USDA funded project to create a GM corn that sterilizes people

GMO, glyphosate and population reduction

If GMOs are highly associated with infertility and spontaneous abortions in animals, is a similar rate of infertitlity (20%) occurring in people and are there increases in spontaneous abortion?

One long-standing project of the US Government has been to perfect a genetically-modified variety of corn, the diet staple in Mexico and many other Latin American countries. The corn has been field tested in tests financed by the US Department of Agriculture along with a small California bio-tech company named Epicyte. Announcing his success at a 2001 press conference, the president of Epicyte, Mitch Hein, pointing to his GMO corn plants, announced, “We have a hothouse filled with corn plants that make anti-sperm antibodies.” 14

Hein explained that they had taken antibodies from women with a rare condition known as immune infertility, isolated the genes that regulated the manufacture of those infertility antibodies, and, using genetic engineering techniques, had inserted the genes into ordinary corn seeds used to produce corn plants. In this manner, in reality they produced a concealed contraceptive embedded in corn meant for human consumption. “Essentially, the antibodies are attracted to surface receptors on the sperm,” said Hein. “They latch on and make each sperm so heavy it cannot move forward. It just shakes about as if it was doing the lambada.”15 Hein claimed it was a possible solution to world “over-population.” The moral and ethical issues of feeding it to humans in Third World poor countries without their knowing it countries he left out of his remarks.

The questions raised by “[s]permicides hidden in GMO corn provided to starving Third World populations through the generosity of the Gates’ foundation, Rockefeller Foundation and Kofi Annan’s AGRA” are many and profound.

1. Isn’t GM technology directed beyond third world countries but at all countries in the world, and first and most heavily in the US?

2. Is there a relationship, since the introduction of GM-crops in the US, of how steeply birthrates in the US have fallen?

U.S. birthrates overall are at an all time low. Continuing a 12-year decline, the U.S. birth rate has dropped to the lowest level since national data have been available …  
Bt-corn was introduced in the US in 1996, three years before the dramatic decline began. “Some seven million acres were planted to Bt corn in 1997 with hybrids primarily from Mycogen, Novartis (formerly Ciba), and Northrup King.  Mycogen and Novartis both produce pharmaceutical contraceptives.

5. How would researchers begin to answer questions under number 3 and number 4? when in the US and in many countries, despite consumer demand for labeling, the corporations involved have exerted tremendous pressure to keep GMOs unlabeled and are pushing through Codex to have all GMOs internationally be unlabeled?

Doesn’t keeping GMOs unlabeled undermine in any country in which this is the case, scientists’ capacity to trace them epidemiologically and to investigate their impact biologically?

Teen birthrates in the US are inexplicably plummeting.  Corporate media, offering no evidence, suggests this is due to the economy, but does not offer a comparison to previous serious economic downturns generating any previous teen birthrates decline.  Is there any data showing that teens forgo sex or become more careful about contraception out of concern about jobs?  Are unemployed teens, stressed and with time on their hands, more careful, or the opposite?

3.  If GMOs are highly associated with infertility and spontaneous abortions in animals, is a similar rate of infertitlity (20%) occurring in people and are there increases in spontaneous abortion?  Would GMOs not affect humans who eat not only the crops but the animals who are already so seriously affected by the crops?

4.  Where did the Epicyte/USDA corn go?  To what countries?  To the US as well?  To US consumers?

Isn’t keeping GMOs unlabeled a virtual form of mandating them, since that lack of information leaves a population prey to them?  Does a population have a right to sue the government based on such forced exposure?  ?  Is there any connection between a current raw milk lawsuit in which the FDA claims the public has no right to choose its food or any right to its health, and the government/corporations creating an additional means of trapping the public into consuming GMOs?

6. With what other products do manufacturers claim a range of astounding superior qualities (huge yields, ability to compensate for global warming, ….) while marketing them rapidly and aggressively, and yet want them kept unlabeled?

The FDA approved GMOs and kept them unlabeled while Monsanto lawyer Michael Taylor was there, bypassing the requirement for safety tests on human beings. Keeping GMOs unlabeled has meant that the only arena for study has been crop yield data (studies are showing that the biotech claims are exaggerated) and animal studies, but non-labeling has ensured there is little information on human impact. The FDA did not follow the law in providing pre-marketing tests for human safety in consuming GMOs, and in keeping them unlabeled, has ensured that post market safety testing is nearly impossible.

Meanwhile, GE-corn, GE-soy, GE-cotton seed oil, GE-canola, are in most processed foods in the US.  Consumers have little idea they are there, little means to distinguish them from other items, and they were never tested for safety for human consumption. Yet studies in animals repeatedly show severe organ damage and infertility/sterility.

7.  If the USDA is funding the creation of a corn crop that sterilizes, is it not committing a crime in poisoning those who are on the receiving end?  And according to the UN, is it not also committing genocide, a crime against humanity, in damaging the reproductive ability of any group?

But the UN appears to operate on two levels, one that sets international standards for moral/legal behavior and one that is complicit in immoral/illegal acts.   The UN itself is involved in forced sterilization and is interested in accelerating fertility decline in the least developed countries.  The UN is also impacted by “the generosity of the Gates’ foundation, Rockefeller Foundation and Kofi Annan’s AGRA.”

The USDA was also involved in developing terminator seeds as were the Rockefellers who have a long history of eugenics and genocide and are the developers of genetic engineering.  In developing corn that sterilizes, has the USDA, in fact, also now developed “terminator food“?

Food is defined as “any nourishing substance that is eaten, drunk, or otherwise taken into the body to sustain life, provide energy, promote growth, etc. and by Webster as “material consisting essentially of protein, carbohydrate, and fat used in the body of an organism to sustain growth, repair, and vital processes and to furnish energy.”

But based on the incontrovertible harm done to animal organs as animals eat GMOs, do GMO-crops even meet the definition of “food” for animals since they do not sustain life, repair or vital processes, but the opposite?

And if one assumes that “sustaining life” encompasses reproduction, a basic human function that the very basis of life it self, does the USDA’s funding of GMOs to sterilize human beings indicate that GMOs for human beings do not meet the basic definition of “food”?

9. While the biotech companies have balked at labeling GMOs as a means of foisting them upon the world – untested and unknown – there appears a larger problem for them now. The corporations have gotten GMOs into the market and patented using the legalism of “substantial equivalence” to normal organisms, but at the more complex biologic level of food itself, don’t GMOs transparently fail to meet the definition and or the biologic function of actual food, since they do not sustain life? And does that make labeling of GMOs truly complex at that point?

10. If GMOs are not “food” by essential biologic criteria and are being designed by the US government and private corporations to damage or end the continuation of life, then would the GMO label more appropriately be weapon?

 

weap·on

/ˈwepən/Noun

1. A thing designed or used for inflicting bodily harm or physical damage.

 

Or more specifically, a bioweapon?

bioweapon [ˈbaɪəʊˌwɛpən]

(Military) a living organism or a toxic product manufactured from it, used to kill or incapacitate

And is intentionally keeping them unlabeled so people cannot know where they are or if they are being exposed, is bioterrorism?

 

Like some of the chemical weapons, biological weapons may also be useful as area denial weapons. These agents may be lethal or non-lethal, and may be targeted against a single individual, a group of people, or even an entire population. They may be developed, acquired, stockpiled or deployed by nation states or by non-national groups. In the latter case, or if a nation-state uses it clandestinely, it may also be considered bioterrorism.^[1]

With the more fitting definition of GMOs, it is easier to appreciate the desire of the US government and corporations to get Codex to remove all labeling from GMOs internationally as a means of maintaining secrecy about its presence and deniability of its impact.  But if GMOs’ true status is as bioweapons, is it even appropriate to include them under Codex altogether, since they do not meet the essential definition of food?  Rather, do they instead need to be dealt with under military treaties dealing with biologic weapons?

To suggest a military basis for GMOs is entirely consistent with a report created in the 1970s by Henry Kissinger for the US government. Mr. Engdahl’s article described both GMOs and vaccines as means to eugenics and genocide, and food and vaccines are precisely the means Mr. Kissinger suggested as a solution to world population which he said threatened the security of the US.

Mr. Kissinger is quoted as saying “The elderly are useless eaters.” The remark may be a window into Mr. Kissinger’s own child rearing background at a time when that expression was commonly used against children. Childrearing practices of the day were predicated on disgust at and hatred of children and obsessive fear of their taking food. Does this dovetail with Mr. Kissinger’s urging the withholding of food to force nations to reduce their births, and covert sterilization through false “humanitarian vaccines” as another means to achieve it. Was Mr. Kissinger playing out some personal psychological pain by writing a report that suggesting eliminating the births of (repulsive, worthless) children and keeping food away from those (black and brown countries) who produce such children, and in the hands of (deserving) others?

Mr. Engdahl shows without question that the USDA, through genetic engineering, has turned “food” into a means of covert sterilization. Now, it doesn’t need to be withheld and nations don’t need to accept, under the threat of starvation, radical reductions in the birthrate to satisfy the demands of US policy makers. Instead, with GMOs, profits can be procured with GMOs at the same time sterilization of populations can occur.

GMOs, just like vaccines, can only cause “reduction of populations” if they are “approved” by governments. Is this why the US government and corporations are using the grandest of humanitarian pretexts (to feed the world’s poor starving people, to protect the world from starvation from global warming, etc) to justify forcing them – unwanted, untested, and unlabeled – on millions?

In India, a bill was introduced to make it a crime to question the safety GMOs (including in vaccines) – with prison terms attached.

Didn’t the Borgias also depend on their guests not knowing what they were eating?

http://www.salem-news.com/articles/may282011/gmo-not-food-cs.php

Hillary Clinton: Population Control Will Now Become The Centerpiece Of U.S. Foreign Policy

During remarks that she made for the 15th Anniversary of the International Conference on Population and Development, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the launch of a new program that according to Clinton will now become the centerpiece of U.S. foreign policy.  This new program is known as the Global Health Initiative, and it is being incredibly well-funded at a time when the U.S. government is drowning in debt.  According to Clinton, 63 billion dollars will be spent by the U.S. to prevent pregnancies and to improve “family planning” services around the globe over the next six years.  In other words, the new centerpiece of U.S. foreign policy is all about eugenics and population control.

The following is an excerpt from Clinton’s remarks….

In addition to new funding, we’ve launched a new program that will be the centerpiece of our foreign policy, the Global Health Initiative, which commits us to spending $63 billion over six years to improve global health by investing in efforts to reduce maternal and child mortality, prevent millions of unintended pregnancies, and avert millions of new HIV infections, among other goals. This initiative will employ a new approach to fighting disease and promoting health.

You see, whenever the global elite want to launch another new eugenics operation, they announce it as a great “humanitarian program” that will save millions of lives.  But their real goal is to control the population and prevent millions of lives from being born.

This was also reflected in Clinton’s remarks about the United Nations Population Fund.  The United Nations Population Fund has been promoting abortion, forced sterilization and radical population control measures around the globe for decades, and Hillary Clinton was super excited to talk about how the U.S. government recently renewed funding for that organization….

This year, the United States renewed funding of reproductive healthcare through the United Nations Population Fund, and more funding is on the way. (Applause.) The U.S. Congress recently appropriated more than $648 million in foreign assistance to family planning and reproductive health programs worldwide. That’s the largest allocation in more than a decade – since we last had a Democratic president, I might add. (Applause.)

So what exactly is so bad about the United Nations Population Fund?

Not only does the United Nations Population Fund support and fund the forced abortion and infanticide of China’s “one child” program, they also promote abortion, forced sterilization and brutal eugenics programs throughout the developing world.

To learn much more about the United Nations Population Fund, please watch the four short videos below.  They will leave you absolutely stunned….

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLkw01UaUes&feature=related

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISj1d9lNi-E&feature=related

Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8V8oWHAh_yo&feature=related

Part 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myITaeV3Q2o&feature=related

The truth is that the United Nations Population Fund always has been and always will be about eugenics.

And thanks to Barack Obama, it is being funded with millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars.

But that wasn’t enough for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, so they have launched this new Global Health Initiative which will now be the “centerpiece” of U.S. foreign policy.

63 billion U.S. taxpayer dollars will be spent over the next six years to promote abortion, sterilization and “family planning” around the globe.

Sadly enough, there are people who are actually convinced that they will save the environment by reducing the population.  They think that while promoting abortion and sterilization may not be the most pleasant thing to do, it must be done for the good of the planet.

Of course they are dead wrong, but the “true believers” do not understand this.  All they know is that they have to keep all of the brown and black women in other countries from having babies so that we can save the planet.

We live in a world that is becoming more evil all the time.  Every person on this planet has a fundamental right to have as many children as they want, but the truth is that this right is being stripped away from an increasing number of people.

We live at a time when even our most fundamental liberties as human beings are under attack.  Let us hope that America wakes up and starts saying “no” to these kinds of policies.

http://howtohelpsavetheenvironment.com/archives/hillary-clinton-population-control-will-now-become-the-centerpiece-of-u-s-foreign-policy

Katie Pavlich on Obama’s Lies and Cover-up of Fast and Furious

Katie Pavlich, who literally wrote the book on Operation Fast and Furious, delivered a very timely talk to the Accuracy in Media “ObamaNation: A Day of Truth,” conference on September 21st. It was the day after the Justice Department’s Inspector General issued a report on the scandalous gun walking operation that resulted in the death of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry, and ICE agent Jaime Zapata, plus hundreds of Mexicans. She points out that it was mainly blogs that broke this story, but that Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News, who AIM honored this year with a Reed Irvine Award, had done an “amazing” job covering the story.

This was the same conference where Patrick Caddell said that the media have become “the “enemy of the American people.”

Answering the Same Old Arguments Against Sound Money

Archived from the live Mises.tv broadcast, this lecture by Tom Woods was presented at the Mises Circle in Manhattan: “Central Banking, Deposit Insurance, and Economic Decline.” Includes an introduction by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. Music by Kevin MacLeod.

Ry’s Rant 3 Neocolonialism, 911 more specifically and dealing with well

Is Disenfranchising Our Military Heroes Impeachable?

Is Disenfranchising Our Military Heroes Impeachable?

 

Mitt’s Bad Math

Romney’s plan to reduce the deficit while increasing the defense budget is unserious.

In 2008, I thought John McCain deserved to lose. This did not mean I believed Barack Obama deserved to win. What McCain represented was four more years of George W. Bush—a drastic expansion of government spending and size in both our domestic and foreign policies that was largely without precedent in our history. Voters rightly saw McCain as an extension of Bush and rejected that Republican brand accordingly.

In 2012, I believe Obama deserves to lose. Everything I detested about Bush, Obama has expanded—the debt, entitlement state, “national security” state, and an even more powerful executive branch. Despite Obama having an edge in the polls, his actual job performance approval is not high. Many, and perhaps a majority, of Americans would like to reject him.

They are just not so sure Mitt Romney deserves to win.

I share this concern. In their first debate, Romney kicked Obama’s ass. When not only the conservative media are cheering Romney’s performance, but also liberals like MSNBC’s Chris Matthews are angrily frothing at the mouth over Obama’s lackluster showing, the winner becomes clear.

But what does “winning” actually mean? Obviously and inevitably, who gains in the polls thus giving that candidate a better shot at being president. But what aspect of this “winner’s” performance means he actually deserves this electoral edge?

Scoring a debate generally means deciding who sounded better, looked better, talked better—who spoke with more authority, commanded more respect, and conveyed “presidential.” In professional wrestling, the “winner” of a match is usually the one whom promoter or fans deem most charismatic, not necessarily who’s best at actually wrestling. In 2008, candidate Obama could give an interview worthy of Hulk Hogan, with millions of Obama-maniacs chanting his name. In 2012, many Americans see this president as a choreographed fraud whose personality no longer obscures his failure to deliver.

Something Romney promised with his winning personality Wednesday night—deficit reduction—is also something hard numbers indicate he cannot deliver. If Obama said anything true it was this: “When you add up all the loopholes and deductions that upper income individuals are currently taking advantage of, you don’t come close to paying for $5 trillion in tax cuts and $2 trillion in additional military spending.”

He added: “It’s math, arithmetic.”

Romney protested that he was not asking for $5 trillion in tax cuts (too bad) and in the Governor’s defense, Obama’s relentless griping about “loopholes” and “deductions” for “upper income individuals” could mean something—or it could be the same, tired, class warfare drivel the Democrats have been peddling for as long as I’ve been alive. On this, I trust Obama’s accuracy as much as Hulk Hogan’s sincerity.

But that “$2 trillion in additional military spending” is something Romney did not even attempt to protest. Whatever hope I had that Romney would represent a dramatic improvement over Obama was dashed—not during Wednesday’s debate—but last May, when CNN reported:

Mitt Romney is campaigning on a platform that emphasizes less spending, smaller deficits and renewed fiscal responsibility. But in one budget area, Romney is running the opposite direction. The former Massachusetts governor wants to increase defense spending by leaps and bounds. By one estimate, additional spending would exceed $2 trillion over the next decade… The additional spending really piles up in future years.

The need to cut military spending is something I have emphasized in columns for so long and so often that at least one of my editors has asked me to stop talking about it. Indeed, if there’s an issue I could be accused of being fanatical about, the dire need for cutting “defense” spending is certainly it.

But Romney’s platform proves my point. If our annual deficit is between $1-1.5 trillion, and neither candidate is really serious about cutting entitlement costs which are far, far greater—how can anyone even pretend they’ll reduce the deficit while increasing spending by $2 trillion on our military?

If our soldiers are not paid enough, do not receive proper benefits, or do not have necessary weapons or essentials it is not because we don’t spend enough on the military. We currently spend more on our military than we ever have—and most of that money goes to fund a massive bureaucracy that has little to do with our actual defense.

That America’s youth aren’t better educated isn’t because we don’t spend enough on education. Conservatives rightly understand this government dynamic when it comes to agencies like the Department of Education. They need to start understanding it when it comes to the Department of Defense. As Ramesh Ponnuru says bluntly:

What Republicans should not do is make an economic argument for defense spending that is both untrue and inconsistent with everything else they say about spending and the economy. When they do that, they treat the nation’s defense as little more than a source of political pork.

Romney won the presidential debate. But what do we “win” if he becomes president? The last time a smooth-talking, charismatic—debate-winning—candidate became president, he promised he would cut the deficit in half. At the time, anyone with a calculator knew Obama was lying.

Romney’s proposal to add $2 trillion in military spending makes it impossible to cut the deficit. Period. It’s math. It’s arithmetic. Barack Obama deserves to lose this election. But Mitt Romney does not deserve to win it.

watch video: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/mitts-bad-math/

Shocking FEMA Bill HR6566: Ordering National Preparation For Mass Death

This  may shed some light on DHS 1.7billion Rounds of  Ammunition purchased recently.

The bill was introduced a week ago, but it took the US Government Printing Office until this morning to actually make the text available to the public.

The United States Congress has passed a bill which mandates the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to prepare for “mass fatality planning” and funeral homes, cemeteries and mortuaries being “overwhelmed” in the aftermath of a mass terror attack, natural disaster or other crisis.

Noting the necessity for emergency preparedness in relation to terror attacks, natural disasters and man-made disasters, the bill instructs FEMA to be sensitive to the fact that Jews and Muslims require bodies to be buried within 48 hours of death.

“Funeral homes, cemeteries, and mortuaries could be overwhelmed should mass fatalities arise from a natural disaster, act of terrorism, or other man-made disaster,” states the legislation.

The bill, H. R. 6566 or the Mass Fatality Planning and Religious Considerations Act, was posted on the govtrack.us website this morning having been approved by the House on September 28

H.R. 6566: To amend the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to require the Administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency …

HR 6566 IH
112th CONGRESS

2nd Session
H. R. 6566

This is just one of those things that makes the stomach turn: the people who brought us the National Defense Authorization Act (authorizing the detention of US citizens on US soil) now deem it prudent to prepare for mass fatalities on US soil…

Moreover, they’re outsourcing it to one of the most failed government agencies in history.

FEMA, as you may recall, is the same organization that couldn’t get bottles of water delivered to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina… and held up hundreds of seasoned volunteer emergency service workers from entering the city for several days of mandatory sexual harassment training.

HR 6566 IH

112th CONGRESS

2d Session

H. R. 6566

To amend the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to require the Administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency to provide guidance and coordination for mass fatality planning, and for other purposes.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

 

September 28, 2012

Ms. RICHARDSON introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, and in addition to the Committee on Homeland Security, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned

---

A BILL

To amend the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to require the Administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency to provide guidance and coordination for mass fatality planning, and for other purposes.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as the ‘Mass Fatality Planning and Religious Considerations Act’.

SEC. 2. FINDINGS.

Congress finds the following:

(1) Emergency preparedness often plans for how to prepare and provide for survivors of a natural disaster, act of terrorism, or other man-made disaster, but fails to plan for how to prepare for and respond to mass fatalities that result from such an incident.

(2) Funeral homes, cemeteries, and mortuaries could be overwhelmed should mass fatalities arise from a natural disaster, act of terrorism, or other man-made disaster.

(3) Different religions have different customs surrounding death; for example, the Jewish and Muslim religions call for burial of the deceased not later than 48 hours after death.

•  

SEC. 3. PREPAREDNESS FOR MASS FATALITIES RESULTING FROM A NATURAL DISASTER, ACT OF TERRORISM, OR OTHER MAN-MADE DISASTER.

Section 504 of the Homeland Security Act of 2002 (6 U.S.C. 314) is amended by adding at the end the following new subsection:

‘(c) Preparedness for Mass Fatalities- In carrying out this section, the Administrator shall provide guidance to and coordinate with appropriate individuals, including representatives from different communities, private sector businesses, non-profit organizations, and religious organizations, to prepare for and respond to a natural disaster, act of terrorism, or other man-made disaster that results in mass fatalities.’.

Whether well-intentioned or not, this strange little bill is yet another telling indication of how the political elite thinks. At best, they’re incompetent and out of touch. At worst, they’re dangerous and sociopathic.

Either way, this ought to be a reminder of what representative democracy really means in the Land of the Free today… and why it’s so important to take control of your freedom.

These people are not the solution. They’re the problem. The real solutions lie within. If you’re not free, you can get free. It just takes a little bit of effort, a reshuffling of priorities, and some rational thinking. More to follow.

Full Text Od HR 6566 IH:  http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/112/hr6566/text?inf_contact_key=140f2fd5fec6506497d7022b6866fa58f1ca32748482bf977f4d986171806804

 

 

Devout Israeli Jews moving to Arab-Jewish cities

Orthodox Jewish Israelis, the driving force of the West Bank settlement movement, have begun to turn their attention inward to Israel itself, moving into Arab areas of mixed cities in an attempt to cement the Jewish presence there.

Activists say that in recent years, several thousand devout Jews have pushed into rundown Arab areas of Jaffa, Lod, Ramle and Acre, hardscrabble cities divided between Jewish and Arab neighborhoods. Their arrival has threatened to disrupt fragile ethnic relations with construction of religious seminaries and housing developments marketed exclusively to Jews.

“Israel has to act as the state of its citizens,” said Mohammad Darawshe, co-executive director of The Abraham Fund Initiatives, a nonprofit group that promotes co-existence between Jews and Arabs in Israel. “Ethnic preference is clearly inappropriate, violating the principles of democracy.”

About 20 percent of Israel’s citizens are Arabs. Most live in Arab towns and villages, with some notable exceptions, especially Haifa, the port city that is Israel’s third-largest.

Before Israel’s establishment in 1948, these mixed cities were populated by Arabs. Many fled or were expelled during the two-year war that followed Israel’s creation. Arabs commemorate that as a “catastrophe.”

The Jewish move into Arab neighborhoods for ideological reasons echoes the nationalistic fervor of the first Israeli settlers in the West Bank in the late 1960s and early 1970s. They set up trailer camps and squatted in unoccupied houses, determined to hold on to the territory for religious and security reasons.

The settler movement has grown into a huge enterprise that, with government backing, has attracted more than 300,000 Israelis into the West Bank.

While the settlements are seen as an obstacle to peace talks and considered illegal by the Palestinians and most of the international community, the current campaign is taking place inside Israel’s borders.

Still, the movement of religious, nationalist Jews into the mixed cities is promoted along the same pioneering lines as the original West Bank settlements. The settlers themselves don’t make the distinction between the two sides of the line, claiming it should all belong to Israel.

The Israel Land Fund, one of the organizations promoting the move, helps Jews buy property in both Israel and the West Bank with the goal of “ensuring the land of Israel stays in the hands of Jewish people forever.”

Its director, Arieh King, said the fund, with the help of a donor who contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars, was instrumental in bringing about 50 families into Jaffa, a mostly Arab town that is now part of Tel Aviv. He would not identify the donor.

“There are places in Jaffa where the Islamic Movement and other groups have been radicalized,” King said. “People were afraid to fly the (Israeli) national flag for fear of how the Arabs would react.” Now, he said, Jews feel more comfortable there.

The Israel Land Fund is seeking investors for a $16 million residential, hotel and country club project in the northern port city of Acre, where the mostly Arab Old City has been designated by the United Nations as a World Heritage Site.

“As always, the financial rewards are outweighed by the spiritual and ideological benefit of knowing that these projects will make a huge impact in the fight to keep Acre a Jewish city,” the ad for the seafront project says.

Acre, a city of about 50,000, is 72 percent Jewish and 28 percent Arab. While relations are generally quiet, Acre was convulsed by bitter ethnic fighting three years ago after an Arab citizen drove through a mostly Jewish neighborhood on the holy day of Yom Kippur, when even secular Jews keep their cars off the streets.

The efforts to bring Jews to Acre have won praise from high levels of government. Deputy Prime Minister Silvan Shalom hailed the establishment of a Jewish seminary in Acre last year a measure as “helping to strengthen the trend of Judaizing the Galilee.”

“There’s nothing to be ashamed of in that statement,” he said at the time.

Acre’s Arab deputy mayor, Adham Jamal, warned that the activists threaten to disrupt a fragile status quo.

The newcomers “don’t understand the mentality of Jews and Arabs living together,” said Adham, who serves under a Jewish mayor. “Those coming now aren’t coming to live in Acre. They’ve come to kick out Arabs.”

Acre’s mayor, Shimon Lankri, insisted there is no policy of “Judaization,” although he said he was sympathetic to a still-unapproved request to build a 100-apartment development for religious Jews in his city.

Such projects, where residents might be required to dress modestly and respect the Jewish Sabbath by not driving or blasting loud music, exist in many other communities in Israel.

“Do I have a policy that discriminates, that favors Jews? There is no such policy,” Lankri said. “I myself lived in a building with Arabs and Jews for five years.” He maintained that Arab and Jewish residents receive equal services in his city.

Arab activists dispute that, saying they face discrimination in Acre and other mixed cities. Arab neighborhoods are often marred by dilapidated buildings and roads, plagued by a shortage of schools and social services.

Before the religious Jews started moving into Acre several years ago, Arabs were preoccupied with the lack of equality, said Adham. With the influx of the Jewish religious nationalists, “the main subject has become Arabs and Jews, and that’s dangerous,” he said. “The discourse is now about demographics.”

Lankri estimated that 200 religious families have moved to Acre in recent years.

A similar process is under way in Lod, about halfway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

Religious Jewish activist Aharon Atias said that after he and his wife married, their “first thought” was to move to a West Bank settlement. Then they came to the conclusion that they could transplant the settlement ethos to Atias’ hometown.

He undertook to reverse a Jewish flight from his blighted hometown, which is about 25 percent Arab and 75 percent Jewish, by bringing in religious Jews. His project began with two families in the late 1990s, he said.

“Now, we’re an empire,” Atias said. He said 400 new religious families have moved in, and six day care centers, three schools, a seminary and a pre-military academy have been built for them. Another three projects for religious Jews are under construction, with about 660 units expected to be populated within the next two years, he said.

One development is in an Arab neighborhood, and the other two are in poor, mixed neighborhoods.

“We want to prevent Arabs from becoming the majority,” Atias said. “The city of Lod, since 1948, and with God’s help, has been a Jewish city where non-Jews live, and it has to remain that way.”

Arab activists bridle at the notion that Jews must dominate.

“They’re like a cancer that enters the body and doesn’t leave,” said activist Horia ElSadi, a Lod native, reflecting lingering bitterness over the establishment of a Jewish state. “They want to live alone. They want Lod to be a Jewish city.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/feedarticle/10467761

Why is the US government planning for ‘mass fatalities’ ?

You just can’t make this stuff up.

Late last week, a bill HR 6566 was introduced on the floor of the US House of Representatives. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I read it.

The bill is entitled the “Mass Fatality Planning and Religious Considerations Act,” and its stated purpose is “[to] amend the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to require the Administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency to provide guidance and coordination for mass fatality planning…”

Hmmmm. Homeland Security. FEMA. Sounds like a fun party.

The bill was introduced a week ago, but it took the US Government Printing Office until this morning to actually make the text available to the public.

It turns out that my weeklong wait was for nothing. The bill itself is just a handful of paragraphs that merely reiterates the title… that the cracker jack team over at FEMA should be prepared to respond to mass fatalities in the United States, and to account for religious burial differences.

This is just one of those things that makes the stomach turn: the people who brought us the National Defense Authorization Act (authorizing the detention of US citizens on US soil) now deem it prudent to prepare for mass fatalities on US soil…

Moreover, they’re outsourcing it to one of the most failed government agencies in history.

FEMA, as you may recall, is the same organization that couldn’t get bottles of water delivered to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina… and held up hundreds of seasoned volunteer emergency service workers from entering the city for several days of mandatory sexual harassment training.

I doubt a Soviet boot factory could have botched the job more miserably than that. I can’t wait to see these guys in charge of whatever ‘mass fatality’ event the government is preparing for.

It boggles the mind that this agency still exists… and more importantly, why with so many other problems to deal with, ‘mass fatalities’ is even a topic of discussion at the Capitol.

Whether well-intentioned or not, this strange little bill is yet another telling indication of how the political elite thinks. At best, they’re incompetent and out of touch. At worst, they’re dangerous and sociopathic.

Either way, this ought to be a reminder of what representative democracy really means in the Land of the Free today… and why it’s so important to take control of your freedom.

These people are not the solution. They’re the problem. The real solutions lie within. If you’re not free, you can get free. It just takes a little bit of effort, a reshuffling of priorities, and some rational thinking. More to follow.

http://www.sovereignman.com/expat/why-is-the-us-government-planning-for-mass-fatalities-8956/

US Prepares for Overthrow of Venezuela

Rigged polling, coordinated Western propaganda campaign, and open conspiracy to install Henrique Capriles Radonski as head of new Western client-regime.

CFR’s “Center for Preventative Action’s” Contingency Planning Memo #6 is in reality a blueprint for meddling in Venezuela’s elections and providing a framework to further undermine the government of President Hugo Chavez should he win another term in office.

October 5, 2012 – The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a think tank representing the collective interests and policies of the unelected, supranational corporate-financier interests that fund it, has issued a “Contingency Planning Memorandum (.pdf)” directed toward the South American nation of Venezuela which states the following:

In the coming months, Venezuela could experience significant political unrest and violence that lead to the further curtailment of democracy in the country. Presidential elections are scheduled to take place on October 7, 2012. President Hugo Chavez is in the midst of a tough reelection campaign against Henrique Capriles Radonski—the young and energetic governor of the state of Miranda––who enjoys multiparty support and appears to have a better chance of defeating the incumbent than earlier challengers.

Over the course of the past year, Chavez and several of his most senior associates have asserted that there will be instability and violence if he is not reelected. At the same time, Chavez is battling cancer, but he has shared little information with the public about the state of his health beyond the fact that he has twice  been treated  for  the disease  since spring 2011.  Speculation about  Chavez’s health problems has generated considerable uncertainty among his supporters, especially since he has  not  anointed  a  successor.  Should  Chavez  appear  to  be  losing  the  election,  die  suddenly, or withdraw from public life for health reasons, tensions are likely to rise in Venezuela, especially if the public  suspects  that  Chavez  has  used  extra-constitutional  means to preclude  or  invalidate  an opposition victory in order to sustain his regime’s hold on power. Protests over such actions, which could turn violent, may in turn lead to the imposition of martial law and the further curtailment of democratic  rights  in  Venezuela. This would  almost certainly  trigger  a  major  political  crisis in the Western  Hemisphere that pits  countries seeking to restore democracy and the rule of law in Venezuela—including  the  United States—against  those  who  support  Chavez  and  the  principle  of noninterference in the internal affairs of other states. Longstanding U.S. efforts to promote good governance in Latin America as well as cooperation on a range of political, economic, and security challenges in the region would be threatened as a consequence.

Accordingly, the United States should seek free and fair elections in Venezuela. If Chavez or a replacement candidate is defeated, it should offer to help promote an orderly, peaceful transition. If Chavez is reelected in a process judged acceptably free and fair, the United States should seek to reset the bilateral relationship with an eye toward the eventual renewal of high-level communication on areas of mutual interest. If the election results appear fraudulent or apparently legitimate results are nullified,  the  United  States  should  encourage  international  pressure  to  restore  democracy  and suspend bilateral business as usual until a legitimate government is restored.

The above scenario is one that has been repeated by the United States in nation after nation, from Eastern Europe, to Southeast Asia, across the Arab World during the US-engineered “Arab Spring,” and already once in Venezuela itself in 2002, when similar rhetoric served as cover for the attempted but failed violent overthrow of Hugo Chavez’ elected government.

Ironic indeed that one of the many co-conspirators involved in the US-backed 2002 coup attempt against Hugo Chavez’ government, is the current candidate running against him this year for the Venezuelan presidency. Indeed, Henrique Capriles Radonski was arrested and implicated numerous times for his role during the 2002 orchestrated unrest, the same unrest the CFR predicts will rack the country this year should their proxy candidate not smoothly enter into office. In 2002, as mayor of Baruta, Radonski failed to protect the Cuban embassy located within his jurisdiction, and his police even arrested  President Chavez’ Interior Minister, Ramon Rodriguez Chacin.

Now, the West is attempting to lay the groundwork for a repeat performance. The rhetoric under which overt, most likely armed violence will be carried out, hinges on a singular, very predictable talking point permeating the Western corporate media – that is, that twice elected Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez will lose upcoming elections and plans on “stealing them.”

http://www.landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2012/10/us-prepares-for-overthrow-of-venezuela.html?m=1

Benghazigate

President Barack Obama’s administration lied to the public. They had no interest in speaking to the truth of the events that lead to Ambassador Chris Stevens death in Benghazi. Their actions bend towards criminal complicity.

“Following the same course that virtually every other major industry has in the last two decades, a relentless series of mergers and corporate takeovers has consolidated control of the media into the hands of a few corporate behemoths. “The result has been that an increasingly authoritarian agenda has been sold to the American people by a massive, multi-tentacled media machine that has become, for all intents and purposes, a propaganda organ of the state.” – David McGowan

Benghazi-Gate
Ambassador Chris Stevens death in Benghazi.

http://larouchepac.com/benghazigate-vid

Israeli forces kill American gunman in hotel shoot-out

Israeli forces shot dead an American man who opened fire in a seaside hotel packed with tourists on Friday, killing one person.

Police and military troops swiftly surrounded the hotel in the Red Sea resort city of Eilat after the man – a former employee of the hotel – “grabbed a weapon from a security guard and shot a hotel worker,” police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.

The man barricaded himself in the hotel kitchen, shooting back at law enforcement officers. He was shot dead by members of a military counter-terrorism squad, a military source said.

An Israeli hotel guest, Aviram Sela, said he tried to wrestle the gunman to the ground before he started shooting, as terrified tourists dived for cover behind a sofa in the hotel lobby.

“We saw him beating the guard and grab his weapon and the magazine,” Sela told Israeli television, adding that the gunman then took aim at a member of his family.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak told Army Radio the incident “appears to be an internal dispute”.

Eilat, on the border with Egypt and Jordan, has been a target of militant attacks in the past, and has come under rocket fire from Egypt’s Sinai in the past several months. The city is currently crowded with both foreign tourists and Israelis on a seven-day Jewish religious holiday.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/05/us-israel-shooting-idUSBRE89409P20121005

Interventionism’s Out of Control Spiral into Death and Destruction

The New York Times reports that the Pentagon and the CIA are preparing plans to target suspects in the murder of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and two colleagues in Libya with assassination by drone. The process is a classic example of how interventionism spirals out of control.

Notice that it wasn’t a Swiss ambassador who got attacked. It was an American ambassador. Was this simply a coincidence? Of course it wasn’t. The reason that it wasn’t the Swiss ambassador who got attacked and killed is because the Swiss government hasn’t intervened in Libya and the rest of the Middle East. It doesn’t maintain military bases in other countries. It doesn’t police the world. It doesn’t engage in regime change. It doesn’t invade and occupy foreign countries. It doesn’t kidnap people, torture them, incarcerate them without trial, or execute them. It doesn’t sanction or embargo other countries. It doesn’t try to force other countries to bend to its will. It doesn’t bribe foreign regimes into doing what it wants. It doesn’t enter into partnerships with brutal dictatorships. The Swiss government minds its own business. It devotes itself to the genuine defense of its own country.

Not so with the U.S. government. It maintains a vast overseas military empire consisting of bases, ships, planes, and troops. It intervenes in the affairs of other countries. It engages in regime change operations. It invades and occupies countries, killing and maiming multitudes of people in the process. It bribes foreign regimes, including dictatorial ones, with foreign aid. It kidnaps people, renditions them to friendly dictatorships for torture, incarcerates them without trial, tortures them, and executes them without trial by jury. It maneuvers and manipulates foreign regimes into doing its will. It sanctions and embargoes other nations, inflicting massive pain and suffering on the citizenry of those nations. The U.S. government doesn’t mind its own business. It devotes itself to interfering in the affairs and conflicts of other nations. And it does this all under the fake and false rubric of “national defense.”

How can it surprise anyone when there is retaliation, as there was in the case of Ambassador Stevens?

Consider the country where Stevens was serving as ambassador — Libya. When the brutal dictator Muammar Gaddafi was president, the U.S. government, through the CIA, tortured some of Gaddafi’s opponents and then worked with him to forcible repatriate them to Gaddafi so that he and his goons could torture them too.

Imagine that. U.S. officials torture people who oppose a brutal dictator. Then, after torturing them, they send them to the brutal dictator himself to be tortured again.

In fact, that’s the big reason the CIA rushed into Libya when the Gaddafi regime fell. It was hoping to grab the secret files detailing the CIA’s torture partnership with Gaddafi so that the American people wouldn’t find out. Alas, Human Rights Watch beat them to the files.

How can the U.S. government’s behavior in Libya not anger people? It would certainly anger the people who are being tortured, wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t it also be likely to anger friends, relatives, and allies of the victims?

At a later date, the U.S. government turned against its friend and ally Gaddafi, just as it did when it turned against its friend and ally Saddam Hussein. That involved bombing campaigns against Gaddafi’s forces and, most likely, secretly furnishing of weaponry to the insurgents. Those bombs and guns killed and maimed people. Those victims have friends, relatives, and allies. Aren’t they likely to become angry at the U.S. government, notwithstanding the fact that the insurgents who benefited from the ouster of Qaddafi might be happy with the U.S. government? When you give guns to one side of a conflict, isn’t it probable that the other side is going to be angry?

So, now they had a second group of people who were angry at the U.S. government — those who were aligned with the Gaddafi regime who lost friends, relatives, and allies to U.S. bombs and bullets.

Now what? Well, the U.S. government reacts the way empires throughout history have reacted. It’s now going to bomb or assassinate anyone it suspects committed the attack. No arrests. No trial. No due process. They’ll just figure out who they think probably did it and drop the necessary bombs in their vicinity.

Sure, there might be women and children nearby. And sure, the targeted people might, in fact, be innocent. But what matters is the good faith of the Empire. It’s going to bomb or assassinate only people it is convinced are guilty.

And what about the friends, relatives, and allies of the victims of the bombs and drone assassinations? They’ll be angry. They’ll retaliate. And the whole process just keeps spiraling out of control, with the losers being not only the victims of U.S. foreign policy, but also U.S. diplomats like Christopher Stevens, and the American people themselves.

What would the Swiss government do if one of its diplomats got murdered in Libya or some other country? Well, we know what it would not do. It would not invade or occupy the country. It would not engage in assassination attempts or bombing campaigns. It would do its best to find the malefactors and bring them to justice. If it was unable to do that for whatever reason, it might simply withdraw the rest of its diplomats or better defend its personnel in its embassies. It would wait out the malefactors, hoping that at some point they might turn up but knowing that they might never be punished for their crime.

Unfortunately, that’s not how an empire behaves. An empire gets indignant. It must strike, bomb, kill, torture, maim, destroy, kidnap, rendition, incarcerate, or sanction. Otherwise, it will be perceived as “weak.”

That is precisely what the national-security state — i.e., the Pentagon and the CIA — is now planning on doing, thereby ensuring the continuation of interventionism’s out-of-control spiral into death and destruction.

http://www.fff.org/blog/jghblog2012-10-04.asp

US Deployed Special Forces Across Northern Africa Embassies Ahead of Benghazi

Advance Teams Were Deployed Months Before Attack

The Obama Administration continues to insist, in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary, that there was no way they could have seen the attack on the Benghazi Consulate coming. Yet they clearly saw something coming.

Officials are now admitting that the White House signed off on a plan a year ago to build up special forces task forces around northern Africa, and had been deploying troopsat embassies across the region for months in the lead-up to Benghazi.

They say the network of troops was “too new” to react to the Benghazi attack, but concede that the build-up was entirely a function of concerns that al-Qaeda was posing a growing threat across the region. Congress is also blasting the administration for not escalating into the region sooner and with more troops, arguing this might conceivably have prevented the attack.

Lost in the entire discussion is that the whole reason al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the north African version, is getting so much stronger is because the US attacked Libya last year, imposing a regime change that led to widespread looting of advanced weapons. AQIM openly bragged that they were the “main beneficiaries” of the regime change in Libya.

http://news.antiwar.com/2012/10/04/us-deployed-special-forces-across-northern-africa-embassies-ahead-of-benghazi/

Turkish PM Deescalates in Syria as Parliament Pushes for Action

Turkish Forces Strike Syria for a Second Day

In a news conference today, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan sought to calm a frenzy of speculation about an impending war with Syria, insisting it is a war he doesn’t want. Erdogan’s comments reflect similar comments from NATO, Syria, and nations across the region, all of whom are hoping to see the potential powder-keg of a border war between them calmed down.

The message that this is a war no one wants apparently didn’t reach Turkey’s parliament, however, and it quickly and overwhelminglyapproved a resolution today allowing the military to conduct unrestricted military operations inside Syria.

Turkey has been repositioning itself as a regional power for years, and with its overwhelming military edge over the Assad regime some measure of bellicosity isn’t surprising. Still, while Turkey seems comfortable in a role of facilitating the rebels in Syria, involving itself in a full-scale shooting war would turn an already dubious policy into a potential disaster, alienating nationalist factions in the rebellion, riling up Syria’s Kurdish community and ruining their already strained relationships with Iran and Iraq.

Ergodan seems to get this, and while the Turkish military continued to strike targets in Syria today, it seems virtually certain that the situation is calming down. What the parliament’s disconnect means for their relationship with the Turkish leadership, however, remains to be seen.

http://news.antiwar.com/2012/10/04/turkish-pm-deescalates-in-syria-as-parliament-pushes-for-action/

Robert Gates: War on Iran Would Be ‘Catastrophic,’ Make Tehran Nukes ‘Inevitable’

Former defense secretary Robert Gates said a US strike on Iran would ‘haunt us for generations’

A US or Israeli attack on Iran would “prove catastrophic” and “make a nuclear-armed Iran inevitable,” former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said in a speech Wednesday night.

Neither the United States nor Israel is capable of wiping out Iran’s nuclear capability, Gates said, and “such an attack would make a nuclear-armed Iran inevitable. They would just bury the program deeper and make it more covert.”

Not only would Iran be likely to reconstitute its defunct nuclear weapons program, but Tehran might also respond by disrupting world oil traffic in the Persian Gulf and launching a wave of terrorism across the region, Gates claimed.

“The results of an American or Israeli military strike on Iran could, in my view, prove catastrophic, haunting us for generations in that part of the world.”

Gates was reiterating what has become an emergent consensus within the military and intelligence community in the United States, that  a war on Iran – which Israel and many hawks in Congress have been pushing for – would not only be entirely discretionary, but would have disastrous consequences for Iran, the region, and the United States.

A report released last month by former government officials, national security experts and retired military officers concluded also that an attack would motivate Iran to restart its weapons development, and that the ensuing war would end up being “more taxing than the Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined.”

On the war strategists’ own terms, a war on Iran would backfire. But the human cost of such a war would also be immense. Even if a US or Israeli strike only targeted Iran’s nuclear sites and it didn’t result in larger land war, the toxic plumes released as a result of the strikes could kill or injure up to 70,000 civilians in nearby cities and towns.

http://news.antiwar.com/2012/10/04/robert-gates-war-on-iran-would-be-catastrophic-and-make-a-nuclear-iran-inevitable/

Karzai: US War in Afghanistan ‘Will Not Succeed’

The Taliban and other militants have not been diminished after a decade of war, Karzai warned

America’s war in Afghanistan “will not be successful,” Afghan President Hamid Karzai said on Thursday before accusing Western media of waging “psychological warfare” on his country.

Karzai said US efforts to defeat the Taliban and militancy in Afghanistan would fail “from Afghanistan’s view” because it was being fought in Afghan villages, while ignoring the safe havens insurgents enjoy in Pakistan.

Indeed, virtually the entire US political establishment recognizes that the war in Afghanistan is a complete and total failure. Both the Obama administration and the Romney campaign agree that US troops should be withdrawn in 2014.

A military report of the mission in Afghanistan released last month documented the continued resilience of the insurgency in number of attacks on US and NATO troops. The Taliban are as strong as ever, the regime in Kabul is weak and cannot provide security, and overall violence has not subsided.

And Karzai’s complaint about Pakistan is also relevant, as tortured relations with Pakistan and the radicalization of the northwest frontier province are widely seen as one of Washington’s greatest failures in Afghanistan. The US war pushed militants into Pakistan’s FATA regions and the drone war there has only radicalized the population.

Karzai also noted that presidential elections scheduled for 2014 would happen on time, but many in Afghanistan think he’ll try to steal the election illegitimately, as he was accused of doing last time around. ”The election will definitely happen. Go on and choose your own favorite candidate. My term, if prolonged by even a day, will be seen as illegitimate,” Karzai said.

http://news.antiwar.com/2012/10/04/karzai-us-war-in-afghanistan-will-not-succeed/

Beyond the Propaganda: The Real Reason Why the U.S. and Israel Do Not Want a Nuclear Iran

As the war drums beat faster and louder for an aggressive assault against Iran amidst the shock and horror at the mere thought of Iran gaining an unproven and currently unfeasible nuclear weapon, there remains the occasional kernel of truth that manages to slip through the firewall of the mainstream media.

For instance, in an article published on October 2 in the Guardian entitled, “The true reason US fears Iranian nukes: they can deter US attacks,” Glenn Greenwald points out the fact that the main concern is not necessarily that Iran may be able to attack the United States or its allies (meaning Israel) with a nuclear bomb, but simply the fact that if Iran were to obtain such a weapon, it would be able to resist U.S. dominance and aggression more effectively.

Although clearly not the sole reason for a Western attack on Iran, Greenwald is correct to point out that destroying the ability of Iran to resist American assault is indeed part of the overarching agenda. Thus, soon after introducing the thesis of the article, Greenwald asks an important question.

That Iran will use its nuclear weapons against the US and Israel is rather obviously the centerpiece of the fear-mongering campaign against Tehran, to build popular support for threats to launch an aggressive attack in order to prevent them from acquiring that weapon.

So what, then, is the real reason that so many people in both the US and Israeli governments are so desperate to stop Iranian proliferation?

He goes on to answer this question by writing, “Iranian nuclear weapons would prevent the US from attacking Iran at will, and that is what is intolerable.”

Ironically, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, whom Greenwald accurately refers to as “one of the US’s most reliable and bloodthirsty warmongers,” seems to agree with Greenwald’s thesis.

Recently, Graham gave a speech in North Augusta, South Carolina where he was asked about the sanctions implemented against Iran and how these sanctions were affecting the average Iranian.

In response and, after heaping praise on Obama for continuing the head-on charge toward WW3, Graham stated that “the Iranian people should be willing to suffer now for a better future.”

He then went on to compare Iranian nuclear capacity with the appeasement of Hitler in the 1930s – a tale that is often told when war proponents are backing up their case for wholesale slaughter of innocent people in third world countries or developing nations for the benefit of Wall Street, corporations, and other interested parties.

Of course, what is so ironic about the analogy is the fact that, in 2012, it is not Iran that the world should fear appeasing – it is the United States and its associates in NATO.

Indeed, it is the United States who most resembles the Nazi regime as it steamrolls across the Middle East and Africa with reckless abandon waging war, destabilizations, and political and financial intimidation.

Regardless, Graham stated:

They have two goals: one, regime survival. The best way for the regime surviving, in their mind, is having a nuclear weapon, because when you have a nuclear weapons, nobody attacks you.

Unwittingly, Graham only confirms the suggestions made by Greenwald in his article – i.e. “the true threat of nuclear proliferation is that it can deter American aggression.”

As Greenwald comments, “In other words, we cannot let Iran acquire nuclear weapons because if they get them, we can no longer attack them when we want to and can no longer bully them in their own region.”

This thesis is by no means the monopoly of Greenwald, however. Pre-eminent scholars such as Dr. David Ray Griffin, author of The New Pearl Harbor and dispeller of the 9/11 myth, as well as prominent Neo-Cons and war proponents have all forwarded the concept of nuclear weapon prevention as an act of establishing “full spectrum dominance” and the prevention of nuclear deterrence.

For instance, Neo-Con Thomas Donnelly of the American Enterprise Institute and the now infamous Project for the New American Century has stated previously (in regards to Iranian nuclear capability) in his 2004 strategy paper entitled, “Strategy For A Nuclear Iran:

The surest deterrent to American action is a functioning nuclear arsenal…

To be sure, the prospect of a nuclear Iran is a nightmare. But it is less a nightmare because of the high likelihood that Tehran would employ its weapons or pass them on to terrorist groups—although that is not beyond the realm of possibility—and more because of the constraining effect it threatens to impose upon U.S. strategy for the greater Middle East.

The danger is that Iran will “extend” its deterrence, either directly or de facto, to a variety of states and other actors throughout the region.

This would be an ironic echo of the extended deterrence thought to apply to U.S. allies during the Cold War.

Most notably, Donnelly echoes the same sentiment in the Project for a New American Century’s most famous document, Rebuilding America’s Defenses, a paper that has been eerily prophetic ever since its publication.

Keep in mind, this was the very same paper that called for a “new pearl harbor” shortly before the “new pearl harbor” of the 21st Century happened on September 11, 2001. In that document, Donnelly wrote,

When their missiles are tipped with warheads carrying nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons, even weak regional powers have a credible deterrent regardless of the balance of conventional forces.

. . . . .

In the post cold war era, America and its allies, rather than the Soviet Union, have become the primary objects of deterrence and it is states like Iraq, Iran and North Korea who most wish to develop deterrent capabilities.

. . . . .

the United States also must counteract the effects of the proliferation of ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction that may soon allow lesser states to deter U.S. military action by threatening U.S. allies and the American homeland itself. Of all the new and current missions for U.S. armed forces, this must have priority

. . . . .

effective ballistic missile defenses will be the central element in the exercise of American power and the projection of U.S. military forces abroad. Without it, weak states operating small arsenals of crude ballistic missiles, armed with basic nuclear warheads or other weapons of mass destruction, will be in a strong position to deter the United States from using conventional force, no matter the technological or other advantages we may enjoy. Even if such enemies are merely able to threaten American allies rather than the United States homeland itself, America’s ability to project power will be deeply compromised.

As David Ray Griffin comments in The New Pearl Harbor, “This statement further suggests that Iran, Iraq, and North Korea were later determined by President Bush to deserve the title of ‘axis of evil’ because of their perverse wish to develop the capacity to deter the United States from projecting military force against them.”[1]

Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld echoed the same sentiment in 2001 when he stated that, “Several of these [small enemy nations] are intensely hostile to the United States and are arming to deter us from bringing our conventional or nuclear power to bear in a regional crisis.”

Rumsfeld also writes, “These universally available [centrifugal] technologies can be used to create ‘asymmetric’ responses that cannot defeat our forces, but can deny access to critical areas in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia…’asymmetric; approaches can limit our ability to apply military power.”

According to Greenwald, Philip Zelikow, former Bush administration State Department official, Condoleeza Rice co-author, and Executive Director of the shameful 9/11 commission cover-up, stated in regards to Iraq and the dire possibility of allowing it to keep its non-existent WMDs, “they now can deter us from attacking them, because they really can retaliate against us.”

Furthermore, in 2008 in an op-ed for the Washington Post, Senators Chuck Robb and Dan Coates wrote:

[A]n Islamic Republic of Iran with nuclear weapons capability would be strategically untenable. It would threaten U.S. national security … While a nuclear attack is the worst-case scenario, Iran would not need to employ a nuclear arsenal to threaten US interests. Simply obtaining the ability to quickly assemble a nuclear weapon would effectively give Iran a nuclear deterrent.

Thus, Greenwald concludes, “The No 1 concern of American national security planners appears to be that countries may be able to prevent the US from attacking them at will, whether to change their regimes or achieve other objectives. In other words, Iranian nuclear weapons could be used to prevent wars – ones started by the US – and that, above all, is what we must fear.”

Yet, the debate over the purpose of Iran’s nuclear weapon is one that is built entirely upon a false foundation. The fact is there is a startling lack of evidence to show that Iran is, in fact, even attempting to gain a nuclear weapon.

While the warmongers in government positions like Lindsey Graham as well as the mainstream media and other commentators continue to beat their chests with the claims of Iranian commitment to nuclear weapons, the reality is quite different.

Numerous individuals close to the scene in Iran have stated on as many occasions that Iran does not possess nor is it seeking to possess a nuclear weapon.

Consider briefly the statement by Israeli Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, who stated,

the program is too vulnerable, in Iran’s view. If the supreme religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wants, he will advance it to the acquisition of a nuclear bomb, but the decision must first be taken. It will happen if Khamenei judges that he is invulnerable to a response.

I believe he would be making an enormous mistake, and I don’t think he will want to go the extra mile. I think the Iranian leadership is composed of very rational people.

Even Defense Minister Ehud Barak has clearly stated that, “[Iran has] not yet decided to manufacture atomic weapons.”

In addition, warmonger Leon Panetta, the Secretary of Defense who has been browbeating the need to strike Iran for the better part of a year, has stated that the Iranians do not have a nuclear weapon nor are they attempting to build one.

Nevertheless Panetta continues to promote the coming attack if the Iranians “take the next step,” however that “step” may be defined.

This is most ironic considering his February 2012 remarks on Face The Nation, where he stated, “Are they trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No. But we know that they’re trying to develop a nuclear capability. And that’s what concerns us. And our red line to Iran is do not develop a nuclear weapon. That’s a red line for us.”

Yet Panetta cannot be accused of “misspeaking” on the national news show. Indeed, he has restated his position as quoted by The Raw Story by saying, “I think [Iran is] developing a nuclear capability [but] our intelligence makes clear that they haven’t made the decision to develop a nuclear weapon.”

Furthermore, consider the comments made by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper:

We continue to assess Iran is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons in part by developing various nuclear capabilities that better position it to produce such weapons, should it choose to do so. We do not know, however, if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons.[…] We continue to judge Iran’s nuclear decision making is guided by a cost-benefit approach, which offers the international community opportunities to influence Tehran.

Similarly, US General Martin Dempsey:

In response to Fareed Zakaria’s question, ‘Do you think that is still unclear, that [Iran is] moving on a path for nuclear technology, but whether or not they choose to make a nuclear weapon is unclear?’ Dempsey:

‘It is. I believe it is unclear, and on that basis I think it would be premature to exclusively decide that the time for a military option was upon us. I mean, I think that the economic sanctions and the international cooperation that we’ve been able to gather around sanctions is beginning to have an effect. I think our diplomacy is having an effect, and our preparedness.’

As Tabassum Zakaria and Mark Hosenball of Reuters wrote in regards to the ongoing pro-war propaganda circling the globe, “The United States, European allies and even Israel generally agree on three things about Iran’s nuclear program: Tehran does not have a bomb, has not decided to build one, and is probably years away from having a deliverable nuclear warhead.”

Yet, even if Iran were seeking a nuclear weapon, building one, or attained the bomb, the fact is that, as Greenwald and others have pointed out, the weapon would only serve as a deterrent to aggressive attacks – not as an asset to wage Iranian imperialist wars.

Not only that, but one must logically ask exactly what threat would one nuclear weapon pose to states such as Israel and the United States who are known nuclear powers, with one being the only nation in the region currently possessing the weapons and the other existing as a powerhouse in terms of nuclear weaponry.

As Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stated before the UN, “Let’s even imagine that we have an atomic weapon, a nuclear weapon. What would we do with it? What intelligent person would fight 5,000 American bombs with one bomb?”

Ahmadinejad has hit the nail on the head with this statement. Indeed, assuming the unlikely event of a successful attack via a nuclear weapon, such a move would be complete suicide on the part of Iran, bringing down the wrath of the victim nation, the United States, NATO, and the entire international community.

Considering the constant sabre-rattling of the United States, Israel, and a gaggle of European countries regarding the impending war of aggression against the nation of Iran which, in recent time has significantly reduced its isolation, the country would almost be foolhardy not to pursue a nuclear weapon.

One thing that is for certain, however, is that the United States, Israel, and NATO have already played their hand.

If the constant political, financial, and military harassment efforts aimed at Iran by much of the Western world do not descend into a conflagration of global scale which itself ends in the use of nuclear weapons, then they will have certainly accomplished the task of providing the motivation for Iran to develop one.

http://theintelhub.com/2012/10/04/beyond-the-propaganda-the-real-reason-why-the-u-s-and-israel-do-not-want-a-nuclear-iran/

Hollywood Masters propaganda war on Iran

America’s new fall TV shows are back at it. Last year the Israeli propaganda and Islamophobia had begun to dissipate but, this year, it is easy to see, the “Masters of Hollywood” are engaged in warmongering on behalf of their own masters in Tel Aviv.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

We have decades of the same actors, oddly enough, most are actually Israeli, perhaps mirroring the not so “secret” that Israelis have been passing themselves off as Islamic terrorists, including blowing things up, for over six decades, playing the parts.

All are snarling comic book characters, reminiscent of Netanyahu’s performance in front of the United Nations last week. His “bomb” graphic, using the movie industry term “bombed” totally with references to the Israeli leader’s uncanny resemblance to a certain cartoon character, “Wylie Coyote” making him a laughing stock.

With TV, however, it has been going on so long, so “ham handedly” and with such insidious intent. The word Palestinian is never used without “terrorist” being added and mentions of there being two sides to an issue, much less damning Israel for genocide and apartheid, has ended more than one career, not just in entertainment but in “infotainment” or “news.”

Anyone caught representing reality is either “blackballed” from all work by the Israeli lobby or quickly makes a trip to Israel to “kiss backsides” and grovel as with Glenn Beck of Fox and more than a few others.

150 years ago in America, it was a crime to teach slaves to read. Little has changed since, teaching Americans to think, more literally, teaching Americans they are, in actuality, slaves, has ended more than a few thousand academic careers.

Putting academia in with the entertainment industry might seem confusing to some unless one were to examine an American text book or, worse yet, the curriculum of an American school or college, all with new classes in law enforcement and “counter-terrorism.”

One university offered me a “department chair” in counter-terrorism. I am one of the few remaining that fought in Vietnam, our war against poor farmers, killing two million of them because those who couldn’t read by our estimation deserved death because they were dangerously steeped in Marxist dialectic.

To me, they seem mostly to grow rice and try to live while under the control of a foreign-dominated and corrupt government. Wait, I think more generations have heard similar stories about other wars.

Thus, I list some areas of academic endeavor as no better than “Wylie Coyote” cartoons, the endless schools of “counter-terrorism,” and their mindless “degrees” that indoctrinate future Department of Homeland Security employees into a mindset of racial bigotry, inherent incompetence and uselessness.

Even the New York Times has noticed this as it seems:

“One of the nation’s biggest domestic counterterrorism programs has failed to provide virtually any useful intelligence, according to Congressional investigators.

Their scathing report, to be released Wednesday, looked at problems in regional intelligence-gathering offices known as “fusion centers” that are financed by the Department of Homeland Security and created jointly with state and local law enforcement agencies.

The report found that the centers “forwarded intelligence of uneven quality – oftentimes shoddy, rarely timely, sometimes endangering citizens’ civil liberties and Privacy Act protections, occasionally taken from already published public sources, and more often than not unrelated to terrorism.”

The Congressional investigators also found that the reports were often derided by homeland security analysts who reviewed the work. “I see nothing to be gained by releasing this report,” one analyst wrote repeatedly on several draft reports.

The investigators also discovered that federal officials cannot account for as much as $1.4 billion in taxpayer money earmarked for fusion centers and that some of the centers listed on paper by the Homeland Security Department do not even exist.”

This same organization recently purchased well over one billion .40 caliber “hollow point” bullets. We have since learned they don’t have weapons to use them. This is another “Wylie Coyote” oversight.

As for entertainment, popular American television shows, I will discuss two I watched, while fighting back nausea, last night.

One was the popular HBO series “Homeland,” one of President Obama’s favorites. The show is about an American soldier tortured by Islamic militants for eight years, a man who converted to Islam and, of course, has now become a “terrorist” himself.

Before the show was on for 10 minutes, we hear a litany of Israeli propaganda including the oft repeated mistranslation of Iran’s statements about the fate of Zionism. The real statement about Zionism “disappearing from the sands of history” was again purposefully and knowingly mistranslated as “Iran is trying to destroy Israel and kill all the Jews.”

The show suggested that the United States use nuclear weapons to destroy Iran. These pronouncements came from a child and were intended clearly to influence the American public as to the acceptability of a nuclear first strike killing millions of innocent people because it would serve Israel.

No effort, whatsoever, was made to hide the prejudice and intent to commit war crimes and all was predicated on the belief that the audience was both moronic and morally flawed.

The current election rhetoric makes one thing clear, though it may be a minority, those who support Romney would, in all probability, also support a nuclear “first strike” on any nation, were Israel to desire it, and do so contrary to any fact.

I could follow this into a discussion of how America, “the land of the free,” has, for the last few elections found genuinely base and evil people to run for public office and how much effort is made to hide this fact from Americans through campaigns based on “our candidate is a Satanic criminal but so is the other one” but we will save this for another time.

Our second television show is called “NCIS Los Angeles.” The real organization, the Naval Criminal Investigation Service, in real life, spends 90% of its time arresting high ranking officers for having sex with the wives of their underlings or arresting enlisted men and women for use of street drugs or speaking too openly in public about the incompetence of their leaders.

On TV, however, the obsess on Iranian “terrorist gangs” that roam Los Angeles in Mercedes 600 sedans, wearing Armani suits and waving guns in public.

Television shows are regulated by the Federal Communications Commission and each network has “Standards and Practices” regulators whose responsibility is to clear each show and remove content that is inconsistent with fact or racially, ethnically or religiously objectionable.

It is not even a minor exaggeration to state that not only are the television networks controlled by “dual citizens” of both the US and Israel, entertainment and “infotainment” as well, but that “Standards and Practices” are directly tasked to indoctrinate the American people for an inevitable upcoming world war.

American television is “war mongering” Islamophobic entertainment, of course, but also includes more than one network that do nothing but demonstrate advanced weaponry.

American children can watch at least five hours a day of uplink footage of drone strikes, each one killing only “militants.” No mention is made that fully 98% of the “militants” killed are innocent civilians.

With up to 1000 channels, thankfully many handling sports, food preparation of “reality,” better described as “bad manners” and “social discord,” there is still a continual flow of wild historical and archeological misinterpretation, mostly centered around the Middle East, depicting Israel and the primary ancient civilization with Persia, Egypt and Greece only having significance as to how they interacted with the Israelis.

Other subjects involve “Israeli archeology” with shows such as the “Naked Archeologist,” a former IDF Commando who, each week, proves that Christianity and Islam are based on false myths.

In one episode, the “Naked Archeologist” visited a warehouse in Tel Aviv, opening a cardboard box, taking out bones, waving them around claiming they were the remains of Christ and the Apostle Peter, discovered, they claim, under a former Palestinian, not “Israeli” home in Jerusalem.

We aren’t beginning to look at the “religious channels,” all dominated by a wild pseudo-Christian heresy originating with a lifelong alcoholic named Scofield, who was born only a few short miles from where I write this. Scofield is the “inventor” of the theory of “dispensationalism” which has degenerated into the worship of Zionism and advocacy for an immediate nuclear World War in order to fulfill a number of prophesies, most of which were never in any holy book.

This is psychological warfare, disinformation, war through “thought control,” or “game theory warfare,” the great specialties of Israel and the Mossad.

The weak-minded are turned into rabid dogs and the well-meaning have their decency used against them, making them more dangerous than the war mongers.

Game theory spares no one; psychological warfare begins with our children, our schools, permeates our media, our society and, in America, will take more than surgery but full “amputation” to remove from our culture.

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/10/04/264864/hollywood-masters-propaganda-war-on-iran/

The Myth of the U.N. Creation of Israel

There is a widely accepted belief that United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 “created” Israel, based upon an understanding that this resolution partitioned Palestine or otherwise conferred legal authority or legitimacy to the declaration of the existence of the state of Israel. However, despite its popularity, this belief has no basis in fact, as a review of the resolution’s history and examination of legal principles demonstrates incontrovertibly.

Great Britain had occupied Palestine during the First World War, and in July 1922, the League of Nations issued its mandate for Palestine, which recognized the British government as the occupying power and effectively conferred to it the color of legal authority to temporarily administrate the territory.[1] On April 2, 1947, seeking to extract itself from the conflict that had arisen in Palestine between Jews and Arabs as a result of the Zionist movement to establish in Palestine a “national home for the Jewish people”,[2] the United Kingdom submitted a letter to the U.N. requesting the Secretary General “to place the question of Palestine on the Agenda of the General Assembly at its next regular Annual Session”, and requesting the Assembly “to make recommendations, under Article 10 of the Charter, concerning the future government of Palestine.”[3] To that end, on May 15, the General Assembly adopted Resolution 106, which established the U.N. Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) to investigate “the question of Palestine”, to “prepare a report to the General Assembly” based upon its findings, and to “submit such proposals as it may consider appropriate for the solution of the problem of Palestine”.[4]

On September 3, UNSCOP issued its report to the General Assembly declaring its majority recommendation that Palestine be partitioned into separate Jewish and Arab states. It noted that the population of Palestine at the end of 1946 was estimated to be almost 1,846,000, with 1,203,000 Arabs (65 percent) and 608,000 Jews (33 percent). Growth of the Jewish population had been mainly the result of immigration, while growth of the Arab population had been “almost entirely” due to natural increase. It observed that there was “no clear territorial separation of Jews and Arabs by large contiguous areas”, and even in the Jaffa district, which included Tel Aviv, Arabs constituted a majority.[5] Land ownership statistics from 1945 showed that Arabs owned more land than Jews in every single district in Palestine. The district with the highest percentage of Jewish ownership was Jaffa, where 39 percent of the land was owned by Jews, compared to 47 percent owned by Arabs.[6] In the whole of Palestine at the time UNSCOP issued its report, Arabs owned 85 percent of the land,[7] while Jews owned less than 7 percent.[8]

Despite these facts, the UNSCOP proposal was that the Arab state be constituted from only 45.5 percent of the whole of Palestine, while the Jews would be awarded 55.5 percent of the total area for their state.[9] The UNSCOP report acknowledged that

With regard to the principle of self-determination, although international recognition was extended to this principle at the end of the First World War and it was adhered to with regard to the other Arab territories, at the time of the creation of the ‘A’ Mandates, it was not applied to Palestine, obviously because of the intention to make possible the creation of the Jewish National Home there. Actually, it may well be said that the Jewish National Home and the sui generis Mandate for Palestine run counter to that principle.[10]

In other words, the report explicitly recognized that the denial of Palestinian independence in order to pursue the goal of establishing a Jewish state constituted a rejection of the right of the Arab majority to self-determination. And yet, despite this recognition, UNSCOP had accepted this rejection of Arab rights as being within the bounds of a legitimate and reasonable framework for a solution.

Following the issuance of the UNSCOP report, the U.K. issued a statement declaring its agreement with the report’s recommendations, but adding that “if the Assembly should recommend a policy which is not acceptable to both Jews and Arabs, the United Kingdom Government would not feel able to implement it.”[11] The position of the Arabs had been clear from the beginning, but the Arab Higher Committee issued a statement on September 29 reiterating that “the Arabs of Palestine were determined to oppose with all the means at their disposal, any scheme that provided for segregation or partition, or that would give to a minority special and preferential status”. It instead

advocated freedom and independence for an Arab State in the whole of Palestine which would respect human rights, fundamental freedoms and equality of all persons before the law, and would protect the legitimate rights and interests of all minorities whilst guaranteeing freedom of worship and access to the Holy Places.[12]

The U.K. followed with a statement reiterating “that His Majesty’s Government could not play a major part in the implementation of a scheme that was not acceptable to both Arabs and Jews”, but adding “that they would, however, not wish to impede the implementation of a recommendation approved by the General Assembly.”[13]

The Ad Hoc Committee on the Palestinian Question was established by the General Assembly shortly after the issuance of the UNSCOP report in order to continue to study the problem and make recommendations. A sub-committee was established in turn that was tasked with examining the legal issues pertaining to the situation in Palestine, and it released the report of its findings on November 11. It observed that the UNSCOP report had accepted a basic premise “that the claims to Palestine of the Arabs and Jews both possess validity”, which was “not supported by any cogent reasons and is demonstrably against the weight of all available evidence.” With an end to the Mandate and with British withdrawal, “there is no further obstacle to the conversion of Palestine into an independent state”, which “would be the logical culmination of the objectives of the Mandate” and the Covenant of the League of Nations. It found that “the General Assembly is not competent to recommend, still less to enforce, any solution other than the recognition of the independence of Palestine, and that the settlement of the future government of Palestine is a matter solely for the people of Palestine.” It concluded that “no further discussion of the Palestine problem seems to be necessary or appropriate, and this item should be struck off the agenda of the General Assembly”, but that if there was a dispute on that point, “it would be essential to obtain the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice on this issue”, as had already been requested by several of the Arab states. It concluded further that the partition plan was “contrary to the principles of the Charter, and the United Nations have no power to give effect to it.” The U.N. could not

deprive the majority of the people of Palestine of their territory and transfer it to the exclusive use of a minority in the country…. The United Nations Organization has no power to create a new State. Such a decision can only be taken by the free will of the people of the territories in question. That condition is not fulfilled in the case of the majority proposal, as it involves the establishment of a Jewish State in complete disregard of the wishes and interests of the Arabs of Palestine.[14]

Nevertheless, the General Assembly passed Resolution 181 on November 29, with 33 votes in favor to 13 votes against, and 10 abstentions.[15] The relevant text of the resolution stated:

The General Assembly….

Recommends to the United Kingdom, as the mandatory Power for Palestine, and to all other Members of the United Nations the adoption and implementation, with regard to the future government of Palestine, of the Plan of Partition with Economic Union set out below;

Requests that

(a) The Security Council take the necessary measure as provided for in the plan for its implementation;

(b) The Security Council consider, if circumstances during the transitional period require such consideration, whether the situation in Palestine constitutes a threat to the peace. If it decides that such a threat exists, and in order to maintain international peace and security, the Security Council should supplement the authorization of the General Assembly by taking measure, under Articles 39 and 41 of the Charter, to empower the United Nations Commission, as provided in this resolution, to exercise in Palestine the functions which are assigned to it by this resolution;

(c) The Security Council determine as a threat to the peace, breach of the peace or act of aggression, in accordance with Article 39 of the Charter, any attempt to alter by force the settlement envisaged by this resolution;

(d) The Trusteeship Council be informed of the responsibilities envisaged for it in this plan;

Calls upon the inhabitants of Palestine to take such steps as may be necessary on their part to put this plan into effect;

Appeals to all Governments and all peoples to refrain from taking action which might hamper or delay the carrying out of these recommendations….[16]

A simple reading of the text is enough to show that the resolution did not partition Palestine or offer any legal basis for doing so. It merely recommended that the partition plan be implemented and requested the Security Council to take up the matter from there. It called upon the inhabitants of Palestine to accept the plan, but they were certainly under no obligation to do so.

A Plan Never Implemented

The matter was thus taken up by the Security Council, where, on December 9, the Syrian representative to the U.N., Faris El-Khouri, observed that “the General Assembly is not a world government which can dictate orders, partition countries or impose constitutions, rules, regulations and treaties on people without their consent.” When the Soviet representative Andrei Gromyko stated his government’s opposing view that “The resolution of the General Assembly should be implemented” by the Security Council, El-Khouri replied by noting further that

Certain paragraphs of the resolution of the General Assembly which concern the Security Council are referred to the Council, namely, paragraphs (a), (b) and (c), outlining the functions of the Security Council in respect of the Palestinian question. All of the members of the Security Council are familiar with the Council’s functions, which are well defined and clearly stated in the Charter of the United Nations. I do not believe that the resolution of the General Assembly can add to or delete from these functions. The recommendations of the General Assembly are well known to be recommendations, and Member States are not required by force to accept them. Member States may or may not accept them, and the same applies to the Security Council. [17]

On February 6, 1948, the Arab Higher Committee again communicated to the U.N. Secretary General its position that the partition plan was “contrary to the letter and spirit of the United Nations Charter”. The U.N. “has no jurisdiction to order or recommend the partition of Palestine. There is nothing in the Charter to warrant such authority, consequently the recommendation of partition is ultra vires and therefore null and void.” Additionally, the Arab Higher Committee noted that

The Arab Delegations submitted proposals in the Ad Hoc Committee in order to refer the whole legal issue raised for a ruling by the International Court of Justice. The said proposals were never put to vote by the president in the Assembly. The United Nations is an International body entrusted with the task of enforcing peace and justice in international affairs. How would there be any confidence in such a body if it bluntly and unreasonably refuses to refer such a dispute to the International Court of Justice?

“The Arabs of Palestine will never recognize the validity of the extorted partition recommendations or the authority of the United Nations to make them”, the Arab Higher Committee declared, and they would “consider that any attempt by the Jews or any power or group of powers to establish a Jewish State in Arab territory is an act of aggression which will be resisted in self-defense by force.”[18]

On February 16, the U.N. Palestine Commission, tasked by the General Assembly to prepare for the transfer of authority from the Mandatory Power to the successor governments under the partition plan, issued its first report to the Security Council. It concluded on the basis of the Arab rejection that it “finds itself confronted with an attempt to defect its purposes, and to nullify the resolution of the General Assembly”, and calling upon the Security Council to provide an armed force “which alone would enable the Commission to discharge its responsibilities on the termination of the Mandate”. In effect, the Palestine Commission had determined that the partition plan should be implemented against the will of the majority population of Palestine by force.[19]

In response to that suggestion, Colombia submitted a draft Security Council resolution noting that the U.N. Charter did “not authorize the Security Council to create special forces for the purposes indicated by the United Nations Palestine Commission”.[20] The U.S. delegate, Warren Austin, similarly stated at the 253rd meeting of the Security Council on February 24 that

The Security Council is authorized to take forceful measures with respect to Palestine to remove a threat to international peace. The Charter of the United Nations does not empower the Security Council to enforce a political settlement whether it is pursuant to a recommendation of the General Assembly or of the Security Council itself. What this means is this: The Security Council, under the Charter, can take action to prevent aggression against Palestine from outside. The Security Council, by these same powers, can take action to prevent a threat to international peace and security from inside Palestine. But this action must be directed solely to the maintenance of international peace. The Security Council’s action, in other words, is directed to keeping the peace and not to enforcing partition.[21]

The United States nevertheless submitted its own draft text more ambiguously accepting the requests of the Palestine Commission “subject to the authority of the Security Council under the Charter”.[22] Faris El-Khouri objected to the U.S. draft on the grounds that “before accepting these three requests, it is our duty to ascertain whether they are or are not within the framework of the Security Council as limited by the Charter. If it is found that they are not, we should decline to accept them.” He recalled Austin’s own statement on the lack of authority of the Security Council, saying, “It would follow from this undeniable fact that any recommendation on a political settlement can be implemented only if the parties concerned willingly accept and complement it.” Furthermore, “the partition plan itself constitutes a threat to the peace, being openly rejected by all those at whose expense it was to be executed.”[23] Austin in turn explained the intent of the U.S. draft that its acceptance of Resolution 181 is

subject to the limitation that armed force cannot be used for implementation of the plan, because the Charter limits the use of United Nations force expressly to threats to and breaches of the peace and aggression affecting international peace. Therefore, we must interpret the General Assembly resolution as meaning that the United Nations measures to implement this resolution are peaceful measures.

Moreover, explained Austin, the U.S. draft

does not authorize use of enforcement under Articles 39 and 41 of the Charter to empower the United Nations Commission to exercise in Palestine the functions which are assigned to it by the resolution, because the Charter does not authorize either the General Assembly or the Security Council to do any such thing.[24]

When the Security Council did finally adopt a resolution on March 5, it merely made a note of “Having received General Assembly resolution 181″ and the first monthly Palestine Commission report, and resolved

to call on the permanent members of the Council to consult and to inform the Security Council regarding the situation with respect to Palestine and to make, as the result of such consultations, recommendations to it regarding the guidance and instructions which the Council might usefully give to the Palestine Commission with a view to implementing the resolution of the General Assembly.[25]

During further debates at the Security Council over how to proceed, Austin observed that it had become “clear that the Security Council is not prepared to go ahead with efforts to implement this plan in the existing situation.” At the same time, it was clear that the U.K.’s announced termination of the Mandate on May 15 “would result, in the light of information now available, in chaos, heavy fighting and much loss of life in Palestine.” The U.N. could not permit this, he said, and the Security Council had the responsibility and authority under the Charter to act to prevent such a threat to the peace. The U.S. also proposed establishing a Trusteeship over Palestine to give further opportunity to the Jews and Arabs to reach a mutual agreement. Pending the convening of a special session of the General Assembly to that end, “we believe that the Security Council should instruct the Palestine Commission to suspend its efforts to implement the proposed partition plan.”[26]

The Security Council President, speaking as the representative from China, responded: “The United Nations was created mainly for the maintenance of international peace. It would be tragic indeed if the United Nations, by attempting a political settlement, should be the cause of war. For these reasons, my delegation supports the general principles of the proposal of the United States delegation.”[27] At a further meeting of the Security Council, the Canadian delegate stated that the partition plan “is based on a number of important assumptions”, the first of which was that “it was assumed that the two communities in Palestine would co-operate in putting into effect the solution to the Palestine problem which was recommended by the General Assembly.”[28] The French delegate, while declining to extend either approval for or disapproval of the U.S. proposal, observed that it would allow for any number of alternative solutions from the partition plan, including “a single State with sufficient guarantees for minorities”.[29] The representative from the Jewish Agency for Palestine read a statement categorically rejecting “any plan to set up a trusteeship regime for Palestine”, which “would necessarily entail a denial of the Jewish right to national independence.”[30]

Mindful of the worsening situation in Palestine, and wishing to avoid further debate, the U.S. proposed another draft resolution calling for a truce between Jewish and Arab armed groups that Austin noted “would not prejudice the claims of either group” and which “does not mention trusteeship.”[31] It was adopted as Resolution 43 on April 1.[32] Resolution 44 was also passed the same day requesting “the Secretary-General, in accordance with Article 20 of the United Nations Charter, to convoke a special session of the General Assembly to consider further the question of the future government of Palestine.”[33] Resolution 46 reiterated the Security Council’s call for the cessation of hostilities in Palestine,[34] and Resolution 48 established a “Truce Commission” to further the goal of implementing its resolutions calling for an end to the violence.[35]

On May 14, the Zionist leadership unilaterally declared the existence of the State of Israel, citing Resolution 181 as constituting “recognition by the United Nations of the right of the Jewish people to establish their State”.[36] As anticipated, war ensued.

The Authority of the U.N. with Regard to Partition

Chapter 1, Article 1 of the U.N. Charter defines its purposes and principles, which are to “maintain international peace and security”, to “develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples”, and to “achieve international co-operation” on various issues and “promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all”.

The functions and powers of the General Assembly are listed under Chapter IV, Articles 10 through 17. It is tasked to initiate studies and make recommendations to promote international cooperation and the development of international law, to receive reports from the Security Council and other organs of the U.N., and to consider and approve the organization’s budget. It is also tasked with performing functions under the international trusteeship system. Its authority is otherwise limited to considering and discussing matters within the scope of the Charter, making recommendations to Member States or the Security Council, or calling attention of matters to the Security Council.

Chapter V, Articles 24 through 26, states the functions and powers of the Security Council.  It is tasked with maintaining peace and security in accordance with the purposes and principles of the U.N. The specific powers granted to the Security Council are stated in Chapters VI, VII, VIII, and XII. Under Chapter VI, the Security Council may call upon parties to settle disputes by peaceful means, investigate, and make a determination as to whether a dispute or situation constitutes a threat to peace and security. It may recommend appropriate procedures to resolve disputes, taking into consideration that “legal disputes should as a general rule be referred by the parties to the International Court of Justice”. Under Chapter VII, the Security Council may determine the existence of a threat to peace and make recommendations or decide what measures are to be taken to maintain or restore peace and security. It may call upon concerned parties to take provisional measures “without prejudice to the rights, claims, or position of the parties concerned.” It may call upon member states to employ “measures not involving the use of armed force” to apply such measures. Should such measures be inadequate, it may authorize the use of armed forces “to maintain or restore international peace and security”. Chapter VIII states that the Security Council “shall encourage the development of pacific settlements of local disputes” through regional arrangements or agencies, and utilize such to enforce actions under its authority.

The functions and powers of the International Trusteeship System are listed under Chapter XII, Articles 75 through 85. The purpose of the system is to administer and supervise territories placed therein by agreement with the goal of “development towards self-government or independence as may be appropriate to the particular circumstances of each territory and its peoples and the freely expressed wishes of the peoples concerned”. The system is to operate in accordance with the purposes of the U.N. stated in Article 1, including respect for the right of self-determination. The General Assembly is tasked with all functions “not designated as strategic”, which are designated to the Security Council. A Trusteeship Council is established to assist the General Assembly and the Security Council to perform their functions under the system.

Chapter XIII, Article 87 states the functions and powers of the Trusteeship Council, which are shared by the General Assembly. Authority is granted to consider reports, accept and examine petitions, provide for visits to trust territories, and “take these and other actions in conformity with the terms of the trusteeship agreements.”

Another relevant section is Chapter XI, entitled the “Declaration Regarding Non-Self-Governing Territories”, which states that

Members of the United Nations which have or assume responsibilities for the administration of territories whose peoples have not yet attained a full measure of self-government recognize the principle that the interests of the inhabitants of these territories are paramount, and accept as a sacred trust the obligation to promote to the utmost, within the system of international peace and security established by the present Charter, the well-being of the inhabitants of these territories…

To that end, Member states are “to develop self-government, to take due account of the political aspirations of the peoples, and to assist them in the progressive development of their free political institutions”.

Conclusion

The partition plan put forth by UNSCOP sought to create within Palestine a Jewish state contrary to the express will of the majority of its inhabitants. Despite constituting only a third of the population and owning less than 7 percent of the land, it sought to grant to the Jews more than half of Palestine for purpose of creating that Jewish state. It would, in other words, take land from the Arabs and give it to the Jews. The inherent injustice of the partition plan stands in stark contrast to alternative plan proposed by the Arabs, of an independent state of Palestine in which the rights of the Jewish minority would be recognized and respected, and which would afford the Jewish population representation in a democratic government. The partition plan was blatantly prejudicial to the rights of the majority Arab population, and was premised on the rejection of their right to self-determination. This is all the more uncontroversial inasmuch as the UNSCOP report itself explicitly acknowledged that the proposal to create a Jewish state in Palestine was contrary to the principle of self-determination. The plan was also premised upon the erroneous assumption that the Arabs would simply acquiesce to having their land taken from them and voluntarily surrender their majority rights, including their right to self-determination.

U.N. General Assembly Resolution 181 neither legally partitioned Palestine nor conferred upon the Zionist leadership any legal authority to unilaterally declare the existence of the Jewish state of Israel. It merely recommended that the UNSCOP partition plan be accepted and implemented by the concerned parties. Naturally, to have any weight of law, the plan, like any contract, would have to have been formally agreed upon by both parties, which it was not. Nor could the General Assembly have legally partitioned Palestine or otherwise conferred legal authority for the creation of Israel to the Zionist leadership, as it simply had no such authority to confer. When the Security Council took up the matter referred to it by the General Assembly, it could come to no consensus on how to proceed with implementing the partition plan. It being apparent that the plan could not be implemented by peaceful means, the suggestion that it be implemented by force was rejected by members of the Security Council. The simple fact of the matter is that the plan was never implemented. Numerous delegates from member states, including the U.S., arrived at the conclusion that the plan was impracticable, and, furthermore, that the Security Council had no authority to implement such a plan except by mutual consent by concerned parties, which was absent in this case.

The U.S., Syria, and other member nations were correct in their observations that, while the Security Council did have authority to declare a threat to the peace and authorize the use of force to deal with that and maintain or restore peace and security, it did not have any authority to implement by force a plan to partition Palestine contrary to the will of most of its inhabitants. Any attempt to usurp such authority by either the General Assembly or the Security Council would have been a prima facie violation of the Charter’s founding principle of respect for the right to self-determination of all peoples, and thus null and void under international law.

In sum, the popular claim that the U.N. “created” Israel is a myth, and Israel’s own claim in its founding document that U.N. Resolution 181 constituted legal authority for Israel’s creation, or otherwise constituted “recognition” by the U.N. of the “right” of the Zionist Jews to expropriate for themselves Arab land and deny to the majority Arab population of that land their own right to self-determination, is a patent fraud.

Further corollaries may be drawn. The disaster inflicted upon Palestine was not inevitable. The U.N. was created for the purpose of preventing such catastrophes. Yet it failed miserably to do so, on numerous counts. It failed in its duty to refer the legal questions of the claims to Palestine to the International Court of Justice, despite requests from member states to do so. It failed to use all means within its authority, including the use of armed forces, to maintain peace and prevent the war that was predicted would occur upon the termination of the Mandate. And most importantly, far from upholding its founding principles, the U.N. effectively acted to preventthe establishment of an independent and democratic state of Palestine, in direct violation of the principles of its own Charter. The consequences of these and other failures are still witnessed by the world today on a daily basis. Recognition of the grave injustice perpetrated against the Palestinian people in this regard and dispelling such historical myths is essential if a way forward towards peace and reconciliation is to be found.

Notes

[1] The Palestine Mandate of the Council of the League of Nations, July 24, 1922, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/palmanda.asp.

[2] Great Britain had contributed to the conflict by making contradictory promises to both Jews and Arabs, including a declaration approved by the British Cabinet that read, “His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.” This declaration was delivered by Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour to representative of the Zionist movement Lord Lionel Walter Rothschild in a letter on November 2, 1917, and thus came to be known as “The Balfour Declaration”, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/balfour.asp.

[3] Letter from the United Kingdom Delegation to the United Nations to the U.N. Secretary-General, April 2, 1947, http://unispal.un.org/unispal.nsf/9a798adbf322aff38525617b006d88d7/87aaa6be8a3a7015802564ad0037ef57?OpenDocument.

[4] U.N. General Assembly Resolution 106, May 15, 1947, http://unispal.un.org/unispal.nsf/9a798adbf322aff38525617b006d88d7/f5a49e57095c35b685256bcf0075d9c2?OpenDocument.

[5] United Nations Special Committee on Palestine Report to the General Assembly, September 3, 1947, http://unispal.un.org/unispal.nsf/9a798adbf322aff38525617b006d88d7/07175de9fa2de563852568d3006e10f3?OpenDocument.

[6] “Palestine Land Ownership by Sub-Districts (1945)”, United Nations, August 1950, http://domino.un.org/maps/m0094.jpg. The map was prepared on the instructions of Sub-Committee 2 of the Ad Hoc Committee on the Palestinian question and presented as Map No. 94(b). Statistics were as follows (Arab/Jewish land ownership in percentages): Safad: 68/18; Acre: 87/3; Tiberias: 51/38; Haifa: 42/35; Nazareth: 52/28; Beisan: 44/34; Jenin: 84/1, Tulkarm: 78/17; Nablus: 87/1; Jaffa: 47/39; Ramle: 77/14; Ramallah: 99/less than 1; Jerusalem: 84/2; Gaza: 75/4; Hebron: 96/less than 1; Beersheeba: 15/less than 1.

[7] UNSCOP Report.

[8] Walid Khalidi, “Revisiting the UNGA Partition Resolution”, Journal of Palestine Studies XXVII, no. 1 (Autumn 1997), p. 11, http://www.palestine-studies.org/enakba/diplomacy/Khalidi,%20Revisiting%20the%201947%20UN%20Partition%20Resolution.pdf. Edward W. Said, The Question of Palestine (New York: Vintage Books Edition, 1992), pp. 23, 98.

[9] Khalidi, p. 11.

[10] UNSCOP Report.

[11] “U.K. Accepts UNSCOP General Recommendations; Will Not Implement Policy Unacceptable by Both Arabs and Jews”, Press Release, Ad Hoc Committee on Palestinian Question 2nd Meeting, September 26, 1947, http://unispal.un.org/unispal.nsf/9a798adbf322aff38525617b006d88d7/ecb5eae2e1d29ed08525686d00529256?OpenDocument.

[12] “The Arab Case Stated by Mr. Jamal Husseini”, Press Release, Ad Hoc Committee on Palestinian Question 3rd Meeting, United Nations, September 29, 1947, http://unispal.un.org/unispal.nsf/9a798adbf322aff38525617b006d88d7/a8c17fca1b8cf5338525691b0063f769?OpenDocument.

[13] “Palestine Committee Hears U.K. Stand and Adjourns; Sub-Committees Meet”, Press Release, Ad Hoc Committee on Palestine 24th Meeting, United Nations, November 20, 1947, http://unispal.un.org/unispal.nsf/9a798adbf322aff38525617b006d88d7/12966c9f443583e085256a7200661aab?OpenDocument.

[14] “Ad Hoc Committee on the Palestinian Question Report of Sub-Committee 2″, United Nations, November 11 1947, http://unispal.un.org/pdfs/AAC1432.pdf.

[15] United Nations General Assembly 128th Plenary Meeting, United Nations, November 29, 1947, http://unispal.un.org/unispal.nsf/9a798adbf322aff38525617b006d88d7/46815f76b9d9270085256ce600522c9e?OpenDocument.

[16] United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181, November 29, 1947, http://unispal.un.org/unispal.nsf/9a798adbf322aff38525617b006d88d7/7f0af2bd897689b785256c330061d253?OpenDocument.

[17] United Nations Security Council 222nd Meeting, December 9, 1947, http://unispal.un.org/unispal.nsf/9a798adbf322aff38525617b006d88d7/ce37bc968122a33985256e6900649bf6?OpenDocument.

[18] “First Special Report to the Security Council: The Problem of Security in Palestine”, United Nations Palestine Commission, February 16, 1948, http://domino.un.org/unispal.nsf/5ba47a5c6cef541b802563e000493b8c/fdf734eb76c39d6385256c4c004cdba7?OpenDocument.

[19] Ibid.

[20] Draft Resolution on the Palestinian Question Submitted by the Representative of Colombia at the 254th Meeting of the Security Council, February 24, 1948, http://unispal.un.org/pdfs/S684.pdf.

[21] U.N. Security Council 253rd Meeting (S/PV.253), February 24, 1948, http://documents.un.org.

[22] Draft Resolution on the Palestinian Question Submitted by the Representative of the United States at the Two Hundred and Fifty Fifth Meeting of the Security Council, February 25, 1948, http://unispal.un.org/pdfs/S685.pdf.

[23] United Nations Security Council 260th Meeting, March 2, 1948, http://domino.un.org/unispal.nsf/9a798adbf322aff38525617b006d88d7/fcbe849f43cbb7158525764f00537dcb?OpenDocument.

[24] Ibid.

[25] United Nations Security Council Resolution 42, March 5, 1948, http://domino.un.org/unispal.nsf/9a798adbf322aff38525617b006d88d7/d0f3291a30a2bc30852560ba006cfb88?OpenDocument.

[26] U.N. Security Council 271st Meeting, March 19, 1948, http://domino.un.org/unispal.nsf/9a798adbf322aff38525617b006d88d7/5072db486adf13d0802564ad00394160?OpenDocument.

[27] Ibid.

[28] United Nations Security Council 274th Meeting, March 24, 1948, http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/NL4/812/32/PDF/NL481232.pdf?OpenElement.

[29] Ibid.

[30] Ibid.

[31] United Nations Security Council 275th Meeting, March 30, 1948, http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/NL4/812/32/PDF/NL481232.pdf?OpenElement.

[32] United Nations Security Council Resolution 43, April 1, 1948, http://domino.un.org/unispal.nsf/9a798adbf322aff38525617b006d88d7/676bb71de92db89b852560ba006748d4?OpenDocument.

[33] United Nations Security Council Resolution 44, April 1, 1948, http://domino.un.org/unispal.nsf/9a798adbf322aff38525617b006d88d7/1b13eb4af9118629852560ba0067c5ad?OpenDocument.

[34] United Nations Security Council Resolution 46, April 17, 1948, http://domino.un.org/unispal.nsf/9a798adbf322aff38525617b006d88d7/9612b691fc54f280852560ba006da8c8?OpenDocument.

[35] United Nations Security Council Resolution 48, April 23, 1948, http://domino.un.org/unispal.nsf/9a798adbf322aff38525617b006d88d7/d9c60b4a589766af852560ba006ddd95?OpenDocument.

[36] The Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel, May 14, 1948, http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/peace%20process/guide%20to%20the%20peace%20process/declaration%20of%20establishment%20of%20state%20of%20israel

http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2010/10/26/the-myth-of-the-u-n-creation-of-israel/0/

The Last Housing Crash Is Not Even Over But Bernanke Is Already Setting The Stage For The Next One

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is determined to push mortgage rates to record low levels and he is encouraging the banks that the Fed regulates to make home loans more freely.  Wait a second – isn’t that exactly what caused the last housing bubble?  After 9/11, the Federal Reserve slashed interest rates and this caused mortgage rates to steadily fall.  Financial institutions were urged to help “expand home ownership” in America, and many of them started making home loans to people who never, ever should have gotten home loans.  When mortgage rates started to go back up, millions of families with adjustable rate mortgages discovered that they could not make their monthly payments.  Mortgage delinquencies absolutely soared and large numbers of mortgage-backed securities suddenly turned into garbage.  So what is the Fed doing about it?  The Fed recently announced another round of quantitative easing in which it will buy 40 billion dollars worth of these mortgage-backed securities a month.  Essentially the Fed is clearing the bad financial paper out of the system and is creating the conditions for another housing bubble.  But will we really fix our problems by going back and doing the same things that got us into trouble in the first place?

The following chart shows how interest rates on 30 year conventional mortgages have declined over the past 30 years.  After 9/11, mortgage rates were pushed to ridiculously low levels and that helped create the mess that we are currently in.

So what did the Fed decide to do to fix things?  They decided to push mortgage rates even lower….

But even with mortgage rates at exceptionally low levels, new home sales in the United States continue to hover around record lows.

Does this look like a “housing recovery” to you?….

Of course we are not experiencing a housing recovery.

In order to have a housing recovery, people need to be able to afford to buy homes.

Unfortunately, median household income in the United States has declined for four years in a row, and the employment rate is currently just 0.1 percent above the lowest point that it has been at during this entire economic crisis.

And most of the new jobs that our economy is producing are low paying jobs.

As I have written about previously, only 24.6 percent of all jobs in America today are “good jobs”.

But if you don’t have a good job you can’t afford to buy a good house.

So unless Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke can somehow magically make millions of good jobs fall from the sky, the truth is that we actually need housing prices to fall so average American families can afford them.

When we push families into mortgages that they cannot afford, large numbers of them end up defaulting on those mortgages.

As the following chart shows, mortgage delinquencies continue to hover around all-time record highs.  Right now mortgage delinquencies are about 5 times higher than they were a decade ago….

So the foreclosure nightmare is far from over.  There are going to be millions and millions more families that are going to lose their homes eventually.

In fact, there are some very troubling signs that things are taking a turn for the worse….

-In the state of Illinois, the number of foreclosures is increasing again.

-In the state of New York, the number of pre-foreclosure notices has absolutely exploded over the past two years.

-In the state of California, mortgage delinquency rates are absolutely frightening.

We don’t want housing prices to rise until incomes start rising again.  We don’t want to pump up home values and then get millions more American families to agree to mortgages that they cannot handle.

We need homes to be priced at levels that American families can afford, but Bernanke seems to think that rising home prices will solve our problems.  And in some areas of the country home prices are actually rising.  We are seeing a lot of investors and foreigners come in and pay cash for homes in many of our major cities.

Meanwhile, hard working families all over America are wondering why things never seem to work out for them.

If Bernanke really wanted to fix the housing market, the following three things would help….

1) Let the free market determine housing prices.  Eventually home prices would fall to levels where people could afford them.

2) Stop manipulating mortgage rates and let the free market determine them.  Eventually they would settle at a level that is good for both consumers and financial institutions.

3) Tell banks to only make home loans to people that can afford them.

But the central planners over at the Federal Reserve are not going to do those things.  Instead they are going to keep printing money, keep manipulating interest rates and keep trying to create another housing bubble.

The mainstream media insists that QE3 is going to create more jobs, stimulate economic activity and significantly improve the housing market.

Of course the first two rounds of quantitative easing did none of those things, but somehow everyone seems to think that by doing the same thing again we will get a different result this time.

But what the first two rounds of quantitative easing did accomplish was that they padded the profits of the big banks.

And apparently QE3 is already accomplishing that.  The following is from a recent CNBC article….

Bank profits from new mortgages have soared since the Federal Reserve began its third round of bond purchases two weeks ago, fuelling the debate over the fallout of the latest dose of quantitative easing.

The extent to which QE3 drives down new mortgage rates and helps homeowners or is pocketed by banks will be crucial to the success of the policy and the prospects for growth in the U.S. and global economies next year.

The big financial institutions always seem to win, and we always seem to lose.

Isn’t it wonderful?

So once millions more American families lose their houses and most of us can’t afford to buy homes, where are we supposed to live?

Well, I have a few suggestions….

You could live in an abandoned automobile factory.

You could take over a convenience store and live there.

You could build an underground shelter and prepare for the coming financial crisis.

You could construct a tree house in the middle of a forest and get away from it all.

Does anyone else have any other suggestions?

http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/the-last-housing-crash-is-not-even-over-but-bernanke-is-already-setting-the-stage-for-the-next-one?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-last-housing-crash-is-not-even-over-but-bernanke-is-already-setting-the-stage-for-the-next-one

Joe Biden: “Yes We Do” Want to Raise Taxes By a Trillion Dollars

VP Joe Biden at a campaign event in Council Bluffs, Iowa says that he and Obama want to raise taxes by 1 trillion dollars

A letter to my family and friends about the NDAA and me.

A letter to my family and friends about the NDAA and me.

By Alexa O’Brien on October 3, 2012 12:00 AM

 

Alexa O’Brien – Targeted With NDAA Detention For Campaign Finance Reform
Dear friends and family,

I am reassured to know that you have my back, and that you have done everything to prevent the US Government from threatening to detain me indefinitely without charge for my work as a journalist and citizen.

I am not one for cultivating an exaggerated sense of self-importance. I think it takes more character and courage to live in reality. Anybody who knows me personally, knows that if this can happen to me, it can and will happen to you or someone you know.

Since January 2011, I have covered the WikiLeaks release of US State Department Cables, JTF memoranda known as the ‘GTMO files’, and revolutions across Egypt, Bahrain, Iran, and Yemen, as well as the legal proceedings against Bradley Manning and the US investigation into WikiLeaks. I have interviewed a preeminent US foreign policy expert on the Cambodia cables, and published hours of interviews with former GTMO guards, detainees, defense lawyers, and human rights activists, as well as WikiLeaks media partners: Andy Worthington, a GTMO historian and author, and Atanas Tchobanov, the Balkanleaks’ spokesman and co-editor of Bivol.bg.

Why do I do this work? Because it moves me deeply. Because I am compelled to learn and to understand. The positive results of some of my work also grants me a sense of common purpose in service to my fellow man/woman.

When the US Government said in Federal Court that they would not guarantee that I would not be indefinitely detained without charge under Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act FY2011 for articles I had written on the ‘War on Terror’, you set aside partisanship. You realized that what is as stake is more than an election. What was at stake is the safety of your friend, your daughter, a fellow citizen or journalist, as well as this nation and people across the globe. The NDAA, after all, was passed with bi-partisan support, and signed into law by President Obama.

Section 1021 of the NDAA FY2011 allows for the indefinite detention without charges or trial of anyone, including American citizens, who are deemed by the US Government to be terrorists or terrorist sympathizers. The institutions of civil society – the press and civic square – are now what our military terms an information environment in a global theater of war. The ‘War on Terror’, our military says, is fought with intelligence and information. And, the US Government has already detained journalists at Guantanamo Bay under the AUMF seeking to gain intelligence on media organizations. The President has already played a personal role in the imprisonment of a journalist covering the US ‘War on Terror’ in Yemen.

When Government contractors falsely linked a group, which I helped found – whose only purpose is to support campaign finance reform in the United States – to Al Qaeda, you were outraged.

When I was sent messages by a Government contractor saying that I was now associated with Al Qaeda and so called ‘cyber-terrorists’, you spoke out.

When emails revealed that other private security contractors with ties to the US Government were “specifically asked to connect” the group that I helped found “to any Saudi or other fundamentalist Islamic movements,” you took action.

When US Department of Homeland Security bulletins declared in error that a group that I helped found was linked to so called ‘cyber-terrorists’, you contacted your representative and presidential candidate and expressed that their support of Section 1021 of the NDAA FY2011 had the consequence of your lack of support for their candidacy.

I am especially grateful to those individuals, including a fellow journalist, who warned me privately that there were other unpublished US Government documents and that US Government agents were focusing their sights on me. They cautioned me to take special care. They understood the consequences for me.

Citizenship is a public office, but who among us can risk engaging in the body politic authentically, when we have families to provide for? Who can risk publishing about the workings of Government, our alliances, and wars when you might end up in my position?

No matter what your party affiliation, Section 1021 of the NDAA FY 2011 violates the First and Fifth Amendments to the US constitution, the principles that safeguard the independence of our republic and any real freedom or lasting security for our citizens and all peoples.

If this could happen to someone like me, it can and will happen to someone like you or someone you know. None of us can afford that risk. Do something now.

Best regards,

Alexa O’Brien

http://www.alexaobrien.com/secondsight/ndaa_hedges_et/ndaa_letter_to_my_friends_and_family.html

Not All ‘End the Fed’ People Quite Get It

Several days ago I managed to get myself drawn into a Facebook exchange with someone who opposes the Federal Reserve and the current banking system in general for not quite the right reasons. Thus the Fed is a “private bank,” it does not put enough money into circulation, its member banks enslave people by charging interest on loans, etc. This person thinks of himself as part of the “liberty movement.”

Another claim of his was that the elites funded and promoted the Austrian School of economics, and that these same elites were behind the funding of Karl Marx. This theory would probably have a difficult time accounting for why Austrian economics is still relatively obscure — why should that be, if the world’s most powerful people are supposedly promoting it? — or why Marx, far from drowning in money thrown at him by the elites, spent his life begging for money, mainly from Friedrich Engels. Given how badly Marx treated and took advantage of Engels, the latter would presumably have been delighted if some moneybags had taken over the task of funding poor Karl.

Until now I’ve more or less let these folks be. But when I heard someone say he had dropped out of the End the Fed movement because it was so dominated by people like this — people who think fiat money per se is fine, but that it ought to be issued directly by Congress rather than by the Fed — I began to wonder if I should address it. So in this exchange, I asked my opponent if he could distill his thoughts into five or ten propositions on money, which I could then examine. I am convinced that the misguided policy proposals coming from people like this are the result of fallacious reasoning about money, so I wanted him to spell out his thinking clearly and systematically.

I am going to reproduce for you what he wrote. The first time through he listed ten things he wanted me to prove. I explained to him that demands are not propositions. I want to know what your views on money are, I said. Someone came along and reworded his demands into the form of propositions.

I said I would respond to these propositions. Not because of the importance or lack thereof of the individual involved, but because these fallacies are evidently widespread within the end-the-Fed orbit. I’d like to have good answers out there.

But look at what he produced. Totally unsystematic. Fundamental issues completely ignored, and in general the list makes me feel foolish for even offering to do this. (If you were asked to give ten propositions on money, would you leave out what money is, where it comes from, and what purpose it serves?) I have no idea what his positive theory of money is, what his ideal system is, or whether the charging of interest is just or unjust in itself in his view.

I said I would respond to these, so I will do so in the coming days, in dribs and drabs. But yikes.

Here are the propositions:

1. The fact that people are having trouble paying their debt indicates that too few dollars are in circulation.

2. It is impossible to pay back the interest on the debt when payments are reloaned, and not recirculated.

3. Monetary deflation benefits the private bankers who wish the People to default in order to seize collateral with, or without govt force.

4. Engineered scarcity is the PRIMARY cause of higher commodity prices. The People in a drought with lack FRN’s [Federal Reserve Notes]. They are not drowning in too many FRN’s.

5. Private bankers will create private monopolies to control the People rather than “compete” in a “free market.”

6. Private banks can enslave the people through the use of un-payable interest based contracts.

7. Private banks will not compete, or offer interest free money creation/lending to people with, or without government force.

8. Private banks are the sovereigns and use patsy government to escape the wrath of the People. “Divide and conquer”

9. Austrian/Keynsian economics are simply a Hegelian Debate wherein un-payable debt/interest contracts prevail with, or without force.

10. If you end central banking, and remove all government granted privileges to the private bankers, they will CONTINUE reign over the people. Private banks do not wish to “compete” in a “free market”. “Competition is a sin” -Rockefeller.

11. Bonus: Here is a money related topic that Alex Jones/most others refuse to cover. Some VERY DEEP truth which few will touch due to: possible threats of anti-semitism/political correctness. However, it is essential to dig into this deep, and ugly history so that we may gain greater understanding of why the US has dozens of US-Israeli citizens in its govt.(Chertoff/Emanuel/etc) And why the US is perpetually fighting Israel’s wars INCLUDING WWI+II. The private usurers have been the sovereigns for thousands of years. Usury/riba/interest if forbidden by each of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. Because it is a MATHEMATIC fraud, whereby it is impossible for all borrowers to pay. However, Judaism permits ELITE Jews to perp the voluntary contract fraud/usury on gentiles. Elite, Jews have sacrificed millions of beautiful Jews, and gentiles with genocide, and perpetual war. Usury is a methodology of international conquest. Usury bankrupts nations and steals their national sovereignty. There’s a reason why there’s a Rothshchild Star of David on the back of a buck. Usury is the original sin of the worlds economic, and monetary problems. Al Pacino represents “Shylock” in Shakespear’s “The Merchant of Venice” on topic. https://vimeo.com/33399039

12. “Love the Sinner(parasitic usurers) hate the Sin(usury)” Prayers go out for peace, and blessings to all our Brothers in Sisters in Rothschilds’ occupied Israel/Palestine. Rothschild will sacrifice beautiful Jew, and gentile alike as the private usurers are the “Synagogue of Satan”

See what I mean?

http://www.tomwoods.com/blog/not-all-end-the-fed-people-quite-get-it/

NAPOLITANO: Election 2012: A failure and a disappointment

System fixed with Obama or Romney

President Obama is a failure as a president, and Gov. Romney has been a disappointing candidate.

FILE – In these Sept. 2012, file photos Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, left, boards a plane in Denver, Colo, and President Barack Obama gets off a plane in Tampa, Fla., during an intense campaign in competitive states. Obama and Romney each have a specific mission for the string of three debates that starts Wednesday night, Oct. 3, 2012. Obama, no longer the fresh face of 2008, must convince skeptical Americans that he can accomplish in a second term what he couldn’t in his first: restore the U.S. economy to full health. Romney, anxious to keep the race from slipping away, needs to instill confidence that he is a credible and trusted alternative to the president, with a better plan for strengthening the fragile economy. (AP Photos)

When he took office, Mr. Obama told the press that if he couldn’t cure the economic mess he inherited from President George W. Bush in four years, he wouldn’t deserve a second term. I guess he didn’t anticipate making the mess worse.

When he took office, the federal government owed $11 trillion to its creditors; today it owes $16 trillion. When he took office, gasoline was running about $1.85 a gallon; today it costs about $3.85 a gallon. This is price inflation that he directly caused by flooding the markets with cash, and that directly harms the middle class and the poor. Unemployment has remained north of 8 percent throughout his presidency for those still looking for a job, and about 16 percent if you count all able-bodied out-of-work adults, half of whom have stopped looking for work on his watch.

He supported radical fanatics in their takeovers of the governments of Libya and Egypt, even going so far as to help them kill Col. Gadhafi, the former Libyan strongman who was once our ally. In the process, they opened jails in Libya, and out came some of the same folks the U.S. government has been fighting against in the Middle East since 2001. Mr. Obama pushed from power Hosni Mubarak, the strongman in Cairo, and he was replaced by the head of a criminal organization that Mr. Obama’s own State Department has prohibited Americans from engaging with. (Query: If the government derives its powers from the consent of the governed, how can the government help a foreign group and at the same time prohibit Americans from doing the same?)

In his lust to build a new world order in the Middle East, a goal for which he roundly criticized President George W. Bush, Mr. Obama has unilaterally, unconstitutionally and unlawfully killed Americans there. He killed Osama bin Laden when he could have captured him, and he let a mob kill our ambassador to Libya when he could have protected him — all to justify a value-free foreign policy that has no lasting friends or enemies, just fleeting interests. He has killed thousands in foreign lands in secret, using drones that will soon find their way here and come back to haunt him.

Perhaps the next month will prove me wrong on Mr. Romney, but so far he is putting the electorate to sleep. I believe him when he claims to favor free market approaches to the nation’s economic ills, but I don’t believe him when he rails against big government and central economic planning, because his record belies his words. He is, of course, the father of the individual mandate — a totalitarian giant leap forward for the welfare state. He has stated that if elected and re-elected, he will borrow money every year he is in office until the last.

When he was interviewed with the president on “60 Minutes” last week, I purposely did not watch or listen to the show. The next morning, I read the transcript of the interview and thought many of Mr. Romney’s answers were articulate and rational. Then I watched the same interview on tape and was bored nearly to death. Mr. Romney cannot put a fire in people’s bellies. The only reason he gives for voting for him is that he is not Mr. Obama — a reason that appeals to just under half the country, but is not enough to seal the deal. He needs to recognize that his audience for victory is not his former neighbors in Boston, but Joe Sixpack in the heartland.

He supports all of Mr. Obama’s killings in the Middle East, but claims he wants to control events there with a more muscular foreign policy. He cannot justify that view, along with the fact that it has failed and put us close to bankruptcy, to an electorate weary of wars. He rips into Mr. Obama’s borrowing, but overlooks his running mate’s voting record in Congress, which authorized all of it. At first he vowed to repeal Obamacare saying it is unconstitutional, and then he said he wants to keep the parts he likes, even if they are unconstitutional.

Can anyone get excited about Mr. Romney? Aside from a capitalistic attitude about the economy — as opposed to the president’s love of central economic planning — does anyone know what views he will embrace on Inauguration Day? Do you know anyone just aching to vote for him, the way conservatives were for Ronald Reagan in 1980 and progressives were for Mr. Obama in 2008? I do not know of such a person.

What do we do? The president’s countless failures have made all of us the worse for them. Gov. Romney’s failures will give us four more years of Mr. Obama. Who says the system is not fixed?

Read more: NAPOLITANO: Election 2012: A failure and a disappointment – Washington Times http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/oct/3/election-2012-a-failure-and-a-disappointment/#ixzz28QyWOtl6
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Iranian Hacker tells the USA to STFU and the Chinese can shut our power off! We are not prepared for WW3

Iranian Hacker tells the USA to STFU and the Chinese can shut our power off! We are not prepared for WW3
http://tatoott1009.com/2012/10/01/iranian-hacker-tells-the-usa-to-stfu-and-th…
WWIII Is Coming Soon & Here’s Why!?
http://tatoott1009.com/2012/09/16/wwiii-is-coming-soon-heres-why/
New Comet Discovered—May Become “One of Brightest in History” IT IS NOT PLANET X
http://tatoott1009.com/2012/09/29/new-comet-discovered-may-become-one-of-brig…
Louisiana Sinkhole Continues to “Eat Up” More Land — Sep. 26, 2012
http://tatoott1009.com/2012/09/27/louisiana-sinkhole-continues-to-eat-up-more…
UPDATE 9/25/2012 SINKHOLE ALERT “NATURAL GAS COMING OUT OF GROUND EVERYWHERE” Louisiana
http://tatoott1009.com/2012/09/21/update-9212012-sinkhole-alert-natural-gas-c…
Alaska F-22s deployed to Pacific even as tensions escalate between China, Japan
http://tatoott1009.com/2012/09/20/alaska-f-22s-deployed-to-pacific-even-as-te…
Big Sis: Obama Ready to Sign “Cybersecurity” Surveillance Grid Executive Order
http://tatoott1009.com/2012/09/20/big-sis-obama-ready-to-sign-cybersecurity-s…
YOU CAN FIND THE TRUTH ON THIS PAGE
http://tatoott1009.com/2012/09/20/you-can-find-the-truth-on-this-page/
Zombie Counterterrorism Training in San Diego
http://tatoott1009.com/2012/09/19/zombie-counterterrorism-training-in-san-diego/
“Dollar Index Headed for Rapid Collapse” Over Next 3 to 4 Weeks
http://tatoott1009.com/2012/09/19/dollar-index-headed-for-rapid-collapse-over…
Top Muslim calls for U.N. to end free speech
http://tatoott1009.com/2012/09/19/top-muslim-calls-for-u-n-to-end-free-speech/
Ventura on CNN: ‘Every War Starts With a False Flag’
http://tatoott1009.com/2012/09/18/ventura-on-cnn-every-war-starts-with-a-fals…
Sinkhole: “Declaration of Emergency” to ensure public safety after shallow gas pockets found near edge of Napoleonville Salt Dome
http://tatoott1009.com/2012/09/15/sinkhole-declaration-of-emergency-to-ensure…
Three Days to Stop the Corporate Death Star
http://tatoott1009.com/2012/09/15/three-days-to-stop-the-corporate-death-star/
Marines At US Embassy In Egypt Were Not Given Live Ammo, USMC Blogs Claim
http://tatoott1009.com/2012/09/14/marines-at-us-embassy-in-egypt-were-not-giv…
Jesse Ventura: “The Terrorists Won! We’re Not Free Anymore”
http://tatoott1009.com/2012/09/13/jesse-ventura-the-terrorists-won-were-not-f…
Censored Jesse Ventura Show On FEMA Camps Survives On You Tube
http://tatoott1009.com/
West Seattle’s now-famous ‘Hum’: Apparently NOT a fish’s fault September 11, 2012 at
http://tatoott1009.com/2012/09/12/west-seattles-now-famous-hum-apparently-not…
DOUBLE ASTEROID FLYBY: A pair of big, near-Earth asteroids will fly by the Earth-Moon
http://tatoott1009.com/2012/09/12/double-asteroid-flyby-a-pair-of-big-near-ea…
Reasons People Suspect Conspiracy in the Colorado Theater Shooting
http://tatoott1009.com/2012/09/12/possible-second-shooter-in-tragic-batman-de…
The 11th Anniversary of 9/11
http://tatoott1009.com/2012/09/11/the-11th-anniversary-of-911/
Red Rivers And The Electric Universe (10th Sept 2012)
http://tatoott1009.com/2012/09/10/red-rivers-and-the-electric-universe-1…
The Hidden Reason To Attack Iran ?
http://tatoott1009.com/2012/09/10/this-event-is-not-accessible-for-public/
Obama tells ‘birther’ joke, asks young boy if he has birth certificate
http://tatoott1009.com/2012/09/09/obama-tells-birther-joke-asks-young-bo…
Ben Swann interviews President Obama (NDAA, Kill List, Syria, Afghanistan)
http://tatoott1009.com/2012/09/08/ben-swann-interviews-president-obama-n…
Conspiracy Theory w/ Jesse Ventura ~ Returns For A 3rd Season On TruTv,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,Gray State Movie
http://tatoott1009.com/2012/09/07/update-on-80-million-in-seized-gold-co…
Unsurvivable
http://tatoott1009.com/2012/09/06/unsurvivable/
HAARP POWER 30X6X180=?at 10 dbg. 1 antenna and there is 180 antenna = 1800 dbg. x5,400,000= 972,000,000
http://tatoott1009.com/2012/09/04/haarp-power-30x6x180at-10-dbg-1-antenn…
ARE YOU SCARED OF THE TRUTH ? CONSPIRACIES NOT : CONTROL OF GOVERNMENT.avi
http://tatoott1009.com/2012/06/17/control-of-government/

How dangerous is space debris?

‘Extremely’ is the answer. Being hit by a ‘sugar-cube’ of space debris is the equivalent of standing next to an exploding hand-grenade. And the problem is only getting worse

The International Space Station is the biggest manmade structure in space. Its size makes it the biggest target for space debris. Photograph: ESA/NASA/Roscosmos

This week, the International Space Station (ISS) made its latest move in a long-running game of cat and mouse with pieces of space debris. For years now, the ISS has been dodging collisions. Some of the latest manoeuvres took place in April 2011 and January 2012. What may not be so obvious is that many of its “near-misses” are due to fragments from a single event in 2009 that shocked the aerospace community.

On 10 February that year, the defunct Russian military communications satellite Kosmos 2251 struck the solar panel of Iridium 33, a commercial American communications satellite. The panel shattered and Iridium 33 tumbled out of control. Kosmos 2251 disintegrated.

The catastrophe created more than 2,000 pieces of space debris with sizes greater than 10 centimetres, and potentially hundreds of thousands of smaller fragments that cannot currently be tracked from Earth. To put the trackable debris into perspective, about 10% of all known space debris accumulated over the past 55 years comes from the 2009 Kosmos-Iridium collision.

Fragments as small as a single centimetre have the potential to destroy whole satellites because of the speed at which they are travelling. This is because the energy of a collision is overwhelmingly determined by the speed at which things strike each other. (Who else remembers that half-mass-times-velocity-squared equation of kinetic energy?)

Typical orbital velocities can be tens of thousands of kilometres per hour. In the case of Kosmos and Iridium, the collision speed was 42,100km/hr.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtT3pTh_q-8&feature=player_embedded
A computer simulation of the collision between Iridium 33 and Kosmos 2251. Video: Analytical Graphics, Inc.

The reason Kosmos-Iridium shocked the aerospace community was that it was a definite step towards a nightmare scenario that had been proposed in 1978 and is known as the Kessler syndrome.

Back then, NASA employee Donald Kessler, together with colleague Burton Cour-Palais, proposed that as the number of satellites rose, so would the risk of accidental collisions. The resulting debris would take out further satellites, sparking a chain reaction that would swiftly encircle the planet with a vast cloud of debris. Orbits would then become unusable because anything placed up there would be sandblasted into smithereens, exacerbating the problem. Eventually our access to space would be lost.

The Chinese started us down the path to the Kessler Syndrome in 2007, when they destroyed one of their own satellites with a missile. It was a test designed to show the West that China had an anti-satellite capability, but it has left a cloud of debris containing 3,000 trackable particles.

So, why aren’t we launching special satellites to clean up space? Firstly, because it is sensitive politically: a satellite, even a defunct one, remains the property of the people who launched it. So you can’t just start pulling objects out of the sky, even if they pose a danger to your spacecraft. Secondly, there is an obviously military side to all this. If you have the capability to push a dead satellite out of orbit, you could use the same method to take down a live one.

This is a knotty legal, political and military problem. Work is proceeding at the various space agencies around the world; notably as part of ESA’s Space Situational Awareness Programme and independently at NASA’s Orbital Debris Program Office.

Time is of the essence. Douglas Adams famously said “space is big”, which is true when you consider the whole universe. However, the space around Earth is not, and we are filling it more fully every day. We must find a way to solve the problem of space debris.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/across-the-universe/2012/oct/04/astronomy-space

Vaccination Campaigns Part Of Population Reduction Policy

Leading World Bank Demographer: Vaccination Campaigns Part Of Population Reduction Policy

Jurriaan Maessen – ExplosiveReports.Com – October 4, 2012

On October 2nd a retired demographer at the World Bank admitted that vaccination campaigns are an integral part of the World Bank’s population policies. John F. May, the Bank’s leading demographer from 1992 to 2012, told the French web journal Sens Public (and in turn transcribed by the think-tank May works for) that vaccination campaigns, especially in so-called “high-fertility countries”, are means to achieve population reduction in those countries. May:

“The means used to implement population policies are “policy levers” or targeted actions such as vaccination campaigns or family planning to change certain key variables.”

Defining “population policy” as “a set of interventions implemented by government officials to better manage demographic variables and to try to attune population changes (number, structure by age and breakdown) to the country’s development aspirations”, May continues to explain that the World Bank is taking up the lead role in achieving general population reduction.

It is not the first time that World Bank officials boast about their willingness to implement strict population control policies in the Third World. In its 1984 World Development Report, the World Bank suggests using “sterilization vans” and “camps” to facilitate its sterilization policies for the third world. The report also threatens nations who are slow in implementing the bank’s population policies with “drastic steps, less compatible with individual choice and freedom.”:

“Population policy has a long lead time; other development policies must adapt in the meantime. Inaction today forecloses options tomorrow, in overall development strategy and in future population policy. Worst of all, inaction today could mean that more drastic steps, less compatible with individual choice and freedom, will seem necessary tomorrow to slow population growth.”, the report states.

Some of those steps are now being taken.

A study published in Human and Experimental Toxicology in May of 2011 concluded that “nations that require more vaccine doses tend to have higher infant mortality rates.” (page 8).

After an in-depth study into the effects of vaccine-coverage in relation to mortality rates among infants, the authors Neil Z. Miller and Gary S. Goldman came to this disturbing conclusion and advised that “a closer inspection of correlations between vaccine doses, biochemical or synergistic toxicity, and IMRs, is essential.”- but naively concluded that “All nations—rich and poor, advanced and developing—have an obligation to determine whether their immunization schedules are achieving their desired goals.”

The authors cannot be expected to know that, actually, that the desired goals are exactly being achieved. Their final point is significant in this regard, that they obviously were not working on the notion that vaccines were harmful and obviously drew their final conclusions on the basis of the idea that the increase in high mortality rates among infants were unintended. The opposite is the case. The World Health Organization, the World Bank, The UN environmental department, the UN Population Fund, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and all the other arms of the creature we call the scientific dictatorship are closing in on all of humanity with mass-scale vaccination programmes and genetically engineered food.

Where the mantra used to be “to combat global warming, we need a one world government”, now it sounds something along the lines of “when we wish to eradicate poverty, we must have a global government and reduce human numbers, by the way.” Any pretext will do. More recently it were oceans in need that prompted the World Bank to initiate a global “alliance”. The same argument can of course be applied and is being applied to every other possible calamity.

Following this line of reasoning will inevitably bring you to pretexts under which global population control can be sold. Want to reduce victims of drunk driving? Reduce human numbers. Looking to cure cancer? Reduce the birthrate so less people will die as a result of it. The scientific community has joined the effort, attempting to sell population reduction to stop poverty and disease worldwide.

Under the guidance of Ban Ki-moon’s top advisor, Dr. Jeffrey Sachs, several studies have been published which call for mass population reduction in the name of poverty-reduction. In 2009 Sachs and his protégé’s Pejman Rohani and Matthew H. Bonds wrote the paper Poverty trap formed by the ecology of infectious diseases. They write that the “poverty trap may (…) be broken by improving health conditions of the population.”

The question that arises, of course, is how to improve “health conditions”. In another study from 2009 Bonds and Rohani say:

““(…) the birth of a child in the poorest parts of the world represents not only a new infection opportunity for a disease, but also an increase in the probability of infection for the rest of the susceptible host population. Thus, epidemiological theory predicts that a reduction in the birth rate can significantly lower the prevalence of childhood diseases.”

Earlier that same year, Bonds wrote a dissertation entitled Sociality, Sterility, and Poverty; Host-Pathogen Coevolution, with Implications for Human Ecology. The study concludes that the best way to eradicate poverty and disease is to, well… eradicate humans.

“We find that, after accounting for an income effect, reducing fertility may result in significantly lower disease prevalence over the long (economic) term than would a standard S-I-R epidemiological model predict, and might even be an effective strategy for eradicating some infectious diseases. Such a solution would make Malthus proud”, Bonds writes.

“(…) the new model, which accounts for an economic effect, predicts that a reduction in fertility may be significantly more effective than a vaccine. It also illustrates that a sustained vaccination policy would be more likely to eradicate a disease if done in conjunction with decreased reproduction.”

“This model”, Bond continues, “is likely to understate the true benefits of reduced fertility because the effect of reducing the birth rate is to reduce the flow of susceptible for all diseases, which is the equivalent of a vaccine for all infectious diseases at the same time.”

If you eradicate the human, you eradicate the disease- problem solved:

“Infectious diseases, however, continue to be most significant in developing countries, which experience relatively rapid population growth. The effect of this influx of children on the persistence and dynamics of childhood diseases, as well as on the critical vaccination coverage, is reasonably well-established (McLean and Anderson, 1988a; Broutin et al., 2005). But it is now warranted to turn this framework on its head: can fertility reduction be an integral element of a disease eradication campaign?”

The answer to that question is given by Bill Gates in 2010 when he promoted using vaccines to lower the population by 10 to 15%:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1sCLOmJZ0xU

Disease and poverty, intertwined as they are, can therefore be eliminated by mas-scale fertility reduction. The religion of the scientific dictatorship in a nutshell.

It wasn’t the first time that Mr. Sachs called for global coordination in regards to population control. In a September 2009 UN press release, Sachs not only lamented human activity on the planet, but argued for scientists and engineers to take the steering-wheel in this process:

“We’re in the age of this planet where human activity dominates the earth’s processes. Humanity has become so large in absolute number and in economic activity that we have overtaken earth processes in vital ways to the point of changing the climate, the hydrologic cycle,” he told the UN Conference on Trade and Development.”

“We don’t necessarily need diplomats around the table”, Sachs continued. “We need engineers around the table, scientists around the table. We need to put the cards down and have a new kind of process.”

What kind of model does Sachs envision for his usurping utopia? He stated in an Economist publication in 2000:

“The model to emulate is the Rockefeller Foundation, the pre-eminent development institution of the 20th century, which showed what grant aid targeted on knowledge could accomplish.”

I don’t have to remind readers that it was the Rockefeller Foundation that funded and developed vaccines designed to reduce your fertility, and intended to distribute these vaccines on a mass-scale.

In his commentary The Specter of Malthus Returns, Sachs gives an adequate description of Agenda 21 without actually mentioning the UN plan for wealth redistribution and global population reduction:

“We will need to rethink modern diets and urban design to achieve healthier lifestyles that also reduce consumption. And to stabilize the global population at around eight billion, we will have to help Africa and other regions in speeding their demographic transition. We are definitely not yet on such a trajectory. We will need new policies to push markets down that path and to promote technological advances in resource saving. We will need a new politics to recognize the importance of a sustainable growth strategy and global cooperation to achieve it.”

As Paul Joseph Watson reported in his September 2010 article Global Tax Scam Shifts From Climate Change to Poverty, the pretexts under which the ongoing effort to establish a world government is moving forward is undergoing a transformation. The focus has now drifted away from the thoroughly debunked global warming myth to poverty-reduction. As usually is the case, once the pretext is sold to the unsuspecting, the eugenicists move in to “reduce fertility.” Global government, in other words, to facilitate global scientific dictatorship.

http://explosivereports.com/ — with JOne CarLows Dewran and Stephen Vick.

Border Patrol Agent Ivie Murdered Due to Obama’s Open Border

Barack Obama has told us that the border is safer than it has been for twenty years.

Barack Obama mocked those who wanted to strengthen the border, accusing them of “wanting to build a moat” on the border.

Tuesday morning, there was another fallen hero near the area where Brian Terry was murdered. Border Patrol agent Nicolas Ivie was gunned down serving his country.

The border’s safe?

Tell that to Nicolas Ivie’s family.

Will Obama ignore the Ivie family like he did the Brian Terry family?

If Nicolas Ivie’s murder is tied to Fast and Furious weapons, will Obama extend his illegal so-called “executive privilege” to suppress the documents?

The Fast and Furious documents should be released so we can get busy impeaching this President.

Because it’s obvious that not only Eric Holder, but Barack Obama as well, knew all about arming the Mexican drug cartels.

http://www.westernjournalism.com/border-patrol-agent-ivie-murdered-due-to-obamas-open-border/

Palin Warns: Obama Camp Will Not Go Down Without Swinging; Will Pull Something

Palin Warns: Obama Camp Will Not Go Down Without Swinging; Will Pull Something

“Now we have to be aware in the next couple debates also if Mitt Romney continues to gain and gain and gain just by being truthful and experienced and intelligent, that doing a good job as a presidential candidate, these guys in the Obama camp, they’re not going go down without swinging. They’re going pull something,” former Governor Sarah Palin warned after tonight’s debate.

“And the American public, with the media’s help, these lapdogs in the media, kind of going along with what Obama and his people want to do to shake some things up if Mitt Romney continues to do so well. The American public just needs to be aware that they’ve got to do their own home work, don’t rely on the shelter of the media, and just be aware something could be pulled here to turn things around if Mitt Romney continues to gain so much ground,” the 2008 Republican Vice Presidential nominee said to Sean Hannity on FOX.

Does Stimulus Spending Work?

After the housing bubble burst, both the Bush and Obama administrations turned to stimulus spending in an effort to improve U.S. economic growth. Stimulus spending is often justified by the thought that it is the government’s responsibility to create jobs. Proponents of the policy claim that an injection of government dollars will create jobs for people who will spend their new income and, in effect, create more jobs. Critics claim that because government money does not just fall from the sky, stimulus spending really just moves jobs from one place to another without creating actual economic growth.

What does the evidence say? Does stimulus spending work? Professor Antony Davies examines data on increases in federal spending and economic growth one year later. When this data is plotted on a graph, it is clear that there is no connection between federal spending and economic improvement. Instead, Professor Davies argues, the only thing stimulus spending does is make the budget deficit worse.

In the past three years, the Federal Reserve and federal government have injected the equivalent of two Canadian economies into the U.S. economy. Despite this stimulus, the unemployment rate remains 9 percent. “One thing that has changed,” says Davies, “is that our government is now $4.6 trillion further in debt than it was before the stimulus efforts.”

http://www.learnliberty.org/videos/does-stimulus-spending-work?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=social&utm_content=%E2%80%9CBetween%20the%20Federal%20Reserve%20and%20the%20federal%20government,%20we%20have%20injected%20the%20equivalent%20of%20two%20Canadian%20economies%20into%20the%20US%20economy.%E2%80%9D

Ron Paul Would Have Crushed Obama in the Presidential Debate

After watching the first presidential debate between President Barack Obama and former Governor Mitt Romney (I live blogged the entire debate for PolicyMic), I couldn’t help but think how different the debate would have been if Texas Congressman Ron Paul had been the Republican nominee and had the chance to debate President Obama instead.

While Romney appeared more aggressive and assertive than the president — who looked tired, shaky, and noticeably rusty after nearly four years of no primary debating — there was much more rhetoric and half-truths to Romney’s attacks than substance.

So while we will sadly never know how a debate between Paul and Obama would look like, here is how Paul would have likely responded to the debate questions and actually provided Americans a real alternative.

What are the major differences between the two of you about how you would go about creating new jobs?

Obama responded with an argument that he uses frequently. The president likes to remind us that he inherited a terrible mess (which is entirely true), and that his policies helped prevent a disaster, created millions of jobs, saved the auto industry, and that the housing industry is getting back on its feet.

Obama then criticized Romney for supposedly wanting to undue his progressive policies and legislation by cutting taxes, deregulating, and blowing holes in the budget, and Romney predictably ran away from this (false) caricature.

Paul would undoubtedly take his time to criticize the president’s policies but most importantly explain that without a proper diagnosis of the disease, a cure is impossible. The cause of the “worst economic crisis since the Great Depression” are precisely the policies that the president and virtually every administration before him have pursued.

Specifically, it was the Federal Reserve’s artificially lower interest rates combined with congressional mandates to flood this cheap money into the housing industry that created a predictable bubble that finally burst. Generally, it has been the policy of the U.S. government, in combination with the Federal Reserve, to finance debt and deficits by the creation of money, pyramiding debt, and dumping the cost on the taxpayer.

What will you do about the federal deficit/debt?

Obama bragged about his supposed “deficit reduction” plan that would cut $4 trillion and his trimming of waste from the military budget. Even if one were to believe that the president honestly plans to cut a penny anywhere, Paul would fire back with a bit of truth to counter the president’s propaganda. Paul has been in Congress for decades, and he sees firsthand the accounting tricks and numbers that are used by both sides to fit their agendas.

Paul always points out how supposed “cuts” are really just cuts on the rate of increases in the federal budget. If a healthy person is supposed to consume 2,000 calories a day, and one promises to eat 9,995 calories a day after years of 10,000 per day, can that really be considered a diet? Same goes for the budget and any promises of fiscal responsibility.

For example, Republicans attack the president for “gutting the military” while Democrats attack Republicans for their supposed cuts to social welfare programs. Both sides are wrong because a real cut would mean spending less money than the previous year. Paul would also likely point out that Obama’s military budgets have increased every single year of his administration.

Paul often says that he thinks politicians in Washington in denial about the fiscal and economic mess the U.S. is in. With $16 trillion in on-the-books debt, $221 trillion in future unfunded liabilities, and a dollar that plunges in value because the Fed keeps printing up the money to finance this nonsense, Paul may have a point.

What are your differences on Social Security and Medicare?

Obama defended the “values” behind Social Security and Medicare while Romney claimed that he fundamentally believes in preserving Social Security and Medicare. While Paul would give the moral, philosophical, and practical case against coercive transfers of wealth, the idea that one is “entitled” to the private property of someone else, and the unsustainability of these programs, Paul would remind the audience that he is really the only one that would preserve these programs — at least in the short term by dismantling the empire and actually slashing non-defense related military spending.

The Fed’s money printing and monetization of the debt, Paul would continue, is doing tremendous harm to people who want to save for the future and those on fixed income. What good is a Social Security check when the money continues to buy less and less every year?

What are you differences in health care?

One can only imagine the president having to face Paul on this one. While Romney offered his version of government-managed health care (“repeal and replace” should be his new campaign slogan!), Paul would note that Republicans are wrong to argue that the American health care system “was the finest in the world” until that rascally socialist took it over in 2009. Health care has been an 80% government run service since the mid 1960s, and for a hundred years the federal government has intervened in the health care market. This has led to predictable consequences: distortions in prices, rise in costs, decreased access, corporatism, and insurance companies seeking influence in Washington rather than competing in the marketplace.

What is the role of government?

Answering this question has been Ron Paul’s siren song. To anyone who will listen, Paul constantly stresses that the role of government in a free society is to protect the liberty of every individual. It is not to police the world or “to keep Americans safe” as President Obama said. It is not to run a welfare state, impose mandates, transfer wealth, or subsidize certain industries over others.

Sadly, Americans won’t get to see this debate. And after watching Romney defend Romneycare, closing loopholes (essentially raising taxes), attack the President for (non-existent) cuts, and sound like a slightly more right-wing version of Obama’s Keynesian economics and overseas aggression, conservatives and Republicans have only themselves to blame for nominating such a robot.

http://www.policymic.com/articles/15854/ron-paul-would-have-crushed-obama-in-the-presidential-debate

Turkey authorizes military action in Syria after mortar attack that killed civilians

MURAD SEZER/REUTERS – Turkish soldiers in a military vehicle patrol near the Akcakale border gate, southern Sanliurfa province, October 4, 2012. Turkish artillery hit targets near Syria’s Tel Abyad border town for a second day on Thursday.

BEIRUT — Turkey’s parliament voted Thursday to authorize military cross-border operations into Syria, a day after an apparently errant mortar strike from inside Syria killed five Turkish civilians.

Deputy Prime Minister Besir Atalay told the Associated Press that the 320-129 vote “is not for war,” but is intended to deter Syria from further violence that could spill over the border.

Atalay also said that Syria has taken responsibility and formally apologized for the death of the five Turkish civilians, and reassured the United Nations that “such an incident will not occur again,” AP reported.

Though this was not the first time the Syrian conflict has spilled over into Turkey, the five people killed Wednesday after a shell launched by the Syrian military crashed into the Turkish border town of Akcakale were the first Turkish civilians to die.

Within hours of the strike, Turkey launched two artillery attacks against Syria in retaliation, marking the most serious escalation in international tensions since the Syrian revolt erupted 19 months ago.

“Our armed forces in the border region responded immediately to this abominable attack in line with their rules of engagement; targets were struck through artillery fire against places in Syria identified by radar,” said a statement issued by the office of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights quoted activists in the Syrian border town of Tal Abyad as saying that an unspecified number of Syrian soldiers were killed by artillery fire that struck a military base Thursday morning.

Turkey has shown a willingness in the past to send troops into neighboring countries to address perceived threats to its safety. Specifically, it repeatedly sent forces into Iraq to combat Kurdish guerrillas who had struck at Turkish targets.

Amid growing international concerns that the conflict could escalate further, Syria’s ally Russia on Thursday urged Syria to publicly admit that its forces had fired the shell that killed the civilians.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the Syrian authorities had told him the incident “was a tragic accident and that it will not happen again,” the Russian news agency RIA quoted him as saying during a visit to Islamabad.

“We think it is of fundamental importance for Damascus to state that officially,” he added.

NATO, of which Turkey is a member, met in emergency session Wednesday at Turkey’s request and issued a strongly worded statement calling the Syrian shelling “a flagrant breach of international law and a clear and present danger to the security of one of its Allies.” Although NATO pledged to continue to “stand by Turkey,” it proposed no immediate action.

U.S. reaction

In Washington on Wednesday, the White House also condemned the Syrian shelling and affirmed the United States’ solidarity with Turkey. “We stand with our Turkish ally and are continuing to consult closely on the path forward,” National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said.

Pentagon spokesman George Little condemned what he called “the depraved behavior of the Syrian regime.”

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton reiterated the United States’ support for Turkey in a telephone call with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davotoglu and pledged that the United States would stand by Turkey in any future discussions of the crisis at the United Nations, according to State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland.

Turkey sent a letter to the United Nations calling on the Security Council “to take necessary action to put an end to such acts of aggression.”

Turks, however, have expressed little appetite for a war with Syria, and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has no interest in provoking international military intervention in a domestic conflict that he still believes he can win.

“This is a gesture, not a war,” said Henri Barkey, professor of international relations at Lehigh University, referring to the Turkish strikes Wednesday night and Thursday.

Erdogan has repeatedly made bombastic statements about Syria, and the first deaths of Turkish civilians left him with little choice but to retaliate, Barkey said.

“The Turks don’t want to go to war,” he said. “They don’t want to do this by themselves, and there is absolutely no support at home for a war.”

The incident nevertheless pointed to the dangers of a conflict that has already polarized the region, stirring ancient rivalries and newer enmities.

“This is the latest manifestation of a worsening situation,” said Andrew Tabler of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “This is not the only place it is spilling over. It is spilling over into Jordan, into Lebanon. They’re shelling on a daily basis. The difference today is it’s the first time we have a country calling Assad out.”

In a statement issued before the Turkish retaliation, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon appealed for restraint, warning that the mortar incident demonstrated the risks the violence in Syria poses to the region.

“Syria’s conflict is threatening not only the security of the Syrian people but increasingly causing harm to its neighbors,” he said.

Tension comes to a head

The strike followed more than a year of growing hostility between Turkey and Syria, former allies who have turned into bitter foes since Erdogan joined his Western allies in calls for Assad to step down.

The tensions soared sharply after Syria shot down a Turkish jet in June, killing two pilots over international waters, according to Turkey, and within Syrian territorial waters, according to Syria.

Meanwhile, a surge in the levels of violence in Syria over the summer months has propelled tens of thousands of refugees into Turkey, straining government resources and heightening government frustrations with the failure of its Western allies to take tougher action against Assad.

The number is likely to grow as the violence continues to rage. A suicide attack in Aleppo on Wednesday, which killed 34 people, signaled that the rebels are becoming more sophisticated in their strikes against government targets, at a time when the regime is stepping up its assaults against rebel-held areas with aerial bombardments.

According to state media, two suicide bombers detonated car bombs containing more than 2,000 pounds of explosives in the city’s central Saadallah al-Jabri square shortly after 8 a.m., killing 34 people and injuring 122.

A third explosion nearby occurred while officers were dismantling a bomb, according to the official Syrian Arab News Agency.

The target, apparently a military officers club, was completely demolished. The blasts also caused widespread damage to the surrounding area, ripping the facades off several buildings. State television showed the bodies of three men wearing military uniforms lying amid piles of debris.

SANA said civilians and military personnel were among those killed, but rebels claimed that all of the victims were members of the security forces, saying that the area represented a legitimate target because it had been turned into what rebel spokesman Mohammed al-Halbi called “a military barracks.” High-ranking officers were living at the officers club, and two government-owned hotels damaged in the blast were being used to accommodate Syrian and Iranian intelligence operatives, he said.

Responsibility for the attack was claimed by the Jabhat al-Nusra, a militant group that has carried out a string of suicide bombings in Damascus and Aleppo in recent months.

Colum Lynch at the United Nations, Ahmed Ramadan and Suzan Haidamous in Beirut and James Ball, Anne Gearan, Debbi Wilgoren, Scott Wilson and Craig Whitlock in Washington contributed to this report.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/turkey-again-shells-syria-to-retaliate-for-mortar-attack-that-killed-civilians/2012/10/04/ff256bcc-0e0b-11e2-a310-2363842b7057_story.html

Obama the debater: Making Jimmy Carter look awesome

Party like it’s 1980!

Bewildered and lost without his teleprompter, President Obama flailed all around the debate stage last night. He was stuttering, nervous and petulant. It was like he had been called in front of the principal after goofing around for four years and blowing off all his homework.

Not since Jimmy Carter faced Ronald Reagan has the U.S. presidency been so embarrassingly represented in public. Actually, that’s an insult to Jimmy Carter.

The split screen was most devastating. Mitt Romney spoke forthrightly, with carefully studied facts and details at the ready. He looked right at the president and accused him of being miles out of his depth.

Mr. Obama? His eyes were glued to his lectern, looking guilty and angry and impatient with all the vagaries of Democracy. This debate was seriously chafing him.

What exactly was Mr. Obama’s strategy here? Did he figure with so many people unemployed in this abomination of an economy he should go for the sympathy vote? Like voters could relate to a guy who is just scared pantsless that he is about to lose his job?

In the middle of the blood-letting segment about jobs, Mr. Romney said good-naturedly: “This is fun.”

Almost pleading, Mr. Obama reached out to the moderator for a lifeline: “You may want to move onto another topic.”

When an unexpected noise went off behind him, Mr. Obama wheeled around to look as if to ask, “Time to go?”

Hopefully.

Turns out, it was the first honest thing we have heard from Mr. Obama’s campaign: The president really was absolutely terrible on the debate stage.

Maybe the next debate will be on something other than the economy that won’t be so bad for Mr. Obama. Perhaps they could hold a debate on street organizing.

Who knew anyone on the planet could make Mitt Romney look easy, relaxed, smooth and human?

But Mr. Romney was absolutely on fire Wednesday night. He had command of countless specifics from voters and business owners from all across country.

He explained complex issues clearly, concisely and with good humor. He was not angry. But he was direct and pointed.

“I’ve been in business for 25 years. I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Romney said in the most devastating understatement of the night. “I maybe need to get a new accountant.”

Like a prosecutor in court, Mr. Romney went after Mr. Obama’s record and eviscerated him about the terrible economy and Mr. Obama’s belief in “trickle down government.”

Mr. Romney also came off as genuine by looking Mr. Obama in the eye with every criticism. He also looked moderator Jim Lehrer in the eye when he told him that if he became president he would cut funding to public broadcasting, possibly eliminating his job.

Mr. Obama weakly offered Mr. Lehrer: “You’ve done a great job.”

OK, that’s one vote for Mr. Obama in the sympathy strategy. Just 55 million votes to go.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/oct/3/hurt-obama-debater-making-jimmy-carter-look-awesom/?page=all#pagebreak

Liberals throw hissy fit over Obama debate performance

If President Obama lost Bill Maher, you know he lost the debate.

On television and on Twitter, President Obama’s most fervent liberal backers in the media lamented the president’s performance in the first presidential debate in Denver, Colo.

“i can’t believe i’m saying this, but Obama looks like he DOES need a teleprompter,” liberal comedian Bill Maher, who donated $1 million dollars to a pro-Obama super PAC, said in a tweet.

“Obama made a lot of great points tonight. Unfortunately, most of them were for Romney,” he said in another tweet.

Liberal MSNBC host Chris Matthews, who once declared he had a tingle go up his leg from merely listening to a speech from President Obama, had a similar assessment.

“What was Romney doing tonight, he was winning,” Matthews declared. “If he gets five more of these nights, forget it.”

Matthews’ colleague, liberal MSNBC host Ed Schultz, agreed.

“I thought he was off his game,” Schultz said of the president.

Left-wing filmmaker Michael Moore had something of a hissy fit on Twitter over the president’s performance.

“He couldn’t say ANY of these words: ’47%’ ‘BainCapital’ ‘FlipFlop’ ‘Bush’ ‘Detroit’ ‘Women(&women’s issues)’ Fire all debate consultants now,” Moore tweeted.

“lemme get this straight. You can send in drones that kill civilians, but you can’t stop Romney or Lehrer from interrupting you?,” he complained in another tweet.

“Is Bill Clinton coming in to sub for the next quarter? O! Wake up! Attack! That is not john McCain over on that podium!” he also tweeted earlier in the debate.

Liberal Daily Beast writer Andrew Sullivan also saw the president’s performance as disastrous.

“Look: you know how much I love the guy, and how much of a high info viewer I am, but this was a disaster for Obama,” he tweeted.

Sullivan even suggested Wednesday night’s performance may have lost the election for the president.

“How is Obama’s closing so fucking sad, confused, lame? He choked. He lost. He may even have lost election tonight,” he tweeted.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/10/03/liberals-throw-hissy-fit-over-obama-debate-performance/#ixzz28LE53xMl

Romney goes on offense, forcing Obama to defend record

DENVER — An energetic Mitt Romney launched a series of attacks against President Obama here Wednesday night, calling into question the president’s record on the economy, health care and the deficit, and arguing that he would take the country in a fundamentally different direction.

Obama sought to parry Romney’s criticisms, charging that his presidential rival favors a top-down approach to the economy that would reward the wealthiest Americans at the expense of the middle class and that the details of the Republican’s proposals don’t add up. But he found himself on the defensive repeatedly during their first debate, held at the University of Denver.

Romney came into the 90-minute exchange after several difficult weeks but appeared rejuvenated by the opportunity to take his case directly to Obama and the American people. He was well prepared and aggressive as he hammered the president. The contrast with Obama was striking, as the president appeared less energetic even as he rebutted some of Romney’s toughest attacks.

The debate is likely to give Romney what he needed most, which is a fresh look from voters — at least those who are undecided or open to changing their minds — and will change the conversation about the campaign, which for the past two weeks has been tilted in the president’s favor. Romney now faces the challenge of trying to build on his performance and keep the president on the defensive in the days ahead.

Romney offered conservative policies throughout the evening but he often sounded more moderate than he does in campaign appearances. He is likely to face a challenge from Obama and the Democrats in the coming days about the contrast in tone and posture on display during the night.

But Republicans were immediately cheered by the aggressiveness they saw in Romney and took it as a sign that he will wage a fierce battle between now and Nov. 6.

PBS’s Jim Lehrer moderated the forum, which included a more open format that encouraged a free-flowing discussion, and most of the exchanges focused on the economy, the federal budget deficit and health care. The debate was generally civil and proved to be one of the most substantive and detailed in recent memory.

The weak economy has long been Obama’s biggest obstacle to reelection. On Wednesday, he argued that, although the country faces problems, it has begun to “fight our way back” because of his policies and the resilience of the American people.

“Over the last 30 months, we’ve seen 5 million jobs in the private sector created. The auto industry has come roaring back. And housing has begun to rise. But we all know that we’ve still got a lot of work to do. And so the question here tonight is not where we’ve been but where we’re going.”

But Romney said the status quo “is not going to cut it” for struggling families. “Under the president’s policies, middle-income Americans have been buried. They’re just being crushed. Middle-income Americans have seen their income come down by $4,300. This is a tax in and of itself. I’ll call it the economy tax. It’s been crushing.”

Romney clearly came to the debate determined to change his image as someone who cares little for ordinary Americans, a view that was heightened by his dismissive comments about the roughly 47 percent of Americans who pay no income taxes.

Throughout much of the early part of the debate, he sought to portray himself as a protector of the middle class, not the wealthy. He said that he would not raise taxes on middle-class families and that he would not reduce the share of taxes paid by the wealthiest Americans.

Obama, however, said that Romney’s tax plan would do just that. He said his rival favors a $5 trillion tax cut and argued that eliminating loopholes and deductions for the wealthiest Americans would not provide enough revenue to avoid deepening the deficit. He said Romney would either have to cut into middle-class benefits or reduce spending on vital programs.

“The magnitude of the tax cuts that you’re talking about, Governor, would end up resulting in severe hardship for people but, more importantly, would not help us grow,” the president said.

Romney repeatedly has declined to specify what loopholes and deductions he would eliminate and passed up opportunities to do so again Wednesday. But he said Obama had mischaracterized his tax plan, saying that it does not include a $5 trillion cut.

“Let me repeat what I said,” Romney said. “I’m not in favor of a $5 trillion tax cut. That’s not my plan. My plan is not to put in place any tax cut that will add to the deficit.”

Obama and Romney clashed over Medicare, with both promising to protect the health-care program for seniors. Obama accused Romney of wanting to turn it into a voucher program, while Romney claimed that the president cut $716 million from Medicare to help pay for the Affordable Care Act.

Romney was eager to launch into a critique of the landmark legislation that he cited as his top example of programs that must be eliminated to close the federal deficit. “I apologize, Mr. President,” Romney added after referring to the program as Obamacare. “I use that term with respect.”

“I like it,” Obama quickly responded, but that was about their only real point of agreement.

Romney argued that the program would raise health-care costs and make it less likely that businesses would hire new workers. He accused Obama of establishing an unelected board to make health-care decisions for patients, and of cutting more than $700 billion from Medicare to help pay for the law. And he chastised the incumbent for “pushing through” legislation of such magnitude without a single Republican vote.

“I just don’t know how the president could have come into office — facing 23 million people out of work, rising unemployment, an economic crisis at the kitchen table — and spend his energy and passion for two years fighting for Obamacare instead of fighting for jobs for the American people,” Romney said. “It has killed jobs.”

Obama pushed back, particularly on the point about the cut to Medicare, which he explained, and independent analysis has shown, does not include direct reductions to benefits for seniors but rather ratchets down payments to providers, including insurance companies.

The president noted that Romney has promised to repeal Obamacare on his first day in office, yet more recently has said he wants to keep some of its provisions, notably its protections for patients with preexisting conditions and the rights of young adults to remain on their parents’ insurance plans.

Obama also reminded viewers that his law was modeled heavily on the health-care law that Romney championed when he was governor of Massachusetts. “We’ve seen this model work really well in Massachusetts,” the president said.

“He now says he’s going to replace Obamacare and ensure that all the good things that are in it are going to be in there and you don’t have to worry,” Obama added. “And at some point, I think the American people have to ask themselves: Is the reason that Governor Romney is keeping all these plans to replace secret because they’re too good?”

Romney defended his plan in Massachusetts, saying he had not raised taxes and had pushed through the bill with significant numbers of Democratic votes.

On energy, Obama said Romney would continue to favor tax breaks for the oil industry. Romney retorted by noting that the Obama administration has invested more than $90 billion in green-energy projects, “about about 50 years’ worth of what oil and gas receives.”

On regulatory issues, Romney attacked the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which overhauled regulation of the financial industry, but he said that some regulations are needed and that he would keep them. Obama scoffed at Romney’s promise to repeal Wall Street regulation that he signed into law, saying: “Does anybody out there think that the big problem we had is that there was too much oversight and regulation of Wall Street? Because if you do, then Governor Romney is your candidate.”

Near the end of the debate, Lehrer asked the candidates how they might make Washington work more effectively. Romney said he would do what he had done with a Democratic legislature in Massachusetts: work out compromises.

Obama said that might be difficult if one of Romney’s first efforts were to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which he said would anger Democrats in Congress. And he accused Romney of being hostage to the most conservative elements of the Republican Party.

“I’ve got to tell you, Governor Romney, when it comes to his own party during the course of this campaign, has not displayed that willingness to say no to some of the more extreme parts of his party,” he said.

 

 

David Nakamura and Philip Rucker contributed to this report.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/decision2012/romney-obama-debate-could-be-pivot-point-in-campaign/2012/10/03/74fad02c-0d98-11e2-bd1a-b868e65d57eb_print.html

Chris Matthews Freaks Out At Obama: “What Was He Doing?”

“Tonight wasn’t an MSNBC debate tonight, was it?” Chris Matthews said after the first Obama-Romney presidential debate concluded on Wednesday night.

“I don’t know what he was doing out there. He had his head down, he was enduring the debate rather than fighting it. Romney, on the other hand, came in with a campaign. He had a plan, he was going to dominate the time, he was going to be aggressive, he was going to push the moderator around, which he did effectively, he was going to relish the evening, enjoying it,” Matthews said.

“Here’s my question for Obama: I know he likes saying he doesn’t watch cable television but maybe he should start. Maybe he should start. I don’t know how he let Romney get away with the crap he throughout tonight about Social Security,” Matthews complained.

Matthews then demanded that President Obama start watching cable news, specifically his program.

“Where was Obama tonight? He should watch — well, not just Hardball, Rachel, he should watch you, he should watch the Reverend Al [Sharpton], he should watch Lawrence. He would learn something about this debate. There’s a hot debate going on in this country. You know where it’s been held? Here on this network is where we’re having the debate,” Matthews said.

“We have our knives out,” Matthews said, admitting his network is trying their best to defend Obama and his policies. “We go after the people and the facts. What was he doing tonight? He went in there disarmed.”

“He was like, ‘Oh an hour and half? I think I can get through this thing. And I don’t even look at this guy.’ Whereas Romney — I love the split-screen — staring at Obama, addressing him like prey. He did it just right. ‘I’m coming at an incumbent. I got to beat him. You’ve got to beat the champ and I’m going to beat him tonight. And I don’t care what this guy, the moderator, whatever he thinks he is because I’m going to ignore him,” Matthews said.

“What was Romney doing?” Matthews asked. “He was winning.”

“If he does five more of these nights, forget it,” Matthews added. “Obama should watch MSNBC, my last point. He will learn something every night on this show and all these shows. This stuff we’re watching, it’s like first grade for most of us. We know all this stuff.”

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/10/03/chris_matthews_freaks_out_at_obama_after_debate_romney_was_winning.html

Presidential Debate 2012 (Complete) Romney vs.Obama – 10/3/2012

Memo: State to expand assistance to opposition groups in Aleppo

As the battle for Aleppo intensifies, the U.S. State Department is trying to direct more non-lethal aid to opposition groups inside the strategic Syrian city, according to a memorandum by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton obtained by The Cable.

At least 40 residents of Aleppo were killed when a series of bombs exploded in a government-controlled area Wednesday. The government blamed rebel groups, and the pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said most of the deaths were caused by regime security forces during a gun battle that preceded the explosions.

Clinton announced Sept. 28 that the State Department would give an additional $45 million to the effort to bring non-lethal assistance to those Syrian opposition members who can get to Istanbul, Turkey, to get it.  In a memorandum to relevant congressional committees, she explained that the goal was to expand the assistance to reach new opposition groups in Aleppo and other areas of Syria that have not yet gotten U.S. assistance.

“Unified, inclusive, and effective civilian leadership is the key to a successful transition in Syria,” Clinton wrote. “Thus far, assistance to the civilian-led unarmed opposition has helped develop the organization and effectiveness of local groups, including their ability to communicate within and beyond Syria. Opposition groups in heavily contested areas remain in need of emergency non-lethal assistance, including essential supplies, communications equipment, and funding for administrative functions.”

“Expanded non-lethal support will build on existing networks to increase support to groups with which we have established relationships and to help assistance reach new opposition groups in strategic parts of Syria like Aleppo province and the contested northeast. Specifically, our additional assistance will enable these groups to more effectively communicate and disseminate information, provide basic services to local Syrians, and to be in a position to effectively participate in a political transition,” the memo states.

State plans to use the money to increase the amount of training and equipment provided to opposition members at the Office of Syrian Opposition Support (OSOS) in Istanbul and the department is thinking about opening more branches of the OSOS in other locations, according to the memo.

The new assistance will include communications gear, radio broadcast equipment, the training required to use it, and workshops on issues such as civil administration, leadership, human rights, and mitigating sectarian strife, with a focus on the revolutionary councils, Clinton wrote.

“While U.S. assistance alone is not a silver bullet, it remains a crucial component of our multidimensional campaign to support a peaceful political transition in Syria, an end to the Assad regime, and the emergence of a stable, responsible government,” she wrote. “Our assistance has helped the opposition to organize and communicate, but additional support to emerging civilian leadership is needed to forestall the chaos that could emerge in a power vacuum and to help prevent conditions that might promote the interests of extremist elements, threatening our vital national security interests.”

According to the memo, State wants to take $15 million away from the Pakistani Counterinsurgency Capability Fund (PCCF) and use that money to aid the Syrian opposition.

http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/10/03/memo_state_to_expand_assistance_to_opposition_groups_in_aleppo

What Is The Real Iranian Threat?

Iran poses a great threat to Zionist terrorist state of Israel. Iran poses even greater threat to the present hegemonic world order controlled by the Western power elite through their financial institutions and the undemocratic United Nation with all its many branches. In the perspective of both Israel and the Western power elite, Iran, as a threat, needs to be weakened and eliminated through regime change, through economic sanctions, through terror attacks, and if need be through war.

The roots of Iran’s confrontation with the West go back to 1908 when oil was discovered in Iran by Burmah Oil Company, later called Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), and finally became British Petroleum (BP). During WWI the British government bought a controlling share of the company because it needed Iran’s oil for its Royal Navy.

When the Persians expressed their dissatisfaction with their meager share of 16% of the net profits a British caused coup in 1925 got rid of Shah Mozzafar al-Din and installed Reza Pahlavi in his place. Pahlavi served the British until WWII during which he became friendlier with Germany after it invaded USSR in 1941. The British and the Red Army, then, invaded Iran, got rid of Pahlavi and installed his 22 years old son Mohammad in his place. American forces also entered Iran and operated the southern part of the Trans-Iranian Railway that transported oil. After the war the allied forces withdrew from Iran but AIOC kept its monopoly over the oil fields.

Iranians kept asking for a fair share of their oil industry, but the AIOC refused to re-negotiate and rejected all proposed compromise. In 1951 the pro-Western Iranian Prime Minister Ali Razmara was assassinated and replaced by Mohammad Mosaddegh. The Parliament created the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) and the oil fields were nationalized.

The United Kingdom was furious and raised an anti-nationalization case at the International Court of Justice at The Hague. After losing their case British Prime Minister Winston Churchill resorted to the US for help, but president, then, Harry Truman was very busy with his war in Korea. However, in 1953, Dwight Eisenhower became the president and authorized Operation Ajax, a joined British MI6 and American CIA coup led by Kermit Roosevelt, which overthrew the democratically elected government of Mosaddegh and transformed the government into an oppressive constitutional monarchy led by Mohammad Pahlavi until 1979. As a result of the coup AIOC returned to Iran but accompanied with five other American oil companies including Royal Dutch Shell with their own shares of Iran’s oil monopoly.

In January 1978 the Iranian Islamic Revolution ignited causing the Shah to leave the country in January 1979, and an Islamic Republic with Ayatollah Khomeini as supreme leader was established. On 4^th of November 1979 a group of Iranian students seized the American embassy in Tehran taking 52 American hostages accused of being CIA operatives plotting to overthrow the revolutionary government as was done to Mosaddegh’s government in 1953. President Carter’s military and diplomatic rescue attempts failed and the hostages were not freed until January 1981 according to the Algiers Accords.

Encouraged by the CIA and financed by Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, CIA man Saddam Hussein, then President of Iraq, engaged Iran into what is known as the Eight Years War 1980 – 1988. The aim was to engage both countries into a war of attrition that weakens both countries and brings huge profits to the Western military complex. To lengthen the war and to increase the casualties and the devastation both Israel and the US provided intelligence information to both parties and sold them weapons including chemical weapons, sold by Donald Rumsfeld to Saddam Hussein, that resulted in, among many, the massacre of Halabja. The war finally ended in August 1988 according to UN Resolution 598 without any territorial gain by either party.

The CIA had also failed to topple Ahmadinejad‘s administration during the 2009 Iranian election through the use of social media; internet, twitter and facebook, to push people into the streets demonstrating against the election.

Iran had become a real thorny bone in the throat of Zionist controlled American administrations when the Iranian government financed and armed Lebanese Hezbollah, whose armed struggle forced Israeli occupation forces to withdraw from Lebanon in 2000, and also inflicted heavy casualties on the Israeli tanks during Israel’s aggression against Lebanon in 2006.

Iran had to be dealt with. Iran became the target of huge media propaganda attempting to demonize its leadership especially Ahmadinejad, who was accused of anti-Semitism, holocaust denying, and threatening to wipe Israel off the map. Iran also was accused of developing nuclear weapons without any real evidence and even with continuous sudden and stringent IAEA inspections. Economic sanctions and oil embargo were imposed on Iran. Penalty and punishment was imposed on countries who would buy Iranian oil, although lax exemptions were later granted to virtually all countries due to failure of the embargo and to the rise of oil prices. Iranian nuclear scientists were assassinated by Mossad/CIA backed assassins. American-backed terrorist Mujahadeen-e-Khalq (MEK, also PMOI, MKO) conducted terrorist attacks against government buildings and against ethnic civilian minorities to incite ethnic conflict. American administration has just removed the MEK from its terrorist list. Cyber war had been waged against Iranian nuclear facilities, and nuclear equipment sold to Iran by German Seimens company contained explosives aimed at sabotaging Iranian nuclear facilities.

In violation of international laws Israel continues to threaten to attack Iran and bomb its nuclear facilities. Israel is the only country possessing nuclear weapons in the Middle East as revealed by their own nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu. There are indisputable evidence that Israel had stolen weapons-grade uranium for its nuclear weapons program from American Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation in Apollo, Pennsylvania in 1950s and 1960s. Israel did not just build nuclear weapons but is also proliferating nuclear weapons as evidence show that Israeli Shimon Peres, now Israel president, was trying to sell three sizes of nuclear bombs to apartheid South Africa’s defense minister PW Botha in 1975. This was also documented by the book “The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Alliance with Apartheid South Africa” by Sasha Polakow-Suransky. God knows who else had bought nuclear weapons from Israel. Israel did not sign, and refuse to sign the NPT.

Not mentioning its many wars of aggression against Palestine and its neighboring Arab countries, its violation of international and humanitarian laws and daily terror attacks against Palestinian civilians, its assassinations of officials and terror attacks all over the globe, its illegal bombardments of Iraq and Syria, its illegal piracy against freedom flotillas in international seas, and its international laws violating threats to devastate Lebanon and to nuke Iran, Israel is accusing Iran of being threat to the region and to the world, although Iran have not committed or threatened to commit any war of aggression against any other country during the last 200 years.

One can easily discern who is the war mongering threat to world peace when comparing Iranian Ahmadinejad’s speech to the UN with Israeli Netanyahu’s pathetic “this is a bomb, this is a fuse” speech. When Ahmadinejad addresses heads of states with logic and respect, Netanyahu insults their intelligence by his condescending demeanor as if talking to third grade students. When Ahmadinejad talks peace, Netanyahu talks war. When Ahmadinejad talks global interests, Netanyahu talks Israeli only interests. When Ahmadinejad talks harmonious religious utopia, Netanyahu talks racist religious elitism. When Ahmadinejad talks global consciousness, Netanyahu talks egocentric Judaic consciousness. When Ahmadinejad talks global holocausts, Netanyahu talks Jewish only holocaust. When Ahmadinejad addresses the concerns of all nations, Netanyahu addresses only Israeli concerns and talks us vs others. When Ahmadinejad speaks of citizenship of the whole world, Netanyahu speaks Jewish only state. When Ahmadinejad calls for return to monotheism and cites Jewish, Christian, and Moslem prophets and messengers such as Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Mohammad, Netanyahu cites his racist god and Jewish only prophets; Isaiah, Amos and Jeremiah. Netanyahu accuses Iranian leaders of waiting for a medieval holy man to appear after a devastating holy war to spread radical Islam, yet he forgets that Zionist Israeli Jews are waiting for a Messiah, a cosmic terrorist, who would wage a holy war to purge the promised land from all non-Jewish heathens; Christians as well as Moslems, and build a temple, from which to rule the whole world.

Iran poses a great threat to the present Western hegemonic world order because its leader is pointing to the utter failure of the present world order in maintaining peace and prosperity and is calling for a new joint global management of the world with fundamental changes and structural reforms to the UN and to the Security Council based on real democracy and equal rights to all member nations by eliminating the veto power of few countries, who dominate and manipulate global politics, economy and culture to attain their racist ambitions. Iran is calling for an end to expansionist capitalism, to the elimination of all nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, and to a return to monotheism to eliminate sectarian wars. Iran is also calling for reforming the current unjust and unfair economic structures and setting up a new international economic order based on human and moral values and obligation to allow potential talents of all nations to flourish. Ahmadinejad called for the elimination of present centers of power that seek supremacy based on domination and conquer of others through wars.

What makes Iran more dangerous is not the fact that it possesses advanced long range weapons that could destroy American military bases in the Arabian Gulf States and all the foreign naval armadas crowding the Persian Gulf and could also reach and devastate the state of Israel, but the fact that Iran will be heading the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) for the next three years. NAM consists of 120 member countries from across the globe making two thirds of world countries and 60% of world population and represents the biggest single voting bloc in the 193-member General Assembly at the UN. NAM countries support Iran’s call for the new joint global management, assert Iran’s right to pursue peaceful nuclear technology, oppose war against Iran and deplore Israeli continuous threat to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities. Iran has become a major global player that could not be isolated nor ignored on the global theater.

Of course the present pro-Zionist Western hegemonic world order will not sit idle and will muster every way to ruin Iran. Western military has been very busy devising military actions against Iran and studying their costs and effects. “Weighing Benefits and Costs of Military Action Against Iran” is an analytical report by the Iran Project and authored by 32 respected national security experts such as former security advisers Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft, and military generals such as Anthony Zinni. The report indicates that military action against Iran would be very costly to the US. “Given Iran’s large size and population, and the strength of Iranian nationalism, we estimate that the occupation of Iran would require a commitment of resources and personnel greater than what the US has expended over the past 10 years in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined” the report stated. Despite this analysis the US and Israel continue to conduct war games in the Persian Gulf testing the feasibility of each new war scenario drawn by American military.

The big question that poses itself is whether Iran would become the nucleus of a global spring that would create a real democratic new world order, or would it be the target of a comprehensive Middle Eastern war, possibly nuclear, whose  devastating effects would hit all countries without exception.

http://sabbah.biz/mt/archives/2012/10/04/what-is-the-real-iranian-threat/

Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters Joins Jury of Russell Tribunal on Palestine

Roger Waters, founding member of the British rock band Pink Floyd, has announced that he will join Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker, civil rights icon Angela Davis, and others on the jury of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine (RToP), taking place in New York City, October 6–7, 2012.

Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters Joins Jury of Russell Tribunal on Palestine

Decades of rock fans know Waters for his progressive ideas and groundbreaking albums such as Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall, which have sold in the hundreds of millions of copies. Waters, whose current tour, “The Wall Live,” has topped international concert ticket sales in 2012, has chosen to participate as a juror in the fourth and final international hearings, saying, “The Russell Tribunal on Palestine is about shedding light about what’s going on in the occupied territories in order that we can lend weight to the argument that the Palestinian people should be treated with respect.”

In a brief video clip he made for the RToP, Waters explains, “I will be required as a juror to sit, to listen to testimony which will maybe give me a little bit more of a feeling about where a solution might lie. There is a nonviolent solution to their problem that might stop us all killing each others’ children for the next 100 years.”

The Russell Tribunal on Palestine was launched in 2009 following Israel’s bloody assault on Gaza, which killed approximately 1,400 Palestinians, and has since worked to bring together legal experts, scholars, activists and other people of note to expose the reality of Israel’s 45-year-old military occupation and colonization of Palestinian land. Previous sessions have been held in Barcelona, London and Cape Town. These hearings have addressed, respectively, European Union support for Israel, the complicity of corporations in the occupation of Palestine and the question of whether Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid.

The fourth and final session will be held on October 6–7, 2012, at New York City’s historic Great Hall at Cooper Union (7 East 7th Street, Manhattan).

For more information about the Russell Tribunal on Palestine-NYC or to arrange for an interview with one of our speakers or jurors, please call Sherry Wolf at 773-991-3877 or email sherrywolf2000@yahoo.com.

http://sabbah.biz/mt/archives/2012/10/04/pink-floyds-roger-waters-joins-jury-of-russell-tribunal-on-palestine/

NDAA: A Primer

“To bereave a man of life, or by violence to confiscate his estate, without accusation or trial, would be so gross and notorious an act of despotism, as must at once convey the alarm of tyranny throughout the whole kingdom; but confinement of the person, by secretly hurrying him to jail, where his sufferings are unknown or forgotten, is a less public, a less striking, and therefore a more dangerous engine of arbitrary government.” ~ Sir William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England

Last New Year’s Eve, the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) was signed into law by President Obama. The most controversial aspect of NDAA was a provision that allowed for the military detention of American citizens without due process. Though apologists for the administration tried to spin or downplay it, constitutional lawyer Glenn Greenwald made the facts very clear:

1. It does codify indefinite detention. The military can be used to detain anyone.
2. It does expand the scope of the War on Terror as defined by the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, originally intended to go after and punish the perpetrators responsible for 9/11.
3. U.S. citizens are not exempt. In fact, House and Senate amendments pushed by a handful of Democrats and libertarian Republicans that would have explicitly exempted U.S. citizens from indefinite military detention were defeated. Furthermore, an open letter signed by forty retired generals and admirals in support of these measures were ignored.

Faced with these facts, it’s put up or “shut up” time for the American people. NDAA is arguably the gravest constitutional crisis we’re facing today since it guts centuries of Anglo-American law. As Justices Scalia and Stevens pointed out in their eloquent dissent in Hamdi v. Rumsfield: “The very core of liberty secured by our Anglo-Saxon system of separated powers has been freedom from indefinite imprisonment at the will of the Executive.”

For those unfamiliar with the Hamdi case, the Supreme Court ruled that Yaser Esam Hamdi, an American citizen captured during the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, could be held in military detention but not without habeas review. That case, however, involved an actual battlefield in an actual war. What NDAA permits goes even further. Section 1021 of this law states the military can detain anyone deemed to be “a part of” or deemed to have “substantially supported” Al Qaeda, the Taliban, or “associated forces.”

Despite our cable networks remaining mostly silent on an assault that strikes at the very heart of our cherished liberties, online outrage over NDAA has brought together organizations and activists that disagree on almost every other issue. Politics certainly creates strange bedfellows as opposition to “indefinite imprisonment at the will of the Executive” brought together a trans-partisan coalition that include the Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street, Amnesty International, Downsize DC, Human Rights Watch, the Tenth Amendment Center, the Rutherford Institute, and the American Civil Liberties Union. A lawsuit against NDAA was filed by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Christopher Hedges joined by prominent MIT professor and dissident Noam Chomsky, Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg, activist Jennifer “Tangerine” Bolen, and other concerned individuals.

Last May, federal judge Katherine Forrest issued a preliminary injunction that barred the provision that allowed for indefinite detention. On September 12th, Judge Forrest ruled the offending provision unconstitutional and issued a permanent injunction against its enforcement. Not surprisingly, the Obama administration filed an appeal in less than 24 hours of Judge Forrest’s ruling! On September 18th, Judge Raymond Lohier of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals wrote a one-page order that put a temporary hold on the decision to block NDAA without offering any further explanation. As of this writing, the court of appeals has yet to set a date for a full hearing.

Having closely followed NDAA controversy since last December, the Obama administration’s actions are nothing less than astonishing. First, Obama promised to veto the law but flip-flopped at the last minute. He also issued a signing statement explaining he will not use that power to detain American citizens despite the fact he campaigned against signing statements not to mention they carry no legal weight and will not bind future presidents.

In the aftermath of Judge Forrest’s ruling, the intensity and fury of the administration’s response have raised numerous suspicions. Plaintiff Chris Hedges noted, “The request by the government to keep the law on the books during the appeal process raises a disturbing question. If the administration is this anxious to restore this section of the NDAA, is it because the Obama government has already used it? Or does it have plans to use the section in the immediate future.” Even more shockingly, the administration lawyers refused to answer if NDAA was already being used (illegally) to hold American citizens without due process during oral arguments. Why does Obama want to reclaim a power that he supposedly refuses to use? To quote from investigative journalist Ben Swann, “Actions speak louder than words. For anyone following this case, it should be undoubtedly clear where the President actually stands on this issue.”

Regardless how the appeals court rules, it is very likely this legal battle will end up in the Supreme Court. We’re heading for constitutional showdown between Judiciary and Executive not seen since the Pentagon Papers. May the odds be ever in liberty’s favor.

http://www.yaliberty.org/posts/ndaa-a-primer

A champion of justice

LAST week was the ninth anniversary of Edward Said’s death. He died in New York following 12-year battle with lymphocytic leukaemia.

He was born in Jerusalem 12 years prior to joining hundreds of thousands of his compatriots in a force, lifelong journey into exile or refugee camps.

He was a towering figure in American academia and distinguished cultural critic best known for his 1978 book Orientalism.

In it, he believed Western perception of the East was based on false colonial, self-serving rationalisation to justify imperial domination.

According to him: “Western scholars appropriated the task of exploration and interpretation of the Orient’s languages, history and culture for themselves, with the implication that the East was not capable of composing its own narrative.”

More than 30 years after its publication, Orientalism continues to dominate academic discourse and Western media bias when covering the East.

On the heels of Orientalism, Said wrote The Question of Palestine in 1979 followed by Covering Islam in 1983, in which he used the Orientalism theory to expose contemporary media bias when covering the Islamic world.

In Covering Islam, he asserts that most professed Western experts were politically motivated by self-interest and influenced by discreet cultural biases.

He makes a compelling argument that “untruth and falsehood about Islam” is propagated and filtered in the Western media under the cover of objectivity, democracy and freedom.

I was fortunate to have met him at a small dinner table when he was a visiting professor at the University of California, San Diego, in 1989.

He was eloquent in critiquing shortcomings of the Palestinian leadership and as articulate when making the Palestinian case before a standing room only lecture later that night.

After meeting and studying Said, you couldn’t help but feel you were in the company of a genius. He was an accomplished pianist and an authority on topics ranging from literature and politics to culture, art and music.

His memoir Out of Place, which he wrote during the sunset years of his life, was the quintessential Palestinian story of people yearning for a place to belong. It was an account most Palestinians would identify with, whether they lived in refugee camps or had a successful life in exile.

I have read many of Said’s books and confess that most are not easy to read. His subject writing is certain to challenge the most erudite and intellectual reader.

Exceptional scholars are typically celebrated in the West. Said was the recipient of many academic awards, but the lack of official US acknowledgement of his talent was mainly due to his tireless efforts fighting the most powerful and organised single-issue group in America.

For instance, the charge of anti-Semitism has become a psychological weapon in the hands of Zionists, who use it to numb Israel’s opponents and stifle its critics.

Said questioned this dilemma extensively in his 2003 book Culture and Resistance, pointing out that “there is a great difference between acknowledging Jewish oppression and using that as a cover for the oppression of another people”.

At a time when it became convenient for Western intellectuals to ignore Israel’s brutality to avoid the wrath of national Jewish organisations, he refused to be silenced. For Said, “injustice was to be rectified, not rationalised”.

http://www.intifada-palestine.com/2012/10/edward-said-a-champion-of-justice/

Who’s Afraid of an Open Debate? The Truth About the Commission on Presidential Debates

2012 – The Commission on Presidential Debates is a private corporation headed by the former chairmen of the Republican and Democratic parties. The CPD is a duopoly which allows the major party candidates to draft secret agreements about debate arrangements including moderators, debate format and even participants. The result is a travesty riddled with sterile, non-contentious arguments which consistently exclude alternative voices that Americans want to hear.

This documentary also reveals the big corporations who “sponsor” the CPD and how third party candidates are purposely excluded. One of these sponsors, Annheiser Busch, is partly owned by Senator John McCain’s wife. Former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura’s election as an independent candidate proves that opening up debates can lead to real change – something the entrenched Republican and Democratic Parties don’t want to see.

Appeals Court Restores NDAA’s Indefinite Detention Provisions

An appeals court has rejected a previous judge’s ruling that the government be barred from enforcing the NDAA provisions

A federal appeals court of three Obama-appointed judges has rejected a previous ruling barring the government from enforcing the indefinite detention provisions in a recent national defense bill.

Congress passed the National Defense Authorization Act last year, which includes provisions codifying indefinite detention for individuals suspected of allying with or supporting al-Qaeda or its affiliates.

Judge Katherine B. Forrest last month blocked the government from enforcing those particular statutes on grounds that they violate Constitutionally guaranteed rights to due process, in a case brought against the government by journalists and academics including Chris Hedges, Daniel Ellsberg, and Noam Chomsky.

The Obama administration immediately appealed Forrest’s ruling, asking for an “immediate stay,” or suspension of the case’s proceedings. When Forrest denied the request, the government went to the Second US Court of Appeals in Manhattan and asked another judge for an emergency stay, which Judge Raymond J. Lohier granted.

The latest appeals court extended the stay, undermining Judge Forrest’s ruling that the government should be barred from enforcing the law.

“We conclude that the public interest weighs in favor of granting the government’s motion for a stay,” Appeals Court Judges Denny Chin, Raymond Lohier and Christopher Droney wrote in a statement on their ruling.

The appeals court ruled that, since the government has promised that citizens, journalists, and activists are not in danger of being detained as a result of this law, it is unnecessary to block its enforcement.

Both parties in the case have been directed by the court to file reply briefs in the next few months, through to December, after which a new calendar date will be scheduled to argue the case again. So, at least for the next few months, the NDAA’s detention provisions are in effect.

http://news.antiwar.com/2012/10/03/appeals-court-restores-ndaas-indefinite-detention-provisions/

NATO Terrorists Mass Slaughter Civilians in Aleppo, Syria

NATO-backed terrorism swept the northern Syrian city of Aleppo this week, killing and maiming scores of civilians. Al Qaeda-style car bombings targeted public squares throughout the city in a coordinated attack the Western press has attempted to claim was “targeting government forces.” CNN in their article, “Syria: Dozens killed in blasts at Aleppo public square,” bases this conclusion on the discredited “Syrian Observatory for Human Rights,” a single man, Rami Abdelrahman, who is admittedly a biased member of the so-called “Syrian opposition,” based not in Syria but in Coventry England disingenuously posing as an entire “human rights organization.”

But even Abdelrahman’s baseless claims state that “most of the casualties were government forces” meaning that the remaining victims were indeed civilians. Attacking public squares populated with civilians using indiscriminate explosive devices in such attacks is a brazen war crime, one made possible by Western cash, armaments, and political support supplied to sectarian extremist groups starting as far back as 2007.

The city of Aleppo has suffered heavily at the hands of NATO-backed terrorists, entire battalions of which consist of Libyan terrorists, not Syrian “freedom fighters” as the Western media attempts to repeatedly state. Libyan militants from the listed terror organization, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), are stationed, armed, and funded in NATO-member Turkey by Western and the Persian Gulf states of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, before crossing into northern Syria to carry out atrocities against the Syrian people under the guise of the so-called “Free Syrian Army.”

Image: Libyan Mahdi al-Harati of the US State Department, United Nations, and the UK Home Office (page 5, .pdf)-listed terrorist organization, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), addressing fellow terrorists in Syria. Harati is now commanding a Libyan brigade operating inside of Syria attempting to destroy the Syrian government and subjugate the Syrian population. After ravaging many of Libya’s historical sites out of sectarian spite, these very same terrorists are attacking heritage sites across the ancient northern city of Aleppo, Syria.

As these terrorist battalions continuously fail to achieve any significant military gains against the Syrian Army, they have resorted to brazen terrorist attacks like the recent coordinated car bombings, as well as targeting high profile historical sites across the ancient city. The Western media then attempts to portray the ravaging of Syria’s historical treasures as perpetrated by the Syrian government, when these same Libyan terrorists ravaged their own historical sites in acts of sectarian spite toward the end of last year’s NATO-backed destruction of the Libyan nation-state.

The UN described in detail similar attacks on Libyan historical sites in a report titled, “UN independent experts condemn destruction of Sufi religious sites in Libya,” which stated:

Three United Nations independent experts today strongly condemned the destruction of Sufi religious and historic sites in various parts of Libya, as well as the intimidation and excessive use of force against unarmed protesters opposing the destruction.

According to media reports, ultra-conservative Islamists were responsible for the damage, reportedly with the acquiescence of members of the security forces. The sites are revered by Sufis, a branch of Islam known for its moderation but considered heretical by some branches of the Islamic faith.

These same sectarian extremists are now busy at work in Syria, again, with NATO arms, cash, and both political and covert military support carrying out identical atrocities with the Western press repeating identical lies to obfuscate from the public the true scope of the conflict.

Source: Global Research

http://www.intifada-palestine.com/2012/10/nato-terrorists-mass-slaughter-civilians-in-aleppo-syria/

Hillary Calls For War Against Iran While Laughing About It!

Pure psychopathic evil! These insane comments go hand in hand with Zionist warmonger Patrick Clawson’s. Why is not this psychopathic witch in Guantanamo Bay with the rest of the terrorists? Have our so called ‘leaders’ gone totally insane?

If Cops Can’t Taze a Pregnant Woman, The Terrorists Will Win

Pro Libertate  Thanks to a misbegotten ruling from a divided Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, police in nine states have been left at an insurmountable disadvantage when dealing with criminal suspects. At least, that’s what we’re told in a legal brief submitted to the Supreme Court by a coalition of police unions.

“It won’t be long before the word spreads through society’s criminal underworld that the Ninth Circuit hasn’t simply given them a `get out of jail free’ card, but a `never have to go to jail in the first place’ card,” warns the amicus brief. Rather than subduing criminals, “police officers will now be forced to walk away from people they have arrested.”

The ruling that is fraught with such awful implications, Brooks v. City of Seattle, involved a patently unnecessary Taser attack upon a woman who was seven months pregnant. The unarmed woman, who was not suspected of a violent crime, posed no threat to the three – yes, three – valiant officers who assaulted her. She was uncooperative, but did not offer any violent resistance.

Her sole “offense” was to refuse a demand that she sign a traffic ticket that was eventually dismissed.

In March 2010, the Ninth Circuit Court found that Seattle Police Officers Steven Daman, Juan Ornelas, and Donald Jones used excessive force when they committed their attack on Brooks and her unborn child – but that they were entitled to “qualified immunity” because the legal precedents dealing with the use of electro-shock torture on a pregnant woman were ambiguous in 2004.

The assailants were thus left in the clear — but unsatisfied with their victory. With the support of organizations representing tens of thousands of police officers (including some 30,000 SWAT operators), the officers are appealing that ruling to the Supreme Court, claiming that any limitation on the discretionary use of tasers against non-violent “suspects” constitutes an unacceptable restraint on police discretion and a dire threat to that holiest of social considerations, “officer safety.”

An unarmed fourteen-year-old girl is tasered in Philadelphia.

In its brief on behalf of the officers, the Los Angeles County Police Chiefs Association (LACPCA) and the National Tactical Officers Association (NTOA) insist that refusing to allow police to use electro-shock torture against a pregnant woman would fatally undermine the principle of “pain compliance” on which social order – as they pretend to understand it – depends.

On November 23, 2004, Malaika Brooks was taking her son to school when she was stopped by Officer Ornelas, who claimed – wrongly, as it turned out – that she had been speeding. When he presented Brooks with a traffic ticket, she refused to sign it out of the concern that doing so would constitute an admission of guilt. She had done the same during a 1996 traffic stop in which the officer, who possessed some residual decency, simply handed her the little extortion note and walked away.

Ornelas, unfortunately, chose to escalate the encounter by calling for “backup.” A few minutes later, Officer Jones and Sgt. Daman arrived on the scene and began to threaten and berate Brooks. None of this was necessary: The officers were engaging in a tribal display of primate dominance, rather than carrying out a function related in any way to protection of person and property. When they threatened to kidnap – or, as they called it, “arrest” – Brooks, the woman informed them that she was “less than 60 days from having my baby.”

After huddling briefly, the three officers attacked Brooks. Ornelas seized her right arm and — in the course of less than a minute – inflicted three “drive stun” charges to Brooks’s neck, shoulder, and thigh, an assault that left her with permanent scars. The three officers then dragged Brooks – who had been desperately clinging to the steering wheel, honking the horn, and screaming for help – from the car, threw her face-down and pinned her to the ground. She was handcuffed and then booked on charges of “Refusing to sign” a traffic citation – a misdemeanor – and resisting arrest.

A jury eventually found Brooks guilty of the first “offense,” and acquitted her of the second. The speeding citation was thrown out before Brooks went to court. Brooks filed suit against the officers for assault and violating her civil rights. The officers responded by invoking the well-established – and utterly specious – doctrine of “qualified immunity,” seeking a summary dismissal. The District Court dismissed the assault charge but found that the officers had committed a civil rights violation that nullified their claim to qualified immunity.

The Ninth Circuit reversed that holding as it applied to the defendants, ruling that the officers were protected by qualified immunity and could not be sued by Brooks. However, the Court offered notice that in the future similar taser attacks on non-cooperative but non-violent subjects would constitute excessive force.

In his dissent, Judge Alex Kozinski maintained that Brooks “had shown herself deaf to reason, and moderate physical force had only led to further entrenchment…. Brooks was tying up two line officers, a sergeant and three police vehicles – resources diverted from other community functions – to deal with one lousy traffic ticket.”

Who was responsible for this “diversion” – Mrs. Brooks, who was merely being uncooperative, or Officer Ornelas and his comrades, who needlessly escalated a disagreement over “one lousy traffic ticket” to the point where potentially deadly force was used against someone accused of a trivial traffic offense, rather than an actual crime?

“The officers couldn’t just walk away,” complains Kozinski. “Brooks was under arrest.”

There was no substantive reason why the police couldn’t walk away – if they had been acting as peace officers, that is, rather than as armed enforcers of the revenue-consuming class.

If a police officer has the option of deploying a reliably deadly weapon in a situation of this kind, he also has the option of backing down and letting the court deal with the merits of the citation. But the position claimed by the officers – and accepted, in a qualified sense, by the Ninth Circuit Court – is that anything other than immediate and unqualified submission by a Mundane justifies the infliction of summary punishment by a police officer.

The amicus brief by the LACPCA and NTOA lament that the Ninth Circuit Court, while upholding the unqualified “authority” of police to arrest people at their discretion, “has deprived officers of any lawful way of enforcing that authority, at least when the suspect is not engaged in violence directed towards the officers” and has “unnecessarily limited the amount of force that can be used against a suspect who refrains from using violence against the police” (emphasis added).

For more on this fatal Taser attack, go here.

What the police unions who filed that brief are demanding is an open-ended grant of unlimited “authority” to use “pain compliance” against people who passively resist abduction by police. The question of using violent means to subdue a violent criminal suspect is not implicated in any way by this case.

In their petition for certiorari, the officers – whose actions, remember, were upheld by the Ninth Circuit Court – complain that the ruling could “prohibit the use of any low-level physical force against an actually resisting suspect who does not present an imminent threat of harm to the officers, a result that could strip law enforcement of any reasonable and practical means of enforcing the law.”

To which a person whose mind is not hostage to totalitarian assumptions would reply: “And the problem with this is…?”

In a reasonably free society, police (actually, peace officers) would not presume to “enforce” the law; they would track down and arrest people plausibly suspected of committing crimes against person and property. They would not be permitted to violate the unconditional law of non-aggression by initiating force, or issue what they assume to be “lawful orders” to people who are not suspected of actual crimes. They certainly would not be permitted to employ “pain compliance” in any situation that didn’t involve legitimate defense against an actual aggressor.

Remarkably, in their amicus brief the officers who committed what should be prosecuted as a felonious assault on Brooks asserted that “it is well established that police officers need not use the least amount of force in effecting an arrest.”

Once again, we’re invited to believe that there would be apocalyptic consequences if police were inhibited in the use of disproportionate force to compel non-violent “suspects” to submit to their supposed authority.

Under the standard prescribed in the amicus briefs filed on behalf of the officers who assaulted Brooks, it’s difficult to find fault with the actions of Beaumont, California Police Officer Enoch Clark.

On February 21, Clark stopped a woman named Monique Hernandez on suspicion of DUI. When Clark tried to handcuff her, Hernandez resisted. Clark’s preferred method of “pain compliance” was a JPX device — a weapon that employs a gunpowder charge to fire a stream of pepper spray at roughly 400 miles an hour.

The JPX weapon is designed for use against armed assailants at a distance of 6 to 15 feet. Its payload of weaponized OC spray is propelled over that distance at less than three one-hundredths of a second, making it (in the words of the company’s promotional literature) “too fast to avoid…. The effect is immediate; there is no chance to resist.”

Clark – a veteran officer and chairman of the local police officers union — fired his JPX gun into Hernandez’s right temple at a distance of roughly ten inches. The impact shattered the woman’s right eye and inflicted irreparable damage to her left eye as well.

The officer has been indicted on four felony charges. His attorney insists that the officer’s attack was justified in order “to gain compliance and in defense of his person.” If the claims made by and on behalf of the officers who assaulted Mailaka Brooks are sound – if police officers are not legally required to use minimal force when dealing with non-violent “suspects” – it’s difficult to see how Clark’s actions were improper, even though they resulted in Monique Rodriguez being permanently blinded.

“It was Brooks’s recalcitrance and resistance that prompted her treatment,” sniffs the officers’ petition for certiorari. “Under both state and federal law she did not have a right to resist her arrest,” which purportedly means that the officers were permitted – nay, required – to employ “pain compliance” techniques against her until she submitted.

Wouldn’t the same principle apply to the actions of Enoch Clark in dealing with the equally recalcitrant Monique Hernandez? His police union attorney certainly thinks so. And let us not forget that any effort to inhibit the police in their sacred mission to impose order would constitute an existential threat to our society.

Deny an intrepid hero in body armor the option of tasing a pregnant woman – or kicking her in the stomach hard enough to cause the near-term infant to defecate in the womb – a reign of terror will ensue, with the “criminal underworld” arising to devour us all.

http://fromthetrenchesworldreport.com/if-cops-cant-taze-a-pregnant-woman-the-terrorists-will-win/22790/

NATO Slams Syria, Holds ‘Emergency Meeting’ After Turkey Shellings

NATO Chief Vows to ‘Defend Turkey’ From Syrian ‘Aggression’

Tensions between war-torn Syria and neighboring Turkey boiled over earlier today, when Syrian shellings killed five across the border in southern Turkey, and Turkey responded with artillery attacks on several sites inside Syria.

NATO was quick to scrambling into action, holding an “emergency meeting” which ended in a matter of minutes with a statement of “solidarity” with Turkey, and a pledge to keep the issue of Turkey’s territorial integrity on the docket for all future meetings.

NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen went on to condemn “Syrian aggression” and insisted that NATO was prepared to do whatever is necessary to defend Turkey from possible attacks.

The reality, of course, is that Turkey is much larger than Syria and has a much stronger military, and isn’t facing a real threat. Exactly what caused the cross-border strike was unclear, but it seems unlikely that it is the harbinger of a protracted Syrian offensive against southern Turkey. Rather the Assad regime, already struggling to handle its own civil war, is likely to try to smooth things over as quickly as possible, no small challenge since Turkey is openly backing the rebels and seems eager to use the provocation as an excuse for strikes.

http://news.antiwar.com/2012/10/03/nato-slams-syria-holds-emergency-meeting-after-turkey-shellings/