Criminal State

May 18, 2009 marks the first meeting between Israel’s new prime minister and America’s new president. Israeli behavior suggests that the pre-staging for a terrorist attack may be underway to advance indirectly what Tel Aviv cannot achieve directly.

In the diplomatic shadow boxing that precedes such meetings, Benjamin Netanyahu took a page from the playbook of former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. In 2002, the hawkish Sharon assured the U.S. that peace was achievable if only the U.S. would remove Saddam Hussein. The hawkish Netanyahu now assures the U.S. that the barrier to peace is Iran.

In practical effect, the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq handed that dominantly Shiite nation to Shiite Iran on a silver platter. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz assured Americans they would be welcomed with flowers and sweets. Yet anyone familiar with the region knew that a violent overthrow of the Iraqi dictator—particularly if led by a nation allied with Israel—would create political dynamics certain to favor the Shiites and Iran.

If Barack Obama fails to comply, Israel has signaled its intention to continue this six-decade conflict. That would only further undermine U.S. national security as America would continue to be portrayed as guilty by its association with Israel’s thuggish behavior.

Citing the Jewish state’s “very close friendship” with the U.S., Defense Chief Ehud Barak declared Israel “ready for a process.” He proposes three years to hammer out an agreement between “two peoples” (versus two states) and another five years for implementation. That “process” puts peace safely beyond the reach of even a two-term U.S. president.

Though Netanyahu will press Obama to pressure Tehran, the “existential” threat he cites to justify an Israeli attack on Iran can be addressed by the Israelis themselves. Palestinian statehood has long been key to keeping Iran’s nuclear program peaceful.

Better yet would be a nuclear-free Middle East. President John F. Kennedy pressured Israel not to start a nuclear arms race in the region. In a June 1963 letter to David Ben Gurion, he insisted on knowing “beyond a reasonable doubt” that Tel Aviv was not building a nuclear arsenal. Before the letter could be delivered, Ben Gurion resigned. With Kennedy’s assassination, the Zionist state found in Lyndon Johnson a far more compliant president.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton suggested that the U.S. may provide Israel with support “vis a vis Iran.” If President Obama in any way links the two-state solution to concessions on Iran, he is inviting a terrorist attack. If history is any guide, that attack will be accompanied by an orgy of evidence implicating Hezbollah, with Iran the plausible Evil Doer.

Nation state terrorism is a real threat. The problem lies in the misplaced focus. The U.S. was taken to war in Iraq by those skilled at displacing facts with what “the mark” could be deceived to believe: Iraqi WMD, substantive ties to Al Qaeda, mobile biological weapons, meetings in Prague and so forth. All were false. Yet all were widely believed.

No one has yet identified the stable nation state intelligence required to perpetrate 911 or to continue to run such a fact-displacing psy-ops program in plain sight almost eight years later. Who has the means, motivation and opportunity to operate inside the U.S. with such impunity? “Islamo” fascists?

More than 92 months have passed since the terrorist attack of 911 was cited by U.S. war-planners as a rationale to invade Iraq. The beneficiary of that attack was not the Arab world but Israel. Yet the chairman and vice-chairman of the 911 Commission reported overwhelming opposition to hearings on the motivation for that mass murder.

The barrier to peace in the Middle East is not Iran. The barrier is the false belief that Israel is (a) a democracy and (b) an ally of the U.S. The obstacle to peace is six decades of ongoing warfare waged by way of deception. The problem is a nuclear-armed theocratic people committed to an expansionist foreign policy and an apartheid domestic policy.

The threat is not to the Jewish state. The existential threat is the danger to world peace posed by the U.S.-Israeli relationship. And by those pro-Israelis who produced Barack Obama’s political career and now shape his policies.

If this U.S. president fails to insist on a peace that only the U.S. can force, he will be allowing foreign interests to shape U.S. foreign policy. By that decision, he will be inviting a terrorist attack. And for that decision he will be seen as advancing the interests of an enemy within—a treasonable charge.

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April 21, 2009 – an article in today’s New York Times implicates Congresswoman Jane Harman and Zionist media mogul Haim Saban in treason. Reporting on a Jeff Stein article in Congressional Quarterly, the Times notes that Saban offered in 2005 to withhold campaign contributions to Nancy Pelosi, an aspirant for House Speaker, unless Pelosi would help Harman become chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

The quid pro quo? Harman agreed to intervene in an espionage case in which two executives for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee were indicted for transferring to the Israeli embassy classified Defense Department intelligence on Iran with the help of a Pentagon analyst (already convicted) who worked for Bush-era war-planners Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith. AIPAC is the most visible component of a transnational network known as the Israel lobby.

The articles report that the National Security Agency “inadvertently” monitored Harman’s phone call with Saban. Harman’s concluding comment in their discussion concedes her apparent criminal intent: “This conversation doesn’t exist.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/21/us/politics/21harman.html?th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print

The reported facts suggest not only political corruption but also outright treason. Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales declined to pursue Harman, allegedly because the Bush Administration needed her support for a domestic eavesdropping initiative. If the facts are correct, the criminality is clear, including treason proposed by Saban and advanced by Harman with Saban’s help.

There may be more at work here. Why did Jeff Stein report this four-year old story NOW? Why did the New York Times consider this account newsworthy NOW?

With the oft-delayed AIPAC spy trial soon to begin, President Obama is being lobbied to dismiss the case by the same network of pro-Israelis that funded his career, influence his schedule and inform his political priorities. Why release top-secret memos revealing CIA torture techniques NOW? Why report them NOW in New York Times Review of Books?

While Stein reported the Harman-Saban treason in Congressional Quarterly, Obama visited the CIA. Why would Obama claim NOW that the release of top-secret torture memos may not result in liabilities for CIA employees? What “associative” strategy is at work here? What’s the intended correspondence? For those adept at waging war by way of deception, what is the strategic goal?

The best defense is a good offense. The timing suggests that pressure is being applied to the intelligence agencies and the FBI to support dismissal of an espionage case that implicates the Israel lobby. A Federal District Court gave clearance for the former AIPAC executives to subpoena in their defense testimony from senior national security personnel.

The Harman/Saban/AIPAC affair increased the perception that even more sensitive intelligence may yet be exposed if this spy case proceeds. The cumulative impact signals “the mark” that a dismissal may be preferred if the case: (a) exposes “sources and methods” that could damage national security, (b) hampers relationships with foreign intelligence services, and (c) creates potential liabilities—such as for those who “inadvertently” monitored Harman’s phones.

The “mark” is the Office of the President. The commander-in-chief must be persuaded that dismissal of an espionage case is in the interest of the United States. Those pro-Israelis around Obama may be assuring him that, with dismissal, right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu can be persuaded to support a two-state solution, enabling Obama to be perceived as the president who brought peace to the Middle East.

Jeff Stein is also the reporter who claimed that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel was “getting tough” with Netanyahu. The son of an Irgun terrorist who twice volunteered to serve in the Israel Defense Forces, Emanuel and chief White House strategist David Axelrod could lose their jobs if, as expected, this case confirms espionage by pro-Israelis collaborating with Iraq war planners Wolfowitz and Feith in an alliance with Lewis Libby, Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff.

The timing requires that one also question the purpose of last week’s announcement by Homeland Security that our Iraq war veterans are a threat to national security due to their susceptibility to right-wing extremism. Why was this report, a product of the Bush administration, released NOW?

If, as anticipated, the spy case were to result in convictions for two senior officials of the Israel lobby, will veterans have a court-confirmed reason for their concerns about just which nation’s interests were served by their fighting in this war? If veterans resort to their Second Amendment rights to express their grievances, would that make them extremists or patriots?

Is what we now see unfolding another case of misdirection by those masterful at waging war by way of deception? Is the Harman/Saban duplicity obscuring a more systemic treason imbedded in the U.S.-Israeli relationship?

Is another president being deceived to make decisions not in the national interest but in the interest of those who helped make him president? If the case is dismissed against spies working for the Israel lobby, will that decision show how treason can proceed in plain sight and, to date, with impunity?

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Copyright Korea Times

Had insurance giant A.I.G. collapsed, losses from its failed insurance coverage would have rippled through banks and investment banks worldwide, destabilizing the world economy.

Yet A.I.G. set aside no reserves to cover the risk of default on those securities it collected premiums to insure. Why should it? Securities rating agencies ranked even the riskiest of those securities akin to U.S.-government bonds with virtually no chance of default.

A.I.G. professed to insure high-risk loans packaged and resold as low-risk securities to unwary pension funds. In a financial markets version of musical chairs, A.I.G. could afford to be the last one standing, confident they were too big to fail. Let’s keep it simple: imagine the casino skim taken to global scale as players extracted fees at each step along the way.

A.I.G.’s lack of financial reserves did not inhibit its financial products unit from charging handsome fees while its insurance unit pocketed vast premiums. A.I.G.’s rare triple-A rating lent the firm an image of strength and stability even as it “insured” the riskiest securities backed by the least secure of subprime mortgages.

A.I.G.’s financial “creativity” induced A.I.G. clients to believe their premiums would cover the risk of default. Heads A.I.G. wins. Tails and we’re told that taxpayers must pay. A precedent was set with the massive savings and loan fraud of the late-1980s when policy changes enabled a similar financial “pump-and-dump.” As real estate prices soared, cash was skimmed at the top of the market to acquire assets cheaply at the fire-sale bottom.

The origins of this fraud can be traced to a “Chicago” mindset that likens unfettered financial freedom to personal freedom. The public interest, we’re assured, is best served by allowing money to freely work its will worldwide. Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan reassured us that “financial creativity” would protect us from the very “irrational exuberance” that he enabled with a combination of easy money and free market ideology.

In a classic exercise in political distraction, the public is now incensed at a reported $165 million in incentive payments to the A.I.G. geniuses behind this financial creativity. In truth, their real bonus figure is closer to $450 million. Albeit outrageous, it totals less than one quarter of one percent of a taxpayer bailout for A.I.G. poised to top $200 billion.

Forced to disclose to which firms the first $85 billion in bailout funds were paid, A.I.G. conceded that 16 of the top 22 institutions were foreign-owned firms. Goldman Sachs, a key node in this transnational network of financial creativity, was paid $13 billon by A.I.G. That’s in addition to the $10 billion that Washington paid directly to Goldman last fall.

Obama adviser Larry Summers succeeded Goldman Sachs chair Robert Rubin as Treasury Secretary when key policies were changed that enabled this fraud. He also handpicked a Harvard advisory team who oversaw a similar fraud that financially pillaged the Russian economy. When Moscow hit the “reset” button in its shift from state to private ownership, a national scale fraud created an oligarchy that dominates the Russian economy.

As soon as Russia’s restructuring was complete, its beneficiaries cited sanctity of contract to protect the spoils of their massive fraud while a deceived Russian public was driven into poverty. There, a massive “loan for shares” fraud enabled financial sophisticates to emerge dominant. Here, a massive “funds for shares” program turned to hedge funds and private equity firms to rescue us from our Greenspan-enabled profligacy.

To facilitate an American-style “reset,” government debts will be secured by our full faith and credit to help financial sophisticates buy trashy debt securities from A.I.G.’s defrauded clients. That cost will reduce fiscal resources required to address the retirement needs of 78 million Baby Boomers whose pension funds were ravaged by this “Chicago” fraud.

As this cash-for-trash program proceeds, who will emerge as dominant owners of the nation’s distressed financial sector? Answer: the senior partners of hedge funds and private equity funds—who already dominate the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans.

As in Russia, debate is being framed around sanctity of contract to insulate from a deceived public a vast transfer of wealth into a few hands. Summers cited that sanctity to insist that A.I.G.’s financial products unit be allowed to keep their half-billion dollars in taxpayer-paid bonuses. Obama initially opposed the bonuses while an incensed House approved legislation imposing a 90% tax. Chicagoan Obama has since backed down. That tax could have set a precedent for a bilked public to recover other stolen wealth.

The real issues remain obscured in the outrage over executive pay while the entire economy is being “reset” in plain sight. The policy changes proposed by Summers & Co. will create a uniquely American-style oligarchy. As taxpayers are stuck with the mortgage, our creative financial sophisticates will get the house. Is this the future that Americans want?

Another intelligence “dot disconnect” may be in the works. While Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano cites our porous borders as the primary danger, intelligence agencies confirm that our weakened economy poses the top threat to national security.

How was U.S. security improved by enabling A.I.G. to make massive payments to foreign banks? How is our national interest served by taking us deeper into debt in order to bail out complicit bankers while creating a Russian-style oligarchy? If those simple questions were asked, the answers would lead us to those who orchestrated this greatest heist in history. And to those now enacting policies destined to make a bad situation worse.

March 24, 2009

For more background and a better understanding of the situation AT LARGE, please visit my website at http://www.criminalstate.com and have a quick peek at my book “Criminal State“.

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