1. “Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh dropped a bombshell on Tuesday when he told an audience at the University of Minnesota that the military was running an “executive assassination ring” throughout the Bush years which reported directly to former Vice President Dick Cheney.”
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Hersh_US_has_been_running_executive_0311.html
2. Charles Freeman’s own words:
“The libels on me and their easily traceable email trails show conclusively that there is a powerful lobby determined to prevent any view other than its own from being aired, still less to factor in American understanding of trends and events in the Middle East. The tactics of the Israel Lobby plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency and include character assassination, selective misquotation, the willful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods, and an utter disregard for the truth. The aim of this Lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views, the substitution of political correctness for analysis, and the exclusion of any and all options for decision by Americans and our government other than those that it favors.
There is a special irony in having been accused of improper regard for the opinions of foreign governments and societies by a group so clearly intent on enforcing adherence to the policies of a foreign government – in this case, the government of Israel. I believe that the inability of the American public to discuss, or the government to consider, any option for US policies in the Middle East opposed by the ruling faction in Israeli politics has allowed that faction to adopt and sustain policies that ultimately threaten the existence of the state of Israel. It is not permitted for anyone in the United States to say so. This is not just a tragedy for Israelis and their neighbors in the Middle East; it is doing widening damage to the national security of the United States.
The outrageous agitation that followed the leak of my pending appointment will be seen by many to raise serious questions about whether the Obama administration will be able to make its own decisions about the Middle East and related issues. I regret that my willingness to serve the new administration has ended by casting doubt on its ability to consider, let alone decide what policies might best serve the interests of the United States rather than those of a Lobby intent on enforcing the will and interests of a foreign government.“
http://www.911blogger.com/node/19585
3. “Foreign policy analyst Chris Nelson described the imbroglio as a reflection of the “deadly power game on what level of support for controversial Israeli government policies is a ‘requirement’ for U.S. public office.” Before the flip-flop on Freeman was announced, Nelson warned, “If Obama surrenders to the critics and orders Blair to rescind the Freeman appointment, it is difficult to see how he can properly exercise leverage, when needed, in his conduct of policy in the Middle East. That, literally, is how the experts see the stakes in the fight now under way.”
The fight is now over.
…
On October 5, 2007 I published an article on Israel’s deliberate attempt, on June 8, 1967, to sink the USS Liberty in international waters off the Sinai, killing 34 of the Liberty crew and wounding over 170 in the process.
The lead was:
“So Who’s Afraid of the Israel Lobby? Virtually everyone: Republican, Democrat – Conservative, Liberal. The fear factor is non-partisan, you might say, and palpable. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee brags that it is the most influential foreign policy lobbying organization on Capitol Hill, and has demonstrated that time and again, and not only on Capitol Hill.”
The point? In June 1967, the Israelis learned that they could get away, literally, with murder and still not endanger their influence in Washington.
Events of the past weeks demonstrate that they and their Lobby are equally good at character assassination. It is embarrassingly shameful to watch President Obama acquiesce in all of this. “
http://www.antiwar.com/mcgovern/?articleid=14389
4. “Breaking the Taboo on Israel’s Spying Efforts on the United States
Scratch a counterintelligence officer in the U.S. government and they’ll tell you that Israel is not a friend to the United States.
This is because Israel runs one of the most aggressive and damaging espionage networks targeting the U.S.. The fact of Israeli penetration into the country is not a subject oft-discussed in the media or in the circles of governance, due to the extreme sensitivity of the U.S.-Israel relationship coupled with the burden of the Israel lobby, which punishes legislators who dare to criticize the Jewish state. The void where the facts should sit is filled instead with the hallucinations of conspiracy theory — the kind in which, for example, agents of the Mossad, Israel’s top intelligence agency, engineer the 9/11 attacks, while 4,000 Israelis in the Twin Towers somehow all get word to escape before the planes hit. The effect, as disturbing as it is ironic, is that the less the truth is addressed, the more noxious the falsity that spreads.“
5. “Why Is the Obama Administration Defending John Yoo?
The question has come up a lot lately, particularly since oral arguments last week in Jose Padilla’s lawsuit against John Yoo made clear that the federal judge was taking the case very seriously. After all, it was a bit odd to see Barack Obama’s Justice Department defending Yoo — who Padilla’s lawyers claim is responsible for their client being tortured in U.S. custody — and urging the court to dismiss the case.
When the Center for Independent Media’s own Ed Brayton put the question to me on his radio show last week, I had to admit I wasn’t really sure of the answer. Like many people, I assumed that the government was required to defend a former employee being called to account for something he did while in government office. But does the DOJ always have to defend government employees, or are there limits? If that former employee has broken — or at the very least twisted — the law, can the Justice Department refuse?
I asked Justice Department spokesman Charles Miller yesterday, who responded by sending me a lengthy excerpt from the relevant section of the Code of Federal Regulations. (I’ll spare you the seven pages of fine print.) The quick answer is, according to 28 C.F.R. § 50.15, a former federal employee “may be provided representation in civil, criminal and Congressional proceedings in which he is sued, subpoenaed, or charged in his individual capacity . . . when the actions for which representation is requested reasonably appear to have been performed within the scope of the employee’s employment and the Attorney General or his designee determines that providing representation would otherwise be in the interest of the United States.”
<!–put article title between tags below–>http://washingtonindependent.com/33130/why-is-the-obama-administration-defending-john-yoo
6. “What’s the 35-year-old drug war really all about? It’s about money and power. Let’s face it: These people are not stupid enough to believe that doing the same thing they’ve done for 35 years is going to produce a different result. The fact is that there are lots of people making big money from the drug war. And no, it’s not just the drug dealers and corrupt Mexican government officials. It’s also corrupt federal, state, and local officials on the U.S. side of the border.
First and foremost are the bribes, especially to law-enforcement people along the border who are paid big money to look the other way. But there is also the “legitimate” money that people make from the drug war — the nice salaries paid to judges, prosecutors, sheriffs, marshals, clerks, and staffs. And, of course, let’s not forget the budgets for the military and the military-industrial complex.
Oh, I forget to mention the other big money that is being made from the drug war — the asset-forfeiture crowd. Those are the public officials whose budgets have soared from the money they have confiscated and stolen from countless people, in the name of the war on drugs. Just ask African-Americans who have had the misfortune of traveling through Tenaha, Texas. They’ve had thousands of dollars taken from them by the cops, without any charges ever being filed against them. What better example of highway robbery than that?
Don’t count on public officials to willingly bring an end to the war on drugs. Like those drug cartels they’re fighting, they’re benefitting too much from it, in terms of bribes, salaries, budgets, and power. The drug-war idiocy will come to an end only when the American people finally declare that enough is enough and demand that the drug war be ended, immediately.”
http://www.fff.org/blog/jghblog2009-03-11.asp
7. Of course the US is trying to play it down. As we discussed yesterday, China didn’t do anything:
“US tries to play down naval confrontation with China”
http://wire.antiwar.com/2009/03/11/wrapup-2-us-tries-to-play-down-naval-confrontation-with-china/
8. “
Argentina bombing whistleblower allegedly tortured
Argentina probes alleged kidnapping, torture of former investigator in Jewish center bombing
Argentina on Wednesday launched a probe into the alleged kidnapping and torture of an attorney who accused top officials of a coverup in the nation’s worst terrorist attack.
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&lt;br/&gt;
The apparent abduction of Claudio Lifschitz on Friday has raised new questions about whether powerful people still have something to hide about the 1994 bombing of a Jewish cultural center that killed 85 people.
Lifschitz said he was driving through Buenos Aires with his secretary on Friday when another car cut him off. Three masked men jumped out, seized him, put a plastic bag over his head and shoved him into a van, he said.
He said the men claimed they were members of the government’s SIDE intelligence agency and shouted “don’t mess with the SIDE!” They carved the initials of the Jewish center — AMIA — on his back, and used a blowtorch to burn a number onto his left forearm, he said.“
http://wire.antiwar.com/2009/03/11/argentina-bombing-whistleblower-allegedly-tortured-3/
9. “Unemployment in 7 States May Have Exceeded 20% in February
As I have previously pointed out, unemployment may actually be higher than during the same phase of the Great Depression. Specifically, as of 1930 – the year after the 1929 crash – the unemployment rate was 8.7 percent.
As of December 2008, U-6 unemployment was 13.5 percent. (U-6 is actually more accurate, because it includes those who would like full-time work, but can only find part-time work, or have given up looking for work altogether). And PhD economists John Williams and Paul Craig Roberts – former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury and former editor of the Wall Street Journal – both say that if the unemployment rate was calculated as it was during the Great Depression, today’s figure would actually be 17.5% nationally.
…
Remember, that these figures are calculated using U-3. The U-6 unemployment numbers for some of these states probably exceeds 20%, which is substantially higher than the numbers for the comparable period of 1930 (today is comparable to 1930 because we are one year or less into the current financial crisis).
Indeed, unemployment is accelerating, and so by the end of this year, unemployment could be even higher. “
http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2009/03/unemployment-in-7-states-may-have.html
10. “Smith, however, also noted:
But Jewish and pro-Israel organizations largely decided not to make the fight against Freeman a public crusade, though they were the first, and fiercest, Freeman opponents and made their views known privately.
Yet reporters agreed to keep AIPAC’s “private” involvement a secret by allowing them to do everything ”on background,” and — far worse — then allowed what they knew to be the false impression to be created that AIPAC had no involvement in the campaign. Instead of the truth, what we have is AIPAC insinuating (through Mark Mazzetti’s article) and Fred Hiatt outright stating that Freeman’s accusations of AIPAC’s involvement are false and deranged — all because journalists concealed AIPAC’s involvement by agreeing to keep it all off the record and therefore pretending it didn’t exist.
This is what journalistically unwarranted grants of anonymity so often achieve. It isn’t merely that these grants of anonymity enable politically powerful individuals and groups to participate in our debates and disseminate information without any accountability whatsoever, though it does do that. Far worse, it causes journalists to become active participants in the dissemination of falsehoods and frauds. When politically powerful people can hide behind anonymity while having journalists disseminate their claims, they have no reason to be truthful because they know that the statements will never be attached to them, and it is thus very often used not to illuminate issues but purposefully to obfuscate and distort them.
…
But that assumes, wrongly, that anonymous claims are always at least somewhat informative (even if not as informative as on-the-record claims would be). But often, perhaps most often, anonymous claims are the opposite of informative. They’re intended to mislead and deceive, which is why the source is unwilling to attach their name to it. Passing those anonymous claims along doesn’t help the public understand anything. It deceives the public.“
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/
11. “When Benjamin Franklin was called before the British Parliament in 1757 and asked to account for the prosperity in the American colonies. He replied, “That is simple. In the colonies we issue our own money. It is called Colonial Scrip. We issue it in proper proportion to the demands of trade and industry to make the products pass easily from the producers to the consumers. In this manner, creating for ourselves our own paper money, we control its purchasing power, and we have no interest to pay to no one.” It was the struggle for financial sovereignty that precipitated the American Revolution when the (Rothschild) Bank of England forced the colonists to give up their own currency.
That war never ended.
Throughout his political life Thomas Jefferson fought off the covert attempts of European bankers to control the nation’s money supply through a privately-owned central bank. Andrew Jackson succeeded in defeating these racketeers, nationalizing the banks and paying off the public debt. Our country then flourished without inflation. When Abraham Lincoln issued ‘greenbacks’ that deprived private bankers of their monopoly control of the nation’s money supply he was assassinated. The international bankers battled for more than a century to establish a private central bank in the United States with the exclusive right to print their own fiat notes and exchange them for government debt. They succeeded in 1913 with The Federal Reserve Act, a covert coup that authorized a private central bank to create money out of nothing, lend it to the government with interest and control the national money supply, expanding or contracting it at will. Representative Charles Lindbergh called the Act “the worst legislative crime of the ages.” Fifty years later, President John F. Kennedy almost restored our Constitutional monetary system when he issued debt-free Treasury Notes. He too was assassinated.”
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22199.htm
