Obama continues rendition despite extensive condemnation of tactic

PressTV

US President Barack Obama’s administration is continuing rendition, the practice of sending terrorism suspects to third countries for detention and interrogation without due process.

George Bush administration’s practice of rendition is continuing under the Obama administration despite widespread condemnation of the tactic in the years after the September 11, 2001 attacks, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday.

According to the US daily, it is unknown how many renditions have taken place during Obama’s first term due to the secrecy involved but his administration has not disavowed the practice.

In the latest example of Obama administration’s use of the tactic, a number of American interrogates visited three European men with Somali origins in a jail in the small African country of Djibouti. The detainees had been arrested on a vague pretext in August as they were passing through the African country.

US agents accused the three men of supporting Somalia’s al-Shabab group. The prisoners were secretly indicted by a federal grand jury in New York two months after their arrest. They were then clandestinely taken into custody by the FBI and flown to the United States to face trial.

The secret arrests and detentions became known on December 21, when the suspects appeared briefly in a Brooklyn courtroom.

The US government has revealed little about the circumstances of the arrests. The FBI and federal prosecutors for the Eastern District of New York have also not said where and why the defendants were detained.

Human rights advocates have condemned Obama administration’s decision to continue rendition.

Obama, in his first presidential candidacy, had strongly suggested he might end the practice but the tactic is still continuing under his administration.

Niloufer Bhagwat presents to the 9/11 Revisited conference in Kuala Lumpur

Corbett Report


 Niloufer Bhagwat, Professor of Comparative Constitutional Law at University of Mumbai, presents to the “9/11 Revisted: Seeking the Truth” conference in Kuala Lumpur on November 19, 2012.

 

Osama Bin Laden Is Really, Really Dead

Daily Bell

USS Carl Vinson

Internal emails among U.S. military officers indicate that no sailors watched Osama bin Laden's burial at sea from the USS Carl Vinson and traditional Islamic procedures were followed during the ceremony. The emails, obtained by The Associated Press through the Freedom of Information Act, are heavily blacked out, but are the first public disclosure of government information about the al-Qaida leader's death. The emails were released Wednesday by the Defense Department. – Huffington Post

Dominant Social Theme: Oh, he is dead. Yes, we killed him. He is gone. Dead. We are so great. And he is cold and dead and drowned.

Free-Market Analysis: We have written numerous stories about the "death" of Osama bin Laden because it seems to represent everything that is wrong or at least inconsistent as regards the US's military-industrial complex.

We have noted in the past that the power elite that wants to build world government uses a variety of dominant and subdominant social themes to do so.

These themes are intended to frighten Western middle classes into giving up power and wealth to elite globalist solutions. One of the main modern tools is the war on terror.
Within this larger (apparently phony) war, the death of Osama bin Laden can be seen as a subdominant social theme, an elaboration on the main symphony of terror.

In retrospect, we think we understand the reason for its presentation. It was to provide a justification for US President Barack Obama to get re-elected.

Of course, we have doubts that Obama WAS re-elected. But the mainstream media has claimed that one of the reasons Obama was re-elected was because of bin Laden's death.
It doesn't really MATTER if bin Laden died or not. What DOES matter is that it provides a narrative that allows the media to offer a rationale for Obama's re-election.

This is what we call directed history. Theoretically speaking, the powers-that-be create a fake bin Laden death. Then they provide phony election results. None of it is true but the narrative itself justifies the results, even if they didn't happen.

We've written a lot about the so-called "death" of bin Laden and you can just search the Internet using "bin Laden death" and "Daily Bell" and find a number of articles on the subject.

The main point is that the death just doesn't add up. He had Marfan Syndrome and failing kidneys more than a decade ago. His death was reported significantly several times, especially in Egypt and Pakistani news, as reported by Fox News. All the CIA messaging from "Osama" after 2001 is identifiably false.

That doesn't stop the elite promotional machinery, though. They keep supporting this elaborate tapestry of evidence – books, movies and news reports – to create this overwhelming presentation of his death.

Absolutely none of it is corroborated and most is second- and third-hand. There is no body, no DNA, no films and many of the SEALS who were involved, at least tangentially, died in a helicopter accident. Some have theorized it was a warning to the SEALS to keep their mouths shut.

There are a few eyewitnesses that the US and NATO have not controlled. We wrote about one eyewitness here:

Eyewitness Tells Different Story of Bin Laden Death

Here's an excerpt of the man's reported testimony:

Anchor: Welcome back, Mohammad Bashir is a resident of Abbottabad's Bilal Town. Muhammad Bashir might seem an ordinary guy but he is no ordinary guy. Muhammad Bashir lives in front of Osama Ben Laden's house in Bilal Town Abbottabad. On 2nd of May, Muhammad Bashir was present on his rooftop from where he saw the whole American operation against Osama Ben Laden with his own eyes. Yesterday when our team was present In Bilal Town, Abbottabad, near Osama Ben Laden's hose, Muhammad Bashir came to us and said, "Sister, I need to tell you something, something that is a burden on my heart and soul," just listen to what he said.

Bashir: I am going to share something about the Abbottabad operation, which till this day nobody else has told you. ... We were awake, not asleep, a helicopter came, some men came down from that, into that house, then that helicopter went away: 10-12 men, then, that helicopter took rounds of those rear hills, then he came back and when he came back, two more helicopters arrived, one from the west and other from the north, there was a blast in the first helicopter and it was on fire ... we immediately came out, when we reached there, the helicopter was burning, then after about 20 minutes the army and police arrived. They pushed us back, now we are asking that if Osama was here then who took him to America because all those men that came in the helicopter died in the blast. Now if Osama was in that helicopter he must have died and got burnt in that helicopter too, then how they took him? This is a question of serious concern ...

We could see the faces of those men but they were speaking Pashto. I don't know whether they were Pakistani or American army or people of agencies, as you know that agency people can speak many languages. May be they were speaking Pashto so that we consider them Pakistani. They knocked and banged at our doors and told us not to come out. I laid down on my rooftop and was watching them. My kids were calling me, I told them to go to their rooms and let me check what's going on...

Anchor: One thing is very clear in this video. Two helicopters hovered never landed. One landed and dropped Pashto speaking people on the roof — 10-12 of them. The helicopter left for 20 minutes and returned to load people in and then a small blast engine failure ... fire helicopter parts all over. Body parts arms, legs, head, all over. Pakistani Army/Police came in dispersed crowd. The whole scene is cleaned up totally now. No evidence left to examine...

So to repeat, according to THIS eyewitness, the only individuals that landed on bin Laden's so-called compound were 10-12 Pashto speaking individuals. The helicopter that returned to pick them up exploded, apparently killing all aboard.

In retrospect, the explosion of the chopper was (if nothing else) a positive coincidence for the US military, as it seems to have wiped out a good many additional eyewitnesses.
You would think newsgathering organizations would be on the ground, searching for this eyewitness and others. No such activity is taking place. The government's unbelievable story, expanded upon by ever more books, movies and reports, remains virtually unchallenged by the mainstream media.

In a way, it's chilling. A decade ago, we didn't understand any of this. But despite what we call the Internet Reformation, the power elite continues to purvey ever more unbelievable versions of directed history – as if the 'Net does not exist and their exposure is not fairly widespread.

Even this article that we are analyzing comes in for scathing criticism at the Huffington Post. A number of people simply don't believe the killing. It's taking on the same kind of resonance as the death of John F. Kennedy, another episode of apparently directed history.

We don't know if it is arrogance, desperation or a combination of both that is driving the elites to continue to deploy ever more unbelievable dominant social themes. But either way it's a significant development.

Conclusion: They don't seem to have any idea of how to grapple with the illumination the Internet has provided except maybe to ban it. And it's too late for that ...

From Fantasy To Fact: Four Ways The Fake Media Creates A False Reality

The Excavator
Saman Mohammadi

1. Hyper-attention On A Particular Event, Issue, and Mantra.
The mainstream media exclusively focuses on a single storyline about an event or an issue, which has the effect of marginalizing other points of view that are equally valid, if not more so. Narratives, not facts and objective data, have taken center stage in the aspiring journalist's mind. Journalists and editors who oversee the making of the news play the same role as screenwriters in the filmmaking process. Their power stems from the fact that the public looks at news as "real," whereas they know movies are totally fake. But news in the United States and the West is the farthest thing from being real.

Journalists who are in the service of the U.S. intelligence community and other government intelligence agencies are messengers for power. Their job is to repeat government narratives and government mantras. For example, Al-Qaeda is a mantra, not an international terror organization that is at war with America. Read, "Al Qaeda And Human Consciousness: Al Qaeda, Al Qaeda. . . . An Incessant And Repetitive Public Discourse," by Prof Michel Chossudovsky. The "Arab Spring" is another mantra that Washington has used to fulfill its foreign policy objectives in the Middle East.

The latest mantra that the mainstream media is using in a domestic context is the "fiscal cliff." Media messengers for the tyrannical establishment do not discuss how the Federal Reserve's private money machine, Wall Street bailouts, and the military-industrial complex's wars have caused the skyrocketing of U.S. debt. They just keep repeating "fiscal cliff," and then offer bipartisan solutions that will benefit the banksters in power while destroying the living standards of middle class taxpayers and workers.

By focusing on the "fiscal cliff," rather than the Grand Canyon of Deception that is the unconstitutional Federal Reserve system, the mainstream media legitimizes the looting and pillaging of the American people by the transnational banksters.

2. Production of Fake News Reports.

War propaganda is not a new feature of warfare, but the modern Western mass media has taken this art to its highest technological development. What the American, Israeli, and Western media accomplished on the day of September 11, 2001, is simply astonishing. 9/11 was a riveting Hollywood production, from start to finish, from morning to nightfall. It made Hitler's propaganda team weep from the beyond. But the official 9/11 story is just one example of how news is manufactured by the government in tandem with the press.

Examples abound in Syria. Propaganda stations like CNN, Al Jazeera, and BBC have reported on fake massacres by the Syrian government, made up the size of anti-Assad protests, and generally exaggerated the intensity of the hatred for Assad within Syria. We cannot rely on the official number of the people who have died in the conflict because the malicious media routinely makes up figures and repeats them until they become accredited as facts.

Up to now, the Western media has painted a very rosy picture of the anti-Assad "rebels" who are foreign-funded Jihadist terrorists, while minimizing the suffering and needless deaths of Assad's supporters like Syrian-Palestinian actor Mohamad Rafea.

We can clearly see that the revolution in Syria is an imagined revolution and not a real revolution. The Arab Spring is not like an organic plague that spreads from country to country. The U.S., Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia transported the Arab Spring into Syria, and it met resistance from the politically aware Syrian people and the powerful Syrian state. This is natural because there was never a demand for a violent Jihadi revolution in Syria. The anti-government sentiments in Syria never reached the level of despair, unlike in Egypt, Bahrain, and other countries in the region.

3. Omission of Facts and Alternative Opinions.

US criticises Europe over 'failure' to label Hezbollah a terrorist organisation

The Independent
KAREN DEYOUNG

White House counterterrorism chief John O. Brennan said Friday that European failure to join the United States in designating the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah a terrorist organization is undermining international counterterrorism efforts.

"Let me be clear," Brennan said in a speech in Dublin, European resistance "makes it harder to defend our countries and protect our citizens."

Brennan listed Hezbollah at the top of a list of joint U.S. and European security challenges. In addition to its alliance with terrorist activities by Iran, he said, "we have seen Hezbollah training militants in Yemen and Syria."

The Obama administration has previously accused Hezbollah of training Syrian government forces fighting an armed uprising in that country. Early this year, it also charged Hezbollah with facilitating Iranian arms shipments to Shiite separatists in Yemen, although it did not say there was on-the-ground training there.

The United States first designated Hezbollah a "global terrorist" organization in 1995, seizing U.S. assets and prohibiting anyone in this country from providing it with material or financial support. While some countries in the European Union, including Britain and the Netherlands, have argued that the Europeans should follow suit, the E.U. and individual governments have argued that there is no tangible evidence the group has undertaken terrorist acts in Europe.

Led by France, some Europeans have said that their influence and relations with Lebanon — where Hezbollah provides extensive social services and its political wing holds government power — would be damaged by the designation.

But the administration, along with Israel and many U.S. lawmakers, has recently stepped up a years-long effort to pressure Europe, saying that money flows from there to support terrorist activities by Hezbollah and Iran.

In addition, Brennan said in prepared remarks for a speech to Dublin's Institute of International and European Affairs, countries that have arrested Hezbollah suspects for plotting in Europe have been unable to prosecute them on terrorism charges.

Brennan cited kidnapping for ransom, by both terrorist groups and pirates, as another challenge, and indirectly criticized European governments and individuals for encouraging such activities by paying ransom. Pressure on al-Qaida's ability to "raise, move and use funds," he said, had led that group and its affiliates, particularly in Africa, to "increasingly turn to kidnapping operations and efforts to extract large ransoms from governments, private companies and other governmental organizations."

He said al-Qaida and allied groups had "reaped at least $120 million in ransom payments" since 2004, while pirates operating off the coast of Somalia had received $140 million just in 2011.

Ransom payments, he said, "many of which come from Europe," create a "vicious circle — fueling the very criminality, violence and terrorism that we seek to stop."

"From President Obama on down, we continue to urge our allies and partners to resist the temptation to pay," Brennan said.

Imperialism In The X-Factor Age

Global Research
Colin Todhunter

In Vietnam, Agent Orange was dropped by the US to poison a foreign population. In Iraq and the former Yugoslavia, depleted uranium was used. In Western countries, things are a bit more complicated because various states have tended to avoid using direct forms of physical violence to quell their own populations (unless you belong to some marginalized group or hit a raw nerve, as did the Occupy Movement last year). The pretence of democracy and individual rights has to be maintained.

One option has been to use South American crack cocaine or Afghan heroin to dope up potential troublesome sections of the population. It’s worked wonders: highly lucrative for the drug running intelligence agencies and banks awash with drug money (1), while at the same time serving to dampen political dissent in the most economically and socially deprived areas. Another tactic has of course been the massive ever-increasing growth of the surveillance industry to monitor ordinary citizens.

But drugs, surveillance and direct violence are kind of a last resort to keep a population in check. Notwithstanding baton charges, tear gas and the use of rubber bullets on the European mainland and that the US Government is not ruling out the use of violence on its own people (2), ideology via the media has and continues to be the choice of method for population control in Western countries.

Whether it’s through the paranoia induced by the fear of terrorism or more general propaganda spewed out by the mainstream ‘news’ channels, political agendas and modes of thought are encouraged which seek to guarantee subservience and ‘integration’, rather than forms of critical thought or action that may lead to a direct questioning of or a challenge to prevailing forms of institutionalised power.

From trade unions to political parties, oppositional groups are infiltrated, deradicalised and incorporated into the system (3) and critical stances are stifled, ridiculed or marginalized. Consensus is manufactured both in cultural and political terms. The result is that presidential candidate TV debates, political discourse and much of the popular mass media is void of proper analytical discussion: public theatre scripted by speech writers and PR people, presented in manipulative, emotive, ‘human-interest’ terms.

From the TV news and commercials to the game-shows and latest instant fame programme, misinformation, narcissism and distraction pervade all aspects of life. Why be aware of the world’s ills and challenge anything when you can live in the dark, watch X-Factor, wear Reebok and shop till you drop? It is an infotainment paradise where lies are truth and unfettered desire a virtue.

It’s a world of crass consumerism and gleaming shopping malls bathed in designer lifestyle propaganda where people drown in their Friday night alcohol vomit, shop till they drop for things they don’t really need or indeed want and bask in their emptiness by watching TV with eyes wide shut.

But this is ‘free market’ democracy. And the concept behind it is that the mass of the population are a problem, and any genuine debate or the electorate’s ability to see what is actually happening must be prevented. People must be distracted – they should be watching millionaire footballers kick a ball around, mind numbing soap operas or some mindless sitcom. Every once in a while, at voting time, they are called on to parrot or back some meaningless slogans.

Politics is no longer about great ideas. The acquisition of power has become the core value in itself, not socialism or any other radical philosophy. What is required from mainstream political leaders is technocrat not, radical; middle manager, not firebrand. In an era of advanced capitalism, the role of mainstream glove puppet political leaders is to demonstrate competence when it comes to managing the machinery of state in order to fine tune the status quo, not overhaul it.

Robert Gibbs Blames the Victim?

The Daily Bell

"A 16-year-old American boy killed in an Obama administration drone strike 'should have [had] a far more responsible father,' Obama campaign senior adviser Robert Gibbs says in a new video released by the group We Are Change. – Young Turks

Dominant Social Theme: If you don't hit them over there, they will come here.

Free-Market News: In this video, Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks comments on why the US killed a male US minor in Yemen – a young US citizen whose father, US officials claim, was a terrorist.

Robert Gibbs is a former spokesperson for the Obama administration and the initial YouTube posting was created by the alternative media group, We Are Change. While the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki (who was said by some to have actually been a CIA asset) was widely reported, the death of his young son, Abdulrahman, also a US citizen who lived in the United States, is not nearly so well known.

Al-Awlaki's death is justified by those who carried it out as a strike against someone who meant to harm US citizens. He was labeled a terrorist and put on an Obama death list. But his son wasn't on any such list and was killed anyway, two weeks after his father, in another drone strike. Neither individual received judicial due process.

In defending the killing, Gibbs says at one point: "I would suggest that you should have a far more responsible father if they are truly concerned about the well being of their children. I don't think becoming an al Qaeda jihadist terrorist is the best way to go about doing your business."

Uygur calls this answer "a terrible one."

Apparently, Gibbs's response has been noted by the larger, "mainstream" US press. "The Atlantic suggests that if Gibbs is giving the genuine rationale for the killing, it's grounds for impeachment." And Esquire magazine wrote about the death of the son as follows:

He was a boy who hadn't seen his father in two years, since his father had gone into hiding. He was a boy who knew his father was on an American kill list and who snuck out of his family's home in the early morning hours of September 4, 2011, to try to find him. He was a boy who was still searching for his father when his father was killed, and who, on the night he himself was killed, was saying goodbye to the second cousin with whom he'd lived while on his search, and the friends he'd made. He was a boy among boys, then; a boy among boys eating dinner by an open fire along the side of a road when an American drone came out of the sky and fired the missiles that killed them all.

(Video from TYTNETWORK's YouTube user channel.)

'Just trust us' - NSA to privacy advocates in court

Russia Today

The US National Security Agency isn’t outright rejecting claims that they’ve been conducting surveillance on everyone in the country, but they want Americans to at least give them the benefit of the doubt when it comes to their intensions.

The NSA was in court again this week to challenge a potential class action lawsuit that aims to end the governmental agency’s electronic surveillance program begun by President George W. Bush in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks; but while the plaintiffs in the case want to abolish the warrantless wiretapping and spying on innocent civilians started under that administration’s Terrorist Surveillance Program, the government’s argument is now one that requires Americans to accept the agency’s insistence they’re really not up to anything worth worrying about, Courthouse News reports.

In Federal Court this week, the NSA said that the public should simply trust the government when they say they aren’t abusing any powers legally or illegally in place to engage in clandestine surveillance of each and every citizen.

A San Francisco courthouse was the venue for the latest episode in the matter of Jewel v. NSA, a 4-year-old case that charges the spy agency with once and still operating an "illegal and unconstitutional program of dragnet communications surveillance.”Lead plaintiff Carolyn Jewel brought on the suit back in 2008 with the assistance of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and on behalf of current and former customers of AT&T who say they were affected when the telecom giant allowed the NSA unfettered access to their systems to spy on the communications of any customers they wish.
The plaintiffs say that the NSA ordered the attachment of surveillance devices to AT&T’s master network in order to have the ability to divert any communication routed through their service to secure facilities to allow for "an unprecedented suspicionless general search." When former NSA senior executive Thomas Drake condemned the agency’s overly broad and costly surveillance of innocent Americans in 2007, the government attempted to silence him by filing an indictment under the Espionage Act of 1917.

When Jewel v NSA ended up in federal court in 2010, US District Court Chief Judge Vaughn Walker originally dismissed the case, only for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals deciding to reinstate it last year.

"Since September 11 and now, through two administrations, the executive has engaged in unprecedented assertions of power without regard to the constitutional and statutory limits of its authority,” attorney Richard Wiebe wrote in the case’s initial filings. “It has correspondingly sought to exclude the judiciary from adjudicating whether these exercises of executive power have stayed within the limits set by the Constitution and by Congress."

Currently, the government alleges that they do not have to respond to charges of unwarranted eavesdropping because they have immunity in instances where disclosure could disrupt national security. As Courthouse News previously reported, the federal government “claims to have invoked state secrets privileges that protects it from any litigation consequentially stemming from supposed violations of those acts.”

Plaintiffs, however, say that the government waived its right to sovereign immunity when it put itself in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) as well as the US Constitution’s Fourth Amendment that protects Americans from unlawful searches and seizures.

Now Mexico Bans Cash

The Daily Bell

Large Cash Transactions Banned In Mexico ... Outgoing Mexican President Felipe Calderon has signed into law a ban on large cash transactions. The ban will take effect in about 90 days and it is part of a broader effort to control monetary flows within the country. Under the law, a Specialized Unit in Financial Analysis operating within the Attorney General's Office will be created to investigate financial operations "that are related to resources of unknown origin." For real estate transactions, cash payments of more than a half million pesos ($38,750) will be forbidden and, for automobiles or items like jewelry, art, and lottery tickets, cash payments of more than 200,000 pesos ($15,500) will be forbidden. The law carries a minimum penalty of five years in prison. – Forbes

Dominant Social Theme: Terrorism must be combated by controlling people's money.

Free-Market Analysis: What we consider to be the "phony" war on terror is the gift that keeps on giving to those who run our governments.

The phony war on drugs only adds to the rationales for telling people what they can and cannot do with their resources.
What is going on is a pattern, not a series of defensive moves taken out of desperation. The power elite intends to lock down the world, it seems, in order to track every monetary transaction of any significance.

We wrote about this trend previously in "Spain Bans Cash." Here's an excerpt:

... As we have long predicted, the phony "sovereign debt" crisis in Europe is being used to justify all sorts ofauthoritarian measures.

It is government pols that gladly borrowed what European banks threw at them. And somehow the upshot earlier this week is that Spanish citizens now lose the right to conduct many transactions in cash.

Spectacularly, the reports such as this one, excerpted above, don't even both to hide the real point. The Spanish government wants to ensure that it can "track transactions and make sure that people and businesses are paying taxes."
Of course, anyone who has visited Spain of late knows that the tax burden in Spain is onerous indeed, and is one reason that the truculent tribes that have co-existed uneasily with Madrid are again beginning to beat the drums of secession.
The taxes that the central government levies on small businesses especially are verging on punitive. But there are no apologies. The official position is one of unflinching demands.

And now Mexico is going the way of Spain. Always there is a justification. But the reality of the project is much broader and has to do with a power elite wish, apparently, to create a world government that is fully in charge of what people can and cannot transact. Here's some more from the Forbes article excerpted above:

In 2010, Mexico instituted strict limits on foreign exchange cash transactions to $1,500 per person per month, which caused several cash dollar exchanges to withdraw from the business and had the effect of penalizing tourists.

Of course, US dollars are a huge portion of the actual paper cash that this effort is aimed at, but the Mexican peso is the 12th most traded currency in the world and by far the most traded currency in Latin America.

Reuters reported that, "Sales of drugs from marijuana to cocaine and methamphetamine in the United States are worth about $60 billion annually, according to the United Nations. About half of that amount is estimated to find its way back to cartels in Mexico."

The Woodrow Wilson International Center For Scholars' Mexico Institute published a comprehensive study in May 2012 entitled "It's All about the Money." The report recommended tight integration and coordination with the United States in the areas of legal framework, financial institution regulation, intelligence on cross-border currency flows, and non-conviction based asset forfeiture.

Two years in the making, the new law also requires notaries, real estate brokers, and other dealers to report the forms of payment for transactions above the respective limits. Financial institutions will also be required to report monthly credit card balances in excess of 50,000 pesos ($3,875).

The article mentions that Italy has also banned cash transactions above a certain amount. Certainly this is a growing trend.

The Forbes article mentions the prevalence of the Mexican drug trade but it is well known at this point in alternative news circles that US Intel is behind much Western drug trade in order to fund various black and gray ops. Presumably, MI6 and the Mossad are also involved.

The British Crown made a fortune in the 1800s selling opium to the Chinese. Government drug trafficking is an ancient business. In order for something to be maximally profitable, it has to be in short supply. Making something illegal is one way to damp supplies and raise profits.

Conclusion: We figure at some point gold and silver will also come under attack, as that's the way the world is trending. But in the meantime, these national bans continually pressure more and more freedoms, including the freedom of shielding one's wealth from prying eyes. And that's just the point ...

The Police State Looms Larger

Daily Bell

Watch 2 Canadians Discover That The US Is Now A Police State ... Welcome to Amerika! Exactly when did she become a police state? "We don't need any grounds. We're the United States" ... These jack boots understand the climate they create with such REPREHENSIBLE behavior! Then they JUDGE YOU on how polite you are? While millions pour across Mexican border ILLEGALLY, Canadians must beware of attempting to LEGALLY go shopping in the US? ...You hear the officer admit that HE recorded. In a free country a person arrested has a right to demand the evidence. – YouTube

Dominant Social Theme: We are protecting you from yourself.

Free-Market Analysis: This is basically an "audio" video but it is probable you won't mind the lack of pictures. It's quite compelling and makes a strong point about what is really going on.

Still, many people don't quite "get it." But what these individuals are experiencing is neither random nor coincidental. There is a very clear pattern to what's taking place in the West these days.

These are policies that have been put in place determinedly and with malice aforethought. The dominant social theme has to do with "terrorism" – a very vague word.

George Orwell predicted it long ago. The powers-that-be are creating a world where anyone can be placed under suspicion at any time. It's all about maximizing control. This is the reason for the "war on terror."

Bin Laden probably died ten years ago. There are plenty of questions about what happened on 9/11 – and the "official" narrative makes little sense. There was no reason for the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan and as we often point out, the current wars in the Middle East make little sense, either.

The only way any of this DOES make sense is as a kind of directed history. Bit by bit a meme has been constructed that justifies any and every authoritarian action. Each of us is a potential terrorist, after all. And everyone needs to be tracked and spied upon.

The future of our civilization, such as it is, can be heard on this audio-video. But it is not the only "future," of course; we are convinced there are other ones. The people planning this kind of authoritarianism didn't count on what we call the Internet Reformation.

Remember that while you listen to this. Nothing is predetermined. You can take your own human action. Increasingly, people will.

Was it worth it? Afghanistan 11 years later

Global Research
Tanya Carlina Hsu

October 7 marked the eleventh anniversary of the US war in Afghanistan. More than 2,000 American soldiers have now been killed, and as the US presidential candidates debate each other to lead the most dominant power on Earth, perhaps it is time for someone to ask them: Was it worth it?

On September 11th 2001, 2,977 people were killed. Almost 700 people in one firm alone (Cantor-Fitzgerald) died; 343 fire fighters and paramedics were killed, as were 60 police officers. Only 291 bodies were ever found ‘intact’. Over half of the families who lost loved ones that day received not a single piece of remains. Within three months 300 fire-fighters went on leave due to respiratory problems, almost half a million New Yorkers are being treated for post-traumatic stress disorders, and 1,000 first responders have since died from acute illnesses related to clean-up activities.

Wall Street shut down for 6 days, and as a direct result of 9/11 more than 146,100 people lost their jobs. Within the first month New York City alone exceeded $105 billion in economic losses.

Was it worth it?

America then went to war. But not just Iraq and Afghanistan: Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia have also been attacked. So have the citizens of the United States: freedoms, privacy and civil rights once taken for granted are gone, in the name of ‘national security’.

Operation Iraqi Freedom officially lasted for eight years and eight months. By December 2011, 4,486 US and 318 non-US troops had been killed fighting in Iraq, more than 1,800 more than who died on September 11^th. However, according to the New York Times, a year after operations ceased US Special Operations units have quietly begun re-entering Iraq at the behest of the Iraqi government.

In Afghanistan, the war that began on October 7^th 2002 still marches on. Operation Enduring Freedom is not due to end until 2014, an exact century after the onset of World War One. So far Afghanistan has taken the lives of 3,196 soldiers: 2,130 American, 433 British, and 158 Canadian. Forces killed in Afghanistan also amount to more than all the lives lost on 9/11.

Thus 8,000 troops have been killed for the 2,977 lost on September 11^th 2001.

Was it worth it?

It gets worse. Once soldiers return from the theatre of operations the numbers keep climbing. For every single death in Afghanistan or Iraq, twenty-five soldiers commit suicide. During the first six months of 2012 there were 187 Army suicides, 55 Air Force, 32 Marine Corps, 39 Navy and 5 Coast Guard. The cumulative effect of multiple deployments and post-traumatic stress disorders et alia suggest, however, tens of thousands of additional deaths.

Each year, 6,500 veteran suicides are documented at a rate of one every 80 minutes. Only the Army releases figures and it is unclear if this includes active duty personnel or veterans of other wars. Although only 1% of Americans have served in Iraq or Afghanistan, they account for a massive 20% of the total annual rate. The Department of Veterans Affairs claim 18 veteran suicides per day, and for every successful suicide 20 are attempted yet fail. Rates of death were far higher in both World Wars: permanent disabilities now affect veterans today who otherwise would have died on the field. In World War One, an average of 57% of all soldiers mobilised were killed; in World War Two, more than 55 million soldiers and civilians died. In other words, the wounded from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are a testimony to modern medicine saving lives that in the past would certainly have been lost, but can lead to tragic results nevertheless.

If the lowest suicide rate to assume is one per day by active duty or Iraq/Afghanistan vets, more than 4,000 must be added to the numbers killed above. And if we assume only half of the 6,500 veterans suicides per year are as a result of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, an additional 36,000 deaths could be included to the totals. Whether suicides account for a further 4,000 or 40,000 deaths, they bring the ratio to between 4:1 to 16:1 deaths in payback for the 2,977 victims of 9/11.

These are just coalition losses of course. The official number of victims in Iraq has been stuck on 100,000 since 2004, not revised upwards since. But, in 2007 the British Opinion Research Businesssurvey calculated that up to 1.5 million Iraqis had been killed in the war. This confirmed an earlier British survey by the Lancet that calculated 655,000 to 1 million Iraqis had died in just three years, from 2003-2006. Although the war continued for a further five years the studies have not been repeated nor revised to account for additional Iraqi casualties, arguably due to intense American criticism.

There are almost no figures for Afghanistan casualties, but Human Rights Watch recorded 1,000 civilian deaths in 2006 and the UN estimates 12,000 deaths since 2007. There are no statistics for the first five years of the war.

Was it worth it?

Let us not omit the secret wars in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Considering the drone programme is covert the numbers are almost certainly low. We do know however, that in Yemen drones have killed up to 1,026 men, women and children (at least 34) since 2002. Somalia is not on most Americans’ radar-screens but it is on the drones’: since 2007, 170 Somalis are dead from these Unmanned Aerial Vehicle strikes. In Pakistan drones have killed a reported 3,341 (at least 176 children) and wounded a minimum of 1,366 people. The ratio of wounded-to-killed indicates how deadly drone are, in part confirming their ‘precision’. They are surgically precise in that they do not wound: they intentionally tear to pieces anyone nearby.

How about the cost of capture, torture and rendition? Housing a single prisoner at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba costs the US taxpayer $800,000 per year. More than 100,000 men were detained in Iraq, many at the notorious Abu Ghraib; thousands more were held at Bagram Airfield or the infamous (CIA funded) ‘Salt Pit’ torture chamber north of Kabul, Afghanistan. Officers forced scores of detainees to physical, psychological and sexual abuse before shipping them off to even worse prisons around the world.

The non-fiscal cost of the consequences of tortures and imprisonment-without-trial cannot be calculated. For every single death or incarceration there is a father, brother, son, nephew, friend or neighbour who will never forget what these wars have wrought. Revenge lives long—generation-to-generation. We already see the first signs of what the wars have bought, exhibited in riots, uprisings, increased anti-American hostilities, destruction of US sovereign life and property, coups, and civil wars.

Was it worth it?

What about the economic cost? In 2003, George W. Bush estimated that the wars would cost $50 to $60 billion. Yet a 2011 study by Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studiesestimated the final cost of the wars to be $4.4 trillion, not including medical costs for injured veterans or rebuilding aid to Afghanistan. Economist Joseph Stiglitz estimated the war in Iraq alone would cost $2.2 trillion. And all of the costs are funded upon borrowed money, demonstrated by the US debt skyrocketing from $6.4 trillion in March 2003 to over $16 trillion as of October 1^st, 2012.

During the Vietnam war, Undersecretary of State George Ball wrote, “[I]n terms of US prestige…we would gain more through enlarging the war.” National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy opined, “[E]ven if it fails, the policy will be worth it” because of US “prestige”.

If the American public—22.5 million now actually (not officially) unemployed—understood the economic price they would have to pay, would they have agreed to so eagerly support the wars? If the US Congress could have foreseen that a bare-minimum of four times as many soldiers as those who died on 9/11would die, would it have been worth it? If the consequences of anger, revenge, blowback—and stratospheric loss of prestige—were considered, would the US have still gone to war?

Was it worth it?

Iraq: Ten Years, a Million Lives and Trillions of Dollars Later

Global Research
Dennis Kucinich

Ten years ago today the debate over the Iraq War came to Congress in the form of a resolution promoted by the Bush Administration. The war in Iraq will cost the United States as much as $5 trillion. It played a role in spurring the global financial crisis. Four thousand, four hundred, eighty eight Americans were killed. More than 33,000 were injured.

As many as 1,000,000 innocent Iraqi civilians were killed. The monetary cost of the war to Iraq is incalculable. A sectarian civil war has ravaged Iraq for nearly a decade. Iraq has become home to Al Qaeda.

The war in Iraq was sold to Congress and the American people with easily disproved lies. We must learn from this dark period in American history to ensure that we do not repeat the same mistakes. And we must hold accountable those who misled the American public.

On October 2, 2002, the day the legislation to authorize war in Iraq was introduced, I sent and personally distributed a memo to my colleagues in Congress refuting point-by-point every reason given by the Bush Administration to go to war.

On October 3, 2002, I held a press conference with 25 Members of Congress and then presented an hour long explanation to Congress on the House Floor, refuting the lies upon which the cause of war was predicated.

It was clear from information publicly available at the time that Iraq did not have Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs), that Iraq had no connection to 9/11, and that Iraq was not a threat to the United States. Anyone who wanted to look could have seen the same information that I did.

Yet some of America’s top political leaders bought into the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld drumbeat of war. Two leading Democrats were among those taken in by the White House hype and the WMD argument:

“I believe the facts that have brought us to this fateful vote are not in doubt. Saddam Hussein is a tyrant who has tortured and killed his own people … [I]ntelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort and sanctuary to terrorists including Al Qaeda members.” Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY), October 10, 2002.

“September 11 was the ultimate wake-up call. We must now do everything in our power to prevent further terrorist attacks and ensure that an attack with a weapon of mass destruction cannot happen. … the first candidate we must worry about is Iraq… [Saddam Hussein] continues to develop weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear devices.” Leader of the Democratic Caucus in the House, Richard Gephardt (D-MO), October 10, 2002.

Even the most trusted newspapers around the country blindly repeated as fact grossly incorrect assertions by leaders of both parties.

“No further debate is needed to establish that Saddam Hussein is an evil dictator whose continued effort to build unconventional weapons in defiance of clear United Nations prohibitions threatens the Middle East and beyond.” The New York Times, Editorial Board, October 3, 2002.

Notwithstanding the blizzard of disinformation, one hundred thirty three Members of Congress voted against the resolution that authorized the use of military force in Iraq, including nearly two-thirds of the Democratic Caucus in the House. Seven Republicans, including Ron Paul (R-TX), also voted against the resolution. In the Senate, the vote was 77 to 23 in favor of a war of choice.

Ten years ago Congress voted to wage war on a nation that did not attack us. That decision undermined our fiscal and national security. To this day we are suffering from the blowback. While most of the troops are home, the United States maintains a significant presence in Iraq through the State Department and its thousands of private security contractors.

The war against Iraq was based on lies. Thousands of Americans and perhaps a million Iraqis were sacrificed for those lies. The war in Afghanistan continues. New wars have been propagated in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia pursuant to the never-ending “War on Terror”. This mindset puts us at the edge of war against Iran. Ten years and trillions of dollars later, the American people by and large still do not know the truth. It is time to usher in a new period of truth and reconciliation.

Dennis Kucinich is US Congressman from Ohio

Gen. David Petraeus Refers to Mineral Resources as a Reason for "Achieving Objectives" in Afghanistan

The cruel reality is that we've lost in Afghanistan. So why are we still sacrificing our young men?

Daily Mail

Max Hastings

Almost 40 years ago, as a young correspondent in Vietnam, I found myself aboard a vast U.S. transport plane, travelling back to Saigon, after  reporting on a battle in the Central Highlands.

The only other passenger beside our TV crew was an American sergeant in a green body-bag, on his way home for burial with his possessions — hi-fi, guitar and suchlike — stacked sadly beside him.

I spent much of that long ride through the darkness thinking about the wretchedness of losing one’s life in the final convulsions of a dying war.

Killed: Sergeant Gareth Thursby (left) and Private Thomas Wroe (right) 

were shot by a man in Afghan Police uniform on Saturday

It seems especially futile to go when everyone knows you have given your life for nothing.

Everyone knew that the bad guys were going to win in Vietnam, and so they did.

For people like me who have been there before, it becomes an especially melancholy business to watch the last act of the Western campaign  in Afghanistan starting  to unfold.

On Saturday, Sergeant Gareth Thursby and Private Tom Wroe were shot dead by a supposed comrade in arms — an Afghan.

Their deaths brought to 51 the total of Nato soldiers killed so far this year by Afghans wearing the uniforms of government soldiers or police.

One in five British fatalities in Helmand this year has been so-called ‘green-on-blues’— shootings by our allies rather than our enemies.

The result of this carnage — friendly fire on a shocking scale — is that Nato headquarters in Kabul yesterday announced that routine joint patrolling by Western and Afghan troops will no longer take place. Some pairings will be authorised on a case-by-case basis — which presumably means when commanders think they can trust specific Afghans. But the general rule will be that joint operations will happen only on battalion scale, or bigger.

Untrustworthy: After 51 'green-on-blue' killings so far this year,
NATO has called an end to joint patrols with Afghan forces

This decision had become inevitable.

The morale of American, British and other Western troops has suffered severely from having to go out to fight the Taliban accompanied by Afghans who might at any moment empty an AK-47 automatic rifle magazines into their backs. Four Americans died at the weekend in this fashion, as well as the two British soldiers.

The new dispensation makes a mockery of Nato’s strategy. This requires its men to work in partnership with local security forces, to train them to take over when Western troops go home in 2014.

Nato commanders are said to be intensely frustrated that the Afghan government is failing to protect its allies from treachery, above all by effective screening of its recruits.

It seems absurd to blame the regime of the West’s puppet, President Hamid Karzai, however. This is a ramshackle government amid a society stuck in a time-warp, centuries behind our own, lacking the means or will to run a proper army or police. 

Of course, some Afghans in uniform are brave, effective, honest and loyal. They want to help to move their country into the 21st century, to save it from the Taliban’s committed medievalism.

Carnage: It is unlikely that President Hamid Karzai's corrupt and incompetent, but cooperative, government will outlast the NATO withdrawal

Unfortunately, for every one like that, there are 20 Afghans who have put on government uniforms only for the money. They have spent their entire lives in a warlord society, where betrayal and corruption are endemic. Afghans are pragmatists: they back the people most likely to run the place in the future.

Why the Mideast Exploded, Really

Consortium News
Ray McGovern

Exclusive: The new conventional wisdom, in the wake of angry protests roiling the Middle East, is that Muslims are either way too sensitive or irrational. How else to explain the fury over an offensive anti-Islam video? But the video was just the spark that ignited a long-smoldering fire, says ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.

By Ray McGovern

“Why Is the Arab world so easily offended?” asks the headline atop an article by Fouad Ajami, which theWashington Post published online last Friday to give perspective to the recent anti-American violence in Muslim capitals.

While the Post described Ajami simply as a “senior fellow” at Stanford’s conservative Hoover Institution, Wikipedia gives a more instructive perspective on his checkered career and dubious credibility.

An outspoken supporter of the war on Iraq, Ajami was still calling it a “noble effort” well after it went south. He is a friend and colleague of one of the war’s intellectual authors, neocon Paul Wolfowitz, and also advised Condoleezza Rice. It was apparently Wolfowitz or Rice who fed Ajami’s analyses to then-Vice President Dick Cheney, who cited Ajami’s views repeatedly in speeches.

The most telling example of this came in Cheney’s VFW address on August 26, 2002, in which the Vice President laid down the terms of reference for the planned attack on Iraq. Attempting to assuage concerns about the upcoming invasion, Cheney cited Ajami’s analysis: “As for the reaction of the Arab ‘street,’ the Middle East expert Professor Fouad Ajami predicts that after liberation, the streets in Basra and Baghdad are ‘sure to erupt in joy in the same way the throngs in Kabul greeted the Americans.’”

Author and scholar Fouad Ajami.

In his writings, Ajami did warn, in a condescending way, that one could expect some “road rage … of a thwarted Arab world – the congenital condition of a culture yet to take full responsibility for its self-inflicted wounds.” He then added:

“There is no need to pay excessive deference to the political pieties and givens of the region. Indeed, this is one of those settings where a reforming foreign power’s simpler guidelines offer a better way than the region’s age-old prohibitions and defects.”

No One Better?

Ignoring the albatross of tarnished credentials hanging around Ajami’s neck, the Post apparently saw him as just the right academician to put perspective on the violence of last week in Middle East capitals. As for his record of credibility: Well, who takes the trouble to go to Wikipedia for information on pundits?

Nor were the Post’s editors going to take any chances that its newspaper readers might miss the benefit of Ajami’s wisdom. So the Post gave pride of place to the same article in Sunday’s Outlook section, as well. What the Post and other mainstream media want us to believe comes through clearly in the title given to the article’s jump portion, which dominates page 5: “Why a YouTube trailer ignited Muslim rage.”

Setting off the article were large, scary photos: on page one, a photo of men brandishing steel pipes to hack into the windows of the U.S. embassy in Yemen; the page-5 photo showed a masked protester, as he “ran from a burning vehicle near the U.S. embassy in Cairo.”

So – to recapitulate – the Post’s favored editorial narrative of the Mideast turmoil is that hypersensitive, anti-American Muslims are doing irrational stuff like killing U.S. diplomats and torching our installations. This violence was the result of Arabs all too ready to take offense at a video trailer disrespectful of the Prophet.

Nonetheless, it seems to be true that the trailer did have some immediate impact and will have more. According to an eyewitness, the 30 local guards who were supposed to protect the U.S. consulate in Benghazi simply ran away as the violent crowd approached on Tuesday night.

Wissam Buhmeid, the commander of the Tripoli government-sanctioned Libya’s Shield Brigade, effectively a police force for Benghazi, maintained that it was anger over the video trailer which made the guards abandon their post.
“There were definitely people from the security forces who let the attack happen because they were themselves offended by the film; they would absolutely put their loyalty to the Prophet over the consulate. The deaths are all nothing compared to insulting the Prophet.”

Predictably, Islamophobes and Muslim haters with influence over Western media coverage are citing the violence as the kind of “irrational” over-reaction that “exposes” Islam’s intolerance and incompatibility with democratic values and demonstrates that Islam is on a collision course with the West.

It is no surprise that Ajami gives no attention to the many additional factual reasons explaining popular outrage against the U.S. and its representatives – reasons that go far deeper than a video trailer, offensive though it was. Ajami steers clear of the dismal effects of various U.S. policies over the years on people across the Muslim world – in countries like Iraq, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Tunisia, Libya, Afghanistan. (The list stretches as far as distant Indonesia, the most populous Muslim state.)

Last week’s violence not only reflects the deep anger at and distrust of the U.S. across the Islamic world, but also provides insight into the challenges posed by the power now enjoyed by the forces of extremism long held in check by the dictators toppled by last year’s wave of revolutions.

Cui Bono?

Who are the main beneficiaries of misleading narratives like that of Ajami. He himself concedes, “It is never hard to assemble a crowd of young protesters in the teeming cities of the Muslim world. American embassies and consulates are magnets for the disgruntled.”

So, does that mean the notorious video trailer is best regarded as a catalyst for the angry protests rather than the underlying cause? In other words, if the video served as the spark, who or what laid the kindling? Who profits from the narrative that neocons are trying so hard to embed in American minds?

Broad hints can be seen in the Washington Post’s coverage over recent days – including a long piece by its Editorial Board, “Washington’s role amid the Mideast struggle for power,” published the same day Ajami’s article appeared online.

U.S. Department of State has an "Office to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism"

American Goy

No kidding.

Wikipedia on the subject.

The Office to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism is a part of the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Affairs (DRL) at the United States Department of State. It is headed by the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism (SEAS). The office "advocates U.S. policy on anti-Semitism both in the United States and internationally, develops and implements policies and projects to support efforts to combat anti-Semitism."

The Office was created by the Global Anti-Semitism Review Act of 2004. Gregg Rickman was sworn the first SEAS on May 22, 2006. The office has remained opened since the beginning of the Obama administration. On November 23, 2009 a new special envoy, Hannah Rosenthal was sworn into office by Obama administration. Rosenthal is former head of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, and former executive director of the Chicago Foundation for Women.

There is no department to protect American interests and American citizens, however.

Not needed.

Interestingly, there is no department to protect african, European, moslem or any other ethnic or religious group.

Lets delve in, shall we?

Law web page at Cornell University, fragments (you are encouraged to read the whole short page at Cornell):

22 USC § 2731 - Monitoring and combating anti-Semitism

(a) Office to Monitor and Combat anti-Semitism

(1) Establishment of Office

The Secretary shall establish within the Department of State an Office to Monitor and Combat anti-Semitism (in this section referred to as the “Office”).

(b) Purpose of Office

Upon establishment, the Office shall assume the primary responsibility for—

(1) monitoring and combating acts of anti-Semitism and anti-Semitic incitement that occur in foreign countries;

(c) Consultations

The Special Envoy shall consult with domestic and international nongovernmental organizations and multilateral organizations and institutions, as the Special Envoy considers appropriate to fulfill the purposes of this section.

What we have here is an office of State Department whose function is to support Jews worldwide. In pursuit of this function, its officials can meet and work with officials from other countries, independently from other State Department organizations.

State Department Official Page:

Monitoring and Combating Anti-Semitism

The Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism advances U.S. Foreign Policy on anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism is discrimination against or hatred toward Jews. The Special Envoy develops and implements policies and projects to support efforts to combat anti-Semitism.

The Special Envoy was established by the Global Anti-Semitism Review Act of 2004, and is a part of the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL). DRL produces the State Department's annual reports on Human Rights Practices and International Religious Freedom, and the Special Envoy provides input on anti-Semitism for these reports.

So what have they been up to?
Travel to Hungary

July 19-22: Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism Hannah Rosenthal was in Hungary met with Hungarian Government officials, Parliamentarians and representatives from the Jewish and Roma communities

Yes, the poor gypsies, hated by all Europeans, for absolutely no reason at all other than bigotry and the general evilness of White people.

Travel to Germany

July 9-12; 15-19: Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism Hannah Rosenthal visited Germany, where her father was honored by the City of Mannheim, she participated in the Centropa Teachers Academy, and met with German government officials, non-governmental organizations, and youth in Berlin.


Meeting the anti-fa and other assorted PC fascists in Germany and giving encouragement to youth organizations.

Splendid.

The previous head honcho was one Gregg Rickman (a non Jewish last name if I ever saw one, n'est ce pas?).

Here is his biography:

Gregg Rickman was sworn in as the Secretary of State’s Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism on May 22, 2006. In this position, he is responsible for the global monitoring of acts of anti-Semitism and anti-Semitic incitement and the creation of policies to combat such acts.

From 1995-1998, he directed the three-year United States Senate Banking Committee investigation,

And what a good job he and his ilk have done investigating our (well, calling banksters "our people" is STRETCHING the truth a bit, as they themselves consider themselves NOT of our people and are a separate racial/religious cult) own beloved banksters!

including five Congressional hearings, into the disposition of assets of Holocaust victims held by Swiss banks since World War II, ending with a $1.25 billion settlement on behalf of the survivors.

Ah, the crux of the matter!

As to whether ANY Holocaust survivors have gotten any of these monies, please peruse my previous research, The Holocaust Industry.

He has served as the Director of Congressional Affairs at the Republican Jewish Coalition, where he worked on legislative issues of concern to the Jewish community including anti-Semitism, counter-terrorism, and immigration.

Got it!?

Got it!?

The issue that are the most important to elite Jews are anti-semitism, counter-terrorism AND IMMIGRATION.

How much clearer does it need to be spelled out?

Most recently, he served on the staff of the House International Relations Committee where he served first on the Subcommittee on the Middle East and Central Asia and handled numerous issues including anti-Semitism and Holocaust restitution


Shakedowns.

Money.

Again.

Am shocked.

Please give me any other ethnic and/or religious group which has its own department concerned with its welfare at our(?) American (???) State Department.

'Obama's Middle East Policy Is in Ruins'

Der Spiegel
David Gordon Smith

There were clashes between police and protesters in Cairo on Friday

US embassies in the Muslim world were on high alert Friday following days of violent protests against an anti-Islam film. Germany, too, closed several embassies in fear of attacks. Some German commentators argue that the violence shows that Obama's Middle East policies have failed.

After days of protests over an anti-Islam film, American diplomatic missions in the Middle East and North Africa were braced for further violence after Friday prayers. The US put its overseas missions on high alert.

Germany has closed its embassies in a number of Muslim-majority countries in fear of attacks. "We are observing how the security situation develops with great attentiveness and we have increased security precautions at a number of foreign missions," a spokesman for the German Foreign Office told SPIEGEL ONLINE. Embassies in North Africa, Afghanistan and Pakistan are believed to be among those affected.

The spokesman said that the missions would only close on Friday, though. Other German institutions such as aid organizations have also been urged to increase security precautions, he said.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said he was "deeply concerned" about the attacks on US embassies. He called on the countries in question to protect foreign missions. "Diplomats have to be able to do their work without fear," he said.

Westerwelle said he could understand the outrage that many Muslims felt about the anti-Islam film. "But this outrage cannot justify violence."

The German army in Afghanistan is also increasing its security precautions. "We are assuming that we will also feel the effects of this whole business," one German soldier told SPIEGEL ONLINE in a telephone interview. "When the people here see the film, they are sure to protest."

Violent Clashes

The US ambassador to Libya and three other Americans were killed on Tuesday when protesters attacked the US consulate in Benghazi. American officials are investigating the possibility that militant Islamist groups such as al-Qaida may have exploited the Benghazi protests to attack the consulate.

There have been violent protests in Cairo and Yemen since then. On Friday, Egyptian police clashed with protesters after security forces blocked the route to the US Embassy.

The protests were sparked by an anti-Islamic film posted online that features an unflattering depiction of the Prophet Muhammad. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton denounced the video on Thursday. "The United States government had absolutely nothing to do with this video," she said. "We absolutely reject its content and message.

• 
• 
• 

The video and the associated protests have also become an issue in the US election campaign. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney used the protests and what he called an apology by the US government as an opportunity to attack Obama.

At a campaign event on Thursday, Obama took a hard line on the attacks. "To all those who would do us harm: No act of terror will go unpunished," he said. "No act of violence shakes the resolve of the United States of America."

Meanwhile, Pope Benedict XVI began a three-day visit to Lebanon on Friday. His visit is the focus of much international attention, given the heightened tensions in the region.