gaza
through an international response to those states, such as Iran, who are determined to be sources of weapons and explosives supply to Gaza.
[and to] recommend additional measures to advance the goals of this Memorandum of Understanding.”
Obama’s statements in support of Israeli “self-defense” and his coterie of Zionist advisors and cabinet picks clearly indicate which direction he will go in the next few days. It looks as though Israel is choosing to play the “reasonable” card, based on an Israeli unilateral “ceasefire,” implementing the MOU recommendations. If this cessation of hostilities is real then it indicates that Israel is getting everything it wants in the still secret provisions of the memorandum. This must mean the full approval on all the next generation fighters and the requested bunker-busters that Israel wanted, along with international peacekeeping forces to police Gaza and then the West Bank, as well as a contract hit on Iran.
Here we have a new president coming into office in the middle of an ongoing CIA/Mossad psyop, which is targeted on him, while he is surrounded by a sea of Israel-serving advisors, immersed in a building world war, which is itself, the biggest CIA op of all time…
The man is screwed before he even starts; kinda sounds like JFK and the Bay of Pigs, doesn’t it?
Obama and his handlers are setting the stage to continue the “Bush doctrine” and to escalate the violence, especially the war on Pakistan. The lure of this appeal is that the reasoning of the Bush doctrine does accurately describe our enemies in this war, the terrorist aggressors who are bombing and murdering their way towards a corrupt world government, but it lies about who that enemy really is. The gang of international killers whom we refer to as “al Qaida” is the biggest threat to security and dreams of world peace, but the address of that adversary is not some cave in the Hindu Kush; it is at Langley and Tel Aviv.
If, from day one, Obama is intent on maintaining the charade of the Bush/Cheney “war on terror” scam (the neocon plan to restructure the Middle East in Israel’s favor through war) which has brought about its own defeat, then he is stepping into the role of primary enemy of the human race and must be opposed accordingly.
If the US can’t remove the deadly Israeli parasite from its government then it will die. If Obama cannot separate us from the Bushwar then he enters office doomed to failure. He must carry-out a clean break with the policies of Bush.
Israel is no doubt encouraged by Obama’s recent naïve remarks about bin Laden remaining the “number one threat” to US security.
“I think that we have to so weaken his infrastructure that, whether he is technically alive or not, he is so pinned down that he cannot function. My preference obviously would be to capture or kill him. But if we have so tightened the noose that he’s in a cave somewhere and can’t even communicate with his operatives, then we will meet our goal of protecting America.”
If our new president doesn’t realize that bin Laden is dead and that al Qaida is the CIA, then he will be no better than Bush.
peter.chamberlin@yahoo.com
1.17.2009
Trend Alert: Israel War to Ignite WW III
By Gerald Celente
1-15-9
CAIRO, 14 January 2009 Israel’s invasion of Gaza sets up the United States and any other nation supporting Israel as terror targets, predicts Gerald Celente. The Trends Research Institute Director also warns that should Israel continue the invasion, or take the war beyond Gaza, the world risks both a 1973-style oil shock and global conflict.
My Message to the West, by Ismail Haniyeh
By Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh - Gaza
I write this article to Western readers across the social and political spectrum as the Israeli war machine continues to massacre my people in Gaza. To date, almost 1,000 have been killed, nearly half of whom are women and children. Last week's bombing of the UNRWA (UN Relief Works Agency) school in the Jabalya refugee camp was one of the most despicable crimes imaginable, as hundreds of civilians had abandoned their homes and sought refuge with the international agency only to be mercilessly shelled and bombed by Israel. Forty-six children and women were killed in that heinous attack while scores were injured.
Read more @ Turkish Weekly
I write this article to Western readers across the social and political spectrum as the Israeli war machine continues to massacre my people in Gaza. To date, almost 1,000 have been killed, nearly half of whom are women and children. Last week's bombing of the UNRWA (UN Relief Works Agency) school in the Jabalya refugee camp was one of the most despicable crimes imaginable, as hundreds of civilians had abandoned their homes and sought refuge with the international agency only to be mercilessly shelled and bombed by Israel. Forty-six children and women were killed in that heinous attack while scores were injured.
Read more @ Turkish Weekly
Modern Race for True World Hegemony
Mmm Hmm. Strangely familiar. - Ed.
By Ivan Simic
Hegemony is the dominance of one group over other groups, with or without the threat of force, to the extent that, for instance, the dominant party can dictate the terms of trade to its advantage; more broadly, cultural perspectives become skewed to favor the dominant group. The cultural control that hegemony asserts affects commonplace patterns of thought: hegemony controls the way new ideas are rejected or become naturalized in a process that subtly alters notions of common sense in a given society.
Syria: Cut all ties with Israel
Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, has urged all Arab nations to sever diplomatic ties with Israel because of the Gaza war.
Addressing leaders at Friday's emergency Arab summit in Doha, the Qatari capital, al-Assad declared that the Arab initiative for peace with Israel was now "dead".
Read more @ Al Jazeera English
Jewish leaders fault Israeli leader for not sticking to the code of silence
omerta: A code of silence amongst members of a criminal organization (especially the Mafia) that forbids divulging insider secrets to law enforcement.
The biggest no-no in the criminal world is to snitch, to tell, to let the cat out of the bag, to spill the beans, to GO PUBLIC with what’s considered a private affair.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Israel’s combined propaganda/intelligence/police brainwashing arm of Israeli interests in America, is a large part of the criminal enterprise known as Zionism with an almost 100 year history of interfering in American life. In the below article from The Forward, the oldest Jewish publication in America, the ADL’s Glorious Leader Abe Foxman lets the cat out of the bag about letting the cat out of the bag.
ZioNazi Regime hopes world will forget Gaza genocide soon
By Khalid Amayreh, Occupied Palestine
With the holocaust-like Israeli onslaught in Gaza entering its fourth week, and with thousands of Palestinian civilians mercilessly killed and maimed by the Israeli war machine while hundreds others still buried under rubble, Israel is planning a public relations campaign aimed at “making the world forget the bad images” from Gaza very soon.
Read more @ Desertpeace
Mossad, Turkey, CIA, Sibel Edmunds, blah blah blah
Wayne Madsen Report:
WMR) — Fresh from revelations, reported by WMR, that Israel’s Mossad and Chabad House-based criminal syndicates were targets in a criminal gangland retribution attack by a notorious Muslim gang in Mumbai, comes word that Mossad has, once again, been implicated in an intelligence and criminal network, this time in Turkey.
Read more @ SOS
WMR) — Fresh from revelations, reported by WMR, that Israel’s Mossad and Chabad House-based criminal syndicates were targets in a criminal gangland retribution attack by a notorious Muslim gang in Mumbai, comes word that Mossad has, once again, been implicated in an intelligence and criminal network, this time in Turkey.
Read more @ SOS
1.16.2009
Americans Refuse to Accept Reality
| By Timothy V. Gatto Jan 15, 2009, 12:54 |   |
Sometimes I feel as if I’ve been writing about the mistakes our country is making for most of my life. It has only been a little over six years; still I end up writing about the same issues. Usually I write about how we are either killing people overseas, or helping other countries to kill people. Every time I write an article I believe that maybe it will do some good. The truth is that while one or two people understand what I’m trying to point out, most times what I write about falls on deaf ears.
Les Vis: The Monkey Wrench Ganglion Nexus
Recall, for those familiar with Political Ponerology by A. Lobaczewski, that this is precisely what he describes happening when normal people subtly refuse to cooperate with the totalitarian state. The evil cannot keep running without your cooperation. - Ed.
A few decades ago, a guy named Edward Abbey wrote a book called The Monkey Wrench Gang. I won’t detail the plot for you and spoil your enjoyment of this wonderful novel; should you be inclined to read it but I would just say if you understand what a monkey wrench is then you have the concept. It’s a very funny, very entertaining read that is apparently being made into a movie… finally.
Read more @ Smoking Mirrors
A few decades ago, a guy named Edward Abbey wrote a book called The Monkey Wrench Gang. I won’t detail the plot for you and spoil your enjoyment of this wonderful novel; should you be inclined to read it but I would just say if you understand what a monkey wrench is then you have the concept. It’s a very funny, very entertaining read that is apparently being made into a movie… finally.
Read more @ Smoking Mirrors
UN official critical of Israel gets death threats
By Louis Charbonneau
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The Nicaraguan head of the U.N. General Assembly, who has been highly critical of Israel and the United States, has been the target of death threats posted on the Internet, his spokesman said on Monday.
"This matter is being looked into by the pertinent authorities," Enrique Yeves, spokesman for General Assembly President Miguel D'Escoto, told reporters.
D'Escoto, a Catholic priest, has repeatedly criticized both the United States and Israel since taking office in September. Recently he compared Israel's treatment of the Palestinians to the former South African apartheid racial segregation policy.
Ten Israeli soldiers choose jail over Gaza
Bethlehem – Ma’an – at least ten soldiers have opted for prison terms rather than going through with their deployment.
The refusals would be the first of their kind since Israel launched its massive air, sea and ground assault on the Gaza Strip,
On "conscience’s grounds," the soldiers refused orders to head to the Gaza Strip, they said.
Read more @ Ma'an News Agency
The refusals would be the first of their kind since Israel launched its massive air, sea and ground assault on the Gaza Strip,
On "conscience’s grounds," the soldiers refused orders to head to the Gaza Strip, they said.
Read more @ Ma'an News Agency
Israeli army masses along Lebanon border
Israel deploys military units along the border with Lebanon amid growing concerns that the assault on Gaza was the onset of a multi-front war.
Nineteen days after the start of the Israeli offensive against the Gaza Strip, the Lebanese daily Al Safir reported Wednesday that southern Lebanon had witnessed the build-up of Israeli armored vehicles - tanks, military vessels and Apache helicopters - along the border.
Read more @ Press TV
Nineteen days after the start of the Israeli offensive against the Gaza Strip, the Lebanese daily Al Safir reported Wednesday that southern Lebanon had witnessed the build-up of Israeli armored vehicles - tanks, military vessels and Apache helicopters - along the border.
Read more @ Press TV
Israeli media asked to explain how Gaza media building came to be hit by explosion
"Accidentally." - Ed.
Reporters Without Borders calls on the Israeli military to investigate and explain exactly how a 16-storey building in Gaza City that houses several news organisations including Reuters came to be hit by an explosion this morning.
An Abu Dhabi TV journalist and a Reuters cameraman were injured in the blast that shook the Al-Shurouq Tower. It was not immediately known whether the explosion was the result of a missile or a shell fired by a tank.
700 Israelis arrested for protesting against war
Neve Gordon
In eight years: twenty Israelis died from Gaza rockets, 4,000 Israelis died from car accidents.
In eight years: twenty Israelis died from Gaza rockets, 4,000 Israelis died from car accidents.
PACIFICA – About 700 Israelis have been arrested for protesting against the war on Gaza since the beginning of the deadly offensive, said Neve Gordon, chair of the Department of Politics and Government at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel on Monday.
Comparison of military strength of Israel and the Palestinians
As the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians has once again flared up following Israel's ongoing air and ground assault on the Gaza Strip, the IMEU presents a comparison of Israeli and Palestinian military capabilities.
Read more @ Institute for Middle East Understanding
Read more @ Institute for Middle East Understanding
Voice of the White House
TBR is highly suspect disinfo, still interesting. Digest al dente. - Ed.
“I note with interest that the judge in the Bernie Madoff matter has decided not to revoke his bail as requested by the U. S Attorney. It is very interesting to note that Madoff, who has been alleged to have scammed over 50 billion dollars over a long period of time, is free on bail. I have never heard of such a thing, especially where the perp admitted his guilt. The main question is where he put the money because it has all vanished into thin air. It is said here from sources quite reliable that Bernie hid it in Israel and we will never see a dime of it."
Read more @ The Truth Seeker
“I note with interest that the judge in the Bernie Madoff matter has decided not to revoke his bail as requested by the U. S Attorney. It is very interesting to note that Madoff, who has been alleged to have scammed over 50 billion dollars over a long period of time, is free on bail. I have never heard of such a thing, especially where the perp admitted his guilt. The main question is where he put the money because it has all vanished into thin air. It is said here from sources quite reliable that Bernie hid it in Israel and we will never see a dime of it."
Read more @ The Truth Seeker
The End of Israel
Very enlightening history. - Ed.
by DOUGLAS REED
About five hundred years before the event of 458 BC, or nearly three thousand years ago today, the brief and troubled association between Judah and the Israelites ("the children of Israel") came to an end. Israel rejected the chosen people creed which was beginning to take shape in Judah and went its own way. (The adoption of the name "Israel" by the Zionist state which was set up in Palestine in 1948 was transparent false pretence).
Read more @ Secrets of Zion
by DOUGLAS REED
About five hundred years before the event of 458 BC, or nearly three thousand years ago today, the brief and troubled association between Judah and the Israelites ("the children of Israel") came to an end. Israel rejected the chosen people creed which was beginning to take shape in Judah and went its own way. (The adoption of the name "Israel" by the Zionist state which was set up in Palestine in 1948 was transparent false pretence).
Read more @ Secrets of Zion
Banks reel after alerts at HSBC and Deutsche
Deutsche Bank, the heart of the Octopus. - Ed.
Fresh turmoil hit the banking sector as Deutsche Bank issued a profits warning and analysts suggested that HSBC could need a massive injection of fresh capital.
Deutsche Bank, Germany's biggest lender, said it would post a net loss of about €3.9bn (£3.5bn) for 2008, compared with net profit of €6.5bn a year earlier – its first annual loss for five decades. The bank suffered a record €4.8bn loss in the fourth quarter as the financial crisis battered its debt and equity trading operations.
Is Madoff the tip of a money laundering pyramid in Israel?
by Wayne Madsen
The U.S. District court for the Southern District of New York seems intent on keeping ex-NASDAQ chairman and $50 billion Ponzi scheme swindler Bernard Madoff confined to his Upper East Side Manhattan luxury home and not in a federal lock-up.
Two judges in the New York federal circuit, Theodore Katz and Ronald Ellis, have ruled that Madoff should stay in his town house and out of prison.
1.15.2009
Israel shells UN HEADQUARTERS in Gaza
Gee Wally. Do you think it's intentional? - Ed.
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Israel shelled the United Nations headquarters in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, engulfing the compound and a warehouse in fire and destroying thousands of pounds of food and humanitarian supplies intended for Palestinian refugees.
U.N. workers and Palestinian firefighters, some wearing bulletproof jackets, struggled to douse the flames and pull bags of food aid from the debris after the Israeli attack, which was another blow to efforts to ease the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip. Dense smoke billowed from the compound.
Israel shells HOSPITAL, UN Compound
Israeli forces have shelled a hospital and UN compound as they continue to pound Gaza City while pushing deeper into densely-populated neighbourhoods.
Thousands of fear-stricken Gazans fled the advancing Israeli trooops on Thursday, but observers said there was nowhere safe for them to take refuge in the territory that is under relentless Israeli attack.
Officials said that a building of the UN relief agency in Gaza had been hit by Israeli shells and set ablaze.
"They are phosphorus fires so they are extremely difficult to put out because if you put water on it, it will just generate toxic fumes and do nothing to stop the burning," John Ging, the director of UN relief operations, said.
"This is going to burn down the entire warehouse ... thousands and thousands of tonnes of food, medical supplies and other emergency assistance are there."
Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, said he was "outraged" by the attack on the UN compound and demanded an explanation as he met Israeli officials in Tel Aviv.
Read more @ Al Jazeera English
The Israeli War on the Gaza Strip: "The birth pangs of a New Palestine/Middle East"
To truly understand the specific you must understand the general and to master knowledge of the general you must understand the specific.
What is taking place in the Palestinian Territories is related to what is taking place across the Middle East and Central Asia, from Lebanon to Iraq and NATO-garrisoned Afghanistan, as part of a broader geo-strategic objective. All the events in the Middle East are part of a mammoth geo-political jigsaw puzzle; each piece only shows you one picture or a portion of the picture, but when you put all these pieces together you see the grand picture of things.
For these reasons at times more than one event must be discussed to gain greater understanding of another event, but this at times comes at a risk of diverging or extending one’s focus in different directions.
Read more @ Global Research
What is taking place in the Palestinian Territories is related to what is taking place across the Middle East and Central Asia, from Lebanon to Iraq and NATO-garrisoned Afghanistan, as part of a broader geo-strategic objective. All the events in the Middle East are part of a mammoth geo-political jigsaw puzzle; each piece only shows you one picture or a portion of the picture, but when you put all these pieces together you see the grand picture of things.
For these reasons at times more than one event must be discussed to gain greater understanding of another event, but this at times comes at a risk of diverging or extending one’s focus in different directions.
Read more @ Global Research
Gaza should not have happened
There is a growing clamour for Israel’s grotesque aggression on the Gaza Strip to be properly examined in a war crimes tribunal.
This is an endeavour the Arab world ought to spearhead to mitigate what has been a shameful showing by the countries of this region.
The Arab world needs to take a long, hard look at itself. For all its feebleness when it comes to foreign affairs, one could hardly imagine the European Union, a coalition of countries far more varied than those making up the Arab world, standing by paralysed should one of its own be subjected to the kind of barbarism that Gaza has been subjected to.
Read more @ The Jordan Times
This is an endeavour the Arab world ought to spearhead to mitigate what has been a shameful showing by the countries of this region.
The Arab world needs to take a long, hard look at itself. For all its feebleness when it comes to foreign affairs, one could hardly imagine the European Union, a coalition of countries far more varied than those making up the Arab world, standing by paralysed should one of its own be subjected to the kind of barbarism that Gaza has been subjected to.
Read more @ The Jordan Times
Obama attends conservative dinner party
This could ruin their reputation: President-elect Barack Obama Tuesday evening attending a dinner party at the home of conservative columnist George Will, attended by fellow conservatives William Kristol and David Brooks.
Read more @ Yahoo
Read more @ Yahoo
Testimonies: Members of Abu Halima family killed and burned in IOF bombing of house on 1/3/09
Until last week, I lived with my husband, Muhammad, 24, and our two little daughters, Farah, 3, and Aya, 6 months, in the a-Sifa section of Beit Lahiya. We lived in the same house as Muhammad’s parents, Sa’dallah Abu Halima, 44, and Sabah Abu Halima, 44, and his brothers and sisters: ‘Omar, 18, Yusef, 16, ‘Abd a-Rahim, 13, Zeid, 11, Hamzah, 10, ‘Ali, 4, and baby Shahd, 1.
Our house had two floors. On the first floor were 250 square meters of storage rooms, and we lived on the second floor. We are farmers and have land next to the house.
On Saturday night [3 January], Israeli jets dropped leaflets calling on residents of the area to leave their homes. The army did the same thing in previous incursions and we didn't leave the house, so this time, too, we decided not to leave.
Hamas accepts Egyptian truce: Spain
Spain says the Hamas movement has accepted an Egyptian proposal for a cease-fire to put an end to Israel's military aggression in Gaza.
"Hamas is going to publicly express its support and acceptance," Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos told the reporters Wednesday after meeting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
Read more @ Press TV
"Hamas is going to publicly express its support and acceptance," Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos told the reporters Wednesday after meeting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
Read more @ Press TV
The 3 main lies about Israel
This will be a short article.
It is designed to give you "ammo" in any debate with a zionist.
When debating on Israel, there are three lies spread by the propagandists (whether
paid or amateur) about that small little country.
These are:
1) Israel is a democracy
2) Israel was attacked first by Hamas and is just responding to attacks
3) Israel is just like any normal Western country, similar to the USA or France for example.
Lets take it one by one.
Read more @ American Goy
It is designed to give you "ammo" in any debate with a zionist.
When debating on Israel, there are three lies spread by the propagandists (whether
paid or amateur) about that small little country.
These are:
1) Israel is a democracy
2) Israel was attacked first by Hamas and is just responding to attacks
3) Israel is just like any normal Western country, similar to the USA or France for example.
Lets take it one by one.
Read more @ American Goy
US 'fake death businessman' found
A US businessman suspected of faking his own death in a plane crash is in custody after he was found alive at a Florida camping ground.
Marcus Schrenker, accused of stealing millions from investors, was treated in hospital for self-inflicted cuts.
He was semi-conscious and apparently resisting first aid when found.
It is thought he parachuted out of his company aeroplane after making a fake distress call, leaving the plane to crash in north-western Florida.
The Indiana businessman was arrested on Tuesday night at a campsite in Quincy, northern Florida.
Diplomats: Gaza op causing long term harm to Israel's image
A few days ago, I met a European ambassador stationed in Israel. The man, a great friend of Israel, launched an emotional monologue and spoke from the bottom of his heart.
"Make no mistake," he said. "I understand why you embarked on the operation in Gaza, and many of my colleagues also understand and even support it, but a few days ago you started to cross red lines."
Read more at Haaretz:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1055222.html
"Make no mistake," he said. "I understand why you embarked on the operation in Gaza, and many of my colleagues also understand and even support it, but a few days ago you started to cross red lines."
Read more at Haaretz:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1055222.html
Economic Stimulus Principles
Folks are getting bogged down in the details of Obama's stimulus bill, which is, by their own admission, neither large enough, nor well enough structured to actually do the job. Other than the obvious (it must be big enough and efficient enough to end the recession not just in GDP but in wages and employment) here's how to do a stimulus plan right:
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1.14.2009
No Comment
Well, one small comment. These people are in for a rude awakening. - Ed.
On January 11, an estimated 10,000 people rallied in front of the Israeli consulate in midtown New York in support of Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip. The rally, which was organized by UJA-Federation of New York and the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York in cooperation with the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, featured speeches by New York’s most senior lawmakers. While the crowd was riled to righteous anger by speeches about Hamas evildoers, the event was a festive affair that began and ended with singing and joyous dancing.
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So for instance, according to the opinions expressed in this video, the gruesome death of this small child by white phosphorous is somehow "OK." That is the reality of what they are saying. Let's not mince words. This is genocide, proudly supported by Americans in Broad Daylight. - Ed.
On January 11, an estimated 10,000 people rallied in front of the Israeli consulate in midtown New York in support of Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip. The rally, which was organized by UJA-Federation of New York and the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York in cooperation with the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, featured speeches by New York’s most senior lawmakers. While the crowd was riled to righteous anger by speeches about Hamas evildoers, the event was a festive affair that began and ended with singing and joyous dancing.
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So for instance, according to the opinions expressed in this video, the gruesome death of this small child by white phosphorous is somehow "OK." That is the reality of what they are saying. Let's not mince words. This is genocide, proudly supported by Americans in Broad Daylight. - Ed.
Alphabetized Boycott list of Israeli corporations/affiliates & banking institutions
As a convenience for e-mails, print-outs/pass-outs, I alphabetized the Boycott labels/products/services.
If you know of others, let us all know, so we can add them to the list. [See list below.]
Also boycotting Israeli-related banking institutions, investment firms, mortgage lenders, credit cards can be very effective and influence choices in the U.S./Israel/United Kingdom/Europe/India/Mid-east/Asia/Australia/South America -- obviously everywhere.
If where you do your financial business is Israeli-related, withdraw your money and handle your financial business elsewhere. Find out who is the "parent" bank of whatever branch, investment or mortgage firm you are dealing with and choose accordingly [See list below.] or find alternatives or hide your money under your mattress or in a container in the ground. ;-) /cm
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If you know of others, let us all know, so we can add them to the list. [See list below.]
Also boycotting Israeli-related banking institutions, investment firms, mortgage lenders, credit cards can be very effective and influence choices in the U.S./Israel/United Kingdom/Europe/India/Mid-east/Asia/Australia/South America -- obviously everywhere.
If where you do your financial business is Israeli-related, withdraw your money and handle your financial business elsewhere. Find out who is the "parent" bank of whatever branch, investment or mortgage firm you are dealing with and choose accordingly [See list below.] or find alternatives or hide your money under your mattress or in a container in the ground. ;-) /cm
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The Blame Game in Gaza: Covering for Israel, Concealing War Crimes
by Stephen Lendman
In his January 8 article, "Gaza Under Fire," John Pilger quotes the Soviet dissident Yevgeny Yevtushenko saying: "When the truth is replaced by silence, the silence is a lie." America's dominant media suppress facts, sacrifice accuracy, and conceal the greater lie that:
-- all Israeli aggression is collaboratively planned months in advance with Washington;
-- American aid makes it possible - billions of dollars annually, the latest weapons and technology, and Security Council vetoes to assure no anti-Israeli resolutions with teeth are passed;
-- six months of preparation preceded Israel's terror bombings followed by invasion, occupation, and repeated war crimes on the ground;
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In his January 8 article, "Gaza Under Fire," John Pilger quotes the Soviet dissident Yevgeny Yevtushenko saying: "When the truth is replaced by silence, the silence is a lie." America's dominant media suppress facts, sacrifice accuracy, and conceal the greater lie that:
-- all Israeli aggression is collaboratively planned months in advance with Washington;
-- American aid makes it possible - billions of dollars annually, the latest weapons and technology, and Security Council vetoes to assure no anti-Israeli resolutions with teeth are passed;
-- six months of preparation preceded Israel's terror bombings followed by invasion, occupation, and repeated war crimes on the ground;
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The Trinity of Global Empire
They break the world so they can put it back together, more to their liking. - Ed.
There are three cities (city-states) across this planet that share striking similarities and play a crucial role in the global governmental system we have long been living under. The three city-states (along with the role they serve) is as follows:
City of London (finance)
Washington DC (military)
Vatican City (religion)
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There are three cities (city-states) across this planet that share striking similarities and play a crucial role in the global governmental system we have long been living under. The three city-states (along with the role they serve) is as follows:
City of London (finance)
Washington DC (military)
Vatican City (religion)
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The NWO is almost in place
The New World Order is for the most part already here. This might be a horrible fact for most to accept but unfortunately it is a reality. For many years we have had international institutions like the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the World Trade Organization and many others actively working towards global government. Phony free trade deals like NAFTA, CAFTA and others have been utilized to tear down borders between nations and usher in a new age of globalization. Prominent individuals such as George HW Bush, David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, Gordon Brown, Bill Clinton, Gary Hart and several others have spoken about the possibility of forming a global government or a New World Order. Despite the revelations from these men, it has continually been dismissed as conspiracy theory by the corporate controlled mockingbird media. In fact Kissinger the former Secretary of State under Richard Nixon spoke yet again about a New World Order during a CNBC interview and recently wrote an opinion editorial published in the International Herald Tribune entitled “The Chance for a New World Order”. If the New World Order is a conspiracy theory, why is it that prominent individuals amongst the U.S. and European political elite continue to talk about it?
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US spending on nuclear weapons exceeds $52 BILLION
Priorities. - Ed.
Most U.S. Government spending on nuclear weapons-related programs is unclassified. But it is functionally secret since such spending is widely dispersed across many programs in several agencies and it is not formally tracked or reported.
A new study prepared for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace estimated that the cost of U.S. nuclear weapons and weapons-related programs exceeded $52 billion last year.
Downsize DC
Quote of the Day: "We did not see (as a result of brain scans of partisan loyalists) any increased activation of the parts of the brain normally engaged during reasoning. What we saw instead was a network of emotion circuits lighting up, including circuits hypothesized to be involved in regulating emotion, and circuits known to be involved in resolving conflicts. None of the circuits involved in conscious reasoning were particularly engaged. Essentially, it appears as if partisans twirl the cognitive kaleidoscope until they get the conclusions they want, and then they get massively reinforced for it, with the elimination of negative emotional states and activation of positive ones . . . The result is that partisan beliefs are calcified, and the person can learn very little from new data."
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Why it's useless to lobby Congress on Gaza
The U.S.A. is reportedly a democracy. It just had an election so Congress candidates made some effort to take the public pulse. And there are the polls. The Rasmussen poll on Dec. 31 reported that only a bare plurality of Americans supported Israel’s all out war on Gaza. Less than 1/3 of the triumphant Democratic voters support the attack and Rasmussen reports only 55% of them consider Israel to be a U.S. ally at all.
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Israelis are united on war in Gaza as censure rises abroad
To Israel's critics abroad, the picture could not be clearer: Israel's war in Gaza is a wildly disproportionate response to the rockets of Hamas, causing untold human suffering and bombing an already isolated and impoverished population into the Stone Age, and it must be stopped.
Yet here in Israel very few, at least among the Jewish population, see it that way.
No bounds to Zionist arrogance
The Haaretz article Israel voices concern over anti-Semitic attacks in Europe indicates the scale of Jewish Zionist arrogance and hypocrisy.
While the IDF slaughters families, women, and children in behavior objectively worse than that of the German Nazi government before 1941, Israeli government leaders inform Europeans and N. Americans that minor desecrations of Jewish cemetaries or synagogues as well as the occasional beatings of Jews are completely unacceptable.
I don't see hordes of Jews demanding that European or North American governments to threaten military action if Israel does not cease its assault on Gaza.
Haven't Jewish leaders insisted for more the 60 years that silence was complicity in Nazi crimes?
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While the IDF slaughters families, women, and children in behavior objectively worse than that of the German Nazi government before 1941, Israeli government leaders inform Europeans and N. Americans that minor desecrations of Jewish cemetaries or synagogues as well as the occasional beatings of Jews are completely unacceptable.
I don't see hordes of Jews demanding that European or North American governments to threaten military action if Israel does not cease its assault on Gaza.
Haven't Jewish leaders insisted for more the 60 years that silence was complicity in Nazi crimes?
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Jewish group claims pro-Gaza protests have violated Canadian laws
TORONTO — Rallies held in cities across Canada to condemn Israel's attacks on Gaza may have broken Canadian laws by inciting hatred and genocide, the Canadian Jewish Congress alleged Tuesday, but the position was quickly dismissed by the Canadian Arab Federation.
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Not in my name
Today, we see a new phenomenon, Righteous Jews, standing up and displaying THEIR moral principles against the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza by the so-called ‘Jewish State’…… Jews that proudly and bravely say to the world, to Israel in particular, NOT IN MY NAME!
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1.13.2009
The Palestinians - Following in the footsteps of the American Revolution
Excerpt:
By siding with the Jewish state in its oppression of the Palestinians, what Americans are saying in effect is–
By siding with the Jewish state in its oppression of the Palestinians, what Americans are saying in effect is–
“We despise liberty…We despise justice…We repudiate everything our founding fathers fought for and achieved…Long live George III, and may our founding fathers rot in hell for what they did.”
Well, as the old saying goes, be careful what you wish for America, because some day you may get it. Indeed, America will pay for her sins in betraying her past and her principles by siding with the enemy of all that is good and decent, and one day we will look upon the Palestinians and recognize that we lost our freedom because of the fact we denied them theirs…
...Because indeed, what goes around comes around.
Olmert BRAGS about Israeli veto over US policies
In a speech Mr Olmert gave in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon, he recounted how he had “shamed” the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice by forcing her to abstain from the UN Security Council Resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, a resolution that she had helped steer towards a vote.
Read moreGaza now Israeli weapons lab?
Israel has turned Gaza into a research laboratory to test out its new "extremely nasty" weapons on Palestinians, a medical expert says.
After working for 10 days at the Shifa Hospital in the war-torn Palestinian territory, Dr. Mads Gilbert, a member of a Norwegian triage medical team in Gaza, blasted Israel for conducting experimental military work in the impoverished strip.
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After working for 10 days at the Shifa Hospital in the war-torn Palestinian territory, Dr. Mads Gilbert, a member of a Norwegian triage medical team in Gaza, blasted Israel for conducting experimental military work in the impoverished strip.
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US arms shipment cancelled due to conflict in Gaza
Well not exactly canceled....just delayed until they find a workaround. - Ed.
A U.S. military plan to ship munitions from a Greek port to a U.S. stockpile in Israel has been canceled due to the conflict in the Gaza Strip, the Pentagon said on Monday.
The United States Navy's Military Sealift Command issued a tender on December 31st for a ship to deliver 325 standard 20-foot containers of ammunition on two separate journeys from the Greek port of Astakos to the Israeli port of Ashdod in mid-to-late January.
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A U.S. military plan to ship munitions from a Greek port to a U.S. stockpile in Israel has been canceled due to the conflict in the Gaza Strip, the Pentagon said on Monday.
The United States Navy's Military Sealift Command issued a tender on December 31st for a ship to deliver 325 standard 20-foot containers of ammunition on two separate journeys from the Greek port of Astakos to the Israeli port of Ashdod in mid-to-late January.
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Must read: Holocaust Now: The Niggers of Gaza....and Here
By Gary Corseri
1/12/09
“And why should ye not fight in the cause of Allah and of those who, being weak, are ill-treated and oppressed?—Men, women, and children whose cry is, “Our Lord! Rescue us from this town, whose people are oppressors; and raise for us from Thee one who will protect; And raise for us from Thee one who will help.”
Might does not make wrong right
By Nidal Sakr (MAF - 1/13/09) By all accounts, what is happening in Gaza today is a new chapter in history. Not so much because Israeli atrocities against Palestinians are unprecedented in historical proportions, but because the world conscience got a rude awakening when we all asked ourselves: “What if this happened to me and my family?”
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Is Israel executing Hamas and Palestinian prisoners? Who is documenting Israeli war crimes?
Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi, secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative and Qaddoura Fares, head of the Palestinian Prisoners Society, have recently inferred that Palestinian prisoners taken by the Israelis are being executed after capture during the present invasion. There seems to be many unaccounted for fighters who Mr Fares says “…gives the army the opportunity to execute them, throw their bodies in the streets, and claim that they were killed in during clashes”.
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Is the theory of the final confrontation with Iran going to become a reality?
I have for over two years now argued through this blog and elsewhere that a great conflict that I have called the Final Confrontation will eventually unleash itself in the Middle East whereby Israeli and US extreme right-wing hawks will manipulate the geo-political situation that exists between the Israelis and the Arabs, particularly the Palestinians, in order to defeat, once and for all, Israel’s enemies; Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria and most importantly for them, Iran. Once these enemies are defeated, resistance to Israel’s quest for a Greater Israel consisting of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights and even, so they hope, south Lebanon up to the Litani River, will crumble.
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Yellowstone Supervolcano Eruption Close?
If you live in a 600 miles radius of Yellowstone national park in the USA i would seriously have a back up plan should yellowstone erupt as per the recent concerns aired on Fox and other networks...
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1.12.2009
America's Shame
Excerpt:
Be a Proud American. Swagger and strut. Pretend that you are not besmirched by the shame that your government has heaped upon you. Take refuge in your ignorance, fostered by 60 years of Israeli lies, that the murder of Palestinians and the theft of their lands is “Israel’s right of self-defense.”
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Be a Proud American. Swagger and strut. Pretend that you are not besmirched by the shame that your government has heaped upon you. Take refuge in your ignorance, fostered by 60 years of Israeli lies, that the murder of Palestinians and the theft of their lands is “Israel’s right of self-defense.”
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The target is Iran: Israel's latest gamble may backfire
The aerial war against Gaza launched by Israel just after Christmas, and the ground offensive, with which it rang in the New Year, were shocking in their brutality, but should constitute no surprise, if viewed from the standpoint of long-term Israeli strategic aims. The Israelis have argued that the offensive was launched in response to eight years' of relentless attacks by Hamas rockets into Israel. But then, one asks: why now? Why should they wait eight years?
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Gaza news from staff at Mezan Center for Human Rights
-Jennifer Loewenstein; Beirut, Hamra; 1.10.09. 2:30am
Here are some newsworthy items out of Gaza that are unlikely to be making it to the Western presses. I received this information directly from one of the staff of the Mezan Center for Human Rights about twenty minutes ago.
1. Israel has begun a new policy in Gaza in the past two days called the “roof knock”. This is when a “small” rocket is fired from Israeli military aircraft that is strong enough to blast open the roof of a targeted building. It is sent as a “warning message” to the building’s inhabitants giving them between 2 and 3 minutes to evacuate before the building is completely destroyed. A number of cases of this new technique have been reported recently.
Premeditated Radicalization? Why?
The following is a very astute observation by the editor of dictatorshipwatch and it cannot be glossed over:
“The truth: The warlords in Washington, London and Tel Aviv do not want less radicalization in the Muslim world. They want more. If there is not enough, they will make sure more people get angry. The more Muslims are against their policies and the puppets they impose on the masses, the more the warlords are able to justify the totalitarian, expansionists policies.” ( Dictatorshipwatch.com January 11, 2009)
To understand why this observation is so profound, and in fact, penetrates to the heart of the matter, please see this Project Humanbeingsfirst’s response to an oped which appeared in the Financial Times in December 2008. It was the first time in recent memory, to this scribe’s knowledge, certainly since 911, that a very respected mainstream newspaper which is read by the who’s who of the entire world, and not just the financial mainstream, had put it all together to test the waters. Project Humanbeingsfirst was immediately on the tail of this bogeyman:
Blue Star Rampage: Israel's dress rehearsal for Lebanon
The reason the rationale for invading Gaza keeps changing, (from rocket-fire to Hamas infrastructure to strengthening deterrents to weapons smuggling to ceasefire violations etc) is because the Israeli leadership wants to conceal the true objective. The purpose of "Operation Cast Lead" is to conduct a dress rehearsal for another invasion of Lebanon.
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Zionism has arrived
It has achieved the goal of creating a master race out of the Jews of Europe. Jabotinsky's followers even framed it in verse:
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"In blood and sweat, our race will rise, proud and generous and cruel."What happens in Gaza, the death of 800 people, mostly civilians, crushed under debris, mutilated, children starved to death near the decomposing body of their parents, all this is a very natural part and consequence of that project.
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Obama-Bush teams to state 'disaster' exercise on Tuesday
Great. - Ed.
- WASHINGTON (AFP) - The outgoing White House administration will next week hold a joint "disaster scenario" exercise with top members of the incoming team of president-elect Barack Obama, US officials said Friday.
- "I'm not going to go into the details of it, but it is a disaster scenario where the government would be very much tested," White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said.
Cities across the world become platform for hundred of thousands of protesters against Gaza fighting
Lots of pictures. - Ed.
Cities across the world became the platform for protest on Israel's military action in Gaza today.
Organisers said more than 250,000 people marched through Spain's capital of Madrid, with other European cities including Athens, Brussels, Rome, Naples Frankfurt, Munich and Berlin also the focal points of protesters.
The protest in Madrid was the largest of demonstrations across Europe, although there were expressions of both support and opposition for the Israeli offensive in Gaza.
WHO: "21 medics killed, 31 wounded due to ongoing Israeli offensive"
Thursday January 08, 2009
The World Health Organization (WHO) reported on Thursday that basic medical services in Gaza are collapsing as Israel continues its siege and offensive in the Gaza Strip. 21 medics were killed by Israeli shells and bullets and at least 31 others were wounded.
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The World Health Organization (WHO) reported on Thursday that basic medical services in Gaza are collapsing as Israel continues its siege and offensive in the Gaza Strip. 21 medics were killed by Israeli shells and bullets and at least 31 others were wounded.
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Holocaust Denied: The lying silence of those who knew
By John Pilger
January 08, 2009 "Information Clearinghouse" -- -"When the truth is replaced by silence," the Soviet dissident Yevgeny Yevtushenko said, "the silence is a lie." It may appear the silence is broken on Gaza. The cocoons of murdered children, wrapped in green, together with boxes containing their dismembered parents and the cries of grief and rage of everyone in that death camp by the sea, can be viewed on al-Jazeera and YouTube, even glimpsed on the BBC. But Russia's incorrigible poet was not referring to the ephemeral we call news; he was asking why those who knew the why never spoke it and so denied it. Among the Anglo-American intelligentsia, this is especially striking. It is they who hold the keys to the great storehouses of knowledge: the historiographies and archives that lead us to the why.
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January 08, 2009 "Information Clearinghouse" -- -"When the truth is replaced by silence," the Soviet dissident Yevgeny Yevtushenko said, "the silence is a lie." It may appear the silence is broken on Gaza. The cocoons of murdered children, wrapped in green, together with boxes containing their dismembered parents and the cries of grief and rage of everyone in that death camp by the sea, can be viewed on al-Jazeera and YouTube, even glimpsed on the BBC. But Russia's incorrigible poet was not referring to the ephemeral we call news; he was asking why those who knew the why never spoke it and so denied it. Among the Anglo-American intelligentsia, this is especially striking. It is they who hold the keys to the great storehouses of knowledge: the historiographies and archives that lead us to the why.
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Gaza: The massacre in Zeitoun
IN the annals of war crimes, the name "Zeitoun" will assume its place alongside names like "My Lai," "Fallujah," "Sabra-Shatila," "Guernica," "Nanking," "Lidice," and "Wounded Knee."
In the last two days, the massacre that took place in Zeitoun, a neighborhood on the southern flats approaching Gaza City, has only now begun to come into focus. Aid groups, including the Red Cross, have used the three-hour pauses in Israel bombardment that began on Wednesday in a desperate attempt to remove the wounded, some of whom apparently still remain. Most of the dead have been left behind.
Reckless Israel endangering roots of our civilization
Israel is spreading seeds of hatred both on a regional and global scale, experts observe. The seeds of hatred have already been plowed as the number of anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic attacks in Europe multiplied by a factor no less than four only two weeks after Israeli operation Cast Lead began.
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Gaza carnage triggers Israeli protest
One thousand Israeli protestors from Peace Now and the left-wing Meretz party have called for an end to Israeli aggression in Gaza.
The angry protestors held the demonstration opposite the Israeli Defense Ministry building in Tel Aviv on Saturday, calling on Israel to review its military policies on Gaza.
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The angry protestors held the demonstration opposite the Israeli Defense Ministry building in Tel Aviv on Saturday, calling on Israel to review its military policies on Gaza.
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Enough. It's time for a boycott.
It's time. Long past time. The best strategy to end the increasingly bloody occupation is for Israel to become the target of the kind of global movement that put an end to apartheid in South Africa. In July 2005 a huge coalition of Palestinian groups laid out plans to do just that. They called on "people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era". The campaign Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions was born.
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Both parties cheerlead still more loudly for Israel's war
World concern over, and opposition to, the Israeli war in Gaza is rapidly mounting:
The Israelis have deliberately made it impossible to know the full extent of the carnage and humanitarian disasters because they continue to prevent journalists from entering Gaza even in the face of a now week-old Israeli Supreme Court order compelling them to do so.International pressure intensified sharply on Israel on Thursday, the 13th day of its Gaza assault, after the United Nations suspended food aid deliveries, the International Committee of the Red Cross accused the Israelis of knowingly blocking assistance to the injured, and a top Vatican official defended comments in which he compared Gaza to a concentration camp.
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Your anti-representatives in Congress
According to the critics, John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, in their “The Israel Lobby,” much exaggerated the power of the lobby. The critics claimed that congressional support for Israel simply reflected the views of the American people. Congress’ recent resolution on Gaza, however, would seem to belie this criticism and underscore the immense power of the Israel Lobby.
Congress almost unanimously endorsed the Israeli mass killing of civilians in the Gaza Strip, which, of course, involves the use of American weapons. By voice vote, the Senate gave unanimous support for the resolution.
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Congress almost unanimously endorsed the Israeli mass killing of civilians in the Gaza Strip, which, of course, involves the use of American weapons. By voice vote, the Senate gave unanimous support for the resolution.
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The sickness that has overtaken the US Congress
THE FOLLOWING REPRESENTS THE SICKNESS THAT HAS OVERTAKEN THE US CONGRESS, JEWISH POWER HAS EFFECTIVELY MADE ISRAELI SECURITY OUR GOVERNMENT’S PRIMARY CONCERN. THE POWER OF ZIONIST FINANCING HAS MADE A HANDFUL OF JEWISH CONGRESSMEN THE DOMINANT VOICE IN CONGRESS. THE DOMINATION ENABLES THE MOVEMENT OF ISRAELI ISSUES THROUGH THE CONGRESS WITH EASE. IT SHOULD SURPRISE NO ONE THAT BILLS LIKE THIS ONE, WHICH EXPRESS THE WILL OF THE CONGRESS IN SUPPORT OF GENOCIDE IN GAZA, PASS WITH TOKEN OPPOSITION.
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Comedy Gold: Joe the plumber in Israel
Excerpt:
Joe the (representative, typical) American idiot poster boy for stupidity was in Sderot.
Joe the (representative, typical) American idiot poster boy for stupidity was in Sderot.
"I've seen some very bad press about Israel," said Wurzelbacher, a colorful figure in the U.S. presidential campaign in which defeated Republican John McCain cited the Ohio plumber as an example of someone who would be hurt by Democrat Barack Obama's tax plan.Read more
"Israel is being attacked and they're defending themselves," Wurzelbacher told reporters. His remarks were interrupted by an alert for an incoming rocket which sent him dashing to a concrete shelter. No one was hurt.
Robert Fisk's world: Wherever I go, I hear the same tired Middle East comparisons
It all depends where you live. That was the geography of Israel's propaganda, designed to demonstrate that we softies – we little baby-coddling liberals living in our secure Western homes – don't realise the horror of 12 (now 20) Israeli deaths in 10 years and thousands of rockets and the unimaginable trauma and stress of living near Gaza. Forget the 600 Palestinian dead; travelling on both sides of the Atlantic these past couple of weeks has been an instructive – not to say weirdly repetitive – experience.
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Why do so few speak up for Gaza?
Why are we so indifferent to the death and destruction in Gaza?
The major news outlets meekly accepted Israel’s banning of journalists from entering Gaza as an excuse for downplaying collateral civilian casualties, our president-elect, Barack Obama, has had little to say about an invasion that will much complicate his future Mideast peace efforts, and most commentators easily rationalize Israel’s many-more-eyes-for-an-eye killings.
When the truth is anti-semitic
Excerpt:
If I had one major criticism to make about Jews today I would say that I am very disappointed that they are not speaking out against the murders… the lies… the revisionism of history… the prosecution of people who question what ‘appears’ to be untrue. Sooner or later you are going to pay for having allowed some bad apples to poison the barrel. It is your duty as a human being to speak out against injustice and if you can’t clean your own house you shouldn’t be cleaning anyone else’s house.
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If I had one major criticism to make about Jews today I would say that I am very disappointed that they are not speaking out against the murders… the lies… the revisionism of history… the prosecution of people who question what ‘appears’ to be untrue. Sooner or later you are going to pay for having allowed some bad apples to poison the barrel. It is your duty as a human being to speak out against injustice and if you can’t clean your own house you shouldn’t be cleaning anyone else’s house.
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1.11.2009
60 Minutes: Speculation Affected Oil Price Swings More Than Supply And Demand
So much for the theories of free market and supply & demand......
The Case For Socialism
Did Speculation Fuel Oil Price Swings?
About the only economic break most Americans have gotten in the last six months has been the drastic drop in the price of oil, which has fallen even more precipitously than it rose. In a year's time, a commodity that was theoretically priced according to supply and demand doubled from $69 a barrel to nearly $150, and then, in a period of just three months, crashed along with the stock market.
So what happened? It's a complicated question, and there are lots of theories. But as correspondent Steve Kroft reports, many people believe it was a speculative bubble, not unlike the one that caused the housing crisis, and that it had more to do with traders and speculators on Wall Street than with oil company executives or sheiks in Saudi Arabia.
To understand what happened to the price of oil, you first have to understand the way it's traded. For years it has been bought and sold on something called the commodities futures market. At the New York Mercantile Exchange, it's traded alongside cotton and coffee, copper and steel by brokers who buy and sell contracts to deliver those goods at a certain price at some date in the future.
It was created so that farmers could gauge what their unharvested crops would be worth months in advance, so that factories could lock in the best price for raw materials, and airlines could manage their fuel costs. But more than a year ago those markets started to behave erratically. And when oil doubled to more than $147 a barrel, no one was more suspicious than Dan Gilligan.
As the president of the Petroleum Marketers Association, he represents more than 8,000 retail and wholesale suppliers, everyone from home heating oil companies to gas station owners.
When 60 Minutes talked to him last summer, his members were getting blamed for gouging the public, even though their costs had also gone through the roof. He told Kroft the problem was in the commodities markets, which had been invaded by a new breed of investor.
"Approximately 60 to 70 percent of the oil contracts in the futures markets are now held by speculative entities. Not by companies that need oil, not by the airlines, not by the oil companies. But by investors that are looking to make money from their speculative positions," Gilligan explained.
Gilligan said these investors don't actually take delivery of the oil. "All they do is buy the paper, and hope that they can sell it for more than they paid for it. Before they have to take delivery."
"They're trying to make money on the market for oil?" Kroft asked.
"Absolutely," Gilligan replied. "On the volatility that exists in the market. They make it going up and down."
He says his members in the home heating oil business, like Sean Cota of Bellows Falls, Vt., were the first to notice the effects a few years ago when prices seemed to disconnect from the basic fundamentals of supply and demand. Cota says there was plenty of product at the supply terminals, but the prices kept going up and up.
"We've had three price changes during the day where we pick up products, actually don't know what we paid for it and we'll go out and we'll sell that to the retail customer guessing at what the price was," Cota remembered. "The volatility is being driven by the huge amounts of money and the huge amounts of leverage that is going in to these markets."
About the same time, hedge fund manager Michael Masters reached the same conclusion. Masters' expertise is in tracking the flow of investments into and out of financial markets and he noticed huge amounts of money leaving stocks for commodities and oil futures, most of it going into index funds, betting the price of oil was going to go up.
Asked who was buying this "paper oil," Masters told Kroft, "The California pension fund. Harvard Endowment. Lots of large institutional investors. And, by the way, other investors, hedge funds, Wall Street trading desks were following right behind them, putting money - sovereign wealth funds were putting money in the futures markets as well. So you had all these investors putting money in the futures markets. And that was driving the price up."
In a five year period, Masters said the amount of money institutional investors, hedge funds, and the big Wall Street banks had placed in the commodities markets went from $13 billion to $300 billion. Last year, 27 barrels of crude were being traded every day on the New York Mercantile Exchange for every one barrel of oil that was actually being consumed in the United States.
"We talked to the largest physical trader of crude oil. And they told us that compared to the size of the investment inflows - and remember, this is the largest physical crude oil trader in the United States - they said that we are basically a flea on an elephant, that that's how big these flows were," Masters remembered.
Yet when Congress began holding hearings last summer and asked Wall Street banker Lawrence Eagles of J.P. Morgan what role excessive speculation played in rising oil prices, the answer was little to none. "We believe that high energy prices are fundamentally a result of supply and demand," he said in his testimony.
As it turns out, not even J.P. Morgan's chief global investment officer agreed with him. The same that day Eagles testified, an e-mail went out to clients saying "an enormous amount of speculation" ran up the price" and "140 dollars in July was ridiculous."
If anyone had any doubts, they were dispelled a few days after that hearing when the price of oil jumped $25 in a single day. That day was Sept. 22.
Michael Greenberger, a former director of trading for the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the federal agency that oversees oil futures, says there were no supply disruptions that could have justified such a big increase.
"Did China and India suddenly have gigantic needs for new oil products in a single day? No. Everybody agrees supply-demand could not drive the price up $25, which was a record increase in the price of oil. The price of oil went from somewhere in the 60s to $147 in less than a year. And we were being told, on that run-up, 'It's supply-demand, supply-demand, supply-demand,'" Greenberger said.
A recent report out of MIT, analyzing world oil production and consumption, also concluded that the basic fundamentals of supply and demand could not have been responsible for last year's run-up in oil prices. And Michael Masters says the U.S. Department of Energy's own statistics show that if the markets had been working properly, the price of oil should have been going down, not up.
"From quarter four of '07 until the second quarter of '08 the EIA, the Energy Information Administration, said that supply went up, worldwide supply went up. And worldwide demand went down. So you have supply going up and demand going down, which generally means the price is going down," Masters told Kroft.
"And this was the period of the spike," Kroft noted.
"This was the period of the spike," Masters agreed. "So you had the largest price increase in history during a time when actual demand was going down and actual supply was going up during the same period. However, the only thing that makes sense that lifted the price was investor demand."
Masters believes the investor demand for commodities, and oil futures in particular, was created on Wall Street by hedge funds and the big Wall Street investment banks like Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Barclays, and J.P. Morgan, who made billions investing hundreds of billions of dollars of their clients’ money.
"The investment banks facilitated it," Masters said. "You know, they found folks to write papers espousing the benefits of investing in commodities. And then they promoted commodities as a, quote/unquote, 'asset class.' Like, you could invest in commodities just like you could in stocks or bonds or anything else, like they were suitable for long-term investment."
Dan Gilligan of the Petroleum Marketers Association agreed.
"Are you saying that companies like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley and Barclays have as much to do with the price of oil going up as Exxon? Or…Shell?" Kroft asked.
"Yes," Gilligan said. "I tease people sometimes that, you know, people say, 'Well, who's the largest oil company in America?' And they'll always say, 'Well, Exxon Mobil or Chevron, or BP.' But I'll say, 'No. Morgan Stanley.'"
Morgan Stanley isn't an oil company in the traditional sense of the word - it doesn't own or control oil wells or refineries, or gas stations. But according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Morgan Stanley is a significant player in the wholesale market through various entities controlled by the corporation.
It not only buys and sells the physical product through subsidiaries and companies that it controls, Morgan Stanley has the capacity to store and hold 20 million barrels. For example, some storage tanks in New Haven, Conn. hold Morgan Stanley heating oil bound for homes in New England, where it controls nearly 15 percent of the market.
The Wall Street bank Goldman Sachs also has huge stakes in companies that own a refinery in Coffeyville, Kan., and control 43,000 miles of pipeline and more than 150 storage terminals.
And analysts at both investment banks contributed to the oil frenzy that drove prices to record highs: Goldman's top oil analyst predicted last March that the price of a barrel was going to $200; Morgan Stanley predicted $150 a barrel.
Both companies declined 60 Minutes' requests for an interview, but maintain that their oil businesses are completely separate from their trading activities, and that neither influence the independent opinions of their analysts. There is no evidence that either company has done anything illegal.
Asked if there is price manipulation going on, Dan Gilligan told Kroft, "I can't say. And the reason I can't say it, is because nobody knows. Our federal regulators don't have access to the data. They don't know who holds what positions."
"Why don't they know?" Kroft asked.
"Because federal law doesn't give them the jurisdiction to find out," Gilligan said.
It's impossible to tell exactly who was buying and selling all those oil contracts because most of the trading is now conducted in secret, with no public scrutiny or government oversight. Over time, the big Wall Street banks were allowed to buy and sell as many oil contracts as they wanted for their clients, circumventing regulations intended to limit speculation. And in 2000, Congress effectively deregulated the futures market, granting exemptions for complicated derivative investments called oil swaps, as well as electronic trading on private exchanges.
"Who was responsible for deregulating the oil future market?" Kroft asked Michael Greenberger.
"You'd have to say Enron," he replied. "This was something they desperately wanted, and they got."
Greenberger, who wanted more regulation while he was at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, not less, says it all happened when Enron was the seventh largest corporation in the United States. "This was when Enron was riding high. And what Enron wanted, Enron got."
Asked why they wanted a deregulated market in oil futures, Greenberger said, "Because they wanted to establish their own little energy futures exchange through computerized trading. They knew that if they could get this trading engine established without the controls that had been placed on speculators, they would have the ability to drive the price of energy products in any way they wanted to take it."
"When Enron failed, we learned that Enron, and its conspirators who used their trading engine, were able to drive the price of electricity up, some say, by as much as 300 percent on the West Coast," he added.
"Is the same thing going on right now in the oil business?" Kroft asked.
"Every Enron trader, who knew how to do these manipulations, became the most valuable employee on Wall Street," Greenberger said.
But some of them may now be looking for work. The oil bubble began to deflate early last fall when Congress threatened new regulations and federal agencies announced they were beginning major investigations. It finally popped with the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and the near collapse of AIG, who were both heavily invested in the oil markets. With hedge funds and investment houses facing margin calls, the speculators headed for the exits.
"From July 15th until the end of November, roughly $70 billion came out of commodities futures from these index funds," Masters explained. "In fact, gasoline demand went down by roughly five percent over that same period of time. Yet the price of crude oil dropped more than $100 a barrel. It dropped 75 percent."
Asked how he explains that, Masters said, "By looking at investors, that's the only way you can explain it."
The regulatory lapses in the commodities market that many believe fomented the rampant speculation in oil have still not been addressed, although the incoming Obama administration has promised to do so.
original article
The Case For Socialism
Did Speculation Fuel Oil Price Swings?
About the only economic break most Americans have gotten in the last six months has been the drastic drop in the price of oil, which has fallen even more precipitously than it rose. In a year's time, a commodity that was theoretically priced according to supply and demand doubled from $69 a barrel to nearly $150, and then, in a period of just three months, crashed along with the stock market.
So what happened? It's a complicated question, and there are lots of theories. But as correspondent Steve Kroft reports, many people believe it was a speculative bubble, not unlike the one that caused the housing crisis, and that it had more to do with traders and speculators on Wall Street than with oil company executives or sheiks in Saudi Arabia.
To understand what happened to the price of oil, you first have to understand the way it's traded. For years it has been bought and sold on something called the commodities futures market. At the New York Mercantile Exchange, it's traded alongside cotton and coffee, copper and steel by brokers who buy and sell contracts to deliver those goods at a certain price at some date in the future.
It was created so that farmers could gauge what their unharvested crops would be worth months in advance, so that factories could lock in the best price for raw materials, and airlines could manage their fuel costs. But more than a year ago those markets started to behave erratically. And when oil doubled to more than $147 a barrel, no one was more suspicious than Dan Gilligan.
As the president of the Petroleum Marketers Association, he represents more than 8,000 retail and wholesale suppliers, everyone from home heating oil companies to gas station owners.
When 60 Minutes talked to him last summer, his members were getting blamed for gouging the public, even though their costs had also gone through the roof. He told Kroft the problem was in the commodities markets, which had been invaded by a new breed of investor.
"Approximately 60 to 70 percent of the oil contracts in the futures markets are now held by speculative entities. Not by companies that need oil, not by the airlines, not by the oil companies. But by investors that are looking to make money from their speculative positions," Gilligan explained.
Gilligan said these investors don't actually take delivery of the oil. "All they do is buy the paper, and hope that they can sell it for more than they paid for it. Before they have to take delivery."
"They're trying to make money on the market for oil?" Kroft asked.
"Absolutely," Gilligan replied. "On the volatility that exists in the market. They make it going up and down."
He says his members in the home heating oil business, like Sean Cota of Bellows Falls, Vt., were the first to notice the effects a few years ago when prices seemed to disconnect from the basic fundamentals of supply and demand. Cota says there was plenty of product at the supply terminals, but the prices kept going up and up.
"We've had three price changes during the day where we pick up products, actually don't know what we paid for it and we'll go out and we'll sell that to the retail customer guessing at what the price was," Cota remembered. "The volatility is being driven by the huge amounts of money and the huge amounts of leverage that is going in to these markets."
About the same time, hedge fund manager Michael Masters reached the same conclusion. Masters' expertise is in tracking the flow of investments into and out of financial markets and he noticed huge amounts of money leaving stocks for commodities and oil futures, most of it going into index funds, betting the price of oil was going to go up.
Asked who was buying this "paper oil," Masters told Kroft, "The California pension fund. Harvard Endowment. Lots of large institutional investors. And, by the way, other investors, hedge funds, Wall Street trading desks were following right behind them, putting money - sovereign wealth funds were putting money in the futures markets as well. So you had all these investors putting money in the futures markets. And that was driving the price up."
In a five year period, Masters said the amount of money institutional investors, hedge funds, and the big Wall Street banks had placed in the commodities markets went from $13 billion to $300 billion. Last year, 27 barrels of crude were being traded every day on the New York Mercantile Exchange for every one barrel of oil that was actually being consumed in the United States.
"We talked to the largest physical trader of crude oil. And they told us that compared to the size of the investment inflows - and remember, this is the largest physical crude oil trader in the United States - they said that we are basically a flea on an elephant, that that's how big these flows were," Masters remembered.
Yet when Congress began holding hearings last summer and asked Wall Street banker Lawrence Eagles of J.P. Morgan what role excessive speculation played in rising oil prices, the answer was little to none. "We believe that high energy prices are fundamentally a result of supply and demand," he said in his testimony.
As it turns out, not even J.P. Morgan's chief global investment officer agreed with him. The same that day Eagles testified, an e-mail went out to clients saying "an enormous amount of speculation" ran up the price" and "140 dollars in July was ridiculous."
If anyone had any doubts, they were dispelled a few days after that hearing when the price of oil jumped $25 in a single day. That day was Sept. 22.
Michael Greenberger, a former director of trading for the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the federal agency that oversees oil futures, says there were no supply disruptions that could have justified such a big increase.
"Did China and India suddenly have gigantic needs for new oil products in a single day? No. Everybody agrees supply-demand could not drive the price up $25, which was a record increase in the price of oil. The price of oil went from somewhere in the 60s to $147 in less than a year. And we were being told, on that run-up, 'It's supply-demand, supply-demand, supply-demand,'" Greenberger said.
A recent report out of MIT, analyzing world oil production and consumption, also concluded that the basic fundamentals of supply and demand could not have been responsible for last year's run-up in oil prices. And Michael Masters says the U.S. Department of Energy's own statistics show that if the markets had been working properly, the price of oil should have been going down, not up.
"From quarter four of '07 until the second quarter of '08 the EIA, the Energy Information Administration, said that supply went up, worldwide supply went up. And worldwide demand went down. So you have supply going up and demand going down, which generally means the price is going down," Masters told Kroft.
"And this was the period of the spike," Kroft noted.
"This was the period of the spike," Masters agreed. "So you had the largest price increase in history during a time when actual demand was going down and actual supply was going up during the same period. However, the only thing that makes sense that lifted the price was investor demand."
Masters believes the investor demand for commodities, and oil futures in particular, was created on Wall Street by hedge funds and the big Wall Street investment banks like Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Barclays, and J.P. Morgan, who made billions investing hundreds of billions of dollars of their clients’ money.
"The investment banks facilitated it," Masters said. "You know, they found folks to write papers espousing the benefits of investing in commodities. And then they promoted commodities as a, quote/unquote, 'asset class.' Like, you could invest in commodities just like you could in stocks or bonds or anything else, like they were suitable for long-term investment."
Dan Gilligan of the Petroleum Marketers Association agreed.
"Are you saying that companies like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley and Barclays have as much to do with the price of oil going up as Exxon? Or…Shell?" Kroft asked.
"Yes," Gilligan said. "I tease people sometimes that, you know, people say, 'Well, who's the largest oil company in America?' And they'll always say, 'Well, Exxon Mobil or Chevron, or BP.' But I'll say, 'No. Morgan Stanley.'"
Morgan Stanley isn't an oil company in the traditional sense of the word - it doesn't own or control oil wells or refineries, or gas stations. But according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Morgan Stanley is a significant player in the wholesale market through various entities controlled by the corporation.
It not only buys and sells the physical product through subsidiaries and companies that it controls, Morgan Stanley has the capacity to store and hold 20 million barrels. For example, some storage tanks in New Haven, Conn. hold Morgan Stanley heating oil bound for homes in New England, where it controls nearly 15 percent of the market.
The Wall Street bank Goldman Sachs also has huge stakes in companies that own a refinery in Coffeyville, Kan., and control 43,000 miles of pipeline and more than 150 storage terminals.
And analysts at both investment banks contributed to the oil frenzy that drove prices to record highs: Goldman's top oil analyst predicted last March that the price of a barrel was going to $200; Morgan Stanley predicted $150 a barrel.
Both companies declined 60 Minutes' requests for an interview, but maintain that their oil businesses are completely separate from their trading activities, and that neither influence the independent opinions of their analysts. There is no evidence that either company has done anything illegal.
Asked if there is price manipulation going on, Dan Gilligan told Kroft, "I can't say. And the reason I can't say it, is because nobody knows. Our federal regulators don't have access to the data. They don't know who holds what positions."
"Why don't they know?" Kroft asked.
"Because federal law doesn't give them the jurisdiction to find out," Gilligan said.
It's impossible to tell exactly who was buying and selling all those oil contracts because most of the trading is now conducted in secret, with no public scrutiny or government oversight. Over time, the big Wall Street banks were allowed to buy and sell as many oil contracts as they wanted for their clients, circumventing regulations intended to limit speculation. And in 2000, Congress effectively deregulated the futures market, granting exemptions for complicated derivative investments called oil swaps, as well as electronic trading on private exchanges.
"Who was responsible for deregulating the oil future market?" Kroft asked Michael Greenberger.
"You'd have to say Enron," he replied. "This was something they desperately wanted, and they got."
Greenberger, who wanted more regulation while he was at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, not less, says it all happened when Enron was the seventh largest corporation in the United States. "This was when Enron was riding high. And what Enron wanted, Enron got."
Asked why they wanted a deregulated market in oil futures, Greenberger said, "Because they wanted to establish their own little energy futures exchange through computerized trading. They knew that if they could get this trading engine established without the controls that had been placed on speculators, they would have the ability to drive the price of energy products in any way they wanted to take it."
"When Enron failed, we learned that Enron, and its conspirators who used their trading engine, were able to drive the price of electricity up, some say, by as much as 300 percent on the West Coast," he added.
"Is the same thing going on right now in the oil business?" Kroft asked.
"Every Enron trader, who knew how to do these manipulations, became the most valuable employee on Wall Street," Greenberger said.
But some of them may now be looking for work. The oil bubble began to deflate early last fall when Congress threatened new regulations and federal agencies announced they were beginning major investigations. It finally popped with the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and the near collapse of AIG, who were both heavily invested in the oil markets. With hedge funds and investment houses facing margin calls, the speculators headed for the exits.
"From July 15th until the end of November, roughly $70 billion came out of commodities futures from these index funds," Masters explained. "In fact, gasoline demand went down by roughly five percent over that same period of time. Yet the price of crude oil dropped more than $100 a barrel. It dropped 75 percent."
Asked how he explains that, Masters said, "By looking at investors, that's the only way you can explain it."
The regulatory lapses in the commodities market that many believe fomented the rampant speculation in oil have still not been addressed, although the incoming Obama administration has promised to do so.
original article
Children of Gaza, Run to the Angels
by Suzanne Baroud, Managing Editor of PalestineChronicle.com
Original here.
Ironically, it was in Palestine, 20 years ago, that I concluded that there is no God. For how could a God, who claims to love all and treat all with impartiality, allow such horrors like those in Palestine to happen?
Original here.
Ironically, it was in Palestine, 20 years ago, that I concluded that there is no God. For how could a God, who claims to love all and treat all with impartiality, allow such horrors like those in Palestine to happen?
This unbelief grew stronger with each curfew, with each strike that mourned the death of yet one more martyr, with a decapitation induced by gunfire in the main square on a sunny Ramallah afternoon so many years ago. But it was cemented the day I had to tell one of my fifth grade students that his brother had just been taken away by the Israeli army. His expression, his body going limp, the shuddering of his shoulders as he wept with his classmates…that’s what finally did it.
Nearly 20 years have passed since that day, and I have now married into a Gazan family. I am a wife and mother, the sister and aunt of so many kids living the horror of what Gaza has become. As we watch the footage of Israel’s onslaught, I hear myself, whispering as I see one more martyred child, “Run to the angels….run.” After so many years, this living nightmare is fostering a burning desire to believe once again in the afterlife.
Caged, starved, sniped, suffocated. They are slaughtered like sheep, but the leaders of the free world just cannot seem to find a moment to comment. Golfing, vacationing, Obama, Bush, even the EU, they just aren’t important enough. My mutterings have become a like a canter. I call out to these stricken and shattered little bodies, who frankly never experienced life to lose it. The only consolation to offer is the respite found in death.
A crowd gathers, shrouded in gas, smoke and dust. In the front stand eight young fathers, each holding a white swaddled bundle of what used to be a son, a daughter. For a few moments there is no screaming, no chanting or crying, but a moment of quiet and stillness that presses one to wonder just whom has been granted the greater mercy, the toddler who caught the snipers bullet, or the young father, who will have to find some way to live beyond this moment?
A young boy sits on the sidewalk beside his mother. She is propped up against the wall of a collapsed building and her life is bleeding out all over the sidewalk. It is spattered on his face and smeared on his shirt. She uses the last of her strength to lift her arm and clutch his cheek in her palm and then she is gone. He rests his head in his hands and cries. He is all alone.
The camera zooms in on the scene of a freshly detonated building, a civilian home. A little girls brown curly hair covered in dust and eyes wide open is all that can be found of her. Her mother wails and pulls her hair while her father frantically searches among the rubble for the rest of his daughter, where could she be? I whisper again, “you will be made whole again in Paradise. Run to the angels”.
What amazing faith. What strong devotion that a father loses his mother, father, wife and eight children, that this man before anything can assert, “God is Great, Thank God for Everything”. He holds his child, now still and ashen, he smothers him with kisses and then gently pulls back the sheet to expose two bullet holes in his chest. He then tenderly places the child beside his brother and again, pulls the sheet back of his youngest son to reveal a single snipers bullet to the chest. He can barely compose himself and he moans to the sympathizing camera man, “God is Great, Thank God for Everything”.
An old and wrinkled Imam so lovingly cradles a little girl’s lifeless body, as if mishandling her now could inflict more pain, he mumbles a benediction and gently lies her beside her sisters and her brothers in the mass grave. I try to comfort her, saying, “Finally, a place of safety. Rest beside your sister. Your brother. Put your fears to rest and meet your beloved Prophet and the many of your little friends who have fallen before you.”
Hospitals, schools, mosques, civilian homes, UN shelters, all worthy targets. Doctors, medicines, food and water, truckloads of relief from all corners of the world line up for miles at the Egyptian border but they are refused entry. Security is high, food is scarce, water is completely gone.
Faith seems to spring forth in the strangest of moments. For me, it seems to be coming full circle out of desperation and in agony, for the sake of the snow-white souls of the many bloodied and dismembered innocents of Gaza.
UN workers coordinate with Israelis to get civilians to safety inside a UN school. Hundreds are tucked inside the mutually agreed safe haven. Soon after, the school comes under Israeli fire. Bruised and battered refugees stare Satan in the face, clad in his fatigues. Hundreds wounded, scores dead, many lost and unaccounted for.
Governments negotiate a cease-fire. Rumors buzz of conspiracies. The US President-elect is forever silent. Parents search beneath the collapsed walls for what remains of their children. Shattered concrete, random arms and legs, broken glass, tossed together in a bloody hodge-podge. But, in my mind, I see them whole, their little bodies swiftly being swept up into Paradise and I call out to them, “Run!”
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