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.

Criminal State, Politics, Washington Politics Al Qaeda, Ariel Sharon, Barack Obama, Benjamin Netanyahu, David Ben Gurion, Ehud Barak, enemy within, Evil Doer, existential threat, Hezollah, Islamo fascists, Jewish State, Kennedy Assassination, Lyndon Johnson, orgy of evidence, Paul Wolfowitz, Road Map, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Shiite Iran, Shiites, Two State Solution, Zionist state

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?

Criminal State, Politics, Washington Politics aipac, Alberto Gonzales, Benjamin Netanyahu, David Axelrod, Dick Cheney, Douglas Feith, eavesdropping, espionage, Haim Saban, Homeland Security, House Intelligence Committee, irgun, Israel lobby, Jane Harman, Janet Napolitano, Jeff Stein, Lewis Libby, Nancy Pelosi, National Security Agency, Paul Wolfowitz, Rahm Emanuel, Second Amendment, treason, U.S.-Israeli relationship

The Need for Alternative Media

Why does democracy need alternative media? An earlier blog on the Criminal State website (”The New Heretics”) chronicles the role that mainstream media routinely plays in waging war by way of deception.

Ambassador Charles Freeman withdrew his nomination last week as the newly appointed chair of the National Intelligence Council. The withering attack unleashed on him by the Israel lobby may awaken a long-deceived public to the perils posed by six decades of accommodating America’s entangled alliance with the Zionist state.

Guilt by Association, the first release in the Criminal State series, condenses the how of Zionism to its duplicitous essence by making the analysis generic and not dependent on any particular time, place or circumstance. At the core of its duplicity lies an oft-deployed modus operandi: the displacement of facts with what people can be deceived to believe.

That “m.o.” operates the same regardless whether it’s an induced belief in Iraqi WMD, a consensus faith in the infallibility of unfettered financial markets, or a shared opinion that Israel is an ally. When waging war in the shared mindset (where else could a “consensus” reside?), the power of association is deployed as a weapon to deceive “the mark”—us.

Thus the stature of Colin Powell was used to lend credence (believability) to the phony intelligence used to deceive the UN Security Council that Iraq had mobile biological weapons laboratories. Powell’s testimony made America look just like the Zionist state—a duplicitous government willing to deceive other governments to wage war on Israel’s behalf. Yet despite the consistency of this duplicity, we continue on with this entanglement, assured that this alliance is in America’s interest.

The Ancient Art of Deception

When deploying the power of association—whether to accredit or discredit—facts are irrelevant. In this case, the credibility of an honorable man was deployed to make a dishonorable case to invade Iraq for Greater Israel policy. For those who consider themselves above the law, the means justify the end. General Powell concedes he was used and has since rarely appeared in public. The result cost America untold amounts in blood, treasure and hard-earned credibility—the most essential capital of any legitimate nation state.

Those profiled in the Criminal State series wage war at the level of the mental state. All else flows downstream from what academics call the paradigm—the shared mindset. To target the public’s mental state is to wage war on informed consent, the foundation on which democracies depend. In today’s media-dependent politics, that’s where modern-day treason operates.

To address this systemic criminality requires tools of perception that enable the public to see this duplicity for themselves. The Israel lobby has so thoroughly intimidated the Congress and the Executive Branch that the battle to restore informed consent must now be fought from the bottom-up. In the media-dominated decision-making of the Information Age, this is what modern warfare looks like. Why would anyone expect otherwise?

This fact-displacing modus operandi depends on mainstream media to shape the shared mental state of the mark (us). Likewise when deceivers deploy the power of association. Both rely on a complicit media to manipulate opinions, impressions and emotions so that, in combination, fiction replaces facts as the basis for policy-making.

How long has U.S. policy been shaped by the criminal syndicate chronicled in Guilt By Association? Barack Obama is the tenth president covered by veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas. When, in his first press conference, she asked which nations in the Middle East have nuclear weapons, our commander-in-chief avoided an answer. That’s understandable.

According to his April 2007 filing with the Federal Elections Commission, Obama’s political career is traceable to the Chicago Outfit. Hotelier Penny Pritzker, Chicago’s Crown clan (defense contractors), and hedge fund billionaire George Soros were his top three contributors. The organized crime lineage of the Pritzker family dates from the Jewish syndicate of the 1920s. Soros represents a more modern vintage. Abner Mikva, former Clinton White House counsel, calls Obama “our first Jewish president” based on his roots in West Side Chicago politics.

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and campaign manager David Axelrod were political activists in Chicago when the Israel lobby targeted Illinois Senator Chuck Percy for removal in 1984, two years after successfully targeting Illinois Congressman Paul Findley. Findley’s AIPAC-recruited replacement was Dick Durbin, now second in the Senate leadership. He shares a house in Washington with New York Senator Chuck Schumer who is third. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, from mobbed-up Nevada, is Mormon (aka the Lost Tribe of Israel).

Though comprising just 1.7% of the U.S. population, 15% of the Senate membership is Jewish. Add Mormons and Christian-Zionists (Jon Kyl, Lindsey Graham, et.al.) and where does the national security of America rank when compared to Israel—whose security Obama described as “sacrosanct”? As Freeman pointed out, the danger we now face is not only to the U.S. but also to the continued existence of Israel—particularly when the mark awakens to the common source of this deceit.

March 16, 2009

Politics Abner Mikva, aipac, Alternative Media, Barach Obama, Charles Freeman, Chas Freeman, Chuck Percy, Chuck Schumer, Colin Powell, Criminal State, David Axelrod, Dick Durbin, George Soros, Greater Israel, Guilt By Association, Harry Reid, Israel lobby, Jewish president, Jon Kyl, Lindsey Graham, Lost Tribe of Israel, Mormon, National Intelligence Council, New Heretic, Paul Findley, Penny Pritzker, Rahm Emanuel, UN Security Council, Zionism

The New Heretics

“Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
– George Santayana

How quickly we forget. With the abuses of the Inquisition still fresh in memory, the Founders embraced democracy to protect liberty from the manipulations of belief. That’s why facts were enshrined at the core of self-governance and the rule of law. The duplicity at the core of the U.S.-Israeli relationship has put that founding principle at risk.

For seven terrifying centuries, heretics were punished under canon law. In 1633, Italian astronomer Galileo was condemned for “grave suspicion of heresy” when he showed that the sun—not the crown—was the center of the universe. Since the merger of church and state in the Roman Empire of the 4th century, anyone who dared dispute papal authority—by challenging faith with facts—was condemned as both a heretic and an enemy of the state.

Today’s heretics are those who challenge our faith in the “special relationship” between Israel and the United States. To criticize Israel risks condemnation as an “anti-Semite.” Defenders of this relationship were forced to become more vigilant after Israeli troops used U.S.-provided arms and ammunition to kill 1,330 Palestinians in Gaza, including at least 346 children.

That attack, planned for more than a year, was scheduled between Christmas and the presidential inaugural. Within 48 hours of ending its assault, Israel had dispatched an army of bloggers to counter anti-Zionist websites. By early February, the Anti-Defamation League was bemoaning a “pandemic of anti-Semitism” as the massacre fueled outrage worldwide.

By early March, Israeli policy was being described as a threat to international peace and security, a violation of international human rights, a crime against humanity and a form of apartheid. By associating the U.S. with such behavior, this special relationship fueled anti-American hatred, fanned the flames of radicalization and set the stage for more terrorism.

At Hampshire College in Massachusetts, protesters urged that their school divest from firms whose operations support Israel’s four-decade siege of Palestine. When students compared Zionist policies to apartheid-era South Africa, Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz condemned them as “rabidly anti-Israel” (enemies of the state).

At Ottawa College in Canada, debate was stifled when Students Against Israeli Apartheid were prohibited from displaying an anti-war poster condemning Zionist policies that president Jimmy Carter condemned in his 2007 book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.

The People In Between

Meanwhile Pope Benedict XVI attacked a cleric whose excommunication he had lifted. The Pontiff claimed he was unaware that Bishop Richard Williamson had challenged key facts of the Holocaust. When condemned by the Vatican, Williamson apologized. The Vatican insisted he recant. Critics claimed the high profile dispute was staged to distract attention from the carnage in Gaza.

Left unmentioned in mainstream media was the fact that this German Pope, the first since 1523, previously led the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a direct descendant of the Vatican’s 16th century tribunal, the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Universal Inquisition.

The fiercest condemnation of the bishop’s reluctance to recant came not from Rome but from German Chancellor Angela Merkel. No media outlet reported that in 2003 Zionist media mogul Haim Saban acquired control of ProSiebenSat.1, Germany’s second largest broadcaster.

As a major opinion-shaping influence in the years preceding Merkel’s emergence as Germany’s first female chancellor, Saban described himself as an “Israeli-American” and “a one-issue guy and my issue is Israel.” Steve Rattner, Saban’s financial adviser, explained the motive for his client’s acquisition six years ago: “He thinks Germany is critical to Israel.”

To put these media-fueled events in historical perspective requires a grasp of how—in the Information Age—warfare is waged not on a conventional battlefield but in the shared field of consciousness. In that mental domain—where consensus opinions are created, shaped and sustained—facts are routinely displaced by what people can be induced to believe.

Thus the threat to democracy when media-owning Zionists influence policy-making—as when Merkel threatened to arrest Williamson for Holocaust denial on an EU-wide warrant. Or when Zionists support a modern-day Inquisition—as when Williamson faced expulsion from Argentina, the site of a seminary he directed and home to the largest Jewish population in Latin America.

In October 2007, Defense Secretary Robert Gates coined a phrase to describe the most perilous combatants when waging unconventional warfare. A former C.I.A. Director, he called them “the people in between.” Between Galileo and the facts was Church doctrine determined to displace science with beliefs or, in media parlance, with consensus opinion.

To lend credence (believability) to the displacement of facts with faith requires that the mental environment be saturated with supportive impressions and emotions. Thus the curious correlation when seemingly unrelated events emerged in this same time frame to reinforce the prevailing pro-Israeli orthodoxy, including:

• The high profile suspension of U.K. diplomat Rowan Laxton for allegedly making anti-Semitic remarks while riding an exercise bike in a London gymnasium.

• The high profile protection provided in Dubai to Andy Ram, an Israeli tennis star.

• The announcement that the London Evening Standard’s new owner, Russian-Ashkenazi oligarch Alexander Lebedev, will expand his media empire with a new radio station in Moscow.

• The announcement that the Obama administration will boycott the 2009 World Conference Against Racism after successful lobbying by the Israel lobby who knew that the Zionist state’s treatment of Arabs would be portrayed as racist.

These impressions were reinforced by the release in 2008 of eight Holocaust-based films.

The Displacement of Informed Choice

The Framers envisioned democracy as a form of governance that resides not in a royal court but in a mindset shared by its participants. Where else could it reside? Thus the key role envisioned for media to ensure widespread participation in a system of informed consent. Absent widespread access to unbiased information, the blessings of liberty they knew would eventually succumb to those who prey on ignorance and beliefs.

Thus the risks to self-governance when freedom relies on broadcasters with an undisclosed bias. It is precisely those “people in between” that routinely displace facts with what an unsuspecting public can be deceived to believe.

That fact-displacing modus operandi works the same in modernity as in antiquity. The impact on informed consent is identical regardless whether the deceit is a belief in Iraqi WMD, a consensus faith in the infallibility of unfettered financial markets, or the widely shared opinion that the Zionist state is a democratic ally rather than an enemy within.

Faith-based treachery is as ancient as the use of canon law to silence critics of Church doctrine. The only modern component of this duplicity is the reach of contemporary media and its capacity to manipulate the shared mental state on an unprecedented scale. Freedom can no longer afford America’s entangled alliance with a nation known to routinely wage war by way of deception.

A 1578 handbook for inquisitors explained that its harsh penalties were “for the public good in order that others may become terrified and weaned away from the evils they would commit.” The new Evil Doers are those who dare document the costs of the U.S.-Israel relationship in blood, treasure, insecurity and hard-earned credibility.

March 5, 2009

Politics Alexander Lebedev, Andy Ram, Angela Merkel, anti-Semitism, anti-Zionist, apartheid, Bishop Richard Williamson, Catholic Church, Doctine of the Faith, Evil Doers, Galileo, Gaza, Haim Saban, Hampshire College, Heretic, Holocaust, Inquisition, Jimmy Carter, London Evening Standard, Pope Benedict XVI, Robert Gates, Rowan Laxton, special relationship, Steve Rattner, Students Against Israeli Apartheid, the people in between, U.S.-Israel relationship, weapons of mass destruction, WMD, World Conference Against Racism, zionist

Is Israel Pre-Staging War with Iran?

credited to Savannah Red

Visitors to the Criminal State website know how well-timed crises are deployed by those skilled at displacing facts with what people can be induced to believe. Thus the use of staged crises linked to fixed intelligence as a way to influence decision-makers. That behavior was on display when policy-makers were persuaded to invade Iraq in response to the mass murder of 9/11—buttressed by an induced belief in Iraqi WMD, Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda, mobile biological weapons laboratories, meetings in Prague, and so forth.

Fast-emerging events suggest pre-staging meant to make an attack on Iran appear reasonable, even desirable. Agent provocateur operations require the staging of collateral events to induce the intended main event. Does that suggest the US and the EU should expect another crisis on the scale of 9/11 as a means to catalyze that attack?

Throughout history, dedicated groups have seen their beliefs manipulated to serve the interests of others. Thus the need to consider the possibility that seemingly unrelated incidents are being staged to create a critical mass of opinion in support of war with Iran.

Consider the cumulative impact of incidents over the past 14 months:

• December 2007 saw the assassination of former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Mark Siegel, her biographer and lobbyist, assured U.S. diplomats that Bhutto’s return to Pakistan was “the only possible way that we could guarantee stability and keep the presidency of Musharraf intact.” President Pervez Musharraf had earlier announced that resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict was the key to solving conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

• During her two terms as prime minister, Bhutto funded the Taliban as a means to wield influence in Afghanistan and catalyze conflicts in Kashmir, fueling tension with India. Meanwhile Israel allied with India and sent an emergency shipment of artillery shells during Islamabad’s armed conflict with New Delhi over the Kirpal region of Kashmir.

• In August 2008, General David Kezerashvili returned to Georgia from Israel to lead an assault on South Ossetia backed with Israeli arms and training. That crisis ignited Cold War tensions between the U.S. and Russia, key members of the Quartet (along with the EU and the UN) committed to resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict.

• The murder of Benazir Bhutto facilitated the replacement of Musharaff with Asif Ali Zardari, Bhutto’s notoriously corrupt husband.

• In late November 2008, a terrorist attack in Mumbai, India’s financial center, renewed fears of nuclear tension between India and Pakistan. When the attackers struck a hostel run by an ultra-orthodox Jewish sect from Brooklyn, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni announced from Tel Aviv: “Our world is under attack.” By early December, Israeli journalists urged that we “fortify the security of Jewish institutions worldwide.”

As “India’s 9/11” was proven to originate from Pakistan’s western tribal region, Zardari announced an agreement with the Taliban to allow Islamic (Sharia) law to govern a large swath of the North West Frontier Province where Al Qaeda leaders have free rein. With anti-Americanism on the rise, Islamabad’s capitulation to Islamic extremists endangered U.S. interests and made U.S. allies more vulnerable, including member countries of the EU.

With the Taliban and Al Qaeda allowed to operate freely in a nuclear-armed nation, Tel Aviv gained traction for its claim that a nuclear Tehran poses an “existential threat.” With the increased political clout gained by a nationalist-religious coalition in Israel’s February 10th elections, any chance of resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict became remote.

That political development is destined to fuel more Islamic extremism and gain more traction for those marketing the “global war on terrorism.” As Tzipi Livni argued in the aftermath of the murderous assault on Mumbai: “Israel, India and the rest of the free world are positioned in the forefront of the battle against terrorists and extremism.”

In Barack Obama’s first presidential press conference, veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas asked which nation in the Middle East has nuclear weapons. Side-stepping any mention of Israel, Obama spoke instead of the need for nuclear non-proliferation. As Islamic extremists were portrayed as gaining access to nuclear weapons, the case for Israeli compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty lost ground. With tensions heightened between a nuclear India and extremist-riddled Pakistan, the case for a global war on “Islamo” fascism gained ground—along with the thematic Clash of Civilizations.

Meanwhile Israel’s brutal incursion into Gaza—staged between Christmas and the Obama inaugural—drew criticism worldwide as Israeli troops killed more than 1,300 Palestinians. Student activists at Hampshire College, a leader in ending apartheid in South Africa, urged the College to divest its interest in companies complicit in Israel’s occupation of Palestine.

Harvard-Zionist law professor Alan Dershowitz portrayed the students as a “rabidly anti-Israel group” and “anti-Semitic.” That same day the Jerusalem Post cited Martin Luther King for the premise that to be “anti-Zionist” is “anti-Semitism.” Those statements followed an announcement that Israel had formed “an army of bloggers” to combat anti-Zionist websites.

Questions that can only be answered by future events include the following:

• Were the murders in Mumbai a form of geopolitical misdirection that served both the tactical goals of the Muslim attackers and the strategic goals of the Jewish state?

• When Bhutto’s murder, Musharraf’s removal, and the attack on Mumbai drew Pakistani forces to the border of India—and away from its western tribal region—did the response to those incidents heighten the risk of nuclear-armed extremism?

• As another extremist government gains influence in Tel Aviv, will these incidents be cited to again postpone settlement of the Israel-Palestine conflict?

• Is Israel’s four-decade delay in ending the occupation of Palestine—despite repeated assurances it will do so—part of Tel Aviv’s agent provocateur strategy?

• Was Israel’s preemptive Six-Day War (in 1967) the provocation required to pre-stage the region-wide outrage now directed at the U.S. due to this entangled alliance?

In retrospect, each of these incidents advanced the Zionist state’s expansionist goals for Greater Israel. Is it possible that these murderous events trace their agent provocateur origins to a common source: those marketing the next main event—war with Iran?

Was the public’s intuitive grasp of this recurring behavior accurately reflected in an October 2003 poll of 7,500 people in EU member nations? That 15-country survey found that Israel is viewed EU-wide as the top threat to world peace. Is terrorism a tool limited to Islamo-fascists? Or is it also a means of geopolitical manipulation deployed from the shadows by what Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt described as “Jewish fascists”?

February 18, 2009

MP George Kaufman re Israeli Nazis

Politics 9-11, 9/11, agent provocateur, Al Qaeda, Alan Dershowitz, anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist, Asif Ali Zardari, Benazir Bhutto, Benjamin Netanyahu, Clash of Civilizations, existential threat, Gaza, George Kaufman, Hampshire College, Hannah Arendt, Helen Thomas, India's 9/11, Iran, israel, Israel-Palestine, Jewish fascists, Jewish Nazis, Judeo Nazis, Kashmir, Kezerashvili, Lubavitch, Mark Siegel, Mumbai, Pervez Musharraf, Quartet, South Ossetia, Taliban, Tzipi Livni, Zionism, zionist

Lionized as the world’s most astute investor, Warren Buffet’s recent acquisitions drew on networks that this Wall Street legend may prefer remain obscure. Yet the ongoing market meltdown reveals how Berkshire Hathaway tapped the U.S. Treasury to buy Wachovia Bank with the help of tax dodges that left even the experts speechless.

One day after Wachovia agreed to be acquired by Citigroup, Treasury Assistant Secretary Eric Solomon published a notice that transformed Wachovia’s $74 billion in losses into $25 billion in potential tax savings for Wells Fargo, Berkshire’s second largest holding. Based on that notice, Buffet renewed a Wells Fargo bid for Wachovia that he had withdrawn just days earlier.

That acquisition typifies the murky relationships key to Buffet’s top ranking in the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans. He bested Citi not with financial expertise but with well-timed political influence that, in effect, treated the U.S. Treasury as his personal bank.

His latest built on the foundation of an earlier bank stock meltdown when, in 1990, Berkshire acquired 10% of Wells Fargo as its share price plummeted by half in the financial bloodbath that followed a nationwide savings and loan fraud. Today’s Wall Street rout resembles the S&L bust but without the perspective of time required to grasp that this latest collapse is likewise a nationwide fraud—in which Buffet was both perpetrator and beneficiary.

At the core of this latest pump-and-dump are the credit rating agencies: Fitch, S&P and Moody’s. Investors recall the key role played in the dotcom fraud by Citigroup analyst Jack Grubman. His inflated financial projections lured investors to over-priced telecom stocks while Citi lent them money, provided them investment banking, sold them insurance and even managed their pension funds. Rating agencies filled the analyst’s role in this latest fraud by making junk securities appear equivalent in risk to gilt-edged government bonds.

Berkshire Hathaway not only owns a 20% interest in Moody’s, Buffet also controls a bond insurer to which Moody’s gave a triple-A rating. But that’s only the most obvious of the conflicts-of-interest that enriched the Oracle of Omaha and his loyal followers who make an annual pilgrimage to Nebraska to marvel at his homespun wisdom.

Much as Solomon’s ruling transformed Wachovia losses into Wells Fargo assets, Moody’s ratings converted financial straw into gold. Or, as during the dotcom era, into fool’s gold when investors realized that genuine risk analysis had been replaced with what the public could be deceived to believe. In return, Moody’s pocketed record fees for Buffet.

Solomon’s ruling was the first of two expanding the losses that banks could use to reduce future taxes. In effect, he shifted to the Treasury much of the cost of those phony ratings along with the entire cost of Buffet’s $15.4 billion purchase of Wachovia. As taxpayers absorb the fiscal pain—an estimated $140 billion—savvy insiders will pocket the gain while also quickening the pace at which banks are consolidated into ever fewer hands.

That barely scratches the surface of the mega-fraud now underway. Over a 10-day stretch in September—amid taxpayer bailouts for AIG, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and a bankruptcy filing by Lehman Brothers—the shares of Goldman Sachs dropped 36%. The firm quickly gained approval to become a bank holding company and completed a $5 billion offering, diluting its shareholders by 20%. Under the leadership of Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman had operated more as a hedge fund than a brokerage firm or an investment bank, generating steady returns that relied on bogus credit ratings.

As those phony ratings became transparent and capital markets tumbled, Berkshire received $8.2 billion in value for its $5 billion cash infusion when Buffet further hammered Goldman’s public shareholders by using Berkshire’s cash hoard to extract massive stock warrants and dividend-assured preferred shares paying $1.3 million per day.

The role played by the Treasury was again obscured, hidden in the $150 billion-plus bailout of AIG. Former CEO Maurice “Hank” Greenberg had used that insurance giant as the counterparty for credit default swaps and financial derivatives originated by Goldman and Lehman. Had Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson not backed the AIG bailout, Goldman would have suffered a $20 billion loss. As a former co-chairman of Goldman with a personal net worth exceeding $850 million, Paulson could not have been unmindful that Goldman’s bonus pool for 2007 was $20 billion.

Former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, a senior Citigroup director and previously a co-chairman at Goldman, insisted that Citi invest heavily in securitized loans backed by sham credit ratings. When Buffet prevailed over Citi in his Treasury-funded bid for Wachovia, his triumph cleared the way for Goldman alumni at Treasury to offer Citi a $306 billion bailout.

This scale of fraud only works when the public cannot prove who is stealing from whom.

Business, Politics Berkshire Hathaway, Citi, Citigroup, Eric Solomon, Forbes 400, Goldman Sachs, Henry Paulson, Jack Grubman, Lehman Brothers, Lloyd Blankfein, Maurice "Hank" Greenspan, Moody's, Oracle of Omaha, Robert Rubin, Sanford Weil, Wachovia, Warren Buffet, Wells Fargo

Does Barack Obama Offer Hope for New Mideast Dynamic?

By Jeff Gates

Those familiar with the pro-Zionist politics of John McCain breathed a sigh of relief at his defeat. With Barack Obama there’s a possibility of change where change is most needed: in U.S.-Israeli relations. The prospects, however, are not bright for several reasons.

First, he faces major hurdles in Congress where pro-Israelis chair key committees and subcommittees. Obama hails from Chicago, a major node in the node-and network system of organized crime. His senior in the Illinois delegation is Richard Durbin, a lawyer recruited by the Israeli lobby in 1982 to oppose 11-term Rep. Paul Findley who challenged the Israelification of U.S. foreign policy. First elected to the Senate in 1996, Durbin serves as assistant majority leader.

Durbin shares a house in Washington with Charles Schumer, a pro-Israeli senator from New York and third ranking in the Senate leadership. Both men are junior to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of mobbed-up Nevada.

Reid is a Zionist-inclined Mormon (aka the Lost Tribe of Israel). His assessment of the Israel lobby: “I can’t think of a policy organization in the country as well organized and respected.”

Obama proved on the campaign trail how readily he could yield to pressure from pro-Israelis. Malcolm Hoenlein, head of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, cited Obama’s promise of change as “an opening for all kind of mischief.”

To please and appease, Obama delivered a series of pro-Israel speeches. Though it was U.S. national security that was put at risk in pursuit of Israel’s agenda in the Middle East, Obama spent much of his spring campaign pledging his allegiance to Israel and portraying its security as “sacrosanct.”

Obama takes office in the midst of a perfect storm raging in a nation targeted by those skilled at waging war “by way of deception,” the Israeli Mossad’s operating motto. Those complicit are skilled at displacing facts with what people can be deceived to believe—whether a false belief in Iraqi WMD and mobile biological weapons laboratories, or a misplaced faith in the infallible wisdom of unfettered financial markets.

Though Americans know they were deceived, they do not yet know how, by whom or to what purpose. Those anticipating change need only watch who staffs an Obama administration.

When he convened his foreign advisory team, he placed pro-Israeli Madeleine Albright at the head of the table. She was secretary of state for President Bill Clinton.

When he convened his economic policy team, Lawrence Summers took
the lead. Recently forced out as president of Harvard University, former Treasury Secretary Summers handpicked the pro-Israeli advisory team that oversaw the oligarchization of Russia. The largest fraud in history, Mikhail Gorbachev estimated that the financial pillage exceeded $1 trillion. Eight of the top nine oligarchs qualify for Israeli citizenship.

Obama will be sworn in on the 100th anniversary of the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The NAACP was established six months after the Springfield race riot of 1908 that resulted in seven deaths in Abraham Lincoln’s hometown. From its outset, the NAACP leadership was dominated not by African-Americans but by Jewish-Americans. Not until 1975 did it have a black president.

By allying with those genuinely oppressed, the Jewish-American community enjoyed extraordinary economic and social progress, particularly when compared to blacks. Advancement in the financial arena was especially pronounced where 25 percent of the Forbes 400 richest Americans are now Jewish, compared to 1.7% of the U.S. population. Blacks, on the other hand, continue their disproportionate representation in the lower tiers of both wealth and income.

The subprime mortgage meltdown is the third financial “pump and dump” over just the past two decades. The savings and loan fraud of the late 1980s cost taxpayers $124 billion. The far more expensive “dotcom” bust of 2000 will be dwarfed by this latest financial fraud. Those who skimmed the financial cream as markets rose have routinely been well placed to buy assets at reduced prices as markets fell.

With foreign policy and economic policy the key challenges, watch who Obama picks for those areas. In this handoff from one party to another, the same pro-Israeli bias appears likely to remain intact. Unable to manipulate him with sex (as with Clinton) or beliefs (as with Bush), race may well come into play.

As the U.S. enters the most challenging period in its 232-year history, this president could determine whether freedom survives or oppression triumphs. If President Obama grasps the all-pervasive influence of the U.S.-Israeli relationship, he could become a transformational leader—by transforming that relationship. Should he continue on the course set by previous leaders of both parties, it would be wrong to charge “the fix is in” when the facts confirm that the fix never left.

Politics Barack Obama, Charles Schumer, Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Harry Reid, John McCain, Lawrence Summers, Madeleine Albright, Malcolm Hoenlein, NAACP, Paul Findley, zionist

‘Passionate Attachment’ Costs Taxpayers Trillion$

By Jeff Gates

George Washington warned Americans about the high cost of permanent alliances. Cautioning future generations against the “illusion of a common interest,” he advised in his farewell address of September 1796 that the costs were particularly acute when an alliance is accompanied by a “passionate attachment” to that foreign nation.

A change in presidencies offers a timely moment to tally the costs of America’s six-decade alliance with Israel in terms of both blood and treasure. But for that alliance, would the U.S. military be waging two wars in the Middle East? The 9-11 Commission reported that the mastermind of that mass murder was motivated by his outrage at U.S. support for Israel.

With 4,195 (and counting) Americans dead, 30,000- plus grievously wounded and hundreds of billions spent, are those costs traceable to the passionate attachment that Zionists—both Christians and Jews—have for Israel? Joe Stiglitz, a Nobel prize-winning economist, projects that the long-term costs of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will exceed $3 trillion.

Other economists include in the cost of this lengthy alliance the expense of the Arab oil embargo 35 years ago. When Arab nations sought to recover land taken by Israel in the Six-Day War of 1967, Richard Nixon resupplied the Israel Defense Forces. In response, Arab oil producers hiked the price of oil, igniting a recession that cost the U.S. an estimated $420 billion in foregone economic output.

But for that alliance, higher priced energy would not have cost Americans $450 billion, according to economist Thomas Stauffer, writing in the Christian Science Monitor in December 2002. Should those embargo related costs be included? Are they rightly part of the “but for” tally? How about the $134 billion for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve established as a hedge against Arab nations again using their oil clout?

What about the $117 billion given to Egypt and $22 billion to Jordan as foreign aid in return for signing peace treaties with Israel? Those costs raise the tally to $4.3 trillion. But for this alliance, would the U.S. have incurred those costs?

If not, then all or a substantial portion of that $4.3 trillion should be included when weighing the costs and benefits of what is routinely described as the U.S.-Israel “special relationship.”

Should we include the expense of keeping oil-shipping lanes open in a volatile region that would be less volatile but for Israel’s expansionist policies in the region?

Though debates rage about how best to tally the indirect “but for” costs, little dispute surrounds the expense of direct outlays. The cumulative direct aid since 1948 was put at $113.85 billion in the November 2008 issue of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (found at wrmea.com).

Direct outlays are often hidden in obscure sections of the federal budget by Israel’s allies in the congressional appropriations process. No one disputes that Israel has been the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. aid since World War II. In 2007, U.S. lawmakers committed American taxpayers to pay an average $3 billion to Tel Aviv each year over a 10-year period—for another $30 billion. Those direct costs omit a 2005 defense appropriations commitment authorizing the transfer to Israel of “surplus” military equipment. The amount and cost of that equipment was not specified.

How does one tally the cost in U.S. jobs due to trade sanctions enacted at the urging of the Israel lobby that reduce U.S. exports to the Middle East? Unlike other recipients, Tel Aviv is allowed to spend in-country 26.3 percent of each year’s U.S. military aid. Israel’s defense industry now ranks ninth in global arms exports. What is the cost of that policy in U.S. jobs?

Absent from this partial tally is any mention of the strategic costs of this alliance. How does one compute the “but for” costs of an avowed ally that routinely dispatches spies who compromise U.S. national security?

What costs did Jonathan Pollard impose on American interests when he stole more than one million classified documents? Or when sensitive technologies were leaked to China? Or when officials of the Israel lobby gave Tel Aviv classified information on Iran?

In a governing system based on informed consent, the opinions of informed Americans should be surveyed before more funds are committed to this special relationship:

? Should Israel remain first-ranked as a recipient of U.S. foreign aid?

? Should Tel Aviv receive $8.5 million per day in U.S. military assistance?

? Should Americans pay for Israel’s armed occupation of Palestinian land?

? Should the U.S. military be deployed to wage war in Iran on Israel’s behalf?

After six decades, perhaps a newly elected president should heed our first president’s advice: “It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.”

Jeff Gates is the author of Guilt By Association—How Deception and Self-Deceit Took America to War available through www.criminalstate.com

Politics cost, costs, israel, Joe Stiglitz, jonathan pollard, joseph stiglitz, passionate attachment, Six-Day War, trillion

Politics aipac, Charles Percy, David Axelrod, Harry Reid, irgun, Israel lobby, Jennifer Flowers, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Paul Findley, Rahm Emanuel, Richard Durbin, Sara Palin, sayanim, White House Chief of Staff, zionist

Politics Apollo Group, ashkenazi, Barack Obama, Blackstone Group, Boris Yeltsin, Carlyle Group, Comptroller of the Currency, David Bonderman, David Rubenstein, fdic, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Henry Kissinger, Henry Kravis, Ken Mehlman, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, Lawrence Summers, Leon Black, loans-for-shares, mafia-ization, oligarchs, Private Equity, privatization, Robert Rubin, Russian oligarchs, Sanford Weill, Stephen Schwarzman, Texas Pacific Group, Tim Geithner