Amazing Grace

by Charles Sullivan - Nov 6, 2007

It seems inexplicable that so many of the American people can be so dazed and confused, while moral degenerates ransack our nation, piss and defecate upon the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, and brazenly loot the public domain, making a mockery of the rule of law and societal norms; whatever they may be.

Incredible lies are routinely passed as truth and the world as we know it is unraveling, as we prepare to invade and occupy yet another country, perhaps igniting World War Three. We go on with the insipid routine of our dull lives: we go shopping, and bombard our senses with mind numbing entertainment, telling ourselves that it—fascism—can’t happen here, even as its poisoned blossoms unfold before our astonished eyes and fill our lungs with their noxious fumes.

We refuse to believe what we are seeing and we dismiss it as too preposterous to be real. We no longer wholly trust our own senses or follow our most innate instincts, failing to recognize that they are all that is true; all that allow us to survive the wretched madness that pursues us like rabid dogs, and relentlessly nips at our fleeing heels.

Increasing numbers of us move through this world with a sense of impending doom but we do not fully comprehend its origins or the breadth of the disaster it portends. We sense not only that something is wrong—something is terribly, irreconcilably, sickeningly, wrong. We do our utmost to repress those feelings, telling ourselves that our worst fears, our darkest nightmares, are irrational, unfounded phantoms of the imagination; so many ghosts lurking under our beds.

We have been programmed to believe that we are the greatest nation to ever emerge from the mists of history, that everything about us as a people is exceptional and exemplary. Despite a history of endless provocation and war and countless other forms of self mutilation, we claim that we are a peace loving people—god’s own children, animated by divine stirrings.

But perhaps our state of confusion, our disorientation, and our shock at what the government is doing in our name—all of which seems to be occurring at the blinding speed of light—and our refusal to believe that which is so blatantly obvious to all but those who wear mental blindfolds, or the criminally insane, is a form of psychological shock and awe that has been deliberately imposed upon us not only by depraved politicians vying for wealth and power, but by our every societal institution.

We have arrived at our place as a result of an educational system that does not teach us how to think, but to follow rules and obey authority; to bow to self policing peer pressure and group think: a system that prepares us to pass math tests but not those of citizen and neighbor. We dutifully recite the pledge of allegiance to the flag but we hold no allegiance to the world’s people, or its stunning biological and cultural diversity, or to truth. We were led to the precipice by religious institutions that operate by the same principles as “for profit” corporations, encouraged by Zionist and Christian fundamentalists with visions of Armageddon dancing in their crazed, bigoted heads. We are here because we pay attention to a media monoculture that does not inform, but lies and deceives for money.

We are here because we are morally lazy, uninterested, distracted, overworked, over burdened with debt, and apathetic to a fault. We confused the symbols of democracy with democracy itself; and we foolishly thought that democracy could somehow magically move of its own accord, without our participation as citizens. Too many of us believed that all that was required of us was to vote in elections in which the outcomes were preordained by the candidate’s access to wealth. We told ourselves this is democracy, but we were tragically mistaken. And now it is too late.

The rush to Armageddon will occur quickly; it must happen, like the passage of the Patriot Act, before the people have time to digest what is being done to them, before they can concoct an intelligent and rational response to shock and awe; before the people can organize against the premeditated murder and mayhem that awaits them.

We Americans are the product of free market ideologues, religious zealots, and vulgar experiments in social engineering. We are being led to slaughter, and to be slaughtered, by dark and foreboding forces bent on the destruction of all that is decent, just, and beautiful.

Yet many will continue to believe that the president and his henchmen are sane and just people. Some will even ordain them devout Christians and extol their dark virtues as enlightenment and courage. Others will continue to believe that the sycophants in Congress will awaken at the eleventh hour to save us from our own delusions and excesses, not recognizing that we are alone and have only one another. It has always been so; but rather than uniting against our tormentors—we fight amongst ourselves.

Events may already be in motion that have acquired an unstoppable momentum, like a hulking meteor streaking in deadly silence toward the earth in precise accordance with the laws of motion. But like all tempests, they too will eventually blow themselves out and, better people than us will someday attempt to rebuild the world anew. I wish them luck and amazing grace, the kind of grace that is so conspicuously absent in us. In the words of labor organizer, Joe Hill, murdered by the state before a Utah firing squad: “Good luck to all of you.”

No more can we enjoy the sight of soft summer sunsets in tranquil settings, accompanied by the singing of the wood thrush, and choirs of chanting insects embracing the darkling twilight; but forever more the rocket’s perpetual red glare and silent, distant death. We are nearing road’s end. The time is fast approaching to mount the nearest hillside, to hold our loved ones close; to sip some vintage wine, and watch the fireworks that are even now hurtling their way toward Armageddon. The time is nigh to watch the world as we knew it wink out of existence, and to say goodbye. It’s been good to know you.

IDF: Nearly 28% of Israeli males avoided conscription in 2007

I don't blame them. I wouldn't want to be associated with a murdering band of thugs either. At some point in the not so distant future, this group of women and child killers will be held accountable for their war crimes and crimes against humanity.

by Mijal Grinberg, Haaretz - Nov 6, 2007

The Israel Defense Forces said Tuesday that 27.7 percent of Israeli males of conscription age are not inducted into the army.

Army statistics presented at the Sderot conference on societal issues showed that 11.2 percent of those who avoided conscription did so under exemptions granted to yeshiva students.

Another 7.3 percent were granted medical deferments. The figure apparently includes psychological deferments, often cited as a source of "gray avoidance," referring to young men who avoid service by presenting evidence that they are mentally unfit to serve.

A total of 4.7 percent were ruled ineligible because of criminal records, and 4.2 percent because they were residing abroad.

The largest single group of young Israelis who avoid conscription is comprised of women who claim exemptions on the grounds of being religious. This group makes up 35 percent of all women eligible for the draft.

A Land With People, For a People with a Plan

by LUDWIG WATZALv- Nov 5, 2007

Two rabbis, visiting Palestine in 1897, observed that the land was like a bride, "beautiful, but married to another man". By which they meant that, if a place was to be found for a Jewish "homeland" in Palestine, the indigenous inhabitants had to leave. Where should the people of Palestine go? Squaring that circle has been the essence of Israel´s dilemma ever since its establishment and the cause of the Palestinian tragedy that it led to. It has remained insoluble. Ghada Karmi's new book, Married To Another Man, Israel´s Dilemma in Palestine, (published by Pluto Press, London-Ann Arbor) shows that the major reason for this failure was the original and unresolved Zionist quandary of how to create and maintain a Jewish state in a land inhabited by another people. Zionism was never able to resolve the problem of "the other man".

There are only two ways: Either the "other man" had to be eradicated, or the Jewish state project had to be given up. Israel did not do either. It succeeded in 1948 in expelling and keeping out a large number of Palestinians, but Israel was never able to "cleanse" the land of Palestine entirely. The fundamental mistake of the Zionists was their belief that "the entire land of Palestine was Jewish and the Arab presence in it a resented foreign intrusion". All in all, the Zionists were "relatively" successful, but for the indigenous owners of the land it was a catastrophe which has been going on until today. "If Israel remains a colonialist state in its character, it will not survive. In the end the region will be stronger than Israel, in the end the indigenous people will be stronger than Israel, " as Akiva Eldar quoted the former Mazpen member Haim Hangebi in the Israeli Daily Haaretz on August 8, 2003. The author concludes: "Zionism´s ethos was not about peaceful co-existence but about colonialism and an exclusivist ideology to be imposed and maintained by force."

Ghada Karmi is a renowned commentator on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and a well-known figure on British radio and TV. She was born in Jerusalem, and forced to leave as a child in 1948. She grew up in Britain where she became a physician, academic and writer. Currently, Karmi is a research fellow and lecturer at the Insitute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter. She has written several books, including In Search of Fatima, which was widely praised.

The Zionist dilemma was perfectly and bluntly expressed by the so-called "post-Zionist" representative and professor, Benny Morris, which led not only to an uproar in the scientific community, but also to a deep disappiontment, because Morris was considered to belong to the "new historians". In this interview with the daily Haaretz and in his article in The Guardian he presented himself as an ardent Zionist. He encapsulates all Zionism´s major elements, its inherent implausibility as a practical enterprise, its arrogance, racism and self-righteousness, and the insurmountable obstacle to it of Palestine´s original population, which refuses to go away. For his colonialist and racist view he was severely critiziced by Baruch Kimmerling and many others who could not understand his attitude.

Morris said incredible things: "A Jewish state would not have come into being without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians. Therefore it was necessary to uproot them. There was no choice but to expel that population." According to him the Zionists made a mistake to have allowed any Palestinans to remain. "If the end of the story turns out to be a gloomy one for the Jews, it will because Ben-Gurion did not complete the transfer of 1948. (...) In other circumstances, apocalyptic ones, which are liable to be realized in five or ten years, I can see expulsions. If we find ourselves (...) in a situation of warfare (...) acts of expulsion will be entirely reasonable. They may even be essential (...) If the threat to Israel is existential, expulsion will be justified." Morris concludes, Zionism is faced with two options: perpetual cruelty and repression of others, or the end of the enterprise. These alternatives give the whole enterprise an apocalyptic touch. For the time being, the Israeli security establishment has chosen the "iron wall"-concept which refers to a wall of bayonets.

Ghada Karmi shows in one of her chapters,"The Cost of Israel to the Arabs", that the price they had to pay was horrendous. She holds not only Israel but also the West, especially the United States of America, is responsible for the rejectionist attitude of the Israeli political class. They just did never consider any compromise. In this chapter the author describes the damage that Israel´s creation inflicted on the Arabs, how it has retarded their development and provoked a reactive and dangerous radicalization. The Arabs are always asked to be realistic and recognise the facts on the ground. "The Arabs were expected to make peace with Israel - and to love it as well." Under the surface Israel has made much progress towards normalisation with the Arab world. The Arab leaders have to conceal that truth from their own populations. Karmi views Western policy in Israel´s case rather strategic than ideological. The installation of the Jewish state as the local agent of Western regional self-interest was an effective way of dividing the Arabs, so as to ensure that they remained dependent and subjugated." Egypt and Jordan are the best examples.

In the Chapter "Why do Jews support Israel?" the author asks "Why did a project, which was, on the face of it, implausible in the first place and inevitably destructive of others, succeed so well? Just as importantly, why did it continue to receive support, despite a clear record of aggression and multiple breaches of international law against its neighbours that ensured its survival - not just as a state but as a disruptive force?" A number of disparate factors account for the unconditional support for Israel: the Holocaust and its associated trauma and guilts, the exigencies of Western regional policy, religious mythology, so-called common values, and Israel as the "only democracy in the Middle East" et cetera. It is difficult to find a similar phenomenon for a state in the 21st Century that gets away with vast human rights violations, colonial subjugation of another people and a disdain of international law. Not only for the American Jewish community but also for many liberal Jews "Israel had taken on a mythic quality, part-identity, part-religion, and its dissolution, as a Jewish state, became psychologically and emotionally unthinkable. The obverse of this coin was of course a paranoid suspicion and hatred of anyone who threatened Israel in the slightest way." Karmi describes the Zionist desperate attempt to prove an unbroken chain between the Jews of Palestine and those of Europe. "Put like this, the absurditiy of the idea is obvious, but that in fact was the proposition Zionists wanted people to believe in order to justify the Jewish `return` to the ´homeland`." Because the Zionist claim rested on such shaky grounds, Jewish researchers "tried to use genetics as a way of demonstrating a link between European (Ashkenazi) Jews and their supposed Middle Eastern origins by way of finding a common ancestry with Middle Eastern Jews".

The author discusses the relationship between the US and Israel and the dominant influence of the "Israel lobby", especially AIPAC which adopted an right-wing posture, both in its support for the Likud party in Israel and the political right in the US, including the Christian Zionists whose belief system goes like follows: They adhere literally to the Old Testament. Fundamental was the return of the Jews to the land of Israel, which was given them by God through the covenant with Abraham. According to this legacy all the land between the Nile and the Euphrates was granted to the Jews. The Jewish return to Palestine (Israel) was essential as a prelude to Christ´s Second Coming; in that sense, Jews were the instrument by which divine prophecy would be fulfilled. However, they were obliged to convert to Christianity and rebuild the Jewish Temple. Seven years of tribulation would follow, culminating in a holocaust or Armageddon, during which the converted Jews and other godless people would be destroyed. Only then would the Messiah return to redeem mankind and establish the Kingdom of God on earth where he would reign for a thousand years. The converted Jews, restored as God´s Chosen People, would enjoy a privileged status in the world. At the end of all this, they and all the rightous would ascend to heaven in the final `Rapture`. The Jewish role in all this meant: "Jews restored to Israel and converted, leading to the Second Advent, leading to mankind´s redemption."

In chapter four, five and six the author critizices the so-called peace process, Arafat´s destructive final role and Israel´s attempt to revive the Jordanian option. In signing the Oslo agreement, "Arafat legitimized Zionism, the very ideology that hat created and still perpetuates the Palestinian tragedy". The Israeli aim to destroy the Palestinans could not have been better described as in the words of the Israeli sociologist professor Baruch Kimmerling who wrote in his book Politicide that the process of gradual military, political and psychological attrition whose aim was to destroy the Palestinians as an independent people with a coherent political and social existence would make them vanish by their fragmentation and irrelevance. "Forty years of Israeli politicide had done its work on the Palestine question as a national cause. The Palestinians, already in an unenviable position of physical fragmentation after 1948, became politically fragmented with the Israeli occupation." In her chapter "Solving the problem Karmi argues that a two-state solution is out of reach. Consequently, she calls in chapter seven for a one-state solution. "In a single state, no Jewish settler would have to move and no Palestinian would be under occupation." The author thinks that creating a Jewish state was "crazy" at Herzl´s time and even now therefore "creating a unitary state of Israel/Palestine, far less implausible than the Zionist project ever was, should be no less successful".

Refering to Hangebi´s statement that Israel as a "colonial state" cannot survive, Karmi proposes an unthinkable idea: "The best solution to this intractable problem is to turn back the clock before there was any Jewish state and return history as from there." But at the end, she turns back to realism: "The clock will not go back and, although the Jewish state cannot be uncreated, it might be, so to speak, unmade. The reunification of Palestine´s shattered remains in a unitary state for all its inhabitants, old and new, is the only realistic, humane and durable route out of the morass. It is also the only way for the Israeli Jewish community (as opposed to the Israeli state) to survive in the Middle East."

Those Minot Nukes

By DAVE LINDORFF - Nov 5, 2007

The Pentagon has been stonewalling on my requests for answers to key questions. For two weeks a public affairs office has been declining to respond to my question about whether the six nuclear-tipped cruise missiles flown by B-52 from Minot AFB to Barksdale AFB were programmed for specific targets, and if so what theose targets were, or even whether the team that investigated the incident checked to see if they were targeted.

The Air Force and Pentagon have also declined to explain whether US nuclear weapons in storage in US bunkers have been provided with the same alarm and motion-detection sensors that the National Nuclear Security Agency helped to install on the nukes being stored on Russian bases.

Clearly if such devices are standard on US nukes, as several Air Force active and retired personnel have assured me is the case, then there is no way that those weapons could have been removed from the Minot bunker by "mistake" as claimed the Air Force's official report on the incident.

The Pentagon has also refused to state whether the missiles were fueled up or not.

Finally, there is another big question that has not even been asked. Supposedly the reason the B-52 was flying to Barksdale with 12 missiles is that they are part of a total of 400 of these things, all of which have been declared obsolete and slated for destruction. But if all those Advanced Cruise Missiles are obsolete, then there is simply no reason for having any of them fitted with nuclear warheads. If they're obsolete, none of them would be on stand-by status. No one at Minot would ever be mounting a nuke on a cruise missile. Note that the Air Force is not claiming that the initial mounting of six warheads onto six missiles was a "mistake." Only that nobody in the subsequent chain of events was alerted to the fact that the warheads had been mounted. But why would warheads have been mounted on obsolete weapons in the first place?

Meanwhile, I have no knowledge as to the accuracy of this, but one Air Force vet tells me that the Advanced Cruise Missiles that were nuclear armed and mounted on a launch pylon on the B-52 in question would have been electronically linked to the plane automatically (which has the capability to program and re-program the targeting of the missiles), and that therefore the pilot of the plane would have instantly seen on his instrument console that he had nukes on board that flight. He also told me that the idea that the pilot would only have checked out the missiles mounted on one wing--by chance the wing that had the six missiles with dummy warheads--instead of both pylons and all 12 missiles as required, which is the claim of the Air Force report, is ludicrous. As he notes, pilots on these aging Stratofortresses see the pre-flight check as a life-or-death matter. Anything wrong on these planes can mean loss of the plane and even loss of the lives of the entire crew and of people on the ground. That would include the secure mounting of the missile cargo.

As a former semi-trailer driver myself, I know that those checks of all the main systems--air brakes, trailer linkage, tire pressure, lights, etc.--are not taken lightly. Before you head out on the road with a trailer truck, you check out all the critical systems, because you know your life depends on their working properly. Surely this would be much more true with a strategic bomber, especially when it is carrying 12 missiles under its wings.

There is another question, raised by an Air Force vet in a comment below, which also bears investigation. The Air Force is claiming that the B-52 was supposedly ferrying 12 unarmed cruise missiles to Barksdale for disassembly. But a B-52, an antique aircraft which requires a big crew, demands enormous amounts of sevicing and repair and wastes a prodigious amount of fuel, is a terribly inefficient way to ferry these weapons to a graveyard. It would be infinitely cheaper to truck the missile bodies overland, or to stack and ship them in cargo planes, and in fact it simply defies belief that the Air Force would be doing this with Stratofortresses.

The more you look at this story, the more obvious it is that the Air Force claim that this was all just a big "mistake" has to be a blatant cover-up of the truth.

2007 is deadliest year for US in Iraq

A woman answers questions as U.S. Army soldiers from Delta Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, 4th Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division search her home that sits adjacent to an auto yard where explosives were found in Mosul, 360 kilometers (225 miles) northwest of Baghdad, Iraq on Tuesday, Nov. 6, 2007. The battalion conducted a search operation in the Nablus area of the northern Iraqi city. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

By LAUREN FRAYER, Associated Press - Nov 6, 2007

BAGHDAD - The U.S. military on Tuesday announced the deaths of five more soldiers, making 2007 the deadliest year for U.S. troops despite a recent downturn, according to an Associated Press count.

At least 852 American military personnel have died in Iraq so far this year — the highest annual toll since the war began in March 2003, according to AP figures.

The grim milestone passed despite a sharp drop in U.S. and Iraqi deaths here in recent months, after a 30,000-strong U.S. force buildup. There were 39 deaths in October, compared to 65 in September and 84 in August.

Five U.S. soldiers were killed Monday in two separate roadside bomb attacks, said Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, director of the Multi-National Force-Iraq's communications division.

"We lost five soldiers yesterday in two unfortunate incidents, both involving IEDs," Smith told reporters in Baghdad's heavily-guarded Green Zone. Later, the military said four of the soldiers died after an explosion near their vehicle in Kirkuk province, and one was killed in Anbar.

With nearly two months left in the year, the U.S. toll has already surpassed that of 2004, when 850 troops died — mostly in larger, more conventional battles like the campaign to cleanse Fallujah of Sunni militants in November, and U.S. clashes with Shiite militiamen in the sect's holy city of Najaf in August.

But the American military in Iraq reached its highest troop levels in Iraq this year — 165,000. Moreover, the military's decision to send soldiers out of large bases and into Iraqi communities means more troops have seen more "contact with enemy forces" than ever before, said Maj. Winfield Danielson, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad.

"It's due to the troop surge, which allowed us to go into areas that were previously safe havens for insurgents," Danielson told the AP on Sunday. "Having more soldiers, and having them out in the communities, certainly contributes to our casualties."

Meanwhile, the U.S. said it planned to release nine Iranian prisoners in the coming days, including two captured when U.S. troops stormed an Iranian government office in Irbil last January. The office was shut after the raid, but it reopened as an Iranian consulate on Tuesday, Iraqi and Iranian officials said.

A military spokesman said Iran appears to have kept its promise to stop the flow into Iraq of bomb-making materials and other weaponry that Washington says has inflamed insurgent violence and caused many American troop casualties.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said last week that Iran had made such assurances to the Iraqi government.

"It's our best judgment that these particular EFPs ... in recent large cache finds do not appear to have arrived here in Iraq after those pledges were made," Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, director of the Multi-National Force-Iraq's communications division, told reporters Tuesday.

Kurdish rebels released another Iranian soldier captured two months ago in northern Iraq. AP Television News showed the soldier being handed over to representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross in the Qandeel mountains near the town of Ilan Shahir.

Among the weapons Washington has accused Iran of supplying to Iraqi insurgents are EFPs, or explosively formed projectiles. They fire a slug of molten metal capable of penetrating even the most heavily armored military vehicles, and thus are more deadly than other roadside bombs.

The No. 2 U.S. commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, said last week that there had been a sharp decline in the number of EFPs found in Iraq in the last three months. At the time, he and Gates both said it was too early to tell whether the trend would hold, and whether it could be attributed to action by Iranian authorities. Iran publicly denies that it has sent weapons to Shiite militias in Iraq.

Also Tuesday, the U.S. military said Iraqi troops had discovered 22 bodies in a mass grave northwest of Baghdad over the weekend. The bodies were found during a joint operation Saturday. It was the second mass grave found in the area in less than a month.

After the discovery, U.S. and Iraqi forces launched an operation Sunday, including ground raids and air assaults targeting al-Qaida in the area, the U.S. statement said.

About 30 suspects were detained, it said. Two car bomb facilities and a number of weapons caches also were found, it added.

Stock Market Mayhem and Bush’s Moral Swamp

by Mike Whitney - Nov 5, 2007

“It’s scary out there---there’s blood on the streets” anonymous Wall Street trader

Last Wednesday, the Federal Reserve dropped its benchmark interest rate by 25 basis points to 4.5% citing ongoing weakness in the housing sector. As expected, the stock market rallied and the Dow Jones Industrial Average soared 137 points. Unfortunately, Bernanke’s “low interest” stardust wasn’t enough to buoy the markets through the rest of the week.

On Thursday, the hammer fell. The Dow plummeted 362 points in one afternoon on increasing fears of inflation, a slowdown in consumer spending, a steadily weakening dollar and persistent problems in the credit markets. By day’s end, the Fed was forced to dump another $41 into the banking system to forestall a major breakdown. This is the most money the Fed has pumped into the financial system since 9-11 and it shows how dire the situation really is.

Why do the banks need such a massive infusion of credit if they are as “rock solid” as Bernanke says?

As most people now realize, the mortgage industry is on life-support. Many of the ways that the banks were generating profits have vanished overnight. The “securitization” of debt (mortgages, car loans, credit card debt etc) has ground to a halt. What had been a booming multi-billion dollar per-year business is now a dwindling part of the banks’ revenues. Investors are steering clear of anything even remotely associated to real estate.

Additionally, the banks are holding an estimated $200 billion in mortgage-backed securities and derivatives for which there is currently no market. This is compounded by $350 billion in “off balance sheets” operations---which are collateralized with dodgy long-term mortgage-backed securities---that provide funding for “short-term” asset-backed commercial paper. ASCP has shriveled by $275 billion in the last 10 weeks leaving the banks with gargantuan liabilities. Bernanke was forced to add $41 billion to keep the banking system from slipping beneath the salty brine.

This shows how powerless the Fed really is when it comes to changing the overall direction of the markets. Sure, Bernanke and his buddies in the Plunge Protection Team can goose the market by buying-up futures and boosting the day’s results. But that’s just a short-term fix. In the long run, the Fed has less chance of stopping the market from correcting than it does of stopping a runaway truck by standing in its path. Besides, the Fed cannot purchase the banks bad investments (CDOs, MBSs, or CP) nor can it reflate the multi-trillion dollar the housing bubble. All it can do is provide more cheap credit and hope the problems go away.

So far, the lower rates haven’t even decreased the price of the 30-year mortgage or made refinancing any cheaper. All they’ve done is postpone the inevitable day of reckoning. In truth, they’re just a desperate attempt to perpetuate consumer borrowing while the banks figure out how to offload their enormous debts. That’s what Paulson’s $80 billion “Banker’s Bankruptcy Fund” is really all about; it’s just the repackaging of subprime junk so it can be passed off to credulous investors. Fortunately, the public has “wised up” and isn’t buying into this latest fraud. As a result, the banks have taken another blow to their already-flagging credibility.

In the last two months, the pool of qualified mortgage applicants has contracted, as has the market for massive merger and acquisition deals (private equity). So the banks are probably doing more with the Fed’s $41 billion injection than just beefing up their reserves and issuing new loans. The market analysts at Minyanville.com summed it up like this:

“Banks are taking the liquidity the Fed is forcing out there through the discount window and repos. After using it to shore up the declining value of their assets, they have excess to lend out. Finding no traditional borrowers that want to buy a house or build a factory, the new rules the Fed has set forth allows the banks to pass this liquidity onto their broker dealer subsidiaries in much greater quantities. These broker dealers are lending thus to hedge funds and margin buyers who are speculating in stocks. Remember, the Fed is powerless unless it can find people to borrow the credit it wants them to spend. By definition, the last ones willing to take that credit are the most speculative.”

This is a likely scenario given the fact that the stock market continues to fly-high despite the surge of bad news on everything from the falling dollar to the geopolitical rumblings in the Middle East. Last month, the Fed modified its rules so that the banks could provide resources to their off-balance sheets operations (SIVs and conduits). If the Fed is willing to rubber-stamp that type of monkey-business; then why would they mind if the money was stealthily “back-doored” into the stock market via the hedge funds?

This might explain why the hedge funds account for as much as 40 to 50% of all trading on an average day. It also explains why the stock market overheating.

The charade, of course, cannot go on forever. And it won’t. Rate cuts do not address the underlying problem which is bad investments. The debts must be accounted for and written off. Nothing else will do. That doesn’t mean that Bernanke will suddenly decide to stop savaging the dollar or flushing hundreds of billions of dollars down the investment bank toilet. He probably will. But, eventually, the blow-ups in the housing market will destabilize the financial system and send the banks and over-leveraged hedge funds sprawling. Bernanke’s low interest “giveaway” will amount to nothing.

Bloomberg News ran a story last week which shedsmore light on the jam the banks now find themselves in:

“Banks shut out of the market for short-term loans are finding salvation in a government lending program set up to revive housing during the Great Depression.

Countrywide Financial Corp., Washington Mutual Inc., Hudson City Bancorp Inc. and hundreds of other lenders borrowed a record $163 billion from the 12 Federal Home Loan Banks in August and September as interest rates on asset-backed commercial paper rose as high as 5.6 percent. The government-sponsored companies were able to make loans at about 4.9 percent, saving the private banks about $1 billion in annual interest.”

Whoa. So, now that the credit markets have frozen over, the banks are going to the government with begging bowl in hand? So much for “moral hazard”.

Commercial paper is short-term notes that businesses use for daily operations. Because much of this CP is backed by mortgage-backed securities; the banks have been having trouble rolling it over. (Refinancing) So--unbeknownst to the public--various banks have been borrowing from the government-sponsored Federal Home Loan Banks (FHLB) so they can cut their losses (or stay afloat?) The FHLB has extended $163 billion of loans to them, which means that the risks that are inherent in supporting “dodgy banks that make bad bets” has been transferred to FHLB’s investors. The danger, of course, is that—when investors find out that FHLB is mixed up with these shaky banks---they are liable to sell their shares and trigger a collapse of the system. This is a good example of the dim-witted strategies that are being used to bail out the banks. There are probably many similar scams underway just beyond the publics’ view.

Citi's Woes

Over the weekend, Citigroup’s CEO Chuck Prince got the axe. Citigroup, which boasts more than 300,000 staff worldwide, has lost more than 20% of its market value from bad bets in sub-prime mortgages. According to the Times Online: “The Securities and Exchange Commission may investigate whether it improperly juggled its books to hide the full extent of the problem.”
”Juggled” is not a word that is taken lightly on Wall Street where traders are now bracing for another massive sell-off of financial stocks. Mr. Prince won’t be alone in the unemployment line either. He’ll be accompanied by Merrill Lynch’s former boss, Stanley O’ Neal who got the boot last week when his firm reported $8.4 billion in write-downs. Deutsche Bank analysts now “predict that Merrill may write off another $10 billion of losses related to its portfolio of sub-prime debts”. (Times Online) That would wipe out 8 full quarters of earnings and represent the largest loss in Wall Street history.

The news is bleak, bleak, bleak. The systemic rot is appearing everywhere presaging ongoing losses for the financial giants and a long-downward spiral for the markets. The banks are currently under-regulated, over-leveraged and under capitalized. And now the sh** is about to hit the fan.

Former Fed chief Paul Volcker summarized the overall economic situation last week at the second annual summit of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. In his speech he said:

"Altogether, the circumstances seem as dangerous and intractable as I can temember….Boomers are spending like there is no tomorrow. Homeownership has become a vehicle for borrowing and leveraging as much as a source of financial security….. As a Nation we are consuming…about 6% more than we are producing. What holds it all together? - High consumption - high leverage - government deficits - What holds it all together is a really massive and growing flow of capital from abroad. A flow of capital that today runs to more than $2 Billion per day." The nation is facing “huge imbalances and risks.”

Volcker is right. The country is in a bigger pickle than any time in its 230 year history. The credit storm that was engineered at the Federal Reserve has swept across the planet and is now descending on commercial real estate, credit card debt, and the plummeting bond insurers industry. These are the next shoes to drop and the tremors will be felt throughout the broader economy.

THE DARK AGES?

As this article is being written, Reuters is reporting that Citigroup may be forced to write-down as much as $11 billion in subprime mortgage-related losses!

Reuters: “Citigroup announced today significant declines since September 30, 2007 in the fair value of the approximately $55 billion in U.S. sub-prime related direct exposures in its Securities and Banking (S&B) business. Citi estimates that, at the present time, the reduction in revenues attributable to these declines ranges from approximately $8 billion to $11 billion (representing a decline of approximately $5 billion to $7 billion in net income on an after-tax basis).”

Citigroup’s statement indicates a willingness on its part to come clean with its investors but, in fact, they know that the situation is fluid and there’ll be hefty losses in the future. Mortgage-backed securities (MBSs) and collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) will continue to be downgraded as time goes by. According to the Financial Times, one banker was having so much difficulty getting a bid on subprime securities; he found the only way he could get rid of them was through “barter. He resorted to using a tactic more normally associated with third world markets than the supposedly sophisticated arena of high finance. ‘Barter is the only thing that works,' he chuckled, ‘It’s like the Dark Ages’” The article continues:

“Never mind the fact that the risky tranches of subprime-linked debt have fallen 80 per cent since the start of the year; in a sense, such declines are only natural for risky assets in a credit storm. Instead, what is really alarming is that the assets which were supposed to be ultra-safe - namely AAA and AA rated tranches of debt - have collapsed in value by 20% and 50% odd respectively. This is dangerous, given that financial institutions of all stripes have been merrily leveraging up AAA and AA paper in recent years, precisely because it was supposed to be ultra-safe and thus, er, never lose value.” (Financial Times; Gillian Tett)

AAA and AA assets---the top-graded tranches--- have already been downgraded by 20% to 50%!?! And the prices are bound to fall even more because there is no market for mortgage-backed securities. This is a banks worst nightmare; an asset that loses value and requires greater capital reserves EVERY DAY. In fact, AAA rated MBSs have dropped 14% in one month. It is truly, death by a thousand cuts.

The US financial system is now buckling beneath the weight of its own excesses. The subprime contagion---which can trace its origins to the massive expansion of credit at the Federal Reserve---has devastated the housing market generating an unprecedented number of foreclosures, record inventory, and a massive multi-trillion dollar equity bubble which is now catastrophically deflating and wiping out much of the mortgage industry in its path. Its effects on the secondary market have been even more devastating where pension funds, insurance companies, hedge funds and foreign banks are left holding hundreds of billions of dollars of complex, mortgage-backed securities and subprime-related derivatives which are now destined to be downgraded to pennies on the dollar ravaging once-robust portfolios. The subprime meltdown has been equally damaging to myriad European investment banks and brokerage houses. We’ve seen a wave of bank closings in France, Germany and England which has left investors shell-shocked; triggering capital flight from American markets and supplanting confidence in the US financial system with growing suspicion and rage. Where are the regulators?

According to Bloomberg News, ”European and Asian investors will avoid most US mortgage-backed securities for years without guarantees from government-linked entities creating an enormous drag on the US housing market” Foreign investors believe they were hoodwinked by bonds that were deliberately mis-rated to maximize profits for the investment banks. This may explain why $882 billion has been diverted into Chinese and Indian stock markets in the last month alone.

The biggest losers of all, however, are the financial giants that created most of the abstruse, debt-instruments that are now devouring the system from within. The productive and “wealth creating” components of the economy have been subordinated to a finance-driven model which suddenly derailed due to the abusive expansion of debt. Inevitably, some of the banks that took the greatest risks will be shuttered and trillions of dollars in market capitalization will disappear. They are the victims of their own scam.

Is it possible that anyone with a pulse and a minimal ability to reason couldn’t see the inherent problems of building a humongous financial edifice on the prospect that millions of first-time homeowners with “a bad credit history and no collateral” would pay off there mortgages in a timely and responsible manner?

No. It is not possible. It was completely crazy…..and foreseeable! The real reason that the subprime swindle mushroomed into a humongous economy-busting monster is that the markets are no longer policed by any agency that believes in intervention. The pervasive “free market” ideology rejects the notion of supervision or oversight, and as a result, the markets have become increasingly opaque and unresponsive to rules that may assure their continued credibility or even their ability to function properly.

The “supply side” avatars of deregulation have transformed the world’s most vital and prosperous markets into a huckster’s street-corner shell-game. All regulatory accountability has vanished along with trillions of dollars in foreign investment. What’s left is a flea-market for dodgy loans, dubious over-leveraged equities and “securitized” Triple A-rated garbage.

Let’s hear it for the Reagan Revolution.

What is striking is how the new “structured finance” paradigm replicates a political system which is no longer guided by principle or integrity. It is not coincidental that the same flag that flies over Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib flutters over Wall Street as well. Nor is it accidental that the same system that peddles bogus, subprime tripe to gullible investors also elevates a “waterboarding advocate” to the highest position in the Justice Department. Both phenomena emerge from the same fetid moral swamp—Bush’s America.

French President Accused of Working for Israeli Intelligence

by Gamal Nkrumah - Nov 4, 2007

As if his marital challenges were not enough cause for concern, "Sarco the Sayan" has suddenly emerged as the most infamous accolade of French President Nicolas Sarkozy. The influential French daily Le Figaro last week revealed that the French leader once worked for -- and perhaps still does, it hinted -- Israeli intelligence as a sayan (Hebrew for helper), one of the thousands of Jewish citizens of countries other than Israel who cooperate with the katsas (Mossad case-officers).

A letter dispatched to French police officials late last winter -- long before the presidential election but somehow kept secret -- revealed that Sarkozy was recruited as an Israeli spy. The French police is currently investigating documents concerning Sarkozy's alleged espionage activities on behalf of Mossad, which Le Figaro claims dated as far back as 1983. According to the author of the message, in 1978, Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin ordered the infiltration of the French ruling Gaullist Party, Union pour un Mouvement Populaire. Originally targeted were Patrick Balkany, Patrick Devedjian and Pierre Lellouche. In 1983, they recruited the "young and promising" Sarkozy, the "fourth man".

Ex-Mossad agent Victor Ostrovsky describes how sayanim function in By Way Of Deception: The Making and Unmaking of a Mossad Officer. They are usually reached through relatives in Israel. An Israeli with a relative in France, for instance, might be asked to draft a letter saying the person bearing the letter represents an organisation whose main goal is to help save Jewish people in the Diaspora. Could the French relative help in any way? They perform many different roles. A car sayan, for example, running a rental car agency, could help the Mossad rent a car without having to complete the usual documentation. An apartment sayan would find accommodation without raising suspicions, a bank sayan could fund someone in the middle of the night if needs be, a doctor sayan would treat a bullet wound without reporting it to the police.

And, a political sayan ? It's rather obvious what this could mean. The sayanim are a pool of people at the ready who will keep quiet about their actions out of loyalty to "the cause", a non-risk recruitment system that draws from the millions of Jewish people outside Israel.

Such talk sends chills down spines, especially Arab and Muslim ones. Indeed, the revelation did not go unnoticed in Arab capitals or come as much of a surprise. Paris can be a sunny place for shady people. When it comes to intelligence gathering on behalf of Israel, a question mark is immediately raised on the moral calibre of the person in question. But, how does this scandal influence France's foreign and domestic politics?

It is of symbolic significance that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was on a state visit to France in the immediate aftermath of Le Figaro 's exposé -- ostensibly to discuss Iran's nuclear agenda and the Palestinian question. Proud and prickly France under its supposedly savvy new president hopes to play a more prominent role in the perplexing world of Middle Eastern politics. On Monday, Sarkozy flew to Morocco, the ancestral home of many of France's Jewry, soon after his Mossad connection was made public. There is no clear evidence that the revelation is to make France any more unpopular in the Arab world than it already is, especially not in official circles.

On the domestic front, however, there are many conflicting considerations. The Jews of France now display a touch of the vapours, in sharp contrast to the conceited triumphalism with which they greeted his election: "we are persuaded that the new president will continue eradicating anti-Israeli resistance," Sammy Ghozlan, president of the Jewish Community of Paris pontificated soon after Sarkozy's election. France is home to 500,000 Jews, mostly Sephardic Jews originally from North Africa and Mediterranean countries.

Sarkozy's own maternal grandfather Aron Mallah, hailed from Salonika, Greece, and is said to have exercised considerable influence on his grandson. Even though raised as a Roman Catholic, "Sarkozy played a critical role in moving the French government to do what is necessary to address the ill winds that threaten the largest Jewish community in Western Europe," noted David Harris, the executive director of the American Jewish Committee. Sarkozy, after all, was a political product of the predominantly Jewish elite neighbourhood of Neuilly-sur-Seine, where he long served as mayor.

France's Muslim minority was far from surprised by Le Figaro 's revelations, even though some may have feigned disappointment. Others have been more forthright. "France is not run by Frenchmen, but by lackeys of the Zionist International who control the economy," lamented Radio Islam, of militant Islamist tendencies. When Sarkozy was France's minister of interior and clamped down hard on Muslim immigrants, calling mainly Muslim rioters "scum" in a widely-publicised interview, they retaliated by calling him "Sarkozy, sale juif [dirty Jew]". Obviously there is no love lost between the five million-strong French Muslim community, the largest in Western Europe, and the French president. He has grounds for concern. He assiduously courts the Israelis. That much is known.

In the scientific annals of French politics there is a cautionary tale of pantomime. French presidents are not always what they seem. There are, however, two key observations concerning Sarkozy. One, is Sarkozy's intention of implementing a "new social contract" between employers and employees, capital and labour. This smacks of Thatcherism. His determination to force a "cultural revolution" in the collective national psyche is a trifle farcical. And unprincipled to boot. He recently introduced legislation -- in tandem with his pension cuts, calling for genetic profiling of immigrants to ensure any relatives intending to immigrate are linked genetically. The strategy appears to be to soften the blow of the social security cuts by appealing to xenophobic racism.

The state of race relations in France is an even more muddled picture than the devastating caricatures by French-African comedian Dieudonne suggest. He is notorious for playing the part of a Hassidic Jew who mimics the Nazi salute. Few politicians blame their troubles on cynical comedians, though, and Sarkozy is no exception. His fans point accusing fingers at the "irresponsible press".

The real magic starts when you power Sarkozy with his ex-model wife. She, after all, played a part in the freeing of the Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian medical doctor. She, too, is of Spanish-Jewish ancestry. But, that may be nothing but an insignificant aside. France, generally, regarded their bust-up as something of a bad joke. Unlike the Americans, the French do not take the private lives of their presidents terribly seriously. There was the late François Mitterrand, for example. Hardly anyone in all France raised an eyebrow when it transpired that he had an illegitimate daughter. The French are more concerned with the ideological orientation and political affiliation of their president and are not in the least interested in their private affairs -- at least not in any political sense.

The interesting twist, however, is that the contest between Cecilia and Nicolas Sarkozy is a comic cross between a lover's tiff and the battle of the sexes. It appears befuddled French voters are being forced to turn a blind eye to their leaders' antics. Sarkozy's divorce follows hard on the heels of the separation of France's first female presidential candidate Ségolène Royal, the "gazelle" of French politics, from her lifelong lover François Hollande barely a month after she lost the presidential race in May. Moreover, at the tender age of 19, Royal sued her father for his refusal to divorce her mother and pay alimony and child support. That was way back in 1972; barely a decade later she won the case against her father. Ironically, Royal's own mentor the late French socialist president Mitterrand was notorious for his extra-marital affairs, the most conspicuous being his love affair with Anne Pingeot and subsequent disclosure towards the end of his life that he fathered an illegitimate daughter Mazarine with her.

And, what of the voters? The latest hazard facing the French president has been his socio-economic policies. Sarkozy's showdown with the trade unions threatens to turn into a deciding moment for France. Foreign policy, too, has come under much scrutiny. France has become fanatically Atlanticist under the presidency of Sarkozy. Although, unlike US President George W Bush, Sarkozy does not make much noise about his own dubious religious convictions. The commonest criticism of Sarkozy is that he is overly conscious of his religious heritage, a trait that is not appreciated by the fanatically secular French political establishment. France is culturally the most irreligious country in Europe, itself the most secular and anti-religious of the world's continents.

For a politician acclaimed for his acumen, it is startling that Sarkozy has been tripped up by events he should have seen coming. His sagacity obviously failed him this week. Le Figaro let the cat out of the bag. And his wife, too, after shopping with Lyudmila Putin, the Russian first lady, apparently decided that she had had enough of being treated as "part of the furniture" and made their rift very public.

France is now in the awkward position of having no first lady. The 49 year- old former model, lawyer and political advisor is by no means media shy. "I gave Nicolas 20 years of my life," she told the popular French magazine Elle in a special feature which she asked for personally, despite the awkwardness of its timing. She had long complained of being politically peripheralised. Troubling as that interpretation is, it is in a way a consoling one for Sarkozy. He is now free to handle his opponents without his maverick Cecilia breathing down his neck or, on the contrary, disappearing at crucial moments.

Even with his personal life in tatters, Sarkozy is obliged to hoist the French tricoleur high in the international arena. Which flag is it to be?

A "Paper Coup"

by Naomi, "Huffington Post" - Nov 5, 2007

I have argued that in the closing stages of a `fascist shift', events cascade. I am hearing about them, even across the globe. Here in Australia I hear from the nation's best-know feminist activist, and former adviser to Paul Keating, Anne Summers, who was also at the time this took place Chair of the Board of Greenpeace International. Summers was detained by armed agents for FIVE HOURS each way in LAX on her way to and from the annual meeting of the board of Greenpeace International in Mexico, and her green card was taken away from her. `I want to call a lawyer', she told TSA agents. `Ma'am, you do not have a right to call an attorney,' they replied. `You have not entered the United States.'

Apparently a section of LAX just beyond the security line is asserted to be `not in the United States' -- though it is squarely inside the airport -- so the laws of the US do not apply. (This assertion, by the way, should alarm any US citizen who is aware of how the White House argued that Guantanamo is not `in the United States' - is a legal no-man's land -- so the laws of the US do not apply.) Toward the end of her second five-hour detention she asked, `Why am I being detained?' `Lady, this is not detention,' the TSA agent told her. `Detention is when I take you to the cells out back and lock you up.'

Last week in Boston, while attending Bioneers by the Bay, I heard that one of the speakers for our event, an environmentalist named Gunter Pauli, was going to miss the time of his scheduled speech; he had been physically taken OFF THE PLANE by TSA agents and had to take a much later flight. More chillingly, the camerawoman doing my interview said that another well-known environmental writer found that his girlfriend was effectively `disappeared' for three days as she sought to enter the US from Canada. Lisa Fithian, an anti-globalization activist, was denied entry across the Canadian border in 2001 and was offered the choice of turning back or being arrested.

A friend emails me a story from USA Today about a 24-year-old college graduate who testified before Congress about her family of immigrants and the difficulties they face; shortly afterward, the entire family was arrested by immigration agents. Another online piece reports that Blackwater is setting up operations along the US/Mexico border and an insightful post on Daily Kos describes how the TSA list will revert from the airlines to the management of the Department of Homeland Security shortly and that by February we may well face the need to apply to the State for permission to travel. If this proposed regulation goes through, we will move from 1931 to about 1934--when the borders started to close-- with the stroke of a pen. Jews in America have hardwired into their DNA a sense of the distinction between those who got out before the borders closed and those who waited a moment too long.

Why should Congress impeach and prosecute this instant, not waiting till February? Why should this impeachment and prosecution be solidly bipartisan? After February it is the leaders on both sides of the aisle -- and the people writing these essays -- who are at most risk of being turned back at the border. People who can't leave in a police state are effectively silenced. And history shows that Republicans are at the exact same risk as Democrats of being violently silenced once liberties are lost. I am reading about IBM's close, profitable involvement with Nazi Germany -- much akin to Prescott Bush's well-documented close and profitable involvement with Nazi Germany through German industrialist, Fritz Thyssen. Right up to the top of the solidly Nazi hierarchy of the IBM affiliate, corporate executives were terrified of taking a wrong step in the eyes of the Party: `There are concentration camps', they would whisper to their US backers. The teenage son of one solid Nazi ally was taken hostage when he resisted Party orders. So alignment with the regime in a police state offers no ultimate protection.

Let us think like business consultants analyzing the decisions of a business that claims it is going to close its door in just a year. What kinds of decisions is it making? Here is a quiz, if you still doubt that we need to shift our thinking and recognize what appears to be 'a paper coup.':

- Is building a US Embassy in Baghdad the size of eighty football fields and at a cost of well more than half a BILLION dollars evidence of short- or long-term thinking?

- These walls would crumble if the next legitimate president independently ends the war. How about defending and expanding the basis for FISA violations at this late stage -- after all, these folks will be gone in a year?

- How about the decision to fight so hard for a US attorney who will defend the view that the President is above the law?

- Why would that matter so much in an administration folding its tents?

- Why the rush to establish Guantanamo as a permanent part of the landscape and even seek money at one point to double its size -- if the next President, a truly independent Republican or Democrat, might just close it down?

- Why the push to expand a war that makes no military or popular sense, rush through military tribunals that the next President might just disband, and, by the way, drum up a fresh new World War III?

- Do the neo-cons advising Giuliani look like a fresh page for an independent, transparent election or an ideological continuity of government in themselves?

- Do these look like the short-term tactics of a fading administration -- or the institutional strategic bases for some kind of new long-term beginning?

- Why work so hard to make sure that the man who defended the infamous "enemy combatant" concept will be the new Attorney General?

Increasingly, reputable figures are starting to talk about `a coup.' Jim Hightower notes in an important essay, "Is a Presidential Coup Under Way?," that a coup is defined in the dictionary as a sudden forced change in the form of government. (He also spells out the basis for a rigorously modeled impeachment and criminal prosecution.) Daniel Ellsberg's much-emailed speech on recent events notes that, in his view, a `coup' has already taken place. Ron Rosenbaum speculates in an essay on Slate about the reasons the Bush administration is withholding even from members of Congress its plans for Continuity of Government in an emergency -- noting that those worrying about a coup are no longer so marginal. Frank Rich notes the parallels between ourselves and the Good Germans. And Congress belatedly realizes as if waking from a drugged sleep that it might not be okay for the Attorney General to say the President need not obey the law. Congress may realize why Mukasey CAN'T say that `waterboarding is torture' -- the minute he does so he has laid the grounds for Bush, Cheney and any number of CIA and Blackwater interrogators to be tried and convicted for war crimes. They are so keenly aware that what they have been doing is criminal that laws such as the Military Commissions Act of 2006 have been drafted specifically to protect them and the torturers and murderers they have directed from criminal prosecution. That is why insisting that Mukasey say that waterboarding is torture is, in spite of the alarming apparent defection of Feinstein and Schumer, an important tactic and even the perfect opening for the impeachment bid that Kucinich is bringing on November 6th to be followed by Congressional investigations into possible criminality.

This is the "Blackwater Tactical Weekly." (Yes, Blackwater has its own weekly e-newsletter.) Look at "Islamist protest in N.Y. - 'Mushroom cloud on way'" -- it is reasonable to speculate that Blackwater is focusing on becoming more active domestically in managing domestic protests and rallies. (Regarding this particular rally, note the repetition of the White House `Mushroom Cloud' sound-bite and other signs bearing current White House talking points, that are attributed to alleged Muslim protesters in New York City. The US has a long history of using agents provocateurs -- people dressed as those they are targeting, who pose as conveying a more violent or threatening message than that of the real group itself or who commit acts of violence to stigmatize the group. The Cointelpro program of the 1970's discredited many rallies in this way. An alleged or infiltrated violent, threatening Muslim rally would be the perfect defensible trigger for a Blackwater response.)

See also that Blackwater may be exploring the management of private flights in US airports because of a threat or `threat' to private aircraft. ("Extremists may target private US planes: TSA.") This entry point to the air travel system would seem defensible -- after all Blackwater personnel do in fact guard airports around the world, for example in Bosnia. The danger is that a bleeding of Blackwater into US airport security in general would affect a coup in essence -- quite quickly and serenely -- even as a coup in fact need not be declared. It is a short step from managing private plane and private airport security to aiding the TSA -- which is a branch of Homeland Security -- and Homeland Security and Blackwater have already worked in alliance with one another in New Orleans. A TSA agent blogged about having signed up for Blackwater -- at ten thousand a month, which is a lot more than TSA agents make now and a real incentive -- but I have no evidence of reverse movement. The White House recently announced that the Watch List and No-Fly List together have 775,000 citizens and that they are adding 20,000 A MONTH. This trend on both sides, if not confronted, points to an easy slide to a paramilitarized domestic flight experience in the US and a routine aggressive searching of hundreds of thousands of citizens, the growth being exponential enough so that being aggressively searched could easily soon become a common experience at airports. Nothing at present prevents Blackwater agents from being deployed to help or replace the TSA domestically. Or from being deployed at the next New York City rally such as the one that is being featured on their website. And airports being the lifeline of freedom, if you are scared to fly or can be bullied, interrogated, tasered or worse when flying, you are no longer free. History shows that there is no easy retroactive movement toward a free society once travel is truly restricted.

The Mukasey hesitation on torture is our cue to call a halt to these crimes. (By the way, strapping victims to boards to prepare them for torture was common at Buchenwald.)

Congress must ask:

- What is torture?
- Has it happened?
- Who ordered it?
- How high up the chain of command does this go?
- And what does our system of laws say about such crimes and those who commit them?

If it takes hearings and possible prosecutions to restore the rule of law and maintain a free society, then it is past time for the hearings to begin.

Israeli Rabbis tell Bush God will punish him if peace deal is reached

These Rabbis and Christian Zionists are singing from the same hymm book. These folks sound exactly like Pat Robertson and Hagee. Talk about tight coordination ~ Seeing as how Bush "talks" to God on a daily basis, I'd be double-checking with the Almighty if I were him.

by Agence France Presse - November 06, 2007

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM: A fringe group of ultra-nationalist Israeli Rabbis has petitioned US President George W. Bush this week to cancel a Middle East peace meeting, saying that his country will face mass calamity if he does not.

"We wrote to President Bush, a man who believes in the Bible, to warn him against the terrible danger to which he is exposing his country by hosting such a conference," Rabbi Meir Druckman, one of eight signatories, told Army Radio.

"The land of Israel belongs to the people of Israel. God punishes anyone who wants to force Israel to give up its land," he said, alluding to the occupied Gaza Strip and West Bank.

"There is no doubt the New Orleans flood from the Katrina hurricane was God's punishment for dismantling the settlements," he said of the August 2005 catastrophe that hit the southern United States.

Israel withdrew all troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005 with wide US and other international support.

"The recent fires in California should be considered the last warning," added Rabbi Druckman.

On Sunday some 2,000 people, many of them Jewish settlers living in the West Bank, protested against the international peace meeting expected to be held in the United States later this year.

It was the first significant Israeli demonstration against the negotiations aimed at reviving full Israeli-Palestinian peace talks after seven years of stalemate.

Ron Paul Raises More Than $4 Million in One Day

by DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK - November 6, 2007

Historians and British schoolchildren remember Guy Fawkes as the Roman Catholic, anti-Protestant rebel who on Nov. 5, 1605, tried to assassinate King James I by blowing up the Parliament. Supporters of the Republican primary campaign of the libertarian Representative Ron Paul may remember Fawkes as a wildly successful fund-raising gimmick.

On Monday, a group of Paul supporters helped raised more than $4.07 million in one day — approaching what the campaign raised in the entire last quarter — through a Web site called ThisNovember5th.com, a reference to the day the British commemorate the thwarted bombing.
Many fans of Mr. Paul know of the day primarily through a movie based on the futuristic graphic novel “V for Vendetta,” by Alan Moore and David Lloyd, in which a terrorist modeled after Fawkes battles a fascist government that has taken over Britain.

The Paul campaign has raised more than $6.84 million in the first five weeks of this quarter, more than the $5 million it raised from July 1 to Oct. 1. Many of the contributions appeared to come through the independent Fawkes effort, but how much was unclear.

On Monday alone, the campaign signed up more than 21,000 new donors, said Jesse Benton, a campaign spokesman.

Among 2008 presidential candidates, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York holds the record for raising the most in a single day: $6.2 million on June 30. But Mr. Paul has surpassed the best day of Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, who raised $3.14 million on Jan. 8.

ThisNovember5th.com includes video clips and the text of a speech by Mr. Paul, a 10-term Texas congressman. In it, Mr. Paul declares, “The true patriot challenges the state when the state embarks on enhancing its power at the expense of the individual.”

Mr. Paul has stood out from the Republican field for his opposition to the war in Iraq. In the speech he argues that the fight against terrorism is threatening American democracy.

“The American Republic is in remnant status,” he says. “The stage is set for our country eventually devolving into military dictatorship, and few seem to care.”

Mr. Benton clarified that Mr. Paul did not support blowing up government buildings. “He wants to demolish things like the Department of Education,” Mr. Benton said, “but we can do that very peacefully, in a constructive manner.”

Israel's Lieberman joins attack on IAEA chief

Minister for strategic affairs' associates accuse head of UN nuclear watchdog of 'identifying with the Iranians and consciously working to cooperate with Ahmadinejad'. Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Livni tells EU foreign ministers that without sanctions, Tehran will obtain the bomb.

Can you believe it? The Israeli Zionists are playing the "race" card. Now, El Barabi can't be trusted because he is an Arab. The main problem with this assertion however, is that the Iranians are Persians. But, then again, that won't matter. The "stupid" Americans don't know the difference.

by Roni Sofer, Ynet News - Nov 6, 2007

Minister for Strategic Affairs Avigdor Lieberman on Monday slammed International Atomic Energy Agency chief, Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, saying that "his conduct raises a lot of question marks regarding his intentions and his real desire to deal with the Iranian arms race.

"So far Elbaradei has failed to prove that he has any skills in any issue or case, including in cases in which the international community managed to halt nuclear projects like in North Korea and in Lybia," Lieberman said.

"This, in addition to his criticism of Israel over the foreign reports on what happened in Syria," the minister added.

Over the past few months, Lieberman has been in charge of appointing special teams which include intelligence and military officials, to discuss Iran's nuclear program. He is expected to submit his findings to the cabinet within the a few months.

The findings are expected to include the conclusion that Tehran constitutes a strategic threat on Israel, both in terms of its nuclear plan and in terms of the tactical threat, by operating Hamas and Hizbullah terror cells and providing weapons to Israel's enemies.

Sources in Lieberman's office expressed their support for Foreign Ministry Director-General Aharon Abramovich, who accused Elbaradei of thwarting the international efforts against Iran's nuclear program.

"Instead of supervising the distribution of nuclear weapons to Iran, he is letting the Iranians stall. Deep down inside, Elbaradei identified with the Iranians on the personal basic level," the minister's associates said.

"ElBaradei identifies with the Muslim and Arab world. He tells himself that 'the Europeans have nuclear technology, the Americans have nuclear technology, and even Israel has it, so why shouldn't Iran have it as well?' He has a lot of anger against Israel over the nuclear issue.

"We must understand that someone here is consciously working to cooperate with (Iranian President Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad," an aide to Lieberman added.

Livni: Europe must lead sanctions

Meanwhile Monday, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni attempted to promote Israel's stance on the Iranian issue among her European counterparts during a European Union conference in Portugal.

"Iran continues to advance in the purchase of nuclear technology, in spite of the international talks being held by the United Nations nuclear agency. The way to stop it is through severe and more significant sanctions, as the diplomatic talks have so far failed in stopping it," Livni said in a speech.

The foreign minister backed the remarks made by her ministry's director-general against the agency's restrained statements in its final reports. Ahead of the report schedule to be released on November 22, which will determine whether the Security Council will impose further sanctions on Iran, Livni believes that the IAEA's conduct is not helping the world stop Tehran's nuclear arms race.

In her multiple meetings in the capital of Lisbon, Livni discussed the failure of the diplomatic moves, saying that she believed the sanctions must be toughened alongside diplomacy.

According to the foreign minister, Iran is trying "to win time" until it reaches the critical point of obtaining the technological knowledge needed for the development of nuclear weapons.

Without the sanctions, Livni said, Iran will move forward while completely ignoring the international community, headed by the UN Security Council.

A source in Livni entourage reported that the foreign minister told EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana and other senior EU officials that "a nuclear Iran is not only a threat to Israel, but a global problem.

"Iran is an obstacle to stability in the Middle East. Europe must lead further sanctions. When the Europeans talk about bolstering the moderates in the Middle East, they must think about Iran as the leader of the radicals, including those among the Palestinian people," the foreign minister stressed.

The Iraq escalator

The Toledo Blade - Oct 30, 2007

The cost of not challenging the Bush Administration on its war strategy in Iraq could be trillions of dollars over the next decade. That message, courtesy of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, should not be ignored by Congress or the American people.

CBO director Peter Orszag told members of the House Budget Committee that war costs are on track to approach $2.4 trillion over the next decade, even with an assumed draw-down of troops in five years. "Astonishing" and "staggering" was how lawmakers reacted to the new cost projections.

"Speculation" and "hypothetical" was how the White House brushed off the news, ever-averse to confronting the real cost of its war. This is the same administration, you'll recall, that in 2002 fired its top economic adviser, Lawrence Lindsey, after he disputed initial White House claims that the war would cost only $50 billion to $60 billion.

Supplemental budget requests and revisions every few months for tens of billions in military spending is this administration's tactic to prevent taxpayers from a getting a true sense of the cost.

The CBO forecast comes as Congress is reviewing yet another administration request for more money - an additional $46 billion - to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's on top of $150 billion already requested for fiscal year 2008, which began Oct. 1.

If the revised supplemental defense funds are approved by Congress, it would bring the total amount appropriated to fund the fighting to more than $800 billion. That's close to the price of the Korean and Vietnam conflicts combined.

At their current rate, war appropriations could reach $1 trillion by the time President Bush leaves office, which, critics note, is way beyond any projection made at the beginning of the Iraq invasion. And even if the United States draws down its military presence in Iraq more sharply than the CBO assumed and its projections drop to $1.7 trillion through the same period, the agency says the country is still on an "unsustainable fiscal path and something has to give."

So far congressional Democrats have been reluctant to use the power of the purse to refuse the President anything when it comes war-funding. And no politician wants to be accused of not supporting the troops, especially with a presidential election closing in.

But it's a mistake not to challenge the hundreds of billions approaching trillions that American taxpayers and their children and grandchildren will be forced to pay on behalf of a losing cause. That was the whole point of giving the Democrats control of Congress last year.

Moreover, with the Iraq war heading into its fifth year, and with no end in sight, Americans deserve straight talk about its monetary cost.

Since the White House prefers evasive spin - "We don't know how much the war is going to cost in the future" - to realistic number crunching, the task of truth-telling fell to the CBO.

It provides what may be the most comprehensive and far-reaching estimate to date of what it will cost if large numbers of American troops remain in Iraq and Afghanistan through 2017 - an unfortunate likelihood.

We ignore these numbers at our peril.

Mukasey's America

by Nat Hentoff - Nov 5, 2007

During the Senate Judiciary Committee's hearings on the nomination of Michael Mukasey to succeed Alberto Gonzales as attorney general, there was an exchange that many will remember. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, Rhode Island Democrat, a former prosecutor, asked about waterboarding, an interrogation technique long associated with the CIA: "Is waterboarding constitutional?"Mr. Mukasey answered: "I don't know what is involved in the technique. If waterboarding is torture, torture is not constitutional."

After that testimony, John Hutson, former Judge Advocate General of the Navy, told the New York Sun: "Waterboarding was devised in the Spanish Inquisition. Next to the rack and thumbscrews, it's the most iconic example of torture." And Martin Lederman, who was an attorney adviser in the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel from 1994 to 2002, said about Mr. Mukasey's "not knowing enough to say whether waterboarding, or any other technique, is torture... or otherwise unlawful (shows) how far we have fallen when a jurist of Judge Mukasey's caliber cannot answer such questions without hesitation" (from the Balkinization Web site of Yale Law professor Jack Balkin).

Among others startled by Mr. Mukasey's evasiveness, George L. Gordon, a former chief appellate attorney in the U.S. Attorney's office in the Southern District of New York, said in an Oct. 20 letter to The New York Times: "How can the United States hope to regain its position as a respected world leader on the great issues of human rights if its chief law enforcement officer cannot bring himself to acknowledge the undeniable verity that waterboarding (making a prisoner feel he is imminently about to drown) constitutes torture, applying any conceivable definition of that term?" During his testimony, Mr. Mukasey also said it would be irresponsible of him to comment on any of the "coercive interrogation techniques" (that the president has approved) because he has not been "read in" on them by being allowed to see classified information on those techniques.

Trying to further the education of our prospective chief law enforcement officer, Mr. Lederman suggests he ask FBI Director Robert Mueller to show him the e-mails sent to him by FBI agents in the field "complaining that the CIA-run interrogation program amounted to torture." Mr. Lederman quotes a senior federal law enforcement official in the FBI messages: "'Those guys were using techniques that we didn't even want to be in the room for.'" A series of these appalled FBI complaints are in a newly published book that Mr. Mukasey, members of Congress and Americans concerned with the degrading of our rule of law should read: "Administration of Torture" by American Civil Liberties Union attorneys Jameel Jaffer and Amrit Singh (Columbia University Press).

At its core are more than 350 pages selected from thousands of actual government documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act that specifically detail systematic abuses of prisoners, including forms of torture that cannot in our law and international treaties be described denotatively in another way than some of the "coercive interrogation techniques" of which Mr. Mukasey professed ignorance. Also, "Administration of Torture" prints Final Autopsy Reports from the Office of the Armed Forces Regional Examiner and the allied Institute of Pathology. For example, a 52-year-old Iraqi male "found unresponsive... in isolation at Whitehorse detainment facility, Nasiriyah, Iraq. Cause of death: Strangulation. Manner of Death: Homicide." There were extensive head, neck, torso and extremity injuries.

Another autopsy report of an Iraqi death "while in U.S. custody" states the homicide was caused by blunt force injuries and asphyxia. Other documents that should greatly interest the likely new attorney general verify that prisoners were shackled in extremely painful "stress positions," stripped in freezing cold cells and deprived of human contact for months. Moreover, the records show that the Defense Department authorized the caging of prisoners in cells as small as 3.1 feet by 4 feet by 1-1/2 feet.

Also, Mr. Mukasey will discover that this maltreatment, to use a euphemism, "took place because of (official) policy, not in spite of it in large part," wrote Mr. Jaffer and Mrs. Singh, "from decisions made by senior officials, both military and civilians. These decisions (going up to the White House) were reaffirmed repeatedly, even in the fact of complaints from law enforcement and military personnel that the policies were illegal and ineffective." As far as these U.S. government documents from Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay are concerned, future American historians will not flinch from calling them records of war crimes — not only from soldiers from the field, but all the way up "the chain of command."

Louis Brandeis said: "Courage is the secret of liberty." The Senate Judiciary Committee's confirmation of Michael Mukasey would not be an act of courage. And will any candidate for the presidency read carefully "The Administration of Torture?" It's also important to remember that Mr. Mukasey testified that in these circumstances, the president can use his constitutional authority to act outside of laws Congress has passed and he has signed.

This is Mr. Mukasey's America?

The agonizing truth about CIA renditions

Khaled el-Masri, who was abducted by the CIA for interrogation as a suspected terrorist, during an interview in Ulm, Afghanistan, Dec. 11, 2005.

The fate of prisoners secreted away under the Bush administration is in some ways worse than even Hollywood has portrayed.

by Stephen Grey - Nov. 5, 2007

At 3:44 p.m. on Jan. 24, 2004, a luxury Boeing 737 business jet operated by the Central Intelligence Agency landed at Kabul Airport in Afghanistan. Onboard were its flight crew, eight members of a CIA rendition team and a blindfolded prisoner who was shackled by his wrists and feet.

The behavior of the prisoner, a German citizen named Khaled el-Masri, concerned the CIA team leader onboard. According to an agency insider, the leader sent word to Washington that "there was something strange about el-Masri. He didn't behave like the others they'd captured. He was asking: Is he the right guy?"

Within days it emerged that el-Masri was indeed the wrong man. It was a "100 percent case of mistaken identity," said another former agency official. Yet, despite this discovery, el-Masri spent 18 weeks in solitary confinement in a CIA "black site," or secret prison used by the United States in its war on terror. He is still waiting for an apology or an explanation.

The case of el-Masri -- whose lawsuit against the CIA has been dismissed by U.S. courts on the grounds of protecting "state secrets" -- caused a huge controversy within the CIA at the time of his capture. A five-month standoff between employees at the Counterterrorism Center and others in the clandestine service led then director George Tenet to step in. "On at least this occasion, Tenet made the right choice," a source told me. "He ordered the release of a man who was clearly not a terrorist."

The current Hollywood movie "Rendition" looks at a fictional case of a wrongly identified terrorist. It calls to public attention the CIA program of "extraordinary rendition," the practice of nabbing terrorist suspects abroad and transferring them without legal process to a third country -- often one where torture is commonplace -- for detention and interrogation.

In the course of investigating the rendition program for the past four years, I have interviewed victims, CIA pilots, case officers who have actually carried out renditions, senior CIA officers who directed such operations and officials at the White House who were involved in authorizing such measures. All of these sources told me in private or on the record that repeated claims by the White House that we "don't send people to countries where they will be tortured" are plain lies.

As Tyler Drumheller, head of CIA covert operations in Europe from 2001 to 2005, said in an on-camera interview, the assurances obtained from countries like Egypt that prisoners would not be tortured were hardly treated as serious. "You can say we asked them not to do it, and they do say that, but you have to be honest with yourself and say there's no way we can guarantee they are not going to do that."

Hollywood's "Rendition" makes some mistakes. It is not true, as the movie depicts, that CIA officers stand by in some Egyptian or Syrian torture room while a prisoner is electrocuted. Most CIA officers would find that abhorrent, and it would breach the CIA's own rules and be a clear violation of U.S. law.

But in some ways the truth about rendition is worse than what is depicted in the Hollywood film. When prisoners are handed over to countries like Egypt or Syria, CIA officers keep well clear of what happens next because agency rules prevent them from witnessing any strong-arm interrogations. But keeping their eyes wide shut, in effect, allows for much darker, more immoral things to occur, and for the U.S. government to preserve plausible deniability.

Inside its own "black site" prisons, the CIA uses interrogation methods that -- while falling short of the medieval techniques used in the Arab world -- still, in the eyes of many within the agency, amount to straightforward torture. It is not only the physical methods like waterboarding (simulated drowning), but also refined techniques of sensory deprivation, that can cripple a prisoner psychologically.

One witness to such abuse was Bisher al-Rawi, a longtime British resident who was snatched by the CIA and held for more than four years, first in Afghanistan, then in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. In a recent interview he told me about the "dark prison" where he was held in solitary confinement while being bombarded with strange music. It was freezing cold and so dark, he said, "you couldn't see the end of your nose." Physical torture, like the beatings he later endured, could be overcome, he said, but psychological torture "lives with you all your life."

The Bush administration now acknowledges its program of rendition and the existence of its black sites. But much remains a deep secret. Most of the terrorist suspects involved remain in custody and cannot talk. And we know the fate of just a small fraction of the thousands of prisoners captured by U.S. forces around the world since 9/11.

Recently, by refusing to hear the lawsuit of Khaled el-Masri, the U.S. Supreme Court has added to this veil of secrecy. It left standing a judgment by the circuit court that however bad el-Masri's treatment, the objectives of national security outweighed the public interest in airing the truth about his arrest and detention in a public court of law.

As long as a terror suspect remains a "ghost prisoner" whose location and fate can only be guessed at, then a prison guard or interrogator need feel little fear of the consequences of what he or she might do. Secrecy is a friend of the torturer.

Carter's Clarity, Bush's Befuddlement

by Robert D. Novak - November 5, 2007

The timing of the release of the new documentary "Jimmy Carter: Man From Plains" was not intentional. The movie is arriving in theaters just before the Bush administration's proposed Middle East conference in Annapolis, scheduled for the end of this month. But the former president's clarity on the Palestinian question contrasts sharply with George W. Bush's refusal to face reality, casting a pall over hopes to conclude his presidency with a diplomatic triumph.

In the film, Carter repeatedly and unequivocally states what Palestinian and Israeli peace advocates view as undeniable: to achieve Israeli-Palestinian peace, with all its benefits for the world, Israel must end its illegal and oppressive occupation of the West Bank. That is a prerequisite that neither President Bush nor congressional leaders of both parties can approach for fear of being labeled anti-Israeli or even anti-Semitic (as Carter has been).

With the end to the occupation not on any participant's agenda, hopes for substantive accomplishment at Annapolis are dim. Testifying before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Oct. 24, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned of "further radicalization of Palestinian politics, of politics in the region" if "we lose the window for a two-state solution." But she did not mention the forbidden words of Israeli removal from the West Bank.

These words are not forbidden in "Man From Plains." I was surprised when a publicist for the movie invited me to a private screening in advance of its Washington debut Saturday. For the past 32 years, I had been a critic of Carter -- but not of his most recent and most attacked book, "Palestine Peace Not Apartheid."

The unusual documentary is mainly an account of Carter's travels promoting his 21st book. Normally, nothing would seem more boring than presentation of a book tour. But Jonathan Demme, the Academy Award-winning director of "The Silence of the Lambs," has produced a beautiful, fascinating film, whose two hours sped by.

Demme told me he intended the documentary to be a "portrait in motion" of the 83-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate, whom he greatly admires, "to find out what makes Jimmy Carter tick." But it became a condemnation of what Demme now calls "land-grabbing" from the "oppressed" Palestinian people.

The film is more assertive than the book, which tends to be prolix in recounting Carter's experiences with Israel. It was the word "apartheid" in the title that spawned instant accusations of anti-Semitism against the former president and led 14 members of the Carter Center's board of counselors to resign. Not until Page 215, near the end of the slim book, did Carter make it clear that the "policy now being followed" on the West Bank is "a system of apartheid with two peoples occupying the same land but completely separated from each other, with Israelis totally dominant and suppressing violence by depriving Palestinians of their basic rights."

In the movie, Carter repeatedly declares that Israel must end its occupation of Palestine for peace to have a chance. The hecklers at his appearances and confused interviewers only provoke a stubborn Carter, who says chopping up the West Bank is actually worse than apartheid, just as Palestinian peace-seekers told me this year in Jerusalem.

A broader, more detailed analysis can be found in the newly updated American version of "Lords of the Land" by Professor Idith Zertal and leading Israeli columnist Akiva Eldar. This scathing account of the occupation, first published in Israel in 2005, declares that former prime minister Ariel Sharon's plan for a security wall was intended to "take hold of as much West Bank territory as possible and block the establishment of a viable Palestinian state."

As Israelis, Eldar and Zertal employ language that not even Carter dares use: "Israel's lofty demands that Palestinians strengthen their democracy and impose control on extremist organizations is ... nothing but deceptive talk covering its own deeds, which are aimed at achieving exactly the opposite -- of eroding Palestinian society."

In "Man From Plains," Carter goes further in this direction than any other prominent American has to date, and people who wander into a movie theater to see the film may be shocked. It raises questions that must at least be asked for the contemplated conference at Annapolis to have any chance.